Best-Paying Programming Languages, Skills

by Liam Tung,   ZDNet

Wage growth for technology-related jobs in the U.S. was essentially flat in 2018, rising just 0.6% from 2017 to an average of $93,244 for the year, according to Dice’s 2018 tech salary report. This continues a stagnant trend in the industry, as tech wages have not increased since 2015.

However, there are a few specialized skills and roles that have seen higher than average growth, which could motivate some professionals into make a career pivot.

Database administrators on average received $103,473 per year but wages grew only 0.2 percent. Meanwhile, web developer and programmer salaries grew 11.6 percent to $82,765. Even technical-support wages saw decent growth of 6.8 percent to $60,600.

Average wages for software engineers grew 5.1 percent to $111,000, while app-developer wages grew 7.6 percent to $105,200. Other roles that paid between $100,000 to $115,000 include DevOps engineer, hardware engineer, project manager, and security analyst.

Dice’s survey of 10,780 technology professionals found that 68% would change careers to get a higher wage, compared with just 47% who would make a switch for better working conditions, such as the ability to work remotely or more flexible hours. In terms of specific skills, Dice found that programmers using Google-developed Go, or Golang, earned the highest on average at $132,827, while programmers using Apache Kafka earned an average of $127,544.

The top-paying location is Silicon Valley, but the report found the best cities for tech workers, adjusted for the local cost of living, were Minneapolis, Portland, Tampa, Charlotte, and Seattle. Report