Slashdot Mirror
Which IT Careers Are Hot and Which are Not?
necromante asks: "I've been working on different IT positions through my career: support; some networking; DBA; web development; project management; even working on the client side for a little while. However, I don't feel like I am really a specialist on any of those subjects and I feel I need to focus on a particular field. So, I decided to ask for some feedback before making my decision. I understand that this depends everyones tastes, likes and dislikes. However, I would like to have a better idea of which are the available options, and I hope the results of this discussion can benefit other readers. Is there any IT career that I should consider more than the others? Which are the emerging fields? Is there any industry I should focus on in particular? Which careers on IT are actually more in demand and which ones not? Is it a better path to focus on moving into management?"
What should I do with my life?
I've worked for a number of people and myself one thing that seems to come up is that good techies don't always make good managers. So don't assume that managment is right for you (or that you would even enjoy it).
Cheap UK and US VPS
A lot of demand has to do with your demand knowledge. I don't know if you could say with a broad stroke that devs are in more demand than DBAs or whatever. If you have financial experience for instance, demand is pretty strong across the board. You need to consider the industry you want to work in as much as the role you want to play.
Which careers on IT are actually more in demand and which ones not?
Editor who doesn't rely on spell check.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
When you were young, did you ever play video games with an older sibling where they played and you watched? Your brother would insist that you were "a team" and wouldn't let you play. Being a manager is like being the little brother, but you do get to fire the other guy if he dies five times in a row on level 8-2.
Seriously, if you like something, why stop doing it and start just watching people do it?
Oh, money.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Personally, I value breadth over depth. And I'm going to propose a reason why everyone should also: in the world of computer science, at any minute a once vital skill could be obsolete. Granted, it doesn't happen often (as we still need workers to maintain cobol & fortran code) but, instead of spending my free time hunched over Enterprise Java Bean projects learning their delicate intricacies, I find myself learning about Ruby, Spring, Hibernate, etc. Now, I might not be an expert in any of these fields but I may be glad when their time comes. All good things come to an end--and if EJBs were to be retired, I'd certainly like to know my way around these other frameworks & tools. I think the same can be said about fields of computer science. Be wary of the web developer that doesn't know the first thing about networks & server/client communication--that's often a pitfall for security.
So if you want my honest opinion about which "are hot or not," I think they're all pretty damn hot and I bleieve you can find money in any job where you make yourself usefull & valuable to a decent business. I find them all attractive because I enjoy setting up networks in my house and playing network administrater even though I don't do it at my job. I love networking Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. and I like toying around with different databases. I love to start new projects that rarely go anywhere but leave me with more understanding of how technologies or products work. I'm not a "trained expert" at any of them though, most importantly, I feel that I could easily become one if a situation deemed it necessary. If you don't enjoy doing some of these things--DON'T DO THEM. Who cares if they pay alot or are "hot"? I'd rather die happy & poor than rich & sad. Of course there is, it's the career you enjoy the most
Choose your path wisely.
My work here is dung.
I think it all depends on the person and what they like. I'm currently an IT Project Manager while dealing with managers and I can't stand it. My goal is to get another Sr. Systems Engineer/Manager position that entails working with various Operating System environments (Solaris, RH, Windows, etc.) while doing IT projects (rollouts, migrations, etc.).
Again, you need to decide on what you feel is right. Obviously, money always come into play here, but it seems like you already have a wealth of information and a broad spectrum of experience that you have the capability of going into any IT arena.
Good luck.
I hear it's lovely over at tech support. You get to talk to n00bs all day and make them run around in circles because it's the "fixing ritual" and stuff.
No seriously. BOFH is the field you're after.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
Where I work, the opposite tends to happen. If you're not that good technically, you tend to bubble up to management. I'm not saying they're complete idiots, just that they're not the best technical people. I still don't think it's the best way to find good managers though ... they may suck at that as well.
What's hot in my area (washington metro)? security. And based on some of the crap being pushed on us, it takes very little experience or understanding of the system to force functionally useless requirements on us. (HSPD12, anyone?)
You then also have to look at not just region, but industry -- informatics is becoming more significant in some industries, but not in others.
Then there's issues with the size of the company -- specialization may be good for large companies with a massive IT workforce, but it's not desired in smaller companies with a small IT staff.
From the sounds of things, you need to look into systems analysis -- and review your organization, and your network of contacts. What's good advice for one person is most likely not what's good for anyone else.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Almost all areas are 'hot', but that doesnt mean anything. The one that will STAY hot for you, is the one that you love enough to continue your education throughout your career, and dont just pick someting to do for a paycheck.
If you love a particular area, your constant learning and improvement will lead you into related areas and keep you relevant throughout your career, you can move into consulting, writing and development within your chosen area and never miss a beat.
Never chase a paycheck.
Someone needs to quote a scripture from the holy text of "Office Space" to back me up. =)
However when specialising, the trick is not to become _too_ specialised. There are many skills that are transferrable, and others which are not. The non transferrable are probably directly relevant to what you're doing. The transferrable cover the 'other stuff' like writing reports, project management, process management, change control, that kind of thing.
In my opinion, you are best served to aim for something you like doing first, but keep an eye on the supporting skills whilst you do. Those are what keep you growing, learning and at the end of the day, able to move to another job, when you inevitably do in your career.
Actually, I'd recommend having a look at something like ITIL for the 'IT baseline'. It's not the only way to run an IT department, but I'm noticing more and more companies are 'going that route' - being able to understand how and why your department does things the way it does is, IMO, very valuable, and more importantly, an excellent plus point when going elsewhere for interviews.
Any provided you live in India. Gotta love cheap phone support.
"Choose a job you like and you will never have to work a day of your life" - Confucius
That's one of the better quotes out there. I've been in the Unix Sysadmin/Programming areas
for 10 years now and while I haven't found it all easy going and wonderful, I DO like what
I do, which is a huge advantage to quality of life in a career.
Pick something from the areas you listed that you enjoyed and work at it. Don't be too
concerned about "what's hot". If you have the fundamentals (such as a CS degree or equivalent experience) you will be fine.
Best of luck.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
"Which IT Careers Are Hot and Which are Not?"
You'll notice on slashdot you'll never see "Which hospitality careers are hot and which are not?". Is everyone here in IT?*
*That would explain much then.
One area that is rapidly growing is Cisco VOIP. I've been studying for my Cisco CCVP cert and it's more complicated than you might think. Most companies love the fact that they can use their existing network equipment (routers/switches) to replace all their PBXs/ACDs, not to mention free inter-network calling.
I work for a large company and we're currently in the process of a ~5 year migration from all legacy PBXs to Cisco Call Manager. Many other companies are doing the same. Just about all new offices are built with either Cisco or Avaya VOIP systems, but most companies go with Cisco since you don't have to be concerned with compatibility. (eg. A high-end Cisco router is also your telephony gateway where the T1s are converted to VOIP.) As you can guess, this calls for some highly specialized skill sets (eg. Call Manager/ICM/IVR + Cisco Networking/IOS, etc.) which not a lot of people have. If you're certified, you will NOT have a problem finding a job.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
Seriously. Some of the worst jobs have great security and pay well. Look at COBOL programmers - it's probably better to say you're a piano player in a whorehouse than to admit you mind legacy COBOL installations, but I hear that they're pretty darned good jobs. The "coolest" jobs usually pay squat, have lousy hours, are highly competitive, and experience high burnout. (see: Elelctronic Arts).
On the other hand, you can always pursue what you really love, and hope that you happen to get lucky and that your obscure interest is the Next Big Thing (TM). That's how the really great ones did it. Of course, if you did a better job selecting your parents (see: Paris Hilton), the career thing wouldn't really be an issue and you wouldn't be in this boat. So based on your track record, going with the chance part isn't such a good idea for you.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Today's "hot" career is tomorrow's outsourced to India dead-end job. Stop caring what's popular and focus on what you like doing the most. If you like doing all sorts of different things, then keep on doing that!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I think the question is somewhat loaded, but I suppose everyone has a perspective. In my opinion VOIP and Network Security are hot career paths. I have been working with both (Cisco) over the course of the last five years and the market is very good for specialized Network geeks. When looking for marketability on the job boards VOIP/NetSec are paying more than my other skills.
.02
The one thing I do know for a fact is if you are diversified in a couple of "hot skills" your marketability goes through the roof. If you throw management experience along with that you can make some pretty hefty sums AND find a job you like.
My
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
The worst part about this type of "manager" is that they usually think they're the bees knees of technological savants, when they were really "promoted" to make room for someone who could actually get something done.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Well if you want to check if you are hot or not you can always go to hotornot and.....ohh THATS what you mean.....never mind
i think you should go into programming and learn to write malware so i can keep charging my customers $95USD to format and reinstall Windows.
I think the easiest way to find the answer to this question is to go to some of the Job sites like Monster.com. From here you can narrow down your search to the fields that you have experience in and get an idea of the number of jobs available for each of these fields. I would expect the ones with the most job openings would be the "hottest" jobs.
Of course you can also take a look at some of the analyst reports who survey IT Managers to see what areas they will be focusing on over the next few years.
I guess the main problem with any of these are that they are somewhat short term outlooks. Although I don't think you are ever going to be able to predict what is going to be hot long term.
Adventure City Tours
The same thing thats always hot...
PORN.
Start taking those spam emails seriouly. Increase your girth 400%!!!!!!!!111!1
I'm a open source programmer who worked in the buzzword business for too long.
k nowing/investing-anything crowd.
Now I finance myself with random fake portals that display adverts like they were news (kinda like Slashdot).
If someone approaches me with a problem (which happens occasionally) I solve his/their often trivial problems for free so they do not need to spend money on hiring a new buzzword invested CS graduate. I know this might sound like I'm bitter or something. But actually I thing I do the right thing to save the IT business where far too many people with some important names, words, clothes, faces but without any valuable practical knowledge block/demotivate people who would get work done.
Too extreme? No, certainly not. Many people have come to the conclusion that a bad job can become a great hobby again and that working for themselves is far more rewarding than being a passionate developer in this lets-get-as-much-money-as-possible-without-doing/
Burger King and McDonalds need some good multitasking people that don't need to focus on one career path. They like it when you can fliip a burger, microwave some frozen nuggets, fry the fries, work the drivethru, and take order at the register. And, in this case, you can debug their network problems when you have issues with credit cards and the phone system!
I have to agree with this. I'm a business owner, with a partner. I'm the hardcore techie here, while my business partner has a background in video production and marketing. He tends to take on the true management role here while I worry about actually getting the work done. It works out well as I'm not a great manager but I can get the work done when it needs to be.
The thing I have noticed is that a lot of people in a more technical role feel that they would be better in charge but in reality would probably just hate the position. I love being in control (hence owning my own business) but at the same time I'd rather leave the more managerial duties up to my business partner while I really worry about the technical side of things.
I have been a manager at a few places and while I did a decent job and my staff liked working for me, but I didn't enjoy the role as much as I enjoy being in the forefront with my technical skills. I did learn a lot about running a business from these positions which is a benefit now, though, and don't regret having been a manager. I just didn't enjoy it.
rm -rf
It happens in a lot of places and it's called the "Dilbert Principle". Unfortunatelly, it is usally a self-sustaining process.
