InfoWorld is reporting a second year of wages essentially flat, with "Developer"s making a median of $84,146. Software Development reports a huge post-2000 slowdown, with current compensation of $78,000 compared to 2000's $95K. (SD's survey goes to a much larger sample size than InfoWorld's, but I'm not prepared to criticize anyone's methodology.)

Meanwhile, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says that being a computer programmer is going to be the fastest growing profession of the decade. According to an article at http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm, there were about 697,000 "computer software engineer" jobs in 2000 (note that this probably represented the peak year of dot-com employment), of which 380,000 were application programmers and 317,000 systems programmers. A total of 49,000 were self-employed. Median salary was $67,670.

On the Dot-NET jobs list (http://discuss.develop.com) there have been some ridiculous postings lately, notably one for a Manhattan-based Tech Lead with salary "to $50K." That triggered a discussion as to whether salaries are just soft or whether there's a genuine salary collapse. Everyone agreed that off-shore development has rapidly become viable in the minds of technical managers and is definitely beginning to have an effect on the domestic market.