Discussion on:

The future of IT will be reduced to three kinds of jobs

I assume you are referring to the US only. In our market, we often act as a consultant, along with the integrator role. I can tell you first hand that companies will not step away from having an IT dept in their midst, nor will they disregard the CTO/CIO, CXX positions. If anything, the role has taken on a new life even in the past several months as corp america realizes how vulerable she is. It is obvious their thinking is circling around security. And for security, they want someone on their side, more appropriately, on their inside. Reaching out to outside resources is still going to happen. And the other two on your list are inevitable. But to shutter the concentric IT dept would not only scare most corps to their knees, their investors and insurers would demand otherwise. A healthy corporation will always demand the resource of an internal IT department, jealous for the ideals, concepts and values that only someone on your own team will have. I can sell to a corporation that we are jealous for all those things. But at the end of the day, I do not have a seat on the board, I do not take a chair at many of those meetings that a CTO/CIO would as an employee. The logistics and the comfort level are not there.

While I would quickly also submit that the IT department as we know it will continue to change, the two positions of defense and offense strategies will continue to define us. Sadly, in the age of corporate attacks, digital espionage, and patent wars, we have become an army of gate and port watchers. No doubt this will continue to change.

However, my argument would be the exact opposite of yours. Corp America seems to be drawing a close arm around their IT staff, with more respect than Ive seen in a long time. To state that they are going to be dismantled and scattered to the four winds of the corporate structure, I simply do not see happening now, nor in the foreseeable future.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I would check the batteries on my crystal ball if I were you.

Information Technology, no matter how we package and deliver it is a complex solution. It always has been and that is why it will always be important to have IT people around. I explain it like this, companies need accountants to help them understand thier financial position. They need IT people to understand thier technical position.

Changes in technology will require changes in work paterns and jobs but it will not destroy the modern IT department. Virtualization and Cloud computing will eventually reduce the headcount required in the data center for hands on server jockies but it will not eliminate it. The new compliexities in IT are related to compliance and interoperability.

Now all this said I have noticed some very bad habits practiced by several of my IT professional brethren that I feel hurts thier cause in employment longevity. I thinki it is important for us to realize that beings agents of change means we need to be willing to change as well.

Are you kidding? Corporate America is on a cost cutting binge, hates the expense of anything to DO with information tech. Respect? Ask any IBMer. And in general ANY IT job can be outsourced to India. Some firms have learned the hard lesson of outsourcing but most still believe that American IT workers are an expense line-item that can be reduced by bringing in those good Indians from CSC.

There are regulations for certain positions that require security clearances, U.S. Citizenship, etc... so, no, not all positions. Specially not security positions.

Regulatory requirements make it difficult to outsource infosec

I have seen design data for products used in weapon systems moved to overseas design centers. Even if the "security" positions don't get outsourced overseas, there is little comfort knowing that sensitive data is not really protected.

but it's not a sure thing. How many support specialists remotely expected to loose their jobs to overseas until it happened? We Americans have a hard time accepting that "foreigners" could do our jobs as well, let alone *much* cheaper. I worry that even corporate management will eventually move out on the orders of a 'bottom line" board of directors.

There is a huge migration taking place right now, of imported resources moving to the DC area, have quite a few friends making the trek. Security is a non-issue in 95% of positions.

The language and time barriers are enough to make it a nightmare. There is a lot of hoopla over this, but the fact remains that many of the companies who have gone this route have discovered to their own detriment what a disastrous choice it was. Costs didn't go down, as contract management ate up the savings of per-hour costs, and satisfaction went down - usually due to the time/language difficulties.

Outsourcing is not going to destroy the tech industry. Stupid managers? Maybe.

If you're STILL working with a company that outsources - things ARE changing.
What's the driver - poor customer service from INDIA> and most outsourcing companies don't care.
You simply cannot have facetime support from folks that don't get it, or companies that hire workers that don't get it.
I'm seeing more USA support staff on call lines, and a retention and beefing up of IT staffs with USA workers in many verticals.

and good riddance to the ignorance that IT is a cost center only

Great comment, Bostwick. I recently went through the same thing. Called Dell to get a replacement CD for a laptop and got tangled up with some rude, know-it-all idiot in India who tried his damnest to convince me that it was my fault that I didn't get shipped recovery media. We went back and forth for 10 minutes or so before I had to tell him that this was the last straw and he personally had just cost Dell a long time (15+ years) exclusive customer. Regardless of whether Dell fixes this or not, I will NOT be back to do business with them. For them to let that happen in the first place speaks volumes as to what kind of company they have become. Sad.

Look how much of our hardware is made overseas now. And I won't mention names ('cause you know who I mean) but certain nations are purposely ignoring international patents and copyrights now. We, for sure, will attempt to block pirated materiel from returning to the States, but most other countries who care little about our welfare will import that stuff like guns to Libya.

What about "replace the burned out hard drive on server xyz"? No jobs should be outsourced.

And "monitors, keyboards and mice ('oh my!')"?
As long as the hardware is still reacheable, someone has to do it (and must be appropiately paid to do so).

A counterperson from Radio Shack can do that part. Diagnostics they can't do, but electrics they can.

Are you kidding? And "electrics" is not a word. So try a failed SCSI drive on a PowerEdge Server in a Radio Shack sometime and also guarantee restoration of customer data in a timely fashion, and also provide a loaner system while the server is on a bench on a Sunday when there are no production loads. Pardon me, but I don't think Radio Shack can do that.

...there will be no server in the first place. The magical "cloud" will not only fulfill all of the organization's needs but save money too!

No-one left to actaully do the work, solve the problems, help the client. Only blame pushers and leeches included

Isn't IBM chinese now?

IBM is still IBM they sold the hardware division to a Chinese company and the hardware has the Lenovo name.

Although there was a day where being in IT was somewhat glorious - remember those days when speed to market on a development project was critical to competitive advantage, and delivering that project made you, your team and your boss a hero (and the company a lot of $$$)? Not today...today we have SOX, PCI, over-bloated project management (no offense to PM's - it's the process of which I speak), user's that don't know what they want - they just want you to do it, and don't want to talk to anyone but management to make their hasty, short-planned demands.

IT has become a burden to most other corporate departments because there is no shortage of process. We've created a bureaucracy that keeps anything from getting done and have basically become a technical politboro...when at the end of the day, the company still has to do business. We are the department that's considered the red-headed step child in most corporations because in the last 10 years we've removed innovation, became treated like butlers and subservients, and watched a lot of folks in charge that do nothing but foster their process laden environments to protect their empires.

I hope Mr. Hiner is on to something here. Streamlining the process down to the 3 job classifications that actually facilitate innovation would be refreshing to the corporate culture!!

I have doubts that IT itself has become the mediocre dysfunctional useless empire on its own. It is the management with their hasty, short-planned demands best described by the 1971 Stanford Research Project so aptly defined in "The Lucifer Effect".

Can't outsource to India if you have to physically touch the machine.
Maybe in another 5-7 years or so when everything is virtualized that will be possible, but right now a select few of us are safe.

No job is safe when the hourly rate in Bangalore is $2. American management LOVES that salary reduction and be damned with the cost loss and productivity dangers.

Many times people wonder why the modern youth go for drugs and booze. The parents will blame Teachers, friends, the parenthood, the religion being too strict or the law deprives them with many odd things they would want. There are no answers and many question. As buffet said "be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy" It is easier to go for the pill to be away from the depressing news and trying to live like a leading actor The rampage is on. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla With No Malice for any.

Judging from the other responses to this, a few of you have your heads in the sand... The 'heads of business' closely value their IT staff, so long as they can't get the same skill sets and availability cheaper. Otherwise, we're just a necessary evil.

Jason's article IS probably a bit premature. It hinges around 'The Cloud', and the 'Perfection' that are outside consultancies and external IT providers. Quite a few companies bought into these notions, driven by the promise of penny-pinching, and quickly got burned. The Cloud is a rehash of an idea that's been around for awhile, and while there are a few IT gurus out there that can seamlessly take over the IT operations for a number of different types and sizes of companies, there are WAY more that sell themselves WAY over their heads. Once the bills and complaints start rolling in, a lot of executives realize that things were much better as they were.

But this is definitely coming. 'Real corporations keep IT depts.?' Please. I can name a few large ones that have successfully transitioned, usually by just hiring the recently let go internal IT staff at a reduced salary and benefits level, to outsourcing. Instant 'expertise' they can offer that corporation, and as long as the outsource company can keep the wool over the corp.'s accounting dept.'s eyes, the more money for them. I'll be talking to a company shortly that, since I know some of their techs personally, COULD ACTUALLY DO MY JOB (albeit for more money in the long-term). 'The Cloud' IS quickly becoming a viable, and even preferred, way to do business, and in the next three to five years will probably be at the point operationally that they claim it is now.

All the prohecies or utopia or doom and gloom (depending on your point of view), seen it all before. Through all the changes real and percieved in the industry since I started, which was a good while ago, there has been a constant.
I've been out of work for three months since 1981...
What does real corporations mean anyway? IT not your core business, so what it's critical to your ability to do business.
Hire it in? Then it's their core business, they will need IT to support doing IT for others, are they going to hire that in? Russian doll time...

Could it result in economies of scale, possibly, but that just makes the people you have more critical and more valuable. All that will do is seperate the wheat from the chaff, an anathema to business. They want an abundance of raw materials, basic supply and demand...

In the next three to five years they will shoot themselves in the foot again, because they don't understand the cloud any more than they do the PC sat on their desk.
Then they'll pay us for triage.

So why should we be scared, they need people like us to get it right, and people like us when they don't....

The few that don't are usually very frustrated individuals. Sometimes it's good to duck and cover but not from a nuclear blast. You have it right but many won't see it your way.

Gee, I guess moving all those jobs to India really helped IBM keep AstraZeneca. Look that one up. $1 Billion contract cancelled early. There are always some outsourcing successes, but very very few.

It is not just premature, it is incorrect. One of the biggest drivers of 'Cloud' solutions is going to be agile solution development and integration.

That means teams of folks.

That means Zero PM roles and less prominent PMI influenced budgets that choke IT departments and hinder solution specialist from doing what the customer wants.

There is no question that a fair share of IT has been and will continue to be outsourced, however, his article related specifically to solutions that are developed internally, and frankly he is way, way off.

Agile (SCRUM, XP, TDD) are all very relevant in the conversation.

I would suggest you will begin to see an IT generalist appear in the marketplace.

Someone with Good to Great Technical Skills (Testing, System Analysis, Development/DBA etc) and a balance/blend of customer service/people skills.

Gartner and others consistently say, and even TR reported recently, there is not a shortage of IT skills, there is a shortage of IT people who can interact with the customer effectively.

See here one example...
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/career/top-it-skills-wanted-for-2012/3503

Note the desire for PM's with a twist?

The evolution of solution development is coming, it may be glacial in movement, but when DHS announces they are going agile, you should take note!

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/enterprise-architecture/232601660

IMHO

The ITIL instructor was horrified when I told him about Agile. See, we have this problem: Companies and Agencies want everything done faster under the premise that given the quality triangle of faster, cheaper, better -- we can do all three. How? A total lack of planning and process. Sit with your users. Bring up development screens on the spot. Let them change their minds continuously without bounds at a whim. Sure, it may take you forever to fix what they break because of the high concept ideas, but it's their money.

