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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Teaching your son a trade or profession at a young age is something that is time honored and good and well, have you heard the saying that a cynic is just an idealist with a broken heart?
Teaching by example is the most important way to teach your children. How else do you show them a good work ethic; persistence and determination and also the ability to take joy in labor and it's fruits. You can't just read that out of a book. (Chores are not the same thing. Chore is just another word for all the good habits that aren't much fun.) So yes, I'd say if at some capacity you can bring your children into your profession then you're teaching them valuable skills and also a lot more than that. When you teach children you're doing the opposite of limiting them.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
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
You must not work in the IT industry. You don't get promoted up the ranks, you get hired at another company for higher wages.
There's a lot of truth to this.
Further, businesses have gotten pretty good at providing advancement tracks for non-technical people (maybe you start as an administrative assistant or working on a production floor, transition into some kind of more advanced office job, transition into some kind of middle management, etc.) but are generally much less good at or able to provide the same thing for technical people. For example, imagine a manufacturing business that has some internally-developed software that runs some aspects of their business and has a constant need for 2-3 developers to improve/maintain it. There really isn't an advancement track for those developers within IT in that company -- they either need to transition to non-technical middle management (probably not a good fit for them) or change jobs completely to get better pay or more challenging work.
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