The guardian reports today that average web developer’s salaries have risen by a whopping 23% in the last year.

Definitely a sign that we’re in the midst of a tech boom. Interestingly, the article claims that the retail sector is driving the demand.

I hope this signals the end of companies seeing development as something to be out-sourced or off-shored. It would be good to see more companies build core technical capability in-house and stop taking the advice of the snake-oil consultancies that seem to profit most from out-sourcing deals.

UK retail in particular has been very poorly served by the delivery of truly awful website technology from expensive and well-known consultancies.

All this while their board was wondering how Amazon and eBay were eating their online lunch.

As a side note, I wonder how those consultancies had any time to do anything at all. Surely they were busy taking government money to deliver mis-sold and poorly thought out public IT fiascos.

Anyway, good news that in-house development is starting to be recognised, financially at least, as a strategic differentiator after nearly a decade of being undervalued and underpaid.

Anyone looking to recruit right now should be warned though. With so many developers now opting again for contracting over full-time employment, I’m sure salaries haven’t yet reached anything like a peak.