A survey on salaries in the Argentine technology industry showed an average of
345 thousand pesos per month
(gross), with 26% of workers with
dollarized salaries
, 58%
home office
and 24% who had a salary adjustment of between
55 and 90%
.
Regarding the
development
sector (programming, among other skills), the average was
224 thousand
for junior positions (0-2 years of experience),
393 thousand
for semi-senior positions (2-5 years) and
500 thousand
for the most experienced (senior, 5 years and older).
The item with the highest averages was registered by the
data science
category , with 287, 505 and
554 thousand pesos
.
The data comes from an anonymous survey that includes some
7,300 responses
collected between December 2022 and January 2023, carried out by the
OpenQube
collaborative platform .
It has been carried out since 2014 and is published every year on its website.
“This is a survey created by a community called
sysarmy
, which among other things works with those who organize the annual Nerdearla event.
It is done as a help to the community to understand how the labor market is, ”explains
Maxi Firtman, programmer and teacher, director of ITMaster Academy, to
Clarín .
These are some of the numbers that paint a bit of the panorama of wages, conditions and labor practices in the local tech industry, and that can be complemented with other studies such as the one carried out by the Chamber of the Argentine Software Industry (CESSI) in December of last year.
Average salaries, positions and gender gap in the IT sector of Argentina
There are still few women in the business.
Photo File Clarín
The salary average was located at
345 thousand pesos
, with an evolution that rises strongly from
2021
.
"This phenomenon is due solely to the increase in inflation and sadly it is not accompanied by an improvement in purchasing power, as can be seen in the tabs that adjust against the dollar," they explain in the survey analysis.
In relation to the form of payment, in an area where
dollarization
is common currency, those who earned the most declared about
687 thousand pesos
in Senior positions, against
418 thousand
who do not have a dollarized salary.
“The market is difficult because there are
people who earn little
(less than a salary for a commerce employee) and
people who earn a lot
(in dollars and well paid) and sometimes for similar work, which greatly distorts reality and it is difficult to have reliable data”, contextualizes Firtman.
"If you get the data from AFIP or ANSES, the numbers are much smaller because
you cannot filter there what position
people have or what expertise," he continues.
"In some private consultancies, what is done is to reach high numbers because they are
recruiting
numbers , of positions in large companies that are looking for professionals, but
those high values do not include a large population
that is not looking and has been stable for 10 or 20 years working in a company in some old technology that is not part of the 'boom' of the moment”, closes his clarification.
Evolution of salaries in the Argentine IT industry.
Photo Openqube
Regarding the salary in relation to the educational level, those who have
master's degrees
average
more than half a million pesos
, while specializations are between
450,000 and doctorates 414,000.
Those who declared having only
completed high school
averaged 271,000 pesos.
The majors that were among the jobs with the highest earning power were Bachelor of Computer Science
,
Bachelor of
Computer Science
, and
Computer Engineering
.
Among the most popular universities are the National Technological University (
UTN
), the University of Buenos Aires (
UBA
), the National University of La Matanza (
UNLaM
) and the National University of La Plata (
UNLP
).
Leading universities in relation to IT careers.
Photo Openqube
And among the platforms most used to work,
AWS
took first place with salaries of up to
605 thousand pesos
in the Senior category.
Regarding the distribution between men and women, there is still a
dominance of cisgender men
: 77.9% against 16.5%.
The increase in women compared to the previous period is barely 0.5%.
0.4% declared themselves non-binary and 0.3% agender.
"According to the data collected, the salary gap between cis men and cis women
increases as the years of experience
of the surveyed population increase, which is where the highest percentage of participation is found," they say from Openqube.
IT salaries in Argentina: the positions that lead the ranking
IT encompasses a huge range of roles and functions.
Photo Ethermax
Regarding the charges that are contemplated, these are the following (explanation of each role by Firtman):
Developer
: is the
programmer
, who writes code for the computer to do something.
SysAdmin / DevOps / SRE
: it is closer to managing
servers
, configuring, working with the security of the equipment where the programmers (
developers
) then put their code to work.
Technical Leader
: is the
technical leader
of a team, who has more experience and can supervise the solution that several developers do and other functions.
QA / Tester
: he is the one who creates the
tests
of the system that allows to guarantee a better quality of the product (that comes out with fewer possible failures).
Manager / Director
: rather classic
management
position .
BI Analyst / Data Analyst
: data analyst.
HelpDesk :
technical support
service
for software users.
Project Manager
: is the project leader, who ensures that the team works,
resolves
any conflicts and tries to reach the objectives.
Data Engineer
: builds and manages data, such as managing databases or sources of information storage.
He is not necessarily an engineer
for what is the title in Argentina.
It is a position closer to
programming
than Data Scientist.
Data Scientist : is in charge of managing
big data, artificial intelligence
, machine learning and different types of analytics
in the company .
It is a position closer to statistics and mathematics.
About the survey and those who charge outside the country
Many salaries are dollarized in IT.
Photo Sebastian Alonso
One of the objections that usually appear when these surveys are carried out is that a part of those who work in the
tech
industry collect their assets from abroad and
prefer not to record this in a survey
.
“This survey is anonymous so there would be no reason for it not to be reliable, but it is true that there is a group of people today getting paid from abroad who do not want to appear or participate in any way and do not usually say how much they earn just in case , because
they are not 100% legal
at the labor, tax or exchange level ”, explains Firtman.
"It is a problem in the market today that many professionals end up having attitudes and behaviors typical of
drug traffickers
, despite being the
most sought after
professionals in the world," he adds.
For this reason, we must not lose sight of the fact that the questionnaire and its results
contemplate averages and do not aim to have absolute answers
.
“In principle, whoever wants to respond, but let's say that the community close to social networks and people who participated in events and are
active in the community
find out .
There are many people who probably have not found out about the survey and that is why they are not represented there”, warns the programmer, who has been working in the field for 26 years.
Openqube knows this situation: “Many salaries entered do not necessarily correspond to actual data.
This may be due to typing errors, misunderstanding the question, or simply intentional.
To prevent these values from distorting the results, we apply the Interquartile Range method with a coefficient of 3.5, it is very possible that there are real wages that have been left out of the analysis”, they explain from SysArmy.
Stability in the sector, "the degree" and the courses
Programming: the most used languages of Silicon Valley.
Photo Pexels
A frequently asked question regarding IT positions has to do with job stability.
2022 was a tough year for the tech sector worldwide: Amazon laid off 10,000 (and plans 8,000 more), Microsoft also joined the wave with 10,000, Google kicked the table with 12,000 job cuts, and Meta fired to 11 thousand people.
“Professionals who have already passed a first barrier of
at least 6 months
of work achieve full stability (they hardly find themselves without a job);
What costs the most is getting the first job because there are many people who think they are ready and they are not, ”explains Firtman.
“Without prior knowledge, taking a course of a few months is not enough for your first job.
In general, there is
a lot of turnover
because companies, by not getting people, end up taking them from other companies”, she clarifies.
Finally, you have to be
careful
with the idea of taking courses and getting a job quickly: this is not always the case and it can frustrate expectations.
“It is true that a university degree is not required to work in the area, but whoever has it in the long term possibly today gets better positions or in better companies.
That has always happened, especially now that there are a lot of people who only took a short course (and believe that this is enough), so those who are doing or have done a bachelor's degree or a university degree are better seen
by
some
companies
.
In a market with more offer, it is a way to stand out ”, he closes.
The full study can be read here.
SL
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