Slashdot Mirror
Techies Keen to Keep Jobs In the Family
Stony Stevenson writes "IT staff are 'overwhelmingly' happy to recommend their profession to their children, a survey has found. Three-quarters of nearly 1,000 IT professionals surveyed said that they would 'definitely recommend' a career in the business to their offspring. Around 70 percent also felt that their jobs are secure, and that they are expecting a salary increase next year. The survey also found that 86 per cent of respondents expect to move jobs voluntarily in the next three years."
You have this idea of how your child should be and what they should like, and then they shatter your dreams when they start playing sports and getting girlfriends.
Though one advantage of IT is they can earn quite a bit of money to help me afford a retirement home, and then when they are a burned out husk of a person after 20 years of stress they will have more time to come take care of me.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
In related news, 75% of all firefighters would recommend their profession to their children. 80% of all police officers would recommend their profession to their children.
Duh. Everyone wants their kid to do what they do. My father (when he was still one himself) wanted me to be a sign maker.
My blog
They found 1,000 IT professionals that have offspring?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm part of that 75%.
I would unhesitatingly recommend a career in IT to my offspring, were I having kids.
Except that I don't want kids. So I would also unhesitatingly have a vasectomy, were I planning on having sex.
Except that this is Slashdot... So even the sex part is a pretty big stretch.
But if I were to hypothetically have sex, and if I were hypothetically not going to sterilize myself to prevent kids, and if I were hypothetically to have kids, then by all means, I'd be damned if I wasn't going to get at least some measure of revenge on 'em.
Here is what I can see happening. Its kinda grim, but its probably reality. I base this opinion on looking at other technologies like the telephone, radio and TV and seeing what has happened to the technicians in those fields.
When the technology is first new, you have the pioneers and the first maintainers who are paid a lot because the field is new and is in such a state of flux, it that you need the best and brightest people if you hope to hold you own in the industry. Eventually that field becomes more solid, easier to learn and there is a generation or two before you that are there for backup. Soon, management doesn't see the point of paying a lot (and probably rightfully so) to those technicians and everybody's mom and dad is capable of doing it. Its not something that you have to grow up knowing like a lot of us did, its something you can pick up out of high school. Its been said that being a system administrator is more of a lifestyle than a profession, but I think that will eventually change. Its unfortunate but I think we have to think about the future since a lot of us are young and will need to think about what will happen to the profession in our working lifetime. Programmers will probably be less commonitized to a degree, but still the value of the role will decrease a bit because software.
I think to some degree, this has already all happened if you compare the 90s and before with this decade. I hope I'm wrong about this though. The thing that really keeps us all going though is that the computer industry keeps reinventing itself with every new groundbreaking technology. I wrote about this before in a comment.
75% of IT professionals hate their children.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Is it me, or is this an example of perfect Slashdot fodder? The article throws out a small handful of statistics, referencing a survey but not bothering to link the source (Since only five Slashdot readers would bother following the link) and performing no real analysis, leaving the dual tasks of Thinking and Putting Things Into Perspective in the hands of the readers.
I'm not particularly approving of this, mind you. At least, tell me where I can get the survey, so that I and the other four guys can look into it...
I'm a programmer. My viewpoint is the opposite. I'm always feeling a bit worried in some part of my mind that H1-B visas or outsourcing will diminish the jobs in my field. At the least interesting and/or well paying ones. Even without that worry it seems like programming jobs last 1 - 2 years tops before something dries up at the company you are at. Not a career I would recommend to people unless they really loved tech and didn't feel that strongly about another career.
I have to wonder what planet these people read their news on, but I hope they are right and I am wrong.
Father-to-son bonding and passing a trade down has been something that people have been doing for ages. Apart from keeping the job in the family (not really an issue any more), it really allows the parents to boast to their colleagues about their children. Fathers also like it that their kids take interest in their work as it gives the father a good feeling that his son admires him. Then there's always the hope that your kid will do great and you can get some of the ego-shine.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Well, if I were related to a guy with that much money, I'd like to keep him in the family as well!
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
lol, awesome post
86% sounds high. Is this really true? Given the expertise needed to competently manage customized server and network configurations, I would think that an enterprise would be very willing to meet the salary demands of the best IT staff to prevent them from jumping ship.
