10 Technology Skills That Will No Longer Help You Get A Job

If you want to know the most in-demand tech skills, that info is readily available. Want to learn the programming skills most coveted by employers? Done. But what are the skills and specialties that no one wants any more? What core competencies raise red flags instead of call backs? 

(See also the Top 7 Most In Demand Tech Skills For 2013 and 15 Programming Skills Most Coveted By Employers.)

A survey of 1,100 tech-hiring professionals by Dice, a job firm for tech professionals, offers some insight. Combining the Dice survey and other research, including an off-the-record conversation with an engineering VP who participates in hiring decisions, here are some of the outdated tech skills and withering technologies to be wary of putting on your resume:  

1. Windows XP Admin/Help Desk

Many IT professionals, from engineers to help desk support workers to system administrators, have significant XP experience. Unfortunately, this may no longer be a useful attribute. Windows XP still holds the #2 spot for desktop operating market share (just behind Windows 7), but its fate is sealed. Microsoft ended XP license sales more than two years ago and plans to cease supporting it in less than a year. 

(See also Microsoft Is Trying To Sell Windows 8 To Enterprises, But Most Want Windows 7 Instead.)

2. Adobe Flash Developer/Designer

Web developers, app developers and designers have long relied on Adobe Flash to create interactive features. Yet Flash's future, particularly on mobile - is quickly drying up. It's now been three years since Steve Jobs created a stir when he posted his Thoughts on Flash memo outlining the reasons why Flash would not be part of Apple's iOS. At the time, Flash was considered so dominant that many analysts wondered if Jobs' decision would crush iPhone sales.

It did not.

Just over a year after the Jobs memo, Adobe announced it would stop developing Flash for mobile devices. Today, Adobe's former CTO, Kevin Lynch, works for Apple. The future belongs to HTML5. Learn, write and build accordingly.

3. Software Support

The transformation of computing from desktop to mobile, and especially the transition of software and services into the cloud is limiting opportunities for traditional/packaged software support. Today, you need to know how to manage software services and software configurations in the cloud. 

(See also Legacy IT Vendors Shoot The Sales Messenger.)

4. SEO Specialist

Google no longer has a Search group. It's now called "Knowledge." That should be a telling warning for all the search engine optimization (SEO) gurus and ninjas looking for work. Expect SEO work to be de-valued going forward. The explosion of smartphones, apps and real-time location information - and especially social media recommendation - is diminishing the importance of search results. Eventually, information may be delivered to us even before we search for it as our integrated, connected systems anticipate our needs.

5. Quality Assurance Specialist and Managers

Hiring professionals in the Dice survey placed Quality Assurance (QA) on the "low priority" side of the ledger. Do not expect this to change. These days, the tech industry seems to be following Google's lead and turning everyone into beta testers. Users are the ultimate quality assurance staff - and they don't get paid!

6. - 9. Mainframes, Voice Telephony, PC Support, COBOL

According to a recent story in the Austin Post, tech recruiters "recommended (that) a 40-year-old still working in COBOL reevaluate why they're a coder." Pretty harsh. But the fact is, technology continues to move forward with no time spared for sentiment.

If you are gainfully employed as a PC repair tech, a COBOL coder, or are working on any of several older technologies, such as voice telephony or as a PBX technician, say, good for you. But don't count on keeping that job for the long-term, or being able to find another one like it. 

10. Something That Seems Secure Today

The TIOBE Programming Community Index lists C, Java, C++ and Objective-C as the programming skills most in demand right now. But here's the thing. In 2009, Objective-C was barely in use. The rapid success of the iPhone and iPad vaulted the language's popularity. Now, however, just over three years later, its popularity is already stabilizing.

In today's superheated technology environment, even the most popular, most secure seeming technology skills can suddenly become obsolete. That's just the way it is. No matter how in-demand your current skill set, you can never rest on your resume. 

