Communications of the ACM
Demand for Software Engineers Keeps Climbing and So Do the Salaries
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Skyrocketing demand is leading to higher salaries and improved career prospects for software engineers across the United States. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 30% job growth in coming years, while CareerCast recently deemed software engineer the all-around best job for 2012. Software engineers with Java, mobile, and .Net developer experience are in particular demand. The national average for a software engineer's base salary is currently $92,648, according to Glassdoor, marking an increase of 2.5% compared to 2011. However, in some geographic locations, the base salary is higher than $100,000 per year.
According to recent data from Glassdoor, Google currently offers the highest average salary among 15 major tech companies at $128,336 per year. Ranked second is Facebook, which pays its software engineers an average of $123,626 per year. Notably, the salary gap between Facebook and Google is closing. In 2011, Google offered an average salary of $114,595 to its developers, while Facebook offered $107,744. Third on the list is Apple, which offers a base software engineer salary of $114,413. In the fourth spot is eBay with $108,809, followed by Zynga at $105,568. Other companies offering more than $100,000 on average include Microsoft ($104,362), Intuit ($103,284), Amazon ($103,070), Oracle ($102,204), Cisco ($101,909), and Yahoo ($100,122).
Ranked by geographic location, companies in the San Francisco Bay Area continue to offer the highest average base salary for software engineers at $107,798. According to a report from CyberCoders earlier this year, San Jose and San Francisco rank first and second as the cities with the highest-paying IT jobs. Seattle ranks next at $102,006. San Diego follows at $93,529, then Boston ($93,403) and New York ($92,701). Meanwhile, Minneapolis-based companies offer the lowest average base salaries to software engineers at $75,032, considerably less than the national average of $92,648. Clustered in the $80,000 range are Philadelphia ($80,270), Dallas/Ft. Worth ($80,947), Phoenix ($80,975), Denver ($83,164), and Portland ($84,793).
From InfoWorld
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