Half of U.S. I.T. Operations Jobs to Vanish 625
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."
Re:Improvements in data center technologies? (Score:1, Informative)
That is 100% not true.
The writing is on the wall methinks (Score:3, Informative)
So 50% of nothing ain't so bad. I can't even manage to get a job at a help desk. Wages here are dropping too - it looks like we'll be worse off than shop assisants and waiters soon.
I know graduates here with High Distinction averages who can't even get an interview for entry level positions. I don't know about America, but our government couldn't give a flying fuck about Science and Technology.
Re:Ummm (Score:1, Informative)
Fine. The average factory wage in S.E. Asia is about $0.13 an hour. The workers sleep on cement floors. They are not allowed to leave their stations, even to use the restroom. 16-hour days are commonplace. There are few, if any, environmental, labor or safety regulations.
They make products for multi-billion dollar companies that have an estimated average retail value to labor ratio of 1000 to 1.
These are facts, and they have been verified repeatedly by government, business, unions and political groups on both sides of the debate.
they get paid about $150 a month
That's good. $0.63 an hour.
Room and board is NOT deducted from the $150!
That's good.
I'm guilty (Score:3, Informative)
missing the point... (Score:3, Informative)
Need a server built? Pop a card into a blade system (HP) that can hold more than a dozen of them, plug into the network, image it and you are done. One of them is not behaving right because of corrupt software? Re-image it in 20 mins. HW problems? Send card back to manufacturer or throw it out.
Majority of IT people 20 years from now will need to understand company's processes, business logic and dataflow. Knowing what will be affected by the latest software upgrade will be more important than knowing how to install it. Does the new patch modify the database? Was its schema or stored procedured and functions affected? What's the bottom line? Are calculations now incorrect and will it impact your company's billing or payment cycle? Will you lose clients', patients' or customer's history records by changing the system? Future admins, (today's architects) will need to know all of this.
The best and most recent catastrophic example of failure that resulted (or helped) in a sale of the company is the Local Number Portability upgrade at AT&T Wireless. If you have time, look it up.
Of course. It's like "stationary engineering" (Score:5, Informative)
There are still stationary engineers. [local39.org] There are still millwrights. [unionmillwright.com] 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.