Kevin Fogarty of ITWorld asks an interesting question: As IT funds start to flow again, are you getting your cut? Probably not, and for a couple of reasons.

A lot of that money goes to "IT Debt:" maintenance, repairs, and replacements on older machines and software that haven't been fixed for a while because the money wasn't available.

So no one expects all that money to be going directly to the help deskers with frustration-patterned baldness from pulling their hair out after talking to users, or the IT project managers with finger-shaped tan lines on their faces from the amount of time they spend in facepalm during and after business-unit project meetings.

Some facts:

IT people at large companies scraped their way to 0.38 percent raises on average between 2009 and 2010, according to surveys from PSRInc.

SMBs were stuck with increases of just 0.11 percent.

Industry consortium TechAmerica Foundation's surveys showed IT organizations cut 143,000 jobs last year and have brought only 30,200 of them back.

Janco's survey of more than 300 end-user companies shows the average of all IT professionals got 0.67 percent more in compensation this year than last, and that staff (1.27 percent) and middle managers (1.07 percent) did best of any other category not specifically delimited by a particular technology skill.

So tough times out there, but perhaps you already knew that. Still, it's certainly worth looking at the department budget to see what percentage of funds is going to gear and what percentage is going to people. Is it the right mix?

-- Don Willmott