IT pros are caught between an AI rock and an economic hard place The US jobs market grew faster than expected in April, but most IT pros aren’t among the beneficiaries. The US economy added 39,000 more jobs than anticipated in April, according to JP Morgan's reading of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. IT consultancy Janco’s analysis of the same data found 10,600 IT jobs disappeared in …
IT pros are leaving the field because money is not there.
In the UK you can make substantially more money by fixing roofs or leaky sinks than as a senior developer. It is also less stressful and you don't have to be on top of what new sinks came out this week and whether they have any security holes.
That said I predict there might be a bounce back, once companies figure out they painted themselves into a corner by adding AI mess into their code stack with a heap of outsourced manure on top.
corporation> can we book you for a month to fix our payments processor? We need to add time limited payment links and this seems impossible!
senior developer/roofer> can't do. I have my whole month already booked!
corporation> we will pay double!
senior developer/roofer> *laughing* I almost fell off the roof! Nah I am good, but thanks!
corporation> ok how much you want?
senior developer/roofer> how much revenue this functionality will generate for you in the next 12 months assuming it will be working?
corporation> I cannot give you such details, but management is all over it!
senior developer/roofer> Ok, 40 grand cash upfront and 5% of revenue generated by the feature in 12 months' time. Any extension negotiated separately.
*click*
It is there, it always has been...just not in permanent in house sysadmin type roles...the money has never been there.
The guys that make it in IT and generate wealth are the guys that create things, build services...invent, innovate...trouble is, not everyone can be Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk etc...you need more than just technical skill...if all you have is technical skill, you'll always be the guy paid to deploy other peoples garbage for peanuts...if you have interests outside of tech that are complimented by tech and you can build solutions there, then you'll probably build something that has some value that will make you decent money. If not, then you're always going to be a lackey unfortunately.
Being an absolute whizz at chopping cucumbers is one thing, knowing how to make a salad is another thing entirely. There's a huge number of folks in IT that are amazing at chopping cucumbers, but not many that know how to make a salad...and unfortunately, it's a lot easier to sell a salad than it is to sell wheelbarrows full of chopped cucumber...know what I mean?
Tech is one of the few professional paths where the access to knowledge is essentially free. So becoming highly skilled in tech doesn't necessarily have a massive capital requirement or even a massive time requirement if you have some level of talent, which is why there are so many highly skilled techies out there competing for the same work, driving the prices down...being highly skilled in tech is not a differentiating factor anymore, hasn't been for a long time...the differentiating factor is what you do with the skill and whether you have some kind of esoteric knowledge outside of tech that you can leverage to build something interesting and marketable...that's where the big bucks are.
I am so looking forward to, if this goes on for a few years, the pipeline drying up for junior IT people to work up to senior, AI turning out to be an earth-killing pipedream, and desperation setting in to find sufficiently senior and experienced people to fix the disasters the suits now find themselves in.
I'll be retired by then, but who knows, maybe that's where my pocket money comes from, when I want to buy a new mid-range gaming rig for $30,000 (of which the GPU will be $25,000).
I would argue that was already happening for whatever (passes for) reason in the C-Suite world even before the advent of AI/LLM as the next big thing.
Particularly noticeable in the operations side of IT with the exception of ITSec where a new graduate with security IT majors might easily command eyewatering compensation whereas finding a senior Linux/Unix role was increasingly difficult and once found typically more poorly paid. Developers/code monkeys probably not so much until AI was seriously centre stage. Even in databases I know a recent graduate that majored in information systems (databases) and full stack development who going to pursue other non-IT career options without ever working in the industry.
I can see all this shaping up into a perfect storm of incompetence and unavailability.
I am so looking forward to, if this goes on for a few years, the pipeline drying up for junior IT people to work up to senior, AI turning out to be an earth-killing pipedream, and desperation setting in to find sufficiently senior and experienced people to fix the disasters the suits now find themselves in.
Hasn't that already happened?
With the cloud killing on prem and companies moving to MSP's managing cloudy stuff, there are VERY few IT professionals out there, and most of those are ITIL helldesks where the 3rd line people are the only half decently trained people.
