The Biz of Coding

Recession Proof Tech Jobs

by Ujwal Tickoo on August 13th, 2008

BusinessWeek has published results from an interesting survey that points out that having a Product Management job is a sure way to survive a Recession. I am actually surprised as typically engineering jobs are considered the safest — I mean you need someone to code the product and typically "management" thinks thats good enough ;). Very often startups have only engineers and product managers are added when the team realizes that they dont know whether they are coding the right product, for the right consumer or market! Similarly Sales people can often survive a recession *if* they can close orders.

Other jobs that are in the Tech Industry and considered Recession Proof by BW:

• Software Design / Development — this is a no brainer! I have explained why I think this job is quite recession proof — especially if you are at mid level and not too expensive ;) 
• Quality Assurance - fair if management believes that minimum quality checks are requried. My guess is the QA ship will be tightly managed
• Project Management — fair, these guys keep projects on track.
• Networking / Sys Admin
• Technology Executives (execs who understand Web 2.0 are in demand according to BusinessWeek — my guess is that they mean Engineering Execs not Marketing / Business Leaders)
• Customer Support — this seems fair. Customers have to be kept happy during a recession. However typically teams are kept tight and people are kept overloaded.
• Database Admins

POSTED IN: Product Management