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The tenor of this thread is overly negative. Its true that there are 'sweatshops' out there (some insurance companies, and some of the big software companies like Microsoft, I've heard), and there can be issues with H1B's and outsourcing, but these are by no means affecting everyone in the same ways or to the same extent. For instance, my team is comprised of American-born Caucasians exclusively. And Help Desk is not always a dead end job; its how I broke in, personally. If you go that route, just remember that 90% of your colleagues will never break out of it, so don't emulate their drive, or habits - and you will probably need to jump to another company for a role in your chosen career path. Another point - I once worked for a basically 95% Indian consultancy, and what issues I had with them had nothing to do with the national origin or culture of their ownership and workers.
The one comment above that I unreservedly agree with is that continuing education is your responsibility, and it necessary throughout your career. Eventually you may land a job that includes some training on the company's dime, but you will have to work your way up to it.
I don't mean to sound Pollyanna-ish, but the threads here on City-Data often have inordinate amounts of doom and gloom in them, and this is particularly true for the work and employment forum.
This is a very sensible post. I agree with every word of it, especially the comment about the work and employment forum.
A lot of dead end jobs serve as opportunities provided you make the best of it. You do have your work cut out for you. Also, I tend to ignore career suggestions from people who spends hours on CD everyday suggesting that immigrants are taking all the jobs or that old workers are heavily discriminated against. The best and brightest are busy advancing themselves.
Can you even predict where technology is going in 30-40 years? If you want to make it in IT, you have to be smart and versatile.
And therein lies the issue with IT. There are jobs that people are doing today that didn't even exist 5-10 years ago. Versatility is key. As technology advances, some of the things that require experts today will be consumer level stuff down the road. So those that don't adapt will simply be left behind.
I obviously don't know the 'naysayers' that the OP talked to - but the ones I know that feel IT is a dead-end are more often those that couldn't (or wouldn't) continue to take on new skills. I know email administrators that have been managing MS Exchange environments for over 15 years who are now scared to death as their companies are looking to move Exchange to the cloud.
In the end, how good a career path will be is dependant on how much the person puts into it. IT is no different.
I'm telling you this because realistically, Indians are taking over American IT shops and they will be present anywhere you work. You'll have to learn how to work around their cultural differences.
30 years in IT and yet to work with an Indian. I guess i'm just special.
Last edited by mrwibble; 09-08-2014 at 01:43 PM..
Reason: Can't count!
As others have said, IT can be a lucrative field but it is very competitive with lots of competition from foreign-born workers. Overtime will be a way of life, as there are very few 40 hour work weeks. I am salaried but wish that I was hourly so that I could get paid for the overtime that I put in. It is pretty much a given that you will work on a multitude of projects during your time in an IT career and this is where the overtime lies. There is job security in performing well and learning as much as you can on a software implementation but the hours that management can and will demand of you can be very grueling. Training and education is a constant, as others have stated, which will also push you beyond the "normal" 40 hour work week.
As others have said, IT can be a lucrative field but it is very competitive with lots of competition from foreign-born workers. Overtime will be a way of life, as there are very few 40 hour work weeks. I am salaried but wish that I was hourly so that I could get paid for the overtime that I put in. It is pretty much a given that you will work on a multitude of projects during your time in an IT career and this is where the overtime lies. There is job security in performing well and learning as much as you can on a software implementation but the hours that management can and will demand of you can be very grueling. Training and education is a constant, as others have stated, which will also push you beyond the "normal" 40 hour work week.
Between all of the time over forty hours and uncompensated outside the job training, how many other professions work this hard?
Between all of the time over forty hours and uncompensated outside the job training, how many other professions work this hard?
I wondered that myself but haven't worked in other fields. I do know that my counterparts in HR, Purchasing and Finance don't work as many hours. Some in Finance do work hard, though, as legal requirements and reporting demands can put a strain on them and a strain on us as well, since that often trickles down to the IT staff to help provide the necessary info or needed change.
And therein lies the issue with IT. There are jobs that people are doing today that didn't even exist 5-10 years ago. Versatility is key. As technology advances, some of the things that require experts today will be consumer level stuff down the road. So those that don't adapt will simply be left behind.
I obviously don't know the 'naysayers' that the OP talked to - but the ones I know that feel IT is a dead-end are more often those that couldn't (or wouldn't) continue to take on new skills. I know email administrators that have been managing MS Exchange environments for over 15 years who are now scared to death as their companies are looking to move Exchange to the cloud.
In the end, how good a career path will be is dependant on how much the person puts into it. IT is no different.
LOL: you've got that right. I've worked for various IT majors in various roles, after career-shifting into IT fifteen odd years ago.
