Twenty years ago, Google Maps and YouTube were about to launch, the iPhone didn’t exist, and "cloud” mostly referred to a fluffy white body of moisture in the sky. Whether you were just starting your career at the time or still bringing home permission slips in your Jansport backpack, twenty years is a long time for all of us.
As Dice celebrates 20 years of tech salary reports with the all-new 2025 Dice Tech Salary Report, we have assembled a unique dataset: detailed survey responses from tech professionals who have witnessed and shaped their industry over the past two decades. These tech veterans have navigated multiple economic cycles, technological revolutions, and shifts in workplace culture, creating a living playbook of decisions that today's tech professionals can use to guide their own careers.
Here are some other “long term takeaways” from this year’s edition of the report:
- Women in tech with over two decades of experience are nearly 1.5x more likely than men to say the culture in tech has improved over the past 20 years.
- AI and machine learning is the most interesting change in tech in the past two decades, say tech professionals with 20+ years of experience.
- Seasoned tech professionals rank cloud, internet, and mobile as the forces that revolutionized the industry the most in the past 20 years.
How Tech Salaries Weathered Two Decades of Change
A closer look at tech salaries over the last two decades reveals a complex picture of resilience. While overall tech salaries have risen steadily since 2005, reaching an average of $112,521 in 2024, the reality is more nuanced when accounting for inflation.
Today's average tech salary, when adjusted for purchasing power, is similar to what professionals earned in 2005 ($112,521 versus inflation-adjusted $114,648), suggesting that, despite periodic surges, compensation in tech overall has effectively plateaued over nearly two decades.
However, this flattening of purchasing power needs to be viewed in the context of broader economic trends. For one thing, the median U.S. household income has fared worse, rising from $58,000 in 2005 to $80,610 in 2023, a gain that significantly trails inflation, as $58,000 adjusted to inflation is $95,403 in 2024. While tech professionals haven't seen real gains in purchasing power, they have at least maintained their position while many other sectors have experienced decline.
This pattern of stability has continued through recent market corrections. Despite tech companies facing revenue pressures and implementing widespread layoffs throughout 2023 and 2024, particularly among giants that had over-hired during the pandemic, tech salaries have held steady. Even with job postings dropping sharply from their 2022 peak, compensation levels have resisted downward pressure. This suggests that while tech may not offer the growing prosperity it once promised, it remains a sector where skilled professionals can maintain their economic position, even as other industries struggle to keep pace with inflation.
Tech Pros Rate Industry Changes with the Biggest Impact
Our base of seasoned tech professional respondents was split about the technologies and events that had the biggest impact on the modern tech industry. When given a list of seven events and technologies to rank, 65 percent of our respondents put cloud computing in their top three, while 50 percent included the expansion of the internet, and 47 percent said the mobile revolution.
Meanwhile, less than 32% of respondents ranked economic recessions and big data in their top three.
We also asked this group an open-ended question: “What’s been the most interesting change you’ve seen in tech over the past 20 years?” AI and machine learning was the most common technology mentioned by far; it was included in 36 percent of responses and mentioned more than two times as much as the runner-up technologies (cloud computing and virtualization).
Naturally, recency bias plays a role in the open-ended responses, especially when compared to these tech professionals’ ranking of a list of seven impactful events later in the survey. For example, only 18 percent of respondents to the latter question listed AI and machine learning advances in their top three. Still, tech professionals clearly regard recent AI and machine learning developments as extremely significant and worthy of attention.
It is also notable that, out of the 439 responses to the open-ended question, 5 percent of tech professionals took the extra step to express concerns about artificial intelligence. These concerns were primarily related to job displacement and unemployment, an overreliance on AI without proper understanding, and potential negative societal impacts.
There’s much more data and insights in this year’s edition of the Dice Tech Salary Report! Check it out.
