Tough times for IT professionals in South Africa

[Dirtydeedsman]

Being in IT this is a bit scary, I have always used a sneaky method in my company which is to be the only person that can do what I do ie: I am the only Linux and Security Engineer amongst many many other skills.

I hope it will help me one day when or if Section 189 comes to my door.

Besides the fact that most jobs in IT are becoming mundane or being replaced by going "Cloud" and as new tech comes out that requires less and less support. I think the future is in Security and Dev. Also the out look of the economy is another major contributor to this... This thread covers that side of things

Standard Bank recently announced that it will restructure its IT division which will “result in the loss of a number of existing traditional IT positions”.

The bank issued Section 189 notices to 526 employees, many of whom are IT managers and executives.

Standard Bank said this restructuring will create new IT roles at the bank, with a focus on cloud engineering, data science and analytics, and cyber security.

This follows similar announcements in 2018 by other companies which employ a large number of ICT professionals, including BCX, Internet Solutions, and Liquid Telecom.

In early November, BCX informed employees that it had started a Section 189 process, which is a fancy way of saying they plan to cut staff.

According to the company around 790 employees across all job categories and in all divisions will be impacted.

Liquid Telecom SA announced in October that its new digitally-enhanced operating model, which includes the automation of many tasks, will lead to job losses at the company.

The extent of the retrenchments at Liquid Telecom will only be established after the consultation process.

The company will also offer voluntary early retirement packages to qualifying employees over the age of 55.

In July, Internet Solutions said many of its employees were facing retrenchment in its latest round of staff cuts.

Internet Solutions also shed staff in 2016 as part of a restructuring process, which the company said was to achieve an “improved client experience”.

These staff cuts in 2018 follows similar process at many large ICT companies in recent years, including Telkom, Cell C, and MTN.

Low job prospects
Bad news for IT professionals who lose their jobs is that the South African recruitment market is not particularly healthy.

The latest CareerJunction Index report shows that demand for IT professionals in South Africa has been flat in 2018.

The CareerJunction Index monitors the labour market in South Africa by examining supply and demand trends.

According to the report, job volumes in the ICT market have not increased year-on-year, as shown in the graph below.



Shortage of some skills
While many IT professionals are facing job cuts and tough jobseeker conditions, there is some good news for those with the right skills.

The demand for software developers, for example, remains very strong in South Africa.

According to the CareerJunction Index, recruitment activity for software developers grew by 12% month-on-month.

The report added that IT professionals with sought-after skills are still in high demand with great job prospects.

SOURCE

 

[Xeqtr]

Oi... glad to be a dev

 

[MikeR]

:dunnoanymore: welcome to Mining industry we have had it for the past 10 years.

 

[Tinuva]

I can tell you now, if those IT guys losing their jobs are willing to change a little bit, there will be a job for them still. Only it will be different. I moved from linux sysadmin/it-stuff to the cloud before things like this even happened, just because I was excited about the cloud based services. My new role also requires managers, so I am sure an IT manager can also change. The manager part will stay the same, its just the employees you manage will be doing something different.

One thing is true though, I think you need less employees to manage the cloud than you do traditional IT systems, at least on the server side.

 

[Dirtydeedsman]

I can tell you now, if those IT guys losing their jobs are willing to change a little bit, there will be a job for them still. Only it will be different. I moved from linux sysadmin/it-stuff to the cloud before things like this even happened, just because I was excited about the cloud based services. My new role also requires managers, so I am sure an IT manager can also change. The manager part will stay the same, its just the employees you manage will be doing something different.

One thing is true though, I think you need less employees to manage the cloud than you do traditional IT systems, at least on the server side.

The landscape changes all the time and you need to be ahead of the curve else you are left behind and these new age kids today will pass you by. I remember for the short period we had Microsoft System Center, a lot of MCSE holders lost their jobs because all servers were easy to manage.

Technology is something else :dunnoanymore:

 

[SubLoaded]

From a dev perspective - people are loving newer frameworks like a .NET Core API coupled with an Angular (NOT AngularJS) front end. You'll obviously still have to support/maintain older projects and coding patterns (classic ASP etc).

With Big Data - NoSQL DBs (MongoDB/Redis for example) are doing really great. You need a bit of DB knowledge and understanding of JSON/BSON objects. Plus it's open source so it's great. MSSQL Server is still very relevant and is widely used but I am seeing (and have worked on) awesome use of all of these tools coupled together. Example: Using Apache Kafka as a streaming platform when using CDC/CT on Microsoft SQL. Sounds perfect for a startup, right? SQL Server can be expensive!

