Do I.T. professionals have an image problem? / ABC Sydney, ABC Drive
Hell yeh! Who wants to go into a career that’s caricatured by nerds and geeks (and not the good kind), dark dank offices, thankless tasks, unrelenting work, small budgets, disgruntled users and little promise of redemption.
On the back of two reports just out, the first by Deloitte Access Economics on our need for an extra 100,000 information and communications technology workers within the next 5 years and the decreasing number of students enrolling in IT courses and the second by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia whose findings state amongst other things that 39.6% of Australian jobs are at high risk of being replaced by machines within 15 years, Linda Mottram of ABC Sydney Morning radio and Fiona Sewell of radio ABC Statewide Drive both wanted to chat about the Future of IT, employment prospects in general and the supposed conflicting messages in both these reports.
A couple of weeks ago I delivered a keynote on the Future of IT to a group of Year 12 students looking to do IT at Monash University next year and urged them not to become IT professionals, but instead to become Life Architects.
Much of our world now comes through digital pipes. There is not an industry that does not technology in some way and some industries only exist inside of digital spaces.
The days of stringing wires, networking, coding, punch cards and problem solving terrible software are gone. The industry and employers need so much more and IT professionals are the only ones that can turn fantasy and dreams into digital and reality.
My advice to the listeners was the same as always, see IT professionals as the architects of these new worlds and spaces.
Encourage today’s graduates to see a world in which they do more than sit behind a screen and peck away at a keyboard instead see a world where their skills are not only in demand, but imperative, if we are going to continue to evolve our digital world.
Beyond this, the world of work and how, where and when we work are all changing as is tomorrow’s landscape for employment, jobs and careers. It is vastly different from anything we’ve experienced before and the future work space requires a very different approach and mindset.
To achieve these new lofty goals we must educate our students to inhabit tomorrow’s world, not yesterday and understand that tomorrow’s young adults will not apply for jobs anymore, they will invent them.
Have a listen now to these 2 segments and then share your support for tomorrow’s IT professionals by passing this post and your comments along.
ABC Sydney – Linda Mottram – 16th June (12 minutes 32 secs)
ABC Statewide – Fiona Sewell – 16th June (10 minutes 49 secs)
Hell yeh! Who wants to go into a career that’s caricatured by nerds and geeks (and not the good kind), dark dank offices, thankless tasks, unrelenting work, small budgets, disgruntled users and little promise of redemption. On the back of two reports just out, the first by Deloit.
When signals like Do I.T. professionals have an image problem emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether Do I.T. professionals have an image problem will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
