IT skills crisis looms – and outsourcing won't help

silicon.com has a report today on the situation with Europe’s IT resources titled “IT skills crisis looms – and outsourcing won’t help”, based on a Forrester Research report. For me the most telling statements are:

Forrester senior analyst Richard Peynot said: “All the evidence indicates that Europe faces a serious risk of a shortage of IT skills and Forrester believes that companies need to take action now to support long-term IT competency needs and to pay close attention to the implications of renewed competition for the best talents.”

For what I see though the IT industry is actually heading in completely the opposite direction and reducing training. the logic seems to go something like this “we don’t need to give someone technical training because those jobs are going abroad and all of these IT people already have some business experience”. In my experience most IT people struggle to relate to business issues. Most IT people are in the job for the technology, not for the business benefit that it delivers. The ones who get a buzz from seeing a business change are the minority, and it’s those skills that the IT industry is going to need in increasing numbers over the coming years.

The technical jobs are inevitably going off-shore because they really can be done remotely. The jobs that need to be done intimately with the customer can’t be done remotely (yet).