IT salaries, job market hit a speed bump

Janco Associates survey finds a mere 1.39 percent increase in salaries and waning demand for IT professionals in the past year

Don't look now, but IT salaries are static and hiring is slowing, according to a survey of the job market.

Management consulting firm Janco Associates and eJobDescription.com's 2016 IT Salary Survey found that salaries for IT professionals in North America had increased only 1.39 percent in the past 12 months, with demand for IT professionals waning. The increase in the previous year had been close to 3 percent. 

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, the U.S. job market for IT grew by 125,700 positions in 2015, compared to 129,400 in 2014; 74,900 in 2013; and 62,500 in 2012.

"What's happening is demand for new IT activity is decreasing because of uncertainty in the business community," said M. Victor Janulaitis, Janco CEO, in an interview. These uncertainties include the economy, situations in Europe and China, and the Presidential race.

Janco's research pours some cold water on what have been glowing job market assessments recently from Dice.com. Foote Partners, though, found a slowdown in IT job growth late last year.

Janulaitis sees tough going for IT job seekers. "If you don't have the exact skills an organization is looking for, it's going to be very difficult for you to find a position," he said. And people with jobs will find there won't be much of a salary increase because there is no pressure to do so.

The Janco research found that from January 2015 to January 2016, the total mean compensation for all IT professionals had increased from $81,583 to $82,483. In large enterprises, the median compensation rose 1.48 percent, from $83,872 to $85,110.

Janco surveyed 252 companies with revenues of at least $500 million and 722 companies with revenues less than $500 million as part of its research. Salary data for the survey drew from 78 U.S. cities and 23 Canadian cities. 

Source: InfoWorld

The cloud and the Internet of things are inseparable

The Internet of things requires the cloud to work, and the cloud will evolve to better serve IoT

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week featured plenty of cloud-related announcements from a wide variety of companies. Indeed, most new devices, from refrigerators to cars, have a massive cloud-based back end. The cloud components of these technologies are becoming more systemic. Indeed, the cloud is assumed.

More and more, people expect everything to be connected. No matter if it’s a washer and dryer, a refrigerator, or a car, they all communicate or will communicate with cloud servers. Why? Companies that make these devices understood early on that it does not make sense to keep all the smarts and storage in the device itself, and these devices must be instantly upgradable for them to have long-term value. Think about your TV service or smartphone updates. That's how cars and thermostats -- and eventually everything else that’s electronic in your home -- are beginning to work.

However, there are downsides to all this connectivity -- security, for one. Although I don’t mind my TV getting hacked, I am concerned about the connected car I’ll be driving. Worse, I’m not seeing a focus on security by manufacturers. It’s going to take a few close calls for the industry to wake up and understand that anything connected must come with well-defined and well-implemented security.

We’ll see a lot of growth in cloud-based services for devices in the next few years, much of it from Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft, plus some from purpose-built clouds that device developers may share or use exclusively. We’ll see growth in compute and storage services to support these devices, and we'll see upgrades in communications networks, including higher-speed cellular systems that will rival the pace of home networks.

Keep in mind that this is not some future development. It’s happening right now. Look at the number of devices that are connected to your Wi-Fi hub at home as evidence that we’re undergoing a major change in how we use technology. This change cannot happen without the use of cloud services. And the explosion in cloud-enabled devices is one more reason cloud-based systems usage will explode in the next several years.

Source: InfoWorld