Software Career Stalled? Data Center Pros are in Demand

“Learn to code” was thought to be a failsafe way to ensure permanent employment.  But we’re at a moment in the technological ecosystem where software developers are seeing reduced employment opportunities as companies pause developer hiring while they evaluate to what extent AI can take over some of the coding duties currently capably handled by developers. 

Meanwhile, buoyed by the AI revolution, data center infrastructure skills remain in great demand in the Philadelphia market and beyond.  Even before AI there was concern with the “Great Retirement” of data center professionals who helped scale the industry starting in the late 1990s.   Software pros concerned with their prospects might be a good fit for these jobs, as they have the technological know-how to pivot to IT infrastructure roles.  But for many it requires a change in mindset.  

Software developers are often creative types, thinking of innovative ways to enhance customer experiences, looking to create solutions with a high “wow” factor.  Data center infrastructure specialists are more focused on avoiding problems.  They design, test, maintain, and monitor infrastructure for maximum availability.  They’re as proud of the outage that didn’t occur as software teams are of the well-received new product release. 

Data center technologies are hardly boring.  Innovation is constant in the sector.  Those of us in the data center world need more talent to handle our growth.   We welcome software pros to make the manageable leap over to the data center universe.  A smart career move may be to pivot to running the infrastructure designed to maximize the performance and uptime of the products and solutions they’ve so ably developed.