Changing Conditions For The Information Technology Jobs Market: Ways In Which Technical Staff Can Find Different Jobs On-Line

The computer jobs market has for many years been unstable and unpredictable. 20-30 years ago, when the information technology revolution really got going, we were told there was a huge shortage of skills in Information Technology. Despite this, at the same time, the employment exchanges were full of computer nerds who were unable to find employment. And today, software and the associated skills come and go rapidly, and computer workers have to continuously retrain to keep up to date. However one option is to look at internet business as an opportunity to work from home in online jobs, as an alternative to moving from company to company in an attempt to stay in tune with the latest technology.

In the majority of walks of life, you do your training, receive your qualification, and then gain experience on the job. In computing, there isn’t really a generally accepted qualification. Not only that, but twenty years experience will count for very little, because your skills from 1990 will count for little. You will need to have knowledge of the very latest software, and will be competing against people who recently left university, where they learned the most recent programming languages.

When computers first became available half a century ago, there existed two principal programming languages: FORTRAN for scientific and engineering use, and COBOL for business users. A technician who could program in one of those, could be assured of employment. Nowadays, the range of programming languages and other software products is so bewildering, that many jobs advertise for skills in some language that most people haven’t even heard of before. It is becoming more and more difficult to keep abreast of the variety of skills which are required currently.

The result is that many computer specialists must, in addition to their day job (which can often involve periods of overtime), be willing to work from home for several hours every evening keeping up with the latest technologies, lest the expertise they use in their current job falls out of fashion and they find themselves on the scrapheap. I have witnessed situations where workers have been made redundant because their technical skillset is no longer needed by the company.

You can stay abreast of the latest skills for a while, but sooner or later you will burn out. Furthermore, there is no way to arrest the ageing process and resulting loss of learning ability, and as it says in the famous proverb, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. So what can an aged canine, or a person who is no longer young, do, when their existing skills no longer put food on the table?

Another worrying point is the proportion of IT jobs that are going to India. In one sense, internet business has allowed this to take place, because it is no longer particularly important, which part of the world you are located in order to write software or run a support department; however Indian salaries are undoubtedly much lower than what companies have to pay their staff in the UK. It seems inevitable that increasing numbers of computing jobs will go to the subcontinent.

This is a disheartening picture, and many IT staff will be tempted to leave the computer business altogether. However, you could work from home in online jobs, in a variety of internet business openings, many of which will allow technical workers to use their computing credentials to an advantage. It is true that non-technical people can also succeed in many of these online jobs; however for people in the computer industry it is a way of re-training which will provide a more secure and less volatile outlook than they may see in conventional employment.

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Filed under: Jobs & Careers

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