No in-person conferences. No get-to-know-you-dinners. No hallway encounters in conference centers and hotels. While the Covid-19 crisis has put the kibosh on many things, active career development may be one of those things.
A majority of the 1,625 professionals -- many from the technology sector -- responding to a survey[1] by Blind[2], an anonymous professional network, finds 53% claim their careers have been negatively impacted by the crisis. Putting things in perspective, of course, one shouldn't complain if they kept their job -- and their health -- through these last six brutal months. And yes, sustaining and maintaining operations and decent user/customer experience through all this was quite a learning experience that will definitely shine on many resumes.
The recent crisis has been a mixed bag for IT professionals. The role of IT has been elevated to the highest echelons in the organizations, which recognized they simply could not survive through the crisis without technology professionals and assets. At the same time, this is placing even more demand on IT professionals to deliver. A recent survey[3] from Nitro Software finds while most people feel productive working from home, they want their organizations to improve their IT workflows but see a number of barriers such as IT being too busy (42%), budgets being limited (41%) and lack of training/support (38%).
IT skills and services have been seen as the world's most valuable commodity. A bellwether is the amount of M&A activity that has been taking place over the past year -- a report[4] from Hampleton Partners, for example, shows that the crisis has put the IT sector "on the frontline despite the pandemic's impact on deal volumes and valuations, with IT