Research predicts that the IT industry is set to lose a significant amount of low-skilled jobs to automation—an alarming prospect, particularly for economies in which the Tech Support industry is the biggest employment generator. With artificially intelligent machines slowly taking over more and more complex IT tasks, will automation create more jobs than it is rendering obsolete? Exactly how will it affect the industry as we know it? Below are some useful insights on automation in the IT industry:
- Although most of the jobs that automation will wipe out are bottom-of-the-pyramid positions, certain mid-level workers also run the risk of being unemployable, if they fail to upgrade their knowledge and skillset—something that isn’t entirely a new trend in the IT sector. In this industry, learning must never stop and people need to keep improving and updating themselves in order to keep up with the ever-progressive industry.
- Recent reports also point out that while certain jobs will perish, there will be a significant increase in the demand for high skilled jobs, such as those related to analytics, big data, machine learning, design, mobility, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things.
- With different sectors also pushing for automation, new jobs are likely to be created across levels, giving birth to a strong startup community that is hungry for upper skill workers. This is especially true in this day and age of diverse information and large amounts of data, when more skill-based positions are likely to open up such as data scientists, digital marketing experts, and designers. Data scientists will be in particularly high demand due to automation—this applies not only in IT and Tech Support sectors, but also in R&D, manufacturing, as well as in banking and finance sectors.
- Different jobs related to the internet of things will likewise be generated, as the need for managing and maintaining internet infrastructure grows.