Neither would I think it is a good thing from an employers perspective for an employee to have in the back of his mind that he *wants* to leave in the near future.
What gives? Why are 860 people out of 1,000 reporting the desire to leave their current employers?
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
I hope my kids come nowhere near IT. The difficulties caused by the dot-com-bust in conjunction with excess H1B's at the same time left a bad taste in my mouth. I had a coworker get replaced by an H1B, and it was one of the saddest work-related moments of my life.
Maybe all professions have boom-and-bust cycles, but I would prefer my kids focus on something that is a bit more general so that they can flex during hard-times or fad-cycle speed-bumps.
Table-ized A.I.
Jesus. Get a job where people give you respect, where you're not asked to rectify other people's idiocy 24 hours a day, and where you get to get a little exercise, see the sun occasionally.
Why would I want to pass that down to my kids?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This survey is total crap.
Five IT Adult professionals in my extended family. NONE would recommend IT to their kids, and NONE feel their jobs are secure and NONE expect a raise this year.
IT Salaries have been declining for years. And still are. Most of the work is outsourced overseas; this is just setting up teens to fail !!!!!!!!!!!
I'm guessing that it's more like 75% wished they had done the things necessary to have offspring, so that they could then have them go into IT.
Maybe I've just worked at places with younger staff, but I've never seen more than 35% of the IT staff have children anywhere I've been, and if their kids are at the age to get career advice (ie, high school or after), the parents were jaded enough to not recommend it as a choice.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I've been in IT for 12 years now and I certainly would not recommend it to either of my boys. I'll suggest that they learn how to use computers effectively and maybe go as far as learn some languages if it makes sense for their career choice.
Sure there is good money and benefits and job security but I don't think it is very rewarding, especially early on in your career. My eldest wants to be an architect and I'm going to support him in that goal. If he ever were to ask me what I think he should do with his life I'd certainly tell him that is something he has to figure out for himself. But if pressed I wouldn't suggest IT.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
That they found 700 techies who were kidding themselves about where the economy is going and what their place in it was. Fish, meet barrel.
I think that some advice from The Woz needs to be brought in here:
"f my son wants to be a pimp when he grows up, that's fine with me. I hope he's a good one and enjoys it and doesn't get caught. I'll support him in this. But if he wants to be a network administrator, he's out of the house and not part of my family."
Coolest screensaver ever. In the ~4 years since I first downloaded it, I've run it at work, on my laptop... always get positive comments.
http://www.electricsheep.org/
No sig for you!!
I have been in IT for an embarrassingly long 28 years. I have seen shortages, and gluts, of IT workers. I have seen strong economies and recessions, I have seen technologies and products come and go.
But one thing never changes, those with a clear agenda: dice, msft, ibm, robert half, tech schools, etc. always claim that IT is great field, and now is a great time to get into IT. These claims are often backed up with some sort of dubious numbers. Speaking as somebody with a degree in math, who has worked on credit scoring systems, and the like, I can assure you that there are people who can make the numbers say whatever somebody wants the numbers to say. Did you know that every time a company requests an h1b, another 5 US jobs are created? It's true, it was in a think-tank report, and bill gates quoted those statistics before the US congress. But, you never seem to see these "happy happy joy joy" surveys from those who don't have an obvious agenda.
Often the claim is that there is some new technology, that will take over the world, and in the near future there will be desperate shortages of people who are qualified to support that technology.
IMO: unless something unforeseen, and unforeseeable, happens, stick a fork in the US IT job market - it's done.
You can probably find a dozen of these types of optimistic articles on any given day. Here is another one from exec at dice.com:
http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid183_gci1313503,00.html?track=NL-973&ad=639083&asrc=EM_NLN_3643525&uid=1339323
If you asked American techies, you'd probably find that more of them would tell their kids that IT is a thankless job and should be avoided in favor of work that isn't so easily outsourced.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Three-quarters of nearly 1,000 IT professionals surveyed said that they would 'definitely recommend' a career in the business to their offspring
You'd get very different results if you interviewed nearly 1,000 laid off IT professionals. It is really no surprise that people who already have a steady job in the field are under the impression that there are plenty of jobs to be had.
I thought this was /., don't you fools know jack about statistics?
and told me that I'd be utterly stupid to become one. Apparently other kids parents strip away any warm fuzzy feelings as their kids are 'geniuses' and 'angels' and you're too stupid to see that.
