Would you recommend your kid go into IT?

[Renew Deal]

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Now, obviously, I'm going to be supportive about almost any legal activity he really wants to pursue. But say he was in college, on the fence, and asking my advice (not necessarily a realistic assumption). What would I reply?

Before I narrowed things down -- like, what part of IT are you talking about? -- I'd have to ask him if he really loved tech. Because if you don't, you'll never have the stamina to pull long hours to wrestle problems to the ground. You need that bulldog grip for just about every area of IT.

If he wanted to be a developer, I'd encourage him. At its best it's highly creative work, and with widespread adoption of agile development, you interact a lot with the business side, which can be good for job security. Developers will be the big winners in the cloud era: When dev and test infrastructure can be provisioned in a flash, there will be more and better apps, which will in turn increase demand.

Funny, isn't it? A few years ago pundits warned that programming was headed offshore, never to return. That happened in some areas, but not creative app dev that requires up-close-and-personal understanding of business requirements.
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More: http://www.infoworld.com/t/information-technology-careers/would-you-recommend-your-kid-go-it-195752

[Cary]

1. I think you need to be supportive of any moral and legal activity he really wants to pursue.

Not only is everything changing but everything is changing at an ever faster rate. But even if it's a technical degree I am advising my own daughter to take advantage of and gain an appreciate for the liberal arts.

Visited Purdue yesterday. Went to University of Illinois (my alma mater) a few weeks ago and we're going to McGill University in a few weeks. Oh, to go back to college!

That was my first time to Purdue and I was definitely impressed.

[Woody Woodpecker]

2. I followed my dad into the industry

and I regret it.

We (my dad and I) are looking into a career change.

It changes so rapidly, it really makes it hard to find a sustainable job.

If possible, go into a speciality - like engineering and programming.

Subspecialities like Cisco, Citrix and others are very high demand right now.

I have some of those, and avoid Cisco like the plague, which makes it a little tough to find a job because Cisco is pretty much "standard".

[PDJane]

3. My offspring is in tech.

VOIP and new tech development. It's interesting, and seems to be relatively secure, but he's overworked and tired all the time. The problem with that is that after a certain point you make mistakes. He's aware of the problem, and is trying to work out something more reasonable, but if you're billing 100 hours a week, something has to give.

[cyberpj]

7. ..."he's overworked and tired all the time"

Ditto here.

My husband has been in IT for over 30 years and so far, thru 3 layoffs, he is now making 2/3 of what he made in 1995, works 60-70 hrs week normally plus on-call for troubleshooting but managed to hang in there because he refused to go into 'management' and purposefully stayed in the 'hands on' required areas.

He kept up with new tech, got lots of certifications (MCSE, Cisco, Citrix, etd.) and stayed mainly in LAN/WAN, Servers, level 3 troubleshooting and support.

Only 3 more years to retirement and, so far, he's still in the game although he has seen many software and customer support personnel go by the wayside. I'm just praying the work hours and travel don't kill him before he can retire and actually spend some time with me.

It's a tough call because customers are NOT satisfied with the level of knowledge of foreign support centers (most work from a flow chart) so perhaps those types of jobs will come back but they'll never pay what they used to.

Whoever said he better love it was right because 1 person is doing the work of at least 2 these days.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Too late, he's a senior in computer science. I voted for radiation tech.

[longship]

5. Long hours, unstable jobs

If a person wants an unstable career, IT is perfect.

The best sci/tech field these days is biology. It also is a great field for IT tech nerds. (Not meant to be a bad term.) From biology, you can branch off into a variety of cutting edge paths, most importantly, genetics -- yet another IT tech rich discipline. Bio can lead one into health fields which is likely to always be a good for job hunting.

Physics is the other iconic IT tech rich discipline, but it is rather more difficult to get a job in physics.

Just my casual observations.

[phantom power]

6. I think you can still do well if you "excel at the hard stuff"

This is just one example from my own experience: say you are a "software engineer". If you are a very good one, who can manage the complexities of C++ design patterns, you are likely to be able to find good paying work. At the other end of the spectrum, if all you've got is "I'm pretty good at Visual Basic and some javascript", then you're not going to find much good work.

It's already been mentioned, but generally you have to be able to show you are a real problem solver. Not just "a coder." This is generally true in any technical, engineering, or scientific field.

In this economy, I'm at a loss for the old style of advice like "the big money is in field X" --- Right now there is no such field. We're in a global depression. Go into a field you are enthusiastic enough about to excel in.

Also, I recommend getting as much education on the cheap as possible. I have an associate's degree from a small community college. I have a bachelors degree from Rochester Institute of Technology. I have a masters from University of Michigan. Nobody cares where you did your first two years, and most people only care where you got your highest degree. For that matter, once you've been working a few years, people rapidly stop giving a shit where you went to school at all

[Hugin]

8. No.

Particularly, if he/she refers to a vast collection of specialized and highly skilled engineering and technical trades as, "IT".

[Peter1x9]

9. Absolutely not.

If he does find someone willing to train him, then he had better be prepared to be overworked, while studying constantly to keep up with the latest new trends, being paid peanuts, and constantly being pissed on by management. Also, when he gets older he will be thrown away and replaced by another young person willing to work for peanuts.

A better option may be something that requires IT knowledge and a physical presence such as medical (X-ray tech, CT, etc) or installing networks (installing cable, building and configuring server farms, etc).