Half of IT pros plan to change jobs in 2020 - Harvey Nash

Two-thirds of IT pros are happy in their job, according to Harvey Nash survey, but just want more money

Half of IT professionals around the world are planning to switch jobs in 2020, despite two-thirds claiming to be happy in their role.

The reason, according to the Harvey Nash Tech Survey 2020 [PDF], is a desire either to earn more money or to improve their work-life balance.

The most common reason cited for leaving a job is, predictably enough, money, cited by 51 per cent, but the second biggest reason is the boss, cited by 36 per cent.

Harvey Nash surveyed 2,088 IT professionals bearing 110 different job titles. It found that half plan to switch roles this year, with four-fifths planning to make a move within the next three years.

Money, cited by 59 per cent of respondents, followed by work/life balance (40 per cent) and flexible working (30 per cent) were cited as the main reasons why.

The survey also found that more than one-third of respondents had begun their careers outside of IT, with a similar number expecting their skills to be out-of-date within three years.

As a result, said Harvey Nash CEO Beverley White, ongoing training will be a key benefit in attracting and retaining staff.

"In today's digital economy, there is fierce competition for tech skills - with retention being as much of an issue for companies as attracting new talent. While there is no silver bullet to keeping prized tech staff, our research highlights where companies can make a significant difference.

"Training and skills development perhaps speaks for itself," said White, adding that organisations that can offer a "social purpose", such as charities, may have an advantage in attracting and retaining staff.

They may partly explain the high number of hours IT professionals claim to work, with 40 per cent suggesting that they work up to 50 hours a week, and a hard core of 15 per cent claiming to work 51 hours a week or more.

The survey also cited the proliferation of IT skills across the organisation as a result of the combination of cloud computing and low-code/no-code platforms.

"If you look inside a modern marketing department today, much of the customisation of customer-facing systems that would have been carried out by software developers in the past is being performed by marketing executives today," the report claims.

It continues: "But low-code/no-code platforms are not the death of the software developer. It doesn't take long before these platforms get complex and need technical expertise, especially in how they are stitched together. Also, enterprises looking for the competitive edge very often find it comes from creating hand-crafted, bespoke innovations."

Nevertheless, despite the widely aired claim that automation, artificial intelligence and even robotics are set to put swathes of people out of work, the IT professionals surveyed by Harvey Nash generally don't think that they will be affected.

While just seven per cent said that they have already been "significantly affected" by automation, and 30 per cent believe that their roles could be affected within the next ten years, 63 per cent believe that their roles won't be affected significantly at all.

Furthermore, IT professionals appear to be getting less worried about the prospect of their roles being automated.

"Having tracked automation for the last three years," the report claims, "the proportion of roles being affected by automation is actually down."

That doesn't mean, however, that IT roles are not set to change substantially over the course of the next decade.

Harvey Nash asked respondents how long they expected their skills to be "useful" for. Fully 60 per cent expected their skills to be out-of-date within the next six years while, as cited, above, 29 per cent expect to have to retrain and retool within the next three years.

And IT professionals working in software testing are under the most pressure, according to Harvey Nash, followed by IT operations - no doubt thanks to the rise of DevOps - then business analysts, developers and software architects.