I see Microsoft continues to shed employees.
Having been in the I.T. field for over 25 years, I’ve never seen anything quite like this, and it’s increasingly occurring to me why:
The field is now what they call mature. All that stuff you’ve been reading forever about how I.T. is the future and there’s always good jobs there? Yeah, well, the future arrived in the 1990s. While there’s still money to be made and things to do, the need for most jobs in the field is reducing right and left–and I suspect that’s unlikely to change. Indeed, the need even for tech support people, technical writers, technical trainers, and most types of programmers and hardware engineers is probably going to continue a downward trend and then stabilize at much smaller numbers than most people realize.
From where I sit, even the need for repair technicians is quickly fading, pretty much the same way the need for T.V. repair technicians has faded to a tiny number.
To be clear, I’m not saying I.T. is dead. I just think the number of people needed to be dedicated to the field, and most traditional specialties within it, is going to continue a downward spiral for a while and then stabilize for the future at a much smaller number we than we see now. The only specialties that will matter much will be web programmers, database designers and engineers, and a small number of support specialists.
I don’t know anyone working in I.T. right now who isn’t either laid off or starting to get scared. And I think for good reason: it’s not a new and exotic and emerging field anymore. PCs especially aren’t. The field is mature, the general public is in ever less need of support, and the technology is doing more and more for itself.
I wish I’d figured this out sooner.
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Not from where I sit, Dean. In fact, the proliferation of small devices with significant computing power is starting a new wave of development. Sure, some industries are more invested in technology at this point than others, but many are still catching up, like the vast health care industry. And there are new customers for specialized software all the time.
I do think that hardware seems to be more reliable, but we still have teams dedicated to that at my consulting company. I think you’re right about leveling off, but I wouldn’t call it a decline just yet. Believe me, there are still plenty of people out there who are clamoring for automation who have no idea how to implement it.
Dean:
As a lifetime IT professional I think you have made some salient points, but I think you are more pessimistic than necessary.
Of course your comment about all the IT people you know either being out of work or worried about losing jobs is partly true. I would say it is particularly true in the software development and technical support (tech writing, QA, Business Analysts, etc) areas. DBAs, server admins, architects and other key IT roles still seem fairly secure jobs, at least in my immediate area of knowledge. Project managers are still in demand, but are mostly these days functioning as contractors instead of employees.
I do think the overall IT field will continue to reduce in size, but the main areas of growth for programmers is in the web or the small device areas. I know a couple of programmers who have begun to focus on iPhone, Blackberry and other mobile device computing. There are some opportunities there.
I’ve made my living from a small data processing business since I bought one of the first IBM-PCs to come through Madison, Wisconsin in late 1981, then taught myself how to program the dbase II interpreter language on it.
Now, 28 years later. I’m making money doing some of the trickiest kinds of list matching/processing that anybody ever schemed up; while all around me I see forsale and foreclosure signs, with the newspapers loaded with short business news articles about this or that place shedding its workforce or going bankrupt.
I’ve never called myself an “IT Professional”. Actually, I’m a trained and experienced journalist and urban and regional planner. But I make my living serving commercial customers who looked for somebody like me to solve list programs neither they nor any “IT Professional” knows how to handle. Which means that I can grab them by the short hairs and make myself irreplaceable.
Moral of the story: Don’t ever dance to anyone else’s drummer. Because if you do, all that happens in the end is the music stops. While you’re still tripping round and round on the dance floor like a jerk.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I know a lot of people with Server Admin experience and certs who are out of work around here, Sean. I think even there, what you’ve got is servers in general being more and more self-configuring and self-correcting and so once you’ve got them set up and running the need for continuing support goes way down.
The hardware gets better and better. The software gets better and better. And so the jobs get less and less. That’s true of most technology by the way, even most mechanical things.
I agree there are still secure areas in IT. Database work seems by far the most solid–a fact that Arnold Harris can attest well to.
On the other hand, cell phones and small device applications? Yes, there’s real demand. But the need for support, training? And the need for more than a core of developers? I’m not seeing it.
Managing and updating enterprise-class legacy systems seems to be where most of the money and demand is, as far as growth goes. Like the aging mainframes still running most of the massive health care industry. That field isn’t mature yet, but it’s also not something you jump into without massive training. You just don’t get hired to work on things like that without having a degree showing significant knowledge of those types of systems, or something like a Master of Computer Science. Otherwise, you’re not getting in.
My son is a VOIP engineer and his whole company are working like dogs. 20-hour days are not uncommon. Maybe it’s just that the landscape has shifted.
I may just be confirming your hypothesis, but I work as a senior database designer, and I have recruiters calling me at least monthly. That is, at least once a month some new recruiter tracks me down by talking to his colleagues or going through old database entries and calls me up. Since about the middle of last year, many of these have included offers of salary increases.
No, actually the opposite is true Dean. There are far more people working in IT today than 10 years ago. The reason is that computers keep getting more useful, so the scope of what can be done with them keeps increasing.
In Michigan, you are doubtless correct about the job situation, but I think the cause is just the collapse in demand for new autos. But even there jobs exist; I had an offer for an IT job there last week.
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