Global Tech Tales: What Buyers Want | Episode 3: IT Careers in 2025

00:00 Hi, everybody. Welcome to Global Tech Tales: What Buyers Want. I’m Keith Shaw here to moderate a discussion with other editors from around the world about technology and leadership topics. Joining me for today’s show. Matt Egan, my co-host, the global content editorial director at Foundry. He is representing the UK and Cathy O’Sullivan, she is the editor in chief of APAC for CIO and CSO coming to us from tomorrow in New Zealand. And you get to joke if you know about your geography. And Valerie Potter, she is the managing editor of features from Computerworld, also in North America/United States, somewhere in a in a bunker, right, right. Val, exactly. All right. Welcome everybody to the show. Hey, you can just wait. Thanks. Okay, so Matt, this episode, we’re on the third episode now, and we’re talking about IT careers in this one, it’s a little bit different from our other episodes, where we were covering a specific technology, such as artificial intelligence or cloud computing was our last one. So why is this the topic that and why do we think that this is still important from the IT leader perspective? Sure.
Well, as you know, Keith, we talk to it buyers every day in the world’s top markets across the globe, are hundreds of journalists are talking to IT and business leaders, professionals, operatives, and they’re doing that to understand the real world, lived experience of those who work in it. What matters to it buyers. It’s in the name of the show, right? And so in this series, that’s what we share, a deep understanding of the real views of real it buyers in all the world’s major markets, around key topics and careers is a huge topic for IT leaders how to develop their own careers, maintain their own careers, but also, and I think maybe even principally, how to build, maintain winning teams. And I’ll give you a small piece of evidence for that in our latest CIO pulse survey, which we did late last year, when asked CIOs, said that skills was the most important thing that their organization was the least focused on. In fact, only 20% of CIO respondents strongly agreed that their organization had the right level of focus on skills, on developing their teams, on staffing. So you can see that as we head into 2025 like all aspects of careers, from building those teams to managing our own careers are hugely important to it buyers, all right, and and we usually start to show off with some statistics.
So as I was doing research for for this episode, I did find three different surveys from from either different articles on the foundry sites or out there in the world, and I just wanted to just pepper the conversation, or start the conversation with these three statistics. So the first one is that IT organizations are reporting that burnout is having a big impact on companies. A new survey from the Upwork Research Institute said that 71% of full time employees say they are burned out, and 65% said they are struggling with employer demands on productivity. In addition, 81% of global C suite leaders acknowledged that increased demands on workers over the past year the second the second one is that it recruitment firm Harvey Nash has said that CIOs are decidedly pessimistic about it hiring in the new year with only 36% saying that their IT head counts would increase in 2025 which is the lowest sentiment since 2011 and then the third stat that that jumped out at me around this this topic was nearly three fourths of women in it have said that they work longer hours to improve their chances of career advancement due to in part, to gender bias and discrimination. And a Corona survey said 71% of respondents said that they work longer hours in hopes of more quickly advancing their careers, and 70% said men in it were likely to advance their careers or received promotions more quickly than women. So with that framework like, what are your thoughts on the market as we head into 2025 around either looking for a job, retaining a team and Val I know that computer world just recently published its best places to work in it, and a lot of these issues came up when you were discussing the companies out there that are, that are great at a lot of these topics, absolutely.
Well, in general, I’d say, I mean, the mood is pretty grim out there, you know, among, you know, sort of anecdotally seasoned IT pros who were laid off over the past couple of years are really having difficulty finding new work, and at the same time, companies are saying they can’t find tech workers with the right skills and experience. So there’s a real disconnect there that’s not so prevalent among the best places, companies, you know, those. These are the, these are the companies where IT pros want to work. So, you know, it’s not quite the same situation for them. But even they are saying there’s, there’s some pessimism out there about the economy and, you know, uncertainty. Be there’s a lot of disruption going on in the world right now, and I think companies just are a little hesitant to go on any kind of big hiring sprees at the moment. So that’s left everybody feeling uncertain.
Yeah. Cathy, what are you hearing about from your neck of the woods, in New Zealand and Australia, in that whole area?
