The state of the field

The IT field is in a transitional state. It remains a lucrative field for those who manage to be employed, and it has proliferated widely. However, many factors in recent years have driven down the number of IT jobs substantially, and recovery has been slow so far.

IT technology is still used in almost every field. Non-IT companies are the major employers of IT positions. Over 91 percent of all IT jobs are in non-IT companies. That's the good news.

The number of IT jobs peaked in 2000. In 2001, half a million IT workers were let go. The lackluster economy continues to take a heavy toll on IT. From the last quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2003, surveyed hiring managers cut their demands for IT workers in half. Hiring forecasts for every category of IT worker (tech support, networking, etc), were lowered.

While companies placed over 86,000 IT jobs in the first quarter of 2003, that's nearly 11,000 less IT jobs than were placed in the previous quarter. In fact, demand for IT was lower in the first quarter of 2003 than at any point of 2002.

Luckily, IT salaries have not been hit hard by the poor economy. Although IT salaries have not changed much since 2002, most of the change that has happened has been positive. Three quarters of non-IT companies surveyed reported that they raised salaries. Half the IT companies surveyed reported raising salaries as well. Only 8 percent of all companies surveyed reported reducing IT salaries.

Evolving occupations

Many IT positions are themselves in a transitional state. Their popularity, requirements, and even their job descriptions change over time. Given the speed of technological advancements, some positions may even completely transform or disappear.

Programmers are a good example of this ongoing process. Currently, programming jobs are among the most prevalent in IT. However, one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the computer services industry is pre-packaged software. Also, advances in programming language capabilities allow end-users to carry out many of the duties that programmers traditionally performed. Microsoft's Visual Basic, which creates a graphical environment for users to construct their own programs, is one example of this. These factors look to curtail programmer employment growth through 2010. In fact, "there are some people who think that programming will transform dramatically, if not disappear," says Steve Johnson, senior fellow of The MathWorks, Inc., and former board member of the Computer Research Association.

Other positions have already changed dramatically. "Between about 1990 and 1995, the term 'system administrator' meant the person who came in for a shift and mounted tapes to collect data backups. By 1995, it meant the person who was responsible for the global communication infrastructure of the company," explains Johnson. "A system administrator may be totally different 10 years from now, because a lot of the things that system administrators do today will be done automatically by the software."

Of course, not every job will change significantly. Support positions like sales and management have remained fairly static. "I think that the basic problems that need to be solved by both of those functions are going to be the same for a long, long time. They still need to understand, coordinate, and lead people, and they still need to talk to customers to effectively identify the customer's needs," says Johnson. However, aside from select support jobs, IT positions typically do not remain the same.

Johnson explains, "Almost everything else is fair game. Even documentation has changed radically. Documentation would have meant books 10 years ago. Documentation now means web pages, and there are documentation people that didn't make the cut."