.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.

[Willie Green]

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.

That sounds about right.
Handheld calculators certainly existed when I graduated in '74, but since most students couldn't afford them, they were strictly verboten for quizes and exams as an unfair advantage. It wasn't until the following year when I entered grad school when the university altered policy and made them a mandatory requirement when taking certain courses. I shelled out $200 for a Rockwell/Unicom that had trig/financial functions.

That was still a LOT of money back then for a student, but it worked great... at least until a year or so after the warranty ran out. Then the #7 button went kerflunky -- just touch the button and the entire display filled with 7's. Made me ill because of what I had paid for the dang thing. But by then I was out of school and working with a desktop calculator provided by my employer, so it really wasn't necessary to pick-up a replacement until prices for a full-featured handheld dropped to a more reasonable $25~35. Never had a need for the fancier, fully "programmable" models.

[VOA]

bump

[Bush2000]

Then add a non-deductable sum to their corporate income tax equal to the wages they pay every foreign worker employed by them or a contractor (to punish companies like Nike and the Gap) if the percentage of their foreign labor accounts for more than 20% of their general labor force and 10-15% of their white collar labor force. Look, something has to be done.

You don't seem to get it: Protectionism doesn't work. The cost of goods (textiles, semiconductors, etc) are low now because there are no protective tariffs. So, if you essentially put tariffs in place (and let's face it: a corporate tax on foreign labor amounts to a tariff on goods and services), the cost of goods will go up and thereby reduce demand. The reduction in demand will likewise cost jobs because inflation has a ripple effect across the economy. Economics 101.

[hchutch]

The answer is not to heap more abuse on companies that are fleeing overregulation and an out-of-control lawsuit culture. The fact is, bashing big business migth sound cool, it might be a thing that will score points with the little people, but when Big Business decides it's had enough of the hostile business climate, and decides to move to a friendlier one, whatcha gonna do?

[tm22721]

So when will FR start applying Six Sigma to increase the quality of posters/postings ??

BUMP

[Arthalion]

Significantly, .Net skills are appearing on the must-have list alongside Java and XML

I don't see it. I took some time out about a year ago to get up to speed on .Net, and since then have become very skilled with C#, J#, and VB.Net in a variety of programming scenarios. As an experienced programmer predating the boom days, my resume still brings in a lot of calls from headhunters trying to place me in new jobs. Do you know how many proposals I've had for jobs requiring .Net skills? Zero. While some employers would "like you to know it", the in-demand skills are still C++, Java, XML, and VB6. I have seen suprisingly little interest in the .Net platform at an enterprise level. It's really a shame too, because I actually enjoy programming C# (C# programming is VS.NET is nearly painless).

[Bush2000]

So when will FR start applying Six Sigma to increase the quality of posters/postings ??

LOL! I would settle for a "Do not show this poster's comments to me" checkbox.

[Bush2000]

I dunno. This study was largely derived from surveys with businesses. Needs change over time, and it's certainly possible that the differences in technology deployment could be regional.

[john316]

I guess my CNE won't get me far this year..

[Arthalion]

I dunno. This study was largely derived from surveys with businesses. Needs change over time, and it's certainly possible that the differences in technology deployment could be regional.

Possibly, but I only live 90 minutes from the Silicon Valley and that's where most of these job offers have originated (I used to commute there regularly, but gave it up for a local job 10 minutes from my house). While the Valley is definitely suffering a major downturn right now, a HUGE percentage of new software still originates from the area, and it's usually on the leading edge of new software trends. It's also worth mentioning that I also recently saw a survey done of the major job boards evaluating the "in demand" skills among actual positions open today. IIRC, C# was 9th or 10th on the list...behind even JavaScript and Cobol. I think this will change over the next few years because it's such a good language, but there isn't a whole lot of activity with it today.

[VOA]

bump