Computerworld is a traditional IT trade journal that has been around throughout most of my career in the computer field; as far as I can recall, it began churning out weekly issues somewhere around 1970. On January 1st, Computerworld published its survey of the “hot skills” that CIO’s and IT executives will be looking for when they hire new people in 2007 (see “The Hottest Skills for 2007“). Here they are:

• Programming/application development
• Project management
• IT/business analysis
• Security
• Help desk/technical support

Yawn … is that it? That’s what our top IT executives are looking for, to help keep their organizations at the top of the heap, making the best possible use of technology? Sheesh!

Not that I have anything against programming, application development, project management, etc. They’re all important and necessary, and for a young graduate who has just emerged from a college or university with some kind of diploma or certificate in these areas, this is probably good news. Unfortunately, the same survey indicated that 59% of people responding to the survey (presumably mostly in North America, but it wasn’t entirely clear) are planning on keeping the same headcount as in 2006; 33% are planning to add more people, and 8% are planning to trim their headcount. I suppose we should be gratified that a third of the IT organizations throughout the land are planning to increase their staff, but somehow, it doesn’t sound very exciting.

Meanwhile, where’s the emphasis on expertise with new technologies? Where’s the search for people who exhibit skills or aptitude in the area of innovation? What about multidisciplinary skills, so we can have people making better use of IT in biology or chemistry or government or basket-weaving? What about people who are good at synthesizing large amounts of disparate, apparently unrelated trends, patterns, and business scenarios? What about grit, gumption, entrepreneurial passion, or a determination to change the world? It sounds to me as if most CIOs are looking to hire a bunch of robots.

And if that’s the case, why not just outsource the demand for new technical skills to India, China, or some other part of the world. Oh, wait: yes, that’s exactly what they’re doing. And why not?

And if that’s the situation, why would I — if I were a first-year or second-year university student, thinking about a major — want to work for such a company? For that matter, why would I even want to consider IT as a career? Of course, one answer is to simply ignore the IT departments in Fortune 500 companies (the kind of companies who participate in these surveys, and subscribe to Computerworld), and look for a really exciting company to work for in Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley (SOHO, in New York City), or Silicon Hills (Austin), Silicon Beach (Santa Barbara), Silicon Bog (the midlands of Ireland), Silicon City (Chicago), Silicon Bayou (Lousiana), Silicon Alps (Carinthia, Austria), Silicon Desert (Phoenix), Silicon Ditch (the M4 corridor, west out of London), Silicon Dominion (Virginia), Silicon Fen (Cambridge, England), Silicon Freeway (southern California), Silicon Forest (Seattle), Silicon Valley North (Ottawa) or any of the Silicon X high-tech centers springing up around the world). Maybe Google … maybe the tiny startup company that has grand ambitions to become the next Google.

Anyway, take a look at this Computerworld article if you’re looking for a straightforward, humdrum job in the computer industry. But if you’re really excited by the prospects and possibilities of computing — as I have been throughout my career in this field — and if you’re determined that you can and will change the world (hopefully for the better), then pay no attention to the article. I’m tempted to say also that you should pay no attention to Computerworld and other trade journals of its ilk; but since the dinosaur IT organizations aren’t going to disappear for quite a while (we still need banks and insurance companies and automobile manufacturers, and so forth), it’s occasionally useful to know what’s going on in such organizations.

But if you really want to know what kind of exciting things are going on out there in IT-land, the blogosphere is where you’ll find it. But you already know that: after all, you found this blog posting, right? And if you found this one, you’re hopefully subscribing to a couple dozen other blogs that report on the latest activities in whatever aspect of computing you’re interested in. Keep at it: that’s where the future is.