After enjoying near-princely status throughout the last decade, IT professionals are suddenly on the defensive. Fueled by the tech-stock collapse and the apparently related national economic slowdown, emboldened skeptics are sparking a backlash against all things virtual. "Dot-com" is now an investment epithet. Unlimited IT resources and skyrocketing salaries are no longer assured.

Now, even more than the details of networks and cyberspace, the technology manager must learn to master the unfamiliar politics of retrenchment.

Some diehards, of course, deny that any such sea change is occurring. It's true, however, that once-thriving Internet companies shed 30,000 workers in the last few months alone as NASDAQ wealth fell by more than half. And no one disputes that million-dollar stock-option packages are now all but worthless.

Yet to IT boosters, all this bad news is largely limited to the dot-com phenomenon, and they consider that to be a short-lived mania in the category of pet rocks or hula hoops with little technological substance. So what if a few of the nuttier Internet scams met deservedly quick market deaths? For most IT professionals, new jobs materialize even before layoffs are announced.

Perhaps so. But the tech-stock meltdown seems to implicate much more than just a dot-com reality check. The more pessimistic analysts, for instance, predict that the next round of IT cutbacks will come from the brick-and-mortar companies -- book retailers, car dealers, grocery stores, and the like -- that spent millions to be part of the virtual economy. Most of their investments, like those of the dot-com businesses that provoked them, proved disappointing, bleeding profits from old-fashioned, yet proven business lines. If such companies begin to cut their losses, IT employment could well collapse even farther.

More sobering still, overall Internet and related IT expansion seems to be topping out. A recent Oxford University study reported that the number of Americans who logged onto and then rejected any further use of the Internet rose from 9 million in 1997 to more than 28 million in 1999. Thirty percent of all U.S. adults now state that they have no intention of ever going online. Citing similar data in Europe, the research team concluded that IT market maturity and stagnation may well be reached much sooner than previously thought.

Unexpectedly slower growth, in fact, is the main reason why "hard" technology firms like Altera, a major chipmaker, Internet backbone manufacturer Cisco Systems, and high-tech icons such as Intel and Microsoft, are suddenly slashing profit projections. The mammoth run-up of IT stocks and salaries in the 1990s was predicated on rapid future expansion. As this expectation fades, the value of even the most highly regarded blue-chip IT firms is deflating so fast that more widespread economic hardships may be unavoidable.

And, if so, everyone will blame IT.

How should IT managers cope in such a climate?

Attitude may well be the best place to start. If the IT sector's troubles deepen, it will be critical to distinguish IT's hyperbole from its undeniably real contributions. Start with a frank acknowledgement that much about the Internet and the digital age was wildly oversold. IT simply can't, by itself, guarantee perpetual growth or an end to the threat of recessions.

At the same time, it's also important to emphasize IT's truly productive, if more prosaic, capabilities. Innovations such as robust e-mail systems, intercompany document transfers, universally accessible databases, and even portable telephones unquestionably have made positive economic differences. The specter of ongoing tech-stock sell-offs, and a growing chorus of told-you-so critics, should not cause IT managers to lose sight of the fact that digital technologies remain an essential component of any successful business strategy.

Still, a dollop of humility can help defuse what seems like an inevitable backlash against IT hubris of yore. Plenty of those in "old" economy functions like sales, logistics, manufacturing, or shipping profoundly resent the attention lavished on what they felt (with considerable justification) were unproven, pie-in-the-sky ideas. They are likely to reclaim at least some of the funding and salary ground they lost during the heyday of IT hype.

To counter such resentment, IT managers must justify their resource requests far more carefully than they have in the past, linking those requests as much as possible with the success of other groups. Moreover, should the IT employment market continue to soften, this newfound market leverage should be used to bring new-hire and consultant costs more in line with everyone else.

It's hard to maintain the momentum necessary to exploit still-important opportunities while admitting past mistakes. In today's increasingly turbulent economy, that's precisely the challenging course IT professionals need to navigate.