Yeah, yeah, certainly. I mean, there’s been an increased focus on costs. So and certainly IT budgets aren’t what they were maybe in the in previous years, certainly around the pandemic times. So with that in mind, people are being asked to do more. They’re certainly being asked to do more with less, and that has an effect both on IT leaders and their teams. And it is interesting, though, to see the people that do place a focus on well being the results that they get. So certainly in our CIO 50 in Australia, I can think of one example where a company introduced as part of their tech team a digital and innovation well being leader. So they introduced a Gen AI assistant for their team to check in every single day on the sentiment, both within the IT team initially, and then they rolled that out to the wider organization, because it was such a success. So they’re placing a real focus, not only on just checking daily on how their teams are feeling, but introducing workshops as well, because they know that the success of their technology team is not just the tech, it is actually the people and the processes that support it. So I think leaders that do place an increased focus on well being do see results, and yet the ones that are really approaching it with that human lens, I think will have success.
Do you get a sense also that the burnout issue is real for a lot of these companies and a lot of these leaders? Do they talk to you guys about burnout for their staffs or even themselves?
Certainly, definitely hearing anecdotally from leaders that they are really feeling it tougher this year, conversations with the exec and the board are definitely tougher this year compared to previous years. Again, I do think the volatility that we find ourselves globally and also that increased focus on costs are definitely underlying factors when it comes to how, how those leaders are showing up each day. It’s really interesting.
I was I was smiling, but not in a kind of happy way, with a couple of things that both right So Val spoke about the economic realities and hardships or being an individual right now, but also the challenges that organizations have, and therefore you’ve got this weird confluence of things where organizations are both cutting costs and finding it hard to find the right skills. And then again, I was, I was smiling in an unhumorous way Cathy, because I’d actually written in my notes like doing more with less, right? That was something that I’ve heard multiple times from people in multiple markets, actually. And you know, it all wraps together. It’s kind of an unholy mess. I think expectations on it are huge, probably higher than ever. Ai cloud, they’re kind of driving those expectations from what the IT department is going to do. New technologies are expected to drive a transformative moment. But at the same time, individuals have huge economic challenges. It’s a time of high inflation and cost of living is extremely high, people rightly are expecting to be able to have some sort of work life balance. They’ve got very justified expectations around inclusivity and career development. I think an IT leader I spoke to recently characterized it as potential recruits are saying, if you are not going to give me career progression and a job for life, I want to be able to work from home when I want, which, frankly, seems quite reasonable. But at the same time, the IT leaders working in an economy where budgets are not going up, and expectations around hiring, certainly for this year, 2025 are not that great. So although it is a bit of a buyer’s market, if you are an IT talent. It’s to Val’s point. It’s not like there’s an infinite number of places you can choose to work. And then for an organization, the challenge of finding talent, retaining talent cafe, that was really interesting anecdote, because I think building that organization that Val’s report recognizes that can keep people it is so difficult and so important training talent to drive a future. And I think certainly the savvy IT leader is putting that job of building a winning team as their number one or one of their number one priorities. But for IT professionals, it’s pretty tough too. It’s really interesting and challenging time, I
think, yeah, on the on the burnout issue too, is it? Because there’s so many technologies that keep coming out, we’re now year three of generative AI. In terms of that disruption, cloud computing is still a big topic digital transformation. So there, there. Is a lot of pressure on the IT department, so I certainly can understand why those burnout issues would be there. But also, is this? Could this be a result of a lot of IT departments finally getting the spotlight shown on them, versus, you know, 2025, years ago, when you know we, you know we were arguing at computer world and some of these other places, like, give it a voice at the table and give, you know, you know, put them in with the business leaders, and then, and then all these companies finally did, and now they’re like, oh, wait, you need, you know, you want results from us. Oh, no, that’s too much pressure. But I’m just joking a little bit. Yeah. Well,
you know, you know, 10 years ago, you didn’t have people at the dinner table talking about cloud computing, right? Whereas today, you do have people at the dinner table talking about the benefits of Gen AI and how they’re using it in their you know, daily tasks at work or for their lives generally. So I think the conversations that people are having, both in the workplace and at home, feed into that expectations around what technology teams, what IT teams can deliver. So certainly, there is an increased spotlight on tech and the capabilities that organizations have.
