Changing Times For The IT Employment Market: How Skilled Workers Could Look For Different Roles Using The Internet
The IT jobs market has always been unstable and uncertain. 20-30 years ago, when the information technology revolution really got going, it was said that there was a great staff shortage in computer-related areas. Even so, at the same time, the employment exchanges were full of computer enthusiasts who were unable to find employment. And nowadays, software and programming skills are in demand one day and forgotten the next, and IT workers have to constantly retrain to to remain employable. Yet one option is to consider internet business as a chance to work from home in online jobs, instead of moving between jobs in in order to to stay in tune with the latest software.
In most walks of life, you do your training, get the letters after your name, and then build up experience in practice. In computing, there isn’t really a recognised qualification. Moreover, twenty years experience won’t impress employers, because your skills from 1990 are outdated today. You have to know the very latest technologies, and will be competing against those who have just completed university, where they studied the most recent programming languages.
When computers first became available in the fifties and sixties, there were two popular programming languages: FORTRAN for scientific and engineering use, and COBOL for the world of business. Somebody who could program in one of these, could easily get a well-paid position. These days, the range of programming languages and other technologies is so enormous, that many jobs require knowledge of something that some people haven’t even heard of before. It is quite simply becoming impossible to keep up with the range of skills which are needed today.
The result is that a lot of IT specialists must, in addition to their paid job (which can often involve long hours), be willing to work from home for two or three hours each evening mastering the latest technologies, lest the knowledge they use in their current job falls out of fashion and they are eventually discarded. I have seen cases where workers have been laid off because their technical skillset is no longer in demand.
You can keep this up for a few years, but sooner or later you will burn out. Furthermore, no one can hold up the ageing process and consequent decline in your learning ability, and as the saying goes, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. So what does an aged canine, or indeed a person, do, when their existing tricks no longer put food on the table?
Another worrying fact is the number of IT jobs that are moving to India. Undoubtedly, internet business has allowed this to take place, because it no longer matters that much, where in the world you are located in order to develop software or man a support helpdesk; however salaries in India are of course considerably less than what employers have to pay their western employees. It is highly likely that a high proportion of computer jobs will go to India.
It’s a disheartening outlook, and a lot of people will consider if they should leave the Information Technology industry altogether. However, you could work from home in online jobs, in a range of internet business opportunities, some of which will allow technical workers to employ their technical background to an advantage. Of course, those without computer skills can also do well in some of these online jobs; however for IT workers it is a way of re-training which will provide a more secure and less uncertain future than is on offer in conventional employment.
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