Professional Project Management solves the problem, but it takes FOREVER. These Generation Whine kids are going to be bored to tears and will probably wonder off and get a job elsewhere.

Where I worked, we had in house folks build a Time Track system. It took three years and cost $700,000. It crashes frequently. It only works in a specific IE Browser. There is no documentation on how it works. The employees keep having to call the help desk because of the changes. There are frequent meetings to explain the latest changes. And it is your tax dollars at work (and it's $7 million of your Federal Tax dollars to use Agile to reimplement the Sheriff Department legal system with no discernable changes or new features -- just in another computer "language").

It's a great con game, especially for greedy politically motivated managers who are a triumph of image over substance.

Gone are the days of any substantiative objective substance: It's all do it on the fly, fly by night, here today, gone tomorrow Agile programming, invented by those short sighted geniuses at Sun Microsystems.

You can't argue with success.

No wait.

Sun went out of business and was gobbled up by another mega corp originally built on what has become ITIL principles.

You don't need an Oracle to tell you who.

Is completely off.

Agile is not NO documentation.

Whatever your personal experience, it is not typical, it is or could be the same in any development process. Uninformed is certainly not going to help you.

EMC Recently promoted more generlist in technology, and certainly PMI/PMP does not support that.

Interestestly PMI now promotes their new certification, Agile Certified Professional.

Lastly, ITIL is and was developed by OGC. Not sure where you think Oracle developed ITIL, or any part of the framework.

I am ITIL certified, not sure where you heard that.

http://www.itil-officialsite.com/

Sorry, wrong on all counts!

But first of all, I did not mention Oracle: I mentioned Sun Microsystems.

I'm for ITIL. I am ITIL certified. I did not say where ITIL was developed. I was commenting on the inadequacies of the "throw it together world in front of the customer" Agile chaos non planning approach. From my experience, ITIL will produce more solid results. The ITIL instructor was horrified when I showed him what Agile was all about.

I am also trained in Project Management by PMI.

Your comment is so off the wall that it doesn't even seem to relate to my posting.

So I'm guessing that you don't really spend much time reading or analyzing.

Say, no wait!

That's the Agile Way -- sort of like the current Administration: Just make stuff up as you go along.

Amazing.

Being uninformed is not going to help you.

Good luck in your job.

Are you a manager?

That would explain it.

First I have been ITIL Certified for over 4 years.
I am also Agile Certified and Scrum (Agile flavor) Certified.

I know about what I speak.

Agile has nothing to do with YOUR description, it is simply wrong the way you have described it. You are not correct!

Clear enough?

ITIL has multiple parts and pieces to it and Agile fits very nicely into that space.

You clearly do not understand Agile, and apparently like most things you do not understand, you attempt to mock them in lieu of understanding them.

As for PMI, as I said, the handwriting is on the wall, and they recognize the days of having a PMI certified person manage from on high are long past.

The CIO of the government declared the US Government is moving to Agile. All the top companies are exclusively or moving to Agile.

Manufacturing has been using Agile/Lean approaches for years.

As for what you believe you know about my politics, you simply do not.

By the way, my job is and has been providing consulting services since 2001, doing quite well, thanks.

The fact that you did not understand my post most likely explains more about your lack of knowledge about Agile, the world of software development and the future, than say, me!

Good luck!

Regarding your merciless diatribe below, you still, even after looking it up on the web, do not understand.

As for my business ethics, more you simply do not understand.

Let me explain it. I make money for companies pointing the things guys like you do not understand!

I've watched as Agile has sunk several businesses: It's the modern way -- managing successful projects take to long and that is why Project Management is disappearing. People don't want to wait any longer. I understand Agile perfectly well and see what it did to its progenitors -- the low foresight people who generated it at Sun Microsystems. Agile is just another hype generation of all those wonderful Rapid Development methodologies of the past. ITIL is derived from the rapidly fading principles of the IBM Mainframe world.

So here is Agile in a nutshell:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

So, starting out, if we use the same resources under the same conditions we get wildly differing results -- hence there is no need for documentation or following a plan: You just live in continual chaos of change, responding to the customers who often doesn't even begin to know what they need. They may know what they want, but they certainly don't have any idea how to get there and often it's because they can't with the current technology, or if they can, it will take bundles of loot to do it.

Your job as a consultant is to deceive people for money. You might not outright lie to them, but you do set expectations for results. Undoubtedly, you have managed to dupe your employers using the principles of my book, "Assertive Incompetence".

Now then, you mention that the CIO of the government declared the US Government is moving to Agile. We all respect the decisions of our Federal Government, don't we: Trillions of dollars in debt, unemployment flying high, problems everywhere, scandals popping up like mushrooms on the lawn after a rainy day. As for the major Corporations, aren't they like the ones that had to be bailed out by the government?

Sure, this whole blog topic is about the future of IT Professionals. It seems clear that the future belongs not to IT Professionals but to slick sleazy politicians who are a triumph of image over substance and are, shall we say, agile in creating seemingly plausible explanations for failure and who are a triumph of image over substance.

I agree with you that you are likely highly successful.

I've had critical success after critical success following planning, producing comprehensive documentation that the customer needed and used, collaborating with the customer and planning the heck out of the project, delivered on time, under budget to a very happy customer who used the products and tools for years and in several cases, decades.

But with generation whine taking over the work place, we have to step up the pace, because they can't wait.

And in the end, it does look like the war of Project Management Methodology over Agile Development is moot as IT is outsourced to countries where neither is valued.

The IT industry has seen a rollercoaster of positions - from sys admin, operations, IT dir, CIO, development, analyst -

Corp. America is NOW finally realizing that having IT as an integral part of most marketing, sales and business operations helps that company achieve their goals
and solidify their business models. The days of "offshore everything" are gone - because it simply didn't (and doesn't) work well.

If anything, I see IT becoming more melded into a role that covers not just traditional IT, but sales, operations, marketing and continuity - even if it's not technology related.

IBM has a plan to have every offshore by 2015. About zero American employees or close to that if they can do it.

Business has a profit motive. If labor cost savings can be achieved elsewhere pack your bags or join the growling list of under employed and unemployed. Additionally in-country Asian shops import temporary or seek H1-B labor at less expense. The elderly employee presents a health insurance cost risk that can be mitigated by part-time employment and outsourcing.

IMO - Money flows to the lowest cost resource(s), expense(s) and product(s). IT is an expense and automated technologies is leading most IT functions offshore. Many US companies are shell organizations for non-domestic business operations. It's is not in their best interest to employ US citizens. it is likely that CIO's working in USA will come from the culture(s) necessary to support the business function.

I also agree, IT, is not dead, what is dead, is top level management, as far as the knowledge to provide guide lines and realistic goals to implement a given solution and that only comes from experience. Most PMs I have worked with do not have a clue to the underling tech, I have found that in order to save a penny one spends a dollar. Not a win win in these profit making dayz. So, I ask myself, how many students buy all this blog stuff, dude, get real. The bottom is what makes the top .... Know your OS, then your hardware, and topology, get your BR, up front. Then suggest.

Is there some sort of a class system here? There are also the domestic market, and unless I'm wrong, the lower scale of maintenance which will always be needed. You dont mention these people. While I am not a fully qualified technician, I know there is enough work there to not need upper level support, and fit right in where domestic support is needed. The market is probably bigger here than in the more in your face industrial support, but it is there...

With technology changing at he speed of light almost, wouldn't you think protecting customer information (both internal and external) is key. 'Thinkers' can include the hackers just licking their chops at another new portal to your data.

Security will continue to be extremely valuable, but a lot of it is going to move higher up the value chain. It's going to be more about "risk management." The really successful security professionals will develop a strong business sense to go with their deep technical knowledge. Most of the highly-skilled, highly-trained security pros will open their consultancy, work for big enterprises (government, financial sector, hospital networks), or work for big consultancies.

it could evolve into more and more hardware solutions with built-in support. Something that is already happening at least on the network edge.

I am consulting more and more startups who just don't have the money to build the traditional IT infrastructure, and cloud solutions look pretty good to many of them, for now. As they grow, they may change; but then doesn't everything?

Once again - I agree with the principles of your assessment. The landscape may look a little different, but then change has a way of making the future pliable.

for getting involved in the discussion regarding this, it is nice to see an author getting involved.

i agree to some degree with the points that you make but I think that you have gone too far. There will always be day to day task and maintenance to do. I also think that there must always be someone to monitor outside resources and do the second tier tasks, although perhaps not to the degree they do today.

I think he is premature in his over selling of these concepts. There is always a lot going on under the covers. Have you ever tried implementing a desktop virtualization project for as little as 500 users. The simpler the concept the more complex it is in implementation. Long live the IT pro.

If you want an inferior solution to a complex problem, don't give it to a team. Give it to a whole lot of individuals working independently.

When you have a physical IT department with everyone a few seconds walk away from everyone else, it's no sweat to go ask someone the best way to implement a function. Most of us geek/techies are good at sharing knowledge because then we can show off how much we know!

Jason,

While I see your point I think you may be casting to narrow a net. I am sure we are going to see reduced headcount in some sectors but there will be modest growth in others. For instance I think desk and sever side support requirements are going to continue to diminish over this next decade. They won't completely evaporate but they will change. I think you see these positions going to contract or consultant roles and are calling that our. I have seen a lot of this kind of activitiy over my career. I have to agree you it will happen.

Another thing I am noticing is the biforcation of corporate IT. It seems like many organizations are ready to outsource and cloud source thier middle tier systems but they don't have answers for first level support and for strategic design.

I hope a few folks see your article for what it is. A wake up call. We as professionals can't stick our heads in the sand and ignore the fact that our career landscape is changing. We need to embrace it and train ourselves for those next opportunities.

I look forward to your next article.

I disagree Jason. Security is not a one time exercise, but requires feet(brains) on the ground forever testing defenses, upgrading systems, and training personnel in personal risk management. The environment is changing rapidly, and needs people on-site to keep the business secure.

Outsourcing/contracting can do this, but in-house is better because you can keep IT people trained, whereas you do not know that your contractors are keeping up-to-date.

I totally agree about Security. I'm sick of trying to explain the dangers of the cloud to my larger size clients. But as a Security professional I guess the cloud is a godsend.

Only until the day before somebody in India or China penetrates your client's "cloud" environment, steals data and somebody finds out about it. And if it is critical or sensitive data, then you had better keep your Lawyer's business card in your wallet. You will be SUED. And rightfully so. I keep NONE of my client's data in the cloud, ZERO and manage all of their offsite data myself in my office on my computers that, for this purpose, are kept turned OFF 23 hours a day. Or longer. I keep a transitory hard drive with me in my bag. Hackers - try to hack this drive IN THE CLOUD when it is locked up and on a shelf.

This is exactly the way all private data should be handled.

Too bad it can't be -- at least for the most part.

Go and sit in a help desk sometime, the 'newer' generations such as the millenials need more support than their older colleagues. Why? Because knowing how to do a Facebook post or put an mp3 on an iPod doesn't make you tech savvy, but you've been told you're tech savvy most of your life. The result? More users who think they're a genius who meddle and wreak havoc, and don't know when to ask for help.

As for user choice of device, seriously. That just creates more IT work, not less.

supporting lecturers who are allegedly teaching IT courses (amongst others) and they still do all the daft things that users do. As for our students, well lets just say that I have seen final year IT students who do not know what a driver is!

