Tomorrow I'm taking part in a discussion at Sofia University targeted towards young students. Speakers are well-known IT professionals and I'm honored to be invited.
One of the preliminary questions posted from students is
In which field to expect saturation of junior specialists in the next 5 years? Which technologies will see higher demand and which will not?
While I don't have a clear answer here are my favorites and comments. If I was a 20 year old student I would definitely be paying attention to these.
Quality Engineering, Quality Assurance, Test Automation
The more software gets written, the more critical the need to test it. In the past 6+ years I've been working in the field of QA and saw 5x rise in the workload and number of team members I've been working with. Traditionally Bulgaria is strong on the development side but lacks trained QA engineers. In the past I have also been approached by several foreign companies to train their QA staff and organize their QA processes. The situation here is not very different even today.
If you want a secure job become a top-notch QA with experience ranging from test automation, QA management, bug finding and all between. Strongly recommended is to get some industry recognized certificates (I don't have such for QA).
DevOps
Looks like DevOps is the new mantra. With advancement of cloud technologies and everything becoming as-a-service my gut is telling me that more and more organization will be switching to DevOps types of operations in an attempt to be faster, more cost effective and more agile. I myself am looking into this field.
While I haven't done a formal research to back-up my words I think DevOps will be a hot topic in the next 5 years until it becomes the norm. Acquire DevOps skills if you are particularly interested in working for start-ups or small engineering organizations serving large customer bases (e.g Disqus, GitHub, The Guardian).
Augmented Reality
AR is not a fiction anymore. We have everything we need to make use of it in everyday life and it's slowly becoming mainstream. If you are into maths, algorithms and research then this is your field. Couple with mobile devices, social networks, big data and cloud and you have a job for a life time.
What else?
I don't have a crystal ball to predict the future. It could be that my IT jobs predictions are totally wrong. Let me know what do you think. If you were in the beginning of your career which fields will you bet on?
Comments !