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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."
Sure it will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_art
I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps and become a teacher until teaching became professional babysitting.
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
The advice that I give most people who go into the "IT" field is to specialize as much as possible.
Programmers are getting outsourced more and more but there will always be high demand for researchers, architects, DBAs, network administrators (referring to the physical local network) and other very specialized areas where it takes someone local with a special skill.
If you get a general computer science degree and go looking for a position as an entry level Java programmer you're not going to be as valuable as someone who wrote their PHD thesis on searching and indexing algorithms, for example.
I did not encourage either of my kids to enter IT for one simple reason, neither had the skills. I introduced them both to programming, and neither one was really interested in it.
My son became a anti-establishment hippie (for lack of a better word) and is very happy living a minimum-impact lifestyle outside of 'the system'. My daughter makes an obscene salary for someone her age as a pet groomer, she is extremely good at it and has many repeat customers with large pocketbooks for tips. She should be able to start her own business by the time she turns 25 and I've been encouraging her to get a business degree.
A responsible parent will encourage their child to do whatever they are good at and enjoy, since job satisfaction is far more rewarding than a large paycheck. I took a 10% cut in pay to get my existing job, and never regretted it. Miss the larger paycheck, but don't regret it. Simply adjusted my lifestyle accordingly.
Raman noodles rule!!!!
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I don't have the dead-tree source anymore, but I read some interesting statistics in the paper a while ago.
There are only around 65,000 (IIRC) H-1B visas handed out each year. These are snapped up the day applications are accepted.
There are millions of IT and programming jobs. Drop in the bucket.
But, visas won't end programming work. Nobody needs to come here to do programming; it can be done in India (almost) as easily as it can be done here, and adding/removing visas won't change that. I'm personally more worried about those smart gentlemen from India.
I actually like the H-1B visas; something about sucking talent from the rest of the world appeals to me. Like Einstein and all those rocket scientists we got from Germany.
DATABASE WOW WOW
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