During the last week, close to 500 people responded to the question -Do you expect to be directly affected by the ongoing job cuts sweeping the IT industry?", with 56 percent saying they feared the worst.
With online IT job adds down as much as 44.4 percent, according to Olivier Recruitment Group, and a hiring freeze across most of the industry, the latest poll results only served to confirm what many had suspected all along: no one in IT is feeling particularly positive about their work prospects at the moment.
What are the long term ramifications for an industry where 56 percent of workers fear they may imminently form part of an ever-growing unemployment statistic?
The view is very different depending on where you sit on the human resources food chain.
Grant Montgomery, managing director for high-level employment agency EL Consult, has been tracking the demand for executive positions in the Australian IT industry, and says the figures are nearly as low as they were during the 1992 recession. Although he believes the market will gradually make a comeback, he warns against exaggerated salary expectations based on the heady days of the tech boom.
-A lot of people came into IT from other industries during the boom, and to a certain extent those industries will be able to absorb them once again, but they will certainly have to peg back their salary expectations," Montgomery said. -Most should just think about taking an extended holiday rather than running around selling themselves over the Christmas period."
However, not everyone is sufficiently well-healed to enjoy such luxuries, as they face an increasingly uncertain future in the IT jobs market.
At the other end of the scale is Paul Smith, a Union delegate involved in the recently launched IT Workers Alliance, who says the jobs market freeze has served to hammer home some hard facts about the IT industry.
-The continuingly high levels of unemployment and sackings in the industry have broken down the notion that IT workers are capable of defending their rights in the work place without any support," Smith said. -Suddenly IT workers are being faced with a whole range of issues like job security and economic security from which they thought they were immune."
Smith also points out that many are wary of putting in the hard yards for a company without some kind of assurance. It would appear that repeated sackings and cut backs have worn away at the blind commitment which once characterised the IT.
-There is now a lot more cynicism out there about companies that are prepared to place their staff under an enormous amount of pressure when they want the work done, but aren't prepared to pay them for that extra effort," Smith said. -Now that the growth has slowed IT workers are gradually coming to the realisation that no matter how much unpaid over time they have worked, they are just as likely as the next guy to be left without their entitlements unless they have some kind of collective representation."
While those who can afford to wait move into lower paid positions or migrate to other industries, the bulk of IT workers may simply begin to realise that they are not invulnerable to market forces. If Montgomery and Smith are right, the gradual thaw will reveal a toned down, slightly more cynical and generally more mature IT industry.
