by
Jim Staats
| Feb 03, 2012
Takeaway of the week is it’s good to be in IT. Granted, that may not be a shared view from the vantage point of some current job-seekers in the sector, but overall indications from the latest batch of surveys, studies and published scribblings show the tech job market to be bubbling, whether it be Silicon Valley titans, burgeoning startups, healthcare providers jumping on the tech bandwagon or countless others.
Study: The Cloud Good for IT Job Creation
For those who say cloud computing and its ilk in the move to mobile is bad for personnel in the IT biz, we have a new study that essentially says “Pffffft!” to that (insert international sound of a tongue making a ‘rasberry’ for effect).
Based on a study of aerospace and smartphone services by the London School of Economics and Political Science, the trend toward cloud computing is contributing to growth in the type of jobs and skills required by businesses, according to a recent Forbes article.
The study, which examined the impact of the cloud on those industries in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Italy from 2010 to 2014, said cloud computing is creating employment through construction, staffing and supply of data centers charged with hosting cloud services. In addition, firms using these mobile opportunities are finding they are able to shift staff to other, more profitable work sectors.
“As firms shift from proprietary application servers towards virtualization and cloud computing, related skills will be in demand among employers,” the study notes. “New direct hires and upskilling for public cloud enablement result in higher-than-average salaries.”
Health IT Saw Healthy Capital Influx in 2011
For those still weighing a foray into the field of health IT, consider this: venture capital investors heaped $633 million into the growing sector last year, its biggest haul in more than a decade.
That healthy bit of investment was a 22 percent increase from 2010, according to figures from Dow Jones VentureSource in a recent InformationWeek piece.
With a nice bit of encouragement in the form of the recent incentive programs enacted by the Obama administration, VC investments in health IT have continued to grow over that past three years. The push for health care providers to adopt electronic health records (EHRs) along with the growing use of mobile devices and information management software has attracted ever increasing attention from the investment community, the article notes.
Analysts note the health IT investments mimic the rosy outlook expressed for the industry by venture capitalists in a separate survey. Conducted by Dow Jones VentureSource and the National Venture Capital Association in the fall of last year, findings show 61 percent of venture capital professionals and CEOs of venture-backed firms predicted investment increases in health IT in 2012.
Bloomberg: Tech Hiring in Full Bloom
The appetite for more workers in the technology is becoming more voracious by the minute, according to a new data study.
Some of the most highly valued businesses in the tech sector, giants including Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., have expanded their workforce by healthy margins in the past couple years in response to heady demands in Internet services, software and electronics, data compiled by and reported on by Bloomberg suggests.
With these Silicon Valley titans increasing their workforce by at least 50 percent over this two-year period, according to Bloomberg, recruitment is now expanding to prospects with nontechnical backgrounds in a radius running from the Great Northwest to the Eastern seaboard.
After the volatile dot-com bust, more job seekers are viewing the tech industry as a true model of stability.
“It’s a tough battlefield for talent all the time,” said Mike Guerchon, senior vice president of employee services at Riverbed, a San Francisco-based network-equipment company. The firm employees a 20-member recruiting team.
Many firms, including EBay Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon, will be adding thousands of jobs this year, many in newly formed satellite locations.
“You’re always reading good news about tech, despite what’s happening in the economy,” said after ditching plans to get into investment banking.
Tech Hiring Boon A Goodie, Just Not an Oldie
There might well be a full-tilt hiring boon happening in Silicon Valley and other high-tech havens, but not for everyone.
Quite a number of educated and experienced older workers remain on the sidelines in a job market increasingly targeting other skill sets and, frankly, new talent, a New York Times article reports.
Analysts indicate that many of the firms hiring are Internet-based while those cutting jobs are of the technology manufacturer model. The skills possessed by the workers made redundant aren’t valued as much in this current hiring climate.
“You’re not going to get a job that’s going to be assembly and filing and coding,” said Russell Hancock, president and chief executive of the research group, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, “and frankly, that can leave a lot of the older set a little bewildered.”
The leader of a local work force investment board, NOVA, which released a survey of human resource directors at a few hundred tech firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, noted in her experience, candidates began being weeded out at age 40.
“Especially in social media, cloud computing and mobile apps, if you’re over 40 you’re perceived to be over the hill,” said Kris Stadelman, NOVA director.
IT Consumerization Means More Money
A nice side benefit to the ongoing rush to create applications and programs that please consumers, staff and enterprise partners is the upward trend in salaries for IT professionals.
Companies are doing whatever they can to keep up with the demand to populate Android and iOS mobile devices with valuable properties which makes that slice of the workforce with those skills a valuable commodity itself, according to a recent CIO-Asia article.
“Companies now want IT to be part of the dialog, part of the innovation cycle,” said Michael Kirvin, co-founder of IT staffing firm, Bluewolf. “IT is becoming more of a strategic partner inside companies, and because of that, there’s more demand.”
With that demand, he said, IT professionals are finding themselves in the driver seat when it comes time to find new jobs and negotiate salaries.
Because IT hiring at Fortune 2000 companies is so active, Kirvin notes, IT pros “have a tremendous amount of leverage.”