Dive Brief:
- Two-thirds of IT professionals are completely confident in their career choice as macroeconomic conditions worsen, according to SolarWinds data shared with CIO Dive. The company surveyed 255 IT professionals via its community portal for the research.
- However, where an IT professional works might determine how they feel day-to-day. Half of surveyed workers felt that they have taken on the work of two jobs over the past two years, according to the report. The other half said they felt their company was adequately staffed.
- There is also a discrepancy related to pay across IT professionals. Three in 10 respondents said they are not fairly compensated. Just 4% said they were overpaid, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
Tuesday, Sept. 20 marks the seventh annual IT Pro Day, a celebration created by SolarWinds in 2015 as a way to give credit to the IT pros who keep businesses up and running.
Effective leaders know they are only as good as the people they work with, so it’s not shocking that businesses have made efforts to entice skilled IT professionals to join their ranks.
“In today’s business environment, the script has flipped — IT pros are essential to getting work done in every department, and can offer critical insights that deliver business advantages, like speeding up a legal team’s procurement process or improving a sales team’s customer interactions,” Prasad Ramakrishnan, SVP of IT and CIO at Freshworks, said in an email.
The tech industry has added 175,700 jobs this year, up 46% from last year, according to a CompTIA review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As businesses add new tech workers, employee experience has come to the forefront — tech workers have made it clear they can switch jobs if they want.
“Business leaders should regularly ask their IT teams for feedback both from their own experience using software, as well as the experience of others across the organization,” Ramakrishnan said. “IT pros have a bird’s eye view of a company’s departments and know firsthand which software is effective and gaining popularity, and which isn’t being used.”
From increasing wages to flexibility, companies have had to learn the hard way that they have to put in the work to retain IT pros that have a plethora of options. However, it's clear that IT pros overall still have issues they’d like resolved including adequate staffing.
“This is particularly challenging for IT teams because they’re not only feeling understaffed but also are expected to do more with less as network environments become increasingly complicated,” Thomas LaRock, SolarWinds head geek, said. “Remote work and hybrid and multicloud environments have made it extremely difficult to keep networks — and businesses — running smoothly, but these IT pros show up every day to get the job done.”
