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Your Tech Skills Have a Two Year Half-Life

Posted by samzenpus on from the use-it-or-lose-it dept.

itwbennett writes "Eric Bloom, an IT leadership coach and former CIO, has answered that eternal question 'does working on old software hurt your professional marketability' with a somewhat surprising 'no.' But, Bloom adds, 'a techie's skill set from a marketability perspective has a two year half-life. That is to say, that the exact set of skills you have today will only be half as marketable two years from now.'"

2 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Depends... by SoothingMist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My experience has been that one has to balance keeping up with one's technical field and avoiding chasing fads. Too often "keeping fresh on new tech trends" boils down to chasing fads and, for instance, using a new language because it is there. What I have concentrated on are the technologies needed to solve difficult customer problems as they push their own application and technological domains. To make this work I keep up a constant cycle of study-learn-work-produce. That has worked well for 35 years and keeps me in demand as a senior research engineer (Ph.D.) at 60 years of age.

  2. IT is more than coders... by TiggertheMad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I suspect that the Bloom is referring 'tech' skills in a general sense. Most IT people are not programmers, and thus consume rather than create software products. If you have 'skills' using Office version X, it will probably not be as valuable in two years when a new and improved product, Office X+1 comes out.

    Obviously, if you think of IT as just programers, what he is saying makes no reals sense, since staples like C, Java, and .Net have been around awhile and are not going to go away.

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