John Lamb on ... IT staff, the disposable workforce

Job seekers were out in force last week at the Computing Careers exhibition and conference, at the Royal Agricultural Halls in London, a venue more used to hosting flower shows than beauty pageants for computing employers. Programmers, systems analysts and project managers prowled the aisles between the booths on the hunt for better pay, better prospects and career advancement or an end to their unemployment.

Among them was a developer from a City company that was recently taken over, who was looking to avoid a looming downsizing exercise, a redundant IBM-er in search of a fresh start, and a youthful contractor yearning for a more congenial and routine way of life in a permanent position.

But what were they doing there? Those who squeezed into the conference sessions were repeatedly reminded that they were in the driving seat, thanks to a programming skills gap the size of Silicon Valley. Got Unix skills? Able to turn a line or two in C? No problem. Worried about money?

Look at the #100,000-a-year SAP programmer or the analyst in the City on who-knows-what a day. Is your employer outsourcing the IT department? Well, you don't have to go along with it: strike out on your own as a contractor.

Those who cut their teeth on Cobol, PL/1 or Assembler are quids in. 'This summer, there will be a feeding frenzy among large companies when they begin to implement their year 2000 strategies,' promised Ian Hugo, from Hugo Associates.

Those legacy programmers will be in demand once again when the European single currency gets off the ground, prompting a fresh round of updates to financial systems. People are even going to get pulled out of retirement to dig us out of the millennium pit.

For all this good news, the average IT person still finds it easier to find their way round the M25 in the rush hour than to plot a successful career path in computing. Skills and experience painfully acquired today could land you on the scrap heap in a few years' time. Java programmers may be scarce as hens' teeth today, but, by the next decade, you can bet they will be two-a-penny.

As for those mega-salaries, the reason they hit the headlines is precisely because so few people actually get them. Average salaries in the industry are no better than those paid for comparable white-collar work in other departments and are even worse in some cases.

With skills turning over more quickly than an IT manager's Ford, and in the absence of any kind of professional structure to push up remuneration, or even to train people, it is difficult to see how the situation might change.

IT workers are in a similar position to the navvies who built the UK's canals and railways in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were needed in large numbers to complete the projects that were to alter the economic and social fabric of the UK so fundamentally. But once the work was done they were surplus to requirements. Don't IT people deserve better?