Brush up on your coding – more tech jobs are going to be hybrids that mix ops and software, or require AI skills

System administrators and IT operations pros might want to rethink their careers, because analyst firm IDC is predicting substantial drops in the number of people employed in such roles.

The firm this week published its first “Worldwide xOps Census and Forecast” – a study that predicts “a substantial shift in the responsibilities of IT professionals will occur over the next five years.”

“IT professionals in the most purely operational roles are facing a transition to a more technical or focused role that very often may involve some level of software development work,” the firm asserts.

  • stanleytweedle
    4·
    2 years ago

    As a result, more tech workers find themselves in what IDC described as “hybrid roles that combine traditional development activities with activities that formerly were associated with operations professionals who historically had few or no development-oriented responsibilities.”

    I guess I’ve always been in what they’re calling a ‘hybrid role’ because this doesn’t seem like a new thing. Every good sysadmin I’ve worked with has some coding skills, not necessarily for developing software products but for solving IT problems. I can’t tell if they’re calling that ‘development’ or saying sysadmin need to learn to develop software products. Either way doesn’t seem like they’re talking about the same sector I’m familiar with.