The future of IT

[imoldernu]

Looking ahead, what do you see as the future of jobs in Information Technology?
With no background in the profession, and just looking in from the outside, my question comes up based on the apparent quantum speed of technology.

Way back in the times of Henry Ford, the first assembly lines for automobiles were very heavily manned by humans. Jump to today, and what took hundreds and hundreds of workers, is now, for the most part, performed by machines.
In 1900, Farmers represented more than 36% of the nation's labor force. Today, less than 2.6%.

According to some estimates, the number of persons working in IT today, is just shy of 7 million.

So, the question was prompted by reading about the technology behind my new Echo Dot... Just to bring logic to sequences of words that "Alexa" is expected to recognize. Hundreds of millions of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 word sequences, pumped through computers to interpret my bumbling questions without resulting in "I didn't understand that". (Amazon LEX)

So, now, if I understand the simple mechanics of programming, instead of writing thousands of command lines, the programmer is able to build on existing individual parts that come together to make the whole.

That may not make much sense, but I look back about 30 years to when I was in my own business. My son, fresh out of school, put together a billing and accounting program for me, that consisted of thousands of lines and took a week to build.

Don't we reach a point when advanced programming does what people do today?

No... not AI, but the question is... how far, how long will Tech Jobs require the number of employees anywhere near the size of today's work force?
Not that we ever reach finite knowledge, but what kind of jobs will be there that cannot be done by sophisticated advanced programming?

If you are or were in IT, and if you were to start your education over again, perhaps at age 20, would you choose it as a lifetime profession?

 

[MRG]

I started my education in IT in '83, started getting paid to write a bunch of 370 assembly code, solving business problems, in '84. At that time programmers were going to be obsolete due to 4GL's, relational databases, upper CASE, lower CASE, OO, JEE.........

I haven't seen any of the promises come true(retired '13). Instead I see more demand for IT services and less people who actually Understand what's occurring.

Honestly the average JAVA programmer has no idea what happens when they say "New". I saw it. Senior developers can't figure out when their code is slow 5000 functions are called and ten million database rows are returned!

It's going to be interesting in the next 10-20 years or so. Realize that most of the systems Americans depend on(SSA, IRS, Medicare and Medicaid...) are all based on COBOL. There's not a lot of young COBOL folks coming into the industry and most of that talent pool is in ER!

Obviously outsourcing development jobs impacts some, constraints in network are being mitigated so world wide deployment is more possible.

My last couple of years were in operational areas. It's absolutely scary how data are trusted to the (JEE)containers control. Sometimes that stuff didn't work.

 

[brett]

I had a career in IT. My first sale was a 4K memory board for an NCR Century mainframe. First mini sale was an $80K system. 96K memory, 20 MB disk. 80" cabinet- A/C required. CRT's were $3200 CAD for a non detachable monochrome monitor!

Sold lots of mainframe, distributed systems, process control, the lot. Where is it going? Who knows but I could not have wished for a better or more lucrative career.

If asked, I would say that some obvious choices would be internet security, AI, robotics, and advanced DB systems.

One thing for certain. If you are willing to work hard, can adapt and learn, the possibilities are endless.

And to think, I was originally well on track to my CPA designation. Gave it up. Best thing I ever did.

 

[orangehairfella]

If you are or were in IT, and if you were to start your education over again, perhaps at age 20, would you choose it as a lifetime profession?

I wouldn't choose it again, but only because I don't enjoy the work anymore.

There will be IT related work for a long time. While the number of developers required to create any given solution is going down due to improved frameworks, this is simply allowing institutions to propose more, and more complex, questions to solve.

There won't be fewer developers creating the same number of things; there will be more developers, creating more things. And we're just talking about software development here, don't forget infrastructure, security, product management, analysis, hardware design, data center construction. All of these fall under the umbrella of "IT".

And these are just the problems we know of today, who knows what problems tomorrow poses.

 

[sturbridge]

A lot of stuff, like in other jobs, is being automated. There are a lot of reusable frameworks and open source. No longer any need to recreate the wheel from scratch, just add your specific business logic. What does require people is often being outsourced to Sri Lanka, India, China and Romania. There are niche areas to be sure, but the more general stuff is becoming comoditized like many other industries.

 

[Aerides]

If I were under 30, no matter what line I was in, I'd learn to code. Seems a requirement for most everyone these days.

For the next 5-10 years, seems InfoSec will enjoy a fair bit of growth, albeit not the sexiest area.

