IT salaries, Linkedin and a spectacular case of fraud

We hope you had a good day and now we want to give you some exciting information to take with you into the evening. t3n Daily is also available as a newsletter. Here are the topics of the day.

IT specialists are in demand in today’s professional world. They not only benefit from the digital transformation of the economy and society, but also and above all from the associated shortage of skilled workers. This is also reflected in the salaries.

In a salary report, the job platform Stepstone determined that IT specialists in Germany, with a gross median salary of 52,045 euros, are roughly on a par with engineering professions and employees in consulting – and thus well above the cross-professional gross median salary of 43,842 euros per year. To do this, Stepstone evaluated and examined over 500,000 salary data. IT management functions in large companies and positions that deal with IT or software architecture can therefore expect average annual salaries of over 90,000 euros. AI specialists are considered to be a particularly sought-after professional group in the IT segment.

News about Apple’s developer program: Interested parties can now try out the new beta versions of iOS 17, macOS Sonoma and other new OS updates for free. Previously, there was an annual fee of $99 to install the developer beta versions of iOS, iPadOS or macOS. The effort to install the developer betas is not great. It is only necessary to go to the system settings, there General > Software update > Beta updates and select the iOS 17 developer beta here.

However, anyone interested should also be aware that development versions may contain bugs and be unstable. t3n advises that it is better not to install them on iPhones, iPads or Macs that are used as everyday devices. The release of the final updates for all users is expected in autumn.

What has been discussed theoretically over and over again in recent months is now becoming reality: people are losing their jobs to AI programs. Now the Washington Post is talking about the first people who lost their jobs this way. Olivia Lipkin worked as a sole copywriter for a San Francisco company. She was already referred to as “Olivia/ChatGPT” in Slack reviews shortly after the release of ChatGPT. Her duties were eventually progressively reduced until she was fired without reason in April.

Even freelancers are not safe from this development. Eric Fein, who owned a text agency, was openly told by his largest client that his services would be taken over by ChatGPT. Now he repairs air conditioners and is training to be a plumber.

Linkedin is one of those social networks that specialize in work and careers. “People who have good ideas connect with each other via Linkedin – and still via Xing,” says freelance business journalist Manuel Heckel, attributing to the platform that it offers users “excellent opportunities” in this regard. Globally, Linkedin now has 900 million members – 19 million of whom are currently from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

But Heckel also finds that there is “quite a lot of triviality” and “a lot of practical jokes” on the platform. His conclusion: “In the end, LinkedIn is what you make of it, and thus a bit like the very analogue professional life: There are nice bosses and annoying colleagues.”

A 39-year-old American man has confessed to selling more than $100 million worth of counterfeit network equipment in this scam. He supplied schools, hospitals, government agencies and even the military. According to media reports, the man sold tens of thousands of inferior products through 15 Amazon and ten Ebay shops, which he passed off as brand new and official devices from the US company Cisco.

Because some of the cheap copies didn’t work well from the start or quickly failed completely, he was finally caught. Although the authorities had been after him since 2014, he was only arrested last June. Now he has confessed and faces a prison sentence of between 48 and 78 months.

That’s it for today’s t3n daily. You can find much more about all aspects of digital life, working life and the future around the clock at t3n.de.