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 the future has disappeared, or at least morphed into something much different.
The glory days when IT pros could name their ticket evaporated when the Y2K crisis passed and then the dot com implosion happened. Suddenly, companies didn’t need as many coders on staff. Suddenly, there were a lot fewer startups buying servers and hiring sysadmins to run them.
Around the same time, there was also a general backlash against IT in corporate America. Many companies had been throwing nearly-endless amounts of money at IT projects in the belief that tech was the answer to all problems. Because IT had driven major productivity improvements during the 1990s, a lot of companies over-invested in IT and tried to take it too far too fast. As a result, there were a lot of very large, very expensive IT projects that crashed and burned.
When the recession of 2001 hit, these massively overbuilt IT departments were huge targets for budget cuts and many of them got hit hard. As the recession dragged out in 2002 and 2003, IT pros mostly told each other that they needed to ride out the storm and that things would bounce back. But, a strange thing happened. IT budgets remained flat year after year. The rebound never happened.
Fast forward to 2011. Most IT departments are a shadow of their former selves. They’ve drastically reduced the number of tech support professionals, or outsourced the help desk entirely. They have a lot fewer administrators running around to manage the network and the servers, or they’ve outsourced much of the data center altogether. These were the jobs that were at the center of the IT pro boom in 1999. Today, they haven’t totally disappeared, but there certainly isn’t a shortage of available workers or a high demand for those skill sets.
That’s because the IT environment has changed dramatically. More and more of traditional software has moved to the web, or at least to internal servers and served through a web browser. Many technophobic Baby Boomers have left the workforce and been replaced by Millennials who not only don’t need as much tech support, but often want to choose their own equipment and view the IT department as an obstacle to productivity. In other words, today’s users don’t need as much help as they used to. Cynical IT pros will argue this until they are blue in the face, but it’s true. Most workers have now been using technology for a decade or more and have become more proficient than they were a decade ago. Plus, the software itself has gotten better. It’s still horribly imperfect, but it’s better.
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. As I wrote in my article, We’re entering the decade of the developer, 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.
翻译：
导读：IT行业及IT工作市场正在进行着巨大的改变，这些改变将会把人的注意力转移到三大类IT工作上。TechRepublic日前发表文章《The future of IT will be reduced to three kinds of jobs》，分析了当前IT市场环境并解说了未来的这三类IT工作。现把该文进行编译，全文如下：
最近几年里，在IT行业中出现了一种普遍的焦虑。这种焦虑来自于与十年前IT行业的对比。在20世纪90年代 ，IT专业人士是“舞会中最美的美女”。IT专业人员长期短缺常常被作为头版消息。通过培训、获取证书、跳槽或作为特定工作市场中关键位置的唯一合格候选人，IT专业人员就能够获得相当不错的薪资报酬。在当时，IT被公认为未来行业之一，将来会有越来越多的好工作通过计算机自动处理过程来完成，代替原有的人工操作过程。
不幸的是，对未来的这一设想并未实现，或者说至少已被扭曲为其他不同的事情了。
伴随着千年虫危机的度过，互联网企业内部的崩溃，IT专业人员可自定身价的辉煌时代已经过去了。忽然间，企业不再需要如此多的编码者;忽然间，极少有创业公司购买服务器，并雇佣系统管理员来运行它们。
同时，美国企业界也受到了IT的严重冲击。在IT技术可以解决所有问题的信念下，很多企业曾向各种IT项目中投入了无限量的金钱。鉴于20世纪90年代，在IT的驱动下生产力有了很大的提高，大量企业对IT进行了过度投资，以期生产力可以发展得更快、更久远。结果，有很多规模宏大、耗资巨大的IT项目受到重创并最终失败。
当2001年经济危机到来时，这些大型的、过度扩建的IT部门面临着巨大的预算消减，其中很多受挫严重。在 2002年～2003年，经济危机过去后，IT专业人员告诉彼此，他们要经受得住这场暴风雨，一切都将恢复正常。但是，奇怪的事发生了。年复一年，IT预算基本持平，该行业的迅速回升并没有发生。
迅速到了2011年。大部分IT企业仍活在以前的阴影中。他们大量缩减技术支持工作人员的数量，或者将所有技术支持工作完全外包出去。他们雇佣了极少的管理员来管理网络和服务器，或者也一并外包给了数据中心。在1999年，这些都是IT行业中极速增长的工作。今天，这些工作并未完全消失，但也不存在此类员工的短缺，及对此类技能高需求等情况。
这一切都是因为IT环境已经彻底改变了。越来越多的传统软件已经迁移到Web上，或者至上迁移到了互联网服务器上，需要通过浏览器获得服务。同时现在的用户不再像以前那样需要更多的帮助。愤世嫉俗的IT专业人员将不断争论此事，直到他们精疲力竭，但这是事实。很多工作者已经使用IT技术十年之久、甚至更长，与十年前相比他们对该技术更加精通。另外，软件本身也越来越好用。虽然它仍存在让人郁闷的Bug，但与以前相比，它已经改良了不少。
那么，现在的IT专业人员都身在何处?未来IT工作又将在哪里?
1.IT顾问
几乎所有大型企业都希望不雇佣任何IT专业人士，或者是尽可能地少。因为雇佣IT专业人士所需费用十分昂贵。我们看见大部分传统IT管理和支持工作都外包给了第三方IT咨询公司。他们可以为大到巨型跨国企业，小到就职于当地中小型企业IT部门的个人提供咨询服务。像IBM、 HP、 Amazon AWS和Rackspace这样的企业也可归属为此类，他们可以向外租用数据中心容量存储及外派IT专业人员以帮助部署、管理和维护解决方案。在未来当企业转向按需购买IT服务以获得更低廉的成本、更高水平的技能及得到24*7*365天的支持时，现在直接为企业工作的很多IT管理员和技术支持专业人员将会过渡到为大型咨询服务公司工作。
2.项目管理者
大部分工作于传统IT企业的员工将会发展为项目管理者。他们将不再是核心IT部门的成员，但他们将延伸至各种业务部门。他们将是商务分析师，帮助企业领导者和管理者做出好的技术决策。他们将收集各种商务需求，和参与者就他们所需要的技术解决方案进行沟通和交流，他们也将积极主动地去寻找可以改变行业的新技术。这些项目管理者也将是与技术厂商和顾问进行来往联系的核心枢纽人物。如果你仔细看的话，你会发现现在很多IT管理者正向这一方向转变。
3.开发者
到目前为止，IT行业中所需要最多的就是开发者、程序员及编码者。尽管IT曾是一个以管理、部署硬件和软件为主的行业，现在它正逐渐转向基于Web的、可以顺畅工作、需要非常少的培训和技术支持的应用，而IT关注的另一方面将是移动应用——本地应用和移动互联网应用。当我在之前一篇文章中写到，“我们正步入开发者十年”时，当前IT行业正进行着“将技术行业中的更多力量从部署、支持这些应用转移到构建这些应用的人身上”的转变。现在该趋势已经在发展中，并将在未来十年里获得飞速发展。
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