Half of U.S. I.T. Operations Jobs to Vanish

Ant writes "A MacCentral article says Gartner, Inc. researchers believe that as many as 50 percent of the IT operational jobs in the U.S. could disappear over the next two decades because of improvements in data center technologies. Donna Scott, a Gartner analyst, said IT workers face a situation similar to that in the manufacturing field, which has lost jobs over the past several decades as automation has improved. Similarly, standardization of IT infrastructure, applications and processes will lead to productivity improvements and a major shift in skill needs, she said."

Comments

Of course. It's like "stationary engineering"

[Animats]

Once upon a time, around 1900 or so, "stationary engineering" was a hot high-tech field. Somebody had to run the big steam engines running. Or you could become a millwright, and help set up machinery in factories.

There are still stationary engineers. There are still millwrights. Not a lot of them, though. It's an skilled blue-collar job, often unionized, with a formal apprenticeship. There are exams and certificates.

Being a system administrator is, fundamentally, the same kind of thing, with technology a century newer.