Question for guys who are in IT for 10+ years 6

[routeconfig]

Hi guys,

I have completed 10 years in IT. Got jack of all for fields including Novell.Unix..Windows..Networking.Security..DB admin etc etc (as job requires)and still working as Technology Specialist..

The IT world keep changin every now and then..It seems to be we will not be able to keep that speed..getting OLD.. ( certifications kills me now..Newcomers are collecting lots of them)..

My questions for guys u guys..WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW??REMAIN AS TECHNOLOGY SPECIALIST (which is not sure for anyone since market demand changes from platform) OR MOVE TOWARDS SOFT SKILLS (Project managemt/Consultant?)

Your thoughts will be most welcome!!

Jo

 

[Skittle]

Yuop start saving or put into a mortgadge.
I was about your age when I remember having a chat with a youngster just starting out in IT ( he was about 18 ).
I told him how much I was earning and he was well impressed.
I then told him I expected to be out of work by my mid-30's and IT may no longer want me. He thought I was being 'negative'.

I'm now 36 and 3/4's and facing redundancy in the next 18 months with largely out of date skills. I've been very strict saving since my mid 20's and I'm glad I did.

If I were in your position today, I'd save money or aim to pay off house by 40, keep skills up to date and either get into analysis by 30 or develop a backup plan. For example Accounts is always a good thing to be knowledgeable in. It won't be the end of the world and at the end of the day IT is just a job. But its certainly something you have to prepare for and not expect IT will always be there for you.






Dazed and confused

 

[stormbind]

I don't know if I should really respond to this thread: I've only 6 years in IT. Sales, subcontracted programmer, and this is my first week as contractor/PM. We will see how long that lasts, lol!

Reading your experiences is interesting, scarey, and hopefully valuable. Almost everyone here has better formal qualifications than I: Started 2 degrees but completed neither

Also, I don't actively persue certificates.

The only thing I have on my resume are pleasant references saying things like "impressed with the functionality of his code", "saved us a fortune" or "solved the unsolvable" and once "broke our system" - Ok, that wasn't my fault though, a stupid manager didn't tell me the system had another purpose! I have tried moving into IT Journalism without success, and this PM job is probably my best hope of staying afloat in IT.

If you guys think you're scuppered by the age of 40, I had better seriously consider immigrating to India.. :-/

----------
Memoria mihi benigna erit qui eam perscribam

 

[GlenJohnson]

Real quick two cents worth. Been in IT in one way or another well over 10 years. Once the dot com bust blew the platform out from under us, I decided to try something different. Went to work in retail at age 50, (So throw out the 40's as the last resort), making good money with good benifits. Still own and run consulting business, and will always have my hands in IT. Just decided not to limit myself to IT. The world is a big place, don't let yourself get stuck with blinders on. Good luck.

Glen A. Johnson
"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history there could be no concept of humanity"
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), German-born Swiss writer
Tek-Tips in Chicago IL

 

[arthurliz]

Here is my two cents on the subject

Had been an IT careerest since the S-100 Bus Days of the 70's all over the place from PC's to Midi's to Mainframes.

Ending was in PC Platforms, and all OS's of them UNIX, Novell, MS etc.

Decided to take what I loved doing....dealing with securities and investing with a fair amount of trading and turning that into a real business.

And so we are today having turned a systems integration firm into a secuirties firm that is a Member of a National Stock Exchange.

The trick is that the firm and the industry it is in is IT intensive and I can lend my skills and expertise to the vision and the architecture of what has to be done and use my maturity to manage IT consultants and our inhouse IT crew as well as set strategy as I am the CEO of a this ten person firm.

 

[bytehd]

Ive bailed.
My wife makes more than me pushing loans out the door.
There are no jobs and nobody cares.


Nothing to see here...
Move along....

George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[Glenn9999]

Yep even not having 10+ years real work experience (I do have 12 years since I compiled my first program), I find no jobs whatsoever that I can get into.

It's hard when you set your heart on something, get the real training that employers will recognize (and not your "hobbyist time"), and no one will listen to you or give you the time of day.

Nothing to see in IT. Go into something that is offshore proof.

 

[bytehd]

Sales.

