Tommorow's IT workers

As an executive at a firm that provides IT consulting services to companies around the globe, I often think about the challenges the next generation of IT workers will face. This field is hugely complex and getting more so by the year. It already encompasses dozens of subspecialties, each of which may take years of study and practice to master.

And today’s IT job market is global. Future workers will compete with skilled people on several continents, not just at home. Who could possibly surmount such obstacles?

Thoughts like these were running through my head as I combed serially through some e-mail at home the other night. Then I happened to glance up at my 15-year-old daughter Brianna, who was working on another computer across the room. Brianna was preparing homework with Microsoft Word, reading and answering e-mail, using Instant Messenger to carry on separate discussions with several groups of friends, listening to her iPod, and surfing the Web for input on both her homework and her conversations.

My head began to ache just thinking about the mental effort. But Brianna didn’t seem to mind. She was juggling these communication channels and typing away to the beat of her iPod as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Then it hit me: This thoroughly normal teenager was multiplexing her activity -- maintaining a precise balance of time division, code division, frequency, and statistical multiplexing. Constantly evaluating her open tasks, she applied just the right amount of attention to each, slicing time like a gigabit hub and doing it all on a demand basis.

This was particularly startling because, although I consider myself an “IT expert,” I would have trouble keeping more than three e-mails open at one time, let alone balancing all the chores my daughter was involved in.

But there was nothing magic in her performance. All over town there were thousands of other kids doing the same thing. Theirs is the generation that grew up with planned sports, academics, religious instruction, and social activities. They did algebra in the backseat of SUVs as they were shuttled between appointments. They learned to use technological tools that were barely dreamed of 30 years ago. And somewhere along the way, they perfected the art of carrying on multiple activities at once.

In a phrase, they are the multiplexed generation, or Generation MUX.

They are also perfect candidates for the next generation of IT workers. As the late Bernard Boar, a forceful advocate of IT, once wrote: “In the industrial age, information flow was physical and paper-based; in the information age, information flow is virtual and digitized.” The members of Generation MUX have adapted to that digital flow. They multitask better than their predecessors did. And as our field grows more complex, the Generation MUXers are perfectly equipped to cope -- managing IT systems, communicating with colleagues, and absorbing critical new information all at the same time. They’ll sustain a pace that would drive older, serial-minded IT folk like me crazy.

I guess we can only hope that they’ll treat the Generation Xers, Yers, and other elders with tolerance and compassion. Maybe it’s a good thing they’re still kids! i

Ken Harney is a vice president at Ness Technologies in Hackensack, N.J., where -- in typical serial fashion -- he serves the company's client base of over 500 public- and private-sector customers in North America, Europe, and Asia. Write to him at ken.harney@ness-usa.com.