Yeah, plus, plus the rest of the business is getting more and more tech savvy. I think the the old joke about the IT department was always that the rest of the users in the company, you know, didn’t know how to turn on a computer, or they didn’t know what happened. You know, there was the old joke of, like, Well, have you tried turning it on and off again, as when they when the Help Desk would get a call? Now, you’ve got, like, the whole issue of rogue, rogue it and shadow IT and all of that kind of stuff too. That must be putting a lot of pressure on IT departments and hiring and things like that too. And
there’s the old adage that IT teams never get thanked when things go right right. It’s always when stuff goes wrong. I mean, I think the crowd strike incident is an example of that. You know, when there was blue screens of death all around the world, people really immediately thought it was an internal problem, that it was their tech team, not that it was a global incident that was playing into these facts, into that particular incident, so certainly, yeah, they get a lot of blame for things rather than being thanked for when things go well, I’d really love to hear from Val on this, because of the Best Places to Work in IT piece, one of the things that’s really interesting about that report is it talks about the importance, on an individual level of feeling like you’re able to contribute in a positive way to the success of the business. And I think this is that this is kind of relevant to what we’re saying, right? Like somehow, exactly to your point. Cathy, it is always to blame when things go wrong, but when it successfully enables something. I’m not sure that that credit ever comes through, that really resonated to me from the report about like that, that idea of feeling like you’re making a positive contribution to the business, feeling like your work is meaningful, is somehow really important in order to keep people engaged and developing.
That’s exactly right. And that was one of my notes that I had written down for this discussion was, this is one of the means that companies use, both to attract it talent and also retain them, is actively demonstrating that it is a valued part of the organization. And so, as an example, total quality Logistics is one of the companies we profiled for for this year’s report, and one of the things that I mean, they do many things, but one of them is to hold a regular two day it hackathons. The idea is to encourage innovation and also to demonstrate the value of it to the to driving the business, not just supporting the business, but actually moving the business forward. And so, you know, these teams, there’s eight person teams, they develop software solutions with customer needs in mind, and it’s like a executives from across the company are part of this judging panel, and they choose a winning proof of concept. And often that that winning concept is developed and added to the company’s software production schedule, the winners get to have lunch with the CEO, and that’s kind of cool, but really, I think it’s like, wow, this is something we developed in this two day hackathon and now as part of our product lineup. And that’s really cool. And I think that kind of thing is happening at a lot of savvy companies that really want to develop their IT workforce and keep them engaged.
It feels like it speaks to another important need as well, which, which is the need to feel like you’re continuously learning, right? Because, again, like amazing. My app has been made, but in the process of working with colleagues across the business to build that, not only do I feel like I’ve got the opportunity to contribute to the business, but I presume some skills have been developed and some learnings happening.
Yeah, I want to, I want to ask about the skills question, because this was another thing that came out. InComputerworld, Val was Lucas Mearian wrote about when, when he’s talking about the job market for IT pros in the US specifically that the numbers are really low. It’s only like 2.5% unemployment rate, which is much lower than the general unemployment rate. And you know, but there are still some difficulties in hiring. It’s taking longer for companies to hire, versus maybe a couple of years ago. But he’s telling us that it’s a lack of skills that a lot of job hunters are finding out about, and he says that there’s a shift towards softer skills, such as you know, being able to communicate, being able to solve problems. It’s not just a list of, you know, technical certifications or degrees or things like that. So, you know, are you seeing this as well from the people that you talk with at these companies? Or do they then, you know, talk about these projects that they’re doing will help these IT staff members get those soft skills?
Yeah. I mean, I think ideally you want both. You want the employees with the hard skills, but but also the more you know sort of cross department work there is, the more collaboration you know that kind of develops those skills, and the more comfortable the employees will be the IT employees will be in working with the business side of things and so. So by by offering these programs, they also there’s a lot of there’s a lot of upskilling, there’s a lot of mentoring and other kind of career development paths and and the other thing is that there are employees from other departments being brought into it. There’s a huge surge in citizen developers, they call them, where these are business side folks who you know, with the greater capabilities, the tool, the better tools that are out there now, in terms of no code software, low code software, a lot of the business side folks are picking up the technical skills, and they may have already had the soft skills, so it’s becoming the complete package. So it’s kind of working both ways.
