| Topic Name: |
Considering a career in IT Part 1 |
| Message Name: |
happiness |
| Date Posted: |
02/19/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
(this is part 2 of my original message)
While not quite as unstable as contractors, even the salaried programmers have some serious salary swings and a lot more layoffs than in other industries. It seems quite possible that programming jobs could be done almost entirely by people in places like India and China 20 years from now. Whether or not this will or will not happen is debatable, but the very fact that it is a reasonable debate makes me very nervous about getting into IT. Everything I hear seems to say that the managers of programmers are better paid and do a lot less real technical work. But IT managers seem to have a lot less stability than most managers and need to have all sorts of technical skills that managers in other fields don't have.
In short, I enjoy programming enough to want to make a career out of it if it is feasible. The prospect of getting rich for what appeared to be a lot less work than other professions (like medicine and law) also drew my interest. But my research seems to suggest that programming, and IT in general is a crummy career path because threes no stability and your always working very hard with very technical stuff but your usually underpaid.
But maybe, just maybe, all my conclusions about the life of a programmer are wrong. I was hoping the experienced IT pros on this board could tell me if indeed my conclusions are correct or not.
(If I don't pursue a career as programmer I will probably go for an MBA and be a manager/executive somewhere. Right now it sounds like a much better career than IT. I would try and get into the best business school I could and then would be willing to work ridiculous hours for my first few years out of school. After that I would be willing to work a max of around 65 hours and 5 days a week assuming I have a good shot at taking in at least $150,000 -adjusted for future inflation- at the pinnacle of my career.)
Thanks!
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| Message: |
I would also suggest that you investigate the results of reasearch into "happiness".
Good luck.
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