Requisite warning about getting into something for reason other than love aside, UX is the Next Big Thing(TM): usability, HCI, interaction design, UX design, etc. There are a lot of disparate sub-disciplines, but the overall theme of the movement is to put the people who use your products first. In academia that sometimes translates to taking control away from the "evil developers," but most of the UX people I talk to know that multidisciplinaranism is really where it's at. Like any other successful field, UX is at its best when it's part of a well-coordinated team of people who know what they're doing. We all care about "the users," but writing good software is challenging enough without worrying about the complexities of human behavior. It goes both ways: just as UX doesn't work when the developers resist their presence, good UX people have to be technically savvy enough to know what computers can do these days. When I was in school, I watched far too many design teams fall into traps like assuming perfect natural language processing, but that's another topic altogether.
Keep UX in mind. You'll find it mostly at large companies at IT hotspots like the Valley right now, but that's how it is with any emerging field. It starts at the top and permeates outward. There's a competetive advantage to well-designed software, and UX is one way to get you there.
If you are having this much doubt about what you want to do, for Gods sake, get OUT of IT.
Go into the resturaunt business. run a mcDonalds. Get into the auto mechanic shop business. You can probably make better money herding 10 people cleaning houses. (That right there is a six figure a year job, for basicly managing a crew of people who descend on a house, clean, sweep, vacume and leave, repeat ad infinitum, scale as large as you want)
Of course, considering your lack of direction, you may not be the best person to run a business. Perhaps you should stick to help desk.
Good DBAs are in demand and will always be in demand. This has been the case since the beginning of the IT industry and will continue to be the case for as long as there is an IT industry. It's also a career where you'll be on call until you retire. There is a reason beyond scarcity that DBAs make a full metric truck load of money compared to other IT industry career paths at the same level of experience/education.
But if you want something `hot', look further into Business Intelligence. Right now people experienced with Actuate and other BIRT tools can pretty much write whatever figure they want on their paychecks.
Oh yeah...I'm coming for all your asses.
12:50 - press return.
you have to go undercover as an exotic dancer at a strip club as part of the requirements gathering phase.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
personal interest is very important. I do feel you should do what you like to do rather than following the market trends. The market trends don't last long, but your interest does.
:)
Now coming back to your question- I would personally suggest working in the finance sector. There are lots of challenging jobs in this sector
- If you like low level system/network programming companies like Bloomberg/NYSE/NASD will give you a very nice exposure and package. They really respect people who think that every call should return in a few milli second
- Most of these companies have huge data centers, optimizing and fine tuning them is fun
- Working for a team building a trading system (a bit tough to get, but if you get then it's really worth it)
- Working for a hedge fund automating trade strategies, exploring arbitrage opportunities through code, and coming up with a few strategies of your own
My personal experience, most of the crowd in finance-IT is dumb, so if you are a good programmer you will make it good.
BTW if you are a good programmer you will do well anywhere
Managers don't have to be technical proficient, they simply need to know different technologies conceptually. I have found the best managers used to be developers, and, while they may have never developed .Net or Java or AJAX specifically, they have enough experience and knowledge to understand the concepts, and know who they can rely on that knows the specifics of what needs to get done.
Managers manage...
dB Masters
About ten years ago, I sold my soul to Microsoft and haven't regretted it yet. I work for a healthcare organization that's a Microsoft shop. I started as a database developer, switched to SQL Server administration, and have been a web developer ever since.
I personally prefer development over administration. Being a database administrator was a lot like being a firefighter. There were long periods of boredom where everything was running smoothly, coupled with late night crisis modes with huge pressure to get critical systems running again.
As a web developer, I get to do database work as well as creating web applications. I create a lot of things to make people's lives easier, some of whom are patients to our hospitals. It's interesting work and I get fairly generous praise heaped on me by coworkers and customers. The really crazy thing is that they pay me quite well to keep doing it.
I have the same problem. I am an IT Multi-tool. I am not the best tool for any particular job, but I may be the best and only tool you currently have for the job at hand.
...
I have the following credentials:
Degree in Computer Science - No I didn't learn everything I needed to know in college, but that paper opened a few doors.
10+ years experience with computers in a networked environment.
Experience using and troubleshooting computers ranging from DOS to Windows to Linux, with a sprinkle of Unix.
Programming in C,C++,Java, VB and VBA
Knowledge of HTML
Experience in maintaining production servers for critical tasks.
Experience with peer-to-peer networks, hundreds of nodes.
Experience with Databases,MSSQL and MySQL know basic to moderate level SQL.
Experiences with Apache and IIS.
Command line scripting from DOS Batch to Linux Bash.
Tons more things I have just "worked" with as needed.
I have always been a "jack of all trades" in terms of computer work. Recently I have been specializing, not by choice, but by necessity in Phone and Data Networks. I have taken several weeks of training in ACD and Phone PBX systems. I have been setting up our phone ACD for about 2 years now. About to start working closer with the PBX hardware as well. It is an interesting niche.
If you are just looking for the latest "hotness" in computers it is security. But that type of job could well leave you stressed out with gray or no hair and a coronary in your early 40-50's. I see too many green newbies fresh out of college all excited about security and their careers. I don't know if I should find them amusing or scary. I guess someone has to do that job.
As for me, If I can keep learning and enjoying what I do, I couldn't ask for anything more.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Actually, it is older that Dilbert, and used to be known as the Peter Principle. In short form it stated that as long as people could manage their jobs, they got promoted, so everyone ended up on a level where he could not manage his job.
"support; some networking; DBA; web development; project management; even working on the client side"
.NET enterprise software engineer, with solid proficiency in SQL Server 2000 and 2005 -- at a large company with a variety of dedicated resources, I wouldn't call hire on as a DBA, but at a small or medium size company, I would feel quite comfortable doing so. I can hack my way through server and network administration, but mostly in a development role -- I wouldn't sign on as anything more than an entry-level role in server or network engineering. (And I wouldn't even sign on for entry-level, because software is where my heart is at.)
These aren't fields. They're roles. They're roles that will always play a part in IT. As others have mentioned, you should focus on what you like. At the same time, don't become overly-specialized -- if you pigeonhole yourself, you risk your job security in the long run.
Personally I'm a
"Web development" has become a silly term. Be an engineer, know the technology, and desktop vs. web won't make a difference. Be a "tech," and again, you're pigeonholing yourself, and putting long term job security in the pooper. Make sure you're proficient in current technology, but keep an eye to the future. Attend user group meetings. Attend industry conferences.
You shouldn't base your future on specializing in one of these roles you've specified, unless that's what you want to do, and nothing else, ever. You're better off exploring theory, being capable of applying practice. Improve your communication skills. Learn something new every month. Read the Pragmatic Bookshelf series, I think they might help enlighten you. Read well-known works, the classics, the new hotness. I can't say it enough: don't pigeonhole yourself.
I am, therefore you think.
That none of your skills matter, only mine. ;)
Actually, happiness is more important. Do whatever it is you enjoy doing the most. If you enjoy it you will be good at it. While I can program and enjoy it to an extent, I prefer what I do better and only program for short periods of time. (I revamp companies infrastructures for far less than consulting firms) What makes me happy is engineering more and better for less and it's why I do what I do. BTW, NO a white box {name your distro here} Linux server does not make a better router than an off the shelf appliance!
For those who might question my pessimism, note that IT careers in the USA continue to decline to this day.
http://career-resources.dice.com/tech_salary_surve y_06.shtml
Along with a list of top-paying fields in IT, it also contains good info one which fields are most in-demand.
There is a subset of s/w dev in banks doing trading stuff. Very highly paid, and although the hours are a bit long they are shorter than I see in some sectors like video games. You need good maths, and be very good at programming. In my experience as someone who pimps these people into banks, almost no CS grads can program, indeed I've screened a number who were so ignorant I could not devise a question they could answer. One bank came to me after they'd interviewed 37 "chimps" (their ter)m and not one could demonstrate a grasp of programming that would betray them as different from an French literature graduate who would at least make the office look prettier.
Things that confuse CS grads:
Order N Square is not a Tom Clancy Novel about a Russian Mole.
Shannon's limit is not a village by a pretty river in Ireland
Stack Frame is not a wrestler.
You can't get high at a hash table
Design Patterns is not a boutique, and threads are not what they sell.
Iterators aren't the little evil robots in Stargate SG1, nor indeed are Heisenbugs.
Not not is is the same as no not. Yes, really I've had to explan AND to some...
The brighter ones manage to look amazed at the !! term in the C++ I write, the dim ones , well I don't know what goes on in their minds.
Also a CS grad knows lisp. It does a little banking but not much. However if you can't do Lisp your not a computer scientist you
are merely someone who like Star Trek : Enterprise who never got a data at college.
Also I have no bloody idea how you can call yourself a CS grad if you haven't taken apart an operating system and broken/hacked it.
Hint for CS grads:operating systems aren't written in HTML, I checked, and Aristotle wasn't Belgian.
They are mostly in C & C++ (not Java, a quiche langage, and if you don't recognise the term quiche you need to do some reading)
As it happens C++ is the language of high end banking, as in people straight out of college what earn three what you do after a 3 years experience.
But they're not CS grads. Maybe there are some smart ones, if so, they apply this intelligence in hiding from me as a headhunter.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
I agree - keep a broad base. Nothing is more valuable than someone who can consider all the ramifications and needs of their projects. A polyglot can see solutions that others cannot.
The career of Slashdot Editor is one of the hottest tech careers. Although some editors, like JonKatz, have come and gone over the years, it's an exciting and prestigious profession. Responsibilities include posting dupes, failing to perform due diligence before posting, and denying responsibility for questionable policies... Where can I sign up?
Sent from my iPhone
I hate to pour cold water but that's my observation. With hundreds of millions of IT professionals flooding the market from newly emerging economies like India, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philipines, South America and so on....I cannot help but see the competition faced by IT professionals getting more intense in the next 5 to 10 years.
;-)
Ok pessimism from a 9 year old IT professional aside, I believe areas such as security, gaming, content management, knowledge systems and ERP systems as well as embedded system development continue to be good areas to build one's career in. However, any of these areas will force a persion into a niche so there are risks. Some risks are, (A) the area of speciality becomes too popular and competition becomes too intense (Java/J2EE?), (B) the area of speciality becomes unpopular and declines (COBOL?), (C) you may not be given the opportunity in these areas. Regardless, the pressure from wage squeeze will be ever present as companies continue to focus on cost over quality.
I believe the competition in the above areas have a manageable level of competition (anyone is potentially a Java expert nowadays), still offers good money (for a given amount of effort) in your IT career. If instead your priority is geographical mobility, I would think avoiding management roles would be good especially if you intend to work overseas. If you want job security, I personally feel that it is wiser to avoid middle IT management roles as well as to lower your pay expectations.
Whatever your decision pal, all the best! I believe we should continue to build up lots of good karma in any situations and the old lady (meaning karma) will take care of the rest.
Reality is what we taste, smell, see, hear and touch yet we cannot comprehend it...only approximate it.
If you're looking for some insight into career pathways then goto http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/. You will find tonnes of stats on how the various technologies are performing within teh industry. I'm a second year degree student and I find this site helpful for directions on what to concentrate on etc... Hope this helps.
