Fortune telling on coffee grounds, or what will IT be like in 5 years?

Long-term forecasts do not work right now.

When I wrote my first program on the MK-61 in 1992, Assembler struggled with machine codes. No database and web. When I received my first IT salary in the 1999th, I did not expect the average salary to increase 10+ times. In the first place, there was not even a concept of a bug tracker and a repository, but now it is the norm.

When I was studying as a software engineer, I did not expect to become a manager and be interested in the project “Psychology in IT”. Perhaps you even read articles from this project on the Habrère about working with Group Resistance (attracting attention, fighting for power, revenge, helplessness) or about the sequence Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance .

Long-term forecasts do not work, but you can predict short-term changes on the coffee grounds. Colleagues, let's think about how the life of an IT specialist will change in the next few years. Under the cut my ideas are in theses.

Technology and Learning

One line of code will include more and more machine operations. Example: an online store 10 years ago required a man of labor, and now a day or two to adapt the template. Demand for new employees who own new technologies will grow. As well as the desire of companies to keep people on old projects on old technologies. So cheaper. This will cause strong conflicts between companies and employees.

The classical education system in universities will continue to lag behind life. Online education systems will receive priority.Even now, there is more respect for the PMI than for the diploma. When an online diploma gets equal status with offline at the state level, universities, in the form in which we know them, will cease to exist for several years. Only the largest and most prestigious universities will stay afloat.

Holivars will remain, themes will change. Pascal vs C used to be popular, then Linux vs Windows on the desktop, now Android vs Apple. Typically, holivars do not end, just the subject of the dispute dies first.

Neither the market leader today can not guarantee yourself a cloudless futurefor several years to come. For example, Motorolla before the launch of Iridium, Microsoft after Windows 2000, Samsung during the time of CRT. As soon as someone stops in development or stumbles a couple of times in a row - he dies. Or you need a genius like Steve Jobs to lift.

Labor market and salaries

Demand for IT professionals will only grow in the next few years . I would like to believe that in the future too, but ... At different times, chemists, physicists, aviators and radio engineers were megawacked. Now - much less. Pay attention to how fast the demand for middle admins falls due to the transition to the clouds. Specialization (“tyzhprogramist”) will play a large role.

We will soon see a wave of people who have been working on the same project for 5+ years, dropped out of the mainstream, and are now in little demand on the labor market. I want a big salary, I’m used to learning, and the labor market requires new knowledge and a lot of free time.

The growth of IT salaries will change. If earlier, the average bar on the market influenced growth more, and the bar was pushed by the price of programmers in Europe and the USA, now growth will depend more on business benefits. In the next couple of years, I estimate the salary ceiling, under which there will be 95% of IT people - at ~ $ 40 per hour. Moreover, many will be below $ 25.

Our 90s demographic pit has already affected the first courses of universities, in a few years it will become more difficult to find juniors . Programmers in China and India are also studying. I think that in the coming years we will see many teams “Russian Signors + Asian Juniors”. Spoken English will become a basic requirement, like proficiency in a bug tracker.

It seems that food companies will continue to supplant outsourcing. At least, while the salary in India is not equal to ours.

An outsourcing company, when it sells a person, takes 50-80% of the money for itself - this is the company's profit, office, accounting, hardware, software, admin, risk insurance, holidays, sick leave, etc. The freelancer's salary ceiling is much higher . Of course, freelance is not for everyone. The personnel vacuum cleaner is already working, look at the growing popularity of the theme of freelance on the hub

Pension . By the time IT pros born in 1975-1991 begin to think about retirement, it will become clear that when there are two retirees per worker, you won’t have to rely on a big pension. And a deposit in the bank will not help here. Most likely, this will lead to a great desire to work "to the last."

The working process

Freelance and work from home will continue to gain popularity . It is cost effective. Business shortcomings of distributed teams will be circumvented due to increased requirements for managers. The ability to manage such a team requires a few other skills than similar in the office.

It will become smaller than medium-sized firms . Large ones will live off savings on wholesale; small ones will live off on mobility. Likewise, issues with protection from the state and raider seizures will be solved by large lawyers and great friends, and small ones by uninteresting raids.

When I started, it was possible to make a super project together. Now we need a team of 6+ people. The time for singles has passed, the time has come for big teams. Since specialists do not summarize like workers on the assembly line, the loss of interaction is becoming increasingly important.

Scrum and other development methodologies will continue to mutate . General direction: from a rigorous process to a greater influence of the human factor. The desire to have a self-organized and self-motivated team will give way to the understanding that even people with good specialized knowledge are not necessarily able to organize and self-motivate. Someone can be helped in this (no, not by corporate parties), but to someone it simply does not suit.