The tech literate students of today often have no idea how anything works under the bonnet!

I've seen this on numerous occasions in the past too, n.gurr@. I had a series of interviews to do for a junior tech' role last year. To try and separate the wheat from the chaff I created a little test sheet (multiple choice; I didn't want to get too mad about it) with problems ranging from basic Windows O/S config changes, simple IP network questions, and a basic database problem concerning joins. I had one guy come in who professed to have an IT Degree, but lord knows how he spent his three years at university. He got one of the lowest scores out of all the candidates. In general the scores were very poor indeed. The best of them was the youngest applicant I interviewed, with two years of experience helping out at a firm where the boss, who had a PC at home; his only qualification, was the erstwhile PC fixer upper. In effect then he had no professional IT training of any sort, but his hands-on experience, and obvious enthusiasm for the role beat the other supposedly qualified candidates hands down.

I'm afraid I have to agree with some of Jason's thoughts. Most of the companies I have worked for the past are SME's with very small IT departments, and aside from the purely tech' roles - PC/Printer/Network fixers - the more senior roles have become far more project oriented as my career has progressed. Where I have worked for firms of similar sizes, my current rol is more about liaison with numerous contractors, evolving IT strategies, and general security maintenance then it is about doing any grunt coding work myself any more. In effect, the development side of our IT Department is largely outsourced to specialist companies who do the same thing for us, and dozens of other companies too.

at some of my interviews. At my last contract I mostly worked on projects outsourcing work to other contractors. The only work I did myself was building IDFs and MDFs. I could see very quicly that I needed to be canned, because I could also see that contractors were a more effecient way of doing IT business. When you work for a non-profit this reality can become obvious even more quickly. Not surprisingly I was laid off, never to work under contract again; but then I like independent work even more. I will take consulting to that world any day.

Is one thing that we are telling our students to get. Placement years and internship are the only real way to get a job straight from Uni in this market it seems. There are many fewer graduate jobs now....

We had a contractor to full time opening come up where I work about a month ago. We got down to 4 people out of the hundred or so resumes we received. Out of the 4 people, one made it and he was the best of the bunch. He came in with 10 years experience and from a large, high paced, work environment.

The three other candidates honestly had no clue. One guy just did rollouts and nothing else. He never did any troubleshooting and knew nothing about support. The other two were 100% clueless, and I mean clueless. The first of these last two guys never, ever did this before. He had the enthusiasm and was going to school for the work. Fine I said, bring him in and we'll show him around.

I brought this kid upstairs to the sea of cubes. This sea extends over 5 floors where we support close to 700 employees, not counting the 100 or so that just moved next door. There are multiple projects going on in addition to the desktop support, and there are queues of tickets that need to be closed for each user.

The timing couldn't have been better when the interviewee came in. He saw the pages of ticket open on my monitor and my lunch sitting there getting cold. (I didn't tell him that I was interrupted by his visit). I then got six telephone calls in the middle of the interview, and let him listen in on two of them. As he sat there, his eyes got bigger than flying saucers! He didn't say too much and I then passed him on to my manager who went through the same process.

Last guy that came in had very little experience. Oh he built PCs for his dad's company, but never worked in a large organization before. He to was a bit overwhelmed by the workload, and didn't even pass the easy tech test we gave these guys. The questions were really, really, basic and he didn't know where to begin. He too left dazed.

The guy with the tech experienced that passed, ask me when he could start. He was not only used to supporting a lot of people, but had the skills as well. He didn't have just book knowledge, like these other kids had, he also had the critical thinking and troubleshooting skills to go a long with it.

In my opinion, I'd take anyone that not only has the working knowledge and the experience any day over someone fresh out of tech school.

Even being a tier up from the help desk I can verify that the "Millenials" are no more "tech savvy" than previous generations. And any company that allows an employee to supply their own device is taking on more than just support headaches. Employees using their own devices also bring legal and security issues. When company data is on an employee device who owns it, who controls it and how is it protected. When it is on a company device the answer to those questions is simple, on a personal device it becomes problematic.

If company data is on a personal device then the device becomes discoverable. Ask your employee if they are willing to give up their personal device for an unlimited amount of time due to a court proceeding and see if they are still willing to bring it in.

Bill

When company data is on an employee device without authorization, it is "stolen" data. I've worked places where connecting an employee-owned device to a corporate device, including networking equipment and USB ports, caused transfer of ownership of that device to the company, and everyone working there signed off agreeing to that. In order to bring in a laptop that had WiFi, you had to **demonstrate** to the security officer that you can and had turned off the wireless radio via the BIOS, not a switch on the case. Turning it back on was an intentional act they would discover during their random sweeps. They had very few issues with data ownership (and a higher class of employee, too).

How many times do professional system administators in charge of servers call "the help desk" for support? Not everything in IT is a nice little IPad or touch something. Even Apple's massive ICloud facility is stacked with a few hundred servers manufactured by ...not Apple, but HP! True.

Where I work even us tech support guys have to call the helpless desk which is located "overseas". This makes getting a lot of things done very difficult because we have to go through the slow process and queue for everything. To make matter worse, we'll get the calls back from the helpdesk at 3:00 am, stating that because no one responded to their messages (What messages!), that they're closing the ticket due to no response! Then we start the process all over. I'm lucky that my manager is the head of software support and has connections with the other group. He's made a few phone calls to get this issue resolved, but that doesn's seem to last and they're back to their old tricks again.

All users too are required to call or submit a ticket online before *ANY* support is provided. This has caused quite a bit of grumpling and grumping by the user community, but that's the way it is where I work.

Yeah I was recently amazed at stories of millenials working on a helpdesk downloading movies and unauthorised peer to peer file sharing software on to the network - both got fired. Its insane - these people worked in IT and yet still had no idea how it worked and what they were doing would get them sacked. Just because they grew up with technology doesn't mean they understand it. Does someone who grew up with the automobiles know about the thermodynamic cycle in an engine or how lubricants work at a micro level to prevent engine wear ? NO !!!

I was going to post pretty much this exact statement.

Your comment is both hilariously astute, with a taste of bitter. I agree-- daft adults have been showering millenials with meaningful praise that is overall hollow in the real world. Great job, little Timmy, you can set up an email account. ANY ONE can set up an email account.

By marking this as SPAM.

I'm betting that they are one of the New Breed of Self Stated technology Brilliants who know nothing.

Col

Consultants (I am one) - Project Managers and Developers. I would argue too that consultants are very often Project Managers and a few can be developers, but mastery of all three is a brain killer. As it is, I also believe that outsourcing destroyed many American information tech positions and a general desire to enter the field. Why get a degree when, in a few years, management will call you an overpaid American worker, have you fired or at worse train your Indian replacement. (See IBM for example). Outsourcing has proven to be hell! Those invisible expenses are murderous, but management sees ONLY salary and benefits. Which is precisely the benefit of Consultants, whether on retainer or on-call hourly rate. WE have become the defacto replacement for many corporate IT departments and the curious thing is that by doing so we also master a great many more technologies than we EVER would have been exposed to in corp. Disclosure - I spent 7 years at Aon Group before outsourced out in 2005. Aon is a Notes shop, always was, always will be so I never would have had a crack at an Exchange Server! And also a wide variety of software packages used by my current clients as well.

As for India ... my goodness, I forgot to ask for an email survey.

since the abacus has resulted in a further proliferartion of specialities, and a broadening for those of us who sell our selves based on generalisation.
Your entire argument falls flat on it's arse, because you forgot a key factor in IT's environment, commerce...

Yes, specialization will only accelerate, but the specialists will be individual consultants, work for big consultants, or work for big enterprises. That way their time can be fully used to the best advantage. The best specialists and the ones in the most lucrative specialties (security, ERP) will see see their value and compensation increase. The mediocre ones won't be able to hide in bureaucratic company IT departments any more.

Business will work on not having to employ these expensive people. Someone will come out with a product on the lines of "Do ERP without knowing anything about it", it will take off, several more will join in, MS will build it into Windows 10.

SSDD..

Mediocre people will always find a place to hide, as consultants or as staffers, plenty of room nehind the non-technical types who command commerce.

I didn't vote you down by the way, must have been a couple of insecure types.

Ho hum...

Oddly enough I agree with both of you on certain points. Where their is a personal conflict with my opinion like this, I never vote on either side.

So many Specialists who deeply understood their small Section of the system and constantly applied Improvements to those Sections resulted in the destruction of the system because

No One understood any more how the base system worked.

They where only ever concerned with their own little area where one improvement broke 20 other base functions and all subsequent Improvements with out the understanding of what it was that they where doing.

OH I'm sure that is how business will want to go a few specialists and no generalists till they starting having so much Down Time that they only have a working system 20% of the time they will start asking just how this happened and want to return to the older ways.

Of course as by then there will be so few generalists there will be no one capable for fixing the mess that has been made by the Multitude of Specialists.

Just because Business wants something by no means, means that they even begin to understand exactly what it is that they have told the people to do. Over the Long Run Business has proved completely incapable of doing anything in a Long Term Manner. They are too worried about the Bottom Line next week and their Board's Bonuses to even begin to consider the Long Term Destruction that they are wreaking upon themselves and their eventual payments. Just look at the Mortgage Fiasco that is just the latest in a long lime of Business Failures where Short Term Profit is put above everything else.

Col

Earlier comments mentioned dysfunctional organizations, incompetence of management as well as short term thinking and plenty of that exists.

Since America has evolved from a nation of builders to a nation of peddlers, a Logan's Run deterioration is expected.

I think that corporate financial analysts are not on top of the IT Cost Center versus P&L because of the myriad of different metrics employed and how they really relate to profit. I think it is common to miss emerging problems because IT activities are poorly measured to how they effect and contribute to profit and value.

Again, when the non-IT staff is spending so much time on porn downloads, updating facebook, and tweeting their followers ("Hey look at me! Look what I'm doing!"). I reckon poorly led organizations will (obliviously) survive as long as the top executives' golden parachute looks better than "facing the music". By then, the company will be in trouble or the board of directors will have (finally) awakened and ask themselves "why did we hire those jerks, again?"
;^)

America is full of mediocre writers. Jason Hiner is not a bad writer and maybe that is his problem. He has been out of the front lines for too long. You could say he is out of touch but don't insult his prose.

Wasn't insulting his prose, just reflecting back his self-righteous/smug "I'm me and too bad you're not" attitude. Like many in a semi-public role, Jason's forgetting that these days, everyone is replaceable, including himself.

We should vote your comment down because you used "prose" (correctly) in a tech column. That word used to be reserved exclusively for use by English professors. What is happening to the caliber of geeks today?

There will always be demand for specialist. I've been watching this increase lately in certain fields where it is hard to get people with all 15 skills listed in the required section. Often their usefulness is short lived, such as transitioning to a new enterprise scale system, and they move on. And they are demanding get huge hourly rates.
Management would, of course, love not paying those rates, but realize that it would take months, if not years, to build up those skills internally, only to have no need for most of them after the transition (maintenance is a smaller staff than transition) and lay them off.

Most of the specialism within IT is deliberately tools based. That's not 15 skills on the requirement, it's 15 tools. Pay the fellow who learnt them first big bucks and a load of people will see that, rush out read a book, take a cert, lie their arse off etc and make you a not a special specialist in short order.