Learning Is The Key

Will highlighting the wrong skill set to a recruiter brand you as out of touch - or too expensive to hire? Perhaps. But don't expect anyone to tell you that's what going on. More likely, they may just won't return your call, or let your resume vanish into the ether. (There will probably always be a few legacy jobs in all these areas, but that's about it.)

The only solution is to keep learning - and keep showing that you can learn. While the pace of skills disruption may well be increasing, learning new skills has never been easier. That includes formal schooling as well as free and low-cost resources like Khan Academy and CodeAcademy, for example. 

Here's the bottom line: Since so much technology is fairly new to everyone, why should a company invest in experienced candidates - rather than someone just starting out? Writing for The Wall Street Journal, business professor and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, was brutally direct:

It may be wrong, but look at this from the point of view of the employer. Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out-of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills — for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. 

Where In The World Is Your Next Data Center?

Data center computing demand grew 63% in 2012, requiring enterprises and data center operators to build new facilities to accommodate the market.

Although some data centers may seem to be placed at random, selecting a data center location is a little more strategic than throwing darts at a map. In fact, there are many different factors that affect this decision-making process. The goal is  to ensure that new facilities address local service demand efficiently and sustainably while still making a profit (or meeting corporate needs). Whether the plan is to build a new facility or retrofit an existing building, a number of factors must be considered to ensure that the potential $1 billion investment will deliver strong returns, including type of service, proximity to end users, potential for disaster and climate.

(See also Facebook To Build Huge New Data Center In Iowa - Here's Why)

While all of these factors come into play for data services and hosting providers, many of them are also concerns for enterprises building their own data centers for corporate use.

Is There Enough Demand?

Typically, the first step in hosting companies choosing where to put a data center is talking to customers, prospects and partners to determine where companies are looking for hosting support. This may seem obvious, but for providers to ensure the success of a new data center, they must fill a substantial portion of the facility before the doors even open to guarantee profits during the first month.

If a provider can’t fill enough of a new facility, one way to reduce the financial risk is to use a modular approach. Many companies, including Dell and IBM, use this approach to accommodate growing data center demand quickly, as it allows for the gradual buildout of infrastructure. Additionally, going modular means that providers don’t have to dedicate resources to power and cool unused aisles and racks – they just pay for what’s being used.

Who Needs These Services?

In addition to demand, the location must also match the services to be offered. For example, if a provider is receiving numerous requests for co-located trading equipment on Wall Street, then a co-location facility as close to Wall Street as possible – ideally on the same block – will best serve the demand.

Alternatively, if a provider is predominantly seeing non-latency-sensitive demand across the greater New York area, it can build a hosting facility anywhere nearby. Building a data center on Long Island would cost much less in rent and utilities, and would still be able to meet this market’s hosting needs.

How Likely Are Natural Disasters?

Another element that plays a role in the decision-making process is the number and severity of natural disasters common to the region. For instance, areas prone to tornados, flooding or hurricanes raise a red flag because they could knock out power and damage the facilities. Similarly, operators may shy away from building new data centers along turbulent coastlines and instead look at real estate further inland to avoid water or salt damage.

Hosting providers haven’t always considered volatile weather a determining factor, though. For instance, despite the likelihood of hurricanes and tornados in areas like the Southeast and Midwest, both these areas have a high concentration of data center facilities. But as data center infrastructure and functionality rise in importance, this factor can no longer be ignored – especially since data center outages can cost an average of $5,600 per minute – that’s $336,000 per hour!

What About Free Cooling?

Average temperature is also very important to keep in mind when choosing where to construct a new data center, as it can greatly influence utility costs. Power accounts for an estimaed 50% of data center operation costs, which is why many operators choose temperate environments that won’t add to the heat generated by servers. In a milder climate, operators can also take advantage of “free cooling,” such as open-air cooling, to further cut cooling costs. Large companies like Facebook, Amazon and Apple have been opening data centers to the Northwest region of the U.S. to take advantage of the area’s cool climate and potential for free cooling.