 

[jollystomper]

A great question with a vast array of opinions for answers... just a few of my thoughts.

If you count high school (by first exposure to IT through writing FORTRAN programs on an IBM 1130) and college (where my major was math and comp sci), I have been in IT for over 40 years, through many different technologies. IMHO the big change will be that you will see (and is already happening) less IT as a "separate" organization and more IT functions embedded in the organization's business units. So if I was starting in IT today it is just as important to understand the business function as it is to understand how IT is supporting, or can enhance, the business function.

When I started working, IT was almost a black art, many with IT technical skills had poor people skills and did not align themselves with what the business wanted. But because they knew something others found hard to grasp, and where not easily replaceable, they really called the shots on how IT was used. Now it is reversed.

There will be less IT jobs supporting the "hardware infrastructure" as more use is made of "cloud" environments (both public and private), but more jobs trying to understand how to integrate various computing "pockets" together - more workflow/process knowledge, with the ability to understand code needed to put things together. I would not tell anyone to focus only on coding, there is so much competition globally, and as more automation is used to generate basic coding blocks, that the pay for pure coders will continue to shrink. But if you can code in many different languages as part of your overall technical AND interpersonal skills, that will be a benefit.

 

[CyclingInvestor]

Yes, I would still choose it as a profession, because it was by far the best fit for my skills.

 

[Alan]

Yes, I would still choose it as a profession, because it was by far the best fit for my skills.

+1

I used to program the computers used to control highly dangerous chemical plants. In the early days in the 70s it was a single computer that interfaced to all the instruments, valves, pumps and motors, and controlled the user interfaces (monitors and keyboards, lights and switches). The first new computer control system I programmed I did all by myself, overseen by a more experienced engineer. By 1982 we programmed the computers to run a brand new polypropylene plant using 3 pairs of redundant computers plus 2 other computers and there were 4 of us on that. As time progressed the control systems became more distributed and the last new plant commissioned in 2008/9 that I was part of had over 1,000 computers networked together using the Fieldbus standard. The number of folks needed to program/configure that last plant was 8. I certainly haven't seen a need for fewer IT people in my field.

 

[rayinpenn]

In the old days the auditor would show and ask for a bunch of paperwork and manually validate everything. Using small samples, the work papers containing the write up of the test performed were often works of art. Cross referenced with tick marks and often done with ink and pen - they represented no small investment in time and money.

Today the integrated auditor, proficient in technology asks for read access to your systems and will test not a small sample but rather 100% for the time period being reviewed... the thing is there are now so many systems to test and technology is in every facet of our lives...

Productivity increases but technology proliferates... opportunity for the creative abounds.

 

[BeachOrCity]

If one is going to pursue it, they should plan to be the best of the best and work in a long term high tech locale (Bay Area, Seattle, AUSTIN, Cambridge). If one is not th best or outside of thee areas you can count on dwindling pay or your job being sent overseas do to companies hiring cheaper overseas talent. You have to have leading edge skills and talent to stay ahead of the pack to succeed these days in this industry. And you have to work where there ar enough high tech companies willing to pay for the talent locally that you can hop from job to job and change your skill set every few years as that is how fast things move now

 

[brett]

What I have seen in the industry is people who are lifelong learners do well. They take refresher courses, take every opportunity to enhance or expand their skills, and move into different/challenging areas even when it may seem uncomfortable. They stretch themselves and are generally rewarded.

Those who I have seen be less than successful have been the opposite. Either strictly 9-5, not willing to invest their own time and effort into improving their skills or changing their career direction or lacking the basic skills of understanding change and adapting to it.

 

[MRG]

What I have seen in the industry is people who are lifelong learners do well. They take refresher courses, take every opportunity to enhance or expand their skills, and move into different/challenging areas even when it may seem uncomfortable. They stretch themselves and are generally rewarded.

Those who I have seen be less than successful have been the opposite. Either strictly 9-5, not willing to invest their own time and effort into improving their skills or changing their career direction or lacking the basic skills of understanding change and adapting to it.

+1000

You can generally tell who's going to do well by their willingness to stay late and work weekends.

 

[brett]

I see one thing in common with my old career path, accounting, and my subsequent career path IT.

The career options are unlimited. One has the ability to shift into different industries, different environments.

The skills that you can learn and utilize in both are often very transferable to other sectors.

 

[GrayHare]

Until the computers themselves are proficient at coding, IT people will be in demand. If I were 20 I'd look to be involved in quantum computing.