.
Convincing your kids to go into IT is kind of telling them to run out in front of a bus. Except the pain from the bus will not last as long.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
I don't want my child to be an IT guy unless that's what he wants to be. I would love to see my child become enterprising and I want to encourage the entrepreneur within him. That way he Will have many more options and won't be as limited to certain fields or sectors.
I don't think the article mentions where the survey was conducted.
BTW: here is quick photo of India - you know the place with all "best and brightest" computer geniuses?
http://techtoil.org/
I'm very proud of the son who followed me into IT. When he got his first "real" job, the joke was that he handed them a copy of my resume and said, "You have to hire me. This woman is my mother, and I have her DNA." (He didn't actually do that, but it's become a tradition to say so.) The other joke, which is actually true, is that people in his shop do not refer to side cutters as "dikes," out of deference to my gender if not my inclination. They're always called "side cutters" or "diagonals" in my honor.
Since then he has far surpassed me in knowledge and skill. I listen to him with great care, ask his opinions, and often follow his advice. Above all, I delighted with him and of all he's accomplished. I do worry a little bit about the twitch he's developed in one eye...
If he's reading, I'll just add: Son, I'm really, really sorry I bought the DLink router. I was in a hurry that day. Next time, I'll buy the one you suggested. Oh. And, grandchildren???
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
I'm not sure if he still plans on doing so, but at one point my friend was insisting that his two children both have a tech support job for one year as their first job, specifically customer-support at an ISP. It was two-pronged reasoning: Get them used to being crapped on (it is something everyone should learn to deal with), and developing communication skills to use in later careers.
I dismissed his idea at first, but the more I thought about it, my in-person and over-the-phone communication skills have greatly improved over the years. And especially working end-user support, you learn even when you solve every single problem, they'll still complain about how you did it.
I'll probably leave this tech job after 3 years, actually. It seems to be a standard around here.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
I think the research financed by IT head hunter is rather unreliable. Besides I think child abuse is illegal in majority of civilized countries.
By the time people reach the age of 18, they should have some ideas of what they want to do for living. My only recommendations to my future kids are:
Do not be an asshole.
Try to do something to benefit this world.
Do whatever you like as long as you're financially independent and not a burden on anybody.
If they ask me about IT, it would not say anything except for the fact that it worked for me and that I did not mind it because with my character (work to live) and a decent income I was able to enjoy my life the way I wanted it. If anything, I will recommend my kids to have a nice life and steer them towards something that allows a person to live to the fullest potential; be it a career in science or a tattoo parlor. This world has enough boring people who fix printers, write buggy code, burn through dozens of Coke cans per day and look like guys who want to be in GAP commercials. Meh.
...and what I'd like my son to learn (a late ultrasound means we know the sex with great certainty) is problem solving skills, and logic. If he doesn't end up a computer programmer, or in IT, I don't mind. These skills will put him in good stead for a job that doesn't involve manual labour. Even if he wants a job that's labour intensive that's something to fall back on if your body folds up on you early.
What I'd really love would be to be able to give the boy a revenue stream that doesn't make him a wage slave, but realistically that's out of reach for most of us, and if it was within reach there is a risk of spoiling the child if they know they never have to work.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Let me also recommend to "you young whippersnappers" that you check out careers in the mainframe world. The mainframe's far from dead, some young people have noticed, and as we older people retire from our system administration posts, there will be a demand for people with the foresight to acquire the skills. Where there's a demand for skill sets and a shortage of people with those skills, salaries go up.
... If you can't keep IT in your pants, keep IT in the family?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Purely insane, colleges run commercials about becoming microsoft certified or in getting into IT as a career in the afternoon to get the unemployed peoples money 'total scam' Then the government gives tax breaks to companies that outsource or hire H1-B's to put Americans out of work who have 40-50k in college loans!!! Now we want to teach this field to our children?? This smells a bit ripe to me.. My career in IT was a huge mistake, I should have been an Attorney, Surgeon or an Electrician.. Of course I'll teach my kid what a computer is, I'm also going to teach him about the shady side of corporate scapegoat posturing and corporate communism, hopefully he will be smart enough to get a career going where he depends on himself and not some shady college for a dead end career or corporate outsourcing traitorist sweatshop.. my 2C.
