Future of IT

Who am I?Lorna Garey is content director of InformationWeek digital media and executive editor, features, of InformationWeek. She has edited technical features since 1995, when she joined eWeek (then PCWeek) as a layout editor. She moved to Network Computing in October 2000 as an associate editor and was named the publication's executive editor in 2006.

Before joining eWeek, Lorna served for six years in the U.S. Army, on the general staff at Second Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas; at U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army Central Command at Heidelberg, Germany; and with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. She held a Top Secret clearance.

Lorna has been the force behind compelling articles and cover designs that have earned industry recognition, including ASBPE national awards. She studied English and history at the University of Massachusetts, barely scraped through math for liberal arts majors, and is a certified technical writer

Three Strategic Observations• You need to learn to code

It’s the only way to really understand how computers work and therefore what’s possible. DevOps is the future. Essentially everything can now be automated/orchestrated.

• You need to always, always be exploringFor a successful career in tech you can’t stand still. You have to be constantly finding new shiny stuff and thinking about how to apply it to help your company. Find what you are passionate about.

• Success is at the intersection of tech and business. Take accounting, communications, and marketing courses. A techie who can speak the language of business has more opportunities than the one who knows 14 programming languages but has zero people skills.

What’s hot in big companies?

What’s hot in smaller companies?

You need to learn to code. Why?> Because “cloud” is synonymous with “automated and software-defined.” Think SDN (software-defined network), SDDC (software-defined datacenter), convergence. Treat servers like cattle, not pets.

> It’s “DevOps” not “OpsDev” – DevOps has many definitions. Essentially, it’s extending the Agile methodology of frequent application iteration to operations. Even if you want to work with hardware, take a look at Chef and Puppet.

> What languages are ascending? Tops in our survey: JavaScript, both client- and server-side (Node.js, etc.), Java, C#, C++, Bash/Shell scripting, C, VB/VB.NET, Python, PHP, Perl, Objective-C, Ruby, Matlab, Groovy, R. Top dev environments: Visual Studio, Eclipse, Command Line/vi/gedit, NetBeans

> Also in demand: Database architects, especially those with NoSQL chops. Hadoop, MongoDB, Cassandra. And security! Penetration testing, forensics.

Always, always be exploring. Why?> Data center is blue collar and shrinking. Don’t do technology unless you are flexible about change.

> The most successful people tend to be those who follow their bliss and do more than just what’s assigned to them by people. The best thing you can do is to step off the ladder/treadmill and just start doing what fascinates you.

> The pace of technology change is accelerating, but that’s not the whole story. We face some generational shifts:

> In-house data centers and applications moving to IaaS and SaaS> Consumerization and democratization of tech. It’s no longer a black art.> Big data, often unstructured. How do we mine it? Internet of things.> Security – Nation-state attackers. No perimeter.

Success is at the intersection of tech and business.

> There will be many fewer jobs doing server support as infrastructure and applications shift to the cloud. But someone still has to help the business choose and implement those cloud systems securely.

> IT is not computer science. Learn the difference. It will make you a better interviewee, and enable you to make smart career choices now, instead of later.

> One up-and-coming role: Cloud Broker.

Observations from my CIO friends: Computer science is good for coding but practical experience always wins. So get an internship.

Don't do technology unless you are flexible about change. | Coding isn't about learning to code, it's about becoming a systems thinker.

Pick a platform and stick with it a while instead of trying to learn multiple ones at once.

Employers and the market are not very interested in desktop applications right now. Expect that interest level to go down further.

Don't listen to global code popularity contests. Check the want ads for companies that you admire and see what they want.

Observations from my CIO friends: Get a github account. The employers you want to work for will want to see it, and your portfolio of work.

The easy learning road is often the way to join a crowd of easy-road colleagues, which is fine when there is market demand, but less good during market declines. To wit: Dot Net.

If you just want to “do technology” then the best life is likely as a software developer, not in “IT” or “networks” or “administration.”

I SAY ALSO:Start building your personal brand: Build a professional Twitter presence. Follow people who are where you want to be, and then see who they follow. Establish a LinkedIn account. Sure, you don’t have much on your résumé now, but set up an account anyway and begin networking, documenting your achievements, and taking part in group discussions (there are many groups for tech).