 

[GravitySucks]

Not sure if I would go into the tech field now.
I think the pay is being artificially held down due to outsourcing over seas and H1B visas. I worry that this will disincentive the next generation to go into tech fields and will in turn diminish the US's future as a tech leader.

 

[kcowan]

How technology will change everything!
I think this article will open your eyes in terms of what can happen! The Tesla is a computer with some wheels attached!

 

[brett]

Agree about quantum computing.

But think about this. There are so many industries, firms, jobs that did not exist 20 years ago that were attributable to advances in, and outshoots of, the IT industry.

Yes, thousands of traditional jobs have been outsourced. But that is the way in many industries. Heck, law firms are actually outsourcing work to less expensive countries such as India. Never thought that we would see this or that it would even be possible.

Very few industries are immune to outsourcing or to the advancement of other county's economies. Mexico, Thailand, etc are just a few examples. What has changed is the pace of change. That is why, IMHO, some of the best attributes someone can have is the willingness to adapt to new technologies and the smarts to identify change and make change work for them.

I can see a real difference between my nephews, nieces, BIL's SIL's in terms of how they individually adapted to change. The ones that are flexible, willing to move, can bob and weave, are the ones that are moving forward with their lives and are achieving job satisfaction. The ones that are not have, or are painting themselves into corner. As each year goes by their career opportunties are shrinking.

 

[PoorOldCountryBoy]

IT is a rather monolithic term - that could be networking, PC support, large enterprise wide systems, etc.
Certainly a tech background is a very valuable asset.

 

[Spock]

I spent 1980 to 2016 (involuntary early retirement) in various flavors of comp sci/software engineering... everything from mainframes to robotic controls to spreadsheet macros to distributed systems. During that time the career was very good to me, but at age 55 with millennial managers I was shown the door despite still receiving awards and patents. The ageism part of the IT field is only going to get worse going forward.

While you excluded "AI", a lot of the new stuff is a form of AI were the new systems are created by the system teaching itself... the programmers involved can not tell you why a given input yielded the output it did.

These trends are accelerating and will continue to accelerate. Programming going forward is going to be the equivalent of a high school diploma. In pharting around with writing smartphone apps, a 5th grader can do it... no college degree required.

I would not recommend my nephews graduating high school go into "IT" in the US. India or China, maybe... but not here.

 

[brett]

I believe that there is still lots of opportunity. Most especially in multi discipline areas.

The last project that I was familar with about seven years ago was a large, many many year project with a telco.

We used some highly skilled offshore resources in India. The cost to the project was $20K per man year. The equivilant cost in NA was $100K plus about 23K in benefits. These cost differences make a huge difference on a large, complex project.

We want to use in country resources but the bottom line is that our competitors were bidding offshore components, the client was looking for lower cost, so the result was a NA managed project with programming skills from India. And those skills were as good or better than any resource available to us in country.

 

[pjigar]

My background is in Semiconductors i.e. the platforms on which the software runs. I can tell you that I always question how fast and complex a given system can get or is it even necessary? Every year I am surprised with the size, scale and power of the new system and Moore's law seems to be kicking and alive so far. Granted that there is lot of reuse from generation to generation and some time simple replication. But even then we seems to always need bigger, better and faster platforms every year. If I can extrapolate this trend then the softwares must be getting equally complex so I see no end to this process. Sometimes I think that there is a conspiracy going on within this companies (both hardware and software): They create standards, languages, libraries, platforms, etc. that seem to become obsolete in less than a decade so you need new hardware platforms and new software platforms every time. Is this need driven or evil plan? Few examples:
Serial port, parallel port, firewire, USB 1, 2, ?...
VGA, SVGA, XVGA, SD, 720p, 1080p, 4K, ?
Basic, Pascal, Cobol, Fortran, C, C++, Java, Dotnet, Lost track,....

 

[Totoro]

Getting systems to talk to each other and do something your customer wants is getting ever more complex by the day. That and self-learning systems. The amount of work in that area is not going to decrease. Infosec too.

Infrastructure .. well that's going the way of the dodo.

And of course the elephant in the room: ageism.

In my view hardcore IT is best viewed as a sports career: choose your niche, get specialized and good really fast. Then either go contractor at a very high rate, find a very high salary at a boutique firm (or hedge fund), or become partner at a big IT firm.

But make sure you have your money in before you are 40, or switch careers if you don't. At least that's my view having studied IT a while back ..