Specialise in admin or development or systems integration, migration, an area that requires technical ability and soft skills and experience, then you have them by the nuts when they need you and you can always earn your corn with a subset of the required skills and tools

They hate that, because it does take years to do....

Current and previous role I got because of of my skills, tools this role I was two to five years without using them, one before that six....

Play your game not theirs..

Best to keep all of your tools sharp as possible. Don't assume the rules of a game you 'wrote" will not be changed by new blood. They can change overnight, or they can change so slowly you don't notice until it's too late.

I would stay abreast of *everything* remotely related to my specialty and some that seem too remote. Imagine if some young know-it-all tries to upstage you and he finds out you've got the full script in your head.

I don't generally apply my dba, network and sstem admin and hardware skills anymore. I'm seriously out of date tools wise, knowing the fundamentals has come in handy a time or two though when there was a need for more than just a developer.

The tools argument says that if I went off and did a course on the latest version, that would make me more valuable than some one who knew and used the the last 10 versions.

I disagree, vehemently. Anyone looking at my resume, and picking me out just because I've just added some tool is going to prefer a newer and cheaper person who did the same course.
I can't compete in that market, nor can I think of single eason for doing so.

I can certainly recommend it.

I'm in there with you. With close to 30 years in technical support, starting as a hardware technician at the component level and ending up later in IT and desktop support, my skills too are becoming "old" by the current standards.

Yet, and probably like you, we can fix anything because we have the knowledge and criticle thinking skills to be able to resolve the problems. The problem is a lot of HR departments are sold the certification garb by the training schools. As we know HR reps have no clue when it comes to IT stuff and suck this garbage up as the holy grail.

Well, I needed a good laugh this morning. This article gave me one. C'mon, Jason, are you really that short sighted?

This article reflects a very myopic view that current bean counters have. These are the three categories of jobs. In any SDLC, the methodologies - waterfall, scrum, agile, and anything else out there, discusses a level of granularity. And of course there is the QA and the PMO.
Even better, why not just call it two roles? Paid and sweat equity? this should cover it!

You know where this is going. Users are so focused on deadlines and getting something done, that QA is a great myth... at least in some places. Funny thing is, a lot of my users don't want to test it themselves and expect the developers to be able to regression test it. A lot of our developers are thrust into QA. You know what that gets translated to IRL

This is definitely talking about "moving the cheese." People hate that.

IT management is responsible for shooting itself in the foot, and if you want really horrific examples - google CITYTIME, SAIC and TECHNODYNE. While this project from hell falls under larger consulting firms, it is management and time billing gone just insane. Corporate IT has the same issues to a lesser degree and corporate IT is mostly dismantled. Developers have been hardest hit by outsourcing to India. Programmers are literally a dime-a-dozen over there. Pay of $2 an hour is a real number folks. OH, and if American management can get somebody at THAT rate??? Wow, beats the Minimum Wage by a mile doesn't it.

Jason, you are spot on. Most people that hate this kind of talk are in positions that are at risk, it's job justification and self-preservation, I don't blame them. The reality is this isn't new and has been going in this direction for a couple of years and now that the economy has tanked, it will just get more prominent. Someone commented on your G+ account that you should follow the money and that's the impetus of all of this change. In a tight economy every budget is scrutinized as is the need for every employee. The reality is, bloat in every department is going to be removed, including IT and technical positions. Although some people in these roles feel they are untouchable because the company will fail without them, the reality is everyone is replaceable and in a tough economy, they are often replaceable for a much more qualified and cheaper person. This is also when companies re-evaluate their tech strategy and often realize the cost savings of relying on your three positions, or something close to it. No matter how important you think your security or technology is, does it matter if the business can???t afford to keep the doors open?

... down-voted you, so I upped you back to 0.

I think Jason's uncomfortable truth is correct. I also think it's for the best. Back in the day, companies whose business model had nothing to do with IT were writing their own applications (go further back and they were writing their own compilers). That's not being business-savvy. Specialization makes sense, and specialization is what will take these skills out of the corporate structure and make them outside services instead.

Developer, it's C# with .net4 on Win 7 SP1 using VS1020....
A small and short term niche.
Specialist as you and I might define it, as in integration specialist or Client/Server Database developer is a generalist as far as they are concerned, loads of boys with VB6 and access still about to "compete" with us....

I assume you are one of the uneducated consultants who know nothing or are you on the business side shining to your upper mgmt because you took away the tech folks and replaced them with half the cost twits? Nothing to do about "truth haters" its the lack of understanding that technical folks hate. You and the person who created this arcticle are masters at completely over simplifying because you just dont know. Hence, the statements you make. I have dealt with consultant after consultant who can not manage to figure out where their ass is in relation to their elbow but once the work is done (by someone else who completed the task for them) they become masters at saying they got it completed!! You can disagree, as i am sure you will and i look forward to your response. What is your field? Should i guess business or consultant?

He knows his stuff technically, and from the articles he's created and other responses he knows how it should be applied as well.
Search for him on here, if you don't believe me.

Also he understands enough about business to make money out of those skills

You need to distinguish between the need for competent consultants because there isn't enough of a business need to warrant a full time exclusive role, from the need to reduce the wage bill so some f'ing pointy head can get promoted.

Redirect your ire...

I'm sure there are plenty of consultants who justify RThreshier's opinion. I like to think I'm not one of them, and I appreciate your support.

of them was chosen based on cost...

I consider this to be a clue...

When I became one for a bit, I turned down several roles because I do it for money, and/or my name isn't Ethan Hawke. I assume they found someone eventually..

Ethan Hawke isn't cheap either....

Oh and you are welcome, people who do know their arse from their elbow, deserve to be recognised....

I don't know any corporate level consultants, but I figured my common sense would find ground in your thinking.

A good one can save you a potload of money and heartache.

A bad one can cost you the same.

No consultant and you're on your own, navigating without stars.

Is that as in celestial bodies, or Z list celebrities?


If you are hiring a consultant (ie not just covering some resource shortfall). There's some knowledge / skills / experience you don't have and wish to acquire on a temporary basis. Given you don't have them, how do you feel comfortable that they have. No different to hiring them full time in that respect is it. The idea that a consultant is some sort of innate solution to this issue, is not a good
argument. In fact I'd have to say, any consulatant who told mne I should hire them simply because they had made the 'elite', was struggling to stay on the Z list.

There are two kinds of IT jobs. The one is maintenance/support. The second is projects. The need for support is there every day. Projects should not be an ongoing thing. You hire contractors and when the project is complete they move on. If you have an IT department full of permanent-staff developers, they are going to cause gray hairs by looking for unnecessary projects to keep busy and make themselves look important.

Why don't we all take a paid sabbatical, and see what happens...

Question which twit of a manager allowed the situation you describe to happen and to continue and why. Answer this conundrum correctly, and many things will become clear.....

While you figure out the answer, I recomend you say little to nothing and therefore avoid letting everyone else who hasn't read your post here that you are a clueless numpty as well....

Based on your posts Tony, you seem like a reasonable Joe (or bloke) of the programming-developer persuasion. Can't tell from your profile, but I expect you'd be a decent boss as well. Buuuuttttt, boy-howdy, when the boss favors the ppl in the dept he came out of, it can be sheer misery for the other side. I worked for two firms where the IS boss came from and favored the programming side and it was not pretty. Not saying that maintenance-support boss guarantees perfection and light. Any IS boss worth his salt is careful to treat both sides decently.

Another of his posts

http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-346688-3477445?tag=discussion-thread

The three factors I think that would make me a good boss are.
I don't like to fail, pretending I haven't is not success in my book....
I know I don't know how to be one.
I'd really rather not be one.

1. A dislike of failure, admitting your have experienced it and that's why
2. Learn how to be a good boss
3. Like being one

No offense, Tony, but it looks like you'd make 1/3 of a good boss.
Oh, well, since you'd rather not, I guess you win, anyway.

I remain firmly convinced I'd make as great a boss as many of the bosses I've had though...
Armchair quarterback syndrome is a definite possibility, not having the same outlook as my peers (if I was a boss) and those further up the food chain, almost certainly.

This I do know though, respect, trust, loyalty and communication, are not one way processes.....

How does a "more qualified" person get hired at a cheaper rate in a company? Your bass ackwards fella.

Costing less is often an extremely important qualifier in corporate IT.

I just think it bollocks. I've watched several types predict development as skill will die, replaced with the "Develop your own application withiout knowing anything about it" application. Didn't happen.

Too many unrealistic assumptions in this picture for me, some one will be saying quality is a prime driver in commecrcial IT next, and my ribs are still aching laughing at the OP's naivety.

The "software development without programming" illusion has been circulated since the introduction of Fortran. I see it the other way around. Developers will become even more differentiated from the rest of IT and will work for companies that provide software development services exclusively, whether it be as a consulting firm or a vertical software vendor. I think companies whose business is not software development will eventually leave that occupation to those whose it is.

I predict data islands and in-house self learners will rise again (where I started actually). Going outside the company requires a huge amount of formalty i's dotted t's crossed etc, where as asking that bloke who knows a bit about programming who is already on the books...
As we both know that sort of approach i self perpetuating, it's easier to invent another isalnd and a ricketty bridge between them than to do it properly. Integrating someything like taht into your main system if it takes off is no fun at all either, unless you have some sort of formal process surrounding, which would require a professional developer to get right...

They've never left it to us, the don't even agree who us is, you and I are in the same box as cookie cutter and an MBA who once wrote a macro.
I don't see this brave new world changing that, because the judgement of what constitutes good enough remains in the hands on the non-technical.

I can (and no doubt you) can see the benefit of partnerships, but the level of trust required for that to work is bit rare in corporateville...

So could you write an article on why IT Pro's are good for business, and about why companies can benefit on having a local IT admin as a resource? It seems to me that all the articles force it managers to view outsourcing as the way only way to go, while they have thousands of IT pro's that would go the extra mile for them. Instead of cutting IT jobs, create a new finance strategy. I was a part of a company that laid off 1/3 of the IT department because they outsourced a department, then they had to buy programs and hire more managers to manage the outsourced department, and put stress on the IT department to 'make things work'. Now they can't hire anymore IT pro's to keep up with business demands because outsourcing cost them way more than what was budgeted. That was a decision made all by management. Weirdly enough, the greatest ideas and most cost savings implemented came when the IT pro's had input in the decisions. IT pro's have ideas on saving money, all you have to do is ask.

...is not part of Six Sigma, business school, or the stock market.

The people who expect to achieve these kinds of results will only see doctored, inaccurate reports. They *think* they have achieved the "zero defect" goal but the real figures will likely be hidden from them. I have had personal experience with the product of a "Six Sigma" company, and despite the reputation earned in earlier days, product performance and reliability dropped considerably to about 15% out-of-box failure rate. This was no doubt driven by a help department who predictably told us we were using faulty test equipment. Products taken to the regional service depot were often returned with the same defect. Still this company was bragging about there "second to none" quality assurance.

I disagree with your prediction, but the article is good. It is defiantly something that is being discussed at all levels within the corporation. It lead to a lot of good discussion with a lot of ideas and opinions exchanged.

Bill

Developers are a dime a dozen and can be outsourced. Not a profession I'd recommend moving into. Stay away from any position that can be outsourced.

Consultants are employed in dribs and drabs. Mostly dribs.

The only one I can agree to are the Project Leaders.

Have you considered Business Analysts ?

