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?

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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: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: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.