ha ha ha. Well I can tell you that no one seems to do anything for the love of it these days, except maybe IT techies.

I always have this thought, "why would you want to make me rich"!

If you cant manage your own money then its your own fault for falling for these finacial scams not Schemes.

Might as well go for one of those chinese .0002c to .02c in 2 days forecast stock scams, I see on the internet email.

my .00002c

Given the state of the industry, I'd worry about making ends meet first. The low salaries in IT pretty much rules out any prospect for discretionary spending.

this is bullsh*t man

i'm raking in $7000 a month after tax and i don't exactly bust my balls, yo

if i really cranked i could pull in $10000 pcm i reckon

what are you complaining about?

get some decent skills, move to a decent sized city and work harder

I'm based in Melbourne and was unfortunate enough to work for companies who regarded employees as a cost/burden on the bottom line. I've sinced moved on from IT and yes I am now earning a decent salary without having to work long hours. In my current job, long hours are abnormal and is appreciated by my employer.

In IT, slaving it out is the norm and not necessarily based on getting things done, instead, it is time based. If you get things done quickly, the employer just gives you more work even after the normal knock off time. They know that lots of IT people are unemployed so someone's bound to do the job.

what did you move on to and how?

tell us all how to exIT

Brownie to rake in such cash?

I've moved onto financial services. The stress and pressure is there naturally but at least I don't get sick headaches like I use to in IT.

Brownie, are you some sort of executive or working at middle management level? At $7K after tax, you're looking at more than $130K gross per year. When I talked about slaving it out, I'm talking about people with many years of experience who are barely earning above $60K. (Note I'm not one of those people but I did exit IT while I am able to)

I imagine that Google's stock options were the icing on the cake.

Surprisingly, Google and Microsoft don't pay much above the industry rate for the geographic area where the staff are employed. Why? They don't have to. They have tens of thousands of people clamouring to work there, with an acceptance rate of less than 1%.

I managed to work my way into over 6 figures a year while in the CRM field.

After getting sick of that, I retrained as an open source Web dev (not considering the job market), and was shocked at the pathetic salaries on offer.

It just isn't smart to do pure dev anymore. You need to add a few more strings to your bow. Marketing is where it's at now. Good copywriters are damned expensive.

Cyber, My thoughts on the open source arguement... if a company can't afford a decent enterprise level software, why would they afford to pay a salary for a decent dev? esp when average web dev's are ten-a-penny?

The trick is to stay corporate, and learn as much about the business, and assist in its effectiveness and reengineering. I fear those on a pittance of a salary are those stuck in the back room coding or supporting systems who don't get their value known.

Anon, as I've posted elsewhere before, the salaries Brownie quoted are not unusual in certain sectors & roles in Sydney. You don't need to be mgt to get these if you know your stuff.

TopDown, I agree with your view on making your value know. In my current financial services job, I do use my skills from my previous IT jobs. The only difference is, my skills are actually valued unlike my former IT employers who saw developers as a $$$ burden ready to be ditched at the first available opportunity.

What exacly the skill you have that you make so much in IT at the developer end?

Unless you are in SAP/ERP implementation, i doubt salaries are that high at the developer market.

I'm doing J2EE at the moment for a bank in Sydney on $80 an hour which works out at over $150K. Look at the rates survey on Brainbox and you'll see such rates aren't that unusual.

I'm doing core Java in sydney

I have several mates here earning around the same

I know of people on twice what I earn

A reasonable programmer can earn $80/hr here

A good one can crank it up to $100/hr+

Brownie, are you a contractor or permanent employee?

So these guys saying they are earning $80/hr, is this through anagency or direct? You might think your rate is high, I've seen companies pay $1350 a day, but that was the agency rate, who knows what the contractor was actually taking.

I hear the market for Java has gone through the roof, along with Contract rates, so brownie could be right.

This year the Java/j2ee rates have been phenomenal especially in Sydney, with salaries of 80/100 per hour being quite common. However this is a very localised growth, i doubt other developer skills in IT have the same demand and salary levels.

