Categorization of Career Length
The IT Trends Report summarizes responses by company size: small (less than 250 employees), midsize (250-999 employees), and enterprise (1,000 or more employees). The survey also asked the following question for demographic purposes: About how long have you worked as a technology professional? With responses available as follows: 0-1 years, 2-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, and 20+. Let’s look at the response distribution by career length (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Percentage of responses by career years.
The percentage of 20+ respondents is roughly 37.5% of the total overall. Combining the categories for 10-14 and 15-19, they comprise roughly 39% of the total. This leaves about 23% for the remaining categories, giving us a decent breakdown of career levels as follows:0-1, 2-4, and 5-9 years --> Junior
10-14 and 15-19 years --> Senior
20+ --> Executive
Don’t get hung up on names here; the goal is to look at the findings across groups and see if the data has a story to tell. Any resemblance to actual job titles is coincidental.Complexity and Confidence
One key finding from the IT Trends report is stated as follows: IT management is growing more complex, and IT pros lack confidence in how to manage. This conclusion is derived from these two survey questions: How has the acceleration of hybrid IT affected complexity at your organization? How confident are you in your organization’s ability to manage complexity? Let’s tackle those questions and responses one at a time, beginning with the question about complexity. The original IT Trends report revealed that 29% of respondents stated IT management complexity has increased. Let’s see the 29% broken down by career levels (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Complexity by career level.
All three career levels follow a similar shape, and it is clear the Executive and Senior roles compose most of the responses. This makes sense, as those two groups make up about 76% of the total number of responses. Next, let’s compare the percentage of responses for each career level and compare it to the overall totals (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Relative percentages by career level.
Here we find that 33% of Executives replied with ‘Increase,’ which is higher than the 29% overall number of responses. In other words, there appears to be a trend where the more years of experience you have in IT, the more likely you perceive your environment as more complex. Next, we do this again, but for the confidence in the ability to manage complexity (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Confidence by career level.
Again, similar shapes, and a significant number more for the two largest groups, with the Executive role being more confident. And again, let’s look at the percentage by career level compared to the overall total (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Relative percentages by career level.
And another spike here for Executive, where they have a higher percentage (45%) of respondents saying ‘Confident’ when compared to the overall rate (41%). It’s almost as if the more experience you have in IT, the more likely you are to recognize the overall complexity of your environment and have confidence in your ability to manage such complexity.
