They certainly did go down. I was personally at a company where the CEO came in one morning during late 2001 and announced a cut of 10% across the board. No-one left as a result either, until 2003.
"Average annual wages in high-tech rose sharply between 2001 and 2008 compared with overall average wages in the Valley. For the Silicon Valley, the average annual wage in high-tech industries rose from $97,344 in 2001 to $132,351 in 2008, an increase of 36.0 percent. (See table 2.) In comparison, average annual wages rose only 21.7 percent across all establishments in the area"
Good reference. But I wonder what the trend was between 2000 to 2003 inclusive, which is the time of interest. At most flat, probably. The Valley started to come back by 2004 and by 2008 was in good shape.
No, as an industry, wages absolutely did not go down. Your salary went down because your company and some others were in trouble, but most companies did not have salary cuts, and salaries were not cut whatsoever.
If a company goes bankrupt and it lays people off, it doesn't mean that salaries all fell, it just means those employees' salaries dropped to $0. This is what happened to you. I got modest salary increases during the same time.
"wages absolutely did not go down" being followed by "Your salary went down because your company and some others were in trouble" makes me wonder how well this line of logic was thought out.
Not sure what you mean. Anecdotal evidence is valueless. Sure, some companies cut salaries, but as a whole, the wages did not go down. It's not all of a sudden the going rate for a programmer went from 100k down to 85k in general.
As already pointed out this covers 2001 to 2008. I'm interested in 2001 to 2003/4 inclusive. Tech salaries obviously went up between 2001 and 2008, everyone in the Bay Area knows that.
If the data for this specific range is available, I'd love to see it. Perhaps I missed it.
This is not what happened to me. I kept my job, but my salary went down.
Various companies also enforced extended shutdowns (over Holiday periods). If you had no vacation left, you didn't get paid. This is effectively a wage cut.
I am aware that wages are "sticky" and companies would rather lay off than cut salaries. But the statement that "wages did not go down" is not correct.
Yeah, @pfarnsworth is stuck on some weird point. Wages in the tech industry went down during the dotcom crash for those that had jobs. And some people lost their jobs and couldn't get new ones. And there were some people who did not have their salaries change, like me. I was not in the bay area, that's probably why mine didn't go down. My stock went did go down in value :-)
No, as I said, as an industry, wages did not go down. Sure, some companies cut their wages, but that was the minority. The salaries for programmer didn't go for $100k to $85k for example. Either the companies died, or they survived and kept wages the same. The vast majority of companies that survived didn't cut wages. They either laid people off, or kept the status quo.
The reason why they didn't is because they didn't want to give an arbitrary pay cut to their best employees, who would leave as soon as things got better. They would rather cut the fat and get rid of employees they didn't want.
Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Cisco, Oracle, etc, none of those companies instituted pay cuts, and wages did not go down in those companies. Some of them had layoffs but they cut salaries.
So we've reached the point where you say the (presumably average) salary for programmers didn't go down between 2000 and 2004. And I am at least one data point that shows that it did (and I know of plenty others).
I wish someone actually had data for the time in question, as opposed to anecdote. I find the question quite interesting, and would like to know the answer.
Seriously? You're going to use the impact on Silly Valley tech salaries that a glut of engineering talent would cause as an argument against minimum wage laws?
If technology professionals ever find themselves in a position where minimum wage regulations are relevant to their incomes, we'll have been through something far worse than a few layoffs.
The myopia of tech people is really mind-blowing sometimes...
Like, for example, corporations preying on people who have no choice but to take any job that's available, and offering wages that are below a starvation level?