The market is hot now in a lot of fields. I do custom business software solutions, and anytime I'm on the market my phone is ringing non-stop and I'm doing multiple interviews each week. I have a bunch of buddies on the Support/Hardware/Networking side of the house too, and they're not slouching either. And I've never worked for an organization who couldn't use a technical writer or business systems analyst. Get a degree, get some hands on time in what ever field of IT you love, and you can go where ever you like. If you want more flexibility and variety, aim for a smaller organization. If you want to focus in one specialty, aim for a larger organization.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Amen to that. Far too many businesses promote someone to management because 1) they're been there for a long time and 2) they're good at their technical job functions. They don't, however, have a lick of personnel or project management skills. It also usually ends up taking someone from a job they do well and putting them in a job they do poorly, a double whammy. I'm at least smart enough to know that I shouldn't be given anything beyond a team lead position.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
"Be an engineer, know the technology, and desktop vs. web won't make a difference.
It makes a difference to every HR person.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
a >good security guy could drop his security role and BE the windows admin, or BE the unix admin, or BE the network admin. Could you be a good locksmith without first knowing the internals of how a lock works?
While I definitely feel you should have your strong points, you should always do your best to learn as much about all these areas of IT as reasonably possible. I've been programming for only 6 1/2 years professionally now, but I've found that my interests and efforts towards other areas such as network administration, information security, database design, database administration, web development, web design, usability, accessibility, and so on have all been indefinitely helpful in augmenting my programming skills. For example, you could "know how to code" and write a horrible web application because it looks like crap and is too confusing for anyone to use, the database is unmaintainable because it is not properly normalized. Likewise, even if it were easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and had a normalized database, if any sensitive information is not secure and your constituents find out, nobody will trust your program/service enough to use it. It's just my $0.02, but I strongly recommend learning a little bit about everything, and a lot about one thing in particular. There's always overlap with these things...
If you don't know what you want to do for a living, please stay out of management. Employees, especially employees with their own drive, hate working for a guy without direction.
What do you love to do most? If you could choose what to do for an 8-hour day, what would give you the most enjoyment and satisfaction?
In my case, it's programming. I'd rather build software than manage projects or meet with clients or do graphic design. So that's what I do, and I love my job.
Go with the job that you LIKE. Not what is the best for a career.
A career in which you don't feel at home with will kill you before you get to retirement.
Based on job postings on various popular tech boards: 1. SAP 2. .NET
3. JAVA/J2EE
Reports of every IT job in the US moving to India have been greatly exaggerated. Indian salaries have been experiencing double-digit growth over the last decade and are now reportedly 50% of US salaries for similar positions. I predict that in the next decade there will no longer be a compelling business case to offshore all but the largest development projects.
I'm manager of a couple of teams at top 5 bank, and my team is primarily responsible for data warehousing and ETL processing for the mutual fund division. Frankly, the best position in IT is the job that is not easy to acquire offshore, and pure IT is... I can find .NET or Java engineers both in the states or overseas; I can find sysadmins here or offshore; and while the requirements rigor is much higher for offshore resources in a development context, I can get it done cheaper, as unpopular as that may be on this board.
Most IT folks don't work in a pure IT shop, ie - Google/Oracle/Microsoft - essentially a company where the technology is the product/service offering. We are enablers of some other business, and at least at my company, we are offshoring like mad so every new development position gets weighted against a set of criteria to see if it's offshore eligible: unless there's particular industry and/or business data knowledge, they typically are eligible.
My recommendation - learn the business. It's the hybrids that companies will retain in the future. It's the blend of business expertise and IT solutions that is difficult for an organization, hell, even a manager, to replace. A specialist here is truly just a commodity worldwide without the corresponding industry and/or business expertise.
If you've got a broad range of experience accross a variety of fields I'd personally say your best bet isn't to give up 90% of your knowledge and try to focus on one area but to istead consider something that wants you to know abit about everything but doesn't need you to be specialised.
A consultant for instance will go into the company and give them overall IT information and what they need to do with some technical details but people will not expect him to get down and debug and fine tune the DB - they leave that to the DB who just then acts on the recommendations of the consultant.
The other thing is that something like consultancy gives you alot more people interaction, company dinners, trips, etc than just being stuck behind a desk as a DBA or programmer.
I've mainly focussed on sys admin type work previously but am now sliding into consultancy and am already noticing the huge improvement. I've had 2 overseas business trips - both of which I extended and turned into a free holiday for me right after the trip and I get to expense a hell of a lot more stuff now and actually get 'perks' to the job - something a sys admin / dba type will rarely get.
I disagree. I'm a "jack of all trades, master of none" and I'm well paid. That means I'm pretty much stuck in my job unless I want to take a huge paycut.
It started off as a specialty position (graphics), and I was well paid for it. But it turned into a position where I was responsible for a lot of other, varied things, like the intra-departmental website, and eventually my grasp of modern graphics technologies started slipping.
Now, because it started off paying so well, I'm still paid well... but now my raises are crap, not enough over cost of living to make any difference. I while I like the company I work for, I hate the location, and would take an equally paying job (adjusted for location) just about anywhere else.
The problem is that when I look at available jobs, the ones that pay even moderately close to what I'm getting now require a specialty.
This really kills me - because I'm sure I could get a great raise here if I threatened to leave, but I wouldn't threaten to leave unless I could follow through on it (I'm not good BSing with empty threats).
So, OK, I'm giving my annecdotal experience, but I find it's true elsewhere. I've had this conversation with my manager and he agrees, and he'd like to see me be able to get back into graphics 100% of the time, but the company won't budget for another programmer (I'm in a unique position here). I like all the things I'm doing, but I wouldn't mind dropping the variety and concentrating on being great at one or two things, I'd still be happy and I'd be able to demand more at a different place.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The overall trend is MS either going the way of the dodo or bogging down the overall developement with the IT industry. Which boils down to the same. ... whatever you like. IT in general is growing and all these areas are comparativly 'hot' as you would put it.
I'd avoid MS whereever possible nowadays. If you do stuff with MS then do it for data migration into open formats or something. Use OSS and you'll never learn stuff that's obsolete 4 years later - this actually is one of the big reasons to switch to Linux aswell. Aside from that do anything you like. Business programming/ERP, Web Stuff, RIA, Admin/Maintainance, Databases, Low-Level/Drivers
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I have no idea of the quality of your work...
But I am a web developer. I recently worked on a web project that was created by 'software engineers'. My client called them that..the 'engineers' called themselves that.
They created the biggest steaming pile of crap web app I have ever seen in my life.
Yes, the back-end worked fine. Not mind-blowingly-great, but fine.
The front end (and the admin area) were both absolute crap. Their knowledge of HTML/CSS obviously came from some book that was at least 5 years old. Yes, they used valid XHTML...but man, it was atrocious. And NO we DON'T need to create our own XML schema..there is this cool 'RSS' thing they had never heard of. (Not high-tech enough I guess)
I was hired because the original engineers could not longer give their time to the project. At first I was intimidated by the whole thing.
A few days later I realized that the entire project could have easily been done in (insert your scripting language here) and it would have been better, stronger, faster. Now I'm stuck compiling changes to a freakin' web site.
It was just a case of engineers thinking that they knew the best way to handle ANY project...and that was over-engineering the damn thing.
No reason to lie.
For instance I was working as a developer for an advertising company doing PHP, Perl, Linux, Javascript, etc where I live now. When that job dried up I needed to find work in my area but 90% of what's going on in Baton Rouge is in the Microsoft environment. I couldn't find a job for quite a while because I didn't have 2+ years of Microsoft development.
I got plenty of job offers out of state(for some reason Tampa Florida companies like my resume) but nobody around here.
So I purchased a few .NET 2.0 books and learned enough to talk my way into a position. Working with Microsoft development is ridiculously easy for me. I can't believe I had a hard time finding a position because I'd done non-Microsoft development but oh well.
Location is extremely important. I'd definitely take a look at what's going on where you want to live before you take a career focus. Now that I've been working with .NET I feel pretty secure that I could jump from opportunity to opportunity if I needed to.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
The link in your signature has a typo, making it a fairly weak ad. :)
Throw the bums out!
Actually, I beleive the Dilbert principle is more accurate in the GP case : "The least competent ones are promoted first to take them away from productive position where they could be dangerous".
There are crap software engineers. There are crap web developers -- I've seen their steaming piles of crap too. I am talking about being an engineer in the purer sense -- understand the workings of the technology, and doesn't matter what your presentation layer is, you'll be able to apply the technology. Again, I'll allude to attending user group meetings, industry conferences, and to reading topical works. Be an engineer.
.NET, I started to make the transition from the web into OO. (I'd worked with VB, but I hardly think that counts, even though, yes, I was doing desktop apps in the late 90s.)
PS, I came from the web. I started freelancing static websites in the later mid 90s. Before that, I played with BASICA, GW-BASIC and QBasic from the age of 6 or 7 on -- thanks, Mom and Dad, for that book on Tandy BASICA instead of Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator. I was writing spreadsheets for quality control operations in the early mid 90s. I got into ASP in 98, which is when I started getting into RDBMS. With
I am, therefore you think.
Learn Chinese, Vietnamese or Russian. It's not as hard as you think--there are community college crash courses that can make you competent enough in a year or less.
Then become the local pimp for cheap offshore labor. These pimps often go by the title of "Project Manager" or "Requirements Lead." I'm assuming you're American but this will work anywhere that offshore labor is cheaper than indigenous labor.
One big lesson of offshoring is that it's dammned impossible to communicate with some of the less-fluent outfits. To counteract the anti-offshoring backlash of the last 2 years or so, a big demand has emerged for a friendly face to act as a go-between. If you learn just enough tribal language and customs, and they learn just enough English, they can push you forward as the face to the customer. A certain three-letter big iron vendor uses this approach in their "professional services" division.
There are offshore vendors in nations that already speak english well enough to skip the go-betweens, but even those vendors are now outsourcing (meta-outsourcing?) to firms that only recently got indoor plumbing and electricity.
Sorry if anyone finds the above offensive; it's reality and it's a real opportunity.
Computer skills + customer mother toungue + programmer mother tongue = nice slice of the pie.
I've had five tech positions as a professional. The first position was at a University, paid badly, but left lots of time for goofing off and playing online games. Lots of fun until my supervisor retired and everyone under him got laid off(read fired). Second position was at a hard core consulting company. Great money, great bene's, little supervision, little human interaction. Drove me crazy and I attempted quitting once, succeeded second time. Third position was tech support at a school, and loved the job, hated the work. Paid enough. Current position is back at a small company that primarily does support, and while the money is again great, I hate it.
I've learned my lesson. Money and titles are for poofs. I prefer my sanity and hair. Currently getting MA in Instructional Technoloy, and heading back to the land of milk and honey: education. There will always be schools, noobs and techno-phobes. Plus they generally promote and pay according to credentials as oppossed to personality and expertise (scarey huh). Luckily I have enough of both to do well. YMMV.
Heybiff
Even the Sun goes down.
From what I've experienced again and again and again is that one of the reason (and there can be others) that techies don't make good managers is that they try to live in both worlds. The new techie manager still wants to get his hands dirty doing the day to day work. Part of this is that they are don't trust others to do it "right" or they are afraid of losing their technical skills. The new techie manager never really gives him/her self over to the dark side of management.
