Slashdot Mirror
Lifetime Careers in IT?
CyPlasm asks: "MSN Careers had this article posted the other day that asked about a "Lifetime Career in IT: Is It Possible?" Does the average Slashdot reader think they will retire (with a pension, benefits, etc) after a long and successful career in IT?"
I've already changed careers 3 times...
Only if i work for Microsoft
I'll retire when they pry the keyboard from my cold dead hands!
We have a few lifers, and they're always the source of plenty of good information. Don't have to know the latest languages to be good at thinking about how things work.
Not me though. I'm going to claw my way to middle management and worry about TPS reports.
Does the average Slashdot reader think they will retire (with a pension, benefits, etc) after a long and successful career in IT?"
--
foobar = foo + bar
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Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
It's not as if you have to be on top of the game in IT. At least, not the government sector.. Most managers and senior support staff are in their 30's and 40's and completely ignorant of whats been going on for the past 5 years.
Let's see;
One week it's another company is dotbombing
Another week is a company replacing all technical people with Taiwanese made sock puppets
And now how we better think about something else if we want to not starve when we reach retirement age.
I can't feel the love guys, are you trying to kill us with more stress???
- sigs are for wimps.
try doing a life - for IT crimes.
Kevin's on the loose, beware!
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
The million+ folks who got laid off since the burst of the dot-com bubble and have not yet gotten a new job say "NO"!
frankly, i dont want to. the better you do your job, the lower your chances are of keeping it unless you are working for a massive company. not to mention the fact that you will more than likely lose your sanity if you dont have a staff underneath you as well.
-Jarhead
Magic 8 ball says:
Unlikely
seems a joke right? I work(ed) for a blue chip company next week, when our entire IT staff gets out-sourced.
After spending 20 years as one of the lowest paid (yet consistently employeed) network/sys admins on the planet, yes, I will get a pension, benefits, etc.
if you're willing to move to India and take 1/10 of your current pay, you can have a lifetime job.
I'll be working on Warcraft XII right before retirement.
I can't even get a week long internship in IT. How is lifetime possible?
And I don't see that being in computers makes it any easier or harder. Sure you've got to retrain every year, but we've got it easy compared to doctors, and even your average factory job changes enough that it's an issue there too. Stop learning and you die, first mentally then physically!
Delivering militantly anti-commercial music to all two people who care!
The odds of finishing an IT career... are getting better. There are more people retiring very soon, and with that comes lots of senior positions that will be vacant, and ripe for the picking.
Settle into a company, make yourself indispensible, and you are set... If we avoid nuclear war, and stop using SUVs...
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Not if he keeps replying with these "FP Posts"...
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Because at the rate IT firms close and layoff, we will have to keep working! Not all companies offer any retirement benefits at all. We will just have to keep on working, and do some smart investing if possible!
pention and all that? no. But i make enought that i should be able to put some away(401k?) It will be all my own money.
Lifetime in IT? Yea, i will be old and grey before i would do anything else.
Retire on a diet of cola, stress, donuts, stress, M&Ms?
Hah
WhatMeWorry!
Maybe I'm missing something but:
1) Why on Earth not? The article doesn't offer any reason to doubt the rather obvious conclusion that, of course, people will have lifelong careers in IT. Except that "MSN Careers member EsTeeJay" thinks otherwise.
2) Maybe I'm nitpicking, but why is a pension a prerequisite for a lifetime career? I'm not holding my breath for a pension but still expect to spend a lifetime doing what I do.
The only reason I can think of to doubt the long-term potential of an IT career is that systems may become so intuitive there's no need for a admins. But given the way software progresses, one doesn't see much chance of that.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If I die tommrow that is....
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
Asking a generation x geek today if they will 'retire from IT' might in 30 years seem as inappropriate a question as saying, "well gosh, do you think you could spend your career in education?"
The obvious answer being that of course you can spend your lifetime in IT work. In it's current manifestation, it is a new field. One that will continue to branch out in ways currently not imagined.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Does the average Slashdot reader think they will retire (with a pension, benefits, etc) after a long and successful career in IT?
what about those of us that aren't in IT now??
Today's society has become more self absorbed, me, me, me. Couple this with the ever growing trend of companies laying off/firing people at the whim of the financialists, and you have my generation.
/.?) 2 yers per company. The longest I worked for one "company" was 5 years, and that was the Marine Corps.
No, IMO, IT for the majority won't be a one company career. Hell, I've only been doing this for 10 years and I have already worked for 5 companies. That's an average of (holy cow, math on
I don't see this trend stopping anytime soon. The technology changes too swiftly for people to find their comfort level and sit there doing the same thing for 30 years.
Sent from your iPad.
Consulting: You work for a consulting firm and merc yourself out to the highest bidder. (Benefits: Lots of money, though little in corporate benefits (Stock, Options, etc.))
Management: The top of the IT ladder is CTO. Most companies have them now. (That puts you on the Board of Directors, and a VP after your name). (Disadvantage: You are now a technical manager, not a technician.)
Company Leap Frog: Work for Company A, beef up your resume and jump to Company B (higher up the corporate food chain). Work for Company B for awhile and do the same and jump to Company C (again with an increase in Title and Wage) and so on and so forth. (I have worked longer in my company the Every Director/VP in my building. Most have not worked here longer then 2 years.)
Conclusion: It is possible, even using tactics found in other departments. But is the end result really worth it? (Even if it is what you want to do for the rest of your life?)
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
RTFA!
Had to be done. :)
I expect to be working or playing at this stuff until retirement age, but I'll probably detach myself from the IT rat-race before then only because it's a rat-race, not because of my ability to contribute.
Writing software is rewarding; writing software for business sucks (after a while; 25+ years in my case).
I would be able to get rich off the dot com boom and be retired by now, forget the pension...but alas those times are over...I'm not going to rely on social security benefits nor a pension to get me through retirement...
I would first have to get a job in IT.
(current status: unemployed recent college grad. MIS major).
I have blog like everyone else
When we fire you, we kill you.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Considering I'm a county employee, I feel pretty confident that I can maintain my career in IT (GIS area) for my entire stay here. And in 30 years I retire with an excellent retirement package. While everyone was jumping around jobs in the IT field, I was studying and going to school. I'm still going to school and plan to for quite some time.
So yes, lifetime IT jobs probably exist and they don't necessarily have to be boring. It really depends on what you are looking for.
Someday I'm going to sell my stock options and retire early on the proceeds. Of course, since the options are so far underwater there's little hope of them ever seeing air again, my retirement years will be spent in a cardboard box underneath a freeway overpass.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
you blow your brains out at age 30. This is the only industry I know of that eviscerates itself every few years and rejects the knowledge of its senior experts. I'm 45 with experience from design and assembly to sales to engineering to programming, and I've been looking for an IT job for years. Ever heard the term "gray-listing"...?
I'm skeptical of IT people who stay at the same job for more than a few years.
They tend to have 1 way of doing things because they've never learned other systems. Switching companies is a way to do that.
And to answer the inevitable "Not Me" posts, I know there are always exceptions.
Look into getting training as a BMW mechanic. I read an article recently talking about how technical it is. There are now training schools for this alone, and their graduates get jobs very quickly. I seem to recall you could make $50K and up doing it.
Does the average Slashdot reader think they will retire (with a pension, benefits, etc) after a long and successful career in IT?
"FP!"
"Woooooot! FP! Lemchatters envy me!"
"asereje ja deje dejebe tu dejebe"
"Back in my day, we didn't even have cybornetic implants. We had to interface with the computer through this thing that had all of these buttons, and another thing that moved around and had 3 buttons. And another thing. We had a command line. When we used Xwindow, the corners were so sharp we had customers sue us for it. That's why we had to use the round ones. And there was this company called apple....."
I have been working in IT for a large healthcare orgainization and have ridden the 1990's boom and the 2000+ bust without noticing anything. Now, those working for thriving IT companies during the 1990's boom certainly were making more money than I, but come bust time, I still have a job, and they don't.
The key to a long IT career is to apply your IT knowledge to something more stable than IT for IT's sake.
It will not be possible for most people to retire from IT as by the time a worker is approaching retirement the amount of people competing for these positions will price the older talent out of the market.
Not only that, but the ability for most people to learn complexity later in life is greatly diminished so what effectively happens is that in 30 years, the 30 years of that time will have skills that are far more advanced than the typical 60 year old.
So if I can hire a 30 year old with a wider skill set, a faster pace, maybe from a third world country, I'll take that person. The fact is that companies must save money to make more money, insurance for the elderly is more expensive, pensions are expensive, and the time required off from work to tend to illness is an impediment to finishing projects under budget and on time.
Being in the position to hire, the simple truth is I can't afford to allow people to retire under my management. Terminations, down-sizing, restructering, and mergers will continue to be the tools to remove those workers who are getting too old and too expensive.
...unless the individual continues to learn and expand his or her skill set. Even then, there's no garantee.
Just being an efficient and capeable IT worker requires continuous learning. For the person that starts out as a sysadmin, he or she will need to move into core programming in order to even begin to ponder staying in IT for a lifetime.
For the individual that starts thier IT career as a core programmer, he or she will need to continuously replenish thier skill set. And even then, they'll need to prove they have fresh skills and ideas in order compete with the younger generation.
A nurse can start out as a nurse and retire as a nurse - not so in IT.
If you're in IT and expect to retire in IT, you'd better re-evaluate. Most will be in for a rude awakening when they reach thier late 50's and no-one will hire them for typical sysadmin or programming jobs.
Really, it sux to think about it, but it's reality.
Probably the best way is to get tenure at an academic institution. Other than that your choices are to be a successful self employed go getter, or work for the government.
My grandfather is 90. He is in perfect mental and physical health, and "officially" worked as an attorney until a few years ago. He still occasionally takes depositions and adjudicates some lesser disputes.
Aside from the fact that that side of the family has a history of longevity, I believe that the two reasons why he kept going were (a) he didn't feel like quitting, because he enjoyed his job, and (b) he worked in a field (partner in a mid-sized law firm) where nobody could dictate to him when to retire. His expertise grew over time.
In Europe, a lot of societies which have historically cherished the idea of retirement at age 65 with a generous pension are starting to re-think this concept, primarily because the pension funds simply won't be able to keep up with the glut of baby boomers retiring soon, but also because peoples' attitude towards work is changing.
Lack of job security nowadays means that, while you may show professionalism towards an employer, you do not display the traditional "loyalty for life". As I can tell, it is in the nature of companies to act in a manner they perceive to be economically rational (regardless of whether it is or not)--this takes precedence over keeping old Smithers but-he's-only-got-2-years-to-go-until-retirement around at all costs. Concurrently, people are discovering that they are far more mobile in the labor market, recession or not, than they once were, and employers generally seem to recognize that fact.
Especially in IT, where actual hands-on know-how may become obsolescent fairly quickly, but experience in how to manage that know-how (project management, design, business-side consulting, etc.) grows over time. I can imagine that we will see an increase in the number of over-40 employees going part-time consultant, and simply not quitting at 65. I don't know about you, but I love my line of work, and can't really imagine just stopping dead in my tracks one day to go play shuffleboard with a bunch of walking corpses.
So a classical "employment-until-pension"? No. A "job for life"? Definitely. I don't know about you, but I would love to still be a part-time IT consultant when I'm 70.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Will I have retirement, benefits, etc...? Of Course! I don't work in IT.
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, and we agree, sadly, that due to a deeping interest in, and an understanding of computers by the average person (although, we could contend that the average person still doesn't know ziltch, but thats another reply) that the average IT will become more of a janitorial position. The way I like to describe what I do to people who don't have a clue is to say, "Imagine your office manager. That is pretty much what I do, but it's all on computers." So if you know any office managers or janitors with comfortable retirement packages, I'd like that job myself. So we were thinking it would be a good idea to form some sort of union, or official guild. I don't know if there is such a thing at this point, anyone know? Being the son of a union family, I realize the immense comfort that this sort of instituion provides to a family (if the contract is negotiated correctly), and the horrible feeling of doubt when the contract is up (i.e. PMA and ILWU) however, something sort of collective barganing would be in order I'd think. I would be first to apply to such an orgization, and avid fighter for our rights to a comfortable future.
If only I'd been able to catch the dot-com wave and retire at 30... Though I suppose that doesn't count for this question, since it would be without pension or benefits (wouldn't need 'em), and after a short successful career in IT.
But that makes me wonder-- do most tech companies (I'm thinking specifically about newer dot-com-type companies) have retirement plans? Many probably haven't been around long enough to have employees with enough longevity at the company to qualify for any kind of retirement benefits. But what about the bigger ones that have been around a while? Anyone know? Can you retire with benefits after a long IT (not management) career? I should hope that if you can't now, by the time most techies are heading for retirement, the system will be in place at most companies.
I'm hoping to retire from the same place, after another 25 years or so.
Oh hell, now I'm depressed...
Some techies are pessimistic about their prospects, citing outsourcing of IT projects overseas and workplace competition from H-1B visa holders.
People have talked about this a lot recently, on Slashdot, in the news, and around my office. But I think people really underestimate the importance of having the developers around so they can be brought into meetings and have face-to-face meetings. When developers feel their responsibility every day, they gets projects done faster and at higher quality. As a developer, I better see the importance of my work by going to more meetings and interacting more with our clients. However, if I was reporting from around the world, I wouldn't feel the same way.
In fact, at my work we're actually bringing lots of QE in from India because we want them working extra hard helping our American-based developers. There's no way real development by American companies will move offshore.
my blog
You go through school, going deep into debt, to learn the trade. You get a job, where they work your nuggies off, for a "salary" that's laughable in hourly terms. Then, after ten years struggle, you're either RIFfed, or, if you're darned "lucky", they'll "reward" you by taking away the only thing that made the job even tolerable - you'll become a low-level manager, and never again be permitted to dirty your fingers typing in code.
