You can't really offshore swapping out a defective network cable or replacing a hard drive. I haven't looked at how they define an "IT Support Professional" but I'm assuming it's not just answering a phone and following a decision tree and saying "I'm very sorry to hear that you are still experiencing a problem" before each step. Anyone can do that with almost no training.
Of course you can, enterprises are already starting to push "bring your own device". Even if you don't do that, you can still move to the thin client model where hardware failure just means asking the office manager to swap your device with a new one from the cupboard.
BYOD doesn't do away with the problem because the users don't know how to fix them themselves, so they'll still need someone, even if it's a tech at the mall rather than in their office.
office workers still have computing devices on their desks, keyboards monitors, mice, printers, label printers, scanners, voip phones, switches, routers, access points, sip callboxes on the doors, projectors, access control systems, etc.
maybe the office will finally go paperless this decade, and a couple of those will go away. they'll just be some new IoT fuckery to contend with.
An office of freelancers with their own laptops using GMail, deploying an app to GKE, writing Google Docs, etc needs a barista before they need an IT Support person, and Google perfectly well knows this, because this is the world they are striving to create!
Or Azure or AWS I just mention Google stuff because this is their thing
I thought I just read about layoffs in all the big support centers in India? Are those similar jobs? Where is IBM, DXC et. al. sending the jobs or is that all just unrelated or my bad memory?
For some reason I thought the general trend lately was many Western countries were bringing support jobs back to their own countries.
IMO the reduction of workforce IT / Software related field is worldwide. Now place I work is hiring whole bunch of people but just on basis of that I wouldn't say in general is industry is creating whole lot of jobs.
I think going forward the hiring would be at best replacing people who joined in 80s in case those jobs are not totally automated away.
FTA: "In the United States alone, there are currently 150,000 open IT support jobs"
This program was literally started so Google could provide tech support to its employees. A highly technical group with access to a leading public cloud. None of that does away with the need to provide IT support.
That is a ludicrously high number. Are there entire companies, entire offices, staring out of the window waiting for someone to do some IT? Or are they managing and sure an IT guy/gal would be nice to have, but no big deal to do without?
I think number looks okay in terms of posting. One thing people wrongly assume that companies putting these openings do actually want to fill them all or even any significant number.