SILICON VALLEY BOOMING? Investors Not Buying It. “In truth there are reasons to worry. For starters, growth in IT spending continues to decelerate steadily. In the 1970s IT outlays grew on average 15% a year. In the 1980s annual growth slipped to 13.1%; in the 1990s, 10.8%. In the 2000s, in the period between the bubbles–2003 to 2008–growth was around 10%. This year, according to Gartner, spending should grow less than 6%.”