COVID Fallout: Some IT Skills Lose Value and Others Gain

Some IT skills learned through certification courses are losing demand, but professionals with skills in building apps and writing programs are seeing their salary soar in the past few months.

A study by Foote Partners conducted in the United States and Canada confirms that employers are valuing on-the-job experience more than certified skills.

Software writers and app developers are gaining additional pay and bonuses in addition to their salaries. At the same time, a considerable number of other job titles are losing in value and, as a result, thousands of technology professionals are seeing their salary decline this year.

Among the hardest hit roles are in mobile platform computing, business systems analysis, .NET, digital product development, IT architecture, enterprise messaging, web systems, and SAP.

Over the past year, average premium pay declined by 6.7 % for as many as 516 certified skills. Foote Partners blames the COVID-19 pandemic for the decline, adding that it had never seen such an impact on IT wages any time in the past.

At the same time, app developers with expertise in SPSS, Apache zookeeper, Ant, Lucene or Camel, Red Hat Fuse or Ethereum, are seeing their pay premiums grow.

Cloud architects and professionals with expertise in cybersecurity are also in high demand. That’s partly because the pandemic revived remote-working and unleashed a series of cyberattacks.