Main image of article Dice Tech Salary Report: Are Tech Pros Happy with Pay?

Tech salaries have leveled off—and tech professionals aren’t happy about it, according to Dice’s latest Tech Salary Report. In 2022, 30 percent of tech professionals reported that they were either very dissatisfied or somewhat dissatisfied with their salaries; in 2023, that percentage increased to 35 percent.

Some reasons for that unhappiness are obvious. Although certain specialized skills saw a notable increase in average compensation last year (especially skills related to cloud and data infrastructure/analytics), significantly more tech professionals (12 percent) reported that their salaries have gone down over the past 12 months; In 2022, only 6 percent reported a decreased salary.

If you feel like you’re undervalued, you may have some room to negotiate with a current or new employer for a pay boost. Here are some tips for that discussion:

  • Don’t be self-limiting; if you feel you deserve more, set up that chat with your manager.
  • Show how you add value to the organization.
  • Put your request in writing.
  • Request a raise well before your next performance review; your manager may need time to plead your case to senior leadership.
  • Don’t start with an absurdly high number; you don’t want to be shot down immediately.
  • Don’t call out inflation or personal reasons for your raise; instead, focus relentlessly on how you help the company fulfill its strategy (and boost its profits).
  • Refrain from using another offer as leverage.

If you’ve made significant contributions to your company, you likely have sufficient justification for a raise—especially if you also possess highly specialized skills that your team really needs.

Layoffs

The massive spike in layoffs at the beginning of 2023 had a major impact on a sizable portion of tech professionals. Ten percent of tech professionals surveyed for Dice’s Tech Salary Report were laid off themselves, and 25 percent are still worried about layoffs at their companies. Of those that were laid off, a portion of them (23 percent) took more than six months to find another job. For context, in the broader job market outside of tech, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average time it took to find a job after unemployment was 9.2 weeks in November 2023.

As severance pay and termination bonuses remain an unregulated landscape in the U.S., there is no standard package tech professionals can expect to receive if they are laid off. With roughly three-quarters of laid off workers taking two months or more to find a new job, there is always a risk that a layoff will impact tech professionals’ personal finances.

For tech professionals who want to prepare for a possible layoff, there are some straightforward steps you can take:

  • Update your resume and professional online profiles regularly.
  • Keep your networks up to date and network whenever you can.
  • Have a rainy day fund ready.
  • Always consider alternative industries when searching for jobs.
  • Focus on up-skilling, particularly in cutting-edge areas such as AI. That will make you valuable to a variety of employers.

Layoffs can impact anyone, and even a little bit of preparation can help save you precious time if the worst happens. Keeping your skills and your personal network up-to-date are crucial.