Reply to: Is IT getting too hard?

[aussielong]

IT isn't the only occupation subject to constant change. Law and medicine are also constantly changing, and I reckon these are or certainly can be much more demanding than IT.

I wouldn't presume to speak for others, but for me in some ways IT is a cushy well-paid option compared to what I might be doing if computers hadn't been invented. I mean ask yourself what you'd have been doing say 100 years ago (health issues or premature death aside).

Zakly. In IT, you can be on 40K (I haven't worked in the UK for 5 years but that used to be a good permie salary) after 2 years out of college - without being a rocket scientist. Just pick up the right skills, get a few projects under you belt and you can be on top dollar. Most other careers don't allow that until much later.

A lot of people actually like the constant change in IT (not me, I have to say). Anyway, its only the baby skills that have a high churn. The core skill sets stick around for 10+ years.

[oracleslave]

i have seen worse like roles a one-man role where you need to be programmer/project leader/sysadmin with a very large knowledge, needless to say (and to spice it up there is no one else in the company with an ounce of knowledge of the software in question altough a large company)

You could always teach English in China/Taiwan/Korea.

[sappatz]

It

As an analyst/programmer/software engineer involved in all stages of the software life cycle, with all the processes, charts, diagrams, case tools, software, databases, etc knowledge involved (the list is endless and getting longer), before coding even starts, isn't it a bit much to be expected to know all about control xxx.nn in latest software product yyy.nn and be able to be able to communicate with actual people and know the business inside out? Is everyone just taking the p1ss now? It never used to be this hard, all you had to do was think. Now you have to be an encyclopaedia too.

i have seen worse like roles a one-man role where you need to be programmer/project leader/sysadmin with a very large knowledge, needless to say (and to spice it up there is no one else in the company with an ounce of knowledge of the software in question altough a large company)

[Brussels Slumdog]

[QUOTE=CheeseSlice;848001]This is something that always goes through my mind. Did I make a mistake going into IT? Should I have gone into something less prone to fundamental change every 3 months.

Also, these mature professions are what I see as the 'protected' professions, with closed circles and institutional gatekeepers (some written into law) to keep the riff raff and outsourcers well away.

I started in Accounting which is dominated by qualifications and changed to IT which is experience driven.
Do you want to work in a sector where someone earns more than you because they have more qualifications but know less than you or do you wish to be paid for your actual know how?

[OwlHoot]

This is something that always goes through my mind. Did I make a mistake going into IT? Should I have gone into something less prone to fundamental change every 3 months.

IT isn't the only occupation subject to constant change. Law and medicine are also constantly changing, and I reckon these are or certainly can be much more demanding than IT.

I wouldn't presume to speak for others, but for me in some ways IT is a cushy well-paid option compared to what I might be doing if computers hadn't been invented. I mean ask yourself what you'd have been doing say 100 years ago (health issues or premature death aside).

[oracleslave]

"Evolving" doesn't mean throwing away your entire career and learning investment to date; but that is what avoiding the IT srapheap demands. In no other profession is 20 years deep and varied experience taken as worthless next year, by people who have no idea what it means anyway.

I agree. Do you have any solutions?

[expat]

So if you can't or have no desire to evolve then you're doomed?

"Evolving" doesn't mean throwing away your entire career and learning investment to date; but that is what avoiding the IT srapheap demands. In no other profession is 20 years deep and varied experience taken as worthless next year, by people who have no idea what it means anyway.

[CheeseSlice]

We are not in a 'mature' profession like law, medicine or even accountancy, where experience builds on a foundation that adds value.
Evolve or die...

This is something that always goes through my mind. Did I make a mistake going into IT? Should I have gone into something less prone to fundamental change every 3 months.

Also, these mature professions are what I see as the 'protected' professions, with closed circles and institutional gatekeepers (some written into law) to keep the riff raff and outsourcers well away.

I do have to question the 'adds value' part though. When was the last time a solicitor added value, rather than blatantly ripping you off for every possible penny?

[ASB]

Just for balance, I'll recall that I was saying to myself in the early 1980s that I just hoped to get another 5 good years out of this COBOL lark.

Still do quite a lot of it. Cobol.Net does winforms asp etc (though anybody thinking I know I'll write this entire web app in Cobol might just be ready for the funny farm).

[oracleslave]

In IT. Yes.

Deservedly so.

But .net programming is all some of these geeks know.

Oh Dear.

[snaw]

They are but cloud computing is looming...

I beta tested a new cloud service provider last month.
Drag and drop a few virtual switches, servers and routers here and there,
configure some parameters (comp name, IP, etc),
hit build,
then sit back and drink coffee until its done.

Am sure its not as good as the real thing, but its getting there.

So if you can't or have no desire to evolve then you're doomed?

In IT. Yes.

Deservedly so.

[oracleslave]

So your current IT knowledge - not the superficial technical tools that you currently use, but the knowledge behind them - should be a useful asset in the future even when IT looks quite different. The trouble is that neither clients nor agents, nor in most cases ourselves, appreciate that, so our real value will be thrown away.

So if you can't or have no desire to evolve then you're doomed?

[expat]

...
Earn while you can but start looking for a sustainable Plan B (not the latest gravy bubble) because sooner or later you will find most of what you know has dropped off a cliff value-wise.
We are not in a 'mature' profession like law, medicine or even accountancy, where experience builds on a foundation that adds value.
Evolve or die...

Actually quite a bit of our knowledge is mature, stable, persistent, and platform-independent: as Dijkstra said, knowing a programming language does not make you a programmer, knowing how to think does that. Change language and you are still a programmer, you don't start as a rookie again. Change the nature of your detailed function in IT, and you do not change your overall function: to make computers do what people want. And everything you have learned, even coding in a dead language, is part of what that takes.

So your current IT knowledge - not the superficial technical tools that you currently use, but the knowledge behind them - should be a useful asset in the future even when IT looks quite different. The trouble is that neither clients nor agents, nor in most cases ourselves, appreciate that, so our real value will be thrown away.

[lukemg]

It will get easier and cheaper because there is a demand for it to do so. In the future they will laugh at the efforts needed to support, maintain and change systems now, just as punch cards are a joke to us.
Look at support, box-shifting monkey work now as the kit has got cheaper and more reliable.
Coding is even easier to outsource than manufacturing, when they started doing that, the quality was rubbish, there were concerns over language and culture differences, people thought it was more trouble than it was worth. The cost difference ensured all this was ironed out and so it will go in IT because the people making the decisions do so with a financial imperative at the front of their minds.
Earn while you can but start looking for a sustainable Plan B (not the latest gravy bubble) because sooner or later you will find most of what you know has dropped off a cliff value-wise.
We are not in a 'mature' profession like law, medicine or even accountancy, where experience builds on a foundation that adds value.
Evolve or die...

[zara_backdog]

How many IT managers have heard of an Entity Relationship Diagram or a Data Structure diagram, never mind agents?

How many IT managers know the difference between an entity and a table?

Where do you start explaining to these numpties that if you show me a data model I'll spot the foreign keys in a matter of seconds?

Do they even know what a foreign key is?

That's why I have never got anywhere as a manager! Thanks for pointing that out - pass me the bleach someone!