.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]

I got Deitel C#/.net

[doosee]

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?

You mean the Air Force launcher used to show variation. I played with that in a classs a couple of years ago. Six Sigma has its value and place but like any problem solving process it can be oversold. I think GE has cooled on Six Sigma since Welch left, am I right?

[CyberCowboy777]

Marked for a second coming

[mitchbert]

I haven't heard that it cooled since Jack left but from what I know it is now so ingrained into the culture of the company that it doesn't matter. Ultimately, that's the true measure of success. Six Sigma is really about establishing a default way of thinking and organizing processes that is based on verifiable data, simply presented. My problem as the Six Sigma Manager for ____ of Canada is that if I do my job properly in about 3 years I will have made myself redundant. No one will need me or anyone else standing over them saying "Show Me The Data!", it will just be the way things are done.

I have had the most significant success by applying the simplest fundamentals of the methodolgy on intitiatives that were going to be undertaken anyway. It allows one to drive to a particular redesign and prove (or if necessary refute) the validity of the decisions. It ain't rocket science and it doesn't need to be presented that way. People who do that are trying to puff themselves up.

It's real simple:

How do we do this today and how often do we get things right?
What are the things about the way we do things today that could cause us to fail in our mission?
How well are we doing in relation to our targets and our customers' expectations?
How can we reduce the variability in the process and get things right the first time on purpose?
How will we evaluate whether our efforts are improving the process?
How much time or money or both are we saving the company by redesigning the process?

There of course is the hidden questions surrounding risk of change, what happens if we do nothing, etc. But the main point is as a way of approaching a problem or challenge Six Sigma offers some very interesting approaches.

[mitchbert]

Oh, sorry. I got carried away. Yeah, the guy that taught me to use the Stat-A-Pult was a former math and stats instructor for the USAF. Best d*mned trainer I ever experienced in my life, and as someone who is considered (all modesty aside) not so bad at it himself I mean that as a big compliment

[doosee]

I gotta run and go eat but the biggest complaint we get is that workers can only focus on a limited number of process improvements. This relates to the theory of observed processes that will improve just because people know they are being measured. So, when we start new initiatives, the prior intiatives tend to slack off which loses the expected productivity etc. How do you beat that situation?

[Ed_in_NJ]

Unfortunately, all the jobs will be in India.

[Bush2000]

Unfortunately, all the jobs will be in India.

That's the free market, Ed. Did you honestly expect job protection? Even the unions can't hold jobs here anymore. Look at Boeing.

[Bush2000]

And by allowing them to export the majority of our high paying jobs they'll make us into a society of lower class workers where no matter how skilled you are you can't get a decent job outside the USDoD...

There's nothing you can do about it, dude, unless you want to boost import/export tariffs on goods and services from the relevant nations (ie. India, Pakistan, etc). But that won't cut it because companies are very creative: They will set up shop in the Bahamas and route all financial transactions through there instead of with India.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[Bush2000]

Then threaten them with a corporate death penalty if they try to cheap the system to that extreme extent.

You're advocating unenforceable laws.

[Willie Green]

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

Sounds like one of those new-fangled toys.
I'm afraid I'm an old fart, got my degree in the year 1 B.C. (Before Calculators)
Still had all the same statistics courses,
Just had to learn it all using pencil, paper, slide rule and assorted reference tables.
Pain in the butt, but it sinks in deep and you don't forget.

[mitchbert]

Great question and I want to answer it. Please re-ask on Monday or whatever as it's Friday night and, well umm, maybe I won't give the best answer right now.

Cheers, eh!

[VOA]

bump

[laker_dad]

I remember my dad bringing home an HP35? calculator that actually had SIN & COS functions back in 72 or 73. They cost about $400 back then IIRC.