We know that the days of getting a gold watch upon retiring from a company at which you spent your entire adult life are gone. People change jobs and companies--or think about changing jobs and companies--all the time. But what’s precipitating that change now? Today, changes in employment are often keyed to changes in technology.
More money has always been a strong driver for career change. With the downturn in the economy, a “change” in job was sometimes a matter of accepting whatever was available in an extremely tight market. Now that the economic outlook is brighter (if not exactly bright), many IT and business professionals are following technology to new careers, according to the ninth annual IT Skills and Salary Survey.
The 2016 IT Skills and Salary Survey was conducted by Global Knowledge, a learning services and professional development solutions provider. The survey was conducted online from Sept. 21 to Oct. 23, 2015. Global Knowledge and its partners sent out survey invitations to more than half a million IT and business professionals. The survey yielded more than 14,000 completed responses from around the globe, with the majority coming from the United States and Canada. The 2016 IT Skills and Salary Report focuses on North America, where 8,923 IT professionals and 1,263 business professionals shared their input.
One-third of respondents to the survey indicated that they have considered leaving their present field for another career. The percentage of IT decision makers who feel this way skews lower, at 29 percent, but it’s up for non-IT professionals, at 44 percent.
Fourteen percent of respondents said they had relocated to take a new position, with one in four (24 percent) moving to a new employer. Thirty-five percent stated they changed job roles in the previous year, ranging from 30 percent for ITDMs to 37 percent for non-IT professionals.
“Looking more closely at high-demand specialties, it’s likely that increasing innovation and new technology adoptions will force change into IT organization,” states the “2016 IT Skills and Salary Survey Report.”
The report notes that there will be two catalysts for an acceleration in these trends--cloud-based operations and the Internet of Things—“as ITDMs seek to reconfigure their teams to maximize opportunities in the market.”
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