What goes up must come down. Let's not forget the threat from a certain south Asian country.

Actually, $80 an hour is bad pay for a Java developer. In Europe or the US you could easily expect double that.

Not Quite Max. In the UK, the hourly rate for a Java contracter is £34($85AUD).

Once you factor in cost of living, you probably won't be any better off.

Source: http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts/uk/java.do

Still, J2EE is definitely a desirable skillset to have right now.

in the UK (London) you can get 500-550 quid per day for java programming (contractor, like me). thats about $1500 AUS per day - and thats not rare or top dollar either. thats average contract java pay in the City of London (CBD - banking etc). if you've got a lot of banking knowledege you can earn 650-700 per day (pounds not dollars) and even more for team lead / arch. so $80-$100 per hour is a pittance compared to what those people earn

anyway, back to the local rates: $80 per hour is average rate for java programmers in sydney - contract rate - like i said - good people are getting $100+ per hour - and thats been the case for at least 2 years

if you are earning $60K for java programming then you must be living in a cave in Broome, or junior (< 2 years exp)!

Issued 12th December 2006

New inquiry into temporary business visas

Joint Standing Committee on Migration

Not specific to ICT, those sort of migration schemes subject people to exploitation with the threat of deportation.

Also this is just another forum to drive wages down even further.

Amused, It's not only J2EE that command those salaries, I know .NET, Oracle and even SQL Server programmers earning the big bucks in Sydney, where I find in the corporate environment for contractors with business knowledge 70-80ph after agency cut is not rare at all. What might surprise you also (it did me initially!) is that BA's are also on equivalent rates.

At the end of the day, I believe it is the business knowledge and visibility is as important as the tech knowledge, but also picking the right industry to work in at the correct time. This is the same globally as Brownie has explained, (City of London finance rates vs elsewhere) and not simply a Australian phenomenon.

Witheld, I agree with your points re the direct/agency rates. To get an idea however, see the Ambition.com.au salary survey and what you see is the agency quoted rates. If you're direct you might earn as good as that. If not, then maybe take 20%-30% off for what the contractor sees. At the end of the day I believe we’re in the day of the mercenary contractor, I think we’re no longer in a world that values the perm employee, and as somebody who has experienced both and is fortunate enough to be healthy and with few fiscal responsibilities I, like many choose to be a contractor. When the time is right I might move into management or even switch out of IT altogether, and am fully aware of this fact. I continually update and enhance both my business skills and my technical skills, and am leaving avenues open to switch careers if need be.

Suffice to say I believe all IT people are underpaid, given the level of knowledge usually required and the continual tech learning we all need to undertake, not withstanding the stress and frustration of long hours. It is a feature of the industry that the majority of jobs do not favour the communication and business understanding abilities of its workers, and thus these roles reward the lowest, with the excuse that the role might as well be performed elsewhere more cheaply. The other reason behind the low rates is the realisation by all parties that IT is justifiably transient in nature. If Qantas can outsource development to India although it might require twice as many programmers for the same cost, why should it not, especially if it is for the greater good of Qantas remaining competitive and alive? This is pure market economics, and whilst many of these decisions have turned out to be bad thus far, you can only bet that the developing economies are getting better at fulfilling the expectations of the West places upon them. So my view is make hay while the sun shines, and don’t expect anybody to owe you a cent.

Rubbish

These salary claims ar a load of rubbish, $100+ per hour

This might of been so when you only did html in the post dot com crash.

I have 10 years experience and can only get $75 - $80 in Australia.

mc

The present rates for Java/j2ee are not long lasting or sustainable. Anon has a point here, the Govt has quietly added Java to the MODL list meaning that you are going to see a flood of java/j2ee programmers hitting the market. The present rates came from the back of a huge oversupply of java programmers 3-4 years ago, it is hard to see rates keeping up that growth rate on a skill that is rather not uncommon.

Re-negotiated my contract to $100/hr in Sydney doing Java - not even J2EE

Don't you just love the easy life!