Which one did you like the most? In your spare time, do you read up more on networking, web development, etc? Since you've tried so many IT positions, you have a good idea of what the different jobs available are like, and that's all you need to make your decision. In IT, asking what is hot will get you different answers every month. If the current flavor of the month becomes obsolete and you never liked it in the first place, you end up in a situation where you have no career path *and* you hate your job. Choose what you love to do.
A piece of advice from a happy worker: Don't worry so much about which field is "hot" and which is "not". Spend a little time figuring out what gives you joy. Before you make any grand plan to move toward a particular position, make sure it's something that's fun for you, because you're going to be spending the great majority of your waking hours doing it.
It astounds me to find just how many managers actually hate dealing with people and have no desire or inclination to make a simple decision. They might have been much happier working on some minute detail of a larger project, but they decided to do something which for five minutes five years ago was "hot" and now they're unhappy. Equally, it breaks my heart when I see some assistant coder who is a natural leader sitting in a meeting chewing his stylus because he can't figure out how he got stuck in this awful situation, working for a manager who is afraid to look him in the eye.
If we're going to live in a culture that makes "work" the primary activity of life, you goddamn-well better do something you really want to be doing. I hope that I'll live forever in heaven, but I also hope I'll win lotto tomorrow. Most likely, though, these four-score years we get on this earth are going to be the whole of our existence. Do you want to lay on your deathbed and realize that you spent your life doing something you really hated? No three-hour drinking binge on Friday night will make up for the 50+ hours you spent in hell during the week.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Like you, I have a broad range of experience, both in terms of technology and in terms of experience. Also like you, I have been looking for something to "settle down in", something to become an expert in but which would continue to be challenging.
.Net, a LAMP variant or some less popular technology, the general skills and approach to that business are mostly transferrable.
In my last job, I worked with a leading CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management System) product. Since leaving, I have come to realise how much I enjoyed it. I will be going back to it in a month or so, but this time as a consultant. Here are some of the benefits of being a CMMS business consultant:
* Job Security. As long as people like their manufactured goods (paper, beer, oil products, etc), live in complexes (apartments, condos, other managed dwellings) and use transportation services (planes, trains, automobiles, ocean liners), there will be a need for computerised maintenance management. Whether the specific CMMS tool that you become an expert in is written in Java,
* Ongoing challenge. Most of the CMMS software out there today is fairly complex and many professionals only ever get to know a portion of "their" product. Plus, while you are getting to know "your" product, it will get upgraded, presenting you with fresh ways to approach and solve problems.
* Fresh challenge. There are many diverse industries that need and rely on CMMS products. As a consultant, you will be presented with opportunities to work in those industries. You will have opportunities to learn how different industries and different companies run their store rooms, do their purchasing, fix their machinery and produce different products. You could be making paper for a few months, then filling cement bags, then making orange juice, then running a marina / wharf -- possibly all in different countries! You will also have to integrate "your" product with your client's other software.
* Management potential. Whether you wish to stay more techical, become a traditional manager (project manager, etc) or become a technical manager, there is the potential for that growth.
All of that to say, I think you might consider working with a CMMS consulting firm. Some products you might search for are SAP, Maximo, Oracle and Avantis.
I wish you the best.
Indeed, the real Dilbert principle is that people get promoted to a position of power *because* they are incompetent. Reasoning is that they do less damage there.
I love my job, new challenges every day, a lot of amazing projects, more and more varied (industrial, medical, educational, games.. ), constantly evolving technologies and a lot of fun !!
developers!!!developers!!!developers!!!developers! !!developers!!!developers!!!
You'll end like this clown
kinda Jack of all trades,master of none eh? SAP are hot careers these days...
The very first sentence of the summary indicates hands-on project experience. Go away troll.
Join an organization such as Infragard. It would open up many possibilities for you.
(So why did I get out of it? Yeah... I got bored. That's a downside of QA, imho.)
Provided you live in India.
... working for Axios Systems at all costs -- they're sh!te.
http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/d ilbert2007048874323.gif
Infrastructure jobs will always be needed. I would focus on learning the mainframe or storage.
The mainframe has a bunch of old guys managing them right now and not many young guys. When the old guys retire you'll be worth your weight in gold.
Storage is a very young side of the industry and it is only going to get bigger. Start now and get in ahead of everyone else.
Only the users with high UID's wonder what a real IT career is.
I'm a "jack of all trades, master of none" and I'm well paid. That means I'm pretty much stuck in my job unless I want to take a huge paycut.
Depends. Some companies *need* the jack of all trades types. Are you really a "master of none" or perhaps you are a "master of several"... With time / age comes generally comes experience. With time, you have the ability to master several specialties. As long as you don't let your knowledge get too stale in a specialty, you can keep up technically.
Jobs in the finance side of IT are, and will, remain very strong. Jobs such as "quant developer" that combine strong IT skills with business knowledge will always be in demand from investment banks and other financial services companies. These roles involve C++ and VBA development plus quite good mathematical skills to be able to understand and implement the pricing models but if you have the skills you can get the money, one thousand pounds sterling per day in London at the moment if you're really good..!
I'm not really saying that would happen to you, but in general it's not as if management and techies are on equal footing and reap equal rewards. Moving up means leaving technical work behind, and I'm torn by that.
Are you posting about managerial consulting, or some kind of system consulting?
What sort of qualifications do you have? MBA? Engineering? CISSP? RHCE?
I have been in the IT field since the punch card days. There is one thing I have noticed especially recently. The pay scale in almost all tech fields are falling. Why you may ask, simply because every university and community college out there are grinding out IT grads, like robots turn out chips. Granted most of them are drones, but they are flooding the work force and are willing to do the work cheaper just to get in. This does not include the off shore operations that are cutting prices. So being a business who's bottom line is profit; why should I pay a lot when I can hire a trainable drone CHEAP.
IF you can't be famous be infamous. But for GODS sake be something
You can put either one on top of your resume if you KNOW the technology and are capable of delivering. And, it's not HR you need to worry about -- it's the techies. If you can't sell yourself to the technical crowd, but you CAN sell yourself to HR, you're a sham, and nothing more. Besides, you don't want to work at a company where HR is more responsible for hiring a technical person than the technical staff are. I was interviewed by two developers, an application architect, the open systems manager and the VP of IS for my current position. HR simply did the paperwork.
I am, therefore you think.
IT is extremely specialized. The list of skills you learn at one company probably won't be useful to another company. Also, IT is pretty much glutted, and getting worse.
As an MBA level manager, you're not tied to any specific technology. And you're not just another java developer that they can replace with somebody from India. How often do you see an IT director's job being done by somebody overseas, or by an H1B?
If you ever decided that IT was not for you, you could move into finance, or operations, or whatever.
Jack of all trades. This isn't so bad, you just need to start interviewing and communicating that. Lots of companies are looking for people who can fill multiple roles. It's a common matter of discussing at the company I work (BAE Systems). Also, someone who knows a lot about many fields at work is a good management candidate. Hope that's not insulting, har har. :)
C//
I work for a IT cooperative in Washington state as a sysadmin. I make about $70K/year, and I thought that was pretty good. But then I took a look at the 'pay band' sheet and see that the payscale for DBA is nearly double what mine is. And Citrix engineers are always in high demand in the medical industry, or so I'm told.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I currently work in the Video Conference industry. I got into it about 2 years ago as a split role (part VC and part IT work) after a string of IT jobs where my main role was Umbrella man. After 2 years, I was still an umbrella man. I did everything from managing laptops, maintaining databases, server, vpn, network, lan, wan, ISDN etc and all the VC stuff I did also. It was nice because I got to touch so many things, and each day was different. It was also however very frustrating, because I never got to spend much time in any one area and felt like I was a master of nothing, an inch deep and a mile wide. As the company grew I was asked if I wanted to stay in the IT department, or move to all video. After two years of doing IT and VC for the same company, I was worth a lot more $ on the VC side. Also, to replace me in IT was a dime a doze, in VC, a C note a dozen. I chose VC and Ive been very happy with he choice. Its interesting, stuff, high demand, and right now its easy to move up the ladder.
And no, I don't mean an MBA. I think in the future a lot of IT is very closely integrated with the business processes of the organization and less of a separate IT department/entity. If you can be in that interface, understanding both and translating between them, you're golden and unlikely to be outsourced or offshored.
The real situation is, do you want to take the easy route? ie. an in demand job, which means you will constantly be hoping from job to another as the lifetime of those positions change and demands go down. Or you can focus on what you love and do the best. It is a little harder but more satisfying. If you become really good at what you do (whatever it is) there will always be a demand for your talents. Takes awhile but it works.
In 1987 I started working full time in IT (plus some part-time IT jobs before that). Two MS degrees (one in statistics, the other in CS). I'll make $83K this year.
My 23 year old nephew graduated from college last year, majored in marketing. He just got promoted and will make $85K in salary (bonus could put him into 6 figures).
If you want "Hot" because of the bucks, IT might not be the way to go.
I just can't get my hair pointy enough to do it.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
A lot of people disagree with me, but if you want to stay technical, chasing the latest specialty is not always the best way to go. If you really want to build a technical career that will last you through outsourcing, technology shifts, etc., then you need to have a broad background.
:-)
Smart people will always find work. I've bounced all over the IT world...support, sysadmin, design and architecture, and it's really hard keeping your skills truly sharp. Someone who's truly valuable picks a few key areas to get really good at, and knows _something_ about the rest. If you're a network guru, learn a little about the machines you're connecting. If you're a systems genius, learn enough about databases to realize your DBA is BSing you.
Take the latest fads...SOA and security. You can learn everything about these two areas, but what happens to all that knowledge when it becomes a commodity? When the execs realize SOA is just a rehash of centralized computing with some XML and the web thrown in, where will you be? Keeping yourself open keeps you employed.
I learned through a really tough experience that management was not for me 2 years ago. Technical people generally don't make good people-managers. It's not lack of social skills, but management is a completely different job. You will never touch a machine again. You will be in meetings, answering e-mails, making phone calls, and "separating the kindergarteners" when they get into conflicts. If you burn out on technology, then it's an excellent career path. Otherwise, don't let people convince you it's a good move. Rememeber all the bad bosses you have/had? Just like some people aren't suited for IT, they're not suited for managing either.
One good overspecialization example I like to cite is OpenVMS system administrators. OpenVMS is still in active use, but it's really declining. Truth is, it's easier to write new applications to run on Linux/Windows Server than to pay for expert system administrators. One of the first IT jobs I had before moving on was VMS support. I don't know how DEC trained these guys, but they're some of the best, most vigilant admins I've ever seen. However, finding a paying job working with those systems is getting harder. I world love to have that kind of sysadmin in the Linux and Windows world I work in, but a lot of them are totally specialized and don't want to learn new systems.
One other thing...outsourcing is here to stay. If you're a developer, become a crack genius developer so you can get the contract jobs rewriting outsourced code that doesn't work. If you're a procedural system admin, become an operations wizard that designs systems that don't randomly blow up. In short, truly earn your money!
*cough*Steve Jobs*cough*
:D Look at Woz.