Totally different skillsets. Vastly different mindsets, and unbelievably different goals.
PM is closer to developer than analyst, they both implement...

What you said is absolutely practical on a small project where the business process is immediately understandable by the PM. The bigger the project, the less-possible that is. The other factor is that you really need a number of BAs, one for each major area of expertise. In other words, if you need a EPCM project-accounting app, your BA has to understand both the ECPM business processes, as well as accounting principles. The PM will certainly need knowledge in one of those, but can rely on the BA for the rest.

though they exist now, we have business analysts and domain analysts for instance. BA looks at it from our end DA looks at it from 'theirs'. What the customer needs and wants is one set of things, whether we could and should provide them is a different question. as you say it;s dependant on size, no way you can do more than one of those roles sucessfully, too much work, or wrong focus...
The legislative requirements of accountancy for instance.

While I agree with allot of the statements made herein I, as someone who has been trying to get some/any kind of work in IT now for the last three years disagree with the particulars.

1) There IS a glut of IT people out there mostly made up of those who have been cut or laid off from the corporate IT departments and those jobs that those people were filling are being farmed out to jobbers. These jobbers are NOT IT people, they are mostly made up of HR people who do NOT know a CPU from a memory stick and are only looking at the job descriptions that they receive from their clients HR departments (who also do NOT know a CPU from a memory stick) and are only checking the boxes off (read key word lists) as they conduct their phone interviews with perspectives. Then once they get a large group of perspectives together they send all those resumes to the hiring manager for the IT department that sent in the body request and that manager (who may or most likely may not be an IT person themselves) weeds through the received resumes for the (what they perceive as) "Best" people for the job(s). The only problem with this is that the criteria being used is quite arbitrary, things such as:

a) A "Bad" credit score (what this has to do with whether youll do the job well I do not know, and besides, after you have been out of a job for OVER a year, your credit score is GOING to have taken a hit or two or more likely ten)

b) Not presently (for more than a month or more) working in a IT position either permanent or temporary, (this is extremely prejudicial to those who have not been ABLE to get a job due to the present economic situation and the one that is in the process of being created by both the Federal Congress and Administration)

c) Not having extensive certifications from the likes of CompTIA, MS, Cisco, etc. (and even IF you have these, please see # 1-b above)

2) Most large companies are keeping their CTO/CIO's, or if they decide to let the ones they presently have go, they are using an extreme form of Darwinian selection to determine who, amongst those left in (and in some cases outside of) the IT department will fill the slot. The problems start happening for the IT professionals out there trying to find work when these CTO/CIO's are NOT competent in their jobs (such as the CEO's or a member of the board of directors son/daughter in law or cousin and cant tell the difference between a Cisco and a Linksys router, well, maybe the size is a dead give-a-way) and he/she goes through the IT department "culling" out those who are making "TOO much money" or have been there too long and are "out of touch with the present business environment" (read those who don't suck-up well enough, or who as Jason said, say NO too much to the powers that be and p/o one or more of them).

3) As time goes on more and more companies are outsourcing their IT departments because it makes dollars and cents to their bean counters bottom lines (I can see this, smaller in-house HR departments, less cost in bennies, etc., hey why dont we just out-source the entire HR department? Dont laugh, its already being done as we speak in allot of companies out there). The issues only start when those companies that do outsource their IT departments start to find that that they are getting a large turn-over in their new model IT departments (most jobbers DON'T want people in a position for more than 6 months because those people start to find out just how badly they're being taken advantage of: can we say almost slave labor anyone) and the people who are being brought in to "fill the vacancies" don't understand the software/hardware environment theyre being dropped into. Each and every companys IT infrastructure is as different as each and every person on this planet is different from another. The mix of apps, OSs, etc. is such that it takes at least six months for someone to get the lay of the land and understand that app A doesnt play well apps B and G and that you have to load app B into a new machine only AFTER app V and before app X or things are going to go to hell in a hand basket the first time someone tries to use app C.

4) Companies are now embracing (as a recent T-Mobile commercial called it) The Almighty Cloud. The only problem is that most of todays managers werent around the last time the thin client type of scenario was tried on a large scale. Who knows, maybe this time it will work, what with a larger capacity web backbone, faster hardware, etc, maybe this time managers wont mind having all their secrets (both personal and corporate) hanging out on the web where any decent black hat can (exploiting some weakness in one of those web apps made by a coding slave) snag it and pass it on the likes of Wiki Leaks so that all their competitors, their significant others divorce lawyer, and the regulating authorities for their industry can see everything that they are up to, gee, whats the new saying going around out there, oh yeah, Transparency is a good thing (?) well, maybe not for everybody, cha-ching.

traditional IT break/fix roles. But you seem to assume a lot about future technology we haven't seen yet! As you point out reduced workforce is occuring because

A) The technology just doesn't break like it used to
B) Information storage, access and exchange is easier for users to do

So the break/fix and user support role is not nearly as demanding technically as it used to be. Where once technical genius that didn't mind getting its hands dirty once trod, now there are an infinite number of monkeys pounding out Hamlet. That said I'm not certain how the reduction to consultant, project manager and developer roles apply to anything other than those traditional feet on the ground forces. Where I see those folks going is hybrid roles. So I guess a fourth role would be "Business technical specialist".

A BTS would be inhouse staff whose role is split between core business needs and using technology to improve workflow for those tasks. An example of a BTS role would be a GIS specialist.

As a Baby Boomer married to a GenX and raised/raising 3 Millennials I can assure you that your average Millennial doesn't require less tech support. My kids were given laptops by the school starting in the 6th grade through Seniors. And I've never met a more clueless set of people. Sure.. they can Skype and Facebook. And I taught them Google Docs so that they could work on their homework even when they 'forgot' their laptops at school. (School laptops all Macs. The 7 home computers all Windows.) They can email.. though they'd rather 'IM'. But the first sign of a error or hiccup in their software/hardware and they are totally lost. The school has absolutely NO CLASSES that teach them anything about computers. They don't know a Hard Drive from a GeForce card and have no interest in learning. When it breaks.. just take it to Mom. She can fix anything. There are a couple of their classmates who have shown some interest in how stuff works and I have taken the time to show them. But overall I do not see less need for tech support. I see less need in applications training vs what baby boomers needed. But these kids aren't taught troubleshooting of any kind. If the application works.. they are all set. But if something doesn't work they can't even narrow down what part of the system is bad. Skill at application use does not equal tech support knowledge.

This is so true!

People nowadays, regardless of age just want their computers to work...much the same way a car does when you put in a key and it just "goes".

No kids in my household yet, but you can definitely bet I'll be teaching them how to troubleshoot when things break!

will you teach your kids also how to repair a car? Or even change tyres?

Yes!!

If you teach kids to repair a car, you have to buy a much older vehicle which can actually be worked on by non-pros. For the most part, these kids don't want that car.
Now, you want to teach your kid about computing but you won't be able to do that by repairing a PC... they need to know server, shared applications, and web applications to 'fix' their own. So, it's the same problem... you need older equipment to be able to jump right in there. Are you going to show your kid how to tear apart an ipad or iphone? Probably not.

Will you show your kids how to change a tire? Of course, but you still need a mechanic to actually repair a real problem with the engine or drive train.

Disk drive doesn't work, buy a new one one plug it in restore your OS.

Oh you didn't back it up!

You peeled off that ridiculous shiny number, and you got this on the hight street so no media and that irritating create a repair disk went away when your free anti-virus subscription ran out.

Now someone rescued your broken hard drive which of course was not faultly (bad driver change from windows update) and now you have no money in your account and you girlfriend thinks you are a sick pervert...

And this hostage ware keeps coming up after you visited that porn site, now your girlfriend left you, because your A/V subsrciption is still lapsed...

The shiny sticker example is true, by the way, it was 'bugging' him....

Later cars have a generous dose of digital control systems, and learning about them could put them in a good position to learn PC's and supporting systems.

We live in a world where everything is a disposable/replaceable commodity. The current struggle with my 11 year old is helping him understand that because something is not working as it should - that doesn't mean you throw it away and buy a new one. Yes it depends on what that something is and how much it is worth, but those variables do not even enter his thought pattern.
There is the old saying "if it ain't broke - don't fix it". The corollary being that you fix things that are broken. Our media-crazed hyper-commoditized market is saying that anying that is not working as well as you want it to, can be replaced with a newer better version.
I am working hard with my kids to make sure that they understand that many things are worth fixing - and even more importantly - the skill to troubleshoot, analyze and formulate a repair plan are critical life skills. Those skills seem to be dying out in our children because it is easier to "buy a new one" than fix the one that is broken.

Don't you realize this is exactly what the big companies want? They don't want users fixing PCs; they want us to toss them and buy a new one. Neither Dell nor MS is making any money off this 5-year-old laptop I'm typing this on. They would prefer it burst into flames and I head out the door to BestBuy. The only way their treadmill works is through ignorant users. The skills you're looking for are pretty much limited to PC gamers (shrinking) and the benchmark crowds (not many to begin with) these days.
Maybe it's just another lost skillset like car repair or preserving fruits/vegetables. Each generation seems to make progress in some areas at the expense of something else. Sometimes I wonder if we aren't making things too easy for our kids. Few have any semblance of self-sufficiency. They have to call a repairman for everything.

As systems grow more and more complex, and we need people capable of understanding them, so many show no interest. Is it because one must access the inner workings of a computer that such work is considered unsuitable for artists, attorneys and doctors? Isn't that the same attitude that held mechanics, plumbers and electricians, that held they were only factotums, not worthy of marrying "our" daughters?

Or are they all frightened at the prospect of having to learn some science, that which society tells them is beyond their ability to learn, and not only might they fail, but those science nerds would show them up?

Getting computers in schools is a great idea, all can learn better with interactive "i-textbooks", and the ability to *use* a computer is priceless. But how many schools teach even an introduction to computer technology? Anything to spur further interest in how it works?
Well, you've got to start by finding and recruiting teachers who know the science and can present it to students in an appealing manner.
Trouble is, most of these people are already making good money in the industry.

I absolutely agree. Millennials have absolutely no problem-solving or critical thinking skills whatsoever. Hell, they don't even have any critical LISTENING, VERBAL or SOCIAL skills. They were never even taught to look at a person speaking because their heads are always looking at a screen!!

Try this experiment: Explain a simple concept to one of these Millennials then, ask them to expound on what you just said. Hell...ask them what EXPOUND means - WITHOUT USING GOOGLE!! You'll get "I dunno.". And then, some convoluted reason explaining why they don't have to know as long as Google is around." Jeeeeezus.
I don't think internal IT depts are in any danger of being eliminated AT ALL - Morphing? Yes. Disappearing? No. Not with these dummies coming-down-the-pike. Pretty soon someone who can spell without electronic assistance will be considered a genius.
Heck, it's happening to me right now. I don't even remember my own Mother's phone number anymore...just - call MOM >Send. :P

1. IT Architects that become IT Business Analysts. These are the people who when you talk tech they just "get it", no knew technology is hard to learn, it just takes a little time to read about it and they pick it up fast. What they need to do is learn to be consultants to the business by learning . The tech becomes less important and replaced by solving the problem cost effectively, securely, and can "sell" the solution to the business. This person will work closely with IT to evaluate the hundreds of companies that can provide your "X as a service" offerings and integrate the chosen companies into the business.