Thanks, I'll take a pass on IT as a career. In many ways, I'm glad that I came down with MS *before* I got RIFfed, as it has allowed me the time to realize that my "career" had cost me my health, my social life, and one of the things that I enjoyed most - the joy of crafting a well-thought-out and well-executed program with my own two hands.
Pension? Get real! To get that, you have to stay in one company for ages. Fat chance of that, with companies dropping like flies all the time.
No, you might actually be better off if you skipped school, and stuck with your "You want fries with that?" menial job. At least you'd have some semblance of a life with that, and after paying off the student loan that allowed you to join the exciting and fast-paced world of IT, I'm not so sure that you wouldn't actually be ahead financially, too.
Lemon curry?
I've always believed that IT wouldn't sustain an entire career for me. So I've worked up a contingency plan:
Work till I'm forty, teach the rest of my life. I know by that time I'll want to pursue what REALLY is important to me, giving back. And besides, I'll be fired due to age discrimination anyway.
Go Gusties
...at 40 already.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
As for career -- I'm just a beginner. Only two years in it. I have been involved in three different projects and in all of them as a freelancer. And I begin to think that pension is a fairy tale for kids.
:)
I can add In Soviet Russia to the subject
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I did the smart thing and got my MCSE. I know that as long as Microsoft is around, I will have a job, and that will be a long, long time.
There's only a worldwide market for, what, 6 machines? No way to make a career out of that.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Honestly, how many people in MANY OTHER FIELDS got layed off within the last 2 years? Granted a lot of people in the Silicon Valley Tech industry got layed off, but that includes more than just "IT" workers.
Sales Managers, Marketing Employees, Graphic Designers, Gophers, PC Technicians, programmers, and Administrators were layed off.
Some of the Marketing people I know that were layed off had been with the company for over 15 years. You can be layed off or fired in any field - it doesn't matter. As long as your smart, have a plan, and quite a bit of luck - you can get your way through anything (almost).
Ave Molech Setting
According to this and this article, close to half of all IT workers could be displaced in as little as two years. International outsourcing, contractors, part-timers and consultants will do most of the work. If you want to work in IT for the rest of your career, you need to be planning your strategy now. So quit munching pizza and watching cartoons and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.
Maybe the analysts are wrong, but do you want to bet your career on it?
The warning signs are out there.
Have any slashdot readers already retired after a long and successful career in IT?
...just as long as I keep assimilating new information, establishing myself as an indespensible team player, etc.
Oh yeah, and bribes. Lots of bribes.
IT professionals still wonder what to expect if they choose to devote their entire career to IT.
Since 1987 I've endured thankless all-nighters and many wasted weekends to satify the insane schedules of inexperienced project managers. I've also had the crushing responsibility that comes with installing and supporting systems that multi-billion dollar companies rely on. I've been shit on as a consultant and exhalted as a savior and treated like a hero. I have experienced a full-spectrum of environments. I am now 35 years old.
But the one thing that has been consistent thoughout this whole time is this: I love what I do. Maddening at times - yes. Mundane - yep. But almost always interresting. If you dont have passion for technology, you wont last.
"You have to keep yourself trained even if management will not pay for it," says Edward Pilling, who participated in the discussion. "You have to have one critical skill set that is in need."
This is what I mean. Learn the new technology. Stay current and informed. Read Slashdot (mod me up now). Take classes. But most of all, stick your nose into it, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. If you are going to get up each day and drag your ass into work, you might as well enjoy your workload. Sure, most IT jobs pay well, but if you hate computers it will show and you wont survive the influx of new grads and you will fall to the side of the road while the fast pace of technology marches on without you. If you love it, you wont be able to get enough of it, and you will succeed.
Read this, paying especial attention to section 5, and then re-examine your questions...
I work at a university, which means I have a couple of things going for me.
1. Longevity. Not many universities go out of business.
2. Job security. You may be reassigned to departments you don't like, but it's pretty damned hard to get fired.
3. Growth. Constant opportunity to do different things. I can get tired of IT completely, and switch to another field entirely, without losing any time on retirement.
I got a job in the railroad industry with a good pension and nice atmosphere. I'd love to retire there after 30 years with 70% salary plus the 401K I'd save... Right now I'm just hoping to make it 5 years so I can get the pension money I'm required to put in.
It's hard to think of staying somewhere for so long when I just hope to be employeed at all.
1. Start company of unemployed geeks.
2. Bribe government officials for fat military contracts.
3. Retire!!!
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by being such an asshole)
Linux and OSS help me love my job. SOunds corny and it is... and it's true. That I work for a .gov helps that much more... lots of opportunities to learn and spread the good word, plus there's a lot of stability. If I wasn't having this much fun I would probably stop my IT career pretty soon.
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
I've already been working in the field for 19 years already, and plan to go another 20 or so (unless I suddenly strike it rich). I don't see why anyone shouldn't plan on working in this career field for as long as they want.
I think the key to this is maintaining a motivation level that will allow you to keep up with emerging trends, but not so high that you burn out.
I have been a unix admin for 10 years, but have been playing with perl, cgi, apache, mysql, and linux for most of that time also, knowing that someday I may have to rely on one or more of them.
keeping a broad scope is absolutely necessary, but not so broad that you master nothing.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
dammit, don't mod him up!
Mod him down! Show him what _real_ pain is! We'll show him what stress is.
My short answer is 'no', I don't think anyone can really be in a position to retire from an IT career if they are expecting things like a pension and other retirement-age benefits.
If you want to work in IT and you want to be able to retire you need to look into:
- Building up retirement funds in a 401(k).
This is tax deferred income and if your employer matches you contribute to the MAXIMUM percentage that your employer matches on. Just keep in mind NEVER EVER EVER touch that money (unless you're retiring, or need to buy a house). Basically pretend the money disappeared and you have no idea where it went.
- MANAGE your 401(k).
Watch those investments! Make sure that where your money is invested is continuing to grow and perform. If it isn't, the contact the company holding your 401(k) funds and move it into investments within the program that *are* performing.
- When changing employers roll the 401(k) into the new employer's plan (if it's a good plan with varied investments).
- Investing in land.
This is a tax shelter while you're working (since interest in a mortgage is deductible) and land always appreciates in value over time (even in Arizona <g>). When you retire you can sell the land and if you're over 59 you can skip paying the taxes (this is a one-time benefit). And if you invest in land by buying a home and you live in the home for 2 of the last 5 years, you can keep the gains from the sale of the house *tax free* up to 250k (500k if you're married). Go put that into some IRA's and life will be gooood come retirement age.
But if you think that pensions and social security are going to get you by in your later years, forget it. The only one taking care of you will be YOU. And the sooner you get started the better. GWB just said that most people age 50 are not anywhere *close* to being in a financial position (investments, pensions, whatever) and that's a real problem.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
I do love my profession....but it's very demanding and I don't think I will continue like this forever.
:)
I'm not in a company with long term benefits as those company are usually big and I don't like working in a too structured and restrictive environnement. So, for me there's no long term advantage working in IT and I'm not looking for those. I prefer an higher salary that I can manage then money I'll get when old.
Also, I would never get the salary I have in a big company as an IT guy unless moving to a manager position.
As soon as I will have kids I will move to a manager position and maybe in a big company doing my 9-5...but until then, I use the 24hours in my days to have fun, enjoy my work and prepare myself for long term. These are my benefits.
I don't want to be seated in a box 9-5...I prefer being a free animal
My ultimate goal is to produce a website with no bad links after, and only after that I will retire.... HTML programmer is an IT job isn it?
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
please forfeit your salary
I see the job market in general as coming full circle back to an environment similar to that of that of my great grandfather. In those days a person with a given skill set worked for whomever payed them the most and provided the most interesting projects. Experience is as valuable back then as it is today.
The days of working for a company for 30 years and retiring with full pensions are gone. Companies I see rarely offer pensions and more often than not you hear tales of them raiding pension funds anyway. At least with a 401K our money is out of their hands.
As an IT person(web primarily), I spend a lot of my personal time researching and learning new and different technologies. Partially because I have to, but mostly because I love to play with things on my LAN just to see how they work. Will I be doing the exact same thing 10 years from now as I am today? I hope not!
The IT field moves fast, as an IT person it is important to me in a job that the employer is willing to 1. Train me in additional skills and 2. Allow me to freedom to implement them however is best. If they can't offer that, then it's time to find one who will. Or freelance with someone who will.
Yes, times are dark now for the IT field. Things in the DotCom Craze swung so much out of control and the pendulum was bound to swing to the other extreme. God willing, things will balance out. Some great people have been hurt in the downturn in the IT field, but then again a lot have been flush out who had no business there to begin with!
I would say the longevity of a career in IT, considering the path its on now, is about the same as trying to be a musician. There are some one hit wonders, some with staying power, some that have made it and lost it, but most just trying to stay in but keep getting kicked back out after a few years to either regroup trying to do something else and trying again or going a different route in life completely.
The "relationship" with your employer is not the same in every nation. It is a more common US problem where people end up having alot of employers -- for many reasons -- and dont end up w/ pensions.
I would suggest that those who have less prospect of pension and a continuting relationship with their employer form a Union. You can get time/cash for training and bargain a reasonable pension.
People outside of the US worry less about this because the cultures are just different.
Last Post!
If it's possible to work your entire life as a grocery store cashier, then I'm sure it's possible to do the same in IT.
I'm one of those people who have had several "careers" during his career, and until the current economic downturn I was able to slide where the work was. I started in embedded programming, moved to technical writing, managed a QA group, built and ran a couple of testing labs, got into the software publishing business, and right now I'm a product maintenance and tech support specialist and part-time security guard (two jobs).
My choice? Not really. Companies kept dying on me, and I would have to move on. [This is nothing unusual when you are at the "bleeding edge" of a field -- I've heard the refrain time and time again as friends/colleagues tell about their experiences, "...and then IT died!"] In most cases, I was able to recognize the leading indicators of impending job expiration and "jump ship" before the blow landed. (In one case, Black Friday happened three weeks after I left a company; management there got sticky about recognizing my contributions...and the reason was that the parent company was dropping the axe on the subsidiary and didn't want to bother.)
In spite of all this, I have received exactly one unemployment check, and that because I didn't act quickly enough before being pink-slipped by a company positioning itself to be purchased -- and the company suffered a near-death experience only to rise Phoenix-like in the UK a few years later -- but not with me anywhere near it.
Unlike a number of my colleagues, I didn't job-hop per se; I tended to stay as long as the company, or project, stayed alive.
One bad effect: the deaths of so many of the companies I worked for left me with no pension, none at all. This was before the days of IRAs and other instruments of retirement benefits that follow the employee even with the demise of the company that offered them. Because I followed the call of the job and not of money, the coffers are not exactly bulging at the moment. Indeed, when you strike the side of the money tank, the ring lasts for a long, long time...
Today, I'm told I'm too old. Oh, no one wants an age discrimination suit, so they don't say it right out loud, but I get the message anyway. So I continue to chase the crumbs and send in resumes, waiting for the day that I have to auction everything off and try a nomadic lifestyle.
Retirement? I don't think so.
Can one find a lifetime career in IT? Don't bet on it.
It's possible to make a lifetime carrier in the IT world. The trick is to keep on top of your game and don't let the world pass you by.
My father started his IT carrier in 1968 and he's still at it today as a Senior Unix Administrator.
He'll be retiring here in a few years. I fully intend to do the same.. only 40 more years to go.
The Computers may get better and more reliable but end users will always need our help to run them.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
I believe its called raising awareness.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I'm 30-year-old Java programmer now. Sometime before I'm 40 I'm going to become either a plumber or a plasterer, and start earning some *real* money.
Yep, I plan on living on my CPP if all else fails. All else being stock markets reviving one of these days!
After a short and successful career in computer programming I retired.
To me it is humorous, but also sad, seeing the folks on this forum worry and bemone their futures. While at the same time railing against the Evil Corporation and spouting from the hill tops about the glory of freeware.
Think about it. The MBA programs of 1000 universities are churning out cute little guys in suits whose ticket to the good life is figuring out how to squeeze out enough "new" money to justify their own million-dollar salary. Did you think benefits and pensions would escape their notice?
Getting up into management is one solution, but my feeling was it meant giving up the work I love (nerdy work) to do work I hate. Being so doggone good they don't want to lose you is one solution, that's the one that we all hope we can use. Some of us will succeed there and some...will not.
Sorry, just my grumpy $.02.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
Corporations are working hard to lower their operating costs. And it's a safe bet that the corporate executives will exempt their own over-the-top salaries, which seem to be completely immune to performance considerations, from the chopping block.
IT is an easy costs target for two reasons:
1) corporations can't measure IT quality, so might as well get the lowest cost
2) the lawyer types who run government-industrial complex never liked geeks in the first place. They're the guys they made fun of in high school.
So corporate chieftans love sending IT work to the lowest cost corners of the planet. To rub some salt in the wound, they even import cheap pieces of the planet to take jobs in America (H1-B).
So as geeks, we have to lower what we charge corporations in order to stay competitive. But that's awfully hard to do when our input costs (like healthcare and housing) are growing at double digit rates.
So the only logical thing for us to do is export ourselves to the 3rd world in order to lower our costs and stay competitive.
Does anyone know if India or Australia will grant work Visas to Americans?
I started out in Cobol, moved to Fortran and PL/I, and then Turbo Pascal and GW Basic. When I became a consultant, I had to learn C, csh, Borne shell, C++, Java, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, PHP, and VBscript. I've done some stuff that sounds pretty interesting in retrospect, although it didn't always seem that way at the time. (Imagine programing on a PC/AT at midnight in the middle of winter in Wyoming in a building where the sole source of heat is your PC and a single 100 watt light blub overhead!)
