Companies are increasingly looking for CIOs with a focus on the basics as IT budgets have tightened, The Wall Street Journal reported April 24.
Executive recruiters told the newspaper that firms want tech leaders who can deliver on things like uptime, cybersecurity and cost optimization, rather than drive transformational change, during a time when there's less appetite for risk.
"Many of the aspirational goals are being reconsidered, and rightly so — it's forcing organizations to figure out how to get the basics right," Paul Groce, a partner and the CIO practice leader at executive search company Leathwaite, told the Journal. "There's a certain amount of realism that's entered the conversation."
Starting in the late 2010s, some companies invested in innovative customer-facing services while neglecting some of the core systems that make IT networks run effectively, according to the story. CIO pay is also growing slower, with median salaries increasing 10 percent from 2021 to 2022, compared to 21 percent the year prior, staffing agency Mondo found.