Delta had to throw money at its problem of key IT staff fleeing. It's a reminder of one useful measure IT pros can take of their job security: How critical the projects and systems they work on are to end customers.

When Delta filed bankruptcy, IT employees flocked out the door, Paul McDougall writes this week. Delta faced "unprecedented attrition" in 2005 after its filing, with almost a third of system engineers and 18% of project managers walking. Delta offered plum bonuses to keep the right people.

It's all part of the complicated picture for what IT talent is most in demand. In a separate article, Marianne Kolbasuk McGee writes about what look like pretty good job prospects for IT pros in 2007. But salary growth is likely to remain modest despite a tight labor market, suggesting only those with the right mix of tech, business, and leadership skills will get marked raises.

Comments from hiring managers in McGee's article suggest the most sought-after technical people are those that can use technical skills to deliver business results. Deep technical skills are still vital--Cigna wants enterprise architects and people who understand service-oriented architectures, and believes there's a shortage of qualified people in that area. But it also expects deft collaboration and industry knowledge.

Big salary growth hasn't necessarily followed with what sure looks like a tightening labor market. One CIO McGee talks with expects raises of 4% for most people, and 8% or more for top performers. That low end is in line with our Salary Survey results of last year. But what that survey showed was that nearly all the increase in the average compensation came from bonuses. More companies were holding the line on base pay, and linking it to variables from company performance to specific project metrics. CNNMoney.com's Chris Isidore notes that U.S. unemployment for the college-educated is 1.9%, the lowest level since it started tracking in 1992. Overall unemployment is 4.4%, yet wage gains are surprisingly low. He quotes Salary.com, which tracks pay issues, predicting overall increases for 2007 of 3.8% to 4.0%. Salary.com also notes about 80% of employers now use bonuses, from only about a half-percent five years ago..

Increasing use of bonuses speak, I think, to another IT career trend we identified this year--the IT manager boom. While most people won't have "manager" in their titles, far more jobs have management responsibility in them. IT manager jobs have been the fastest-growing category of U.S. IT jobs the last five years, and grew almost 15% last year, according to the averages of 12 months of Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys. The thing to remember about these BLS stats is they're based on what people say they do, not what title they have. So growth in managers could be anyone from an IT architect leading a project across departments to a programmer who spends half his time coordinating the work of an offshore team and the needs of a business unit.

Here's where these ideas seem to all connect as we look to next year's tech job market. Tactical IT decision-making is getting more dispersed due to a range of factors, from more business-unit input in IT decisions, to a greater need for speed and to more outsourcing. IT pros, from programmers to database admins to people with manager titles, all need to grab a piece of that action. If they're not in the decision-making stream, playing some role that's accountable for real results from IT strategy, even on a very local, project level, they're at greater risk both to outsourcing and stalling wages. They need to work themselves into a position that's closer to business results and end customers.

That's one attempt to pull together some of the career trends we've written about the past year, and cast them forward to the coming one. What are your big career concerns heading into 2007? Let us know your outlook, and how it compares with recent years. And let us know if there's a way our coverage of IT employment issues can be more useful this coming year.