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Engineers are destined to get fired. Engineers including software engineers typically work on a project, which means that once the project is complete, they don't have to be around. Of course, some people need to be maintaining and debugging, but roughly 90% of engineers can go. I am not just talking about IT, but engineering in general. Let's say you are a construction engineer and designing a building. Once the construction is over, who needs you? We've got to move around and keep finding new projects, and that's the nature of our profession. Sounds kind of like prostitution, but it's not. Prostitutes might have regular customers, but we (real engineers) don't. If you feel OK about it, you'll have lifetime career in IT, if not, you'll find some other job. Simple is that.
I agree, and I come from an almost exact same background. I've noticed that management tends towards expecting a lot with little investment. "I want this network to work is all! No we don't need any more infrastructure, I don't care if our switches came from K-mart, they worked plenty well at my last job. Don't tell me how it works, tell me what is wrong."
The most succesful IT people know how to reverse that tendancy, or feed off it. Better and more trickier to reverse it. I don't see myself in IT too much longer if I can help it. I'm pretty good at it, but like Methos in the Highlander series, the fights all but gone out of me.
I'd rather get into instruction, or more specialized CAD. If I don't find my way into actually being able to engineer this or another network, its just not worth it. I don't have the nerves to keep putting out fires, or wait for them to happen.
_________________________
OnRoad: Boldly reporting the SUV war from the middle of the road.
You'd be surprised, a good mechanic and a body technician (repair wrecks) can make really great money. It's really hard work but good mechanics can make 65K and body guys can top 6 figures and that's just working for a shop. Most of those guys get paid by the bill hours and the job hours aren't how long it actually takes. There's a big book with how many hours it takes to do EVERYTHING but if you can do it in half the time that's twice the money.
Does the average Slashdot reader think they will retire (with a pension, benefits, etc) after a long and successful career in IT?
If by "retire" you really meant "blow your brains out" and by "pension" you really meant "all your vast 401k dot com profits" and by "benefits" you really meant "bankrupt social security" and by "long and successful career" you really meant "still living in your parents house sitting around getting stoned" then, yes, I believe I will retire after a long and successful career in IT.
I could give a toss about a lifelong career in IT. I'm doing what I'm doing so that I can pursue those things which really interest me, whether that be starting my own company, working on art/music, moving to Spain, or whatever.
I happen to know quite a bit about computers, so for the time being, it works quite well. They use me and I use them.
Basically, I've learned the hard way that the industry doesn't give a -shit- about you. The only thing that matters is the bottom line.
SST (an old punk rock label) once had a saying:
"Don't suck corporate cock"
It has worked quite well in my life.
Ciao!
you can have a very long lasting career in IT if you are a manager that knows the right buzzwords and the right people. Actually you can probably even do tech work as long as you know the right buzz words and people. Remember that to large companies you are often seen as cattle there to feed the top rung. If however you are in a smaller company working for respectable and professional people then you can pretty much guarantee a long and rewarding career. So it would be better to break "IT" up into management and non-management, worker and sycophantic leach and of course large buffoonish company and smaller group of entrepreneurial, problem solving professionals
here troll, here's a bit of meat... what a cute little troll you are...
No. OSS is a threat to the shrink wrap world, it the Old World reasserting itself. If OSS "wins" then you won't work at shrink wrap software companies, you will work at service companies, and as staff at places that need to extend software (or write their own).
Software engineering is competitive... but it's not other software engineers, it's the software. Software automates what software engineers do. Better be better than a CASE tool, or bye.
i knew *something* useful could come out of the evil empire. even if it isn't software.
that you were reading something on MSN, or
that you believe that your IT career can become lifetime employment.
Take my advice. Get involved with the local Mafia family (or one of five if you live in New York). That way, when you retire from IT, you can still work your next job as a button man. It sure beats guarding the door at Wal-Mart.
My dad, who was in one tech job or another since high school, finally gave in his last retiremnt notice at age 81. 5 months later, he passed away.
He had gone from radio repair, to manager at a major defense contractor (fighter jets), to nuclear power plant design. After retiring from the 'regular' job, he went into teaching programming classes at a local computer chain.
An "IT" job does not necessarily mean coding day after day for 40 years. Explore the various segments of the field. As you age, you'll find you some things better than others.
As long as I'm breathing, I'm going to be doing something.
1) Most people change careers a few times. Not sure if this is true, due to the amount of knowledge/education that most tech workers have/need (especially after reading some of those ridiculous job requirements on Monster, requiring experience in every technology under the sun).
2) Demographics. An aging population means that in 10 years, lots of people will be retiring. Canada and the US bring in alot of immigrants to help balance that. Unless employers start to go to India to get their tech-needs filled (which has lots of downsides), demographics should mean lots of work for Gen-X.
For this discussion, I definately did not want to read at a threshold above 4. I began at 2, and with a grain of salt poured over most comments. I wasnt looking for the hotshots that bragged about their careers, or their flashy plans, rather I was looking to get a sense on avg (just like the original question wanted) of people's thoughts.
;-)
Anyway, one comment hit me strongest, and gave me most hope:
"the industry will continue to evolve in ways unimaginable"
and another idea (evident in many comments) is that people might move out of IT into management...
Well, I'll just respond to this second idea. You see, if you havent already realized it, this whole planet is a machine. People are a machine. Now, that doesnt mean its a deterministic machine or anything like that. But, IT is simply the most dynamic, the least latent, and the newest way of interfacing with this machine and its creations. When you move up to middle management, you're still crunching information, just at a different rate, in a different direction, and with a different flavor.
Finally, I'm not trying to de-humanize with what I have just said, rather, its simply just one way to look at things.
Peace and love to all
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
It's been well documented that the average career of a programmer is about 4 years, before they get promoted, move on to something else, or go insane. People just can't take being a code monkey, with the insane hours, for longer than that. There aren't enough management positions for all of them to get promoted within 4 years, so a lot probably quit for something else.
Of course, it begs the question - why does this situation exist in IT? I think the answer is that there is such a flood of programmers (both domestic and "imports") that employers have 0 incentive to make them happy. Programmers are disposable - those that aren't promoted get used up.
I would say there are only a few ways out of this. Either educate kids how shitty an IT job can be, or close off the tech visas for foreigners. But really, neither will happen. So we get to enjoy generation after generation of programmers (and admins) get disillusioned with what they used to do for a hobby.
Happy life!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
1) Bring in lots of suckers out for the $$
2) Purge them with the bad economy
3) Post stuff all over the web about how terrible the IT field is so no one new enters.
4) Profit!!!!
Uhhhh, yeah, thath dithgustin. [The lady's man]
A new SlashDot poll reveals that when MSN Careers publishes a fluffy article based solely on idle message board speculation, the end is surely near.
"It's Dot Com!"
but it can be done. I am an eldergeek, 60 last year, who just got an MCP cert in VB and expect to get another cert this year. The key is, you've got to keep up. If you don't learn a new discipline every year or so you're dead. I've always been on the techie end, so agility is mandatory. But then so is working for the right company when a crunch happens. I think chances are best in a midsize company, they can change course quicker and with less disruption. Many of those yelling "age discrimination" are just dinosaurs who didn't keep up - I see them at work daily.
I have just past what I call my quarter-life crisis and I had to make the choice to either stick with IT or go into the Golf industry. I love working with computers, but I'm extremely paranoid about job security. While IT is a high paying job in most cases, there is not too much job security in regards to one-job-till-you-die. In the golf industry however, there isn't a whole lot that changes and the percentage of getting that job-till-you-die is rather high.
I'm going to go back into the golf industry and work as an IT consultant on the side. If I get a higher demand for my IT services, then I might decide to focus on it more and have my career in golf on the side.
When you get right down to it, I'm really just taking two of my passions in life and letting whatever comes my way decide on the outcome.
Ugly Bob
To Live Is To Die.
A lifetime career in IT is easy if you don't mind the below average pay, ancient tech, and stultifying boredom a government job gives you. I know the work sucks but everytime I read about more layoffs and coders volunteering for a chance at a paying gig I am thankful for my extremely secure, good benefits, regular salary increases federal job.
It is not enough to succeed, others must fail. - Gore Vidal
No, I don't think it's possible. Burnout in this industry is a killer. All of the "lifers" I've seen in IT literally end up like the guy in Office Space with the red stapler. It's such a demeaning business.
No, but it seems like several lifetimes already.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Been doing it fulltime since 1974, Unix Admin, Multi-Language Developer, Software Specialist - always updating my skills and staying near the leading edge, but far enough back to not get swept up in the "latest craze".
I now find that I'm respected for my extensive knowledge and depth of experience - I get to act in advisory positions and get paid accordingly.
Retire? Maybe... When the travel gets old and the stock market gets it's feet back, but for now I'm doing "just fine" thank you very much.
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
This is right on target IMHO. First, software automated the blue collar manufacturing jobs, then the pink collar clerical jobs. Now it's after the white collar professional and technical jobs, the knowledge workers.
The notion that smarter software converts knowledge work into service work is the truly scary part of this trend. Software won't replace people, because software will never be perfect; but it will REDUCE dramatically the number of people needed in the original task, and relegate the others to cleanup (help desk) type positions at much lower pay. In another country.
In India (or Russia, or China, etc.)
This is of course old skewl bullshit. I don't even
bother leaving my desk to talk to people in the next office -- why bother? For one on one's the phone is
faster and for multi-calls IRC or other IMs have many benefits over spoken meetings. The slower pace and ability to look back and keep on track is invaluable and far superior to regular face to face meetings.
Is the "average SlashDot reader" really in IT? Have you done a poll? I am a hardware Design Engineer (35 years of it and love it still). We hardware engineers went through the layoffs in the late '80s and saw the idea of pensions get supplanted by the 401k.
With the average engineer position lasting 3.5 years, pensions don't exist and I do not think the IT career is any different.
If you like what you do and make enough to eat and buy a few things as you do it, any career is successful.
Retirement planning should be done by everyone as soon as their career starts. I was unfortunate to get caught between the pensions that disappeared if you did not stay 5 years, and the 401k/IRAs that you were not allowed to have if you were on a pension plan.
If you can't do a 401K, do the IRA's and do it young! Then you will be able to retire if you want to stop working.
One of the differences I've always noted between Latin America and the US, is that in Latin America people build and rely on relationships with other people, especially family. In the US, there's an ongoing illusion that you can trust money - that money is secure and will take care of you and all you have to do is make more of it. Countries that have experienced hyperinflation somewhere along the line know better than to trust money more than people.
Many jobs are now being outsourced overseas to places like India and Singapore. I expect that in 10 years time jobs like the one I now hold will be few and far between, I am a systems admin working for a large outsourcing organisation. Reality is that many positions don't need to be filled locally, if you have an adequately skilled person that speeks the language it doesn't really matter where they are located. If someone that has the same skills as me that lives in Bangalore can do the job, and for half my salary, what future do I have?. It is a matter of time before large outsourcing organisations such as the one I work for start setting up offices in India etc with the intent of winning outsourcing contracts by undercutting the companies that try and do the same thing locally.
A senior manager in my dept recently sat us down in a big meeting to discuss P&L figures, our local dept is not doing well. Among all the talk of things we can do to turn it around he did mention that he and a few senior colleagues are flying to India next month to see if there are any opportunities to be had employing foregin labour. This is the thin end of the wedge, my days are numbered. I am already planning for a career outside of IT, I am just praying I can cling to my job for the 3-5 years I need to set myself up financially before I am made redundant.
Modular and intelligent components with a few drones to manage the hardware and centralized contracted "experts".
And the legal tax breaks will make you drooooool. :)
Yeah, it *IS* that easy. I know. It's what I did after 4 years of Java programming for idiot managers on Wall St who didn't know Swing (the API) from Sting(the Singer). Trust me... with a Palm pilot, a cell phone, and a bit of SELLING, you can do ANYTHING. Lifetime career in IT? Easy, if you work for yourself.
Good luck! :)
(1) I can't wait until you guys find jobs in other industries... I love logic, and am quite fond of computing devices.
(2) Oh shoot, your are right, a lot of jobs are like that in IT, and you best find something else to do because we are going to automate that stuff away.
-pyrrho
Well, I won't bitch too much but the PX isn't the benefit it is made out to be. Everything has no sales tax (and that of course is a good thing) but Walmart would still beat their prices. The Commisary is tax free too but you still have to pay a surcharge which is used to pay commisary expenses and upgrades.Also, there are many states that have no sales taxes on groceries to begin with. Let see, what else, oh, you get to be separated from your family for months, if not years at a time. You DO NOT have a choice in how you spend your day. You don't get fired for screwing up, nope, you get confinement or demotion or worse. Let's not forget getting shot at if you go into a conflict. Then let's say you get peace keeping duty (oh joy, lets goto Kosovo where everyone hates us). Cops get shot at too and have much better pay and benefits than Military and they deserve it IMO. As for job protectionism, you obviously didn't hear about the drawdown in the 90's under Clinton did you (in fairness, it started under Bush). Thousands of troops lost their jobs. It was just fortunate that the economy was in good shape at the time. Now take all that and go live in pre Korean war barracks or family housing with the roaches. Oh, you live in a high income area? Go find a house without a Cost Of Living Allowance. Look, the Military ain't doing too bad but I certainly didn't do it for the money and the Men and Women in there now most certainly are not now. Many are thankful just to have a job. Of course then there are the reservist and national guard guys that the President called up. I bet you didn't realize that they have to give up their civilian income while they are gone. Hows that for F'ed up.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Because people will be doing it for free. You WON'T be working at a service company, and you WON'T be working as staff to extend it. The jobs will not be there, because OSS destroyed them. What you WILL be doing is asking customers whether they want fries with their order.