With AWS and Azure - it's inevitable that a lot of things will change. Again, what I've seen under the Microsoft Stack is that Azure has DevOps and VSTS (check it out - it's cool). All of it is neatly integrated with TFS as well. A lot of legacy apps won't even be able to be completely cloud-based due to the way they were written and would probably require a rewrite. There's actually many things to factor in.

I feel that Dev is the way to go. However, in SA, you're always expected to know more than your job description and chances are you will somewhat be a full stack developer. I've yet to come across a job where you are only a sql dev, or only a front-end (css/html) dev.

 

[Dirtydeedsman]

I feel that Dev is the way to go. However, in SA, you're always expected to know more than your job description and chances are you will somewhat be a full stack developer. I've yet to come across a job where you are only a sql dev, or only a front-end (css/html) dev.

That is a major thing is SA, I am not sure if its a cost cutting measure or what. I remember going for an interview in which they REQUIRED the following from one person.

Job tittle: Security Support Engineer

CISA
CCNP: Security or NSE4 or higher
CCNP: R&S or HCNA R&s or higher
CCNA: Cyber OPS or equivalent
LIPC-3: HA or equivalent
MCSE: Virtualisation or VMware equivalent.

As far as I can tell these are at least 3 people jobs not factoring in the costs and time required to earn these certs. Over 10 years experience. Basically this was a job for people in their 50s.
The lady then said they don't have to be active certs, even expired certs are okay as long as they are in your name.

:dunnoanymore:

 

[Spiro]

guys.... i've worked at Said place... i was sectioned off a few years back... there is a deeper setting to this apart from what is seen from the surface... when i got sectioned off, they moderately kept a handful back... their time with said institute and cost per individual is/was too high, this is the basic situation that happened there in 2009.... i can write an essay that will give you a full understanding to the inner works.... but i'd rather sell that to ITWeb...

 

[TurboLlew]

This is reality unfortunately. I saw it happen 12 years ago when I had to make a decision as to whether to stay in a space that was becoming commoditised or move.

There is consolidation in markets

There is commoditisation of products as well as skills

There are companies that now exist that are 'born digital' and will not require anyone to set up their Office 365 or exchange servers (or have tin of any kind on site). They can dev their own websites (people wanting to get into web design make me laugh... if you aren't a full service digital agency, spinning up a wordpress site is not going to make you money).

These same companies and individuals are coming into existence at a time when experimentation is not only cheap but also sophisticated (imagine if we had access to the hardware and software libraries and connectivity options we have today back in the mid or late 90s??)

There are no 'secrets' anymore (code and ideas are freely available, costs are known, CIOs/CTIOs will often know what they want, down to specific hardware and platforms. They will know its cost and its support costs prior to even asking you to tender). Intelligence is also not particularly high valued - frankly considering how smart devs are, they get paid peanuts. In the same way highly paid and sophisticated financial services jobs effectively killed the entry level (and subsequently devalued themselves) the same is happening in ICT. It is an industry 4.0 reality.

Big players (and crucially their shareholders) only understand old world metrics of success (although a few have tried to partner with the small and agile - semi-successfully). Some ideas don't keep financial years. Others happen radically and will impact the bottom line but will secure the future... There is talk of running one major ICT organisation on what can only be described as skeleton staff in order to ensure that there is protection of margin.

These and other phenomena are artefacts of the times IMHO and the medium and large players in the middle pay the price... they only know the old levers to pull... Channel CapEx into buying competitors and hope the magic continues (failed integrations - look at BCX)... cut OpEx (Section 189, reducing spending, no year end parties)... change in leadership (destabilises the organisation). Meanwhile, the small and agile (staffed in many instances by people from these industries) rapidly and heartlessly disrupt the market in terms of speed, freshness of approach, service as well as margin. Meanwhile the 'titans' and hyperscalers (the Huawei's, Microsofts, Amazons, Googles, Ciscos etc.) are smiling... for various reasons. One of these is that they acquire long term clients via partners, whilst driving a model that inherently hands off these clients to the 'mothership' at a certain point to the potential detriment of the partner if they don't adapt in parallel. This also has a global effect as a major portion of ICT spend in future might be channeled outside of the country to the EU or US or China. The other is that virtually everything digital (whether we want to admit it or not) is going through their platforms). This goes back to market consolidation on a global scale...

Can you get into some of these technologies? Yes sure. There is also a lot of snake oil still to be sold... however in the mid term (maybe 5-10 years) you need to be crystal clear on where in the value chain you would like to be (if you stay in ICT) as simply 'being a cloud specialist' or 'iot specialist' is IMHO not going to be a thing...

