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The State of Careers in IT

The folks at Computerworld just sent us the results of their 20th annual IT Career Survey that has a few interesting (but not unexpected) nuggets about the current state of IT salaries.  Who's getting  the short end? According to this survey, it is the network managers and the technical trainers.  No surprises there considering that some of these positions have either been outsourced offshore or have been replaced by downloadable instructional video podcasts.  The winners (obviously) are the Web developers, the programmers; essentially anybody that can bring a touch of Web 2.0 to their current employers.

The Web has become infinitely more malleable thanks to technologies like Ajax that allow anyone to customize software and Web-based applications to suit VERY specific business needs and can make a company more efficient and competitive.  What used to take months to develop, now takes a few hours to create...and what's even more attractive to business-owners is, these applications are mostly Web-based, which means they don't need to host them on their own network servers (this probably explains the dip in pay raises for network managers).

Who's hiring these Web developers?  Media companies and content owners are being forced to adapt to changing consumer appetites by distributing their content libraries online.  Web skills are hot, so we've been recommending to our many IT candidates that if they do not already have a proficiency in this area, they should add these skills to their repertoire immediately.  Also, a word to employers: you may find yourselves paying top-dollar for Web developers, but we encourage you to think about the efficiency gains you may reap down the road.