Wall Street Journal (01/24/12) Pui-Wing Tam

A new survey from tech-jobs Web site operator Dice Holdings Inc. finds that average annual salaries for California’s Silicon Valley technology workers passed the $100,000 mark in 2011. Salaries for software and other engineering professionals in Silicon Valley increased 5.2% to an average $104,195 last year, outdoing the average 2% increase, to $81,327, in tech-workers’ salaries nationwide.

Several Web companies—such as LinkedIn Corp. and Zynga—went public in 2011, with Facebook poised for an initial public offering in 2012. Their success has sparked the creation of numerous new start-ups, which in turn has spurred a hiring war for software engineers and others. “There’s a tussle for talent growing in Silicon Valley and employers have to pay up,” says Tom Silver, a Dice senior vice president. Overall, tech-job postings in Silicon Valley on Dice increased to 5,026 earlier in January, up 26% from 3,974 a year ago, he notes, even as tech-jobs postings nationwide only increased 11% over the same period.