Just sayin'... it's happened before
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
...but if you do a good job, you can't help being promoted until you reach a level where you won't be so good in the job and you'll stop being promoted and just stay there. The same happens to everyone in the organization, until all positions are held by people not suited for their jobs. That's the well-known Peter principle.
IT jobs going begging at Oil & Oil service companies. Perhaps people havent forgotten the two decades of downsizing.
- Security is hard, much harder than you think, because the obvious instant answers are usually impossible for political reasons.
- Your main role in security is to give the warm fuzzies to investors and senior management that "Something Is Being Done".
- If anything happens, it's YOUR arse on the line - not the dopy admin or lazy programmer or stupid end user, YOURS. Your job is to secure the (virtually) unsecurable.
- Security is often the point where all the departmental rivalry, executive willy-waving and fatuous politics comes together. Everyone, however, will agree on one thing: you are paranoid, delusional, and are asking for impossibly "ivory tower" stuff that no-one in the real world could ever use.
For all that, though, I love the role - mostly for the reasons above; if you can accomplish anything at all in the face of all that, you get a marvellous sense of achievementEverything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Microsoft shops pay their people well and treat them right. It's a reflection of their software buying policy: spend whatever it takes to get what (they THINK) is the best.
Sell yourself to one of these places, quiet the anarchist inside of yourself that rebels at the thought, and enjoy what it means to have a real career in IT for a change.
IT employers are cherry-picking. If you don't already have 5 years experience in a specific area, it's not even worth considering.
For example, let's suppose you want to go into project management, but you have no experience in PM. So you take some graduate classes, and get a few certs, and . . . nothing. Take a look at the job boards, there is no such thing as starting in new field - you must have expereince in that field. In fact, most tech have a landry list of skills, and you need experience in all of them. And the experience must be full time, recent, and verifiable; and every job has a different landry list.
Or, let's say you want to be a java developer, you learn java, and then you can't get a job. It just does not work like that. From my experience: the choice is not up to the IT worker.
The IT career that generates revenue (and not expense) and the IT career field that requires client interaction. I work in a disaster recovery center and boy are we raking it in. Plus I get to build, restore, administer, develope, on all kinds of OS'es, PLatforms, Databases, networks, etc. I also get invaluable experience in networking with switches, routers, and VPN appliances. This is all to support clients willing to pay dollars for business continuity and it is FUN, because every day is a new adventure.
Small shops *love* jack-of-all-trades because they have to be able to cover a lot of bases without specialized help. I've worked of academic and government agencies where they had limited budgets to hire many people so I had to dabble in DBA, Unix Admin, Apps Admin, Developer, User Support, etc all at the same time. I never became a master of Unix admin tasks (big hardware changes justified getting some help) but now I know enough to understand other specialists. My DBA knowledge alone is very valuable for performance recommendations or simply knowing when to say "This is a DBA issue, not a code issue". Even when you work with a group of specialists you quickly become important if you have a broad base.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
As others have mentioned, you should choose what you like doing. Also personally I would stay away from "hot jobs" because you know what? Those are exactly the jobs all the other cattle will flock too because they are "hot", and you'll wind up with a 100 people applying for the same job. With a little luck you could try seeking out some little niche area where for whatever reason (most people don't know about it, it's not "sexy", whatever) the demand is always high even if the number of jobs in the area is limited.
Just my two cents from personal experience. I'm a mac programmer (and even a *mac* game programmer at present if you can believe it!) and have been one since the beginning of my career. I've never had to develop on a windoze machine, and I've never had a problem finding a job and never had much competition when applying for those jobs.
The fact that I own 50% of the business shares would prevent that from happening. Like I said, while he takes care of the management side of things and I worry about the tech side of things, I still have business experience and am not going to dig myself into a hole I can't get out of.
I work with another company who, again, has two owners both at 50% each. They hired a manager to run the business, which also includes telling them where they need to be. You need to play your strongest hand each to make the business successful.
Also, as a small company, if I didn't play my role, he wouldn't be able to play his to grow the business. We aren't large enough to hire someone with the technical expertise that I have, so if I don't play my role and deal with our larger clients issues, we don't have any income, and we both starve.
rm -rf
Or, is that just ready made convential wisdom, that doesn't really pan out in the real world?
I've known people who have decided to make a living out of doing what they love - and hated it. Why? Because when you do what you love by your own rules, it's fun. When it's a job: everything is different, you can't do what *you* want. For example, if you do software developement as a job, you may find yourself being a "cog" tediously working on some tiny part of a giant system.
Furthermore, most people love stuff that is in way over-crowded fields. For example, about 50% of high-school students say they want jobs like: actor, musician, artist, or writer. Which means about 50% of high-school students will end up frustrated in the career paths - sorry folks it's a demand/supply thing.
It's a very un-sexy job, but if you end up at the right company or in academia you can get involved with some pertty interesting work.
The pay can be quite good, and the demand is downright bonkers - I have on average 3-4 recruiters a week cold calling me (I include phone, E-mail, LinkedIn, etc) for positions they can't fill.
The company I work for expects managers of technical folks to keep doing tech work themselves. As a result they don't manage well, and their tech work suffers too. The corner office folks think managing techies is not a full-time job, and want to get the most for their money. But it's a completely short-sighted policy. We did hire one guy who was an excellent manager, and only did management though he had an engineering degree. For a year his projects were consistently on-time and under-budget. They fired him. Said he wasn't producing enough specs and code.
Hur man än vänder sig är alltid ändan bak
Agreed. At our shop we can all do each other's job, with varying degrees of ease. Most small shops can't afford one head per technical field.
I prefer being a Renaissance man; I'm too curious NOT to be...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
With my experience most small places atleast expect you to be able to do everything ,from security to web programming to telephone systems and network config.
Unless you are going to a med or large company dont go to a specific field in it.
At med sized insurance company, here at the library ,and at a software programming company I was expected to know hot to do everything.
Thats my experience.
But seriously... focus on major technologies and be flexible in specialization.
The same stuff that's always been hot always will be:
. Database administration and programming .NET
. Application development, esp.
. Network administration and security
. Data conformity, formatting and storage esp. XML-based
Find some way to make it fun. The first step is to eliminate tedious work by better time management and custom code, even if it just fills in your expense reports for you.
technical writing / development
We just recently outsourced our entire phone system to our phone company. Instead of maintaining Cisco call manager and the associated servers, we now have MPLS circuits at all our locations to our phone company. They interconnect our sites, and provide VOIP service with Polycom phones and Broadsoft's VOIP backend.
It turned out to be cheaper to pay per-month, per-phone, than maintaining a huge infrastructure to support Cisco voice. We have to pay for voice service anyway, the small additional cost put phones on everyone's desk without a huge capital outlay to buy all the Cisco gear.
Stuff changes overnight in this business. VOIP might change that fast as well.
-ted
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Project Information Manager is an emerging field, that at some companies gives folks with an IT background a new and interesting field to play in, recieve a top wage, and be immune from outsourcing (in fact PIM's manage outsourced projects). PIM is popping up spontaneously in many different industries from heavy industrial engineering, to building construction, to public works projects, to archeological sites in africa. In industrial engineering, wherin I toil, the job title popped up about four years ago. If you google for 'project information manager' you will see three engineering firms, Flour Daniel (a US-based firm), AMEC (a UK-based firm), and Colt Engineering (from Canada). But all heavy industrial engineering firms have a similar role. The beauty of this job is that there is yet no accepted industry-wide definition, so you will have greater opportuinty to affect its evolution. At Flour Daniel the role is generally filled with people from an IT background. At Colt they take a mix, with some of them having an IT background
Basically, a PIM manages the information in a project. In industrial engineering, we use lots of very complicated software packages that were not made to work together, and try to make them work together. Industrial engineering is complicated. IT projects are complicated too, but when idustrial engineering goes wrong, people die. Industrial engineers have to design plants that take some raw commodity (say, crude oil) and turn it into other stuff, all without blowing up and killing people. And with complicated controls so the refineries can run efficiently with fewer and fewer operators. All in an environment where people are constantly changing their minds. And every year we have to do it in less time. Oh, and did I mention 'without blowing up an killing people?'
Critical to this actually happening is the timely flow of information between various flavours of engineers. What we are after is that when some engineer keys in some data, it never has to be rey-keyed by anyone. (Traditionally we would issue a drawing or specification and downstream disciplines would rekey it all again for their own purposes.)
To me, there is no greater pleasure than taking information from one application and figuring out how to bring it into another application so people can just use it. This is win-win for everyone, since the interesting part of industrial engineering is the "designing"--deciding which things go where and in which way. Checking (and re-checking) to make sure you've kept up with the continual changes is boring. So when the PIM does a good job, everyone is happy.
What's in it for IT folks? Being part of something bigger. Being part of being able to do something better. Oh, and working in an industry segment that is making a bazillion dollars that can afford to pay top wages.
Outsourcing? Well, it happens in industrial engineering too. But if the project has an American partner, it is usually coordinated from America, and someone has to make sure all the applications running all over the Earth are working together.
In the US talk to Fluor Daniel. Colt Engineering was recently purchased by Worley-Parsons (an Australian firm) which has offices in Houston. Also try Bechtel and the Shaw group.
First of all I will say that I have worked mostly in software development in my career, although I also have some UNIX system administration experience in my background. Because of that, this is focused mostly towards software development although some of it applies to other IT functions as well.
Next I want to clarify my own personal definitions. I define Information Technology (IT) as the group that provides technical expertise to a company in order to support their business needs. For example, if you work for a bank, you maintain the computer hardware software that allows the bank to make a profit by providing financial services. You aren't really directly contributing to the bottom line, since you aren't creating a product or service that the bank sells, but you are critical to their success.
The flip side of that would be Software Engineering or Technical Consulting, where you work for companies like Oracle or Microsoft or IBM. Although those companies have IT departments, the positions I'm referring to are the ones where you produce a product or service that is sold to customers to generate revenue. In this case you ARE directly contributing to the bottom line.
What I see in the industry is less of a demand for actual software development in the corporate IT world. In the past, companies needed a software development group, because they developed all their software in-house. If you worked for a tire manufacturer, and your company needed an accounts payable system, you would often develop and support it yourself. Now, that same company would be much more likely to purchase an ERP suite like SAP. If you needed needed technical customization, you hire consultants and/or contractors to come in and do the work on a project basis.
This is also true of help-desk and even networking/system admin functions. We're seeing more and more of those commodity-type positions being outsourced to third-party providers, especially in larger corporations.
So... my advice to someone just starting out in IT would be similar to what has already been said. If you really want to stay technical and go into hardcore software development or system administration or something, try to get jobs with companies who make that their focus, or else be prepared to work as a contractor or consultant, traveling frequently from project to project.
However, if you want to truly be successful in corporate IT, try to get as broad of an experience base as possible. Ideal IT candidates in the future will have broad experience in both hardware and software, and also the communication and people skills to help leverage technology to solve strategic problems. Working in the IT department of a big corporation will mean that instead of writing that accounts payable software package yourself, you will be identifying the requirements and coordinating with the different vendors to get the job done. You will still need technical knowledge, because you will have to be able to communicate with the consultants/contractors/vendors, and you will performing the integrations between the systems. However, you might not be slinging code all day.
Just as a disclaimer, I will repeat that this isn't a 100% rule. There will always be a need withing corporate IT departments for software development, because companies will always develop creative solutions to give them a competitive advantage over their competitors.