Times are changing. Is it not axiomatic that is the very definition of "technology work?" We're in an information revolution, detailed by smarter Futurists than I. High-level, the changes I've seen end of the 1990s to current have been impressive enough. Some of that in the pipe will take it to the next level. Seattle is huge on "cloud apps" companies, obviously: think Amazon, Google, HP's endeavors, Microsoft Azure. Microsoft's new credo is "services and devices company." That tells you much of what one may need ot know about the future, with multi hundred billion $ in total market cap firms (combined) going that way, overall.
A "cloud" when I started was a rather-disjointed collection of mass network storage devices. Yes, there were LANS, WANS, and the Internet's various components were really starting to scale, at least conceptually. They thought that (mass NAS storage, locally, federated with other devices on networks) was going to be the biggest of big news, in 2001. They were partially right, out of which grew more-advanced SQL clustering and etc. Right for-sure, about the data-part in terms of volumes. Wrong, in how it was, is, and will be implemented and distributed for all kinds of uses. The so called advent of "Big Data," which is still in its infancy. They couldn't have known that, though could probably guess. I was in planning meetings around all of this for a couple of the major products and services back then; it's been fascinating watching the evolution!
Now as to jobs. Yes, there is a lot of of temp scut-work. That may, or may not, be getting better or worse over time. That does not need to be the beginning, and the end, though it will be if you don't self-train and educate right out of it. As others have already mentioned. I did some of this work, early on, found it vulgar and solved it via self-starting education and training. Believe it, there are tiers of consultants from entry-level temp to high-powered, educated, and smart vendors bringing in $200K+ per year by working smart (not "working hard," which by itself is simply toiling unnecessarily).
IT roles requiring strategic thinking and leadership won't be outsourced in the foreseeable future. If-ever. They exist. Yes, it is a long road to carefully cultivate skills and contacts to get into said-roles. The majors hire the best, brightest, and most-motivated (and most-savvy). That's the fact. Pay is consummate with value brought to the company. If you're under-paid, quit and find better work.
Offshoring, btw, works well if the pitfalls of the model are well-understood. These days, they are, at least by some of the companies providing the service (and firms requesting it). In 2007-8, when I was in grad school (while working), people were realizing magnitude of the initial error, as several mention. Since, modifications to the model are actually making it an enjoyable experience (if managed correctly!)
We have a number of managers onsite of the same culture and language as our offshore teams of several hundred persons, in one particular org. They run things from here. That, and other changes, have vastly improved the paradigm from the disasters of the early to mid 2000s.
I have worked with IT development teams in several countries, including the US. I would not worry too much about foreign employees flooding the US, or taking US development jobs to "sweatshops". As it has been pointed out, this is an extremely quick moving industry and it also shows in the sense that things get levelled out very quickly. Look at the European market: eastern EU countries produced a lot of IT specialists and jobs did migrate there. However, because of the high demand, wages quickly grew to the level that there was not a huge difference between UK/German wages and eastern EU wages.
IMHO, there is a career opportunity in IT, but there are things to look out for:
- Developers will be in high demand. Everything works with a software these days and the number of smart devices will only increase. Mind you, the days of specialists are over. If you build your career on a tool/language, it will devaluate very quickly. Java, .NET and similar juggernauts will lose importance. Yes, they are still important, but the market is quickly shifting to leaner, more effective tools. Make sure you follow the trends. This applies to database experts as well. Don't get too comfortabel with SQL. NoSQL solutions are quickly taking over in several fields.
- IT infrastructure guys will be less in demand, because of the cloud services. Who in their sane mind would set up, operate and support a server cluster, when you can do that more efficiently and much flexibly on the AWSs of the world. No, the cloud is not the answer to everything, but it is very likely, that local infrastructure will shrink significantly, and the IT team will follow.
- The nature of IT careers is that it is an accelerated process. With 4-5 years of experience, one can become a senior professional (consider this: the lifepan of certain technologies is shorter than this timeframe). It is great in the beginning. However, after a certain time, you will compete for the same jobs with people much younger, with more up to date education and skills and more time to learn (no family for eg.) If you can make a career transition to a managerial role, fine. However, that takes an entirely different skillset. Being an excellent developer does not directly translate to being a good manager. Getting stuck in a senior developer role, you will lose some edge to younger competition. This is natural.
- Try and find a "niche market": for eg: Oracle (the ERP, not the database) is hiring for outrageously high salaries. Why? Because their ERP requires running at clients requires a huge development/maintenance team. Oracle can not keep their freshly trained staff, as they will flock to clients.
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