In an industry where product cycles churn every 18 months (or faster) and where Moore's Law is still pretty much holding steady, it may seem pointless to try to predict the lay of the land ten years out, and yet we keep trying, the way this recent Computerworld special report on 2020 does. Why bother? Because even if we can't pinpoint the weather forecast for 2020 we can probably get a sense of which way the wind will be blowing. Careers last a long time, so it's a useful exercise to try to catch at least a little bit of the breeze. The Computerworld writers make the case that if you're young the future doesn't really matter because you'll still be learning anyway. And if you're old, you'll be out the door soon enough, so don't sweat it. It's the big crowd in the middle who face the toughest challenges. They have experience and are somewhat set in their ways, yet the world is changing all around them and they have to keep up with it for another 20 years. I agree with that premise in a sort of sweeping macroscopic way, and I also agree that the kinds of nuts-and-bolts IT work that keeps hundreds of thousands of people employed today - help desk, network and desktop support, LAN maintenance, telecom functions - will be increasingly commoditized, with salaries adjusting downward. If you're at the lower end of the totem pole in any of these fields, you'd better start climbing toward management as fast as you can. You don't want to be left behind among the teeming masses.
Where the Demand Will Be in 2020
Ten years ago this month I wrote a magazine article in which I attempted to describe the perfect hand-held gadget, a device I was instructed by my editor to call "the holy grail" of PDAs. Today we'd call it the iPhone 4, but back then my imagination wasn't expansive enough for built-in cameras, touch screens, or broadband speeds. The dream gadget I ended up describing may have been cool at that moment, but today you'd just laugh at it. In an industry where product cycles churn every 18 months (or faster) and where Moore's Law is still pretty much holding steady, it may seem pointless to try to predict the lay of the land ten years out, and yet we keep trying, the way this recent Computerworld special report on 2020 does. Why bother? Because even if we can't pinpoint the weather forecast for 2020 we can probably get a sense of which way the wind will be blowing. Careers last a long time, so it's a useful exercise to try to catch at least a little bit of the breeze. The Computerworld writers make the case that if you're young the future doesn't really matter because you'll still be learning anyway. And if you're old, you'll be out the door soon enough, so don't sweat it. It's the big crowd in the middle who face the toughest challenges. They have experience and are somewhat set in their ways, yet the world is changing all around them and they have to keep up with it for another 20 years. I agree with that premise in a sort of sweeping macroscopic way, and I also agree that the kinds of nuts-and-bolts IT work that keeps hundreds of thousands of people employed today - help desk, network and desktop support, LAN maintenance, telecom functions - will be increasingly commoditized, with salaries adjusting downward. If you're at the lower end of the totem pole in any of these fields, you'd better start climbing toward management as fast as you can. You don't want to be left behind among the teeming masses.
In an industry where product cycles churn every 18 months (or faster) and where Moore's Law is still pretty much holding steady, it may seem pointless to try to predict the lay of the land ten years out, and yet we keep trying, the way this recent Computerworld special report on 2020 does. Why bother? Because even if we can't pinpoint the weather forecast for 2020 we can probably get a sense of which way the wind will be blowing. Careers last a long time, so it's a useful exercise to try to catch at least a little bit of the breeze. The Computerworld writers make the case that if you're young the future doesn't really matter because you'll still be learning anyway. And if you're old, you'll be out the door soon enough, so don't sweat it. It's the big crowd in the middle who face the toughest challenges. They have experience and are somewhat set in their ways, yet the world is changing all around them and they have to keep up with it for another 20 years. I agree with that premise in a sort of sweeping macroscopic way, and I also agree that the kinds of nuts-and-bolts IT work that keeps hundreds of thousands of people employed today - help desk, network and desktop support, LAN maintenance, telecom functions - will be increasingly commoditized, with salaries adjusting downward. If you're at the lower end of the totem pole in any of these fields, you'd better start climbing toward management as fast as you can. You don't want to be left behind among the teeming masses.