If you're just starting out, my recommendation is try several areas of the technology field and figure out what makes you happy. Being happy in your job is much more inportant than just money, in my opinion. If you don't like what you're doing, try something else. Having a broad experience base can only help you in the job market of the future.
My degree is in CS.
Being categorized by I.T. makes one an Information Technician, and is degrading.
Now admittedly, most software jobs are not Science either, as often what you work on is done in secret, often re-inventing wheels, and by the current nature of the industry, getting true peer review of anything probably breaks your non-disclosure agreement.
Of course if you are lucky enough to be working for a real open source company, then possibly you could be a computer scientists.
Given the choice of Technician, Engineer, Scientist, or Artist, which one describes your job? Which one would describe your ideal job?
It sounds like you are not feeling satisfied with yourself. I suggest doing some thinking about what drives you... what's your passion?
It could be you like a certain industry... like volunteering... like a group of people or respect a certain person or cause. I suggest considering those first and seeing how you can fit in. Worry less about what the techie side is (which you know you can do anything) and think more on what makes you happy.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
I've had a pretty successful career, totally by accident, so here is my advice.
.net or Java? Are the more jobs available for an Oracle DBA or a Microsoft SQL DBA? If that is your primary consideration then you will probably be beaten out by the people who are passionate about their career choice and made it for other reasons. Honestly if you are really excited by databases (you sick bastard) then you should be interested in working with all of them and learning as much about both DB theory and the specific implementations as you can.
Do what you enjoy. That's it.
Everyone I know in IT who really enjoys what they do (to the point where they would probably do it as a hobby for free if they were independently wealthy), ends up being successful. They are passionate and competent, likely not because they are inherently smarter than anyone else, just that they spend more time learning, experimenting, and playing around with the technology they like and work with.
I also know people who picked their IT career (and decided to go into IT to begin with) based solely on the job market. Will I make more money with
There are jobs out there for everything. If there is something out there that really gets you excited go for it. If you learn quick, really throw yourself into it and know your stuff, you will find employment. It might be more lucrative in the short term to trend hop, but if all you are interested in is the possibility of making big bucks then you should forgo IT and go into something like hedge fund management.
Me? I really dig identity management stuff. I've worked in academia with SAML, Kerberos, and PKI and in the corporate world with Oracle and Sun's IdM tools. A word of warning though: Find a field you enjoy, but do not get too hung up on a specific technology. I'm happy using my knowledge and experience in IdM to work with Infocard, SAML, PKI, LDAP, NIS, Xellerate, CoreID, Kerberos, AD, etc. I have my opinions as to what is best for what need, but I try to not be too much of a snob about it and limit my career that way. I've seen a lot of people go the "horse and buggy" way by latching on to a specific technology and refusing to let go when the world moved on.
Finkployd
Part of this is that they are don't trust others to do it "right" or they are afraid of losing their technical skills.
The latter is why I've never made a push to become manager. I fear that once you cross over that threshold there may never be any turning back, and you may run the risk of obsolescence should your technical skills fall behind.
I don't necessarily think a manager needs to be fully versed in the technology they manage, but they certainly need to be able to communicate on a somewhat technical level. The needn't know everything but certainly they need to be knowledgeable in order to be able to easily communicate with those who you manage.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
As time goes on, and the blasted "Web 2.0" gets more and more full-featured, security gets worse. Money drives the economy, not safety. Features drive demand, and demand generates revenue. So products evolve based on features, with ever decreasing focus on security. Tools are built on tools, and tools/standards are built for ease of use (PHP? AJAX?) and we find ourselves immersed in an orgy of socially motivated functionality with nary a thought given to security...until shit blows up, everyone realizes their entire lives depend on a house of cards, and they then come screaming for the security people, who bill them heavily.
HR just needs to see a few key words and make sure you're not a drug user/criminal/lying about your previous employment history. It's the techies that will ultimately decide if you can do the job, HR just files the paperwork.
Which fields are hot? I'll simply repeat what's been said numerous times in this thread - today's hot field is tomorrow's legacy application. Learn to adapt and be an "engineer" as opposed to pigeonholing yourself and simply being a "J2EE Developer". New technology is constantly being adopted and mature systems constantly need maintenance. Understand the various roles, concepts, and how IT impacts business and you'll be in far better shape than the code monkey that only understands his part of the world.
Jack of all trades,
Master of none;
But oftentimes better
Than master of one.
There are two basic employment tracks in the U.S.
1. Small business where you are required to do many tasks and have the capacity to learn new ones.
2. Big business where you have _very_ specific tasks and duties and in some cases that's what they are looking for. (IMHE anyway) You may start in a low-prestige job that you're pretty much stuck in unless you have great social skills. The likelihood you get to the high-prestige job from within the organization is low.
In rare cases, the lines blur a bit.
1. Which are you happier in?
2. How much more money do you want to make?
As other posts have said, I don't think jack-of-all-trades is bad. It's just a matter of combining a few of those trades more effectively.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
If you become a manager you will lose your soul.
I've seen many comments about picking up a few new languages, and I have to agree, diversity is key to IT survival from what friends have told me. My query is, what if your love of IT isn't for code? I can read through a few key sections looking for a bug, but being told to code X application or part of an application isn't for me. I have a rough time remembering commands and sitting for hours on end, not my cup of tea. Is there any hope for the hardware side other then a Best Buy TechMonkey?
End users are becoming more savy, and as such, while there is still a large market for desktop support, salleries are lower now, because you have so many techs right out of high school that can do the same thing.
.NET, ASP, SQL, Pearl, Python, and C? My company is hurting for skilled Python developers, and we pay a pretty penny for them.
Get your MCSE and Cisco Certifications, and go for networking. You will be treated like crap, expected to work extended hours without the benefits of overtime pay, but you will secure yourself a job.
Focus less on webdev. Focus more on application and Intranet dev. HTML is being taught in gradeschool, most high schoolers can do Flash and know how to use photoshop, but how many do you know that know
Just because we all love Linux inside and out does not mean that everyone uses it. The last few companies I have worked at have been Microsoft houses, and now I work at a company that also has some Apple stuff. Make sure you know your Windows Server 2003 and Apple XServ
The new techie manager still wants to get his hands dirty doing the day to day work. Part of this is that they are don't trust others to do it "right" or they are afraid of losing their technical skills. The new techie manager never really gives him/her self over to the dark side of management.
You see, that IS the real "dark side" of managment -- when you become a micromanager or some other type of manager that constantly second-guesses their employees because you "know better." Even worse is the type that is constantly trying to make people prove themselves to them by withholding information to see if their subordinate is "smart enough" to come to the same conclusions (and then berate them if they don't either due to a difference of opinion or a crucial missing piece of information).
I've had four jobs since I entered the IT field. Every single manager I've had was a former programmer with the exception of one boss's boss (who was entirely awful because she was more interested in office politics and backstabbing for advancement... but I digress).
All the good bosses I've had gradually abandoned the programming side and learned to act as mentors. They used their knowledge of the system to give pointers on where to look when you were stuck on a problem and trusted you to get things done, only prodding every now and then when a schedule was threatened. All the bad bosses I've had (save the one mentioned above) second-guessed you constantly and either went around your work to put someone else on it (like themselves) or constantly made you justify ever single moment you spent your day on. In both cases, the attitude comes from the thought that they could do it better if they didn't have to do all this management crap instead.
In other words, the secret to going from a technical role to being a good manager is learning to let go. Use your skills and knowledge to aid your subordinates and shield them from upper management by understanding what they are doing. If necessary, use you knowledge to call their BS if they're actually slacking, but don't envy them or treat them as irritating time-wasters blocking you from doing "your real job." Otherwise, you're just demonstrating the Peter principle.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308, 39118116,00.htm
I think I read a more recent article, that claimed SAP experts were earning over $160K, but I can't seem to find that article right now.
Small shops should and do love JOAT folks, but they may have trouble hiring them.
If a shop is large enough to have an HR department (complete with screeners) it's hard to get a foot in. It's often difficult to get a position open to hire for with the designation Jack of All Trades. Uppers don't understand, and HR certainly doesn't. (Thats a common situation, but not a rule.)
If they do get that designation, starting salary for the job will be somewhat low, because that designation will be of lower status than an "expert".
And small shops tend to pay less than big ones in the first place.
This wouldn't apply at all for a shop consisting of just one or two people, but then, they tend to pay VERY low salaries.
For the record, I'm a JOAT, too, but have been involved in a bunch of hiring.
You say you had spent time "...even working on the client side for a little while." That implies to me that the business side of the technology equation was able to talk to you...perhaps they even [gasp] trusted you? We call that "business analysis" in my firm.
Good Business Analyst are hard to find. Most of the BAs I know seem to be too much business (nearly worthless) or too much tech (not as worthless as the former). People with the ability to relate to both sides -- understanding and predict business issues while balancing IT complexity, execution, and costs -- are a vital component in most software projects.
Important Skilz: not stupid, willing to call BS on arrogant IT Project Managers trying to slip stuff by as "too hard for the business to understand", willing to call BS on arrogant Business Managers trying to push through "do my job" buttons as critical functionality when they have no real value, good negotiator/dictator/friend (as necessary), able to write a complete sentence, good with Powerpoint and drawings of boxes and stick figures (for Business management), willing to be the only person in the room who really "gets it" 90% of the time, SQL and/or data analysis abilities.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleTOC&specialReportId=9000100&articl eId=112360
I disagree with that, ElForesto. While people do get promoted if they stick around long enough, management is very reluctant to promote people who perform their technical tasks well. Technical talent is thin enough that when a manager finds someone who is technically savvy, the manager is best served by keeping the talented person as a subordinate for as long as possible. As far as the original question is concerned: Judging by the fact that the poster does not claim to be an ace at any specific technical discipline, I would say that management might be a good career path for a person like that. The vast variety of experience this guy has had might make him very valuable as a manager.
> Learn Chinese, Vietnamese or Russian.
What about competition from all the Chinese, Vietnamese or Russian, immigrants here in the USA? There is no way you are going to be as fluent as the native speakers.
...booth babe.
Just junk food for thought...
Hi,
.. go ahead.
looking at the figures here in Germany, I'll think development is a prospering
field. Working as a freelancer in the J2EE area there is definitive a need for
developers here in good old Germany. And the figures are looking like it is a
stable situation, I think over there in the US it's not different. I've heard
a IBM podcast last night that 2 % of the IT position in the states are offshoared,
while the overeall number of IT people is again in the region of 2001 at top of
the hype.
If your interested in programming
Greetings from Cologne, Germany, Europe,
cu Stefan
-- ++49-(0)171-2116079
It's big and growing, and it's better to be on the side doing the cuts instead of the side being cut.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Is it a better path to focus on moving into management?
