Popular Technology Degrees
Has Your Future IT Job Gone to India? Probably Not.
January 30, 2007
by
Mary Hobson
Technology Schools Columnist
For the past few years, the clamor about outsourcing America's tech jobs to Asia has been growing. The Association of Computing Machinery commissioned a report on globalization and offshoring of software to examine this trend. Their report was published last February, and came up with some very interesting conclusions.
The Big Picture
The IT job boom is certainly continuing in the US. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that the job market for IT workers is growing faster than the rest of the market. Although most of the work that is offshored is in this industry, there is still no shortage of these job opportunities in the US, and little prospect that this is going to change.
The biggest factor in getting a job in the U.S. technology industry is
education. Programming and software skills are a product of good education, so getting your career training in information technology should increase your job prospects.
Globalization is the Future
And what of the future? Barring a catastrophic event, the globalization of the IT industry will continue. Low-cost broadband makes cross-country communication easy. Stable software platforms such as Microsoft Windows, IBM or Oracle mean companies can share knowledge across oceans.
So learning to live in a globalized market is the first priority in the IT industry. Some jobs will be lost in the U.S., but up to now only around 3 to 5% have gone, and it looks like this is going to continue as an accepted rate. So make sure your education is the best you can possibly get, and keep your
training current, and you will find that your career may benefit from globalization.
Sources
About the Author
Mary Hobson is the Head of IT School at a Polytechnic in New Zealand. She worked as a consultant for technology start-ups in Russia.