OSS only exists after Capitalistic research does the heavy lifting. You should live in a commune, and exist with nothing made by Capitalism. That means food, clothing, shelter, tools. Make everything you have from scratch. You will see how much you will want Capitalism.
This is something that I have thought a lot about. i thought that i would actually be a lifer - but I am not so sure...
My grandfather was a Nuclear Engineer for GE. That was the only job he ever held. That was a time when you had loyalty to a company and (hopefully) the company showed the same loyalty to you.
Now, the thing is that most people dont have loyalty to a company - and the companies have never even heard of that term before.
What will I be doing when I am 65? well I am 28 now and not even sure what I will be doing when I am 30, or even 35. Thats not to say that I dont have goals, or never did - but the world has just changed so fast that all my goals needed to be re adjusted.
I was planning on working hard in tech till i was 35 - then retiring and building a family somewhere cheap and un-populated. That was when I was married though - and working as a six figure IT worker with 80,000 shares of dot com stock.
well now, I make 50K, no stock... and I'm divorced. So much for loyalty of any type...
I am just happy to have a job that (barely) pays my bills. but I dont have any expectations to be in the same career (unless I work for myself) for life.
uhh, no there's not. You sir, are an imbecile.
that 35-45% of IT positions in the U.S. may be outsorced, not that they will be eliminated. And just because the positions are outsourced doesn't necessarily mean they move overseas. I might also note that a lot of the managers they interviewed for the story on outsourcing didn't think it was cost-effective. Do you really believe that someone halfway around the world is really going to understand what your needs in software are? That's a tall order. It can be tough enough to make systems work when you are dealing face-to-face with a customer. I think career planning is helpful, but I think it revolves around the notion that you affirm that this is what you really want to do, and that you are going to commit to doing what is necessary to be gainfully employed, such as keeping up with new technologies and being open to changing employment arrangements.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
I'm an independent contractor and I really (at this moment) can't see myself buying into any company enough to join on and get long-term benefits.
Just for the record, there is NO "off the record" record.
Make a record of that.
Although it has only been one day on the helpdesk, it seems like a lifetime.
Those of us that enjoy what we do for a living can and WILL make a career out of IT.
The people that won't be in this for the long haul are those that were told, "Hey, get into that IT thing. You can make a ton of cash and play games all day."
Those that got into IT because it was the "place to be" will vaporize into whatever the next "place to be" is.
To me, this means that I won't have to listen to people bitching about how they took a desktop job and don't get to work on any servers. I won't have to hear, "I worked on this, that, and the other thing" and the words 'but you don't know what cut and awk do' ring in my head.
Sorry, I'm venting because these are the folks that are kicking and screaming to stay in IT, but they don't really belong in IT and the "next big thing" isn't here yet for them to hop to. There are many good IT folks out of work today, and these whining people need to make room.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
that's something our parents or grandparents might have been lucky enough to get. all we get is massive contributions to our 401K.
Not bloody likely. Well, maybe more like probably, unless that movie offer comes through...
And that's why I have an alternate carreer in the theatre, because of the money! (Would you like fries with that?)
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
What, you don't have any life outside of work? That's sad.
I intend to do something similar: I love computers, and I hope to work in computers until the day I die.
What this probably means is that I'll die penniless - a broken man - and that my genius will only be discovered 200 years later after my death (when corporations are overthrown by the starving masses, declared illegal, and their suppressed documents are released, causing a second renaissance and pulling all the world out of the second dark ages).
Or I'll just do something else that I'm good at.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Yes, here are a few ways you can make it happen right now.
1. Take an electric cable and fit a plug on one end. Put the plug into an electric socket. Hold the other ends of two wires in your hands. Switch on the power supply and you can see Lifetime IT career reaching you soon at electric speed.
2. Take your server machine to the topmost floor. Tell your assistant to put down the server in five minutes. Go down to the ground floor and stand right below the server. Within five minutes, you can achieve lifetime IT career falling into you.
3. Disassemble all the parts of your computer. Eat the parts in the following order. Processor, RAM, Video Card, Audio Card, Motherboard. This method is so special that you can get rid of your hunger at the same time you acheive lifetime IT career. wow !
That's all for the trial version. For full version of advice, please register at http://lifetimeITcareers.gotse.cx. Hope you enjoyed our tips. We wish you good luck !
getSexySig();
There's a difference between "raising awareness" and telling people to run for the hills. A lot of the stuff I'm seeing on Slashdot has been of the "There is nothing left in IT that you can ever do, and IT is dying."
There's a WORLD of difference between saying "Sure, the city's a little flooded right now, maybe you should spend a couple of nights in a hotel outside of the city for comfort", and "SHIT! THE CITY'S FLOODED! THERE WILL NEVER BE A CITY AGAIN! PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!"
In case you haven't heard, most people are NOT making money now, no matter what profession they're in. My dad makes BOXES in a factory, and they're having paycuts. My mom takes care of the mentally ill, they're having paycuts. (the caretakers, not the mentally ill.)
-Sara
In case it isn't obvious to some of the above described individuals, this is satire. Let me rephrase that: a joke.
Nevermind RETIRING right now; how the heck do you get HIRED?
Hopefully my career path will be like Gates' (except for the draconian tactics of course!). Create software company, make billions (or at least be able to retire early/comfortable!), be the chief software architect. Let someone else do stuff like marketing and running the company.
Of course, it takes a few years of experience to make it to the 65K level. Until then you'll be making much less, and will need to tune your current lifestyle down a couple of notches.
As a homeower with monthly mortgage payments, I'm not sure I could make that transition.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
If you want to have longevity in the IT field, learn how to solve problems first, then how to do it in software.
I don't have any worries, myself, because there will always be a place for people who can cut to the core of a problem and have insights into the key issues, in a broad range of fields.
Actually coding up the solution, though, is a S.M.O.P.
are you saying there's such a thing as a reasonably-priced porsche mechanic?
sorry, i sold my '84 911. had to have $2,500 in work done on it for the 90K service to sell it. seems "90,000 mile service" is a fairly loose term.
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
I've got it all figured out:
3 9 21 29 43 + 27
Al Gore lied!
I started at 20 hanging tapes and mounting disks (CDC drives... you screwed them in... only 80 megs... the drive itself was as big as a washing machine. I swear to Jebus! ), and "toggling octals" on PDP-11's and 32's (ATEX Publication Systems). Moved into coding on Vaxen (Pascal and C). Transitioned into being an Oracle DBA for a while. Then pure systems administration (Digital Unix [now tru64], Solaris and was a way early adopter of Linux in production environments. During the Dot.Bomb era I moved back into coding (Assembly, C++ and Java). Now at 42 I'm working for a small company doing Systems Admin/Oracle&MySQL DBA/Java Programmer. I think I'd probably go nuts if I had to pick one IT track and stick to it. I'm pretty sure I'm a lifer but then again I have tentative plans to retire at around 50 to a small college town and get a degree in history and take it easy.
It's been almost 18 years since college as IT at a big non-IT, but science-oriented corporation, all at the same location (the company's been merged up three times now)... the 'job' has been different things: Grunt programmer, support JOAT (Mac evangelist forced to become Windows migrator), technology pilot...
.NET and Linux, because it's too cutting-edge for a big corp, but most of the other shlubs around me can't seem to find their way around JSP, ASP or even some basic DOM and HTML.
My current title is "IT Architect" which means I do what needs to be done, whether or not the users wrote requirements, pull rabbits out of hats, never say, "It can't be done," and still I manage to get away with the "It'll take eight weeks" and finishing it in one trick.
I don't work 80-hour weeks, I get well compensated, I'm known in the field and respected by my management.
Will it last? Maybe not. That third merger is just happening, and the rumor mill says our facility may close.
But it's never been boring, because I'm always willing to learn something else. No, I'm not doing
Design for Use, not Construction!
I'm one of the people that jumped into IT because of the money in 2000 after I got out of the military. Before that I liked to play with computers as a hobby. Now I hate it, because of work.
This is what I see. Programming will get outsourced overseas. Jobs will remain here, but not a lot for programmers to demand 6 figure salaries and tons of bennies. Sysadmins will get automated as software matures and computers become more powerful. Where I work I see it already. With Windows 2000 we are consolidating numerous servers into 1 or two and clustering them. Add some management software and we won't need to hire any new admins for years to come.
I'm going to school and will soon change my major to accounting and then get an MBA in finance or something. You are always going to need people to count money, account for it and make money with other people's money. Jews have been doing it for hundreds of years.
I am 33 years old.
I just quit IT and went into the Financial world.
Money will always rule.
Financial world = pretty simple. Sell shit,profit.
IT = slave to the machine, remember arcane shit, suck up to some PHBs, work weird hours, and get laid off because some asshole in a different country will do it for ten cents on the dollar.
I mean, banks bring out new products all the time, and even the core market can be somewhat changing, eg by deregulation of the market, etc. But it still does not prevent one forging a career in banking.
Likewise, once the protocols stabalise, it does not prevent people persuing a career in IT. Even major paradigm shifts like windows/unix is seen elsewhere in industry (eg metric conversion), and such do not drive massive numbers of people out of the affected industry.
The dot-com bust is probably a grander scale event similiar to the typical building booms and busts, and the massive railway boom/bust that left a large amount of infrastructure to recycle. Some UK cities have abandoned railway terminii, from defunct companies whose assets were assimilated and rationalised into more favourable terminals.
So what we have gone through in the last 20 years, and maybe the next 10, are just the sorting out of the technological structure, and we should start seeing computers stable enough for long-term careers to be forged.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
At my company, we have all those things, but I really feel much more motivated by meeting with people personally. I've also found that people get things done for me faster if I set up meetings with them and explain why we need what they're building. Both parties can understand the other's constraints and can also discuss work-arounds immediately.
We're a decent sized software company that develops a lot of new technology. I just graduated from college two years ago. So I wouldn't say either me or my company are 'old skewl', but 'old skewl' business practices still seem to work the best.
my blog
Sorry buddy, that's not IT, that's the fast track. Making $50-$75k/year right out of school, you're on the fast track. Guess what, median income for a family of four is under $40k/year. Every fast track career is short (the pre-MBA consulting jobs, etc., are 2-3 year jobs, then you get an MBA and start track two, or you wash out). Traders have the same lifestyle.
You get out of school, and run like hell. Most people fall off (not everyone can be a senior partner at a law firm or Big-5 company), that's how it works. With the IT path, you find something else, or you sit and rot. You can sit in a big company's IT staff for years, but the hot-shot jobs are all going to be churn and burn. You want the comparitively big bucks, get ready to run like hell.
Ya know all those cushy management consulting jobs that your business major friends wanted? Talk to them after 6 months, 12 months, 24 months. Some make it and go to B-school, others wash out and go find something else to do. If they couldn't take 80 hours a week of crunching excel spreadsheets that get ignored, they wash out.
Stock traders, they can't sit there staring at a screen forever. Same with brokers. The ones that sit in a phone room either make it or wash out.
Lawyers can go and start a 1 person law firm, but the big firms will suck you dry. You can't bill 80 hours, you can't make the next rung. That's life. There is only room for one CEO, and he can only have 7-10 people reporting to him, and so on, and so on. That means that for every person that advances, 6-9 wash out.
Such is life. You can find engineering jobs that last, but the hot-shot code wringing dot-com lifestyle? Yeah you only got 3-5 years of it, same for everyone else.
Alex
I didn't get into IT until I was 30, and am now 44, and see no reason I would stop before 65, in fact I imagine working until 70. I worked 10 years for Wolfram Research, before moving on to SAIC (and this was for better pay). I specialize in test automation. Perhaps my "better pay" would be embarrassing small for you east coast and west coast IT types, but its very good pay for the mid-west, and I squirrel away a good amount in a co-pay 401K and buy a reasonable amount of SAIC stock.
I have been lucky to find jobs that have a scientific flavor. And of course my niche is less about programming paradigm and more about program functionality. I use PERL to script complex tasks in verification along with Android for GUI tasks. At Wolfram I used Mathematica to script and test Mathematica (of course this is only possible because it is a general-purpose language). But I still use sh and csh for some (very short) scripting tasks. I plan on learning more languages in the future (I will omit the rather longish list of past learned languages), but have a very pragmatic attitude about code - you use what gets the job done in the least painful and most maintainable fashion. Don't crucify yourself on the bleeding edge of technology.
For those of you actually in testing (a niche that sometimes garners little respect), my best advise for job security - stay on mission. Perhaps this would apply to other IT areas as well. You have to promote an agenda that is good for the product and the company, and not become the lackeys of the development staff (without becoming quality assurance trolls).
Letter To Iran
I work for a public school district as a systems administrator, and I find the thought of being there for good has become a pleasant thought. You don't get paid nearly what a corporate IT person does...But, there's job security if you're good at what you do and have people skills, I have access to training if something new comes up, and the benefits are impossible to beat. I probably have one of the last medical plans out there where there is no prescribed list of doctors or hospitals; I choose what I want. I'm appreciated and respected by the people around me, and I'm fortunate to also have a really good guy as a boss. Added up, I enjoy what I do, and have found there's things I value more than making big bucks.
Never look down your nose at others. Someday, someone is bound to see your boogers.
now all i need to do is find a job...
...that 90% at least of those million that lost their jobs were the chaff of IT workers everywhere.
They weren't really IT people either, many were 'idea men' or whatever. Most people that lost a dot com job, and stayed lost, lost the job cuz they sucked.
Those that didn't found jobs in the real industries.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Hmmm... maybe I'll look into becoming mentally ill.
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
Here's a good example of a life'er:
A few years back, IBM was reevaluating the FAA systems for Y2K compliance and they came to a conclusion:
There is nobody left who understands the system.
Moral?