Shrug. I thought it was a bad idea (I think the response time and the overhead will end up making it less profitable in the long run), but it's my job to do that sort of thing. Hell, I got brought in on it because the whole mess had fallen behind schedule, and I kicked it back on schedule even when I could have delayed implementation by dragging my feet.
I'm not going to say I agonized about it, because I didn't. I have my job, and I do it. Jobs aren't a god-given right. You have to work to find work, and you have to have skills. I think most of my friends will have little trouble coming up with something new; they are talented.
I'm sure someone is going to Godwin this with some, "The Nazi gas chamber guys had jobs too" because that's the correlation they draw in their tiny minds. They'd have been protesting outside Henry Ford's plants decrying his destruction of the horse and buggy whip industries. When the computer came along it destroyed the industry for typists and secretaries; was it a bad thing?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
That's what Terry Pratchett said about journalism, and it's even more true for IT - you don't have to try and write exciting things about the local footie team, or interview some mother who's just lost a kid in a car crash asking "how does it feel?".
I tell them that working in software is kind of like what George Bush, Sr, once said about the Vice Presidency: "It pays well, it's indoor work, and there is no heavy lifting."
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
When I was twelve, my father expressly told to never do what he did. He started out as a draftsman (which anyone under 40 probably knows as a CAD/CAM operator now) and got out because it was too boring, sitting at a desk all day, smoking pack after pack of Winstons. He became an over-the-road truck driver and was until the day he died. Now that I think about it, it probably wasn't much different than the drafting job in a lot of ways: long periods spent sitting in the same seat, not talking to anyone else, smoking Winston after Winston. I think the isolation appealed to him for much of his life, but trucking at least offered a continual change of scenery at least. He was not all that happy with his jobs and none of them paid very well.
I worked at companies where he worked to earn cash in the summer when I was a kid. What did I learn? Anything that didn't actively engage my mind was just not for me in the long term and I wouldn't be working-class if there were any way to avoid it. I took his advice to heart.
Fast-forward about 10 years... I was finishing up college wondering what to do with a degree in mathematics and no real ambition to go to grad school or become a teacher. Still hadn't found something I wanted to do and no role models to offer any strong clues. I knew I had to do something cerebral and something that paid. My soon-to-be FIL was a legal administrator, maybe law would be it. He did not discourage me from it, but wasn't encouraging either. I was baffled by this at the time.
Tried working in a legal department at a tech startup. Interesting company, but the work was mostly boring. Transferred to IT since I had some aptitude for it and, at that point, some understanding of what was needed from a technologist in that setting.
Bingo. Been with for 10 years now, I like it quite a bit, have advanced several times, and make more money every year. The niche I'm into now (electronic discovery data processing) requires a fair bit of sustained and varied types of cognition and I will likely not have to be poor ever again unless I choose to.
So, what will I tell me daughter? I'll tell her about what I do, to be sure. As will her mother (museum curator). I'll tell her to talk to my friends who have interesting jobs they seem to like (a diplomat, a professor, a reporter, tons of others). But I don't think I'll suggest she do any of them. I plan to tell to:
1) Learn a language other than English -- one of the romance languages and/or Mandarin would be good.
2) Learn to write well
3) Read a lot and read widely
4) Get as many degrees as you can stand
5) Get a job and get out of my house directly afterward
That's it. She'll have to figure it out. Life's more difficult, but in the end, more interesting that way.
So I guess you could say my thinking about this topic is that the best advice is to give very little, or none at all. Pretty much what I got from both of the father figures in my life and only recently has the wisdom of that approach become clear.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
Do that sooner rather than later, however. Learning to speak a new language when you're old is a bitch.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
I always tell the joke that engineers' sons become rock musicians, and musicians' sons become engineers. It's the whole rebel-against-the-folks thing. My grandfather was an engineer (and a blind electrician for a while -- no shit!). He told my dad, "Son, you can be anything you want in the whole world, except a musician." My father has been playing piano professionally for the last 40 years, and told me the same thing. While I grew up in recording studios and such, I found myself always being more interested in computers. I could probably have made more money in a bar-band than as a sysadmin. I like working with developers (and robots) more though.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Be a plumber, or an electrician, of an Air Conditioning Mechanic, etc - You get out from behind the desk (and therefore stay fit), they can't off-shore your job, and if you decided to go into business, you can
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
My advice wouldn't be so much to stay out of tech as it would be to stay away from big corporations. Tech work itself is fulfilling and often a lot of fun. It's the "TPS reports" and other corporate hoops that make it unlikely you'll spend much time on actual tech work. The more layers of management you have, the more time you spend helping them justify their positions and meet their nebulous goals. Some people thrive in that easy do-nothing-real environment, but if you actually like programming, you'll hate it as a corporate job. The only people that like these jobs are the ones that are just happy to no longer be working the night shift at Wendys.
