| Topic Name: |
Career Change |
| Message Name: |
Going other direction... |
| Date Posted: |
11/01/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
From an article on www.salon.com:
Then there's Matloff own research challenging the notion of a "shortage" of IT workers. By studying a database of college graduate surveys, he found that only 19 percent of computer science grads are still in that field 20 years later -- compared with 52 percent of civil engineers. To him, the low unemployment rate for programmers masks what he sees as a pattern of older techies getting left out in the cold in the middle of a red-hot economy.
Research by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers supports Matloff's claim that veteran coders are being driven out of the field. In a 1998 report, the institute discovered that unemployed members typically require three additional weeks to find a new job for each year of age over 45.
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| Message: |
Frankly I thought the first post was pretty intersting considering I have about 10 years of IT experience, and I've just completed my MBA. I'm trying to go the other direction into more of an analyst, manager, or non-techie position.
If you look at where things are going, the actual value of being in IT is not being the hottest programmer or knowledgable in the technology of the moment (XML anyone?). All this type of gruntwork will be outsourced to low-cost labor countries. It's flying out the door right now. I think an IT worker's value is being able to interact with people, understand business requirements, and write documents or designs that incorporate those requirements.
This is a skill that you can't easily send overseas. There will be gruntwork careers where the software is an integral part of the company's competitive advantage but for most places buh-bye.
And by the way, if anyone is looking for a software team lead, development manager, analyst, or something where I can put together an MBA with excellent engineering skills (in the Chicago area), please feel free to contact me...
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