The IT profession and the IT job market are in the midst of seismic changes that are going to shift the focus to three types of jobs.
There’s a general anxiety that has settled over much of the IT profession in recent years. It’s a stark contrast to the situation just over a decade ago. At the end of the 1990s, IT pros were the belles of the ball. The IT labor shortage regularly made headlines and IT pros were able to command excellent salaries by getting training and certification, job hopping, and, in many cases, being the only qualified candidate for a key position in a thinly-stretched job market. At the time, IT was held up as one of the professions of the future, where more and more of the best jobs would be migrating as computer-automated processes replaced manual ones. Unfortunately, that idea of this has been morphed into something much different. More and more of traditional software has moved to the web, or at least to internal servers and served through a web browser. Moreso, today’s users don’t need as much help as they used to. Most workers have now been using technology for a decade or more and have become more proficient than they were a decade ago.

So where does that leave today’s IT professionals? Where will the IT jobs of the future be?

1. Consultants

Let’s face it, all but the largest enterprises would prefer to not to have any IT professionals on staff, or at least as few as possible. It’s nothing personal against geeks, it’s just that IT pros are expensive and when IT departments get too big and centralized they tend to become experts at saying, “No.” They block more progress than they enable. As a result, we’re going to see most of traditional IT administration and support functions outsourced to third-party consultants. This includes a wide range from huge multi-national consultancies to the one person consultancy who serves as the rented IT department for local SMBs. I’m also lumping in companies like IBM, HP, Amazon AWS, and Rackspace, who will rent out both data center capacity and IT professionals to help deploy, manage, and troubleshoot solutions. Many of the IT administrators and support professionals who currently work directly for corporations will transition to working for big vendors or consultancies in the future as companies switch to purchasing IT services on an as-needed basis in order to lower costs, get a higher level of expertise, and get 24/7/365 coverage.

2. Project managers

Most of the IT workers that survive and remain as employees in traditional companies will be project managers. They will not be part of a centralized IT department, but will be spread out in the various business units and departments. They will be business analysts who will help the company leaders and managers make good technology decisions. They will gather business requirements and communicate with stakeholders about the technology solutions they need, and will also be proactive in looking for new technologies that can transform the business. These project managers will also serve as the company’s point of contact with technology vendors and consultants. If you look closely, you can already see a lot of current IT managers morphing in this direction.

3. Developers

By far, the area where the largest number of IT jobs is going to move is into developer, programmer, and coder jobs. While IT used to be about managing and deploying hardware and software, it’s going to increasingly be about web-based applications that will be expected to work smoothly, be self-evident, and require very little training or intervention from tech support. The other piece of the pie will be mobile applications — both native apps and mobile web apps. The current changes in IT are “shifting more of the power in the tech industry away from those who deploy and support apps to those who build them.” This trend is already underway and it’s only going to accelerate over the next decade.

What about IT marketing?

ur right....project management is the core coz you can fit in anywhere and cannot be easily displaced for lack of versatility....

Em-my:
What about IT marketing?

This article categorises only the core of IT JOBs. As you know for every biz to thrive in this competitive economy marketers are needed in every field. Even people are re-branding sales of foods & nutrition supplements into organisations and they r also recruiting marketers

peterpierre1st:

This article categorises only the core of IT JOBs. As you know for every biz to thrive in this competitive economy marketers are needed in every field. Even people are re-branding sales of foods & nutrition supplements into organisations and they r also recruiting marketers

k.... But don't u think that IT marketing is a unique& important part of IT career path as not all marketers can be IT marketers?.....

OP, you forgot to mention IT SECURITY, Government parastatals, Financial Institutions,Multinationals etc. will always be in need of IT Security Experts and will prefer to hire an employee rather than outsource security issues.

Nice piece though, The future of IT is an important topic, anyone with or aspiring to have a career in IT should keenly follow the trend and upgrade accordingly, else you might find yourself in a saturated field.

Em-my:

k.... But don't u think that IT marketing is a unique& important part of IT career path as not all marketers can be IT marketers?.....

Emmy, maybe I dont understand your perspective about IT marketing but, I think "marketing" is a generic concept every business person must adopt to force an impression & impact in the marketplace. If a developer come up with a product and design, and he wants it to go public, he has just created career for trained MARKETERS. I have a friend, he has worked for an IT firm as a marketer before and now he's in a financial institution for same job function. Marketing is about PRODUCT n SKILLS to convince a customer to buy it, so if you can sell a product I think u r a marketer. Meanwhile for the sake of this article I would classify them as consultants.

nairalander: OP, you forgot to mention IT SECURITY, Government parastatals, Financial Institutions,Multinationals etc. will always be in need of IT Security Experts and will prefer to hire an employee rather than outsource security issues.

Nice piece though, The future of IT is an important topic, anyone with or aspiring to have a career in IT should keenly follow the trend and upgrade accordingly, else you might find yourself in a saturated field.

We can categorise "IT SECURITY" under Developers.....

peterpierre1st:

We can categorise "IT SECURITY" under Developers.....

No we cannot! Security is Security and has little to do with programming

@Op i truly admire ur write up and am greatly motivated,sometimes i wonder where i am now and where i should b in 5years from now.please i need ur advice on how i can find my way to become a developer because i am more close to a Developer than the rest.though i stand to be corrected i see project managers as certification base ,and that of Consultant requires so many years of experience and strong capital base.please advice me How do i become a developer,what are the basics.tnx

Thoughtful. But actually the industry is a dynamic one and it is highly encouraged to continue to update one self to the current trend.

However, by this, am actually on track.