Monday, April 30, 2007

Recent Supply and Demand for IT Professionals

Shortly after the dot.com crash, I landed my first IT position. At the time, I knew several people who were seeking and obtaining jobs completely away from the tech industry. A couple of my co-workers observed this trend and had predicted that there would eventually be a shift in supply and demand and the people that stuck around and continued to progress would be rewarded with high salaries. This was hard for me to imagine with our fully laden team of extremely talented underpaid individuals.

Things have changed significantly in the past few years. It's had been difficult for me to wrap my head around why the tech market appears to be so different now than it was 5 years ago, until I recalled the supply/demand conversation. Many of our talented Engineers have moved on, and management hasn't been able to replace them. For a while we've been struggling with staffing. High quality, enthusiastic, eager to learn technicians have been few and far between. This article and the salaries that our Engineers have been leaving for seems to confirm the supply/demand theory. Perhaps the demand brought to light in the article will spark more tech career interest, and perhaps tech staffing will become slightly easier for companies that are unable to invest too highly in IT wages.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070424_967747.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story