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Note – Comments are my own

Another year has passed and another new year will start.
2025 has another been AI year. Chat about whether it will replace jobs, make people redundant, increase job vacancies etc, you name it.

Don’t let the AI chat put you off pursuing the skills needed for a more complex IT future. Below are the 3 top skills in my opinion needed for 2026 and beyond.

• 1. API knowledge
  • In this age in AI you can’t rely on it completely to tell you how apps work
    • You do need to find out yourself
      • Map it out, write on paper (yes on paper 🙂 ) to understand the hops and flows
  • Knowing how apps talking / communicate to each other through API’s is a critical skill
  • Some things to know about API’s
    • Functions
    • What does the message look like
      • Json
      • XML etc
      • Is there a sample I can take a look at
    • Does this API both have backwards and sideways compatibility
      • E.g. If data is missing from the API, can the API still function or will there be some kind of error?
    • Identify the developers (if any, still around) who built the API and ask how they built it, ask some challenges and ways to support this API
• 2. System knowledge and support
  • There are many systems today which haven’t been upgraded, updated etc and literally running on life support
  • Nonetheless these systems still need support and knowledge
  • As the IT society continues to ever move into the cloud, there will always be some legacy system needing support, until it’s been migrated across to a new environment or into the cloud
  • Most likely you will have limited knowledge on IT systems
  • However you can ask the following to other IT users
    • What are the top 5-10 functions of this system
      • What is critical and if these functions we’re to be unavailable what will be the consequences
        • E.g. A report not being delivered to our financial team, they will not be able to invoice out clients, leaving a gap in the company revenue etc
    • Who is around that knows these systems end to end, or knows enough
      • Have a chat to them (if friendly 🙂 )
      • If you don’t have this resource available, good luck! XD
        • You might need to scope and map the system end to end yourself, doing research, reading documents and logs etc
    • Who are the clients, vendors needing these systems to deliver outputs, results, data etc
      • These systems will be talking / connecting to other system maybe unrelated to your IT company.
      • Find out who these other users are
        • Talk to them, what they expect from the system (in terms of work related matters, not what they want or wish to see)
  • Ask what the future state of the system if, new or old
• 3. IT language skills
  • How many times have you hear the term, “it’s not working”
    • My follow up question to this is, “what’s not working”
    • Before you know it, you go back and forth all day with the client or end user
    • Put your yourself in the IT user’s shoes, what do they see, what is blocking them, what can’t they do?
    • To combat this uncertainty when talking to IT users, you can ask them the following
      • What is it that you are doing? This should reveal the functions of the system which the IT user is interacting with
        • Yes some system / product knowledge might be needed when asking this question
        • E.g. “I’m having issues logging into the system” When you get this question, you can start thinking to yourself, has the user locked their account, have they not reset their password, what does the logs show?
        • After diagnosing these steps you can step by step ask the IT client to reset their password
          • But to tell them how to reset their password, you need to know what the interface, screen, display looks like. I.e. putting yourself in their shoes
    • When you communicate to IT clients and other users, do you use vague terms and words?
      • E.g. When this system talks to this system, the data doesn’t show?
        • When presented with this sentence, you can get more questions than answers
      • E.g. “When system a talks to system b, the data to show the quarterly financial results does not display. Can you check the financial api system to ensure it ran at 8am? If it didn’t ran please get the Ops team to check and if possible rerun the job”
        • See the difference between the two questions above?
        • One is vague and open ended the other explains step by step what is missing and what the Ops team can check
      • This is the level of description and explanation needed when talking tech / IT to other users
  • Build a IT vocabulary (verbally or in your brain)
    • Using words like inputs, outputs, messages (instead of errors or failures, what is the source, what is the destination for this message etc)
    • Having this professional vocabulary list will better improve your communication and you will sound much better in the IT workforce

Summary:

• Know how API’s work, how the data/message is shaped and sent between system
• Know about current systems, the way they are setup, where they are setup, who looks after what etc
• Learn the IT language and lingo, build how you describe processes and procedures, how you ask IT users to describe issues on what they’re seeing and build a vocabulary of IT terms (e.g. input, outputs, functions, what do you usually see, what buttons do you press, how do you get to a part of this system etc)