Yeah, on the citizen developer side, do you? Do you hear from IT leaders that support this concept, because it feels like it could be a double edged sword. It’s like, okay, you’ve got this ID department, and you know that they can develop and you know they can code. And now we’re going to bring in this whole new batch of people that now do, does the IT team have to babysit them or not babysit them? And or now, now my production is going to triple. I just, I’m wondering, with what IT leaders are telling you guys about citizen development,
I think, I mean, I’m hearing a lot about, you know, the soft skills and hard skills question is, and it’s almost similar to this idea of, do you want someone who’s got the university degree, or are you going to continue to develop raw talent. And I think the answer is my favorite answer, as you know Keith, it’s all of the above, right? So you definitely want people who are curious innovative, understand the wider scope of the business. That’s the same in any department and any organization, right, like but you also need people who are hardcore specialists who can bring new skills to the table, and certainly in the the UK and the US, which are the markets that I’m closest to, like the idea of very low unemployment in IT pros is certainly the case, but it also is a struggle to get the right skills in the right place. So sometimes you have to develop your own and I think ideally, you’re always going to go and hire the person who is the perfect blend of soft skills and hard skills, but it’s just not realistic at this point. So if you find someone who has the ability to innovate and learn and develop, then you’re going to do everything you can to hold on to them. But equally, and I think this is where organizations that are successful are very judicious in their hiring, and they might like spend top dollar and be really specific about a handful of key roles, whilst at the same time staffing up with the right quality of person and developing that person on the role. But Cathy, when you talk to IT leaders the whole time, I’d be interested to get your take on that.
Yeah, certainly something I’m hearing, and I guess it also depends on career stage, like certainly, I think, for when CIOs are going out and they’re looking for maybe more junior people in their team. I’m definitely hearing a lot of conversations around hiring for attitude hiring from different parts of the business and upskilling within the team, and very interested in what you said as well. Val about hiring for other parts of the business, because that’s certainly something I’m hearing a lot more of. I can think, for example, of a company who the CIO literally took over the reception desk as part of her role when they were doing a restructure, and as part of that, she. Ended up training through her team, training up a lot of the reception staff to join the the IT support help desk and some of those people have again grown in their roles over the last few years, and have Yeah, have developed their careers in technology. So great to Yeah, to chat to those leaders who are thinking differently about hiring that it’s looking internally as well, people who know the business, who have relationships in the business as well, and can be developed internally. It’s great to hear those success stories.
I will say that it’s important for companies who are upskilling their employees to carve out time in the Workday for that to happen. It seems like an obvious thing to say, but a lot of companies will offer these, you know, training modules and other opportunities, but they, they don’t, you know, they they’re not allowing their employees to set aside certain times of the day or certain week, days of the week, or whatever, for these training efforts. And so the onus is on the employee to just do it on their own time. And that’s not, you know, it’s just not a supportive way to do it. And you know, these employees are already struggling with work life balance, which, you know Matt had mentioned earlier, and and burnout, and you know, that’s just going to add to the problem
in Australia, where a company, they created a Gen AI Academy, an internal Gen AI Academy, and they had dedicated Gen AI time for every single employee within that company. And it’s a big company as well, but it was in everyone’s calendars. They had credits that they could use. They had their own cryptocurrency for completing those courses that they could use for other things. So 100% agree that, you know, it is important that, yeah, that that time is allowed within the workday to actually have those opportunities for development.
Yeah, that makes me think of what Val was talking about earlier, when she was mentioning the it hackathon at that one company. And I started thinking, Well, I hope that it hackathon wasn’t like a 24 hour event, where you have to be at work for 24 hours and we’ll give you some pizza and refreshments, but then you have to go back to work at 9am hopefully they carved out the correct amount of time for that.
