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Computerworld Releases 2015 IT Salary Survey

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Companies are increasing IT salaries in order to attract and retain talent in a highly competitive hiring market, and the security profession in particular is red-hot, according to IDG’s Computerworld 2015 IT Salary Survey.

The report lists average 2015 salaries for more than 50 job titles at senior IT management, middle IT management and staff levels.

“Computerworld’s 29th annual IT Salary Survey results show that it’s a buyer’s market for IT professionals in 2015,” said Valerie Potter, Managing Editor, Features at Computerworld. “Hiring managers are facing tough competition for workers with skills in key areas such as mobile, big data and security, and for the first time since the economic downturn we’re seeing significant year-over-year gains in IT compensation.”

Per the survey, in 2015, the average increase in total compensation (salary plus bonus) for IT workers increased 3.6% in 2015, compared to an average of 2% in each of the prior three years. With salaries up, unemployment down and open positions, it’s a great time to be looking for a job in IT — and many employers are willing to loosen the purse strings to keep the top performers they’ve got.

Compensation is one of the biggest motivators for IT professionals, with nearly half (49%) of respondents reporting base salary as one of the most important aspects of their current position.

Only three out of 10 respondents cited the “challenge of the job and responsibility” as a key motivator.

Security professionals are in extremely high demand, due to several recent high-profile security breaches at major companies. For security-related positions such as Chief Security Officer and Information Security Manager, increases in total compensation rose 6.7% and 5.3%, respectively, year-over-year.

Overall, 67% of IT workers reported receiving a raise in 2015, compared to 60% last year, 57% in 2013 and 47% in 2012.

Methodology: Computerworld’s 29th annual IT Salary Survey was administered via the Internet. The survey results include responses from both Computerworld digital magazine subscribers and visitors to Computerworld.com. The collection of data began on Oct. 2, 2014, and concluded on Dec. 18. A total of 5,484 people responded to the survey. Of those respondents, 4,863 were employed full time or part time and were eligible to complete the entire survey. At the 95% confidence level, the margin of error for this sample size is 1.4 percentage points.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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Computerworld Releases 2015 IT Salary Survey

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Companies are increasing IT salaries in order to attract and retain talent in a highly competitive hiring market, and the security profession in particular is red-hot, according to IDG’s Computerworld 2015 IT Salary Survey.

The report lists average 2015 salaries for more than 50 job titles at senior IT management, middle IT management and staff levels.

“Computerworld’s 29th annual IT Salary Survey results show that it’s a buyer’s market for IT professionals in 2015,” said Valerie Potter, Managing Editor, Features at Computerworld. “Hiring managers are facing tough competition for workers with skills in key areas such as mobile, big data and security, and for the first time since the economic downturn we’re seeing significant year-over-year gains in IT compensation.”

Per the survey, in 2015, the average increase in total compensation (salary plus bonus) for IT workers increased 3.6% in 2015, compared to an average of 2% in each of the prior three years. With salaries up, unemployment down and open positions, it’s a great time to be looking for a job in IT — and many employers are willing to loosen the purse strings to keep the top performers they’ve got.

Compensation is one of the biggest motivators for IT professionals, with nearly half (49%) of respondents reporting base salary as one of the most important aspects of their current position.

Only three out of 10 respondents cited the “challenge of the job and responsibility” as a key motivator.

Security professionals are in extremely high demand, due to several recent high-profile security breaches at major companies. For security-related positions such as Chief Security Officer and Information Security Manager, increases in total compensation rose 6.7% and 5.3%, respectively, year-over-year.

Overall, 67% of IT workers reported receiving a raise in 2015, compared to 60% last year, 57% in 2013 and 47% in 2012.

Methodology: Computerworld’s 29th annual IT Salary Survey was administered via the Internet. The survey results include responses from both Computerworld digital magazine subscribers and visitors to Computerworld.com. The collection of data began on Oct. 2, 2014, and concluded on Dec. 18. A total of 5,484 people responded to the survey. Of those respondents, 4,863 were employed full time or part time and were eligible to complete the entire survey. At the 95% confidence level, the margin of error for this sample size is 1.4 percentage points.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

Hot Topics

The Latest

The enterprises that will define the next decade are not the ones that deployed the most technology. They are the ones who understood what their technology was actually doing. That distinction is not a philosophical point. It is the central operational challenge facing every organization that has spent the last five years modernizing at speed ...

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

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