Note: Not disparaging it, you certainly know more about most things than me, but 1997 was the start of the .com run-up. Salaries started skyrocketing at that time frame. There was a huge need for tech skills, and very few people who could handle it, and the right people who could handle a bit of uncertainty in their lives could do consulting for far above average wages.

But that was unsustainable.

Lots of people got into the field, lots of people who may or may be any good. The .com runnup tanked, even before the economy in general did. Lots of those jobs went poof, which drives the salary down for the remaining employees due to the competition.

I know I ate a 2 years of no raise and 1 pay cut, and that was at the same employer.

So my question to you, did you see a series of significant increases of income in the following years, and did they correlate with increases skill and responsibilites or was it simply a matter that market prices allowed you to charge more?

> Also, how do you explain my wife's complete inability to
> find any kind of job at all (doing software QA for name
> firms like Autodesk and Wells Fargo)?

Hmm: software QA?
Everyone hates you.
The crappy programmers because you point out their mistakes that they have been hiding.
The PHBs who blame you for making the project late.
The users who want it NOW, and really don't understand now means a data damaging bug that will kill weeks of work, silently.
The good programmers love you, but since they are good programmers, you find very little problems with their stuff so there is very little interaction. Or, you find a problem in the crappy coder's code, and it is given to the good programmers to fix, incrasing their work load - so they hate you too.

That is a NASTY job. You have to be detail oriented and politically strong.

I won't try to "explain", other than to say it is the 1st job to go (along with trainers) in tough economic times. Sure, it is STUPID to get rid of the people who save your ass from making mistakes, but as we know, PHBs are short sighted to they only see them as pure expense.


> The economy is not "recovered". I point to the
> recent stockmarket nose-dive as additional evidence.

Agreed. Is has a cancerous upper level expansion at the expense of the shrinking middle class, which can't go on indefinitely. The term jobless recovery has been bandied about, and I'm partially responsible for that as I streamline our operations and automate things.

Maybe your particular specialty peaked and then demand tanked.

Maybe you hit the top band of what is possible, and anything after that would require a huge change in job responsibilities.

I do know that tech track peaks somewhere above middle management, but not up to senior management level. So the ONLY way to get anymore money after a certain point is to move into senior management. I'm about to have my review in a bit. Doubt it will beat inflation. The only way I maintain my income is by side work / consulting.

Or maybe it is a matter of the multiple jobs. I know you've held several in several companies that have gone under. I assume in each case if you were out of work for a while you accepted a job at a lower income level.

For some reason you assume ever increasing income should be a given, and you are pissed that it is not true.

The bottom line is that it is not. Either you take 100% responsibility for your income by being an entrepreneur, which also means a strong chance of losing everything, or you take the less risky and less rewarding path of working for someone else, who in turn gets to set your salary.

And while you may say it is not less risky, the only thing you lose when the company you work for goes out of business is your job (and possibly pension). The owner might have bet a lot of savings, his house, etc, on the business.

Edit: missing "not"