This is the other thing that has to be addressed when we talk about burnout. Is post pandemic, which is a big, traumatic experience for everybody, but has been transformative in the transformative in the way we work. We’re also in a time where most of the major economies are not performing brilliantly, and at a time of, let’s face it, high, late period capitalism. So what that means is, as a, you know, as a worker, you can always be on, you know, you know, if you’re working in it, there are very few roles that you can’t like that, sorry, that you can walk away from at any point, like the work is still there. Your computer is sitting looking at you, and the organization always wants more, because the organization is always trying to drive towards shareholder value or customer or whatever kind of thing. And so I think it was really interesting in the best places study that. Again, things that really stand out in terms of organizations people want to work for is a collaborative it culture. They want continuous learning. They want to feel that their work is meaningful. They want training, but they want that work life balance as well. Everybody deserves that, and I think it is often forgotten. So it’s a really good point that you just made, right? Which is cool, we can do this, this cool thing. We can do this learning, but it’s outside your normal work life. And from a recruitment and retention perspective, that is the sort of thing anecdotally that you hear when it comes to retaining people. So much of it now is about really having proper, meaningful, grown up conversations about what work life balance does actually look like, and meaning it as well, not just talking about it and saying, Yeah, we want you to be able to take your time off, etc, etc, but behaving in a way that does mean that that you can, without feeling guilty, be off when you’re off. And that also has a knock on impact on inclusivity. I mean, you talked about at the top of the show, Keith around, like the frankly appalling and not getting better figures around gender disparity in this space. You know, what’s driving that? What we well, you know, frankly, what’s driving it is exactly that, like, culturally, lots of organizations have not woken up to, and the fact that they need to really mean inclusivity, work, life balance, and in order to do that, you need to have the right kind of business leadership. And I certainly hear being frank. I certainly hear from IT leaders who are frustrated that they culture of their organizations doesn’t allow them to support in the right way, the kind of culture that they want to impress upon their teams.
The stats haven’t moved. And, you know, hugely, I was just looking today at the latest NZ tech study for this part of the world. And I think in the last four years, it’s and the number of women in it has only moved by about 2% so I think we’re at 29% for New Zealand, about 28% in Australia. Yeah, and you know, the more senior the role, the worse those statistics get. And so certainly, you know, it’s a it’s a known issue, it is interesting to talk to leaders that are trying to do something about those stats. So an example is a New Zealand Company, and we did a story about this on cio.com so what they’ve done is they are using special measures under the Human Rights Act here in New Zealand to give women a preference for any of their senior technical roles. They’ve just gone out there and said, these are the senior roles where we’re hiring for we have a preference for women for these roles, so that they, you know, I think they’re they’ve only around 13% of their senior technical leaders are women at the moment, and they realize it’s a problem. They’ve talked to their team, and the internally, what’s what they’re hearing is, we know it’s a problem, just tell us how to fix it. So they have decided to take this measure to see, is it going to move the needle along with about 28 other initiatives that they’re doing to try and make their their their work life balance better at work, and just have those grown up conversations about, okay, what do we need to do actually, to make this an attractive place for women to work here? And
the thing that I really want to emphasize about that is is it’s not about doing the right thing, only about doing the right thing. Your business cannot survive and thrive without making these decisions and these changes. And if we go back to the top of the show like, you know, we need more. It high quality, it people. We can’t hire them. We can’t find them. We don’t have enough budget to get all the things we need, like these are all related. If you’re not creating the right culture within your organization, you’re not going to hire and retain the right people. So it’s existential for your business, but
also from the customer point of view. You know, if you have a more diverse team, you actually end up having better products, better customer service. So it’s all circular. It’s not only as you say, it’s the right thing to do, there actually is a benefit to the business for doing for looking at this seriously. So
I had two quick stories I wanted to tell. One was I did cover this issue is not just an IT issue as well, with women in IT. I did cover the robotics and automation space for a while, and they were having, I think, even a harder time to try to get robotics experts and automation experts that were, you know, women in those fields as well. And a lot of companies tried to play with the numbers by basically saying, Well, we have a diverse team, and the females on the staff would be the head of HR or the head of marketing. And most of us were looking like, that’s not what that you know that, yeah, it’s nice that those people are at that sea level, but, but a lot of but I think what they’re looking for the you know, people that that are, you know, across the entire business. The other, the other little, quick story, I wanted to say is that, you know, we’ve been covering a lot of these issues for years, and there was a lot of discussion about STEM programs and education. So, you know, I have two daughters, and I was like, All right, I’m gonna get, you know, I’m not gonna do the typical dad thing where I point my son towards math and science, and I point my daughters to the other things. I wanted to be a good dad, so I tried to encourage them, math, science, robotics, all this other stuff. And they just looked at me and were like, no, not interested. So as a dad, I kid, I couldn’t just say, No, you must. You must go and work in it, because that would make me a horrible father. So I think there’s still a lot of generational and cultural work that needs to be done here. Yeah,
