"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.
