A New Breed of IT Workers

In the eWeek.com article IT Workers Second-Guess Career Choice, Deborah Perelman reports a disturbing trend where the IT workers in the US see a bleak future for their career and are discouraging their kids to not pursue IT career.

Outsourcing, Offshoring, H1B Employees, Commoditization of IT work force are all here to stay, but they are all signs of a dynamic IT industry. Granted older software development skills become less relevant in a hurry. But, is this a new occurrence? Much sought after experts in VB and ASP in late 1990s are now a relic. The employees have always understood that they need to retrain themselves in new emerging technologies constantly. That’s the occupational hazard in IT Industry. Now, what has changed is the nature of new skills that are relevant. ‘Soft’ skills are becoming more important.

Businesses are no longer interested in making sure that the tactical aspect of IT is running smoothly. They don’t want to know if their IT infrastructure scales, if their data is secure. They expect it to happen anyway, just as you expect the lights to go on when you flip on the switch. That’s where the IT is getting “commoditized”. If your skill set is in those areas, you need to get out fast. But, increased globalization has made corporations more vulnerable to competition. The impetus to change and look for the new markets quickly is of highest priority now. Thus, I believe IT now is more relevant to the corporations than before. When organizations talk of ‘agility’, it’s the IT organization that can enable the corporations to be agile. How can you be agile when you do not have ways to make your business processes agile? Throwing the IT project over to the IT department and expect it to meet the business needs is no longer viable today. At the same time IT department cannot go into seclusion and work on a project for few months at a given time. The hypercompetitive environment will make your IT project irrelevant during that time. IT workers now need to collaborate with the other business organizations. This new reality calls for new generation of IT workers. The ‘soft’ skills that are more relevant now are -

Comprehend Company’s Business Strategy
Understand how the company differentiates its products or services vis-à-vis competition
Articulate technical jargon to non IT business people
Understand TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and ROI of a project
Ability to negotiate and influence others

I know these new skills can be intimidating to a ‘techie’. The above mentioned skill sets do not limit itself to IT personnel but need to be expanded in other Knowledge Industries like product engineering, R/D etc. Most of us are uncomfortable to collaborate, communicate, influence and negotiate and hence we choose safer ‘engineering’ jobs. ‘We can just do our jobs and go home… Who wants to get involved in company politics…’ that’s the conventional wisdom in the ‘techie’ world. Guess what… we are now in the middle of corporate universe and we need to be like ‘them’.

I believe, now is the exciting time for knowledge workers. We can influence the Business Strategy and be relevant to the core of the organization. What other job function would be that exciting? It’s a self fulfilling prophecy when we send out wrong messages to the younger generation to stay away from these fields. America will surely loose competitive edge with this kind of attitude.