100% but it is, you know, there are a lot more organizations now, and I know of a lot of but men and women CIOs, who do volunteer and go along to schools and universities and try to get in front of people that maybe do not consider stem or tech as a career. I’m really trying to make it exciting, and it’s also talking to other communities and reaching them in different ways. I spoke to one CIO who was really focused on getting more Maori and Pacifica into it here in New Zealand, and the way she did it is using one of her senior leaders, who’s from one of those communities. And what they were doing was getting out in front of the families at the churches, talking about opportunities, not just thinking about law or accounting or teaching or other professions, but actually talking about the opportunities that there are in tech, just in a different way than probably some companies would consider. So
I want to switch gears just a little bit and bring Val back in on this, on this question with workplaces and culture and a lot of the perks and benefits that were discussed. And have you sent? Do you get a sense with the number of different best places to work, projects that you’ve done, that that workplace benefits and culture is changing at all, or is it still all of you know? Is it still about great salary, great training opportunities, the appreciation factor? Because I remember a few years ago, it was all about, hey, cool workplace with the ping pong table and all that kind of stuff, and we have a juice bar, and that’s what, you know. I think a couple of years ago, gym and wellness and healthy eating and cafeterias were good. That was another thing that was attracting people. What do you get a sense of, like, the best ways that companies can can attract these IT talent versus maybe from 10, 15, 20 years ago.
Well, you know, everything, what goes around, comes around. It’s, you know, all that stuff, of course, took a back seat all the in office perks took a back seat during the global pandemic, when everyone was working at home, now that most of the companies in the in the survey over the past couple of years are squarely in the hybrid zone in terms of where, where employees work, and that includes it, so, you know, initially. So you know, 10 years ago, it was all about the in office perks, and then four years ago was not, and now that’s coming back to some extent, but, but you’re right that it is a lot of them, and that’s a shift we’ve seen over the years with Best Places, is it has moved more towards sort of a culture of wellness, and so work Life Balance is part of that, and the in office perks are have more of an emphasis on that. So the, you know, cafeterias with healthy food options, and the on site gyms and, you know, chair massages and things like that, those are some of the things that companies are offering to entice companies to come in some of the time, but they’re also recognizing that there’s, you know, a lot of tasks that are better done at home when you can concentrate. And so just, just recognizing the balance, I think, is a big part of the battle. And you know, what I’ve seen is it’s not so much. You know, there has been a push lately to get employees back into the office full time, but I don’t think that’s coming from the CIOs. That’s like the CEOs who think that’s a good idea. That’s not really coming from the IT side of things.
I 100% I don’t know if a single IT leader who, you know, feels that they’ve really stood back in the office, and I know many who are frustrated that their business leaders seem to have this kind of obsession with presenteeism when, like, don’t get me wrong, humans need humans, and there’s, there is some real benefit from finding a meaningful way of getting people to interact at a certain point, but it’s not everybody’s got to be in the office an arbitrary percentage of the time. And as I say, I know a lot of IT leaders who are frustrated that that has been imposed on their organizations. Yeah,
Cathy, is there a lot of the hybrid remote work issues that companies where you are?
Yeah, certainly that all resonates. I actually can think of one who really loves everyone in the office and has 100% in office, but that’s the exception. But yeah, definitely that the in office message is certainly to Val’s point. It’s coming from the top. But, you know, I think people have embraced hybrid working and I, yeah, I think most are struggling with the idea of 100% back in the office, particularly with some of the IT tasks that you do need to be really concentrate, really have that time to think through things and where, yeah, but also have that balance of meeting in person and connecting with with people on a human level as well. And
it’s not, it’s not about, I think the equivalent of the ping pong table like is not necessarily about the environment and the maybe perks and things like that. But I also think organizations that are really successful have got more savvy to the fact that it is like the idea of continual development. It is like the concept of working on the latest technology that will keep someone engaged or attract someone to come and work in your organization way more than, you know, the kind of more physical manifestation of a perk, which might be, you know, a nice a nice cafe in the office or whatever. And I think, I think again, that’s occasionally, there is kind of a shift culturally between different organizations and the savvy organizations have understood that in a world where it’s unlikely you’re going to work in the same place for your whole career, the things that keep people engaged and focused and motivated are about their own. And work life balance, but also their own personal development and feeling that they’re doing interesting and meaningful work and that they’re they’re improving and moving forward, and that there is a next step or two steps within their current organization. And yeah, absolutely, it really matters that your colleagues and people you enjoy and enjoy interactions with, but that doesn’t have to be like in a physical workspace.
