- Tech workers earned an average salary of $111,193 last year, but 35% of them weren't satisfied with it.
- One reason for pay dissatisfaction is layoffs across the tech industry, a Dice investigation found.
- Dice's CEO said employers are “setting their people and their salaries right” and limiting raises.
A recent Dice survey shows some tech workers aren't too happy with average six-figure salaries, and industry layoffs are contributing to growing dissatisfaction with their pay. There is a possibility that it has become.
Researchers at the tech job site surveyed 6,166 registered users and visitors of the site near the end of 2023 to understand how tech workers feel about their pay. . Their jobs include solutions architects and software engineers, who earn an average annual salary of more than $100,000, as well as technical writers and help desk technicians, who earn less than six figures a year.
According to the study, the average annual salary for technology workers surveyed was $111,193. That's slightly lower than the average salary researchers found in a study last year, Dice said. Meanwhile, the average full-time American earned an annual salary of $59,384 as of the fourth quarter of 2023, according to salary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But despite earning nearly twice as much as the average American, tech workers surveyed reported becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their pay. Thirty-five percent of workers surveyed last year said they were “somewhat” or “very” dissatisfied with their pay, a 5% increase from 2022, according to the survey.
“Given the slowdown in salary growth, this is not surprising,” Dyce said in the study regarding the pay dissatisfaction findings. “Significantly more technology professionals (12%) reported their salaries have decreased this year, but only 6% reported their salaries have decreased in 2022.”
Among those who say they are dissatisfied with their income, satisfaction varies by age and level of career progression. Tech employees early in their careers reported being more dissatisfied with their pay than those with more than 15 years of experience.
So why do more tech professionals seem to be dissatisfied with their paychecks? Mass layoffs across the tech industry may be one reason.
“Companies are right-sizing their employees and their salaries.”
According to Layoffs.fyi, technology companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Google laid off nearly 263,000 technology employees in 2023 to cut costs. More than 49,000 technology jobs have already been cut this year as of March, according to the Job Attrition Tracker, and analysts say more will be cut as companies focus on generative AI and hiring AI talent. We expect that there will be cuts.
The technology industry is known for very high compensation packages, which can reach up to $718,000 per year for software engineering roles.
But Dice said tech giants now don't seem to be offering as high a salary as they used to, making it difficult for workers to find another job with a comparable base salary, which can lead to frustration. That's what it means.
“Technology salaries skyrocketed in 2021 and 2022 as we emerge from the pandemic,” Dice CEO Art Zaile told Business Insider. “Companies are now trying to rationalize their employees and their salaries, and are also limiting the large pay increases that were previously the norm.”
JT O'Donnell, founder and CEO of career coaching service Work It Daily, agrees. She says laid-off tech workers now have to compete for a limited supply of jobs that may be paid less than before.
She compared the current state of the technology industry to what happened in Silicon Valley during the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, when companies lost a lot of money and jobs were cut.
“I've seen talented software engineers lose their jobs, then sit around, drain their 401k, pile up debt, and then be forced to take a tech job for half their previous salary,” O'Donnell said. told BI when explaining the dot. -combubble. “They truly believed, 'This is my worth.'”
Career coaches are now seeing pay dissatisfaction reflected in their career services. She said some of the clients who come to her are technology workers looking for new jobs or people considering changing industries because they're not satisfied with the salary they're being offered.
As a result, O'Donnell says there is a need to manage customer expectations about realistic amounts of money they can make today.
“I think what frustrates tech job seekers is that they think I should make what I make, and that’s no longer the case,” she says. To tell.
Still, tough economic conditions don't necessarily mean it's impossible for today's tech workers to land coveted, high-paying jobs. If you do, you may simply need a different approach.
That's why O'Donnell now teaches clients how to market themselves by clearly communicating the unique value they add to their clients. Doing so, she says, could help tech workers stand out among job seekers with the same technical skill set.
That could give you better opportunities with a higher base salary.
“I think the tech industry and tech workers are going through a difficult time right now,” she said. “They really need to realize that to get more money, they have to put in more effort.”