The Future of I.T.

Posted: December 9th, 2005 | Author: Michael R. Murphy | Filed under: General | No Comments »

I’ve been hearing a lot lately how experts are predicting a shortage of qualified I.T. people in the United States within the next ten to twenty years. The most common reasoning during these conversations is that the scarcity of jobs in this industry in the recent past has scared students into other fields. Add to that the large number of baby boomers retiring in the near future and apparently that amounts to a shortage of experienced technical people.

Most recently however,someone mentioned a factor I hadn’t heard before. I wish I could give credit where credit is due but I tuned in during the middle of a local radio show and turned off before the program ended. Currently the corporate mindset is to outsource low paying technical jobs overseas and keep high paying ones here. The guest had all sorts of facts and statistics which I don’t remember but let’s operate under the assumption that some of those high paying positions are filled by foreign nationals here for school or because of lack of opportunity in their homelands (China and India).

In the news almost as much as Paris Hilton is the fact that the economies of China and India are growing faster than that stuff in the bottom of a fraternity house refrigerator. It won’t be long before the appeal of opportunity in the US is worth less than the prospect of being with family and these workers leave for better opportunities at home and take their skills with them. In parallel,as quality of life and opportunity increases overseas,how long will workers there be content with lower paid support positions?

With a portion of our highly skilled workforce heading home,fewer entries into the field,and overseas contracting no longer as affordable,what does that mean for I.T. workers in the US?

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