.Net may top list of job skills in demand

ZDNet ^ | January 2, 2003 | Andrew Swinton

[Bush2000]

.Net may top list of job skills in demand

By Andrew Swinton
ZDNet
January 2, 2003, 7:57 AM PT

One year ago, the world was still reeling from the raw impact of 11 September and security on every level was a priority. In terms of IT skills, disaster recovery and storage featured prominently, although the chief executive of EMC criticized other storage companies for exploiting the terrorist attacks.

Twelve months later the economic downturn in the tech sector continued with talk of recovery being a distant prospect. Job losses have continued on a large scale especially in the telecom sector. WorldCom, Cable & Wireless, Marconi, Siemens, Lucent, Nortel and Orange all cut staff heavily in 2002.

The telecoms sector has become so out of favor even the annual show “Networks Telecom” has been renamed “Networks for Business.”

Modest upturn

Research by e-skills in their quarterly bulletin shows the UK IT market experiencing a modest upturn during the final months of 2002, with anticipated growth in 2003 of 4 percent. A comparison to a year ago points to a decrease of 127,000--or 12 percent--of people employed in ICT as whole.

Contractors

IT contractors in 2002 experienced drops in hourly rates of pay in four out of 49 job roles monitored by the Computer Weekly/SSP Quarterly Survey. The most significant decreases were for Webmasters, and in content creation where rates dropped by 34 percent. System administrator contractors had their rates cut by 20 percent, as did PC helpdesk workers.

Contractors fortunate enough to have hourly rates increases were technical authors with increases of 8 percent; senior database admin/analysts up 5 percent; and network/comms analyst/engineers up by 3 percent.

Another area with a predicted upswing is in the public sector, which, despite a reputation for poor pay and conditions, may be contractors' best bet for steady work.

Core skills The 'core' technical IT skills, according to e-skills, demanded by employers for both contractors and permanent staff are unchanged from last year except for the addition of .Net this year:

• SQL
• C++
• Unix
• Oracle
• C
• Windows NT
• Java
• Visual Basic
• MS Office
• .Net

Contract staff with SAP and Windows 2000 skills were consistently in demand in 2002 and on the permanent side SQL Server and TCP/IP skills were in demand, although TCP/IP as a percentage of all permanent advertisements decreased in each quarter over the last year.

Small increases in demand have been tracked over the last two quarters in the following skills areas: Freehand, OLAP, Smalltalk, BPCS and EPOS for permanent positions, with JDBC, JSP EPOS, VPN, VBA and Switches had increased demand for contractors.

.Net

Significantly, .Net skills are appearing on the must-have list alongside Java and XML. Hull University is developing--with Microsoft--the first .Net Post Graduate Degree course for Computer Science in the UK, beginning in September 2003. As part of the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance, universities create a "lending library" where students can legally access copies of the products for home use.

Dr David Grey, a lecturer at Hull University said he believes that providing students with the inner workings of the .Net Framework will give them a significant edge in the skills and expertise needed to excel in the Web services area.

Soft skills

There is a trend for firms to hire more business-aware staff with customer focus, client-facing and interpersonal abilities but also in more technologically specific areas such as:

• Project Management
• Security
• XML
• EAI
• .Net
• C#

Training and Certification

2003 will be an undeniably tough year for all IT employees within the tech sector. As always the candidates with the right skills set, training, certification and experience will do best.

[BrooklynGOP]

Got my C#/.NET book a week ago.

[Bush2000]

I can foresee one problem for Microsoft and that is how to deal with Mono.

My bet is that they'll tolerate Mono -- and by all signs from the Mono team, MS engineers are cooperating with the effort, if not endorsing it outright. The open source community is suspicious of Mono because of the threat of patent infringement. But, in all likelihood, MS will let it ride because it will strengthen the .NET platform just that much more. And sell lots of copies of VisualStudio.NET in the process.

[Bush2000]

JOOC, what are you reading?

[BuddhaBoy]

Well, I guess I am in like Flynn with my MCAD, working towards MCSD. No shortage of consulting work, that is for sure.

[BuddhaBoy]

Do you know anything about the rumor that Microsoft is going to buy Macromedia? I personally am pulling for that, so that VS can get some better design tools. VS.NET is great in every area but that one.

[Dinsdale]

Flash must die. I want CA to bye macromedia (CA where software goes to die).

[BuddhaBoy]

Flash should die, but a Microsoft Dreamweaver would be the final nail in the Front Page coffin.

[MrPeanut]

What's wrong with flash?

[RippleFire]

BUMP

[mitchbert]

Happy to see SAP is still up there. Now, combine that with Six Sigma Training and Project Management and I'll be dancing in my living room.

[Bush2000]

... Six Sigma Training ...

It may not be listed but it's very much in vogue now.

[Willie Green]

... Six Sigma Training ...

Demming extremism...
good stuff, but often misused and abused.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

1) What is Six Sigma Training?

2) I just got through a C# SAMS (teach yourself in 21 days book) from the library. That was cake. The .NET version ( which is actually C++ based) looks a bit more involved.

[doosee]

Demming extremism...
good stuff, but often misused and abused.


In regard to Six Sigma, you are on the money. There are only so many problems where multiple regression and Chi Square are going to be applicable. I know one company that trained about 100 black belts and then upper mgt. got mad that they were sitting around waiting for projects. Over hyped process improvement mythology.

[mitchbert]

but it's very much in vogue now.

There's a very good reason for that. It works. Further, if you approach it without prejudice it's an incredibly simple concept that can be applied to any structured activity. I spent last summer training 500 people in my company, 20 at a time, on the fundamentals. From clerks to senior managers, all were able to get the high level picture. Now, I oversee and help develop their formal projects and casual initiatives. Key phrase: Show Me The Data, and Keep It Simple Statistically.

Happy New Year, eh!

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

1) What is Six Sigma ...?

Oh, i see

[mitchbert]

There are only so many problems where multiple regression and Chi Square are going to be applicable

Correct. Yet establishing a simple methodology that demands facts supported by data as opposed to gut feel, that attempts to focus on the costs of poor quality, thereby fixing business processes so they don't fail in the first place, is something that can be transplanted into any business very effectively.

Six Sigma provides a road map for this. Not every problem needs to have a master statistician overseeing its' analysis. In a transactional environment, it's amazing how much can be gained by simply applying the fundamental principles and simply adjusting your SOP's.

By the way, are any of you familiar with the Stat-A-Pult?

:-)