[quote=kev374]I’ve been reviewing Salary.com data recently for Sr. Software Engineers with Enterprise Java and the salaries seem to have dropped significantly. The median in Los Angeles now has dropped from $115k in 2009 when I checked to $103k a 10.5% drop and closer to 18% inflation adjusted.
A concern is if this is a temporary anomaly due to the economy or if this is a permanent trend due to the huge influx recently of cheap L1 labor from the likes of Infosys and Wipro.
People in existing jobs seem to be fairing well and getting 3% raises based on the wage they got when they were hired which may be much above the current market wage…but if they ever get laid off they would have to take a huge pay cut.
Any comments on this?[/quote]
Kev, enterprise Java is dead (well, it’s been dead for awhile 2-3)…There’s not too much new going on in the enterprise world in terms of new and innovation. It’s partly because the enterprise landscape looks really different from 6-7 years…Back then, enterprise software was pushing the technology envelope. All this hype about web services, EAI, application integration etc…And the solutions were all homegrown or “engineered” solutions. Fast forward to today… Enterprise software now consists of configuring a bunch of prepackaged software (most likely now all under the oracle name). Much less of software “development” needs to be done in this space. So enterprise java is no longer pushing the tech envelope. It’s quickly becoming antiquated. Too many people know about it. (Very few people are good enterprise systems architects though, so if you’re one of them, you’ll do well) …It’s not going to go away…Like you’ll always need some mainframe experience. But like every other technology that has a shelf life, enterprise java has reached it’s peak probably 2-3 years ago, and the demand for people with this skill set is in decline…
The dollars right now is is mobile software engineering and solutions. There’s probably about another 3-4 years of shelf life on Android O/S before it too saturates. In embedded, knowledge of linux embedded engineering is going to carry one for a long time. And knowledge of ARM architecture and working experience will be around for some time. Wait probably for another 5-6 years when the software cycle shifts focus back to the backend systems (again).
If one plans to stay in the enterprise space, one needs to focus less on a specific technology (IE Java skillset, EJB skillset), and focus more on being a system designer and or architect that can work with lots of different things, including knowing when to buy the solution versus building it. People in IT don’t give a crap if you know how a Java VM work, if you modified the VM to make it more efficient, or if you optimized the code….If that’s your thing, you belong in real software engineering, NOT I.T. That’s why I got out when I did.