Work hard and then fuck the documentation when nobody is looking.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
For the past 10 years I've been managing IT for a $20 Million company in SW FL. Thought for sure I would retire with that employer as the business had been around since 1959. 10 months ago we were acquired by a $6 Billion company and most of what I did is now handled by corporate in OH. Although the future is a bit uncertain, I am currently enjoying the benifites of such a large organization including a pension plan and great insurance coverage. It looks like our plant will remain open for at least another year - but my closest ties are to sales and marketing so I am trying to build my value in those areas. So far so good. Moving to Ohio at some point could be an option in order to remain with my new employer, but I also have to think of my two boys (8 and 12) who I see every weekend. Tough choices may lie ahead. Wish me luck... - Dave Cook
In fact, at my work we're actually bringing lots of QE in from India because we want them working extra hard helping our American-based developers.
"QE" is not familiar, but the Indians work "extra hard", where Americans would not? Interesting.
There's no way real development by American companies will move offshore.
I believe you've underestimated the short-sighted avarice of the typical American CEO, but I hope you're right.
I'm 33, have an M.S. in computer science, and got my first paying job in software development in 1990. While I expect I'll always be playing around with computers, I doubt that it will be my primary employment in the long-term.
Partly this is because of my growing frustration with the universality of poor management; partly it's because of the ceiling I see for techies who don't want to become managers; partly it's the threat of jobs moving overseas.
I'm a second generation programmer. My father started programming in the late 60s. He had a pretty good career going (a few rough times, but all in all pretty darn good for someone without a college degree) until about a year and a half ago. When the downturn hit, he found that no one was interested in hiring a 58 year old programmer/analyst. (What percentage of coders, designers, and analysts at your shop are over 50?) He's finally just about given up on getting back into the field, and gone on to take real estase classes, just passed his licening exam.
I've decided not to wait, but start laying the groundwork for a second career now. I've cut my day job back to 30 hours/week and will be starting classes in Shiatsu in a month. No rapidly changing skill set in massage and acupressure....
I hope that in five or ten years, I'll have my own bodywork practice, and do some computer consulting on the side.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
skill labor of any sort is in high demand lately as people move more towards professional jobs. it's lots of hard work and takes some time before you can make the big bucks, but very few people move in that direction and it's easy to find work. i'm considering becoming a lineman for my electric company.
please me, have no regrets.
"QE" is not familiar, but the Indians work "extra hard", where Americans would not? Interesting.
The American guys are working really hard. We have a big release coming up and our company's yearly revenue depends on having a good one. The Indians (QE=Testing) are being brought in so they can have direct access to the developers on the project.
I believe you've underestimated the short-sighted avarice of the typical American CEO, but I hope you're right.
It's exactly this short-sightedness that proves my point. Bluntly, CEOs want to be able to yell at the people working on the project. They want meetings and direct responsibility. If development is happening elsewhere, they have far less control over the product. I'm sure many companies will make the mistake of shipping products offshore, but they will only serve as examples of what not to do after they fail.
my blog
Well, same applies in software development. 65k is about 50% more than what I made my first year working full time, and that with an master's in CS. (Of course, that was in 1993, pre-boom.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I think the average IT life span is about 5 years. Which means I shouyld be gone already. My next stop is to buy a Video store so I can watch video's all day and still work :)
A bunch of uppety IT people slacking off for hours while the mail server goes down, and not letting anyone else fix it. Can't be fired of course, no no no.
Why don't you study something usefull instaid?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I work for the government, in an IS department. We have people who have been working there for 20+ years. One of them still has the same office. The great thing about government is that since one gets raises based on time automatically, one does do better the longer one works somewhere. Granted the raises aren't as fast or as potentially rewarding as private sector, but one doesn't have to worry about one's employer going out of business either.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Right, it's the same in all industries. But my point is that if you were to change careers, your salary will drop substantially.
:)
I remember being amazed at my first $29K techsupport job
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
IT is associated with the support and information side of the industry. Technology is the innovative frontier that many of us push forward... I love how no one pays attention to this.
It's exactly this short-sightedness that proves my point. Bluntly, CEOs want to be able to yell at the people working on the project.
Perhaps you work for a smaller company. CEOs in larger companies don't lower themselves to yell at anyone lower than a vice president. The only input they get is from the CFO who tells them how their stock options are doing. And if those options are not doing well, then by god, the CEO sends out a company-wide email demanding that all employees demonstrate their commitment to the company by increasing cash flow. It's not a joke - I've received those emails.
I'm sure many companies will make the mistake of shipping products offshore, but they will only serve as examples of what not to do after they fail.
I agree with you there, but what is the fallout here until the companies (sans the golden-parachuted CEOs who raped the companies and "retired" to spend more time with their families) realize their mistake? A whole missing generation of American IT professionals?
I think I'm too expensive and the the last time I checked companies weren't interested in paying me a lower wage. They don't seem to trust me if I'm willing to work for 2/3 of what I should normally make.
In spite of that, I think someone with skill can work in IT as long as they want. I'm just about done after 25 years and ready to learn and do something new. Maybe I will come back to IT in 20 years and start over again.
"He's dead, Jim"
at least not if you're american: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_05 /b3818001.htm
I have only been in this business for 5 years as a network engineer but, the main thing that I have noticed that keeps people around in companies is their certifications. The more of those you have the more likely the company will keep you. Perfect example was when the tech market crashed the company I work for layed off more than half of the network engineers, those that are still around either are really good at kissing ass or have those coveted certs.
I've been twenty-two years in Silicon Valley, and I'm _trying_ to keep
...
...
going as a geek,but it gets tougher every year.
Technology companies have this inherent need to plan projects for the
earliest possible completion.
It's _always_ a race to market.
There's _always_ schedule pressure.
When you're 22 or 25 and just out of school, single and with few
responsibilities, "challenging" projects are fun, in that masochistic
geek way that we'reall so familiar with. Possibilities are exciting;
obstacles exist to be overcome. You're gaining mastery.
You *know* that you can bring in on time if onlyyou work nights and weekends
for nine months or so. Maybe a year
So you work insanely hard for three years, maybe five, and the company "appreciates" it. And eventually that company goes under, or closes your
division, or something, and you move on. (Those options? Never were worth
very much, and you never sold any of them anyway.)
Then you're 37 and have young kids and a spouse who works.
Your manager comes to you with a right-to-left project plan that you _know_
will require nights and weekends. Again. And you sigh, and sign up, and do
the work -- it's familiar, you know the right way to do stuff, you know the
problems and what the solutions cost, you know the tradeoffs.
You do it, but it costs you -- you have to miss your kid's school talent show,
you're not home nights, you have to work the week you had planned to take the
family to the beach. Your spouse resents the hours, but they've promised you a
sabbatical after only five years, and you've got lots of stock options.
Somewhere along the line you try management, and parts of it are OK,
and parts of it you're real good at, but it's tiresome to work at such a high
level of abstraction, where there's no right answers, only "issues". And it's
soul-killing to watch your boss, and his boss, try to avoid understanding
inconvenient facts. At some point you know, you _insist_ that the plan under
discussion is unrealistic, because it is. You're not a team player.
Your review is painful, for the first time ever.
Back to engineering.
You work hard for a year, and they cancel the project.
You work *really* hard on the next, critical, save-the-company project --
and they cancel that one too. You go to meetings for three weeks trying to
define another product, and then that company folds. Your options are again
worthless. The company stock you bought through the ESPP is worthless.
You're burnt out emotionally, and your health could be better -
a dozen years of sitting in a cubicle typing under fluorescents
has taken its toll.
You resolve never again to sacrifice family life and emotional health in favor
of working too hard. You limit your hours,never come in on weekends any more.
You won't sign up for plans that demand sixty hour weeks -- but most of your
co-workers are youngsters just out of school, and eat that stuff up. You look
unmotivated and cynical by comparison -- in fact, you _are_ unmotivated and
cynical. It's great doing stuff with your own kids for a couple years (but
they're teenagers now, and don't have much time for you), but your reviews
aren't much fun. They hand out options and you get damn few. You stop getting
raises.
Then that company folds, and you're forty-nine years old, looking for another gig
in a downturn. The companies that need you are looking for someone to come in
and work _really_ _hard_ to save a project that's fallen behind schedule
but you could pull it off, with only
nine months or so of working nights and weekends.
Maybe a year
----
All you young guys should read Tracy Kidder's excellent
_The_Soul_Of_A_New_Machine_. Maybe read it twice.
Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check
read Nickeled and Dimed or the Underground History of American education, wake up and start fighting....
Chances are Slashdot's opinion will be heavily biased because the readership is heavily weighted in favor of the out of work and people who have the time to read and post all day long because theyre not doing much else. I know a lot of people who are very successful in the IT industry and have been for years, and as long as their are "systems" to maintain will be there maintaining them. They're too busy to come to Slashdot and tell you their positive stories, so yea, youll probably just see a lot of "IT Sucks" on here.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Just today, I made an apointment for an ingrown toenail. It will be a week before I can see my doctor.
TriCare sucks!
As a civilian, I'd call several local clinics, find one with an opening, and probably be seen bt weeks end.
Yes, I'd pay more for it, but choice is a good thing. Well worth paying for.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
no
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I mean, surely it counts as a "lifetime career" if you commit suicide at 35, right?
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Another university professor that's never worked a day outside of academia relishing in the fact that they can "influence students in a way that nobody else can".
Don't get me wrong, there are some amazing profs out there. It's the ones (like this poster) that stay in school and decide to teach simply to avoid the move out of their safe academic environment that piss me off.
Does the term 'practical knowledge' mean anything to you? Oh wait, you said you could also do consulting on the side. Now I understand...
Plenty of my friends and ex-coworkers have retired more than just wealthy...some are millionaires. Some got lucky and sold their stock or options at just the right time, others were overpaid to begin with and were able to invest wisely. I am well on my way, but, I am no fortune teller. Can it happen? You bet! Will it happen to me, well, I can only be so lucky.
No, it won't. There will always be executives - but they do not want to be accountable if the shit hits the fan. They will always need someone to delegate the responsibility to.
And we all know what happens to toilet paper once it has been soiled.
Academia isn't a bad thing, that's for sure. But in a field like IS, I would suspect that someone who didn't have any realworld experience wouldn't be worth all that much. I know a manager who tells me that fresh graduates of MBA programs know a lot, but they never know nearly as much as they think they do. And as a recent, almost two years now, graduate of a computer science BS program I can tell you, from my experience and those of my peers, that you learn a lot on the job in the computing field.
When you mix those two fields and come up with IS, I would imagine that you get a domain in which pure academic knowledge is not of much use unless it is coupled with some time in industry.
Also, keep in mind that being a professor is not all about teaching. There is a tremendous pressure to research and write paper after paper if you even hope to get tenure.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
I'm only 25, but I've maintained employment in IT since October 1998. My pipeline is filled through the summer, and I have plenty of prospects. I haven't taken the typical jobs - none of the 60 hour a week crap. I haven't been salaried, ever. I only take contract work. The jobs I do have to work the extra hours for are my private clients - no manager to screw with. I keep my eyes and my mind open - I go where the money is.
.NET development because that's where the work is. Next week it might be PHP, or Perl, or Java. I don't care, I'll do it, regardless of what my personal feelings are. Until ESR or Jobs or Cox or Gates start paying my rent and feeding my family, I show no "professional" allegiance to any one company or principle. I consider software and technology a tool; to me, Windows, Linux, .NET, and Java are just hammers, screwdrivers, and saws. You have your preferences, but you're willing to use any one of them if there's a paycheck on the other end.
I'm primarily a programmer, and I have picked up a number of technologies, since no platform lasts forever, or always has work available. I don't play the "platform politics" game - currently I'm doing
I focus on architecture. I focus on networking - I'm on the board of a local user group (DFW ColdFusion Users Group). This keeps my name in the community. I focus on business processes that drive the software I build - so far, I've picked up in-depth knowledge of the airline, health care, and financial markets, among others.
The bottom line - don't sit around letting yourself be influenced by the market; create your own market. Always remember that no how good you can write stored procedures or killer C API's, your just another code monkey - find a way to make yourself more than a coder, and you become a solutions provider that customers keep coming back to.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
It's a wonder how many times this needs to be said, and people don't get it.
IT means a LOT of things. If you think you can be Tech Support for life and retire, I'd say you're nuts. I'm working for others, building my skills, earning capital, networking, and when the time comes I'll start my own business. That will be my eventual path to retirement. IT is no different from any other field in this respect. Constantly improve yourself and strive for excellence, and it will pay off.
A "lifetime career in IT"?! Whatchu-talkin'-'bout-Willis?!
I pity the fool who thinks he can have a lifetime career in IT.
That's a wonderful goal. And, though just halfway through my career, I've already achieved half of it.
People who really want to make it in the industry are trying to thin out their competition. Hopefully it works: the world needs fewer low quality coders who are only in it for the money.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The 4 years things has been commented on, but I'll wager it is "4 years, MTBF" (Mean Time Before Finding another job). Actually, I think that would be lower (2.5, 3 years?).
Otherwise, yeah, corporate life is hard. Personally, I want to stack up my saving a bit, then get out and do something a bit slower pace. I would like it to be software development related. However, I'd like to spend a bit more time with my kids before the leave home for college, work, whatever.
After that, maybe I'll bust my butt as a consultant some time again, if anybody will have me. Yes, I do learn new stuff, but of course I don't have the ob. "7 years experience in Acme FOOBOL IDS-builder 3.1" that HR goons screen for.
The HR screening process is the worst part, I think. Otherwise, the "work hard, it's up or out!" ethic is much like other professional jobs.
-
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Half of what you said is true. Your guess which.
My grandpa was an engineer. Pretty much spent his day doing a lot of what I do, solving problems. He was freelancing/contracting when he died in his 80's.
My uncle got into computers before I was born. Retired and freelancing.
