So I decided to play around with http://www.indeed.com/ a little more and do some comparisons. I wanted to compare salaries based upon certifications. So I consulted some sites to find out what’s hot, and added a few that I see a lot of demand for. Here are the results:

As my buddy jtroyer pointed out, there is an aspect of the “Salary Graphs” that doesn’t get scene until you view the larger versions. That is the # of jobs with each keyword:

Notice the litle blue bars that I circled and how it’s much lower for XenSource.

If we use another service from http://www.indeed.com/ we can see the trend for new jobs with specific key words. Here’s a comparison of new jobs for VMware, Xen, Xensource, Virtual Iron:

The VMware Blogs just posted an article stating:

“Average VMware salaries for job postings nationwide are 115% higher than average data center salaries for job postings nationwide. (source: Indeed.com)”

This is interesting, but not very surprising. Specialization always brings a higher paycheck. Just for kicks and giggles I decided to use their source and add a few more search items.

XenSource scored higher than VMware! My first impression is that it’s because it’s harder to find someone with a good Xen background than it is to find someone with a good VMware background.