Image via CrunchBase
Attn: Tech Managers. The next sound you may hear is employees closing the door behind them.
A survey of 2700 U.S. companies by Dice Holdings, a provider of specialized career websites, indicates we’re on the eve of a job-hopping, work-poaching frenzy – one with, sorry to say, very little salary improvement. The upshot is that a lot of employers will need to defensively think of low-cost ways of building loyalty.
The survey said that 54% of hiring managers and recruiters think we’re on the eve of a more aggressive job market this year, particularly in hot areas like mobile and cloud computing, but also in basic enterprise jobs like security. Only 3% think things will get easier. An even higher percentage of companies actually in the tech and consulting world think there’s going to be more job-hopping.
Surprisingly, very little of this is showing up in salaries. “We have a 30% increase in the number of jobs posted, compared to a year ago,” said Alice Hill, Managing Director of Dice.com, where about 80,000 largely U.S. tech jobs are posted at any time. “Salaries are 1% higher – not a lot.” Silicon Valley salaries were only somewhat higher, up 3%.
“Salaries are following very slowly,” Hill said. So far the economy has seen what she termed a “retentionless recovery,” with a lot of people held flat, or moved down, in their salaries and responsibilities.
“Employers need to start looking for telltale signs” that someone is getting ready to go, she said. “It might be taking a lot of days or half-days off, wearing a suit when that isn’t necessary, or rushing to get all their expenses in. It’s the kind of stuff other workers notice, too.”
Surprisingly, only about 54% of hiring managers believed they could tell when a technology professional was looking to exit.
With very little budget to pay people more, employers wanting to keep people typically offer other things, like a chance to telecommute, or work in projects that can add to skills. “It’s a good time to renegotiate your role, if you’re a top performer,” Hill said.
Across the country, according to dice, the average tech salary is about $80,000, but that can vary from $45,000 or less for, say, a helpdesk employee in North Dakota, to over $200,000 to a great Java programmer in New York or San Francisco.
If people do leave, the survey showed, there is a relatively strong chance they can come back. About 33% of managers said they’d have departing employees back, and 11% said they wouldn’t. Most said it would depend on the person – so don’t slam the door.