Trumpistan has already pulled the plug on the International Criminal Court. There is no particular reason why they might not decide to do the same to any other business competing with the US in a critical area at any point if he thinks that it's worthwhile.
Even if the business did have offline backups (which fewer and fewer companies seemingly do) then if plug pulling and things raining from the cloud to on prem happened then even a moderate scale I don't think there are a sufficient number of even semi trained monkeys available to get things operable even if companies were willing to present blank cheques.
Thing is, IT has always been this way...it's not generally a long term career for most people. Most people duck out at the 10 year mark for one reason or another...usually because tech is a dead end for them and they can't really progress anymore or they move into tech adjacent roles which aren't really tech anymore...like project management etc...which earns a lot less money than people think when they make the jump.
...I have never been out of work even once. When this sort of thing happens it's people in the middle that disappear from the industry. Because it's the folks in the middle that are the easiest to remove / replace with something else...I started my career early (I was out and about as a field engineer when I was 19 whilst most of my mates who I did computing with in college were at Uni, prior to that, from about 15 years old, I was doing local IT support around my area, undercutting PC World and doing a better job).
Juniors (just starting) and Seniors are generally, quite safe depending on their age and relative experience....it's mostly because you can't really get by without senior techies and junior techies are cheap, especially the very young ones...the guys in the middle though...not as cheap as juniors and usually not as experienced or skilled as the senior techies.
I've always said to people wanting to embark on a career in tech...start early...no matter what, you're going to start out in a shit paid position that you hate...so you might as well get it out the way when you're 19-24 and you don't have any debts, massive expenses etc....this way, you'll have 5-6 years experience when the folks in your age group at Uni hit the job market and they will always be behind you as a nice cushion when layoffs come around in your late twenties / early thirties...because you will be a known quantity with a decade of experience (you are now senior) whilst the others are still "middlers" with 5 years of experience or less and older than the younger, cheaper rookies.
I read some statistics somewhere recently, unfortunately I can't find the link...but according to those stats, something like 55% of people working in tech have 9 years or less experience. More or less an equal distribution between juniors (1-5 years) and middlers (5-9 years). There is a sharp drop off at 10-14 years experience (18%) then by the time you reach 25-29 years experience (where I am), it drops to around 5%.
These are quite shocking stats, because they suggest that within 10 years of starting, half of the people that enter tech will be gone and will never return.
I don't know the age ranges in these experience brackets, but I'd imagine the majority of the folks still around in the 25-29 year experience bracket, are probably in their 40s...I certainly don't come across many folks in their 50s with my years of experience. It's kind of a weird place where I am...pretty much all of the folks I started out my career with are long gone from the industry, most of the folks I work with my age have a similar background to me (started early, no uni) and the folks that are better qualified (and usually older than me) usually have about half the experience, earn considerably less and find themselves with pockets of unemployment because they are hyper-specialised.
The other common pattern is the ones that stick around are the ones that jump into freelancing / consulting. The vast majority of the folks I know in tech that have been around for a long time, at some point converted their permie role into a freelance role and started branching out to new clients...you typically do this by negotiating with your employer to work reduced hours (usually 50%) for a reduced pay packet (usually 75%) which frees you up to put eggs in different baskets. By the time you reach about 4 or 5 clients, it's pretty difficult to become "unemployed" unless you end up with some nasty disease or horrendous injury etc...especially if you spread your load across different industries rather than focusing on one specific industry...because when times are hard in one industry, you will have the flexibility to reduce your rates to keep the client, whilst raising them for a company in an industry doing well to counter it. Drop 20% on one client, then increase by 5% everywhere else (if you even want to keep the client at all).
Not really. It's the same as anything really. If something happens that reduces the need for labour, it doesn't cut off the experts and professionals, it only cuts off the labourers.
For example, if you have 1,000 builders out there, and a new robot is released that can do labouring work...you don't end up with fewer builders...you only end up with fewer labourers...in fact you might end up with more builders because some labourers might train up and turn into builders when they find themselves out of work.