There's a dearth of IT managers out there right now. If you want to stay close to where the action is, focus on project management. With your knowledge of all the different facets of software development, you should be able to relate to your team pretty well. It's a tough and sometimes stressful job that nevertheless can pay well and provide great job security.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
I did the same; my specialties are gone (though I am not sure they would be relevant in most places now anyway) and having a hellava time finding something. Even though returning to school for "Information Systems" M.Sc. as it was a generalized view of systems and methodology; I specialized in software engineering and sw testing (with a documented, commercially successful, master on the topic) and still cannot locate a position here in Michigan. Mainly as I cannot get past the HR and the placement goofs who have stuck themselves to hiring managers like a michigan mosquito; one told me she was once a novell admin, and asked about my skills with "who uses that?" They, and some business owners, appear to be trolling for insider information on where to find cheap skills X by posting (often false) advanced opportunities, interviewing and pumping for information, but never hiring. Others only want your references, previous supervisor's name, and contact information. They are hiring naivete, youth, offering 1 year gigs, temp work. The projects are seat-of-the-pants.
I find most positions are simply not hiring for depth or breadth but for specific tool skills. Saying we want someone who has worked with large datasets, PL/SQL, Unix. Then send you a message asking "how many years with Ab Initio?". The same with software testing; can you push the buttons on this product?, not how much, why, and where.
To me, that is dangerous for them, and myself, but I do want to pay the bills.
PS I have lost my IndusGT drives for several of my old Ataris in my personal now-useless-technologies-but-still-fun-to-have collection; have any for sale? haha
I am in the fast growing field of Information Assurance (aka computer/system security). Every time there's a security/data breach, my field gets more visibility and more companies develop positions in IA. It is definitely not something that will be outsourced overseas either.
Some people in this field have a lot of OJT in a lot of areas (sounds like you) and others have gotten degrees with or without additional experience. I am currently finishing a MS in Information Assurance from Iowa State University via distance. Among my classmates who went to work in private industry, the lowest starting salary was 60K - for 23YOs without experience. Some chose to work for "three-letter government agencies" and after a few years, their experience plus high level security clearance will practically guarantee a quantum leap in salary in private industry.
I have heard that people who go on to get the ISC2 CISSP certification (requires 4 years IA OJT or 3 years w/IA degree from certain universities) have an average salary of 100K.
Some specialize in network security but others have chosen forensics, project management (at MS), applications development, database security, certification and accredidation teams, PKI administration, etc.
I chose the specialization of Information Assurance oversight. I use my broad knowledge of computers/systems but I do no systems/network administration or even have an account on the systems I oversee. Plus, because I had a broader experience/qualifications than my classmates, I started at a lot higher salary also (my net is more than my peers' gross).
Why threaten to leave before asking for more money?
If you think it's deserved, which you obviously do, then ask. And ask again in 2 months if they say no. Don't ask your manager, since he seems impotent in the situation. Ask his manager, or a C* level exec. YOU need to let upper management get the hint that you're unhappy with your salary.
If you are "worth" it to the company they will see things your way - provided you can explain why you are "worth" the extra $$.
Good luck.
...do what interests you. Having done several rounds of hiring for all sorts of different positions myself, let me tell you that's what I look for most: someone who's actually interested in what they're doing. If I'm hiring a web application developer, I'll take the guy who's passionate about it with three years experience over the guy with five (provided he can talk intelligently about it).
Or, hell, interested in something. If I'm choosing between two equally qualified web developers, and one of them's really passionate about, oh i don't know, VAX compiler optimization and the other guy just seems to be in it for the paycheck, I'll go for the VAX guy in a second. VAX compiler optimization hasn't been a "hot" area since i was in grade school, but the fact that he's able to think enough about technical topics like that to get excited about them is a really good sign.
that being said, here's the thing about "hot" areas: it's easy to find people in them. i know where to find really good ajax-y web people, desktop application developers, bio-med CS people, wireless networking people (RF, equipment, whatever), and so on. the "hot" areas get saturated first.
what we're having a really hard time finding are really good Product Managers. not anything currently "hot", certainly not glamourous, but people who can envision a product at some point down the road and figure out how to get there. mostly what we see are glorified project managers or systems-engineers-light. but finding someone who knows enough about tech to understand what pieces are needed (and keep the real techs honest) and with some vision of the future? they are few and far between.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Alright... An answer is below, the 1st two paragraphs are a reply to the first comment.
Intelligent, personable people can do both. If you find that your a like-able (*sp), in charge, and talented individual, that is what a manager is. I feel it is incredibly important to have people that excel as technicians eventually move up as they so desire. It is of course still up to the judgement of upper management to see any holes in his skills after he starts as a new manager.
Far too many people are allowed to move up even when they don't perform. If your a bad tech, you most likely will be a bad manager. Some of the most respected, productive, proactive, and efficient managers I have ever worked for in the IT industry started out technically. An IT manager needs to also be a mentor in aiding business level decisions. A good tech can solve a problem a number of ways, but the one that makes sense to the business will earn management and the tech any points. But how can a manager with no technical skill, at all, be asked to aid in decision making for his team. How can a non-technical manager be expected to hire tech's if he/she is in no position to judge technical know how. In my opinion, only upper management can decide if a person is right for management.
Every IT field you refer to is booming. My company wants to hire for all positions. Net Admins, DBA's, desktop support, application support, software development, client support teams, and more... So do what challenges you, but you enjoy. I like to change it up a lot. This helps for times when your personal life is a little more challenging. Net admin work is a great gig, and always new and changing. Especially working with client SLA's etc, everything moves at a 100 mph.
Well, thats one side, take what you want.
JC
Not too common of a title, but I've recently been promoted to a "Systems Architect" position. Basically I get to manage everything about all of our systems, but I don't "manage" the department, just the techie stuff I'm good with. Networking, DBA, Sysadmin, helpdesk, system design, virtualization, software development comes from me, and I will be helping administrators put new systems into place and have a plan for them to execute. It's as close to the top you can get without being at the top. My manager and I have an excellent relationship, and while he holds Veto power over any of my ideas, we pretty much have a similar vision.
My suggestion to you would be to look for this type of role. You get to maintain that "Jack of all trades" position, plus you get more responsibility and power, but overall you only need to worry about what you're already good with.
A whole book was written about this, and it pre-dates modern IT. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle The Peter Principle
You may become obsolecent in the technical sense but if you are a good manager you can avoid falling behind in the management of technology or sw development or whatever. The real risk is simply there are a lot fewer managers than rank and file developers, so there is a lot less demand for them.
It turns out these are really different skill sets - one set cranks out code, the other set knows metrics, process, etc, still technical but not the things most rank and file developers obsess over.
That being said the main requirement for being a good technical manager is still being a good manager. I've had managers who had no technical skills, but the ones who knew how to evaluate, metricize, and develop processes specific to the task at hand were better.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Go broad, customize your resume for each job. Make sure your cover letter has everything on the job description.
The best field in the IT industry is in IP - intellectual property. Develop something amazing, or revolutionize a current development for whatever company you are at. Be the one person that knows how to fix it, do it better, etc. This is a good way to ensure that the company knows what you're worth. I have a friend that interned for a company that developed in C++. Interns were assigned the crappy and monotonous job of changing static values in header files. Tens of thousands of header files. Hundreds of values in each one. The same variables, changed to the same values. Instead of going to work and sifting through the files every day, my friend wrote a small, relatively simple Java program to search and replace variable values in the files. Instead of spending the entire summer working on this crappy job which usually took thousands of man hours to complete, they took two weeks to show the company something new, which did the same job literally over a single day. My friend was given an offer that was on the order of 20% higher than their average starting pay. Plus, they have some great job security since they're about the only person in the company that knows Java.
It is not as simple as you suggest. It is more about how the individual looks at, and understands the world. It has been my experience that the best Techies that have worked for me see the world in black and white. Dont misinterpret this as a bad thing; on the contrary, it is one of the (IMHO) most important aspects of a real Techie. The next aspect is their ability to focus exclusively on minute details that may have limited scope.
This takes a type of concentration that a good manager cannot afford, as it would mean that they are ignoring other issues that may be just as important. Additionally, a good manager needs a broad knowledge that is not necessarily deep, but sufficient for him/her to understand what their teams are doing and to communicate effectively with superiors, customers, and team members.
The focus that Techies have also tends to ill prepare them for dealing with complex social issues that a manager may have to navigate on a daily basis. To Techies, these are irrelevant and distracting. To a manager, this is a critical skill.
So the real issue that the originator of the article should think about here, is how they see the world and whether they can deal with, or even prefer a, gray world...
Coldmoon over Dark water...
There's an old saying about the gold rush in the 19th century. Very few people struck it rich finding gold, but the guys who sold shovels got rich.
This is kind of how I gravitated towards a career doing database work. DBA / Data Architect / Systems Architect. I'm a high-end Oracle DBA, and you know what? I'll be the very last person to be let go in times of crisis. No matter what kind of project you work on, no matter whether your products get canceled, no matter whether they quit using your programming language of choice, no matter whether your business unit gets kicked around during reorgs... Someone has to manage the data, and that person is me.
It's not a career for everybody, but it's something to think about. Sometimes it's very dull. When things go wrong, it's a very stressful job. But if you're really good, the pay is excellent ($100K + U.S.) and I believe it's the most stable career choice in IT right now.
It's a growth area, your colleagues are hot, and you get to wear cool lab coats and go to seminars all the time.
Plus, you tend not to have a lot of ethical conflicts. Seriously, it's a good area.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
A common dichotomy I see is a between front-end and back-end folks. Some engineers are really interested in how systems work, others think much more about the ways people use systems.
For example, ask yourself what reactions you have when you use an ATM cash machine.
If using an ATM makes you think about what kind of database banks use, or how partner banks can reliably take cash out of your account, or how the system keeps the pin secure and prevents spoofing, etc, - if your focus is on those kinds of technical details, you may find back-end work more rewarding.
If, on the other hand, your first response to an ATM machine is to get annoyed and think "why can't the people who designed this stupid system make it remember what language I speak!" That reaction suggests you may be more of a front-end thinker. Focusing on the UI side of the business could be more fulfilling.
Of course, its good to know a bit about all aspects when working in a team, but in my career I've found that focusing on just one end has been helpful. It gives me a specialty and skill that is appreciated. I get to do more of what I love. And when the system crashes I can say "blame the back end guys!"
Think about it for a moment. Why would a company promote an incompetent? If anything that makes them more dangerous to the company's success. In reality incompetents are fired 99% of the time.
The reason we have these sorts of myths is exactly the Peter Principle. You do good work, you get promoted, and promoted, etc. Then at some point you get in over your head. And there you dog paddle to keep your head up. Managers are very visible while techies and engineers are less visible. So it is very likely a manager's mistakes will be seen by many while the opposite is usually the case for engieers.
(NOTE: When i use the term "incompetent" I mean as far as management and organization skills. Sure some people are just not cut out to be managers. IMHO I believe 80% of engineers are usually not management material, and 90% of managers are usually not engineer material.)
Get back to work
No good answer can be given that doesn't begin with: it depends on the area in which you live. There are no large companies where I live, so employers need people with a wide variety of computer skills. Someone who only wants to be an Oracle DBA won't find a lot of opportunities here. Someone with average Oracle experience who is also decent with some 3 out of 4 combination of C#, C++, PHP, and Linux administration could easily find a job here (we're looking to hire someone like this right now).
Your mileage will vary in other locales. You're asking a very vague question with a wide variety of good answers.
being the tech support at Castle Anthrax, though.
