Slashdot Mirror
New Grads Shun IT Jobs As "Boring"
whencanistop writes "Despite good job prospects, graduates think that a job in IT would be boring. Is this because of the fact that Bill Gates has made the whole industry look nerdy? Surely with so many (especially young) people being 'web first' with not just their buying habits, but now in terms of what they do in their spare time, we'd expect more of them to want to get a career in it?"
I would have gone into Economics.
Or maybe Forestry...
If I had only known the IT world would turn into what it is now, I'd do something else. Too much politics... To much hype...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"Spair time?"
Seriously, this is ridiculous.
And it's not because it's nerdy (as the summary opines). It's simply because its about maintenance of poorly-designed shit. You might as well call it glorified janitorial work.
In contrast, creating new stuff, as actual programmers and engineers do -- that's interesting!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Shit, I wish my job was boring. When something breaks it gets so exciting I worry that I'm going to keel over dead.
Anyway, the damn snowflakes need to suck it up. What entry level job isn't boring? You put in your crappy dues, so that you get a better job down the road. I've worked all kinds of jobs, and they're pretty much all boring, even things you wouldn't think would be boring. I did a stint doing wildlife tagging, where I got to roam around on a four wheeler shooting things with a tranq gun, and that was astoundingly boring...99% of the time you just sat and waited and let the mosquitos gorge themselves on your blood.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Hate to piddle in your soup, but most jobs in the world are "pretty fucking boring". Welcome to reality.
"But over 60% of non-computing students do not wish to enter the sector because they think it will be boring."
Who cares what non-computing students think? I can think of dozens of other job sectors that I suspect would bore me stupid, that's why I had the sense not to study for qualifications in them.
I suspect that these graduates all have a nasty shock coming to them anyway, courtesy of real life. Most jobs are "boring" in some way. That's why you get paid to do them rather than doing them for fun.
If jobs were very exciting and fulfilling in and of themselves, we wouldn't need to pay people to do them.
Life requires labor. Civilized life requires even more labor. Most of that labor is unpleasant in some way. We face the grind anyway, day after day, because it keeps the ball rolling, and because it gives us the money we need to do the things we actually like doing.
If you manage to find a job that you actually like a lot, that's great. If not, hopefully you will be strong enough to accept the realities that most people face, get a boring job, be useful, and earn a decent living.
Even if you dont find it boring to begin with you really need to ask yourself the question "where will I be in five/ten/twenty years?". For the majority going into software engineering or IT the answer is "prettymuch the same thing I was doing two weeks after I graduated college". You might be better at it and you might be leading a team of people, but you will still be doing about the same thing.
You see this at big companies too, its much more common to promote a software engineer to a "software engineer level 2" or something similar than it is for them to move on to something else. The career path is usually designed to keep you doing the same thing for a long period of time. For many other types of jobs (such as consulting) the entry level position is seen as stepping stone to bigger and better things.
Now I know that there are a lot of exceptions to this rule, but generally speaking 90% of people who start out in a company as an entry level software engineer or IT guy dont move on to anything else. Thats why people get bored with it imho.
I can't help it, I'd rather be a university gaining new knowledge, than be on an overseas holiday. I rather spend all night configuring, adjusting and tweaking computer hardware and software than be getting drunk in some crap night club. I'd rather be /.ing than mindlessly myspaceing and so for me a career in computers just ain't boring even if a do find some elements somewhat tiresome like coding.
So the grads are just leaning the computers skills are more difficult than other grad choices and the big entry level salaries are gone eliminating blind greed as the only reason to choose a career in computers, so reduced numbers are to be expected and generally it is better for the whole industry, less drones sucking up space doing more harm than good and of course the actually computer geeks/nerds get to enjoy higher salaries and better conditions.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
CEOs don't get paid a fortune because that's what's needed to convince them to do an arduous job. They get paid a fortune because they're in a position to directly control how much they get paid, and they like being paid a lot. Think "pirate", not "drudge".
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I think the reality is that "doing it for a living" is a good way to drain the fun out of almost anything. I enjoy building things out of wood. For about a year or so, I made custom furniture for people, and that's how I got the money I needed to eat. I did not enjoy woodworking all that much for that year. Now that I've been working in a different field for a few years, I've spent a good portion of my disposable income on building up a decent woodshop, and it's once again a hobby I enjoy. *shrug*
One time I threw a brick at a duck.