Same thing in tech...we have a bulging middle in tech...full of sysadmins, JS developers etc etc (you know the "you write me a function to loop through a CSV", "you setup all the users" those people)...folks that aren't really responsible for understanding, building, architecting and delivering, they just provide the labour and follow instructions...AI is wading in here and displacing some of them...a lot of them will never return to tech (as is tradition in tech) and some of them will train up and remain in the industry. It's just how it is in tech. The vast majority of people working in tech, won't be in tech for the long haul. They will probably end up in some kind of tech adjacent role, you know, managing a CRM, managing a Wordpress blog etc but they won't be directly involved in tech.
It's like any form of engineering...you can start out as a barrow boy when you're a teenager and work up to being a senior welder on the bridges, but at some point, if you want to go further, you've got to design and build your own bridge...become a full engineer...that's where people drop off...because they don't want to build bridges or can't build bridges because they just don't care about solving problems. They can do everything up to that point because there is routine, a chain of command, familiarity etc. Install Windows, deploy Active Directory, make login scripts, setup group policies etc...but if you drop them in a situation where nothing pre-exists and no decisions have ever been made, where things have to be done from scratch, they just can't do it. Most people cannot operate without instructions or precedent with someone else solving problems and defining the jobs...some massive arrow pointing the way. It's why the Ubisoft open world formula is so popular...because the hardest thing you have to do is walk into a new area and light up a tower after you've done the important stuff in the area you're already in...from there, everything is on the map and you have a check list to complete, you don't have to explore, you don't need to interpret clues and solve problems, you just do your tasks...then when they're done...new area, but with the same familiar shit...but with maybe one or two new hazards that didn't exist before and a new item or two to spice it up...but 90% of it is the same.
A month from now the shortages caused by his trade war will be hitting shelves and online platforms in the US, and that's going to really worry consumers. They respond to worry by reigning in spending as much as possible. Companies start seeing that in their sales, and respond by freezing hiring and announcing layoffs. Those will happen later this summer. So look at the July and September numbers if you want to see how it affects the job market.
Even if Trump folds like a cheap suit in the meantime, which he's ultimately going to be forced to do since Xi has shown he's willing to wait out Trump as long as it takes and force him to be the weakling who backs down, the damage will have already been done. It is just a matter of how many months the tariffs will have been in place before Trump caves and tries to sell it as a win to the red hat wearing inbreds.
Xi can wait out Trump, because 145% tariffs on stuff leaving China bound for the US has a much smaller impact on China, than the inbound tariffs on goods coming from the US has a much bigger impact on the US.
America's biggest export is massive markups on products made out of Chinese produced components. US Imports cheap as fuck microcontrollers etc on custom boards with custom housings for next to peanuts, slaps a brand on it and flashes some custom firmware on it, put's it in a box with "Designed in California" on it and sells it back to China for hundreds of dollars.
A 145% tariff on Chinese imported microcontrollers that cost less than a buck is nothing, 145% tariffs on expensive as fuck American branded shit sent back to China are massive...and here's the kicker, China doesn't give a shit about US branded products because they have their own equivalents. All the tariffs do is hurt the US and it's people...it's peak autism.
I'm done retraining and retooling. I've done it all my career and at 61, I'm just flat out tired of fighting to still end up living paycheque to paycheque.
Retirement beats the stuffing out of spending my remaining years arguing with computer "AI" systems to get them to do what I want, and fixing the bugs they inevitably create.
Me too. I started in this industry in the early 80s. The first 30 years were fun, a chance to be creative, solve real problems, travel, and generally enjoy myself.
The next 10 years gradually gor more & more boring, many of them being a misery of being unable to design new stuff (manglement considered it too expensive to "re-invent the wheel") and having to just glue together crap FOSS to "create products", and eventually acting as security policeman for badly-designed crap that I was ashamed to see customers buying. Fortunately I'd taken advantage of the good years to save, and retirement is so much more fun. I got out before AI really started to have much impact, so now I can sit on the sidelines with the popcorn.
Given several existing standards for software development (I am not talking about coding standards but more generic development standards like CENELEC 50716, IEC 61508-3 or DO-178C), there is more to do than just "generate the code" using AI. You might want to use AI, but the design in front, and the checks afterwards cannot be assigned to AI in its current state and trust.
There are opportunities left, although this kind of software engineering may not appeal to everybody.
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