The Tech Worker Perception Gap
Businesses are hiring more and more information-technology pros. But these workers’ confidence levels are at an all-time low.
Over the last year, employment for IT pros is up 10%. It’s one of the few bright spots in an economy that is otherwise shedding jobs. But techies don’t see it that way. In fact, they’re overwhelmingly negative about their prospects, according to a survey by Technisource, a tech-staffing company, which was conducted by Harris Interactive.
Of the 456 IT pros surveyed, 70% say the economy is getting weaker, one percentage point more than last quarter – although still better than the national average of 72%. Fifty-nine percent say they believe there were fewer jobs available, a four-percentage-point jump from last quarter and the same as the national average. This, despite the fact that businesses are increasing tech hiring. Techies are also increasingly skeptical about their ability to find a new job (20%) and about the future of their employers (17%). While those numbers aren’t that bad, they’re more negative than workers in other fields.
So what gives? Our guess is that techies see the headlines about the economy just like everybody else. And we don’t know this, but we suspect that demand for tech workers is strong in some places and weaker in others. But on paper, it does look like there’s a perception gap between what’s happening and what techies think is happening.
IT workers: How do you feel about your sector of the economy?
-Ben Worthen
Undoubtedly IT or related-IT fields are pegged for strong growth. I used to recruit IT people as well and found out that a lot of IT professionals simply didn’t know their worth. I think it’s a great field to be in, through good and bad times - not to mention that IT departments are ever-increasingly becoming more integral in day-to-day business demands and operations.
Our company specializes in third party service and support of enterprise data storage equipment. In my job I meet with a lot of CIO’s and CTO’s, and most of them are looking at cutting costs everywhere they can. In some locations job cuts have started, but most managers are looking to cut costs in order to retain their highly trained staff.
Cost cutting has taken over as the prime objective in IT departments over the last 90 days.
If the 2008 IT salary survey ( http://www.savingtoinvest.com/2008/05/results-from-2008-it-salary-survey.html ), is anything to go by things are getting worse for the IT sector. Overall the median salaries for business technology professionals fell for the first time in 11 years. From 2007 to 2008, median base pay for IT staff fell to $73,000 from $74,000 and for managers it dropped from $97,000 to $96,000.
I think 2009 results will be worse.
It’s not that there aren’t any jobs out there. It’s just knowing that the job you have or get can evaporate on a moments notice as the result of poor monthly financial number or poor quarterly numbers. New economy = no job stability, and for some people that’s an undesirable thing.
@ Andy in DC - Those numbers look pretty impressive compared to what my school has posted http://informatics.indiana.edu/careers/hiring_statistics.asp
@Max, they fail to mention in your link whether that’s median or average or whether those are starting salaries or experienced salaries. The numbers Andy in DC is probably stating are median salaries for experienced workers, in my estimation.
Don’t forget outsourcing and offshoring. Many IT people I know are losing their jobs to companies in countries with cheaper workers. This adds to insecurity and feelings of low worth.
As for the ability to find new jobs, the pace of innovation is so high that I think people tend to feel that they can’t meet the expectations of employers for the latest and greatest knowledge and experience. Thus leading to even more feelings of insecurity and low worth.
There may be more good news stories than bad, which evens it all out in our favour. But perhaps we IT people only hear doom and gloom from the media and our colleagues.
I think one aspect of what is mentioned above is correct, I.T. is one of the first places where job cuts take place, and as such you’re going to feel vulnerable most of the time. The cuts I’ve seen are based on numbers and not on the value of the employee, or were the result of sending the job overseas. And meanwhile, the executive salaries keep increasing while the cuts are happening and your workload is increasing and you’re told there is no budget to hire additional staff.
The other aspect is that the IT jobs are so focused on a particular skill set versus your ability overall. So if you’re not programming the right language at the right time in the right market good luck finding another job. This even applies to business analyst/qa/project manager type positions as well. It’s all in what set of acronyms show up on your resume, not your capability in the position.
And good luck learning a new skill in a job, the existing employees get pigeon-holed into maintenance of legacy while new staff or consultants get the new projects.
As someone that’s been hunting for months, is an older employee, it’s definitely discouraging. Finding affordable training for a new set of skills is also near impossible. I even see entry and junior level positions asking for 3 years experience.
I don’t feel that my job is going anywhere anytime soon, and I agree with the article’s premise that IT jobs are becoming more common, but I see this as a result of the growth of the field, not of the economy. IT is necessary in most companies regardless of a company’s position. Without IT, a company is likely to go under completely.
I do, however, see fewer and fewer jobs that I would be qualified for, as LH noted, that require too much experience, or underpay for the job in question. The reason for this, to my mind and personal working experience, is that many jobs are hiring underqualified people who have no practical knowledge.
Corporate IT staffs are under serious pressure from outsourcing and H1B threats. However, independent consultants with a good network are very much in demand. Wages seem to be up for the first time in years. But am I worried, even in my Hyperion niche, because IT managers are still mandated to reduce expenditures even in strategic applications such as HFM or Planning System 9. For this reason, I think all IT workers ought to be worried. How did Ellison put it? “Only the paranoid survive”. Indeed!
