It is Friday, which in the Automated IT towers often means an excitable hive of happy activity. We thought we would share in that happiness by highlighting some good news for IT and Technology workers. Silicon have reported that “many IT professionals can expect to see their salary rise by around an average of £10,000 every five years.”

Now before you go cracking open the bubbly, take your time to read the research, it is better to savor good news slowly. Apparently “Techies working in project management are those likely to see the biggest jumps in earnings as they progress up the career ladder.”

Supposedly web 2.0 is an IT Manager’s nightmare, but at Automated IT we want to defend IT Managers’ (via Twitter, blogging, facebook natch) willingness to embrace web 2.0. It is great to see Computer Weekly give credence to the idea of being innovative with IT resource, but IT Managers seem get a bum rap in the article.

IT Managers are not bulwarks to innovation, they are managing and delivering crucial IT services. The bulwark is often the amount of resource and manpower they have to spend on operations, the everyday stuff that is important but probably not the subject of glowing press articles. IT Managers are never given a pat on the back when (as per most of the time) IT works like clockwork, only when things go awry.

So my message to those criticising IT Managers is that if you want IT departments to be more able to innovate, liberate them through automating IT processes. Automating your bread and butter operations can free up IT staff to provide the gourmet innovation you demand.