2. IT Security. Identity and Access Management, keeping systems secure even with anywhere access and "bring your own device", protecting intellectual property, and knowing how to cost effectively comply with corporate and legal policies. These people are in very short supply and will be needed across the board. Many companies may rely on consultants here, but when you need this person the most is not when you want to find out your consultant is working with another client. Note: a highly sought after subset here is the security analyst that understands the technology and works with the legal department to design corporate compliance for the various (global) legal requirements like SOX, HIPAA, MOD, PII, etc. Again, this is mostly done by consultants today but as more of these requirements are made (and I am sure we are just starting here) to deal with cloud providers, these personnel will be in high demand to be the conduit for internal audit/compliance and all the service providers.

3. Technical Project Managers. Personally, I dislike working with PMs that only care about schedule and budget and have no concept of the actual work being done. With cloud services everyone under the PM can be outsourced and/or moved to "X as a service" providers; this includes the technical person who validates the project plan. A technical PM was once a consultant or senior IT admin who elevates their social and business skills to learn to be a good PM and helps the business ensure that the outsourced project members are being frugal and efficient. Note: my prediction is this is where women will edge out many geeky males that only care about the tech.

My top three why I believe IT Developers are not in the top three.
1. A combination of in-house IT Business Analysts and Technical PMs can adequately specify the effort required allowing the work to outsourced or provided by a cloud service.
2. Global marketplaces started by iTunes have unleashed a gold rush for developers making it appear that anyone with the skills and big idea can be first to implement the next hot "app" to make it rich quick. Where this model breaks down is when that single person has to deal with the business aspects of supporting all the applications they have written. We have already seen that being a cool app is no longer enough. Users are demanding an adequate support system for their purchased applications that is where companies will start stealing the business back from the basement developer (e.g. Zynga).
3. Software patents do not favor freelance or entrepreneur developers (where the real money is at) turning most developer jobs into corporate coders which unfortunately complete with a global talent pool.
Now do not get me wrong, I feel there is a lot of opportunity for developers and other IT personnel. However, it is not as being just an awesome programmer, great administrator, etc. You must mix in the business skills to cement yourself into the business as a critical employee. What you need to do is become the person that makes IT easy for everyone.

I started in IT/Technology (whatever you want to call it, it was DP then) in 1973. About every two years since then I've heard this kind of prediction for one reason or another.

It seems that in IT if you want to look farther than 2 years ahead you'd need a crystal ball.

I started (junior programmer) for IT/Technologies in the early 1970's (Japan products wiped out that employers business). By late 1980's (Junk Bond years) I turned to consulting assignments. Through recurring US recessions I managed to find telecom consulting assignments but not this time. I'm back in school thanks to the Dept. of Labor, Trade Act. (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that expired on Feb. 10, 2011 - for those that lost their jobs due to off shoring). After 4 years of unemployment the income plan seems to be, early Soc. Sec. retirement.

bblinder. Sorry to hear your predicament.
Here in Australia we have a relatively healthy economy and IT jobs are a plenty however we have an absolute glut of so called "IT Professionals". This is due to our Governments offering incentives to overseas students to come here and study/qualify in IT (and many other fields) at our (tax payers) expense. They then hit the job market with shiny new certificates (which in my 1st hand experience mean jack in the real world) and flood the work force.
Personally I'm doing okay as a full-time tech being contracted to schools and doing my own part-time consulting to small businesses.
Best of luck for the future.

Your reality sounds close to mine. I'm hopeful I can start an alternate energy company soon. I will still stay in consulting though - IT is my passion.

I started working as a Fortran IV programmer for a small manufacturing company in 1979. In the 1980s, I turned to consulting and did very well. During the recession in CA during the early 90s, I could not find any work and tried to transition to C++. Unfortunately, I could not find any one to hire me. Finally, in 1998, with the economy going like gangbusters, I managed to find a well paying Y2K job in the Chicago area. Many businesses had help wanted signs all over the place, which was very different from southern CA. There was a shortage of workers during this time and many employers were dying for experienced software developers. After Y2K, I managed to find a well paying C++ job in downtown Chicago in 2000, but got laid off with most of the other workers when the company was bought out in 2002. I looked for a job in the Chicago area for 6+ months. What I discovered is that most head hunters did not bother calling me back or respond to my emails. I did not get invited to a single interview. So, in June of 2003 my lease was about to expire and since housing is rather expensive in Chicago, I decided to move to Las Vegas, NV and play poker for a living. During the 90s, I played quite a bit of poker in southern CA and made decent money at it, so it was not a total crap shot. I have had one software development consulting job here in Vegas last year for a few months, but that is it.

One of the reasons I have had so much trouble finding work as a software developer is because I never finished college. So, even though I'm very intelligent, have made many signficant contributions, and work very hard when I'm employed, the fact that others have a college degree or better yet - a masters degree or doctorate, they look much better on paper and thus get invited to interviews.

I would rather be working as a software developer, but I'm 53 now. I too have thought about going back to school. However, according to articles i have read, there are plenty of middle aged workers with masters and doctorate degrees that can not find work. Many of them believe that this is because of age discrimination. The idiots in HR really want 20 and 30 year olds. Someone in their 50s, even with great credentials and work history has a much harder time finding a job than someone 20 or 30 years younger with weaker credentials. For someone like me who has not worked much since 2002 and no college degree, it is almost impossible. Going back to school for me would pretty much be a waste of time since employers are not really interested in hiring older workers.

So, for me, it looks like I will be playing poker for the foreseeable future. I just hope that some of the headhunters that I sent resumes to in the past come and sit down in my game and double me up... By the way, if you are thinking that you can do this too, odds are that you will lose since the skills required for good poker players are quite different than those required for developing software. Although, high intelligence and strong discipline is required for both.

Are you going to write another article tomorrow and say "The future of IT will be MOST WANTED three kinds of jobs" are Consultant, Project managers and Developers? BTW, I just unsubscribed this. Sorry!

especially in corp IT. Why?
Cloud and broad band => No need for datacenter (servers) => No need for sys admins. (sorry)
Wireless plug-ins and Mobiles => No need for internal Network => No need for network admins.
Web-Apps in the Cloud => No need for help desk.
The Developer is the corporate's tech one man show, he can do everything other tech guys can do, but others cannot do what he can do.
So get rid of all other guys and keep this Developer to do:
- Analysis
- Design
- Technology Advice
- Help Desk Advice
- Network Advice
- Point of contact with consultancies and vendors
- ...

Sorry for all our colleagues and good luck.

Ahmed.

It's garbage of course, but as long as the execs who buy it get promoted before the wheels come off , all is golden...

What is a cloud? Who provides the broad band? Sys admins will need to work for these new service providers. The content won't just deliver itself.

Wireless networks don't need a network admin? Have you ever set up a large wi-fi mesh network?

Web-apps don't need a help desk? Seriously? There will be a telephone number to call. It might go to India but someone will pick the phone and help you.

I know some developers, they are not going to run the show. Some of the guys I know who write code for large in-house applications don't know anything about the computers they use to write the code. They can't design, implement or maintain the technology they depend on. They simply have no interest or time.

PR, sales, and all customer interaction should be performed by technically literate personel. This is the face of your company. You want to look like you know what you are talking about.

Admins moving to the vendors isn't a reduction, it's a move. They still exist, they just work for someone else. I can't see how you can say the role will no longer exist. An admin job is an admin job whether you work for an insurance company, or an IT vendor, or a cloud vendor.

The theory is that with all these admins moving to outside consultants fewer will be needed since admins can service multiple clients instead of having nothing to do between firefighting sessions.

admins do in terms of prevention then, ie a theory based on appalling ignorance...

What will actually happen is that the cloud providers will outsell. They will promise more than they can deliver. There will be a gold rush and land grab followed by a mass die off. Some companies will find they cannot expand fast enough and once they finally get everything set up the bubble will burst.

And we all go wireless with blazing speed reaching several galaxies in nano seconds. All equipment is now self healing and manufactured by the cloud providers. We only need consultants and sales people. We don't need network engineers. Just plug this USB device in and you are connected. Secure? Guarantened or your money back. Ooops I fell of my Cloud but luckely with both feet on the ground. I'm going to train end users. That must be the job for the future.

I work for a Fortune 200 company and our IT focus has already shifted to exactly what Jason described in these 3 areas. This was almost like reading a description of how our IT organization operates. You can nitpick all you want (of course there will be more than JUST 3 IT jobs out there...), but Jason is very right. If you disagree with this article you've totally missed the point and have your nose too close the the paper, so to speak... so back up and take this article for what it is; high level generalization of an industry.

The Fortune 200 company I used to work almost certainly operates in the way Jason describes. Additionally, much of what Jason describes can be gleaned from "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

The one area where Jason's thesis falls down a bit is writing about how it's all about developers. It is "all about developers" in a corporate environment, politically speaking, but any developer in a large enterprise who claims to "do it all" is lying. Sometimes, a developer is only as good as the server admins (and other support) he/she is working with.

I tend to akin IT to the role of a car mechanic. Most people who drive nowadays have no idea how their car works; for some, they turn the key and it "goes". Same rings true for computers. Most people turn on their computer and expect it to work, with no idea of why or how it works. When it doesn't, that is when IT is needed.

Now, IT also makes the right tech decisions and choices to keep things just "working", be it in a hardware or software upgrade.

To put it plainly, an employee who is inputting data into an Excel spreadsheet, be it a Boomer, Generation X'er, or Millenial doesn't care about the internal workings of a network or the computer they are using; they just need to get the job done.

The ones who care about how the network works or the internal workings of the computer are those in the IT department.

In this sense, there will always be a very real need for an IT department.

For many people the primary tool they use in their job is a PC. I expect any professional to be an expert in the use of the primary tools of their job. Not just competent, but expert.

If more and more don't meet this standard, it doesn't mean it's no longer a required standard, it just means more and more are not professionals.

A car mechanic can fix the electrical drill he works with? And the diffrent jacks and stuff! Cool didnt know that.

We have only 2 of us on staff, (albeit a small company of only a couple hundred persons), but I spend half my time hand-holding this 'Millennial' generation. The older generation admits what they lack and seems to strive to remember what we teach them.
As for the 3 positions, what about the hardware repair guys, or security.
I do find myself in all 3 of your listed roles. If I had more staff, then sure we could begin to split up the work.

The developers will be in demand until the computers start to THINK and write their code for solving problems.

I like a lot of your articles, BUT this one is crap. Out of the three groups you've identified - which one repairs your hardware ? This story reminds me of when Linde / Praxair bought McCormick and Dodge all encompassing software. All the Long Timers were worried about losing their jobs. The Rollout was crap ! The tech support was crap ! The promise to reduce the number of employees was A LIE. After the installation and customization - it added positions in the company. You're way too young to know how it was back then - I have a feeling you wrote this article to "stir the pot" , to get a lot of reaction kinda thing ?

I do agree with your opinion but it will not be the case for complete IT Industry. There will be more outsourcing of the IT functions. But some of the functions like security and information security need to be maintained by Reliable peoples. And even though all softwares are being more robust , user friendly and perfect, still they will need local support. Some companies may outsource their data centre, but industries like Finance Industries can not outsource their data centres. Because doing that they will put their info in others hand which will be not acceptable.

Still number of headcounts for support and other things will be redduced . person in IT industry need to improve himself day by day to fight with this situation. Talented peoples will remain lifetime requirement of the companies for any positions.

