I'm a rust belt boy. I've lived in or near Cleveland, Ohio my entire life, so I've had a front row seat for the erosion of the manufacturing jobs that once put paychecks in the pockets of everyone's dad (and a few moms) when I was a kid. And I had a couple of those jobs myself, before I had the opportunity to make a major career change and jump on the WWW bandwagon in 1997.
Back then it looked like anybody with web-related tech skills was going to be set for life. But a quarter-century later it's clear that even technology jobs are not immune to some of the same forces that so dramatically changed the manufacturing industry.
Consider this from Cloud computing skills gap is widening, warns IDC, a ComputerWeekly.com article by Archana Venkatraman:
About 1.7 million cloud computing-related job roles globally could not be filled in 2012 because applicants lacked training, certification and experience needed to work in a cloud-enabled world, according to a study by IDC.
If that news surprises you, it's time to wake up. It should be abundantly clear by now that the cloud is not going away. And as cloud computing matures and evolves it will bring significant changes to IT.
In July 2012 I interviewed two experts on cloud computing, Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (product director for cloud computing at AT&T) and Dr. James Baty (VP of Oracle Global Enterprise Architecture). The discussion focused on the emerging Role of the Cloud Architect. During that conversation Dr. Baty advised that even among experienced architects, cloud computing is "about all of us upping our game." (Access the interview here.)
Times, even for those in IT, are changing. So what are doing to up your game?