I've been at this since I was a teenager. Every project/process I have used has long since gone away and been replaced by something more complex. The amount of available work has grown exponentially throughout.
What'll I be doing in 20 years? Retiring... and by that I mean shifting to part-time and being selective about the projects I do.
Do I think the specific work type I'll be doing will change? Yeah. Appreciably? Nah. I'll be teaching things how to do stuff. It might be computers, it might be lightwave-based tools, and it might be little microbes. Assembling logic-based tools is what I like, regardless of what the tool looks like. I/T, to me, is the epitome of wise laziness... rather than doing it all myself, I spend all day inventing ways to automate tasks.
-- advaitavedanta
Only 40 but have been at it for over 20 years; first with very large mainframe systems, vax, networking (PCs are still toys, but finally coming of age) and later unix systems admin and now *ack* back in school for the CS Masters I never could afford. I have a small, insignificant pension, but I have significant 401ks since I started about the time they were just becoming popular.
I jumped out of the rat race, built a home on a lake in the boonies, and to hell with it all.
My only advice is:
*beware who you work with or for* as they are Dilbert Weasels who do not have the fortitude to do what is needed, just what they are told.
*academics and profs will steal your ideas*
*beware the expensive college, educated, and often very intelligent, arrogant person who is currently working in CS because it seems cool, and when that becomes boring will go do something else, like be a lawyer.
And, don't settle for being a grunt; be independent.
the world needs fewer low quality coders who are only in it for the money.
Yeah, but businesses only want to make money. So which is it?
I guess you could call me an ol' timer; I started pushing tab cards thru accounting machines and sorters in 1958. This was before IT was invented so I guess I haven't spent all of my life (so far) in IT. The point is that early on I tried to do career planning and tried the management path. One day I looked in the mirror and saw a PHB and have refused any kind of management position since the late 70s.
I thrived on taking the tasks that everyone else refused because it couldn't be done. I've been lucky in staying in challenging jobs because people knew I could get it done. The last few years have been a little slack because the folks that knew me and were in positions to hire me were getting laid off too. Now, after three layoffs in as many years and half of that out of work, my retirement funds are pretty much depleted. I'm 62 and if I were to retire at 65, all I would have is social security plus a little bit. I guess it's a good thing my wife graduates med school next year.
But, I won't retire. I'd go crazy. After lazing around on the beach last summer, I'm the one and only IT type in a small (8 people) biotech startup with a couple of Linux clusters and years of calculations to get done. Bettin' on the come... Might have some retirement funds after all. Let's see, when is that IPO...
Does the income I've derived from working with Unix belong to SCO?
A few years back, IBM was reevaluating the FAA systems for Y2K compliance [house.gov] and they came to a conclusion: There is nobody left who understands the system.
Who says anybody *originally* understood it?
Table-ized A.I.
Hmmm... maybe I'll look into becoming mentally ill.
In that case, either stay in IT, or become a psychologist. Either way, you'll get there :-)
I have been working in the IT field since the day I turned 16. (Actually, I was even working before that on my own, but I was hired on my 16th birthday in a computer repair shop.) I can't imagion doing anything else.
Karma is like sex. I can't remember the last time I had either of them.
I think you'll be lucky to have any job in the coming 2-6 years (depending on you know who). As a tech worker? Not unless you're in the government or a company that does big business for the government. Even they're not safe... A large company canned a bunch of people late last year Upstate (then quietly posted "new" openings at entry level salary, that no "entry level" person could do, that were filled by H1-Bs)
A friend who works for a national company (Let's call them See S. Sea) is only a few years from retirement. He's a virtual wreck. Half his coworkers have disappeared, and, poof, here come some much lower paid H1-Bs to take their place. If he had transitioned to management when he had the opportunity, he might be safe, but as a tech worker, his job is in constant danger of being the next plug in the dike of the quarter's sinking projections due to the PHB mismanagement style of management (that's irony).
You can quit when you're dead.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
"As a homeower with monthly mortgage payments, I'm not sure I could make that transition."
You probably could. Other people do. I think the average salary in the US is about 35K and I am sure some of those those people have homes and kids.
War is necrophilia.
This is one of the key differences between the Australian and US university systems, then. Our academics are underpaid (when compared both to non-academic IT jobs in Australia, and especially to academics in other countries), over-worked (student numbers are increasing, academics are required to do more teaching and yet keep up their research load), and highly stressed (very few are in permanent roles).
Unfortunately, our extremely short-sighted governments continue to cut university funding.
No wonder there's a "brain drain" of Aussie students at the post-graduate and PhD level.
David.
Seeing as IT stands for Information Technology, I would imagine that as long as humans desire Information, there will be Technology around to provide that Information.
:)
The problem with a long-term career in IT is that it favours youth, as 'burn out' is a big issue.
The trick to a lifetime career in IT is to acknowledge that eventually youth will surpass you and to make plans to take a different route, such as starting a small company or move up the food-chain in a larger company
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I will retire from IT when they pry the keyboard from my cold dead fingers... ...but given the current state of the job market, that could be this February if it gets too cold...
Seriously though, I don't know how much longer retirement plans will be offered by corps.
It's getting harder for them to steal the money, fire the workers, and slink off into the sunset with the "bonus" pay.
- Eternal Optimist
"Not all chicks dig money" "The type of chicks that double up on a guy like me do"
Part of our website was farmed out to an overseas company. Looked good, however, it was all in some strange language that nobody could read instead of being done in English! :)
Our company paid for a project that was to be done offshore by some overseas dev firm. All negotiations were by fax and phone. Sent a check for 50% of the dev fee/work (1.5 mil). After 3 weeks of not hearing from them, tried calling, etc. Phones were disconected. Management was in a CYA mode trying o explain why we sent a seven figure check overseas to people we didn't even know. It was a great show to watch. Thank the Lord I wasn't a participant, just an observer.
I spend my four in the miltary, and I saw some of the worst crap happen to good people. I saw a father of 3 have to work a second job (delivering pizzas) to just afford living in town and having food on their table. Because of this, and shortage of on base housing, he also had to get food stamps to help feed his children. Plus work his full time miltary job.
Tell me do you think shit like that is fair?
I have seen couples having to live in hovels that if the house had been "out in town" (off base), the health department would have condemned it.
You, sir, need to shut the fuck up about shit you have no idea about!
Secure multi-mediation is the future of all webbing...
should be to be restored as a hologram, and live for a few million years...
There ain't all that many. Most are squeezed out before they hit 40. That's what we've been trying to tell you all along but most of you haven't listened. Now you're over 30 and 35 ain't so far away. You're already looking over your shoulder.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Only if I die young.
It should be noted that retirement is actually only a relatively recent idea. Chancellor Bismark introduced old age pensions at the age of 65 about 100 years ago. Why 65? Because he looked at the numbers and found that only about 10% of Germans would actually live to that age.
I'll bite.
Yeah times are tough right now, despite being out of work 2 years (due in part because I live in the hardest hit IT sector in the world, Silicon Valley) I still try. It's not IT's fault that you lost your heart in the work.
2 years not makin that dot com salary, yeah I moan and bitch all the time. Would I ever tell someone *not* to go into IT? Hell no! Several reasons why. After 8 years of dealing with dickheads at a thankless job i'm taking what I learned off them and applying it to a new business. Guess what? Me and 2 other buddies are opening a gamehouse! That's right, after 8 years, buying a house, and building my credit, I finally have enough to get out and make it without some shithead whining about the same shit breaking everyday because he won't let you upgrade his laptop. (Waaa I want all my programs and e-mail the same if you put me from 95 to XP WAAAAAA!)
Now i'll be the first one to admit that it's a pretty thankless job, but the wealth of experience you get if you're smart enough you can apply to your own business, be your own boss, get out. I've gone from a salary of 87k down to 20k@year. I kept my mortgage paid by not eating, building equity in my home.
So i'm done playing with the dumbasses at work, sorry folks, I know coders and IT ppl hang out here, but you have to admit EVERYONE ELSE IN YOUR COMPANY IS DAMN NEAR COMPUTER ILLITERATE! It sucks when you have to be the guy fixin someones PC and they are asking what the problem is before they even let you look at their shit.
The worst one's are the big exec's with the attitudes, for the most part the secrataries and the rest of the underlings are pretty nice to IT folk, but it's those dickheads at the top you just want to knock some sense into them with their monitors.
Remember, when you're in IT, you're not isolated to one paticular part of a company. You interact with all levels of personal and management, and get to see the big picture of how a company runs without being the big boss. You pick up a little from everywhere making your personal knowledge that much more powerful.
30 in 1 month and starting a business I know I will love. I wouldn't have know WTF i'm doing if it wasn't for those years of IT experience.
What also helps is I haven't let myself get too set in my ways. We've been through a lot of changes where I work.
First, it was Z80 assembler coding on Xerox 820 computers hooked to some ancient twisted-pair 307.2Kbps network. I wrote an OS for it. It ran until 1989.
Then in 1988 we got a Prime minicomputer and 386-based AT&T Unix system. I had to learn configure that Unix box having never touched vi before, had to figure out Primos and their gawd-awful ed program, and then taught myself C. Made sure all above ran TCP/IP so we could one day connect to public Internet, even though everyone else wanted X.25. In 1992 we connected.
In 1993 threw that all out and bought a Data General Aviion box running dg/ux and a nifty 20-slot RAID array system. Shortly after that I pushed a web server in my company and got them up with that. Chose to learn Perl, quickly preferred that over C.
In 1999 threw it all out and got a new fangled Storage Area Network with a rack of cheap (relatively) servers. An entire new technology to learn.
During above time I also became very proficient in Windows Systems administration, and currently manage a 50/50 mix of Windows under Active Directory for 13,000 user and Linux boxes.
I'm 43, I'm going to retire in 4 years with a pension and health insurance for life. At that time, I'll do riskier self-employment scene since the pay is better (if you can get the work) but the pension check will pay the bills during dry times. I've already purchased a server at johncompanies.com and have two paying clients and am working on more with goal to build it up until I retire and move to that stuff full-time.
Another opportunity is to teach. I taught part-time at a community college from 1984 to 1994 and enjoyed it. I also know, beings that I work for one in IT, that good teachers are hard for these places to find.
Yes it is possible if you switch to freelancing.. Im a php freelancer myself and I expect to be here for a long time !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Meanwhile, those of us still doing development are watching in horror as we receive awful newbie-grade code from these off-shore super-genuises, projects slip as communications fail (verbal and connectivity-wise) or the foreigners simply go missing for hours or days at a time, delivery dates come and go and the apps still don't work right -- the stories go on and on.
Now, this isn't a simple case of us having just chosen the wrong company to contract with. As I noted above, we're an enormous company (Fortune 50). We have contracts with many companies in India, and in some cases contracts with American companies who employ off-shore resources in turn. So far, I haven't been able to dig up any success stories. I have been personally involved with (although thankfully not responsible for) quite a few ridiculous failures -- none of which would have occurred if we hadn't been chasing this magical off-shore solution. However, the trend will continue in big companies because middle management has no choice but to show (and therefore report) success, and upper management has no connection with what's really going on day-to-day which means they only rely on the falsely-rosy middle managers' reports.
I should point out that nothing I said about our experiences with the off-shore effort was even a little bit exagerated, either. I have personally been involved in these problems for the last seven or eight months. Here are a few examples I've seen in just the past 45 days or so:
Again, those examples all involve completely different off-shore contracting comapies, unrelated projects, and very different skillsets and responsibilities -- yet they are all characteristic of every report I've heard from co-workers and colleagues at large companies who are enduring this fabulous new technique for managing the bottom line, and similar examples are not hard to find if you go digging around on-line.
In a nutshell, so far it appears the only positive stories come from managers, and they mostly appear to focus on up-front costs -- not quality, or long-term costs. (And in a company this big, believe me, even the worst little application can have a lifespan measured in many years.)
I'll say this much -- it makes me miss working for smaller companies. Sure the pay wasn't as good, and the risk was greater, but at least mid- to small-sized companies simply don't have the option of sustaining the massive waste of exercises like the great off-shore push.
Now before somebody goes and labels me racist or a nationalist or jingoistic or whatever thesaurus.com spits out next, please understand I don't blame these off-shore guys in the least. If I could live on a few bucks a day (I read recently that the average programmer in India makes about $12K) I'd be undercutting the big boys too, and my skillsets be damned -- at that point I'm competing purely on price, and even the shittiest hack-job code still has a chance of running right; certainly business managers aren't going to review it. But so far, in my experience and in the considerable experience of many people I know, the basic quality and skills are sorely lacking, and success stories are few and far between. This is my opinion based on real experience. If my experiences change (and by god I hope it does, given the way our current project is spinning out of control and requiring the stereotypical "heroic efforts" of our now-scorned American programmers) then I'll gladly sit back and agree with the Wisdom of Management. But I've just seen too much failure to deliver in the Great Off-Shore Push, so far.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
So to answer the question, If you work at IBM you have a career at IBM.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
The problem in IT is that the life of an IT or Computer Sciences professional is a race against obsolecence. I have been working in the last 10 years in Computer Sciences and have recycled myself in at least 15 languages and/or technologies ranging from Microcontroller C to VB. If someone does not recycle itself, he/she can be obsolete in just a few years.
And come on, I'm sure we all have known a lot of wannabe coders who got jobs making insane bucks a few years ago and we couldn't figure out how they did it. Well, they are all dropping out of the field too. Companies hired a lot of people because they were desperate a few years ago, a lot of marginal or really suckass personnel. If Bush stops scaring the shit out of consumers and businesses and things settle down and this country gets back to business, they will start hiring again and people with true skills this time will succeed because there will be less of us. Only the real talented ones will be left.
(At least this is what I keep telling myself so I feel better...)
