IT and Tech Skills Are Getting More Specialized

Tech_Skils_Specialized The contemporary world is all about technology, and technology is evolving with each passing day. So much so, it has become difficult for IT managers to keep up with every change. This fast change in technology has affected both the nature of IT jobs and the expectations of CIOs and CTOs of IT companies from tech talent. It’s true that the demand for tech talent is increasing and will continue to increase in the days to come, but the employment criteria for IT and tech talent has changed with time because tech skills are getting more and more specialized.

There has been a lot of talk about tech skills gap lately. It’s true that this gap in the tech industry exists because the technical skills required for specific positions are getting more specialized. This has amplified the need for more advanced tech talent that can fit the description of these expert level jobs. And finding such qualified tech talent is as difficult as it gets.

Consider this example of Microsoft web developer. Just a few years ago, one tech employee was considered qualified enough to handle a multitude of jobs if it had sufficient experience in just ASP.NET, C#, web services, JavaScript, and SQL Server. Sure, there were different ways of architecting these together (e.g. stack and heap vs. a structured array). But today, the number of options is exponentially greater.

The tech industry relies on innovation. From smart-phones to self-driving cars, and from artificial intelligence to machine language, technology has had a huge and significant impact on how humans live their lives today. Thus, in order to continue influencing human lives, the tech industry demands constant innovation. And for that, it needs tech talent that can cope up with the latest tech advancements to innovate things frequently for the good.

This article is all about how tech skills have become more advanced and specialized, and how because of that, the need for specialized tech talent has gone up. Here are just a few examples of how the tech specialization is coming into play:

1- JavaScript

The first dominant Javascript libraries were AJAX, JSON, and JQuery. Over a couple of years only, tech talent has been introduced to newer and more advanced JavaScript libraries, such as Angular, Ember, Backbone, Node.js, Bootstrap, and Polymer. As of now, there are more than two hundred JavaScript libraries and frameworks that tech talent can work with. In fact, if you want to do interesting things using JavaScript, you will have to use its advanced features, such as AJAX and JSON API. Thus, if you’re not qualified to deal with the sophisticated and complex features of JavaScript that are coming in, you’re not the tech talent IT companies are looking for. It’s the differences like these that increase tech skills gap.

2- .NET

What once used to be the single “full” framework of .NET, has now been extended and broken out to include .NET Core, PCLs, .NET Standard, Entity Framework, and WCF and ASP.NET Web API. There are so many supported platforms for the various applications that we use today that, realistically, no one .NET developer can know all of the .NET. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the .NET developer who can do everything with .NET doesn’t even exist. What IT companies should do in order to reduce tech skills gap is that they can hire .NET developers they can find and then boost their professional development in order to help them become the kind of .NET developer they are looking for.

3- Cyber Security

As the technology continues to take giant strides ahead every day, cyber attacks have also become a common menace. It is tech skills gap that keeps companies from finding the advanced cyber security professionals who can find weaknesses in modern IT infrastructure and fix its loopholes. The demand for cyber security professionals with specialized skills is high, but the availability is sadly quite low.

4- Cloud Computing

The cloud-based computing has changed the nature of IT jobs and tech skills. Both these things are no longer the way they used to be since cloud computing has become the new norm in companies. With giant cloud service providers, like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, in the business, it has become very difficult to maintain the level of competition. Designing new features for cloud services now requires so much more than just an ordinary IT professional. Keeping the reigning players of cloud computing in mind, you can very well imagine the kind of tech talent cloud service providers would look for in order to have an edge over their competitors.

5- Agile Methodology

In order to stay competitive and abreast with latest IT developments, today, IT companies need .NET developers who not only have sufficient experience of working with Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, but who are also capable of dealing with Agile Methodology as well. Now, when we talk about Agile Methodology, we must know that it’s an umbrella term used for numerous incremental and iterative software development methodologies, like Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal, Scrum, Lean Development, Future-Driven Development (FDD), and Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM). Today, even having a grip on Agile Methodology is not enough. It is mandatory for the high in demand tech talent to be well-versed with DevOps tools as well. Developer-centric testing tools have become quite common, but finding such all-rounder tech talent is obviously a difficult task. It does nothing but increase tech skills gap within the industry.

You can see how tech skills in demand today have become more specialized. IT companies that used to search for a large pool of tech talent with each individual professional having eight required skills are now looking for a smaller pool of IT professionals with each individual having twenty required skills. They are looking for tech talent that is proficient and has working knowledge of cloud computing platforms, cyber security, networking, IT infrastructure, and many other related tech roles. This is the primary reason as to why the demand for specialized tech talent has gone up, and why tech skills gap has widened.

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