Most Companies to Hire Tech Jobs in 2015, but U.S. Unsure of Its Innovation

 Fifty-one percent of U.S. companies will hire technology professionals in 2015, and the proportion of tech professionals employed on a full-time, permanent basis has risen to 70 percent in 2014, according to the third annual Harvey Nash Technology Survey: Disruptors & Disrupted – the New Tech Flux. The report reveals that innovation remains an unclear goal, despite acceleration of technology investments. Even as the U.S. is voted overwhelmingly the most innovative country in the world, it is least optimistic about its own innovative future, with only 45 percent considering their own country innovative.

More than half (52 percent) of U.S. companies are still experiencing a technology skills shortage. Almost half (48 percent) of technology professionals changed jobs this past year, 20 percent more than in 2013. Almost 8 in 10 people (78 percent) chose work-life balance as the number one reason for leaving their job for another. Salary ranks fourth on the list.

Other key findings of the Harvey Nash 2015 Technology Survey include:

• Globally, 30 percent of technology professionals do not work in the countries where they were born.
• More than one in five U.S. tech professionals (21 percent) does not work in the country where he/she was born.
• India-born technology professionals dominate the foreign-born U.S. technology workforce at 51 percent.
• Technologies most likely to make a big impact in the next five years are big data analytics, cloud, eHealth, mobile and wearable technologies.
• 18 of the 20 companies ranked in the Next Big Thing are U.S.-based; yet the U.S. doesn’t believe itself to be innovative.
• 61 percent of U.S. tech professionals say Google is the world’s most influential technology company.
• The second place position goes to Microsoft at only 12 percent, 49 percentage points behind Google.
• Mobile and cloud remain the top two technologies for investing time and budget (76 and 72 percent, respectively), followed by big data analytics at 63 percent.
• Cyber security is in fourth place at 54 percent, despite the many recent and ongoing data breaches.
• Four in 10 will invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, virtualization and eHealth in the next five years.
• 55 percent of U.S. technology professionals have been personally hacked in the past year.
• 53 percent of U.S. organizations have been hacked during the past 12 months.