As one of those baby boomers who would have retired by now except the bankers got all my money...
I am often the oldest person in a room full of inspectors and (non IT) consultants, all with their top of the range blackberries, ipads, laptops etc., but who gets to tell them how to work these gadgets? (That's me!) Some of the worst are the youngest, who never pulled stuff apart, never wondered how stuff works, just expecting the product to be work whatever they do to it.. None of them know how to use the mainframe computers to access data. No-one understands linux or DOS. And because some of the younger people are so arrogant now, they attempt to do things which they shouldn't, and wouldn't have in the days of the IT department being boss. A very important colleague around 30 years of age recently asked me how to convert a pdf document into word, as she believed it was impossible. I could have charged her a fortune as she was manually transcribing the documents in word. While we're talking of this young/old thing, people have in mind the geek in his bedroom hacking into MI6 and the CIA, and downloading all his music for free. For each geek there are many thousands more who are happy to pay Apple a considerable amount of money to use a proprietary format on overpriced hardware just because it is easier for them, and they really don't have any expertise.

and yet I don't.
To be flexible and/or quick enough you will still need sysadmins, but a lot less of them.
But I noticed that as a systems administrator I have to manage more and more IT projects, instead of (pro-actively) solving problems myself. The OS's have become more stable, redundant hardware keeps on running, software becomes more robust.
IT is an ever changing profession and the IT-people need to change with it

This has to be either the funniest or least accurate article I have read in a long time.

The very idea that departments within a company would accept or work with contractors as opposed to support staff that they know by name is ridiculous. I appreciate that outsourcing is a great way to make savings but it entirely depends upon the nature of your business. The complexity of many businesses makes efficient work with contractors impossible. Legacy applications still exist pretty much everywhere, as do complex departmental structures. That kind of knowledge is only gathered and maintained by an in-house support department. Contractors just don't cut it.

I think other comments here about the author being away from the front line for too long are probably accurate. There seems to be a general belief that standards are increasing in IT know-how across the board for non-technical staff. What these viewpoints fail to address is that users very often DO know how to fix their own problems, they just aren't prepared to do it themselves.

Much of the expenditure was wrongly directed. The products bought were expensive unwieldy and already obsolete. In my opinion there is a revolution going on in the iT business. It may be less visible than the .COM boom because it is in the hands of professionals who go about their work quietly and effectively. Customer engagement and the transition to web based architectures is only beginning, and if you think the .COM boom made huge inroads the new breed of products which seamlessly interact with any and all external stimuli (RIAs) will without question extend your boundaries! The new breed of IT professional will be more involved in commerce, process, and reall value add. he will know his employer /customers business and
be able to interact with continuosly improving their IT return. Specialists in BI and other complex
areas will find plenty of opportunity as businesses become increasingly more scientific in their
strategic approach. There is plenty of work out there, it just has a different job title.

From a job perspective this article is propbably true. However, from a costs perspective, I think that going over the "buzzes" (blades, virtualization, the "cloud") companies are going forward with there IT infrastructure and move spendings from personell to (buzzword) technology. There has been some habituation to the (higher?) costs of using "services" over the costs of managing your IT infrastructure your own. IT is (still) getting more complex and risky every day. Note the data breaches lately in the news. The impact of such has and will kill companies in the future. Futile errors will have massive consequences. The responsibilities are diffuse in current IT. I'm not sure that the quality of those IT services can remain at the current levels...

In 2008 Bill Gates said ???future applications should use only around 10% of the code that is used today??? seeing this as ???the holy grail of development forever???. Well he knew what he was talking about because it has been created and not even as much as 10%! Business requirements and build both become business driven as core code does not change yet can build any custom solution. It is truly a paradigm shift as "agile software" in the hands of business professionals so the "consultant" or "project manager" or business analyst control end to end build. This was written with view on UK Government but relevant anywhere http://bit.ly/pSi0Ld but not yet available in US!

Then I'll slaughter you.
In the meantime, don't give up your day job and ponder these

When Bill said future systems would use only 10% of the code they do now, he meant they'll use 90% of his....

The more abstract a piece of code the less it does.

Not one thing I read in the first three pages is new...

Including someone selling the next magic bullet, silver hammer, panacea for all IT's ills...

And it read more like an advert, aimed at Gartner lemmings and politicians and such like...

First I agree totally with the aim, but I'm a propeller head, so that doesn't matter, in fact my agreement will almost certainly harm your case.

The implementation, well no detail in your white paper at all, in fact it was white as in blank as far that's concerned.

Do you know what a legacy system is?

In terms of maintenenace and enhancement, it's one you can't test. It's not old code, it's not old paradigms, it's not only runs on old hardware, it's one that you can't prove you've changed properly.

Now you appear to be making a case that your pipe dream won't require maintenance, that the code will do all things for all men forever and ever amen.

I know and you should know that that is utter crap, technical debt guarantees that change will be necessary and commercial success as it's currently defined requires technical debt.

How do you imagine the big boys would react to a system that meant their products were effectively irrelevant, because make no mistake you are talking about an abstraction that would take hardware and OS and off the shelf applications in it's stride without a murmur.
There would be no need to buy it from them again....

Try again, or choose a less astute audience, some politicians or civil servants, maybe.

Believe me it works - and Gates knew that. Microsoft even tried to patent the core design but our prior art means no patents for anyone not even us! You have just described the "innovators dilemma" and yes the "big boys" will not like but what about end users the people that pay? The core code just does not need to change no maintenance required. Yes the processes always change and that is supported without the core underlying code changing.

Business logic has not changed since commerce started it is about people that do "something" to create a business. Think of the pony express - the pony is now the web the "IT" industry has focused on the "pony" with some great technology to deliver (that includes the Cloud) but ???IT??? failed to recognise how people actually work - the business logic is always the same - got it?

You are right legacy is a major problem for all but think a dynamic "process hub" that handles front and back office where people work and collaborate with constant change and use legacy as valuable stores or processors of information. The other point is people work together in relatively small teams think about it? So these process hubs are easy to build if you have a supporting tool that addresses all requirements that support people at work and independent of the delivery tools ??? yes as delivery tools get smarter then where the business logic sits need to be able to handle such technology progress.

You mention OS as an example we have seamlessly moved from Windows 95 to 7 and open source. As for implementation at basic level the Oracle Database a web server and browser at client all standard proven technologies ??? it is just the way the core design was built that delivers on the elegance described.

Your view is not unusual indeed is the one that has prevailed over the years we have battled against great odds. We have proven with early adopters and thankfully the game is now changing and all credit to this new UK Government who have their HMG Skunkworks that will give such innovation a chance.

So it is no pipe dream but yes maybe a nightmare for some?

You read my mind, we heading there and we preparing for it.

Your prediction of the future is just a description of the present. You've simply mislabeled a help-desk as 'contractors'. If you stay you are not a contractor, you are a vendor. The real contractors are the development people who do the job and then leave.

"The future of IT will be reduced to three kinds of jobs... Consultants, Project Managers, Developers"

Shall I continue? No Marketing. No Accounting. No Product Development. No Advertising. No Manufacturing. No Production Control. No Distribution.

Where would iPad and iPhone be without all the hype? Where would Dell be without order processing and shipping? Where would Citibank be without accounting? Where would Intel be without production?

Jason, I usually enjoy your articles, but this one really missed the boat.

Interesting article, but I think just a bit wide of the mark (not too far though). The future of IT is in the value add functions (some of which you have identified), project management, process engineering, business intelligence, analytics, design, solutions architecture, and leadership/visioning.

Specific, non value added skill set's can be addressed in a variety of formats - and yes, many will continue to do them in house (desktop support, help desk, networking, etc). Interestingly I think coding falls smack into this category. The designers and project managers will bridge the core-business to the programmers, but the coding itself can take place anywhere - again, including in-house.

If the tech world promise of SAAS/Cloud/app virtualization/etc ever comes to fruition the focus will truely be able to shift to the value adds and off of operational and infrastructure support.

Jason after many decades in MIS/IS/IT, I can tell you that "applications that will be expected to work smoothly, be self-evident, and require very little training or intervention from tech support" has always been the goal and seldom, if ever, been the achievement and I, for one, don't expect it to get any better, at least it hasn't yet.

Dear Jason! No research, no support jobs, no quasi science anymore? Nice! And by this sleep so deep, to say, you'll end the pain and the thousand natural shocks IT dreamer is air to.. And "The rest is silence", of course...

Mr. Hiner's predictions aren't off the mark for most organizations, but none of the reasons for the root problems are new. If upper management doesn't truly understand what they get for their IT dollar, they naturally become suspicious about the value they receive. IMO that's because operational groups *directly* request services from the IT group, with insufficient supervision or approvals by senior management. Senior management usually fail to insert themselves into that because it's difficult to do and hard to understand, so they ignore it or delegate it to a patsy, who immediately knows he is not welcome to bother the senior managers to make actual decisions about it. The trouble ramps up when he or she tries to decrease costs by keeping old systems and equipment in service. Later, when the IT infrastructure is crumbling and needs a complete replacement, the issue finally returns to the senior management.

They ask an "IT Consultant" for an opinion, but they never fully realize they're talking to a salesman, who is there to push outsourcing, cloud services or almost anything else with a fresh buzz. Since they have been told this is the new way to save money, they sign on the dotted line.

The operational groups are horrified and can't get service from the new faces, who haven't got a clue how they get their work done.

So the new path for your IT career is in the operational groups. Embed yourself in the business culture and processes, get VERY close to the groups you serve, ramp up your project management skills and learn how to write a bulletproof business case for IT projects that you need senior management to approve.

This is what always happens when an IT group becomes disconnected from senior decision-makers. CIOs and IT managers, don't let it happen to you.

I work in a manufacturing company that has outsourced most of it's IT support and I completely agree with Slartibartfast. The newly employeed young professionals either from the US or overseas have the same issue. Very Overconfident in their computer skills. They tend to make terrible messes and after cleaning more that a few of these I now let them stew for a while and then walk them through the repair process a step at a time, very slowly and painfully. None of them want to spend the time for 'due diligenece' testing and evaluation. They seem to truly think that they can 'cut & paste' their way to success.

The trend seems to be, "just make it work!" without regard to how it happens. I'd be willing to bet if I were a betting man, that CEOs, Presidents, Vice Presidents and Directors would like to have IT reduced to something akin to telephone installation: Someone comes, does the install, it works and anyone connected with it just disappears, with the infrastructure being invisible, out of sight, out of mind.

Most IT is being moved to being outsourced (ask the IT folks who used to work at Boeing -- they advertise for business analysts, but things like the IBM Mainframe support techs are gone).

Applications are being bought off the shelf: Why spend millions developing payroll again and again and again. It makes no economic sense to keep developing back office products.

The business people only want to talk to business people. Technologists are strange unfathomable creatures to them. Over the past 50 years, the United States, in particular, has gone through a socialization phase wherein smarmy chatty charismatic plastic nitwit twits who are pleasant to be around without anyone in particular rising beyond the lock step of mediocrity are the norm. True advanced technologists may as well be trying to explain rainbows to earthworms.

