Ask Arthur
Ask Arthur: Career opportunities in technology?
A reader asks what direction their daughter should pursue for a job in the high-tech sector. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK offers some answers.
Q: My daughter wants to work in technology when she finishes school. Where will the opportunity be?
A: She couldn’t choose a better direction for her career. There will be numerous opportunities in the future, as well as a few warning signs, The bad news first: major global tech firms are not hiring right now. Quite the opposite: they are laying off employees in a big way, meaning there is likely to be a large oversupply of global tech talent in the next couple of years.
However, the world will recover from the current slump, and employment will ramp up again. That means, if your daughter is still at school, chances are that hiring freezes will be over once school and a tertiary education are completed.
That aside, the South African and pan-African tech spaces are still in a period of relentless growth, and there is a major shortage of skills to meet the demand.
There are three areas of tremendous need for skills and skilled workers:
Cloud computing: with all the world’s major cloud providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, AliBaba Cloud, and Huawei Cloud) all establishing data centres in South Africa or partnering with local data centre owners like Teraco and BCX, there is a massive demand for qualified employees. Those names are all a starting point for researching potential future employers.
Cybersecurity: The threats from hackers and malware is not slowing down. There is an arms race, and cybersecurity companies cannot hire skilled staff fast enough. Get a qualification here, and your future almost maps itself out.
Artificial Intelligence: It is not just the flavour of the moment, but also the driver of the future. AI means not only cars that will drive themselves, cybersecurity that will look after itself, and software that writes itself, but numerous opportunities for innovation and entirely new categories of enterprise and employment. If one has an affinity for it, AI should be built into any career ambition.