Yeah, I want to ask another question. This is an off the board question. So so I don’t, I don’t know if anybody can, can really answer this, but with the IT leaders that you speak with, are they could do they? Are they concerned about their own career development as well, or is, is the biggest thing that they, that they think about is just to make sure that they have a great team behind them. I and I don’t even know if I’ve ever asked anybody that, like, Who are you more concerned about your own career or your the careers of your employees? Because they might not tell you the truth. Because there’s also, if you’re at that, if that’s the at the IT leadership level, you are always possibly looking for a new job as well, right? Because we see a lot of shuffling going on there. Well,
the smart leaders know that having a great team is going to make them look good too. So I don’t think that you necessarily have to make that decision like it’s me or them. I think it’s all of us. The rising tide lifts all boats
so that’s not just specific to it, then that’s in almost any company, right?
Yeah, and it and it’s also time difficult economic times are also times of insecurity, and the more seen you are, the more insecure you can be. And also, like when it’s personally difficult from an economic perspective, that that puts an even sharper edge on it. So yeah, I think in an unguarded and off the record moment, plenty of it, leaders will tell you like their own career progression and security is top of mind. And to balance point like your your your success or failure, it depends on the team that you have around you, so you will feel a level of responsibility towards them, but also you need them to succeed in order for your own development. I think, I think it’s a pretty, a pretty challenging time for lots of people. Yeah. I
mean, you know, Cathy made that point at the beginning of the show, when she was talking about the crowd strike incident, and that make, that always makes me think that, you know, when you’re a CIO or even a CISO or a CSO, your head is always on the block if something goes wrong, and especially if something disastrous goes wrong, like, you get blamed a lot quicker than than maybe, if, like, because if the head of marketing, you know, does, if the campaign doesn’t run well, very well, you can kind of hide that under the covers a little bit. But you know, if you have a global outage, like, oh, everyone’s looking at you, or a data breach at this point with security,
just just on the point of career development for CI. So what I’m hearing, you know, anecdotally, from some of the more senior leaders that I deal with, is they’re thinking more about board positions so and thinking about how they can upskill themselves. You know, particularly with tech being so instrumental now to so many businesses like more boards are seeking people with it senior IT experience so many of the CIOs who are maybe further on in their careers, who are thinking about their next steps. That’s kind of a goal for many of them. And but yeah, so certainly I do get some phone calls and messages from people from time to time saying, Do you know of any CIO roles going that I might be good for? So part time recruiter, part time editorial.
Cathy, I hope you get a commission if you get point someone in the right direction,
yes, I should.