(See also Say Goodbye To The Traditional Data Center.)

Selecting a new data center location follows complex formulas that may not result in the same outcome for every every hosting operator or enterprise.

Every company building a data center will prioritize different goals and concerns. For example, data centers located in Los Angeles face big bills when it comes to climate control, while New York City data centers must grapple with extremely high rent. It’s all a matter of finding an location that offers the greatest number of benefits - without costing a fortune.

Why The Wii U Will Inevitably Be Hacked (If It Hasn't Been Already)

News broke earlier this week of a new hack to Nintendo's Wii U that would allow gamers to play unauthorized (read: pirated) games. Nintendo immediately disputed it. But whether it's true or not, the Wii U will most certainly be hacked before long — and that fact tells us a lot about the increasingly tense arms race being waged between console manufacturers and hackers.

Users have been hacking their consoles — in the sense of writing new games and implementing new functions of their operating systems — since the dawn of gaming. But back when the hardware of your 1970s era console only slightly resembled the inside of your computer, it was more of a hobby and less of a widespread movement. 

In fact, you can blame game developers, not ordinary users, for modern anti-hacking measures. The Atari 2600, released in 1977, had no software restrictions at all, and neither did competing consoles. This left developers free to create a flood of terrible and low quality games that overwhelmed consumers and led to the great video game crash of 1983 — the industry’s first major recession. 

Nintendo Clamps Down

That changed with the rise of Nintendo, which sought to reverse Atari’s openness in favor of tight control over console technology and a business model that relied on revenue from licenses sold to game developers. Nintendo sought to ensure high-quality games by retaining the sole right to approve them — and by locking out rivals and hackers who might create their own.

Overnight, the challenge for hackers flipped from exploiting the potential of Atari’s open platform to finding ways to circumvent Nintendo’s lockout chip. It’s a cycle that’s continued to this day. Today, the Internet makes it easier than ever for hackers to collaborate and distribute exploits that allow even average players to bypass the lockdowns on their consoles.

If the Wii U has indeed been hacked, then it will join the ranks of the Playstation 3, Playstation 2, XBox 360, Xbox, Wii, Nintendo DS, and PSP. All of these consoles can be jailbroken like iPhones, ready to run whichever programs their owners choose. That could mean running an operating system like Linux on your XBox, loading homebrew, or original, games on your Wii, or playing pirating copies of commercial games on your PS3. 

Hackers Rev Up The Arms Race...

Obviously I don’t endorse piracy, and even at its most innocuous, console hacking lies in a legal gray area. (The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to change that.)

But it’s hard to imagine that hackers will — or can — be stopped. Locking down consoles seems to do little, if anything, to slow down people intent on hacking anyway. The more restrictions console manufacturers apply, the more it appears to spur hackers into trying to remove them. 

Or just enrage them. For instance, Sony's PlayStation Network —its online game service — was hacked shortly after Sony removed support for Linux on the PS3. Sony’s retroactive cutoff of the one place hackers could play around in the console could easily have incited the attacks in response. Of course, the PSN hack was very different from console “jailbreaks,” not least because it may also have resulted in credit-card fraud following the theft of user data.

...And So Do Game Companies

Yet console manufacturers won't give up, either. Their lockdowns are mostly ineffective against hackers, but they do plenty to make it not worth the average player’s time. If there was no lockdown at all, anyone could burn illegal copies of games on CDs to share.

The big console makers also have an incentive to hold onto all the money they can get. Aside from pirates, consoles face a slew of big challenges, not least among them a robust second-hand game market they would dearly love to kill off and a profusion of 99-cent game apps that are frequently just as fun to play as the $60 monsters produced by big game developers.

Of course, this entire mode of thinking could go out the window when the Ouya is out this summer. The world’s first “pre-hacked” console is a throwback to the fully open Atari. The very fact that it earned $8 million while still a concept shows a high demand for a open-source system, but time will tell if it inherits the Atari’s woes or finds a way to make it work.