#k IT jobs, the IT industry, job loss, job market, dot bomb, Dilbert cartoon, cubicle life, information technology, the bottom line in it, scarce jobs, IT grads, grads, overseas labor, IT outsourcing, saturating the market, handwriting on the wall k# #tThe plight of IT jobs, and the warning signs your industry has seen its peak.t# #dA look at the state of the IT industry, and why Information Technology jobs are flushing into the world septic system.d# IT people (Information Technology that is), computer folks, here's a question for you: You ever get the feeling computer jobs are already dying?
Look around you. We've got an entire economy somewhere between crappy and growing, depending on which news channel you watch. IT outsourcing marches on, in spite of the occasional optimistic view. IT graduates are spending more and more time on job hunts, and settling for less and less. In short, us new IT folks are getting marginalized pretty quickly.
The handwriting is on the wall.
We've already seen cheap, overseas labor has taken the place of yesterday's blue collar jobs (for proof, check the "made in" tag on your stuff, whatever it is, and chances are, it ain't "USA").
The bottom line is the bottom line - costs. Companies care only for making things cheaper, with or without your service. And now that IT folks aren't a scarce commodity anymore, they're finding themselves in the same precarious boat as everyone else.
Workforce gap
One cause is the fact that computer professionals are saturating the market, thanks to the huge misalignment between IT labor demand and IT college programs (as shown on the adjacent graph).
Early on, high school grads were getting six-figure employment contracts for hacking into NASA. By 2000, a heartbeat was your qualification to an IT job. Today, IT graduates are lucky to find a job doing the work of five people and get paid for less than one.
Education gap
Not helping things, colleges dumbed down the traditional "Computer Science" for the more likable "Information Technology" (or "Computer Information Science", or "Information Science and Computers", or any variation of) to get more students in. The new major ends up being like Computer Science, only without all the Math, Physics, Programming, and anything else that requires really heavy books.
As a result, now we have a skill gap. Somewhere between the Dot com bubble and George W. Bush, Indians (not the American ones) and other foreign citizens have become proficient at performing IT roles expertly for vastly cheaper prices. This sucks for us recent grads who are barely given the Microsoft Office skillset and basic buzzword training, but expect $50K+ and killer bonuses.
The whole situation is a mess, and like a guy at work said to me recently, "if you're not already in IT, it's already too late." How grim.
I genuinely like computers, and I know many others do too. I'm also very skilled with computers, as many others are as well. But, unfortunately, we may have missed the "niche".
The long and short of it is...
...you'll probably be more successful doing one of the many jobs people have flocked from once the IT craze hit us. Consider this food for thought: you might be living "larger" fixing pipes in stagnant basements than coding Java applets in a flourescent-lit cubicle. You ever hear a plumber giggle over a Dilbert comic? No. It can't be all that bad.
IT Jobs