Yeah. So one final question I want to ask, and then we’ll get to the part where we vote about what we think might be happening next year. But I was wondering if, if it used to be a big deal for a lot of people that were thinking about it, jobs they wanted to go for the big, large tech companies, they’d be at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, but those companies can seem to be in like a constant state of layoffs, like they’re you know, we’ve heard that the pandemic really messed everybody’s up in terms of their hiring and layoffs, but are you seeing a shift, maybe, where IT leaders just want to work for a normal company that isn’t necessarily making tech but but just using tech in new ways. And I think when you look at the best places to work Val, that’s another that’s a thing that you see. You don’t see Amazon, Google, Microsoft, on those lists, right? Yeah,
I think, well, so there are companies of all sizes on the best places to work in IT list, and that’s deliberate, and that’s because, yeah, you’re right that certainly you’re going to have more cache, you know, being the CIO of Google or some subsidiary of it, but you can you get a chance to make a bigger mark. And. In a smaller firm. And there are, there are people who are always going to prioritize the big names, but I think a lot of a lot of IT leaders really want to do. It’s the same thing we were talking about with the with the staffers too. I mean, they want to do something that’s meaningful. They want to use technology in a way that drives the business. It does some good in the world, and that’s just as true of the at the leadership level. So, Matt or Cathy, anything else to add to that? I
mean, I think, from a recruitment perspective, I think the bloom has definitely gone off from the days where the big tech vendor on your CV was a ticket to kind of the next job of your choosing, although I do know like it is, it is a thing that recruiters will look for, like a like a meaningful period of time with one of the big tech vendors. Because, you know, ultimately, all experience is valid, and working for a major tech vendor in a meaningful role is something that’s really interesting. But I think increasingly a people looking for a mixture and blend of soft and hard skills, as I mentioned earlier, but also like the kind of perfect CV doesn’t exist, but if it does, it probably has a blend of working for large and small organizations of different types. You
know, I have interviewed many CIOs who have worked for some of the global big players, and they’ve learned a lot through their experience working for those companies, and it’s given them valuable skills. And so I think there is still a benefit to working for those, those major tech companies, but yeah, to Val’s point and Matt’s point, it’s maybe not the big goal that money have have had in the past, but certainly there’s a lot of benefits for working for those organizations,
all right, so that almost sounds like with with Matt’s answer. Of it all depends. It’s a little bit of everything, all right. So we usually wrap up these shows where I do a quick yes or no or a vote type of thing. So for the question that I came up with this one was, will 2025, be the year for IT leaders to look for more work? Or is it a sit and wait at your current company? Type of year? This can apply to both the leadership part, but also maybe a general it work, or anybody in the IT space, you know, just is it? Is it a great time to look for a job? Or is it maybe, maybe stay at the company and, you know, fight the fight from inside, and make, make, make work better by being more involved in the company. It’s kind of wishy washy, but I guess, Matt, why don’t you go first on this one? Well, Keith, it depends. It’s a little
bit of fun. I genuinely mean that, because I feel like it’s definitely, there’s definitely opportunity out there, both as a recruiter or as someone who’s operational senior in looking for that next role. It’s definitely a time to assess, am I in the right spot? You know what is out there? But I also feel like if you are in the right spot. It’s a good time to stay, because it’s a turbulent time. And if you found a good environment, if you found one of the best places to work in it, you know, my advice would be like, stay with it and ride this wave. All right? Cathy,
yeah, I agree. I think most that I’m speaking to are planning on staying at least for the first, you know, first few quarters of 2025, but again, it just depends on the individual and what their their needs and what they want for their own careers. But certainly, at the moment, a lot of people are just staying put for now, I
agree with that. But I would say, you know, maybe passive looking is the is the way to go where you’re not maybe actively going out there and seeking things, but, you know, dust off your resume, make sure your LinkedIn page is tidied up, be open to opportunities that might arise. I think that’s sort of maybe where people are at and it’s kind of a safe place to be.
Yeah, we always hear that it’s, it’s easier to get a job when you’ve already got a job. It, you know, rather than it’s harder to get a job when you’re, you know, unemployed. I’ve never been fortunate enough where every time I’ve been looking for work, I’ve usually been out of work rather than job hunting. Maybe a tough a couple of times early in my career, I did actually make a jump, actually, to join Computerworld, 20 something years ago. That that’s a whole other story. We don’t have enough time on this podcast, but there was an Instagram thing I found from from someone I follow, and there was a little cartoon that said, great, if you’re working at a company and you are earning well or learning well, then you should stay, so if you are getting those training opportunities and if you’re making a good salary, but if, if neither of those exist, and then it’s probably time to look for a new job, but, but either one of those is fine for staying, and if you get a company where you’re you’re earning. And learning, then, by all means, that’s the best job that you can have, right? Yeah, I love it when I’ve when they’re all silent at the end, that’s the clue that we should wrap up. So again, thank you all for participating in this episode of global Tech Tales. What buyers want. So we’re going to be back next month with more global editors to talk about AI priorities, where companies are going to be placing their bets and their money. So again, thank you Val, thank you Matt. Thank you Cathy. You know again, thanks for being on the show. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that’s all the time we have for the show today. Feel free to add any comments that you have below. Check out our other tech talk shows, such as today in tech, cio leadership live and demo, if you are interested in seeing B2B product demonstrations. I’m Keith Shaw, thanks for watching.