George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[jsteph]

Sales...or construction trades. Electricians & Ironworkers typically make $100,000+ with just a little overtime. And that's as offshore proof as you can get.

As far as sales, I worry that if we become a sales/service economy, then we're just a bunch of sales/service people selling to and servicing each other (no snickers now...).

Like two kids tossing a ball back and forth, and someday the ball is just going to fall and nobody will pick it up, because it's not our ball--we were just tossing it back and forth.
--Jim

 

[johnpoole]

good post, some great responses. disagree with almost all of them.. 37 years as a tech 25 plus sofware only. did the management thing, project management, vp small company (100 techs) now i am just software, if i do 50 hours a week i hit the 100K mark. but the only headaches i have are mine. i do as much or as little as i want. find something you like, and get real good at it. and don't take any grief from anyone..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[kHz]

Electricians & Ironworkers typically make $100,000+

These ridiculous and baseless statements need stop being spewed as fact.

Because of the high demand and high pay for IT in the late 90s, people flooded the field. IF electrician were making over 100k, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect a flood of people to this field? Yet this isn't occurring.

Electricians can make good money, but if you are a line worker in snow belt and wind, ice and snow down power lines at 2AM then the electrician will be awake at 2AM working in 10 degree weather with 30mph winds and blowing snow. Equal to that is the hard work that is demanded of ironworkers.

Look at the facts. In Chicago, the median pay for an Electrician 1 is $41,005 and for an Electrician 3 it is $53,417. Chicago is an expensive city, too. In Kansas City, my geographic region, the median pay is $37,996 and $49,997, repectively.

 

[jsteph]

kHz,

wouldn't it be reasonable to expect a flood of people to this field?

There is a long line of people waiting to get into the electricians union, iron workers less so but there is still a line. This is the union--you don't just walk up with a pair of pliers and say "I'm an electrician now".

Look at the facts. In Chicago, the median pay for an Electrician 1 is $41,005 and for an Electrician 3 it is $53,417.

I don't know where you got your numbers, but local 701 journeyman's wages are (last time I talked to by buddy about that), about $32 per hour, and the employer pays an addition $8 per hour towards benefits.

Do the math:
The 'typical' electrician works a 10 hour day, 5 day's a week--many do what called "6-10's", which of course is a saturday added in. And yes the work is available.

current scale: $32 per hour
8hr @ $32 = 256
2hr @ $48 (time & 1/2 overtime) = $96

352 per day 50 weeks per year = $88,000
No take the 6-10's, and I know several buddies who do this most of the year.
Add a saturday at double-time:
10hr @ $64 = $640
$640 x 50 weeks = $32,000 + $88,000 = $120,000

This includes a very good benefit plan. Now, my buddies don't do 6-10's all year, but even doing it half the year brings you to over $100,000

As a lead developer, I do in 'somewhere in between' that range, and I only work 40hr per week. But I know a lot of heads-down coders working nearly 60hr weeks who make only slightly better than half what the electrician makes with those hours.

Like Peter say's in office space "This isn't so bad--gettin' exercise, workin' outside, makin' bucks...F'n A"
--Jim

 

[bytehd]

Basic services rule.


George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[kHz]

You're smoking something REALLY good if you believe electrician make $120,000 per year!

 

[jsteph]

khz,
I didn't say *every* electrician, but it's certainly not uncommon, especially around here. The numbers I gave you were for a journeyman. A general foreman gets $38 per hour, time & 1/2 for overtime, and double-time on saturdays. Do the math on that one.

You don't need to be smoking, khz, you just need to do some math. Truth be told, the buddy I refer to lives a bit better than I, his wife doesn't work, and his family wasn't rich. Maybe he's stealing? Day trading on the side? It's a reality--you can't outsource this, the unions still weild a fair amount of power.

If you think that's something, how about a decidedly 'dumber' job:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/10/24695.shtml

From 3 years ago, the wages have gone up:

http://archive.ilwu.org/solidarityday/NYTimes20021125.htm

--Jim

 

[kHz]

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos206.htm

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos215.htm

 

[jsteph]

khz,
Those are valid sites, but keep in mind they take the national average. However, it states

and the highest 10 percent earned more than $33.21

...and here in the Chicago area, this is definitely the top 10%.