This is happening quicker than you think (or industry is comfortable to admit) and we are probably down 60000+ ICT jobs in the past year (just looking at Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, BCX, the state of the SME space as well as other players). The integration component is simply not as lucrative as it once was. Other areas will follow suit.

just my 2c

 

[///Avi]

:dunnoanymore: welcome to Mining industry we have had it for the past 10 years.

@MikeR, You work for WPRSA by any chance?

 

[r0ckf1re]

If you in IT, you have to keep up with the new Tech, which changes rapidly or you going to be left behind.

 

[kili1]

Yip, I'm in the cloud business and get push-backs most of the time from the infrastructure people...They don't understand that they can easily be trained as solutions architects.

 

[MikeR]

:dunnoanymore: welcome to Mining industry we have had it for the past 10 years.

@MikeR, You work for WPRSA by any chance?

@Avi135 - Yes I did sir.

 

[///Avi]

:dunnoanymore: welcome to Mining industry we have had it for the past 10 years.

@MikeR, You work for WPRSA by any chance?

@Avi135 - Yes I did sir.

I'm still here. I remember you advertised Ashley's car a while back. Ok good stuff, small world man.

 

[kilotango]

maybe im reading all this wrong.. but i think this is a knock on effect of a recession and business deals being done because of the SA economy, rather than IT skills being made redundant because of tech.

I know for sure that places like Liquid Telecom didnt just retrench people recently because they were moving on to better tech, but because the business itself is being sold off to the highest bidder soon. they are unbundling from the econet group from what i understand.

Also, IT in big corporates are like this, they hire and fire depending on how shareholders are calling the shots. when business is bad, they have to pay shareholder their dividends and employees are the first thing to be cut, to do this.

IT changes, yes, but still needs people to manage it properly. remember, cloud is basically someone elses desktop pc somewhere else in the world. :biglol:

 

[TurboLlew]

maybe im reading all this wrong.. but i think this is a knock on effect of a recession and business deals being done because of the SA economy, rather than IT skills being made redundant because of tech.

I know for sure that places like Liquid Telecom didnt just retrench people recently because they were moving on to better tech, but because the business itself is being sold off to the highest bidder soon. they are unbundling from the econet group from what i understand.

Also, IT in big corporates are like this, they hire and fire depending on how shareholders are calling the shots. when business is bad, they have to pay shareholder their dividends and employees are the first thing to be cut, to do this.

IT changes, yes, but still needs people to manage it properly. remember, cloud is basically someone elses desktop pc somewhere else in the world. :biglol:

It is both: Double whammy locally. You also said it in your last paragraph... "somewhere else in the world" - located in a hyperscale data centre somewhere else and supported out of Manila/India/China etc. The opportunity to make money and kinds of skills required is changing in terms of what is required locally.

 

[Kyle]

Nothing to worry about in the SAP space luckily

 

[kilotango]

....

It is both: Double whammy locally. You also said it in your last paragraph... "somewhere else in the world" - located in a hyperscale data centre somewhere else and supported out of Manila/India/China etc. The opportunity to make money and kinds of skills required is changing in terms of what is required locally.

If you look at things like GDPR, alot of countries are adopting regulations like it, where it becomes more relevant on where/how data is stored.

Its easy to move stuff to AWS, or host it "on the cloud", but there is a real issue of data security and privacy. alot of companies are becoming much more aware of this, especially since there are huge fines/penalties now involved if a breach or leak happens.

on another note, i have personally witnessed where a company got so tangled in AWS, that they cant move off it, without huge expenses involved. so imo, alot of this is seasonal, rather than definitively killing off of IT jobs in those big corporates.

i think IT jobs are alot more secure than most others..if you look at regular banking jobs, or even retail, those guys are having it alot harder than most.

 

[Mia225]

I think I'm fortunate enough to be in the middle realm of the IT world, and that is being a QA/Software Tester. Regardless of the tech you working on, somewhere there will be a need for you. raise:

biggest thing I had to catch up on was most certainly automation. It's probably one of the biggest requirements as a QA these days it to have some form of automation knowledge...

and now with DevOps most companies are working on a 3:1 dev:tester ratio

Non the less, there is a big change, specially with AWS and AZURE where the market is moving to cloud services.

For instance, I worked on a project for almost 2 years where PwC started selling a client application that had to be developed and hosted on Azure due to the flexibility it offers and amount of maintenance which is minimal.

 

[Steph745]

This is a bit scary . So in the Business Intelligence/Analytics and Cyber Security spaces what certifications would any of you guys recommend to pursue? It's time to learn new tricks, but there's so much info out there it's hard to drill all this down to a clear and concise way forward.