You wouldn't be working for IBM down by Southampton/Portsmouth way, would you? Exact name escapes me, but...
I work for the AFL-CIO, in IT -- software developer.
We have excellent benefits (uncanny, really) in order to demonstrate to others how benefits "should be handled," in hopes that the sentiment will take hold to the benefit of laborers everywhere.
I can retire after bascially 25 years with 80% salary. Not bad. Heh...been here 2 years so far...
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
This is becoming borderline troll material. Why do I actively pass on the traditional route ? Well, it's constantly under assault. First from employers who want/need to keep labor/benefits costs down. They're trying to get the best bang from thier buck. Whats funny is I've met so very few people who turn this back around on the firm. Second from global competition (rightfully, IMHO) that are looking to win business and a better standard of living for themselves, putting downward pressure on wages. As other countries gain IT or some other hot commodity, they will put pressure on firms that have been mainstays. This means keep an eye on China & India. It also means firms like HP, IBM, etc are doomed to marginalization in so many ways. Third, the churn of technology doesn't really leave much room for "lifers". Put another way, certain skillsets that command above average wages tend downward over time due to new entrants, obsolesence etc (example: vendor specific certifications become worthless quickly without increasing relevant experience too, think Novell, OS/2, DECNET) Finally, and more importantly to me, independence from someone else's teat (be that government, corporations, or unions). Forget blatant examples like Enron. Think more frequent examples like IBM, the US Army, the Postal Service, or {name your favorite entity that has cut back on retiree benefits in some way over time, see google}. Anybody, currently under 40 who thinks they will retire the old fashioned way is following a dangerous fairy tale. I think a lifelong career is possible. However, trusting that {your favorite entity} will take care of you in the golden years is a sure path to failure. Multiple jobs, both independent, and as staff will happen. Everytime I will actively manage, and manipulate the situation to maximize my benefit according to my plan.
Actually, no, it's not a surprise. As a "jack-of-all-trades lifer" (over 50 & still in IT), I've noticed most of the guys who are still around (and making above average $$) are the well-rounded ubergeeks, the guys who are interested (read: play) in everything. (If all you care about is money, start out with something involving licking stamps. It'll give you good experience for kissing butt in your later years.) If you want to contribute, really contribute, to the foundation of things, do what you love. Your attitude will be the best thing you contribute.
I know of a company where this 'hostage taking' took place - 3 contractors knew all the code, which was pretty obscure and poorly written, with a tacit understanding that if anyone of them was 'let go', the others would go too.
That said, my first company used a bunch of Russian programmers, who were brilliant, but the code was commented... in russian... indispensable? Not really, market forces changed, the company changed direction, and their code was replaced with new, 3rd party shiny stuff.
Yes.
"And on top of that you can influence students in a way that nobody else can."
... and why?
I love that quote in the way it was intended... but have you considered how he's using his influence on you?
Gee.. I work gor TRW Noertheast.. No pension there.
I've got a 401k though... in the toilet.
I adjusted the 401k so mostly everything is getting deposited in the bond market. It's safer, it's not
loosing money, but it's not the 15% of the 90s.
I just might consult on my own when I reah my 50s.
Or... Maybe invent a cool gadget that everyone wants to buy and make some money that way. It seems that
the US goverenment wants to raise the retirmenet age.. I say hell no, I want to retire at 52. I've seen too many people keel over and die at 67.
My father in law died from Parkinson's disease at 69 years old. He was too sick to do the things he liked to do by 68. So, we are all better off to retire when we want. My house won't be paid for until I am 65, so I may refinance the house
so that it's paid off at (yikes).
Someone has got to kick the health insurance industry in the ass. They are responsible for a
major portion of the poor economy. I've got health insurance but I fight back, my wife and kids gowhen they need to go but I don't. I only go if it's an emergency. And all the pperscription drugs people are on, forget about it. My blood is fine.. so I have asthma.. big deal, I don't need to stay on medications that is going to make a company rich and possibly my body sick later. If breating gets tough I take an extra shower. The mist seems to help big time.
Argghh. time for a meeting, got to go!
well I used to drive semi trucks (loweries for you UK'ers) across the US ...long hual out a week at a time with 2500-3500 miles a week. Made great money, got injured now I make 1/4 of the money but get home nightly working on computers, I like it, it was my hobbie but looks like it will be my life now (I'm 32). There are many times I miss the big truck doing 70MHP on the interstates going all over, a litteral breakfast of crab patties in maine and next day dinner of shark steak in florida. Best part was the pay 40cents a mile (for the math 55 MPH (slowest speed limit on an interstate(communistic state of OHIO))times 40 cents is $22 an hour. The government allows you to work 60 hours in a 7 day time frame so $1320 a week is low ball run west and the speed limit goes up to 75 MPH and there are a lot of bonuses possable (unloading, loading, waiting in a dock for to long, even if the load gets dropped of at sevreal points...)) but for now it's back the the bench to build a few more systems....
My mom takes care of the mentally ill, they're having paycuts. (the caretakers, not the mentally ill.)
Well, that's just not fair. If the caretakers have to take a pay cut, then I say the mentally ill should, too.
I'm just here to score chicks.
I am the network admin for an electronic internet based commodities exchange in Canada. This is what the company offers us.
I get pension contributions that equal 5% of my salary from the company. Which vested after only 2 years with the company.
I can also make RRSP (401k for Canadians) contributions of up to 5% of my salary and the company matches them.
They also offer full benefits (health, dental, eyewear and long term disability) and we usually see a 10%+ bonus yearly and a 3-7% raise yearly as well.
While we are a commodities exchange at least 50% of our staff is either in development, testing or network administration.
And I can see myself with a job here for a while. But I will most likely be in IT management or something before I am gone.
After 37 years in IT, I assure you you can get to retirement. And it is easier now with IRAs and 401Ks than it was in my era.
For most in the private sector, there will be no pensions. That era is gone. Far better for us as we are now so much more portable because we aren't enslaved by that promised pension. Knowing there is none and knowing we must be responsible for our own future, we are free to plan and move to wherever is desireable/necessary.
The trick is save fanatically, diversify your investments and make sure you are always perceived as giving more value than you cost.
I've never left the original company I hired on with, yet have gone through 6 corporate ownership changes, several technical revolutions, and flitted in and out of management and technical contributors roles as the need arose. I was never wed to the product or technology, just to doing a good and interesting job. I never planned on being a lifer, this was, after all, just supposed to be a summer job while I was waiting to get into law school. But it got too fun to leave. These fools paid me to solve logic puzzles I'd have worked on for free.
Am I the sole survivor still with the company of many of the groups I was in along the way, yes. Perhaps because I was always willing to change and learn.
Did the promised retirement package vanish somewhere along the way while the corporate biggies pocketed multi-millions? Yes. But thanks to taking home less than 40% of what I make, there is money in the bank for when I want to retire. And there was money to pay for kids to go to school. Stay married to the same person. Live in the same house. Drive your cars into the ground. Yes I live less grandly than many I know, but it suits me and my risk tolerance.
Good luck. Stay flexible. And protect yourself.
I started in the field as a Computer Operator feeding punch cards into an IBM 4331 Mainframe (which was probably about as powerfull as a 386) in '82. I moved up to developer then to sysadmin before retiring on disability in '99. Since then I have worked part-time as a programmer and security engineer, because the disability retirement pay is no where near enough to live on. In 25 more years I will reach "manditory retirement" age. If I live that long I will be officially retired from the field. So far I have been able to remain a techie and it is my hope that I never find myself in a managerial roll.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Stop beating it.
Big company here (check the financial section of your newspaper, you will see it mentioned). The immense investment in software is for internal development. OSS is not even in the radar.
But as users, Perl, Apache, are indispensable. We are introducing an standarized version of Linux. If we have problems and we can't wait we will hire a good programmer to fix bugs.
In communism, dear ignorant, there was not such a thing as copyright. The state owned all. With OSS the state owns nothing of the product of your labour. You may also remember that OSS encourages people to make money from OSS (services, training, customized software).
In conslussion, your communism diatribe falls to the ground like the falacy it is.
The previous poster (before the parent) claimed that people with "real skills" (like a BS) would have no problems getting jobs. This unfortunately isn't the case. Companies are struggling and people with "real skills" (BS) are usually more expensive than those without "real skills", and not garanteed to be any better at what they do, from the employer's point of view.
The goverment pensions are so laughable small and continously dwingling that you can match them easily with the difference in the salary (if you are disciplined and save money regularly).
To each one his own, I enjoy earning 4 or 5 times more that I would in a goverment position knowing that if I keep my discipline of saving 10% of my incoming I will have a better level of life when I retire. If the situation gets bad I can try a goverment job temporariy until I find something else.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yes and no. It certainly won't be IT like we know it today.
Personally, I see the commoditization of the PC market continuing, turning the hardware tech side of things into something resembling the TV Repair industry; pretty much dead since a TV is usually cheaper to replace than repair. We're already reaching that point.
The networking side of the house will also change, it has to. Networks are going to become simpler, easier to manage and thus reduce the need for a dedicated admin. Sure, the larger companies will still have admin staff, but to be honest I feel that those departments will shrink dramatically, and smaller to mid-size companies will no longer need a dedicated admin. Small companies and home users will probably only know that they plug in a cable and it works... no messing around. How the abstraction of services will work between a local machine and the network I can't predict; personally I can't wait.
The outsourcing/consulting industry will actually probably stay about the same as it is today (or slightly smaller). Reason being, these commoditized networks and PC's don't need quite so much work, and are normally replaced rather than fixed. Those smaller companies without admins will use outsourcing for their basic admin needs, probably only needing a few things per month, if even that. This is already happening; I admin for a company here in St. Louis that has 45 users in the office, and their network is managed entirely by me, maybe 10 hours a month. As I've improved the network since I originally installed it, my admin work has been reducing. These days I barely have any overhead on their systems and there's rarely a problem that takes more than a couple of hours to fix.
As for programming... now there I do see some growth, though not as much as many might predict. Good programmers will be required to create the abstraction layers that my above predictions need, and to maintain them after the fact... but there are already enough programmers out there to make this a reality. The problem that I see in the programming industry is an "egg-farming" attitude; hire lots of cheap, semi-computer-literate programmers and give them all very small tasks to do, and sooner or later you'll have a product. I have worked (for a month) for one company that did this as a project manager (the one growth job for experienced people in this business model)... I quit because I hated seeing it and knowing this was the future of programming. Sure, the products worked, but that's about it. I guess someone might call it the "Infinite Monkeys" programming style. As the programming team project manager, I managed a team of 30 programmers. Even then I was only given a section of code to work and then it was my job to break it down into tasks, then manage to it. Tedious as all get out, but as much as I hate to admit it, it did produce the desired results.
Basically, the upshot of my discussion here is that IT is going to change. There is going to be less and less room in this industry for those who love to (need to?) excel at everything they do. Going "the extra mile" will eventually result in a manager saying "Very good job, but how much did that impact the tasks I gave you last week?" Creativity will be stifled within the walls of corporations, even those that have encouraged that creativity to-date, and "good enough" becomes a mantra for IT departments everywhere.
I hate to see this happen, in a sense... but it was inevitable. I have loved the IT industry for about the last 11 years I've been in it; it has provided me with great opportunities to excel at what I do best, as well as bring in a decent paycheck and allowed me to be creative with solutions. However, I'm already seeing the writing on the wall from where I stand.
In answer to the main question; no, I don't see myself retiring from IT. The old IT and new IT have one thing in common; they both value youth (and therefore low-cost). Thankfully, I got into IT young, so I have been able to ride it for a long time... but I see already that I'm within 8-10 years of being considered an "old man" in the IT world. To me, this is the time for me to start looking around at other options. They may not pay as well, but to me they will be much more rewarding.
That's why I'm learning to fly!
Not only do I not think I will spend my entire career in IT, I pray to God that I don't. I've seen what happens to guys who are in their 50's and still trying to do this. One, they either spend every waking moment in continuing self-education to keep up, or they just work so hard that they become indispensible. Meanwhile, their managers, who are 20 years younger, are enjoying ski trips to Colorado and working an 8-5 every day, sometimes calling on Saturday to see if the ancient IT guy is making any progress.
To hell with that. I don't want to end being a suit but I don't want to be doing this when I'm 40. The money dries up eventually. A guy with 30 years of IT experience is better than a guy with 5, but it's because of industry knowledge more than plain skill. And in any case, that extra knowledge rarely justifies a big salary. When layoffs come aroud, seniority be damned, you're getting canned, and nobody wants to hire an IT guy with 30 years of experience who (reasonably) expects to be paid six figures for it. Why hire that guy when you could hire two goons who'll be just as good instead?
So sure it's possible, but it's no life.
Most of the people who I've known who work as psych nurses experience the occasional episode of, shall we say, mental aberration. It's a very stressful job, and there might be something pheremonal in it as well...
Lifetime career? Well, I could be a blacksmith. Or a door-to-door salesman. Or run the local fix-it shop. Or work in the apothcary(?). Maybe I could deliver ice for the household icebox.
Maybe I'll just keep standing by the french-fry machine.
All the older repair technician I work with have been several places over the years do to layoffs and closings. It is such a fly-by-night racket that I don't think a lifelong career in the same place is possible. Most of us will "retire" when we are laid off, or the company goes under and can't find another job because this industry only wants kids fresh out of college, not oldsters.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Let me rephrase my point and say that those MBAs who do have jobs in your company would love to find a way to get your job done cheaper.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
Well, sure. Would you want to be the guy to tell Jim-Bob the serial masturbator that he was getting a cut in pay?
I've been told that even in the extremely unlikely occurance that I become redundant the University *will* find something for me to do and retrain me as necessary. They like me. My bosses like me. I get good yearly reviews. Unless i'm somehow being lied to and this is all a scam, I fully intend to stay as long as they will have me.
