If You Want a Job, Don't Work in Information Technology

There was a time and place where IT jobs were not only plentiful, they were desired. Oh, how things have changed. Operating systems and back-end server environments are created to maximize your technology ROI, and as a result, constant cutbacks in the IT support sector have led many IT professionals to turn to other careers (ie. the fella that worked at the Nissan deadership who sold me my Sentra back in 2003 was a former programmer whose job went overseas).

I've been in the IT field for almost 10 years professionally and have seen this get worse and worse. Programmers are being trained in India to take over coding from North American developers (cheaper costs in India and other developing countries like China, where cheap labour can be easily had). Technical and deskside support jobs are slowly being phased away, due to operating systems being more robust and having features that allow the end user to fix themselves. Helpdesks are moving en masse to develping countries. Offshoring is the big word in IT circles these days, and if it's not going to be offshored this year, you can bet your bottom dollar that your company is thinking of doing it at some time. Consider the fact that a number of companies now use self-training tools, since they don't want to invest a lot of training dollars to train someone when they know the job will likely go somewhere else long term.

There are still some good jobs in IT, but they're mostly non-technical jobs - ie. if you're a project manager, it's a pretty safe job. But if you're in a support field, you probably have seen the tide change in the last few years anyway. A lot of recent graduates from IT programs can be hired cheaper than your IT guy with 25 years experience. I see this all the time, not just in my company, but in other companies where I know people.