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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?"
Anyone need an overpriced mechanic who specializes in aircooled VWs/Porsches?
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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.
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!
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??
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"...?
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?
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 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.
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 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.
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...
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?
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.
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
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)
Precisely why I included the phrase "only your government can take it away" when referring to dollars in your own personal accounts. I originally wrote "where nobody can take it away" until I remembered that guys with guns can always take your stuff.
I pointed out a wealth tax as one way in which wealth could be destroyed, but hyperinflation is another.
The key is to watch, anticipate, and adjust accordingly. Does the value of a house drop in a hyperinflationary environment? No - it stays flat. If you anticipate hyperinflation, sell paper assets (stocks/bonds), get rid of paper liabilities (rent) and buy hard assets (houses, gold, jewelry).
The trick is doing it before capital controls get implemented by the guys with the guns. My original point - that if we get to this point, we're all fux0r3d anyways - still stands. And while it can happen here, I think it's exceedingly unlikely, even if the upcoming war doesn't go our way.
Do I have it all taken care of? Hell, no. I still have to save diligently and invest prudently, and that's a non-trivial task, particularly over a 20-year timeframe. Do I have enough of it taken care of that I think I'll be able to at least survive most economic scenarios? Yeah, I think I do. My point wasn't (and isn't!) to brag, but to point out that I don't think I'm doing anything special that can't be done by anyone else.
By way of analogy - geeks often say things like "There's nothing magical about computers" to nontechnical people. For those geeks to whom the world of money seems daunting, I was just pointing out that there's nothing magical about sound financial planning either.
Another big benefit. The disabled veterans college fee waiver. 20+ yrs and you're qualified, even with 0% disability. Free college for you, your spouse, and your kids, for like 10 years at any public school in the state you retired in. This came in handy for my dad. 20 yrs in the USAF and 4 kids. And we all got through school for FREE.
I ate my sig.
...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.
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
I know a highly skilled mechanic who makes $150k as the head gearhead at a Kia dealership. Nobody wanted to take the gig, so they bought him a complete set of tools as a signing bonus. (prolly $25k worth)
He's been approached by a NASCAR team and offered even more as well.
I find it amusing when IT dorks and Project Managers turn their nose on skilled mechanics and plumbers because they get their hands dirty. Skilled blue-collar workers make big bucks without having to pay for the trappings of success (fancy car, $50 ties, etc.) that schmucks who sit at a desk all day do.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
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
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