This is not to say that the business people don't want hand holding -- they do. They want the warm hand of a young attractive pleasant hero who comes along when they have a problem and solves their technical problems, without any hint of threatening superiority. Well dressed, well groomed and charismatic, these people show up when needed and then just disappear after a pleasant discussion of whatever the business person is interested in. It may be that the non tech tech doesn't really solve the problem, just that the business person feels better about the problem. Well heeled psychopaths should fill the bill well.

But upper management is paranoid, afraid of losing their perks and having to resort to their golden parachute: Security will be paramount. Not IT security. Heavens, no. Just a person (preferably not a group) who can make them feel secure.

As for those consultants and project managers -- they need to be well versed in Assertive Incompetence. Produce appealing visions of utopia to come. Get the business to invest. Make promises. Then when you get to the part where you have to actually produce something, distract the short of attention span with greater and newer visions of a new utopia so they will forget and reject the old one. It's sort of like Enron without the downside of having everything collapse when the big empty hot air balloon collapses. A consultant is a person you hire to tell you the time. They borrow your own watch, tell you the wrong time, charge up the kazoo for it, then walk away with your watch. Nifty stuff for the successful sociopath.

Again, Jason, your points were brilliant. I wish I could be optimistic about the topic, but the good news is that I'm comfortably retired and things look good, as long as we all can survive a President throwing a temper tantrum threatening the people with extortion to get his own way and Social Security isn't taken away.

Now that was brilliant...

.

Good article, close to reality.

as reality....

One hopes this is simply a language difficulty....

Yes, This is the general trend. However this cloud computing and support outsourcing is partially just another fad. We have seen it with .com and object oriented programming and ... at some point everybody just pointlessly repeats that it is the future. Followed by a period that it is like a curse word which nobody accepts they have had anything to do with at any point in time. And then comes a time when people recognise that it is a good solution for certain situations and not suitable for others. Same here. We are going to see shifts that you explained. Not as dramatically though. Before this fad is able to transform the market to the image that you portrayed, itself will be replaced by another fad which shifts everything towards something else. That is if next world war or global crisis of any type does not completely change the game.

Look at the Department of Defense, and all the various intelligence agencies. Even as stupid as they can be when it comes to implementing information security, they never outsource critical information processes.

Businesses that thrive on information access and processing will never outsource critical information processes. Those companies that do outsource will all sooner or later run into a catastrophic failure that will probably torpedo them and eventually sink the company. It may work fine for several years, but you're playing Russian Roulette.

The Cloud is a wonderful place for processing and storing non-critical functions. It works well for possibly reducing IT costs for those non-critical functions.

I can see some logic in the article and commentary, but whatever your role in IT, I sincerely believe you can increase your "worth" to an organization beyond your pure IT skills in two ways:

1. Understand your organization's business, how it works and the needs of that business.
2. Translate the value of technology into terms the business can understand.

Becoming a better communicator also required me to become a better listener when dealing with my customers and not trying to anticipate what they were saying as they saw that as a superior/dismissive attitude.

After 20+ years in this field I've realized technology is only a tool that when implemented and used properly by the business allows them to operate more efficiently, effectively and competitively. My job is to help the business wield that technology. That's my 5 cents.

All of the Cloud and normal growing pains aside, the real difference is the over-paid are being kicked around, let go, and hired for less. During the boom as it's called, IT uppers were paid for knowing more than they actually did know. There were a good number of "wonder workers", such as myself and my peers who were called 'techs' but were really IT professionals/consultants/developers/technicians (I work in a university environment), and we kept things running. Our "management" was pulling in 3 times our salaries and mostly went to meetings, coming back to tell us how we had to work harder and why we should take a 3 month project and finish it in 1 month.
These jobs are, rightfully so, going away. The wiser of the wasted upper management will be end up in the first two of those categories, except where myself and peers have proven ourselves first.
So, it's more of a 'trim the fat' movement and I believe most organizations understand the difference between the 'fat' and the 'marbling'.

Jason, it looks like you stepped on a hornet's nest. I agree that the reaction seems to be related to moved cheese. IT has and will continue to change even more dramatically. However, I get the deja vu feeling with the Cloud. It is almost like a resurrection of the SysOp priesthood from the days of mainframes. The company will be tied into a system that it neither understands nor controls. The career types will continue to evolve perhaps into fewer or more diversified, but they will evolve. The pendulum move to outsourcing and off-shoring will swing back also. The off shore cheap labor will go away as the economies improve and wages rise. I have always thought that off-shoring was short sighted and counterproductive in the long run. The 'exploitation' that off-shoring was originally branded is turning out to be technology and wealth transfer.

As many others have, I also disagree. As a 40 + year vetern to IT I have seen many trends and cycles. I have seen IT go from big box centralized data centers to distributed PC networks and now back again to large centralized data centers now called clouds. I have also seen software go from hardware vender provided and inhouse developed to standardised generic business applications hardware independant. As we in business outsource more of our IT we will need Technical managers to manage the vender support agreements. We will also need IT business analists to selectivly implement the required features of standard business applications. Yes we will need project managers, consultants, and on ocasion developers but they will not be the bulk of the IT resources within the businesses. The developers will be working for the Business application developers and the cloud service providers which will be far less than the business world in number. AS always there will be a need for project managers and consultants but as thoes services are bundeled by the providers even their number will be reduced. The days of the giant IT groups is over every one including the cloud providers are running on limited centralized staff and lights out data centers seldom provide jobs. IT jobs are being reduced to a limited number of specalied tasks. The days of large IT organization within a business are over they have be outsourced to a much more efencent limited staff provider.
RES

For some, cloud computing will work well, and for others it will fail miserably. Some businesses will thrive on it and others will not. It isn't a silver bullet. (We mix these approaches at my business.)

As far as relying on consultants...there is a difference in the quality you get from an internal versus external person. That will never change. The external person doesn't have a reason to permanently solve your problem or teach you how to deal with it yourself. You will need generalists. Overspecialization causes headaches too, just different ones.

Eventually, some major world conflict with end the outsourcing dream of many...along with many cloud companies that are not based in the user's home country. All that information that has been shipped out cannot be brought back. It will be (and probably already is being) pilfered.

So while you may see certain categories take over for awhile, you will eventually get back to needing most of what you need now.

One exception: There will undoubtedly be less internal code development. This is only logical as there are more solutions out there, ready made, each year. As companies fill in the software gaps, how many businesses really need to have a custom accounting (or whatever) system when there are so many choices already? The answer: Less each year for a long time.

Agree with this to a point, but as long as we have end users that are "pet rocks" we will have support on site. Too expensive to pay that mileage with gas around $4 a gallon for the end user that refuses to think for him/herself.

The only thing constant is chnage!

Over 100 years and cars still require tires and feul. IT will change and the requirements will change with the latest fade, Virtualization, PM disiplines, etc. and the labor needs will be cyclical Developers, Admins, Hardware, Management. But until we have a system that doesnt need humans, we will still be needed. There will be big and small shifts in technology, causing incerases then decreases in specialties. There are already monthly and yearly shifts in corporate needs of labor. Until our computng devices are like and as inexpensive as toasters or microwaves and we can plug them in and the do everthing we "want" then the different labor disiplines will still be needed.

We in the IT field have to change with the needs.

Except that bodies shopped are doing support and/or development. And developers get dragged into tech support, tech writing, SQA, data-base analysis... all sorts of things outside the core of software/system product development, and that extra work is rarely rewarded. The B-school bozos have never wanted to pay full value for tech support, have always short-staffed it.

But I keep forgetting that the ZD writers are fixated on "IT" in the old-fashioned terms of "data processing", i.e. in-house geeks in non-tech firms, rather than real computer wrangling work... which software product developers don't consider to be REAL jobs.

"There are regulations for certain positions that require security clearances, U.S. Citizenship, etc... so, no, not all positions. Specially not security positions."

Some of the federal contractors have been lobbying for several years and have gotten some easing of such requirements already. They're pushing for more, though. Have you noticed the shift over the last several decades, from a general willingness to invest in clearances for new-hires to a great deal of reluctance to even talk to anyone who may have had one but no longer current? Nope, they want cheap talent already in the vicinity... or cheap, pliant foreign bodies shopped, brought in as OPT from local universities and then converted to H-1B when that runs out.

"I created a little test sheet (multiple choice; I didn't want to get too mad about it) with problems ranging from basic Windows O/S config changes"

Easy. Just ban MSFT-software-running devices from the grounds. No more Windoze problems.

Those of you who haven't been out in the diversified world recently. Look out, Jason's spot-on. SaaS and managed data centers will rule the SMB IT world. Which is the largest IT sector. As data circuits get faster and cheaper with more competitors in the mix and mobile apps and devices more capable. Take heed, mark this info. And only blame yourself if you don't convert your skillset or move on to another career. I've fought it for years. But now, since I couldn't beat 'em, I'm joining them.

You wrote ???We???re going to see most of traditional IT administration and support functions outsourced to third-party consultants.???
Let me apologize first for any grammatical errors as English isn???t my fisrst language.
I dare any consultants to walk-in where I work and be able to do my job without spending weeks with me to explain how things work here.
I can only assume the same can be said for many organizations.
I???m responsible for 2 separate networks and the people using it. One network is a Mac environment for Prepress and the other one is Windows for Administration.
Before, I was hired full time; they used to have 2 IT Administrators from other plans that came once in a while and not together. I???ll spare you the details; let???s just say this place was in disarray.
A full time traditional IT Administrator will always be needed for most corporation. That's my opinion.

To those who disagree with this article, please re-read it before you miss the point. While it may imply that ONLY these kinds of jobs will remain in the future, nothing is ever perfectly predicted. But it definitely identifies a major trend I have also seen in the industry after 28 years as a consultant. The takeaway is that if you do not have these skills, you should start building them and getting training or experience to enhance them in your skills profile.

Nobody would ever expect you to have all three skills as some have implied the article states. But you would definitely boost your career prospects by having one of them and even better to have two. In my opinion, a consultant without technical or project management skills isn't really a consultant, but is instead a "temp."

If you think it's difficult to build two of these skills, then think about how hiring managers and CIO's feel when they look at their staffs and prospective hires. You should do all you can to boost your skills in this direction.

Jason...I saw your comment about this being your most hated article of the year. I probably agree with you. It hits close to home for many readers and, in essence, you're "calling their baby ugly." Reminds me a lot of the Nicholas Carr article from ten years age about "IT Doesn't Matter." Like that article, a simple read misses the point. Readers must think deeper when digesting this. Thanks!

However it's that appreciation of how IT works within business, that leaves me with no choice but to consider the underlying premise naive drivel at best.

Business is not looking for more efficient, better quality, greater longevity, flexibility, agility jada yada yada. They are looking for cheaper. And now, and are quite happy to sacrifice later to get it.

Look up technical debt...

Have a deep think about it, or even a shallow fleeting one. As soon as you see that technical debt is a long term vicious cycle of cost yet business keeps amassing it, you soon realise that what business says it wants, isn't what it's trying to achieve.

If your working for the cloud provider will there be server admins? Will they be consultants? I could possibly see how someone could extrapolate current trends to say this of government or smaller non-IT related corporations, but to say that these jobs will not exist anymore is nonsense.

Bill

If there are no Admins at the cloud companies, whose going to be running the systems? The managers?

Maybe if as you say "nothing is ever perfectly predicted" the smart move would be not to make such blanket predictions! Once again we get categorical statements that everyone then tries to defend by saying "oh he didn't mean it that way". If so, why say it in this way?