Underlying an IT professional’s career is that needling and constant fear that their technical skills will eventually become obsolete. It’s understandable given that most IT skills begin eroding at just two years, explained Dr. Damien Joseph, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University, who authored the paper “Sustainable IT-Specific Human Capital: Coping with the Threat of Professional Obsolescence” along with Christine Koh and Arthur Foo also at the Nanyang Technological University. To protect their careers, IT professionals simply learn and adopt more skills. It’s been the prevailing theory for years. More skills translates to increased employability. But IT professionals can also defer development to other people. Meaning if a company needs a new IT skill, they can let one of their coworkers spend the time to learn that skill. While the options for an IT professional who defers skill learning is now limited, it’s not the death of his or her career. Even when an IT employee defers this knowledge, they can still find jobs at other organizations. Joseph theorizes that these other organizations have less up-to-date technologies. Michael Gallivan, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, wrote a dissertation on the same topic fifteen years ago. What he believes has changed during that time is that maintaining tech skills is the employee’s responsibility. In the mid 90s and before, employees believed that it was the company’s responsibility to maintain . . .