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

Improvements in data center technologies?

[Nine Tenths of The W]

Is that a new way of saying outsourced to India?

Re:Improvements in data center technologies?

[Fiz Ocelot]

No actually the goal would be to eliminate the need to even outsource at all, as you don't need that many people. It will eventually be achieved, just look at how farming and manufacturing has moved. Always towards higher efficiancy. Simply outsourcing isn't exactly efficient.

Re:Improvements in data center technologies?

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens in other industries as well. Your manufacturing example is a great one. Interestingly, China lost more manufacturing jobs during the past 5 years than the US did. Where did they go? Not to India. They jobs simply went away thanks to improved automation.

This is pretty scary; since it's likely that in our lifetimes computers+robots will be better than Humans in _most_ jobs including

• all military jobs (fighter pilot, tank driver, battlefiled strategy
• most construction jobs (welding on bridges & highrises; home building, etc)
• all manufacturing jobs (cars, chips, etc)
• most desk-based service jobs (phone answering, 1st level customer support via voice recognition & support lookup tables)
• many retail jobs (self service checkouts are becommingn common; we have gas stations with zero attendants here, etc)
• drug design and testing -- computers can match gene databases, simulate protien folding, run stastics, analyze samples, etc better than we

and as soon as a computer becomes a better programmer than a person, the gap will speed up very quickly

I wouldn't be surprised if there are simply no jobs to go around.

Re:Improvements in data center technologies?

[Eskarel]

1) Military jobs, if you think that AI is going to be good enough to have computers acting as soldiers any time soon then you either have a really unrealistic view of AI develop or you have an incredibly disrespect for what it takes to be a soldier. Added to that no one is going to trust intelligent robots with guns for a very long time. The military will probably end up using machines more rather than less(possibly to their detriment but that's another topic), but they'll still have to be controlled by someone.

2, 3) Construction and Manufacturing. Possibly though again AI is a long way off. I think this may eventually happen though.

4, 5) Service jobs are a bad idea for automation. It could be done, but won't be in anything but the cheapest of places. People want to buy from other people, get support from other people(preferably ones who speak their native language). I think it will be tried in a few places, but eventually companies will work out that people hate it and only places which would have paid you minimum wage will use it.

6) Drug testing. Unless you know something I don't this isn't even close to ready yet either. Drugs still need to be tested on people to see what actually happens as opposed to what is supposed to happen, and that requires a doctor, there is no script for doctor which works 100% of the time, if there were anyone could do it. As for research, as c omputers are not particularly good at innovation(seeing something other than what they're specifically testing for) it wouldn't be a very efficient process.

The jobs which get replaced are jobs which require repetetive manual labor(robots), or which can be predicted entirely and do not deal with people(scripts).

In general it is a fallacy to believe technology is the solution to every problem, or that it ever will be or should be. There is value in having a person do a job, even a job which you think is pointless and stupid, because people want to deal with other people.

Re:Improvements in data center technologies?

[Amiga Trombone]

I wouldn't be surprised if there are simply no jobs to go around.

I don't know that jobs will be eliminated, but they may change. When I first got into IT in the late 1970s, you needed a shift of about 20 people just to run a mainframe. People to monitor the console, people to mount the tapes, people to run the printers, etc. Eventually most of those jobs were eliminated, i.e. automated tape libraries replaced tape handlers, online archival systems largely replaced the need to print massive reports, and automation software determined what jobs to run when and checked for error conditions. Everybody thought that was the end of having a career in IT.

But that was back in the '80s, before the tech boom of the '90s. True, there weren't as many jobs running mainframes, but plenty of new jobs opened up such as LAN and Unix admins, network techs, security specialists, etc. Instead of jobs being eliminated, suddenly there were more jobs than there were people to fill them.

If you're just going to sit on your ass and expect make a career out of what you're doing now, then you'll probably be out of a job eventually (ask any COBOL programmer or tape handler from the '80s). But if you keep learning new skills as technology evolves, you'll probably always have a job. When I first moved from mainframes to Unix in the early '90s, Unix systems were fairly primitive and required a lot of massaging. Now that they've evolved to the point where they've acquired nearly mainframe like reliability, they need less admins to support, but on the other hand you have new ancillary technologies like SAN's that also require specialized knowledge to manage. These days, I spend more time on SAN management than I do on Unix administration proper.

I've been through this before. Remember, even if they replace the administrator with management automation, someone has to admin the management automation too. Make sure that someone is you.

10 to 20 years

[MrRTFM]

Don't panic - this in 10-20 years time. If we are still fucking around reinventing the wheel (scripts, repeated processes, crappy hardware, patching CRAP software, etc.. then I will be amazed, and dissappointed.

It just means we will be doing other IT related stuff.

Re:10 to 20 years

[cubicledrone]

Don't panic - this in 10-20 years time.

About the time current graduates start applying for home loans.

