The survey reveals a core set of skills employers look for: Oracle experience, J2EE/Java proficiency, project management, C language and SQL skills. But it’s not necessarily the core stuff that will help IT pros earn more competitive wages, said Tom Silver, a senior vice president with Dice.

There’s an increasing demand for virtualization and mobile experience. In fact, virtualization salaries are above average — about $81,600, compared with $79,384 for positions overall. Despite this, virtualization salaries have been trending down in the past few years, likely because more workers have gained virtualization expertise, making it easier for employers to hire those with expertise.

The survey does show a glimmer of hope overall: About half of respondents got a raise in 2010, similar to the findings of TechTarget’s salary and careers survey. But for the most part, those salary increases are miniscule, and they have been for the past two years. Tech skills are always in high demand, so why aren’t they being properly recognized?

The easy answer? The economy. But economic conditions are improving, so that leaves us with another variable: technology skill sets. To stay in the game, IT pros have to keep up with changing technologies and entirely new concepts (cloud computing comes to mind). But more companies are viewing technology as a strategic business component, which means they’ll soon have to start shelling out the cash, said Silver.

“Increasingly, skills and experience matter,” Silver said. ”Employers realize that they have to pay up for that.”

With low pay increases, it’s no surprise only 50% of respondents were “somewhat” or “very satisfied” with their salary.  Plus, four out of 10 thought they could make more money if they changed employers in 2011. Silver said that could be true for workers who can fill companies’ skill set gaps, or it could simply be a “grass is greener on the other side” sentiment.

So why do tech workers feel they can’t get no satisfaction?

“Tech pros are tired — they’re just tired,” Silver said. “Tech guys are essentially being asked to do more with less.”

Sure, the whole tech industry is male dominated, but it seems even more so at VMware events, where the females stick out like sore thumbs and get stirred at like alien beings on a foreign planet.

My “outsider” paranoia was made poignantly clear when the older gentleman sitting beside me during lunch asked out of sincere curiosity, “So, why do you write about technology? Wouldn’t you rather be writing about fashion or something?”

My imaginary response was “Why, Yes! I would also love to spend my days writing about the latest additions to the My Little Pony collection and playing with Barbie dolls.” In reality, I was too insulted to think of anything witty to say, and was trapped in a flashback to when my brothers told me I couldn’t play G.I. Joes because I’m a girl.

With that, I made it my mission to speak to almost all of the women at the event about what they do and their virtualization projects. Which means I spoke to three women.

Two of the female IT administrators I spoke with, who together run all of the IT operations for the town of Shirley, MA, were there to learn about virtualization. They currently have about 26 servers running Microsoft Windows, MySQL, and other applications used by the town and school district. Most of the hardware is  outdated, so they need to either upgrade to new systems or invest in vitualization. Attending the VMUG event was a step in the latter direction.

Truth be told, they approached me first out of sheer curiosity as to why I was there. “You don’t look like the average tech geek. What do you do?”

The other woman I spoke with is a network engineer with a large mutual insurance company in Warwick, RI, who was also there to learn the ins- and -outs of virtualization. The insurance company has added numerous physical servers to accommodate growth in recent years, and has run out of room in the super-hot server room (90 degrees on same days). She was looking at VMware virtualization  as a way to stop server sprawl and reduce the power and cooling challenges the company deals with.

And while the ladies were dismayed at being so out-numbered at the VMUG event, they sort of expected it because IT is a male-dominated profession, and the scales appear to be tipping further in that direction.

In 2008, women earned only 18 percent of all CS degrees, compared to 1985, when women earned 37 percent of CS degrees, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT).

The NCWIT also reported that that girls represented just 17 percent of Advanced Placement computer science (CS) exam-takers in 2008; that’s the lowest female representation of any AP exam. Translation; there won’t be long lines at the ladies room at IT events any time soon.

When I look at those stats, I feel a bit sad. But then I remember that VMware, one of the biggest most important data center technologies of the 21st century, was co-founded by a fellow female, Diane Greene, and I start to feel a bit better.