My grandmother told me not to be an engineer and my mommy told me not to be a programmer-so of course I'm majoring in computer engineering. They've got the genes that helped them take to their fields, so makes sense I'd inherit some of it. (I got psychology from my dad.) My brother's the outlier, don't know who he takes after.
open source modern art: laser taggi
In the spirit of 'work to live' I have avoided careerism. Ten years ago I wondered if I was shiftless or a novelty addict. Now that I'm middle aged with kids, I realize that I'm just a stereotype gen-Xer and I hope they will be influenced by my dilettante ways.
I've been: a landscaper, fisher, youth care worker, performance poet (yah, for real), factory worker, journalist, university instructor, tutor, warehouse grunt, retail sales manager, documentary producer-director, web designer, database programmer, substitute teacher, administrator, driver, and IT hack at various startups, plus odd jobs and 'hobbies that pay.' Right now I'm carrying various IT contracts and getting ready to open a computer service and home theatre business in a small but underserved market.
Naturally, I'm better at some of those things than others, but I only suck at a couple of them and do well at most. Mostly, though, the kids have seen me with computers and cameras, and hear these strange stories about my past. Hopefully, what they'll get from it all at the least is a sense of independence and adaptability, and to focus hard on what is at hand.
What I really want them to get, though, is the ability to combine creative insight with technical facility, for I think you're partly right: in a mass-produced world, what is in short supply is well-executed creative expression.
Teach your kids to think clearly, to keep playing, and to adapt--because you can't predict the job market at this rate of change.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I grew up programming and working with computers -- but there was something missing. Sales. So (among other sales jobs) I worked my way up through the restaurant industry until I managed bars -- and let me tell you, IT and Sales skills are equally as important. When the house is packed with 2000 drunk people who want to hand over a $40,000 night, you need to be able to bring your computer system online pronto, while at the same time entertaining the customers who want instant gratification. I tend to develop this explicitly vengeful distaste for the common whiney client. Homicidal fantasies are my way of coping... If you want to not be stuck in a cubicle 'working for the man', or if you're an artist and don't want to be stuck praying to get noticed (and therefore paid), sales and customer service skills are a must. The customer pays your bills, and is paying you because they don't know how to do your job. Don't expect them to. The pay sucks, job security is a laughing matter, everybody winds up hating you, and you hate all the ones that don't. This is why Sales is so important in life:
- Learn to sell yourself (to get a new, pleasant, well-paying job)
- Learn to sell your skills (you have to show proficiency in a way that makes the finances justifiable to your bosses)
- Learn to direct your emotions. (They have to pay you to be there, that's why it's called work. You might as well try to enjoy it -- your customers will never have interest in a bad mood, and it leaves a lasting impression.)
I recommend some sales-related reading: anything by Zig Ziglar, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Science of Influence... There's a lot available.Don't get stuck relying on an agent, or wishing for a job referral. Make your own opportunity. Salesmen get a bad rap -- but it's that salesman who ensures your program/product is well-received in the market. Someone has to deal with the non-tech customers to educate them about the importance of your product -- and it's tough not to take the job personally sometimes. Nevertheless, Sales is the highest paid profession worldwide precisely because it bridges that gap between producer and consumer. No matter how much talent you have, if you can't communicate it with the world, it is useless...but I digress.
To summarize: Sell yourself and your product. If you show a happy, well-meaning face to the world, and have patience, you will be well-received wherever you go. If you hide behind fear, anger, and doubt, that's how others will view you too.
If I had a sig, this is where it would be.
Work visas coming into the US are nothing compared to the flood of jobs being sent off-shore. And they are not just developer jobs either, practically anything that can be done on a computer can be off-shored. Lots of sysadmin and DBA is being offshored - not all of it, but lots.
