Into the future… July 17, 2006
Browsing through TechMeme last night, I came across a few mentions of articles in Computerworld, on how the IT employment world is going to look in 2010. Interesting stuff always, and timely right now as I consider my next position (my current position will be “downsized” at the end of March 2007).
The first article is “The IT Profession: 2010″, and that’s followed by “Hot Skills, Cold Skills”, which was the piece that initially caught my eye. It’s tagline is “The IT worker of 2010 won’t be a technology guru but rather a ‘versatilist.’”. Something to think about. Key point:
The nuts-and-bolts programming and easy-to-document support jobs will have all gone to third-party providers in the U.S. or abroad. Instead, IT departments will be populated with “versatilists” — those with a technology background who also know the business sector inside and out, can architect and carry out IT plans that will add business value, and can cultivate relationships both inside and outside the company.
Did I mention my job was coming to an end? 
I’m not actually losing my position to out-sourcing, although others at my current company have, but it’s obvious that this is happening even more so. When I was asked what I do for a living, I used to reply “computer engineer” - it was never entirely factually accurate, but it was a quick way of answering, and contextually understandable by “non-techies”. These days, I usually go with “I’m a manager”, or “technology architect”, and we can usually leave it at that. I was missing working “hands-on” in technology, but it appears that having gone down the generalist route might actually turn out to have been a good thing. One can but hope…
For more reading on the above, Marshall Sponder at WebMetricsGuru, has broken the story down into comment-sized chunks, but the original article is pretty easy to scan through to see what “the survey said” about which positions may be “safe” or “hot”, and which may need to be rethought.