Links and Resources: March 20, 2008

How about some light reading about the IT profession and career outlook:

• Hot Jobs in IT for 2008 summarizes findings in a Robert Half's 2008 Salary Survey. They expect starting salaries in IT to rise 5% in 2008.
  
• Web 2.0: The skills behind the buzzword talks about the skills and tools an individual would need to support the read/write web. Not real in-depth, but it does use buzzwords to explain the buzzword (meta-buzzwords).
  
• Woes Aside, Some Businesses Expect More IT Hiring indicates that although not stellar, there should still be growth in IT hiring in 2008. Top areas include network administration, windows administration, desktop support and database administration.

[A quick note on critical thinking and information literacy. In case you thought "if three different articles say the job outlook is good, it must be so", notice that all three quote the Robert Half survey. That doesn't mean it isn't true, you just want to be skeptical of such things.]

• Help wanted: Tech companies feel skilled labor shortage documents the large number of IT jobs in IT companies that are going unfilled. Microsoft has the most openings, which it can't fill due to a lack of qualified workers. [Note that this tech shortage is much debated as in separate pro and con articles in InformationWeek.]
• IT career paths you Never Dreamed of talks about how the changing nature of IT in the organization is changing job titles, responsibilities and organizational hierarchy. If nothing else, it does highlight that IT is not for people who want to plop down in a chair and be told what to do everyday for 35 years.