How the IT industry will change as a result of a pandemic – experts argue
How will a pandemic affect IT?
The measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus certainly affect all areas of the business, including IT. But, in our opinion, today the IT sector suffers less, since it does not require constant presence in the office and tasks directly dependent on location. In our company, many employees worked remotely before self-isolation, and everyone could stay at home any day. The transition to the remote format took place “painlessly” for us. We believe that those IT specialists who work in companies related to production, logistics, tourism and those who depend on their customers are at risk. And also we notice that all known IT conferences go online or are completely canceled, which also affects the IT industry as a whole.
Our company is ready for the fact that in the next six months or a year, we are likely to expect a decrease in the number of orders, as IT is still a supporting structure (in fact, the service sector), and economic growth has slowed down or stopped. All these factors, of course, will affect our industry.
We hope only that the main industries with which our company works (retail, public and financial sectors, healthcare) do not suffer global losses and, for the most part, continue to operate normally.
Which IT areas will become more popular, and which will be in decline?
All IT areas will be in demand in varying degrees, and, of course, will depend heavily on customers and industry.
As the last 2 months of self-isolation showed, the maximum leap was received: online trading, online training, online games (the sale of many games increased 3-4 times, but IT specialists are also working on their development), online food delivery, online movie theaters , online orders of various levels, a public services system, applications that provide financial services, taxi services, grocery deliveries and other retailers. All these are delivery services and companies providing online services, they require various IT specialists, from technical support and community managers to architects and developers of the Senior level.
Various messengers, video communication systems, cloud storage solutions, data protection, remote access will remain in demand. In our opinion, the demand for all systems will only increase and it is too early to talk about the decline of any system, and IT specialists will have to complete all these tasks.
If you look at our company, recently the most frequent requests are the development of personal accounts, portals, cross-platform applications, CRM, project and banking software.
How will the IT job market change?
Over the past few years, the IT labor market has been constantly growing and developing, new professions appear and, as a result, a “personnel shortage” is formed. Pandemic crossed out this trend.
Perhaps, against the background of self-isolation, new professions related to supporting enterprises that decided to switch to a remote work format will appear. Most likely there will be small cuts that slightly lower salary levels.
And, of course, experts who write the code themselves, develop the architecture, those who can support the existing code and work independently will remain in demand. Consequently, the managerial staff will suffer the most, as well as small companies and companies working with the sectors most affected by the pandemic, such as tourism.
In the current situation, we did not stop the search for candidates, the number of requests decreased by only 3%, and traffic to the company’s career site increased by 18%.
Will outsourcing push out in-house development?
Outsourcing has become an integral part of the IT business, especially for companies that do not have their own professional development team. Outsourcing a project means saving money and time, reducing risks and avoiding mistakes, as well as comprehensive maintenance.
Professional outsourced IT companies provide not only the full support of highly professional specialists who have created dozens of projects, but also offer financial guarantees, select IT solutions and IT infrastructures for each customer. True, it is very important to seriously choose a contractor.
In our opinion, outsourcing development provides too many benefits to customers, and it’s difficult to quickly assemble your own competent team, few customers are willing to take risks and significantly increase development time. Therefore, IT outsourcing is not going anywhere.
