At least salaries are holding up. According to the latest Dice salary survey, Texas IT jobs pay on average $72,900, up 2 percent for 2007 but still trailing the national average of $74,570. The 2008 Robert Half Technology Salary Guide finds pay in Austin to be 3 percent above the national average, noting - as Sapphire's Miller also says - strong demand for software developers/programmers, desktop support specialists, and Web developers.
Fast-growing employers include Deloitte & Touche, Hyatt Hotels, Samsung, Bazaarvoice (which needs senior software developers), and the University of Texas.
"Austin is home to many Fortune 500 companies, including large semiconductor and computer manufacturing companies. They continue to have a strong presence in the Austin IT community and are a good source of jobs for IT professionals in the region," says Miller.
Job seekers should check in with the AusTech Alliance, formed by the Chamber of Commerce in 2006 to attract new tech companies to the area. The Chamber's "Opportunity Austin" five-year plan has surpassed its goals of adding 72,000 new jobs and $3.5 billion in payroll to the region's economy.
Medical technology is also coming on strong. In December, venture capital fund Santé Ventures said it had raised $130 million to invest in med-tech and healthcare services in Texas. It joins two other med-tech funds, Emergent Technologies and PTV Sciences, which are also jump-starting the industry.
And the Austin American-Statesman reports that Texas's Emerging Technology Fund, which was started in 2005 to "expand high-tech research and the commercialization of that research," has put $85.3 million into 31 firms. As is the case in many other cities and regions around the area, biotech and life sciences look like increasingly promising industries for technology experts to explore when plotting their next career moves.
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Unfortunately, fewer of those jobs were available in the fourth quarter, and 2008 is off to a somewhat slow start. As one pessimistic Dice forum commenter put it: "I know many people with computer science degrees from quality schools and 10-plus years of experience who have taken more than six months to find work over the past couple of years, and usually for a lot less than what they had previously made. I've also had several hiring managers I interviewed with in the past year tell me that they received hundreds of resumes for their software engineering job postings, dozens of which were 'good.'"