When they describe you/your job as a commodity that can be done by any outsourcer in the Third World, then you can come back and tell me how it feels.
I’m a middle aged IT professional with 16 years experience. I’ve been unemployed for two years. I know many techie peers in similar situations. My take on this is that companies are willing to take on very critical senior IT staff and/or entry level. The welcome mat isn’t out for mid-level IT staffers. This indicates to me that IT hiring in the US is bad and likely to remain so in the coming years.
I suspect one of the factors influencing the strongly negative views is the tech experience in the last recession - anyone who entered the tech workforce before 2001 encountered a pretty rough 2-3 years.
Regarding those of you who have the opinion that “outsourcing” is relevant in IT. Well, in my opinion for security reasons we are not shipping our data to servers in foreign countries. Although we may need to bid for the labor of those third world countries to fill low skilled IT jobs. If you are a business owner with more than 50 employees that plans to outsource your IT jobs then I want to hear from you.
danahyatt.mail@yahoo.com
I don’t know why they allow our critical personal information like social security numbers etc. to be sent overseas. There ought to be a law against that. Citizens should be able to object to where there personal information is being used.
I believe it is a gross over simplification to lump all technology jobs together into one classification called “I.T.”.
Yes, there are a huge number of low level PC maintenance, simple network administration and website coding jobs out there and this number is really growing fast as ever cheaper technology is employed in very conceivable way.
But these jobs aren’t what we used to call IT. Why do I say this? Because these jobs don’t require much experience and demand only low level skills. As a result, they don’t pay much.
Yes, these jobs are plentiful and easy to get. They are also quite easy to lose. The average tenure being just a few months or even weeks. I think they should be classified within the temporary labor pool rather than permanent employees, despite the fact that some of these folks receive a pay checks instead of A/P checks.
But as for the other, higher paying technology job segments such as software development and real software maintenance (I don’t mean configuring packaged software), the job market is grime. Why? Many (most?) of the otherwise available jobs are being filled by offshore firms. Of those jobs not already offshored, another significant portion are being filled by temporary immigrants here on H1B visas. They in turn return to their homeland when their visas expire to head new offshore teams so the long term is even more grime, if that is possible.
I am a quite senior IT professional with emphasis in software development and program management. I’ve been under-employed, essentially out of work for almost 2 years, and 4 of the past 6 years.
I, like many others in this situation am not on the unemployment roll. Until recently I just kept spending my home equity and hoping for the best. Of course recently things have changed. My equity is now about wiped out.
I feel like as journeyman blacksmith must have felt when automobiles replaces horse and buggies: I have well honed skills that are no longer needed.
I see these negative comments and can’t believe it. My company has 20 tech openings in South Bend, IN. These are not all entry level, they are mid-level and entry level jobs, good paying. Some are developer jobs, mostly network and server adminstrator jobs. Not sure why we can’t fill them, but there certainly are some descrepencies between folks who can’t find jobs and the number of openings we have.
The Gravy Train days of the 1990s are just a memory. I got into IT just a year or 2 before the Dot Com Bubble burst. I was doing entry level desktop support then, and I can still remember the thousands of web pages at Hot Jobs and Monster offering near 6 figure incomes, sometime more for anyone with IT skills. There were schools aplenty offering quick MCSE certs for 10 grand. People by the thousands flocked to learn VBasic, Java, Networking, and C++.
Today, of course everything has changed. When CEO began demanding a bang for thier IT buck, IT shops began to act like any other support group. Eliminating costs, redundancies and waste was paramount - it still is. Gone is the MCSE who just monitors backups and maintains a few servers. Gone is the day of the “programmer”. Today, they are “developers”. Not only do they code, but they also must manage multiple projects, interface with customers and keeps costs down. Gone is also the infrastructure specialist. Today, the Desktop support person must maintain servers, desktops, switches, VIOP systems, backups, disaster recovery, etc…That’s what I do. The pay compared to 12 years ago is 30% less. My boss could always outsource to vendor specific networking companies. I’m happy with what I do, but I have no illusions about the field. Most of my IT friends who owned small IT service/consulting firms are long gone, as regional or national IT service companies have moved in. Technology is also a big “enemy”. When I showed some friends of mine how easy it was to maintain a simple small business server (Linux or MS) they were amazed. Why pay a consultant $100/hour if you can do it yourself? Gone was the complexity of running or managing a Novell Netware server or Unix based server.
Number of IT jobs goes down, not up.
http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers-hr/my-career/news/index.cfm?newsid=10504
WSJ.com's business-technology blog focuses on the technology that businesses use -- the hardware, software, services and know-how that can make or break a business -- and on the people who deploy that technology. The lead writer is Ben Worthen, who joined The Wall Street Journal from CIO Magazine. The blog also includes contributions from other reporters and editors at the Journal, WSJ.com and Dow Jones Newswires. Have a comment? Write to 
