Why Are People Keen To Get Out Of IT?

[SuperZ]

I'm only staying in IT until the gigilo market picks back up again. Recession hit, and it's been hard times, well soft times depending on how you look at it.

[Iron Condor]

Loads of reasons, too many to list but here are few:

IT no longer has the status it used to.

The money is not as good as it used to be. I would guess at least 33% lower in real terms than in the 1990s.

Highly cyclical, at the bottom of each cycle there is little work around, and you get to feel like a complete failure if you are out work during this time.

Its boring, 95% of projects are boring business applications. Web front end with a database at the back. The initial build may be interesting but most of the life cycle of a project is maintaining and upgrading it years after it was first delivered (assuming it even gets that far).

Constant retraining required to keep up with the latest Buzz words and skills.

Age novelty factor, at age 20/25 you might actually enjoy IT and coding with the latest languages and systems, at age 30/40 you don't enjoy it so much, but you still have to compete with fresh new people who do.

...

[Pogle]

Well, I actually love what I do, I really enjoy it and I love the freedom of being a contractor- (when I'm working )

[Green Mango]

It strikes me it depends on your individual circumstances.

The importing of Indian contractors and the exporting of work to India itself have really meant that rates are lower in the real time market.

In the recession of 1993, I worked on doing a low rate project while many contractors kicked their heels. However, where I'm working at the moment are implementing lower rates than in 1993 when inflation ajusted.

I've worked for large corps. in the last 3 years, but the story is generaly the same. Purging of contractors. Rate cuts and in the real time areas the rates are not that high especially when you consider the cost of pension provision.

I still enjoy the job on some days, but on others I consider whether I'd be better off to stop working and just start trading the markets which I do for my SIPP part time.

[suityou01]

Well, I actually love what I do, I really enjoy it and I love the freedom of being a contractor- (when I'm working )

WSS. Not just agreeing cos I'm Pogles biatch, but I really do enjoy what I do. And I've not been coding for over 6 months now (well I dip in now and again to help out when the developers get stuck, but with good grace)

IT has evolved. First came the green screens, then windoze, then client server, then web. Programming has evolved. There are far more threats around, more frameworks, more choice. Open source, closed source, copy left. Linux (even usable flavours such as Ubuntu).

The list goes on. It is true, programming is more about plugging things together, and less about crafting code. Although the java boys and girls have their design patterns down to an artform, literally.

You just need to pick and choose, and be unafraid to move about. If you're fed up doing web design, try moving into penetration testing and web security for example.

Industry has always tried outsourcing and offshoring. It doesn't work. Plain and simple. And what's for damn sure is that agile development doesn't work with offshore teams.

So please stop whining on here about how it was rosy in the good old days. It wasn't. Your windows 95 machine took an hour to shut down, the BSOD was rife, and you had to dial up on a frakin modem to check your email.

[AtW]

The technology moved on - it is a lot easier to use (meaning more people can get into IT) and often far more powerful than needed in many cases - this means cr@p programmers can get away with using cr@p languages like J@v@ rather than pure assembly

Add to this that price of hardware has been falling not just in terms of bang for the buck but also in terms of absolute amount spent - it used to be that decent PC would cost you £2000, now you can get good one for £400-500: this has meant that cost of labour became much more visible on the radar of CEOs.

[suityou01]

The technology moved on - it is a lot easier to use (meaning more people can get into IT) and often far more powerful than needed in many cases - this means cr@p programmers can get away with using cr@p languages like J@v@ rather than pure assembly

Add to this that price of hardware has been falling not just in terms of bang for the buck but also in terms of absolute amount spent - it used to be that decent PC would cost you £2000, now you can get good one for £400-500: this has meant that cost of labour became much more visible on the radar of CEOs.

Garbage collection does have a lot to answer for, it's true. If there are all these crap programmers out there, how comes every coding gig I went for involved some sort of coding test?

ClientCos that don't interview properly get cr@p programmers, then after a while to project hits the buffers and they hire contractors to go in and sweep up the mess. Where's the problem?

[Zippy]

I'm not keen to get out. I can't do anything else

[NotAllThere]

Law is already and has been saturated in the different areas of the UK for years...

My sister-in-law packed in a £60K fairly secure job as a purchaser to get a law degree (on top of a degree in Chinese and Business Studies from Durham). Another similarly dippy female of my acquaintance did the same 5 years ago and is still unemployed.

Well, I actually love what I do, I really enjoy it and I love the freedom of being a contractor- (when I'm working )

I'm not leaving IT either. I thoroughly enjoy what I do, I'm very very good at it and (as a fringe benefit), my clients think I'm very very good too.

I do wonder what I'd be doing, if I'd been born of a moderately wealthy family a hundred or more years ago.

[pzz76077]

I just wonder - I ve seen a number of posts stating that people are thinking of doing an OU degree in Law etc after doing a number of year contracting....

What is it in particular about IT that people dislike and think that a career elsewhere would benefit them?

Personally, Ive really enjoyed my last 28 years in IT and am a little sad I will be retiring in a few weeks time.
Someone asked me if I would have followed another path if I had my time again, but looking back, IT would still be my choice.

Would I recommend IT contracting to anyone just starting out, probably not. Theres far too much competition from low cost economies and IT is not a respected profession like it was when I first started out.
Plus there is not so much skill required these days, the emphasis is always on quick and cheap whereas when I started contractors were taken on because they were the only ones that had the skills and knowledge to get the job done.
The whole marketplace started taking downward turn around 10 years ago IMV when agents realized that there was big money to be made from cutting each others throats and treating contractors as commodities. That coupled with short term cheaper is better horizons prevalent in most organizations these days makes has taken much of the prospect of being a pioneer out of the marketplace that got me into contracting in the first place.



PZZ