Re:10 to 20 years

[nomadic]

Right on. People always affraid of jobs disappearing and often forget that there is always new jobs being created. It is called progress. Every major labor saving invention puts people out of job. But it frees them up to do something new.

Tell that to people in the rust belt who lost their manufacturing jobs in the 70s and haven't found a replacement in 30 years. A lot of people just struggle on through multiple low-paying, benefit-less job, service industry jobs, putting spouses and family members to work, government assistance, and just plain adopting a significantly lower standard of living. You all want that? Judging by the comments I see on slashdot, it looks like it.

Wake up. Jobs don't magically appear when needed. A large number of you are gonna be screwed when automation and outsourcing leaves you in your 40s and 50s without a job. You'd better pray social security's still around then, but that's kind of a slim hope.

Of course, it doesn't matter to me, I moved out of the IT field into something that can't be outsourced so easily. But I just don't like what's going to happen to all my old friends and coworkers when the industry bottoms out.

Oh no, you're saying, if you're smart you'll find a way to adapt. Not necessarily. When 100,000 jobs become 10,000, maybe 10,000 people are going to manage to get by, but what about the other 90,000? "Finding a niche" doesn't always work, and a lot of very smart people can lose out just through chance.

Don't believe me? Prior to the 90s intelligence and technical brilliance more often got you a job at Radio Shack than at IBM. There are generations of people with your natural talents who were unable to find their "niche" just because it didn't really exist.

Re:10 to 20 years

[eclectro]

It just means we will be doing other IT related stuff.

Like operating the point-of-sale terminal at the local Piggly Wiggly???

Re:10 to 20 years

[Usquebaugh]

Why should the next 20 be different from the last 20?

Having almost got 20 years as a developer I can see no change in mind set amongst IT workers or Senior executives that would allow for any improvement in efficiency.

So in 20 years :-
I'll be using some new and improved language that is still no better than Smalltalk or C.
I'll be working on some hardware that can process everything faster but still get's nothing done.
My customers will still be customising rather than configuring software.

Re:10 to 20 years

[Gannoc]

If I actually need a job by the time I'm in my 50s, I'll have screwed up royally somewhere. Compound interest and dollar cost averaging are your friends. You really can take responsibility for your own life.

That was such an outrageous thing to say, I decided to actually do the math.
Assuming that:

1) You started to save at 25. (Most people don't)
2) You expect to live until 85.
3) You want to retire at 55
4) A real growth rate of 5%, which is generous. (Real growth is growth after inflation. See http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/stock-market/ for historical examples)

You'd have to save and invest 26% of your income to retire and maintain your existing lifestyle. With a 4% real growth rate, which is very possible if our economy loses several high paying jobs, you're looking at needing to save 36% of your income.

Uk government

[Turn-X Alphonse]

If it's anything like the systems the UK government use then we'll be fine. We'll all become tech support staff!

Yeah, right. 2024 will be exactly like that.

[Skyshadow]

Okay, seriously, how the heck do you make *any* predictions about what's going to be happening in the computing industry 20 years from now? This seems like a definate "in other news, 84% of statistics are made up on the spot" item.

Think about trying to predict 2004 back in '84. PCs were just starting to take off, Al Gore was just starting to bury the first fiber connections that would become the internet, IBM was going to be the big power in personal computing...

Nobody could have foreseen that we'd all be selling the shit out of our basements on eBay, listening to huge music libraries on devices the size of a deck of cards and spending our work days trolling Slashdot?

C'mon, Garner, who are we trying to fool here?

Re:Yeah, right. 2024 will be exactly like that.

[motherjoe]

Yeah, I am still waiting for my flying car and domestic robot to all my chores. :)

Re:Yeah, right. 2024 will be exactly like that.

[JanneM]

Look at it from the other way: have you any reason to believe that the IT industry will buck the trend and not improve worker efficiency, unlike any other industry in existence?

The Gartner analysis isn't preposterous; it's just trite.

Re:Yeah, right. 2024 will be exactly like that.

[BurritoWarrior]

Not true. Just look at this:

Dear Mom,

I know you don't think I can see the future but I can. In 2004 we will all be selling the shit out of our basements on eBay, listening to huge music libraries on devices the size of a deck of cards and spending our work days trolling Slashdot.

Now please get me out of this place. I don't like the doctors and want to come home.

Love,
Your son the burrito
Dec. 14th, 1984.

Bugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry ... I'm busy adding countless bugs and security flaws....send more beer and I'll try harder.

Quoting Charles Wang on Gartner

[whatthef*ck]

"I want to choose my words carefully here, so I'm not misunderstood," he said. "They're a bunch of fucking idiots."

Operators, sound off!

[Rogue Leader]

As a Data Center Operator (OS/390 mainframe), I have to chime in on this one. That big, black monolith always needs someone baby-sitting it. Major problems are rare, but there's enough little stuff happening around the clock to warrant attention. And if your organization is anything like mine, they are brainwashed by vendors *cough(Siemens)cough* and are migrating from those rock solid boxes from Big Blue to an array of Win2k servers running MS SQL. yes, it scares me too. But it's only for the main Clinical system for the region's leading hospital; what could go wrong. Anyone in the know, can tell you that will be more support-intensive.

