What skills can you acquire?

In the following pages we will look at jobs in IT companies, or in companies with a large IT department. It is difficult to comment on the potential or future of IT positions in organizations that have very small IT outfits.

An IT company, like any other, will have a number of departments and job designations. If we keep staff and corporate management functions aside, then the remaining IT-related positions can be broadly divided into three areas: hardware, software, and content. These can again be classified as associated with their creation, maintenance, management, or sales.

Thus, we can fit most IT jobs into a 4x3 matrix as shown below.

Very rarely are all the twelve cells here occupied by any one com pany (two Indian names that come near are Wipro and HCL. IBM is a global one). Companies tend to concentrate their primary business along any one column rather than across rows. But they often have people who are experts in the other two columns also. For example, a software-development company would have people to manage their hardware, as well as people who create the documentation for the software they

create.

To get a better picture of your organization vis-a-vis your own skills, find out in which cells the organization operates in, and which cell you are in. Your function may cover more than one cell . For example, You may be a systems administrator maintaining and managing both hardware and software. Now, see which other cell you can add to your skill set. You can make your position more secure by, one, being comfortable in as many cells as you can. This way not only will the chance of your becoming redundant be lesser, but also, your chance of growth within the organization will be much more. This is not easy, particularly if there is no support from your organization.

Another way to secure your position is to further segment your cell in the matrix, and build competencies in other sub cells. If you are a systems administrator specializing in Netware, look at building skills in other network OSs like Linux, Solaris, and Windows 2000. Similarly, if you are a designer with Web skills, you could master Web animation or even 2D or 3D animation.

In the following articles, we will examine each of these cells in detail, and also tell you what additional skills you need to acquire to keep yourself abreast with, if not ahead of, the others.

Krishna Kumar