IT jobs – Location matters

Investing in an IT career is like investing in real estate: In both cases location matters. While it’s not all about location, location, location, compensation for the same IT job can vary widely — sometimes by $50,000 or more — depending on where you decide to work.  But the best paying job may not be the best value because cost of living factors can more than cancel out a higher salary…

Salary variances by city: The bigger the city, the bigger the salary

Let’s start with the compensation variances. Robert Half Technology group provides hiring managers with national average pay ranges and projected pay increases for more than 70 different IT jobs. But markets are different in each metro area, so the recruiting firm uses “local variance” factors, or index numbers, for each city/metro area that are based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and information from its own history of IT job placements. For example, New York has a variance factor of 1.41 (141%), which means the going rate for an IT job that pays $100,000 on average nationally would command $141,000 on Wall Street. Here are the 10 locations with the highest index numbers:

Choosen excerpts by JMM from

via Hot IT jobs: Why location matters | Computerworld Blogs.