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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ratan lal who wrote (17304)	4/25/1998 9:27:00 PM
From: Investor-ex!	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 94695

ratan, Few, if any, programmers receive $150,000 in base salary, though I have seen SAP offering nearly this much for well-experienced implementors of their R/3 product. Then again, SAP is German company hell-bent on reaching their goals and, for them, money appears to be no object. So, if true, your nephew is very much on the leading edge, salary-wise -- let's hope it lasts. Most I/S managers in mid-to-large size companies routinely earn as much, but not their programmers. The average programmer salary in the US, after working many years at a major US corporation, is more like $50-70,000, plus benefits, including stock options for some. This is a fact and not a debatable point. Unfortunately, lots of corporations balk at even this rate, as your ex-Motorola-at-$42,000-per-year-newphew exemplifies. The fact of the matter is that, unwilling to pay the going market rate, certain corporations fabricate a woeful tale of technical personnel shortages. They also use this manufactured "crisis" to keep pushing Congress to increase immigration quotas and work visas for the technical people they so "desparately" need. I can assure you that, given the proper incentives, supply would expand to meet demand, and salaries would then moderate -- this most basic law of economics has not been repealed. If I may be so bold, I think what you mean to say is not that there is a shortage of good programmers, but that there is a shortage of good programmers AT THE SALARIES THAT CERTAIN CORPORATIONS HAVE DECIDED THEY WILL PAY REGARDLESS OF MARKET REALITIES. This is another case entirely. The duplicity is palpable. These same companies will benchmark executive pay to make sure that they're "competitive", but then turn right around and declare that there is a "shortage" when they discover they can't retain worthwhile technical skills at the relatively meager rates they're willing to pay. I guess the market solution doesn't always work in one's favor and, when it doesn't, one should then go whining to Congress to change or create some more laws. Washington plays along because, for obvious debt-related reasons, it is very much in the business of making inflation appear non-existent, when, in fact, it isn't at all. There can be (and is) rampant inflation in executive compensation, but let a whiff of it appear among the drones and we suddenly have either out-of-control "wage-inflation" or "shortages". Inflation for the chosen few is OK, whereas inflation for a few more is, well, inflationary. Can't have that -- therefore, there must be a shortage! But no need to worry, the FED will come to the rescue before things get too far out of hand -- one quick recession ought to do the trick. Question is, how to do it without hopelessly ballooning the deficit again? :o)