The future of work in technology

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How technology leaders can reimagine technology work, the workforce, and the workplace

The future of work in technology, encompassing work, workforce, and workplace, is undergoing a transformation. How can technology and business leaders strategize, design, and collaborate to succeed in this journey?

EVOLVING strategic business imperatives, trends, and disrupters are driving a seismic shift in the way IT organizations operate. This report—part of a series exploring the merger of business and technology strategies and the reimagination of technology’s role in the business—aims to address fundamental questions about the future of work in technology:

How can organizations leverage technology to redesign current work outcomes to focus on exponential increases in productivity and cost efficiencies and redefine new work outcomes that extend beyond productivity and cost to value, meaning, and impact?

How will tomorrow’s technology workforce be different than today’s? How will jobs and roles change? What skills and capabilities will be needed?

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The secret to winning the war for talent

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In the long siege known as the war for talent, employers need a new battle plan. Instead of trying desperately to recruit from the outside to fill a growing skills gap, companies should turn to the resources that exist within their own workforces.

This is a build versus buy strategy, with greater emphasis placed on training to develop skills in-house to meet the organization’s current and future needs. As a recent Harvard Business Review article observed, rather than spending billions to acquire talent, a better approach is investing in the talent that’s already in place. “Poach-and-release is no longer a sustainable model for talent acquisition,” the authors write.

There is a greater-than-ever need for effective and efficient corporate training as the shortage of skilled workers heightens to an urgent business issue. At an education conference I attended recently, Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told the audience that the concern he hears most frequently from employers is the difficulty of hiring enough workers.

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There’s a new obstacle to landing a job after college: Getting approved by AI

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San Francisco (CNN)College career centers used to prepare students for job interviews by helping them learn how to dress appropriately or write a standout cover letter. These days, they’re also trying to brace students for a stark new reality: They may be vetted for jobs in part by artificial intelligence

At schools such as Duke University, Purdue University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, career counselors are now working to find out which companies use AI and also speaking candidly with students about what, if anything, they can do to win over the algorithms. This shift in preparations comes as more businesses interested in filling internships and entry-level positions that may see a glut of applicants turn to outside companies such as HireVue to help them quickly conduct vast numbers of video interviews.

With HireVue, businesses can pose pre-determined questions — often recorded by a hiring manager — that candidates answer on camera through a laptop or smartphone. Increasingly, those videos are then pored over by algorithms analyzing details such as words and grammar, facial expressions and the tonality of the job applicant’s voice, trying to determine what kinds of attributes a person may have. Based on this analysis, the algorithms will conclude whether the candidate is tenacious, resilient, or good at working on a team, for instance.

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The future of jobs is already here

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One of the great challenges of the business world is predicting which jobs will grow and which will disappear. Several companies and institutions are working to solve this great mystery, including the World Economic Forum (WEF), an international organisation that “involves society’s leaders of politics, business, culture and other spheres in shaping global, regional and industrial agendas.”At the end of 2018, this organisation published the Future of Jobs Report, which analysed the trends predicted for the 2018–2022 period in 20 economies and 12 different industrial sectors.

“The increased demand for new roles will compensate for the decreased demand for others,” noted Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF, in the preface to the forecast document. The German economist is optimistic about the predictions because, although five million jobs will disappear, another 133 million new ones will emerge.The technological revolution will change business models in all industries.

A phenomenon that the Davos World Forum has already dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution. High-speed mobile internet, artificial intelligence, big data analysis, cloud-storage of information, augmented and virtual reality, and others factors will spearhead the adoption of new technologies by businesses. They will also change the dynamics of work, the competences required of workers and the gender gap in industry.

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Average IT salary hits record $113,639 in US due to these certifications

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US tech employees lead the global pack thanks to a mix of certifications, job skills and tenure, according to a new report.

The average annual salary for IT professionals worldwide is $89,732—the highest yet found by Global Knowledge’s yearly report. The report is the largest worldwide study of professionals in the tech community and has been conducted every year for more than a decade.

IT professionals earned an average of $5,000 more in 2019 than in 2018, with the main reason being improved job performance, the report found.

This increase in both salaries and performance quality indicates that more people are taking steps to progress their professional development, resulting in better performance and more compensation, according to the report.

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Why people thrive in coworking spaces

 

Coworking started as a fringe trend that was expected to fade as fast as it emerged. Several years later, the popularity of coworking has continued to grow rapidly.

Currently, there are over 14,400 coworking spaces all over the world.

It is estimated that by 2022, coworking spaces will be the workplace of choice for about 5.1 million people.

The increasing popularity of coworking spaces has been fueled largely by the increasing number of freelancers and remote workers.

NOTE: Anyone interested in learning more about coworking or leased offices at the DaVinci Institute in Westminster, Colorado, go to Colony Workspace and request a tour.

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Americans are flocking to these 10 cities where salaries have risen 25% or more in the last 5 years

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In a world of stagnant wages and rising costs of living, moving to a place where you can grow your income feels like a solid bet. And many American cities offer just that.

