According to the Network Computing survey/Carnegie Mellon University economic analysis, IT managers in San Diego got the biggest increases in base salary this year, at a median 11.7 percent, followed by those in San Francisco, 11.2 percent; Phoenix, 10.5 percent; and Atlanta, 10.1 percent.

IT staffers working in San Diego also got the highest raises, with a median 10.1 percent increase. Next were San Francisco, 10 percent; Boston, 9.8 percent; and Denver, 9.6 percent. The lowest increases for staffers were in Minneapolis-St. Paul, 7.3 percent; Houston, 7.1 percent; and Indianapolis, 7.1 percent.

As for total compensation, which is defined as salary plus cash or other bonuses, IT managers in San Francisco ($125,000), New York ($117,000) and Philadelphia ($106,000) are the highest paid on average. The lowest compensation rates for managers are in St. Louis ($84,000) and Indianapolis ($81,000). Compensation for staffers is highest in San Francisco ($88,000), New York ($79,500), Boston ($79,000) and Denver ($76,500). Kansas City ($65,300), St. Louis ($64,000), Portland ($61,000) and Indianapolis ($59,000) have the lowest rates.

Money Can't Buy Me Love

But megasalaries alone don't necessarily mean career happiness. The cities in the survey with the highest rate of respondents who said they were satisfied with their jobs are Washington, Portland, Kansas City, Austin and Minneapolis.

And while the IT labor shortage has affected all parts of the country, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York and Dallas have the highest number of IT workers who said they'd been contacted by recruiters regarding other jobs within the past 12 months. Those cities with the highest rate of IT professionals looking for new jobs, meanwhile, are on coasts, in Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia and New York.

If you're young -- under 35 years old -- the hot cities in which to work are New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Austin and Houston, which host the most IT managers and staff in that age group.

The 36- to 45-year-old IT crowd works mostly in Dallas, Portland, Denver and Philadelphia. And those cities with the most IT workers older than age 46 are Phoenix, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Seattle.

Life in the Big City

IT managers and industry analysts say plenty of IT jobs are available in all parts of the country, but demand continues to be particularly high in areas where there is a concentration of high-tech companies or where larger organizations are spending a lot on technology projects.

"Regional demand is fairly uniform," says Ernst Volgenau, president and CEO of IT consulting and systems integration company SRA, in Fairfax, Va., and chairman of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA)'s Workforce and Education Committee. However, some regions are outpacing others.

"The federal government's demand for IT workers does not seem to be slackening at all, so the Washington metropolitan area has become a very strong IT community," Volgenau says. "And nearby suburban Maryland is creating a strong biotechnology community" that is luring IT workers, too, according to Volgenau.

Maria Schafer, program director of human capital management at Meta Group, Stamford, Conn., says Washington is attracting a large networking work force, as are New York, Boston and Silicon Valley in northern California.

"In general, the two coasts are very big for networking and IT jobs," Schafer says. "Atlanta is hot, and Chicago is bursting at the seams. But there's strong demand for networking skills in any large urban areas where there are companies struggling to expand their infrastructure to be global players. Networking is critical to these companies."

William Seltzer, executive vice president and chief information officer of office-products retailer Office Depot, concurs that the East and West coasts, as well as Atlanta and Austin, are luring the most technology workers.

"There are many areas, such as Silicon Valley, where technology continues to explode even with all the dot-com failures," Seltzer says. Internet-based companies will continue to provide additional technology jobs, as well as competition with traditional companies for the best IT talent, he says.

"The dot-coms were a learning experience; they'll re-emerge with a different business model," Seltzer says. Fast-growing business segments, such as ASPs (application service providers), will also compete for technology staff in many parts of the country, he adds.

Location indeed can be a big selling -- or sticking -- point for technology chiefs looking to fill strategic positions in networking and other areas. Seltzer considers Office Depot's location in sunny and fast-growing Delray Beach, Fla., for instance, to be a big plus.

"Florida is growing rapidly and there's a lot of talent here," Seltzer says. "I get letters from people who say they're thinking of moving here and asking if we have anything available. On the other hand, if you're trying to get someone to move out of northern cities like Pittsburgh or Detroit when they have a lot of family there, it can be hard."

Other IT managers have a harder time attracting technology workers to live in their areas. "It's a struggle to get people to work in rural areas," says Barbara Hauger, CIO at Kapco Machinery Systems, a manufacturer of machine tools in Roanoke, Va.

The exception, according to Hauger, is when a company decides to relocate a plant or division and asks its IT and networking people to move. "Then they're basically bringing the labor force with them," she says. "But this is a rural area where a majority of the population is not trained in technology."

Rural areas are nice places to live and raise a family, but there is typically a smaller base of people to draw from to fill IT and networking jobs. And it's tough to compete with the big-time salaries found in the major cities, unless these smaller cities can use the lower cost of living and quality-of-life factors to lure IT talent.