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
A good area to get into if you are looking to avoid the whole outsourcing issue is customization, or some form of middleware. At the company I work at, a lot of the application stuff has been outsourced to developers in India. However, they still need someone to glue the different apps and systems together. That is where my role comes in. And this type of job will always been needed because no two companies have the same setup, so there always has to be someone to do that work to customize the systems to work together.
I hear the fringe benefits are great!
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
The other thing is;
A lot of businesses do not reward the "pure techie" track. Everywhere I've gone, I am pushed, shoved, encouraged, and even intimidated into taking on a more managerial role. Jobs are less (financially) rewarding, and most importantly less secure, when you shun the managerial track.
The best role to get into, IMO, to avoid this, is the "tech leadership" role. You get the power to manage technical direction of projects (ie. avoid stupidity that a non-technical manager might make) - but you don't have to be a "manager". You still have the responsibility for planning, schedule, and budget, and task delegation, but from a technical angle.
Unfortunately, few businesses seem to realize that they need people to fill these roles; they don't seem to be a facet of most org structures I've seen.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
...they think management is an obstacle to overcome.
most likely the response here is to go for some cowboy programmer aspect.
good luck.
Is it a better path to focus on moving into management?
If you are even asking this question, then the answer is emphatically yes. If money is your primary motivator, management is likely to pay better. If writing software and building systems isn't your primary motivator, you're probably not as good a developer as people who do it because they love it. If you would even consider seeking a job in management instead of engineering, then you'd probably be happier and better paid there.
To put it another way, right up until that last sentence my answer was going to be, "Find something you love, get really good at it, and odds are you can find somebody who will pay you to do it," but if there's nothing in IT that you love, you're better off doing something else.
I currently hear a lot about 'information security' and VoIP, however I would say: they're empty bags of wind and self-perpetuating bubbles.
Information security will be hot until the majority of managers finally finds out that the weakest link in a chain equals the strength of it and see that it's their USERS (aka employees) they have to satisfy, no matter how much their security is upgraded, as long as the sales drone can put it on a memory stick or CD so they can work on it, or in the mean time they can give it to their customer (or their next sales gig), it's useless to keep locking it down. The average script kiddie is going to be kept out with the current lines of defense (frequent updates, virus scanners and firewalls) and the real hackers are going to get in anyway.
VoIP is indeed a hot topic and requires a lot of work these days, it is a good technology, but just as when computer networking (Ethernet, Token Ring) replaced mail carriers around the building, once it's in place, not a whole lot of expertise is required to keep it running. Yes, you'll need the local VoIP administrator and if it breaks the VoIP consultant, but you don't need 10 of them to re-implement it. So again, only the best will survive while the rest will move on to the next field.
The same happened to SEO, firewalls, virusscanners, intranets, websites... it all had it's time of implementation, now everyone has it and it only needs maintained. Thus, either do what you like, or follow the IT fashion industry. Both have their pro's and con's.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Every place I've ever worked at in a technical role reminded me of BoFH. The tech manager either had no technical skills or they were 15-25 years out of date, yet he wanted a role in the tech side.
I agree with the "tech leadership" role, which is almost the role I take here. While my business partner handles most of the managerial side, and I handle most of the technical side, I still work hands on with our in shop tech staff. But when it comes to on site large clients, I take the full technical role, because I want to make sure it's done properly the first time.
rm -rf
What's hot ? Being under thirty and making squat - from my perspective , piss on on all the HR types - let them do the work.
Just as being a DBA or being a developer is a skill. Don't assume you have it. Don't assume you can learn it. Move into management if you genuinely want to manage people. If you don't please quit inflicting your interest in larger salaries on the rest of us.
This signature would be better if I was creative.
I'll get as deep as I need to for a particular area, but I don't feel I need to become expert beyond what's needed. The more experience you have in seemingly diverse areas the better because you can cross-correlate your knowledge. For example, as I was tackling Oracle DBA stuff, the OS management and systems programming I've done really helped get a feel for what was happening underneath the surface. Conversely, the Oracle knowledge has made me better able to manage my systems.
Don't sell your varied experience short.
Having worked in IT for over 20 years and doing a job search recently, I believe that there are 2 major fields that will see increasing employment in the next 10 years: embedded systems and web-based business-to-business. (And altho' I call it B2B, the gov't is also hiring for this field--egov't systems.)
The embedded systems growth I think is obvious, but there are many (including myself) who first approach it as if it is just normal development on small systems. However, considering the issues of porting applications to specific hardware, real time requirements (which have more to do with predictability than timing), and unusual UIs, there is quite a bit of specialized knowledge required.
The B2B stuff has been in the works for years (I worked with a couple of X.500 applications in the 90s). But most of it has been the usual de facto proprietary standards that result in many APIs which require some sort of gateway to work together poorly. With the general acceptance of XML and development of industry standards using XML, I expect this field is finally going to stabilize, and the applications are going to become really sophisticated.
Imagine a customer going to a tech website and purchasing a wifi router. This generates the order at the warehouse, which automatically checks inventory, and, if necessary, places an order with the supplier. The supplier's system then checks it's inventory and, if necessary, places orders to its parts suppliers. And so on and so on. Some of this may be possible today, but how many applications account for returns and DOA parts, etc.? And I am sure that the capabilities vary from one industry/application to another. And do the applications work with each other? These are the kinds of issues that I see being solved over the next decade.
As far as finding employment doing what you love, sometimes having to bend to the demands of a business can make you hate showing up for work. The problem is that most development jobs require you to sign an IP (sorry RMS) agreement, and most of those are draconian because people just sign them. I have had some success in pushing back, but I was very nervous doing it, so I didn't push very hard. I would say that employment skills should be treated as exactly that. You had better be pretty good, but you also have to be ready to do what the boss wants, even if you disagree for technical reasons.
If you want to program because you love it, I suggest trying to do it on your own terms. There are plenty of FOSS projects where the arguments are about technical merit instead of market feasibility. And if the project is really good, there is even the chance that you will be paid to work on it. Just watch out for the IP traps.
Do not go after the more common knowledge like PHP+Web Design. Lots of code monkeys around tinkering with topics like this one. Try to get into the latest exciting high tech fields like grid computing, corporate backup and SAN solutions, virtualization, non-Intel weird HW architectures and many many more. Of course, you have to be open-minded and love new techonolgies, if not, forget it.
- This can't be... - Be what? Be real?
I work in healthcare IT, and this industry is exploding! I get hands on experience will all kinds of different systems and new technologies. The most intersting of which is known as PACS (basically it is digital radiology). Not only do I get to play with a wide variety of technology to keep me interested, but I get paid very very well. On top of that, it is nice to know that my work has indirectly helped people and society. For those of you aging nerds out there, know this: colonoscopies are no longer necessary due to advances in healthcare technology. Do not be tricked into letting a doctor shove a camera up your a$$! A virtual colonoscopy is available at your local high-tech hospital. A simple MRI can reconstruct your colon in 3D for analysis. Yay for nerdy doctors, keeping cameras out of your "special areas."
Life sucks . Fsck you.
You shouldn't be in IT. Please pack up your A+ and MS certs and get the hell away from anything remotely technical.
Thanks to lazy and ignorant people like you who keep feeding cash into the black hole of the major vendors who are making it hard for people like me to get anything serious done.
I'd like to tell you and following companies to frak off:
IBM
Hewlett Packard
Verizon Communications
Dell
Microsoft
Intel
Motorola
Sprint
Canon
Ingram Micro
Cisco Systems
EDS
Xerox
Computer Sciences
Apple
Texas Instruments
Oracle
Sanmina-SCI Corp
Arrow Electronics
Sun Microsystems
Nortel Networks
Solectron
One of the best 'traits' of IT for me is constant change. When you get bored, switch to another technology, architecture, layer or whatever. Plenty possibilities are available. And again, if you don't like change, stay home, don't even touch IT.
Datto's Job Chart
I've created an Excel chart showing the relative number of job openings for the search criteria listed below over the last 18 months up to 03/18/2007. This might provide you with factual data about some of the Information Technology jobs that are growing, stable or losing ground over the last 18 months. The data is derived from a popular job website. The data has been tracked every Monday over the last 18 months except when I was on vacation or hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.
If you'd like a copy of this Excel chart, please email your request to jobchartmon (hat) yahoo dohtt com and I'll have someone email you a read-only copy. Note that I'm an MCSE, VMware VCP, Citrix CCA and Linux enthusiast with no axe to grind but have some factual data y'all mind find interesting and hopefully helpful to your career. I'll let you make your own judgment about the data rather than providing commentary. If you publish this information, please give credit to Datto.
* MCSE and Citrix
* Culled MCSE and Citrix (these are targeted job openings in a corporate Citrix setting rather than system integrator/consultant setting)
* MCSE and Linux
* MCSE and Linux and Citrix
* MCSE and ISA Server
* MCSE and ISA Server and Citrix
* MCSE and MOM
* MCSE and VMware
* MCSE and Director
Datto
...is that they never bothered with a minor in business while they were in school. Having some sort of business background makes you a hot property because: (1) if you look at the areas from where most managers are being promoted, you'll find that there is a dearth of managers from IT, usually due to a general lack of business accumen in that field; and (2) having that business background makes you a more valuable employee (the company can always find another code monkey in India to work for half of what they're paying you, but does said code monkey have any further value to the company? What happens when they can find IT workers in, say, Africa to work for less? Probably the same thing that happened to your downsized former colleagues.) Having some business training can also help alleviate some of the usual frustrations felt by the IT staff toward the users, as you can now view how you job fits within the framework of the company's mission (i.e. you have some insight as to how some of the "stupid" decisions coming down from the top came to be that way).
This space for rent!
you are promoted to the level of your incompetence
Yeah, but not all of us are Jewish.
The issue with technical people is that they tend to be rational (me included.)
I think it works best with an example
User talks to tech-guy
User: "I have a nail, and I have to nail this to this wall. Will you build a hammer for this task?"
Tech-guy: "Ok"
User talks to manager
User: "I have a nail, and I have to nail this to this wall. Will you build a hammer for this task?"
Manager: "I already provided you with an iron, and I can show you how is it possible to use this iron to achieve what you want to do."
What drives me crazy is when that manager tries to come and do dirty work and makes things worse, leaving us to clean up a bigger mess. Manager should stay on his side and let us earn the trust to make things work on our own.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I started in IT in 1979, got a degree in business in 1983. I even did graduate work, and got two certifications in project management.
Never helped me in the least, employers were never the least bit interested. And when I look on dice.com, I don't see any demand.
There is another problem that keeps technical managers hands in the pudding; the people they manage. I have personally seen companies grow a code project founder hand off the project and start managing only to have the new programers consider their boss a slacker who makes them do all the work. And they're better than their boss because they, after awhile, know more about what's going on at the code level than their boss does.
Technical managers therefor tend to get out of touch with the nitty gritty earning the ire of those he manages and at the same time not do a good job for HIS boss because of the time spent tryiing keep up a proficience they don't use to maintain the respect of those working for him. It's a nasty conundrum that can turn good techies into very unhappy people.
is a way to keep from firing them and keep them out of the business. call it a 'promotion' if you will, but give them a closet office somewhere removed from everyone and little pointless jobs to do. its a practice used in some big organizations, like schools and so forth, to avoid the conflict of firing someone (potential lawsuits and political battles that ensue from the allies of said person) and so forth and so on.