Google blamed for jump in high-tech pay

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

When Silicon Valley executives complain about soaring wages for computer engineers, they often blame a single company for their plight: Google Inc.

The Mountain View search engine, they say, has pushed up salaries with its deep pockets and huge appetite for technology workers.

"It's driven up software engineering wages by 50 percent in the past couple years," Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, the online DVD rental firm in Los Gatos, said recently at a conference for the technology industry's lobbying group.

Bill Cobb, who oversees North American operations for San Jose's eBay, chimed in from across the table, saying, "Sounds about right."

Wages for computer programmers in San Francisco have jumped 30 percent between 1999 and 2004, according to the latest figures available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Programmers earned an average salary of $85,840 in 2004, up from $66,270 in 1999.

Notice how unions have nothing to do with this story? I guess everyone can't thank a union boss for a pay raise.No wonder Google gets 150,000 resumes a month.