Charles Rutstein is chief operating officer at the Cambridgetechnology consulting firm Forrester Research Inc., which last yearexpanded its workforce to 1,100 employees from 900, while beingvoted one of the Globe's Top Places to Work. Rutstein, who recentlybroke his leg in a climbing accident on Mount Monadnock in NewHampshire, spoke with Globe reporter D.C. Denison about the kinds ofworkers and skills Forrester and other firms are seeking.
Forrester has been doing a lot of hiring. What does that tell youabout where the jobs are?
Our hiring was up 15 to 20 percent in 2010. For 2011, we'reexpecting another 15 to 20 percent of growth. What that tells me isthat companies are interested in hiring when it can accelerate theirbusiness and increase productivity. That may be why the tech economyis growing about twice as fast as the economy overall.
So companies will increase tech hiring if they think it willboost overall productivity?
That's the thesis: From these investments in technology comeoutsized productivity gains. What's changing today is that when weused to see growth in the tech economy, we'd say, "That's the guysin the information technology department," or the guys at Microsoftor IBM. But today, the growth is not necessarily in those places.One reason is that there is so much self-provisioned technology.
What do you mean by self-provisioned?
When I walk into my office with an iPad or an iPhone, it's mine.I own it. I've self-provisioned it. And, by and large, it doesn'trequire that I contact my company's chief information officer to useit. These devices all represent technology spending, and theyimprove my productivity, but they don't necessarily represent moremoney for the IT shop.
How does that change hiring patterns?
It means that the jobs are not necessarily in the IT department.It's not the traditional, "We're going to hire 50 more programmersthis year." In many cases it's probably the companies that aresupplying this [personal] technology that are doing the most hiringthese days. It means that there's a new role for people who can workwithin a business and who understand technology better than theaverage bear. Those people can act almost like a shadow IT personand help push a lot of innovation.
So a lot of the tech jobs will be outside tech departments?
Yes, because a lot of the dynamism and change is happeningoutside of the tech department. One of our analysts has writtenabout a guy at Black & Decker who started creating videos of newtools for the sales force. He shot them on his own little Flipcamera, in order to get the sales team fired up about the tools. Andthe IT shop was never involved. This is the kind of tech that peopleare grabbing and doing interesting things with.
Are there any programming languages or technologies that youthink will be hot?
We're seeing a big shift into what we call the "App Internet."Most of the innovations written today are being written for deviceslike the iPod, or the Android, or the iPhone. If I were going toconcentrate on a technology, that's what I would do: learn thedevelopment skills for those kinds of platforms. Custom developmentis also a promising area.
Custom development?
Custom software is what customers notice. Think of the firstpackage tracker from UPS - that was custom software that customersloved. Or some of the new features you see from Amazon or Apple:those make a difference, and they are valuable to customers. Sothat's a good skill to have.
Are there many tech sectors with a lot of growth, but not a lotof jobs?
Sure: Think about data centers. Spending is up, but automationmeans that jobs are down. Look at what's happened with data centerautomation: a data center administrator used to be able to managefive or 10 servers. Now it's 500 or 1,000. So even though the numberof servers is going through the roof, the number of administrators Ineed is not going up, or it's shrinking.
Charles Rutstein, chief operating officer, Forrester ResearchInc.
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