Job Security Through Specialization

New Mar2004 internet material worth reading:

• http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/07/OFFSHORING.TMP
• http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/07/MNGRT5G2GL1.DTL&type=printable

People who think they have better or more specialized skills than the average IT person and therefore immune to changes may want to read these, and put their thoughts in the related discussion pages.

How many more years left in your otherwise normal IT career?? Would you be sailing through the upcoming turbulent period like you have done so before?

You know, it's interesting to compare the complaints made in those articles with some of the boosterism that came in answer to the question WhyDoYouPermitThisToBeDoneToYou?

Meanwhile, the stories in those articles give this reader the very strong impression that certain folks in southern California seem to believe that 1) the world owes them a living, 2) owes them a living at least as good as the best they ever had, 3) this living should improve monotonically, for ever, 4) this living should require of them only work they are already skilled at and 5) this living should allow them to live exactly where they wish.

More specialized skills leave an IT worker more exposed. Amongst the keys to employability are flexibility, genericity of ability, and being focussed on delivering solutions rather than deployment of technlogies. But they greatest of these is flexibility.