As technology grows more diverse and powerful it also grows more difficult to manage and balance. Many IT jobs are gaining a broader responsibility in terms of expertise and the number/type of skills required. No longer is it possible to be a Windows administrator for instance. Because working in IT today requires an IT professional to be more of a generalist rather than a specialist in one discipline, the pressure is on to have a diverse knowledge set. This spells promise for IT pros who can leverage a broad skill set and move among groups or companies to exercise their talents, but it can limit the career options of those who can’t or don’t keep moving. The employee whose sole task is to keep Windows systems up to date with patches might be replaced by an automated process that can perform the same job. Someone whose role is to reset passwords could be shown the door by an employee self-service program that covers the same process.
Tech Pro Research conducted a global online survey in July 2014 to see how IT jobs are changing and what changes may lie ahead. Specifically, we examined the following issues from the 1,156 respondents: