I’ll admit something upfront: I’m not a developer. I didn’t study computing, and I’d never call myself an engineer. But I build things. A lot of them.
Over the years — mostly on the side, because I genuinely enjoy it — I’ve built our company website, our own recruitment CRM and applicant system, a stock-tracking site, and somewhere north of ten other websites and eleven web apps for other companies. AI has been a huge part of that; it’s let someone like me — full of ideas but not classically trained — actually turn those ideas into things people use. And that’s the part I love most: seeing something I built still being useful to someone years later. That tells me it was worth making.
And I’ve been drawn to this for a while. Back in late 2019, I went to a Google developer meet-up over in Alexandra and even shared a session there. It was all about AI — I still remember them pointing a camera at a banana to see if the model could recognise what it was. It feels almost quaint now. The tech wasn’t mature at all back then, but I was already hooked. Which is a long way of saying: this isn’t a passing interest for me.
I’m telling you all this not to show off, but because it’s why I look at IT hiring differently from most recruiters. I’m not just matching CVs to job specs from the outside — I’m a little bit inside it. And from inside, here’s what I see.
It’s the fastest-moving industry there is — and AI made it faster
IT people have always had to keep learning. But since AI became normal, the pace has gone from fast to slightly insane. What you need to keep up with is never-ending. And here’s the honest part most job ads won’t tell you: that’s exhausting. Especially for people whose work isn’t 100% their passion — it’s a good-paying job, sure, but that’s not the same as being into it. Constant learning, when you’re not that curious to begin with, wears people down.
Even your strongest people are quietly worried
I talk to a lot of people in this space — friends, candidates, employers — partly because I’m genuinely interested in it. One thing comes up again and again: everyone knows they have to keep learning, and a lot of them are tired. I spoke to a relative recently who’s in IT and doing perfectly well — and even he’s worried about his job. Not because he’s bad at it, but because of how fast everything is moving.
That matters to you as an employer more than it sounds. The quiet worry isn’t only in the people who are struggling — it’s in your good ones too. And a good, tired, slightly anxious engineer is exactly the person a competitor with a calmer environment can tempt away. If you can’t see it in your team, it’s usually because the strong ones rarely say it out loud.
What this means when you hire
IT is huge — cybersecurity (more important than ever, precisely because of AI), cloud, infrastructure, AI, right down to IT support. And in every corner of it there’s the same split: a handful who stay genuinely ahead, and a larger group quietly keeping their heads above water.
So when you hire, the thing I’d weigh most isn’t whether someone knows today’s exact stack — that changes anyway. It’s whether they actually like the work enough to keep learning without being dragged. Someone genuinely into it will still be sharp in three years. Someone who’s only there for the pay slowly falls behind, no matter how good the CV looks today. (I’ve written before about hiring for adaptability over the CV — it’s doubly true in IT.)
Two things follow from that. First, move quickly — the people who are genuinely good know it, and they’re usually talking to two or three others while they’re talking to you. A slow, five-round process doesn’t screen for quality; it just loses you the person you wanted. Second, once you’ve got someone good, give them room to keep learning. In this industry that’s not a perk — it’s survival, for them and for you.
And to any IT folks who’ve read this far: I know the pace can feel scary — keeping up with the tech is honestly one of my favourite things to do, and even I feel it. You’re not weak and you’re not behind — you’re human. Keep learning and you’ll be fine.
At JTE we recruit across IT and tech in Singapore — from support to software, cloud, cyber and beyond. And because I actually build this stuff, I understand both sides of the table a little better than most — what “good” really looks like, and what it takes to keep them. If you’re hiring in this space, talk to me.