Oh, I could get paid more working someplace else, at a big dotcom where I bite my fingernails, work my ass off and am hounded at home by mobile, pager and laptop, all the time worrying if the rollercoaster will end and the company will fold. Instead, I do 8-4, i'm salaried, I get mad benefits, and i'm able to go home and night and play Diablo until I pass out from exhaustion and not think about my job or work until next morning. In my opinion, i'll take the pay cut for the tradeoff of a more relaxed job environment, very little stress (aside from the usual deadlines/politics that crop up) and benefits.
But I don't think the environment (or pay) is for everyone. You need to be a very, erm, specific kind of person ;)
Its funny, I've said the same thing before... if I could make 3/4 of what I'm making now and spend my day working as an Audi/VW/Porsche mechanic/tuner, I'd be happy as a pig in you-know-what.
But I'm in no hurry. Unlike a lot of people, I'm working at a job I look forward to every morning with people I enjoy working with.
And there is no decrease in the quality of the software. Projects are finished earlier. And I assume it is cheaper.
So developpers in the 1st world are offering same quality at a higer price delivering late. No wonder companies are trying to use talent from other places.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Huh? I find that most really good IT people ARE dorks and do not drive around in fancy cars, $50 ties, etc despite having the money. You are thinking of management or sales or something. Personally, I have always thought of myself as a glorified plumber (I work in IT).
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
The right conditions can reduce almost any financial plan to rubble. Call it "the government" or "the invisible hand of Adam Smith," almost anything you do can backfire (or can produce outrageously good results). Diversification and asset allocation are the only ways to reduce the odds of backfire, but they also reduce the odds of outrageously good results. Longer time frames tend to make it easier, not harder. An ethicist who gave seminars at Enron reports the employees who are now complaining about their lost 401(k)s were fond of just the kind of pronouncements you are posting. They thought only the government could take away their security.
They were wrong.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I've been doing this stuff for 25 years already. I always saw myself doing electronics and computers from a young age (I was born with a soldering iron in one hand and a keyboard in the other, you see), and I find it hard to see myself doing anything else. It is my job as well as my hobby, and I love doing it. I wish I just was more successful financially with it than I have been the last few years. I guess that, though being an entrepreneur and geek/nerd/techie/whatever is in my blood, I have just not been that good of a businessman overall. I'm getting better, though. There's really very little in the IT field that I cannot already do or pick up in an amazingly short time to an expert level (not meant to be a brag; after doing one thing for 25 years, you build up a large, solid foundation that allows you plenty of latitude and the ability to pick up related topics very quickly).
;)
/.) that Microsoft would not be dethroned by the product of another company, but by a "grass-roots" movement of the people (both developers AND users alike) creating an alternative that Microsoft could not assail because any attempt to do so would rebound back on them and hasten the revolution. Even though I personally detest *nix (no more than I detest Windows, though), I am happy to see and participate in the burgeoning revolution that I have wanted to see for so long.
However, the growing politicalization of my field concerns and confounds me. It is the curse of popularization, and old timers like me tend to yearn for the early hobby days (Oh how I miss that Altair 8800). The influx of money and power into my profession and hobby has been, as with all other things, a double-edged sword. There's the plus side of all the growth and advancement of the Art (and, yes, I do consider the greater part of it an Art as well as a Science; Art represents skill, Science represents tools), and the negative side of all the damn lawyers and politicians getting involved via patents, the DMCA, etc. Some people will say "Well, guy, that's just tough; you gotta take the good with the bad."; maybe, but I don't see a reason why the bad always has to override the good, as it definitely has in my field.
Ever since my college days, I have been tinkering with an OS and language of my own. I hope I will get some time soon to get back to work on one again. I mainly want it for me, but I wouldn't mind seeing it get wide circulation to the point of dethroning MS (and maybe even Linux, har!) once and for all.
Even as far back as 1994-1995, I told a friend of mine (Shivetya here on
I also am an avid gamer, and I have plans to turn my talents towards game development this year. I'm in the process of putting together an association of independent (and neophyte) developers, whose main goal is to just make games that we want to play, as those are most often, simply, and by far the best games that come out.
I guess that, in later years, I would also like to become more of a writer, probably a number of CompSci works, but I do so love Fantasy and Science Fiction, and I have no end of ideas for books in those genres. I already have started on a few stories, but until I get a few free months, I will have to let them sit a while longer.
Anyway, to close, yes, I am a career IT Pro. It may not be with one company or in any one specific area, and my retirement will come from my own savings, but it doesn't matter. I'll be doing this stuff until the day they unplug the life support.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
First of all, you ought to boycott private industry entirely. They're shipping all of our jobs overseas, outsourcing our projects, bringing in cheap foreign labor... Corporate America is out to get rid of us, and we might as well stop playing ball with them. So that's a start.
Second, avoid accepting any debt at all. Don't build up huge student loans (trust me, I know, I'm paying one off right now), don't abuse your credit cards, don't buy expensive cars or other consumer crapola. Debt is the modern analog of indentured servitude. Why do you NEED a 100K IT job? To cover your expenses. Lower your expenses, and you don't need that job! Cut all your fixed expenses, especially debts. Live somewhere relatively inexpensive, buy a used car, get your computer equipment on ebay... Get an apartment instead of a house. Eat out less. And so on.
Look for a job where you have reasonable hours and no noncompetes or IP agreements to sign. Make enough to cover your expenses, and program for open source projects, contributing to the community. Make it FUN again. Instead of putting in that sixty or seventy hour week in IT for a bunch of asshole suits who don't care if you live or die, move out to the country, take a forty hour week maintaining the computer system of the county courthouse, and spend your free time out at the lake with a friendly, perverse woman (or, if you're like me and lean towards celibacy, get a tan). You'll be happier. You'll live longer. You won't age as quickly, and you won't be as heavy because you'll have time to cook real food instead of the vending machine crap you live on right now.
If you want to continue to work in IT until you retire, and then get a retirement, all you have to do is get a civil service job. The pay isn't as high, but the benefits are spectacular. The people are nicer, the hours are shorter, the job is more fun... I could go on but you get the idea.
I make in the high forties, I work only 37 1/2 hours a week, and I have benefits you corporate guys can only dream of. Plus, MY retirement is going to be almost at full pay (I've already done the numbers).
Think about what I'm saying. What do you really owe these corporate assholes, anyway? What have they ever done for you? Get a state or county job in civil service. Work for your neighbors instead of some asshole corporation. Help your community, not some greedy fat-cat in a Mercedes.
Seriously.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
to be modded to a seven or a nine...
jackass,
they are commonly referred to as "Civil Engineer's", and believe it or not, getting an honest to god "engineering" degree is not exactly taking a couple MS tests and passing.
I'm an honest to god systems-engineer. as in, i will need to get an MS EE to advance to top levels, my CS BS barely cuts it.
in many cultures, germany, japan and china, the title "engineer" is looked upon almost like the title "doctor" or "lawyer" is.
That is before anyone who knew how to turn on a computer started to call themselves an "engineer".
i think that you massively underestimate the sacrifice and hard work and effort it takes to become a "real engineer".
... hi bingo
Unless in the military or government (as previously mentioned), the only way I see to have a lifetime career in IT is to make a technology indispensable in the organization, make certain the technology is never updated, and to become the subject matter expert on that technology.
Example: Our firm uses several PDP-8s (circa mid-1960's design). One person who's been here for 30 years takes great pride in being able to maintain that equipment. He even showed me how he fabricated a replacement for a part that's no longer available.
Companies that update their technology will often update their personnel as well. Think about it - workers who have been on the job not only generally are paid more than college grads, but if the company wants them to be happy and productive, they have to pay for recurrent training. Alternatively, they can hire college grads that cost less and have paid for their own training.
Granted, new grads are generally lacking in maturity and judgment that a more experienced worker would have, but companies are looking at next quarters results - who cares about maturity and judgment?
You claim to be trying to acsend to the level of a "doctor" or "lawyer" yet you can't parse a paragraph sufficiently to understand my point despite the use of intentionally vague terms.
There are many kinds of engineers involved in construction my man.
i think that you massively underestimate the sacrifice and hard work and effort it takes to become a "real engineer".
You don't know me from Adam. But I see, like so many before you, you've found it much easier to assume ignorance in those that think differently from you.
I suggest that you might want to broaden your horizons and consider that sometimes, maybe often, the person who disagrees with you is as smart and well educated as you are and still finds a different conclusion.
The best part is, I don't even think differently from you. I agree that "real" engineers require a lot more training than most of the folks that call themselves engineers in software.
poliglut.org: they're still alive and fighting the man
Damn you must be my long lost twin or something. I'm an aircooled VW/Porsche nut who wishes that computers could just be a hobby again, but can't afford to get a lower paying job (i.e. mechanic.).
BTW I have a '59 sunroof Beetle sedan and a '74 914-6 (converted with a 3.0 from an '81 911 SC). I wish I had a Ducati Monster 750S.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Actually, they do. SSI and Disability benefits become harder to achieve during a time of depressed economic activity. Cases are reevaluated and oftentimes the benefits are decreased for those already recieving. If someone's "borderline" disabled then they're threatened with a loss of benefits if they don't start actively pursuing either a.) career rehabilitation, b.) medication or c.) employment.
I know, I know. A joke. But it's soooo fun to ruin a great joke with some stupid factoids.
-Sara
When I get rich enough to buy my 993, I'll give you a call.
+++
NO CARRIER
You might think that means that a lot of product development will go away, but a lot of software is developed by those smaller teams, and it's much harder to outsource/export those. Spending $120k a year on travel for meetings (which yes, really are needed for a lot of things) may make sense when you're saving a million a year on developer salaries & facilities, but if you're only saving $60k?
fencepost
just a little off
It has been my experience that most IT people who are worth their salt seem to operate in the same cycle.
From what I have seen, most good IT people get the itch for something cool and new to do, so they seek a tantalyzing IT position. From there, we get into a groove, and enjoy our job until we get fed up with corporate and administrative garbage. This leads us to the distaste part of the job. Finally, we get tired of dealing with it, and decide to look elsewhere.
The 401K was designed so that perhaps some day, all of us IT folk, and those other people who don't seem to keep a job long enough don't have to work until the day we die.
I hope I'm not being too redundant, but if I am, I apologize.
Most IT people who are worth their salt don't like the same old thing all the time. IT has to be challenging or its not worth doing.
as long as you don't plan on living that long.
Slashdot is giving too much credence to an article that not only mentions 'IT' but also 'career' in that horribly wrong way that only 'Human Resources' types and the people who took 'Computer Science' because they heard there was a lot of money in it use the terms.
I am sorry. I am a technical person, with an electronics background and some computing skills, including embedded controller programming in assembly language. I can't describe in words how the hair raises up on the back of my neck when some tardball 'career counselor' at a job agency implies that means I work in 'IT.'
The hell with that term. For me, and most of the people I've worked with on product development teams, 'IT' are the drones who come by once in awhile to screw up our development workstations and damage the emulators.
The term 'IT' brings to mind a vision of the kind of person who just doesn't get it but gets by.
Well, rant off for now.
> they are commonly referred to as "Civil Engineer's", and believe it or not, getting an honest to god "engineering" degree is not exactly taking a couple MS tests and passing.
Ok, probably more accurately, they are called "Structural Engineers".
> i think that you massively underestimate the sacrifice and hard work and effort it takes to become a "real engineer".
I tend to agree with you, and you might claim that "real engineers" are not disposable like a bunch of tech guys who got laid off for the last couple of years. But I get the feeling that, when people are discussing IT career and regular engineering jobs, they are probably talking about regular software engineers, who are perhaps not "real engineers", what you call and other engineers, who are not as smart as you are, I'm afraid. So they are not looked upon like "doctor" or "lawyer", although you might be looked upon like a doctor curing epidemic disease and lawyer fighting for the weak and saving them. They are like regular accounts and regular sales. Their jobs are not secured, either, but I get the impression that software engineers and "not-real engineers" tend to be considered disposable and expendable.
Information Technology, managing and supplying information to those who need it.
This is a critical piece of infrastructure, and taking care of infrastructure is a good career.
It is annoying to be mistaken for another task, particularly when you've worked quite hard to get where you are.
But lose the elitist attitude, it isn't helping anyone. We have swarms of people who maintain our systems, from police to plumbers, farmers to store clerks and drivers. It is a busy world with many tasks that need to be done, don't get down on those who choose to do something else, you probaly couldn't do your job without them.
I'm an IT-focused management consultant who has worked with many different CIOs and other executive leaders, at companies ranging from small startups to Fortune 10 giants. I'd address the career question by standing in the shoes of the CIO for a moment.
My bet is that most CIOs would agree to the following statements about their situation:
I would also bet that this picture is almost completely insensitive to short-term market conditions (in other words, expect the situation to be the same in 10 years). My corollary is that you could build a career in IT if you:
well, first of all I want to point out that I know lots of people who hold IT degree but couldnt find any jobs available for them. When they first entered that program, IT was pretty much a hot stuff to learn but it is undoudtly dropping from the top incoming list.so i think it's not a "lifelong career" problem, rather it's actually a question about whether or not IT will equal unemployment in the near future?
> My mom takes care of the mentally ill, they're having paycuts. (the caretakers, not the mentally ill.)
Time to join the mentally ill then.
So when they reach the point of finding that no-one wants them as a warm body any more, and they haven't paid any attention to developing marketable skills that put them beyond warm-body-hood, it's a big shock. And then you start seeing the complaints about age discrimination, etc.
It is true that busy people have less time to read Slash Dot. But, as an ageing A/P, I was worrying about my retirement prospects well before being left without a job. I know many other people have had the same concerns, but never voiced loudly while the pay checks were coming.