Financial advice website SmartAsset analyzed data for the 500 largest U.S. cities to determine the top “boomtowns” in the country. These areas are not only attracting new residents but feature thriving economies and ample housing. The site considered seven metrics in its ranking, including change in household income over a five-year period. It also looked at population change, unemployment rate, number of jobs created, GDP growth rate, business growth rate and housing growth.

To compile the list, SmartAsset used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 and 2018 1-year American Community Surveys, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns Survey.

Here’s a look at 10 of the top boomtowns where household income rose more than 25% in five years.

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Global co-working survey reveals how personality impacts use of office space

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Coworking spaces, by definition, group people together to work in one area, side by side. How closely depends on the accommodations and the management. Functioning in this environment can work differently for different people. A new survey reveals how workers feel about coworking spaces based on their individual personality types.

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What is a futurist? 12 things to know about the coolest job you never knew you could have

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When you hear the word futurist, what comes to mind? You might think about those fortune teller stands at the fair — for $50, you can learn at what age you’ll die, if you will ever find true love, and address any other deep-seated insecurities. But where fortune tellers will root their predictions in divine forces and mystical unexplained powers, futurists make their predictions based on stone cold facts. A futurist is a kind of consultant who makes predictions based on future trends they identify. Their point of view can even impact how companies design products or how communities run their outreach, which makes being a futurist officially one of the coolest jobs of all time.

“When I was younger I didn’t know this job existed, so I often ask myself how I ended up with it,” Ford’s in-house futurist, Sheryl Connelly, tells Bustle. “What I really wanted to do was be an artist. But when I look back I feel like it was divine intervention or that it was my destiny.”

Futurists like Connelly spend their days recognizing trends, explaining why they’re recognizing it, and suggests how the trend might make an impact on a global scale — so that brands can take advantage of that forward-thinking insight for their future products. Sound complex? I agree, which is why I was surprised to learn that it’s a field that anyone can fall into — among other mind-blowing facts about this job. Here are 12 things all future futurists should know about this unconventional career path.

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These are the 6 hottest jobs of 2020

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New year, new job. Maybe even a new career. If you’ve been making promises like this to yourself for years, 2020 may be the time to turn them into reality. After all, with the unemployment rate the lowest it’s been in half a century, job seekers have the upper hand. Not only do employers have to work harder to gain their attention, but in some jobs they have to craft more attractive offers, too.

“Increasing pay is the simplest and most powerful way to attract and retain workers,” says Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. “Money speaks, and it speaks pretty loudly.”

But that’s not the only good news: Hiring managers can’t afford to be as picky either, says Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn.

“Employers who used to demand people who went to top-tier schools are now more open-minded,” he says. Not only that, but “hiring managers are much more receptive to individuals who need to grow into a job or want to try something new.”

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Up to half of developers work remotely; here’s who’s hiring them

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Forty-five percent of developers work remotely at least part of the time – why not? Glassdoor and Remotive have compiled lists of employers actively hiring remote IT workers.

One of the great things about technology work is that it doesn’t really matter where it’s performed. You’re on the network, with minimum latency, regardless if you’re down the hall or on another continent. For employees, working from home — or from a remote office — means greater flexibility and reduced stress from commutes. For employers — and this is extremely important in the IT field — it means being able to draw from a vast, global pool of talent, with no concerns about relocation. In addition, work could even be handed off from time zone to time zone for more rapid turnarounds.

It is estimated that there are between 18 to 21 million developers across the globe. Of this, only about one million — or five percent — are in the United States, so you can see how an employer in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, needs to spread its recruiting and staffing wings.

It’s in the best interest for tech-oriented employers, then, to be open to this global pool of talent. There are a number of companies leading the way, actively hiring globally distributed tech workforces. Glassdoor recently published a list of leading companies that encourage remote work, which includes some prominent tech companies, and Remotive has been compiling a comprehensive list of more than 2,500 companies of all sizes that hire remote IT workers.

Survey data from Stack Overflow, analyzed by Itoro Ikon, finds that out of almost 89,000 developers participating in its most recent survey, 45% work remotely at least part of the time, and 10% indicated they are full-time remote workers. A majority of remote workers, 58%, are regular full-time employees.

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Science explains why we should all work shorter hours in winter

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People tend to feel gloomier when the nights draw in and cold weather descends. But altering our working hours to fit the seasons could help lift our mood

For many of us, winter, with its chillier days and lingering nights, ushers in with it a general sense of malaise. It’s increasingly difficult to peel ourselves out of bed in the half-light of morning, and, hunched over our desks at work, we can feel our productivity draining away with the remnants of the afternoon sun.

For the small subsection of the population who experience full-blown seasonal affective disorder (SAD), it’s even worse – winter blues mutate into something far more debilitating. Sufferers experience hypersomnia, low mood and a pervasive sense of futility during the bleaker months. SAD notwithstanding, depression is more widely reported during winter, suicide rates increase, and productivity in the workplace drops during January and February.

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Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
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By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

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