If the work visa program was really about the "best and brightest" then the typical H1-B would a Nobel prize winning scientist. The truth is, the typical H1-B is an average student, hired right out of college with only a four year degree. The typical H1-B is no more qualified than the US graduates who are not getting jobs. The H1-Bs are just cheaper. And because of the lottery nature of the H1-B process, employers do not even know who they are getting. So how do employers know that they are getting the best and brightest?
While IT can be rough at times, especially if you are in the support area (night calls, etc), IT is one of the few jobs that always allows you to have your own time, and if you are wise enough you use that to develop yourself.
:)
... har-har :)
Unless you are at a multi, you end up doing all kinds of jobs, no matter if you are BS, Masters, or self-taught IT guy. From that, you move where you can, and where you want to.
Your mileage might vary, but I started at system admin/support while at college, moved to product manager/support, then to office manager/system admin, to system admin (unix/network), to admin/programmer, to self employed programmer/affiliate marketer, and currently I am full time developer, part time freelancer.
Oh, did I tell you, that I started to study tourism after high school (hotels mostly) , but hated the hotel/catering business so much I quit, and went back to IT after one year to learn programming.
Took more than 10 years to migrate into a full programmer position (OK, I still admin our ZEUS and Asterisk more or less and help out with our UNIX servers from time to time).
Guess what: I am doing my final touches on my tourism related site/software to start my own tour-operator business in Costa Rica
I mean: if you are in IT you have so much space to learn, change and select, and to learn new stuff is a REQUIREMENT. If you are an other engineer, you can pretty much do the same stuff for 30 years, and if you are a car mechanic, even for 50.
But then again, it all depends on your attitude and the job you take. At a multi you can be support for 10 years, then become manager where you answer mails all day, and end up not knowing how to set your access point up (a secretary with manager title), like my ex bosses at HP
just my 2cents
When I follow the link, the page I see says "IT News" with "Breaking IT News for Australian Business." As a parent and middle-aged developer, I can't but wonder if one of the posts above that jokingly suggests that 75% of IT workers hate their children isn't funny for a reason. Is the slashdot crowd largely American? I ask because Australia has a national health care service. Layoffs and children have made for me an insurance nightmare.
My motto: Mommas don't let your kids grow up to be developers. Unless the kid has already decided that a job-hopping child-free adulthood is to be their thing.
I, myself, am second generation IT. I was always around computers when I was younger. It seemed like a natural progression. I have to say I'm not much like my father in any other way though.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Or, of course, it could go the other way around due to the fact that the IT certification industry is getting huge by making people with no experience and knowledge about any of IT or the different technologies and industries around it think that by just having an MCSE or CCNA/CCNP will make you an expert and help you land in the decently salaried IT industry.
I'd heard and read how some people while working on their degree will also get their certification. Then with the cert they'll get an intern or coop, the cert helping to get a foot in the door. But there's disagreement on this, for instance some professors at the college I went to recommended certification while others derided them and said they're a waste of tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?
She thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
If my son ever expressed an interest in IT, I'd do EVERYTHING in my power to change his mind. Lawyer, artist, trash truck driver, plumber, pet groomer...Yes, go enjoy what you do.
Worthless PHB's & their spawn ruined the field.
(but then the study seemed to have something w/a headhunter site)
I warmly welcome automation. (And no, not as an overlord)
;)
Automation can only remove the repetitive and boring tasks, never replace creativity*. Automation can never do anything but remove tasks we didn't want in the first place. Automation is nothing but a process of honing our jobs into ever more creative work.
Then, the tech industry will be artists.
* Well, maybe, and then we risk replacing humanity which is another story.
I lost my sig.
I've worked for some of the biggest names in American IT and seen the American IT worker become an endangered species from 1) offshore outsourcing and 2) corporate use of foreign "guest workers" (H-1b & L-1 visa) as replacements and primary labor sources inside the U.S. One or more of my children might have become a third generation software engineer. NO WAY! I actively discourage that thought! Paying for an expensive engineering program only to face nationality and age based discrimination is a foolish waste of valuable resources: time, brain power and money. Taking a degree in an IT area of study is, in my opinion, an "opportunity cost" that my family can ill afford in an era of stagnant real income and declining middle class employment opportunities for Americans. If I, myself, had another viable career opportunity which replaced my current income, I'd strongly consider leaving IT altogether -- not because I dislike any aspect of the often interesting technical work but because corporations and politicians seem determined to destroy employment opportunities for American workers. I and many thousands of other American IT workers like me have been put on the road to extinction by the likes of Bill Gates (M$), Mark Hurd (NCR & HP), Carly Fiorina (HP), Sam Palmisano (IBM) and Scott McNealy (SUN). I don't know who participated in this survey but I speculate that those who have some "time in IT" and been through the wringer on offshore outsourcing or job loss due to use of foreign replacement workers chose not to waste their time on such surveys...