Re:Helpdesk

[Phleg]

Of course it can be automated. We just need to automate users first. Possibly with a small shell script.

Just like telephone operators...

[Nova Express]

Remember the glorious days of manual switchboards? Roughly 98% of those jobs disappared. Oddly enough, however, the telephone industry didn't reduce its overall workforce by 98%. As technology elimiates old jobs, new ones are created for new technologies. By 2024, major jobs for Slashdot readers might include immersive holographic engineer and "wranglers" for self-evolving computer code.

And as for the Gartner Group predicting the future of IT two decades from now, who died and made them Hari Seldon? Predicting 2004 in 1984 probably sounded a whole lot like "IBM and AT&T dominate the personal computer market, PCs have reached almost 30% of people's homes, most PCs come with a 500 MHz RISC chip or higher, with over a megabyte of memory and a blazing fast 16K modem! The sales of software giants Borland, Ashton-Tate and Lotus exceed $2 billion annually." Etc. You just can't predict the future of technology with anything remotely like accuracy that far out.

Not on my watch.

[Bug-Y2K]

I actually manage a small datacenter. One thing I have learned after 10 years in the Internet Server hosting and colocation game is SERVICE is what sets you apart from competitors. The big .com era hosting superstars (exodus, colo.com, etc) all built their datacenters with the concept of "lights out" and "reboot button monkeys" for (skeleton) staff. Where are they now?

So long as software is wriiten by flawed humans and small business clients need to have smart people on-call to assist them when they delete files, or bork their server again... datacenters will require support staff.

If you ever call our support number and get some guy in Bangalore answering the phone, you will know that I'm dead... 'cause until then, I'm hiring geeks - right here. Thank you.

They'd better be at least half right...

[rewt66]

If we have as many systems as I think we're going to have in 20 years, and one person can still only effectively manage the same number of systems as they can now, we're going to have big problems.

Really, even if they are 100% right, this is not a bad thing. The less-capable half of sysadmins will have to find something more useful to do. I say "more useful" because, from the larger view, the view of the economy as a whole, IT people are mostly wasted. They don't produce anything (well, they do design and roll out networks, but most of their work is to keep our incredibly brittle systems from falling apart. It would be less wasteful to make less brittle systems.)

I've been in IT (IS, MIS etc.) since 1980...

[zorkmid]

and the ever elusive "they" were saying this way back then.

About coding (Joe user would just describe what he wanted done to the computer and wah-lah. It would program itself).

About Databases.

And about sys admin.

Eventually, if they keep yammering out this prediction, they'll may be right.

I'm not holding my breath though.

Re:Ummm

[Talian]

That's fine, then let the company that employs those folks (whoever or wherever they may be) move and incorporate there, why should they enjoy the benefits my tax dollars provide and yet not contribute to their own local (of varying scales) community.

It's about time we stopped letting Corporations milk the country dry, and give something back from all they take.

Re:Ummm

[Tassach]

As long as there are users around to screw up the systems, they will need to pay geeks to fix them again. Human stupidity is the one true constant of the universe.

Re:Ummm ... 20 years??

[HiThere]

OK, This does seem probable within 20 years. Within 20 years I expect the server to be around as common as the mainframe is now...and for the same reason.

OTOH, robot maintenance tech will be one of the new jobs opening up as a result. And home network coordinator. And ...

So, yeah, Gartner probably got this one right. It just doesn't mean what it appears to mean.

Re:Helpdesk

[Yorrike]

while(!pr0n){
complain();
}

To be true, IT innovation will have to cease.

[zerofoo]

Thanks to automation, my clients can do a heck of a lot more on their own without my help. Repetitive tasks like patching, virus definition updating, and user maintenance can be performed without my assistance.

So, I must be out of a job right? Wrong - new technologies don't install themselves. Take, for example, wireless networks - when the technologies became available, I got a call from every single client to install some sort of wireless network. Then I got calls to move from WEP to WPA.

One of my clients was deploying so many new technologies that they decided they needed to hire me full time.

Sure, repetitve stuff will get easer - everyone here should be thankful this is true.

-ted

They are close, but wrong

[ajs]

10-20 years from now, it will take 50% or less of the operations staff that it takes today to manage machines... I can buy that. I look at the history.

In the 50s-60s we had entire departments of large corporations supporting one machine (mainframe).

In the 70s-80s we had entire departments of large corporations supporting several machines (minis).

In the 90s-00s we have entire departments of large corporations supporting hundreds of machines (micros).

So, if we project forward, I certainly see what they're saying, but what happens when I can support 1000 machines at a time on my own the way I do about 1/10th of the support work for those thousand today, but my company needs 10s or even 100s of thousands of machines? Answer: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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.