A friend of mine was laid off recently from an IT job with a real estate company. Feeling a little shaken up, he wondered if he should change careers. I told him, “It’s a bad time to be in real estate, but it’s a great time to be in IT.” Consider:
From Winthrop Quigley, Albuquerque Journal Business Outlook (May 30, 2011):
“A ManpowerGroup study says that 52 percent of American employers can’t find the skilled workers they need today.You could train a lot of workers with a trillion bucks, hire them and start producing the advanced goods the world needs.”
Executive summary: The $1,000,000,000,000 he’s talking about is the cash nonfarm, nonfinancial businesses were sitting on as of the end of 2010. That’s a massive chunk of non-investment, which we the consumers have observed and emulated. Let’s stick with this, and we’ll all be in rags. Few businesses will invest in American workers. They want them already educated, already possessing 3-5 years of current experience. God help you if you don’t have those assets.
Recommendations: We the IT people will have to educate ourselves at our own expense. Since this is a tough, technical field, not that many people (on the large scale) will manage to do this. That means those of us who DO pay our dues are more like doctors than fork lift operators. With demand so high, there’s no reason not to demand a decent wage/salary for your skills. Because the guy down the street might offer more.
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US taps IT and consumers to solve the 21st century energy challenge (TechRepublic)
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/us-taps-it-and-consumers-to-solve-the-21st-century-energy-challenge/8532?tag=nl.e101Executive summary: Consumers are hurting badly enough from energy prices that they’ll embrace opportunities to track and reduce their own use, given the technology. IT will supply that technology, and even more IT will help create the large-scale grid technology that can make alternate energy sources practical.
Jobs implications: Industries that already are having a hard time finding qualified technical people are going to get even more desperate.
Recommendations: Get that degree, and stack up those certifications. A lot of this work will involve code development; learn Perl at the very least.
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Top Job: Software Engineers Are Back (Computerworld,
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/356281/Career_Watch_Your_staff_wants_interesting_work)Executive summary: Back indeed: this is now the #1 career according to job site CareerCast. The iPhone and iPad in particular have livened up this field, as well as the transition to cloud-oriented software. “Workers [have] become less beholden to employers or vulnerable to outsourcing.” And the developers aren’t alone: the #5 best career in the survey is computer systems analysts. That sure covers a whole lot of us geeks.
Job implications: iPhone developer, iPad developer, cloud app developer; cloud systems, virtualization, virtual desktops, thin client support, security: the list of coming jobs is huge.
Recommendations: Learn Objective C if you’re a hard-core binary geek. Look at “native” web application platforms for handhelds like Appcellerator if you prefer Javascript and XHTML. AJAX and HTML5 apps that run within all these platforms’ native browser object are probably going to be the big thing. Get an Amazon EC2 cloud account and learn to use it. Learn the ins and outs of virtualization, starting with your workstation and working up to servers.
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IT worker demand remains strong despite slow economy:
Companies are finding that a low tech unemployment rate and a limited worker supply mean increased demand for IT talent
http://www.infoworld.com/t/it-jobs/it-worker-demand-remains-strong-despite-slow-economy-882Executive summary: “The unemployment tech rate … tends to be half the national average….”
Interesting, isn’t it? We (and I mean thee and me, fellow ITsta) were worried about overseas outsourcing and the massive decline of interest in our cluster of fields. Young Americans were actively steered away from computer science for oh, a decade or so. Now there’s a small stream of new interest among students, but the numbers indicate supply (of us) will be modest to thin, while the demand from businesses will be massive, huge. Overwhelming.
I’ve always considered my own ongoing education my best investment, and you should too. The areas of demand are very clearly drawn; pick one that suits your interests (or else why even bother) and head straight toward it like a laser-guided missile.