I make a point of not bringing my work home with me -- If I do, it just winds up stressing my wife, my roommate, and myself out just that much more, and it isn't worth it.
Shit-tons of work for about 2/3 the pay is getting to be typical for this industry from what I've seen, unless you're either a tiny technological deity or possessed of the gift of gab to a degree that you could convince a rabbi to have a ham sandwich during Passover.
I've bounced around enough IT/tech support jobs and done some consulting on the side, and I know that this is no longer the field I want to be in. There's too much instability, with companies buying and selling each other like children swapping baseball cards. Long hours, at least at some firms, are the norm rather than the exception, and if you insist on having a home life there are always those who think that you're not a team player. There are too many managers who don't comprehend word one of the explanations they demand, and blame you for their lack of understanding, particularly if it means that They Look Bad... even if it's ultimately their fault for not adequately supporting their staff. You're measured by criteria that are composed of formulae that shift according to the political whims of the company.
This is one reason I'm going back to school for a Mechanical Engineering degree -- still involved with technology, but I won't have to worry so much about arbitrary metrics.
I'll be creating, rather than just patching this, installing that, and rebuilding the other.
If/when my wife and I ever have children, I will neither encourage nor discourage them to follow my footsteps. My dad was in IT, until the bottom fell out, and now he sells Harley-Davidson parts in Florida, making a fraction of what he once did, but he's still happy. He's certainly more relaxed than I've seen him in years.
Even when he was still in the field, he made certain to strike a balance between work and home. That was his example to me, and that's the lesson I'm going to pass on to my own kids, should that occur: Do whatever you feel like doing -- but don't take it so seriously that you stop living.
FOOLS! I will destroy you ALL!
Thanks for the compliments.
However, I am no graduate of business school or even college, for that matter. I've been working my balls off for years now in several different jobs (often multiple, as I am now.) I have no need to lie about my services and products, the quality of my work and service speaks for itself. I simply said that sales and service are equally as important as hard work and competence.
I work for myself, and also handle all the IT and design for a few small businesses. I don't berate IT workers because I am one. Please see my website, Double Rebel Design Studio.
The one thing I DON'T do, is allow myself to be undercompensated or treated without respect. There's no amount of money I would take to destroy my self-respect and dignity. People -- bosses, friends, coworkers, and otherwise -- will treat you as you allow yourself to be treated. If you put yourself forth in the best light and refuse to stand for less, while always striving to improve, you can create opportunities for yourself.
There is a huge fallacy in this country that hard work and talent is all you need to get ahead. The management and business (and government) types you hate continue this fallacy so people like you will work themselves into the ground, thinking that's the answer. In the meantime, they are fine-tuning the perception and psychology of others. In this global world, it's personal interactions that make the difference -- people can only judge you on what they know.
That's why you have to use sales techniques to positively sell yourself -- your 'brand'. You have to market your skills and talents in a way that brings you above the crowd. It also prevents misinformation from people who want to keep you down, be it bosses or competitors. You should always have a good product and a good work ethic to stand behind. Nevertheless, no matter how much talent or how good your work, if you can't work with others or communicate well, you are useless to a business, which needs stability and reliability.
It's really disappointing to see rants modded up. IT is a great field, but so much of it is about working with people, not just numbers. I have had over 10 different jobs that did not require computers at all -- but all required working with people. No matter what happens with technology, I will always be employable. I want young hopefuls to know that with a willingness to learn, and good (effort at least) social skills and work ethic, they can always be employed -- but anger brings neither employment nor happiness. I'm certainly not yet rich, but I've found the opportunities to travel across the US and Europe, and I'm never cold nor hungry. I wish the same for all of you.
Charles
P.S. I can't stand cocaine, and have left jobs and friends behind because it was around. I empathize with your frustration.
If I had a sig, this is where it would be.