I checked

http://www.lmccdupage.org/apprentice.htm

Which states

The wiremen presently earn a gross wage of $33.63 per hour.

Which is in line with what I said.

But certainly if you take the national average, and roll in construction, which has off time during winter months, the numbers will be more like your example of $53,417, but the same goes for developers--so many are laid off that if one takes all the laid off programmers and rolls them in with the gainfully employed, you're going to get very low 'average' salary.

My point, and I'll admit I used the higher end of the spectrum, is that the trades can't be off-shored, and are therefore more stable than a job in which the output can be sent over the internet from anywhere in the world. You can never have a guy in Bangalore or Taiwan lay coduit and pull wire here in the states.

Following that point, I was just defending the fact that electricians can and do make over $100,000 per year, I know several who do.

And how about nurses--there's a highly paid profession. The below story is has some worst (or best, however it's looked at) cases:

http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_114214207.html

...Yes, $280,000 per year for a Nurse! Sure she was screwing the system, but her base pay was still $92,000, which is not to shabby. My wife's friend is a contract nurse who makes $10,000 per month, but that's like a programming gig--it's 6 or 8 months, then maybe a month off until the next gig. Either way, that's another proffession that can't be offshored, though they are importing foreign nurses from anywhere they can to fill the shortage. But--they have to live here, spend money here, and most important--deal with the expensive cost of living here which will keep their wages higher.
--Jim

 

[kHz]

An electrician's job can't be sent overseas but to make a statement that implies that (most) electricians make over $100k is incorrect. There may be some but they are not the norm, hence the more realistic BLS stats. Read the BLS stats for nurses, too (

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos083.htm).

Tom Hanks makes 20 million dollars per film. There are several actors that make 20 million dollars per picture. So more people should become actors. But if you look at what most actors make it is a relatively small amount (there are A LOT of waiters and waitresses who are actors in LA).

Anyway, I am finished with this thread.

 

[arthurliz]

Here a suggestion based on a 30+ year career in IT

At year 20 or so I realized IT is like any pro sport. Some young hot shot who costs less is coming up.

So I did start to focus on my "soft skills" as others in this forum suggest. Sort of like a good baseball (but not a great baseball) player can slide into becoming a coach.

At year 25 then I realised that if I added some buisness and finance skill (night school for an MBA on my nickel) to my growing soft skills more doors would open.

Well around year 30 got to be really good at combination of understanding IT, soft skills and buisness.

To make a long story short in year 32 somebody called me to take that all to next level and run a firm that is technology intensive, has need for buisness skills and of course finance skills.

So today 35 years after graduating (class of 70) from a small technical college with a degreee in industrial design, I am the president of a securites trading firm that is a member of the one of the stock exchanges in the US.

I love getting up at 5:30 AM at the age of 57, hopping on Amtrak rolling into my office near the trading floor and lending my insights and wisdom to a pack of go getters that respect me as a sounding board and perhaps a parent they never had.

In terms of money...it is a heck of a lot more than I ever earned as a straight techie....but you know I started the change 10 years ago to try to find something that I loved because 10 years ago, one of my father's surviving buisiness partners (he was the "kid" in the partnershp" and now he is well into his late 90's) told me that it was time in my life to quit doing somethng for money and do it for fun and the money would follow.

And it did.

 

[mikeydidit]

I just love arthliz's outlook on this. I have watched this thread from day one wondering where it would go. I have been in telecomm/networking for about 16 years now and I have have been forsed to make changes along the way. I started off strickly telecomm and was asked to help on a netwoking project. I did and they were so pleased that I had it handed to me and have pretty much much had it ever since. I miss the tech side of things now that I have other duties and 2 crews that work for me. Now it's scheduling projects and tryng to make things work. Although I only have 16 years in as telecomm/networking I have been here for 23 years now. I don't feel that I make what I am worth, (who does lol) but I very much enjoy my job as hecktic as it can be. So my advice is to find somewhere you are happy, keep up with this ever changing field of ours an be good at everything you do. Then stay long enough to work your way up to management and push paperwork... I have friends that move from job to job looking for money and happiness and I am not sure they will ever find either. I think that things are what you make of them and if you do your best to stay ahead in any field you will not have to worry about having nothing to do at 40.

Mike Jones
Louisiana State University Health Sciences center