How Secure do IT Pros Feel in Their Jobs?

I feel like a turkey in October, I dont have a good feeling about the future.

Can we outsource to China? wait Vietnam, the place where the US Govt claimed that 100% of software there was pirated.

They're in demand. The shortages described in CIO Insight's Jan 15 issue are real, and will get more painful over the next 5-10 years. Headhunters will start to see techies coming out of their cubicles en masse. Then, universities will enroll more IT majors, and the cycle will start all over again.

The problem that I have been seeing lately is that it is still an employer's market. Job ads usually specify a very narrow range of experience, and employers are not willing to look at candidates that don't have exactly that range of experience. For example, if the add is looking for a systems programmer, it might specify that they have 5 years experience in the healthcare industry. Then they will ignore candidates with 20 years experience in other industries.

And of course we have all heard the stories about companies demanding 5 years of experience with technologies that are only 3 years old. Yet we still hear them complaining that there is a skills shortage.

Until we see employers willing to broaden their searches, I don't agree that there is a skills shortage. In today's market, a technology company would never even look at someone coming out of the soft drink industry -- Sorry Mr. Gerstner.

I'm glad I'm retired (sort-of).

IT workers are and will continue to be in demand, the profile however is continuously changing. So it's important for the technical staff to keep their skill sets contemporary; for business IT, the struggle is a lot less as domain experts will always remain in demand as long as they can continue to offer value by building bridges between the technology and what business wants.

It's very difficult to keep ones technical skillset "contemporary" while also having to work with legacy applications and/or technologies (which are often not static in nature themselves).

Doing so is possible, of course, but often it requires significant effort outside of the workplace in many cases; not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to work in both legacy and "trendy" technologies. This is especially true in large corporations where vertical specialization is almost always a requirement.

I suspect that the issue of companies looking for skillset lists instead of skilled *employees* will continue to be an issue for some time. Not all companies treat their technical people that way, of course, but enough of them do to make job searching in the IT marketplace an extremely long and frustrating process, at least for many people.

I think it's sad -- over the past 20 years I've seen a large number of extremely talented people being arbitrarily excluded from interviews because of some HR person's impressions about technology, or based on a buzzword list that was generated more by wishful thinking than actual technical requirements.

No jobs are totally safe...
But, I believe that good reputations and capable work are always in demand. Our small IT consulting business currently supports about 15 other small businesses. Fortunately their individual circumstances and thus IT needs, are often not related to the status of the general economy. But that said we certainly remember how hard it was to be starting up during the recession of the early 1990's.

Two years ago I was skeptical about the IT worker shortage. Since then, based on my first-hand experience, those of my clients, and other anecdotal evidence, I am a believer.

It may depend on geographic region, product and services segment, and perhaps other factors, but Wisconsin is definitely feeling the squeeze of the shortage.

Tim