Current Tech Skills Redundant Within a Decade

Byron Connolly, Infoworld Viewed 947 Times Viewed by 660 People

The lack of skilled IT workers is hurting the deployment of emerging technology, according to a new survey from Gartner. In areas from cloud to cybersecurity, this crisis is expected to last for years to come.

Almost half of the IT workers responding to a global survey believe that within 10 years their job will be automated, rendering their current skills redundant.

Recruiter Harvey Nash spoke to 3,245 tech professionals across 84 countries for its 2017 tech survey with 94 percent indicating that their career would be severely limited if they didn’t teach themselves new skills.

Bridget Gray, managing director at Harvey Nash APAC, told CIO Australia that technology careers are in a state of flux.

“With over 50 percent of respondents indicating that their jobs are likely to be automated, it is possible that 10 years from now the IT function will look vastly different. Even for those IT professionals relatively unaffected directly by automation, there is a major indirect effect – anything up to four in 10 of their work colleagues may be machines by 2027,” Gray says

The chance of automation varies greatly with job role, according to the report. Testers and IT operations professionals are most likely to expect their job role to be significantly affected in the next decade (67 percent and 63 percent respectively). CIOs, VPs of IT and program managers will be least affected at 31 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

Despite the increase in automation, IT workers are in high demand with survey participants receiving at least seven ‘headhunt calls’ in the last 12 months. Software engineers and developers were in the most demand followed by analytics and big data roles.

Respondents expected artificial intelligence, augmented virtual reality and robotics as well as big data, cloud, and the internet of things to be the most important technologies in the next 5 years.

Learning a priority

IT workers are prioritizing learning over any other career development tactic with self-learning significantly more important to them than formal training or qualifications.

Only 12 percent indicated that “more training” is a key thing they want in their job while 27 percent saw gaining qualifications as a top priority in their career.

Meanwhile, respondents were also asked that if they were to change one thing about their workplace what would it be? More than seven percent said their boss, and nearly 15 percent said to be recognized for their contribution.

A further 29.9 percent wanted to work on more interesting projects, 10.4 percent wanted better job security, and 18.7 percent wanted a stronger team around them.

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