Lifetime Careers in IT?

CyPlasm asks: "MSN Careers had this article posted the other day that asked about a "Lifetime Career in IT: Is It Possible?" Does the average Slashdot reader think they will retire (with a pension, benefits, etc) after a long and successful career in IT?"

of course!

[Anonymous Coward]

pention and all that? no. But i make enought that i should be able to put some away(401k?) It will be all my own money.

Lifetime in IT? Yea, i will be old and grey before i would do anything else.

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it's pointless to tell a first-poster to RTFA, but...

RTFA!

Had to be done. :)

Re:Certainly

[Telastyn]

Indeed, my dad is a lifer (same systems for 25+ years even). Doesn't know many (modern) languages, but has been keeping the system he's worked on up, running, and maintained to modern needs while the company cycles through less competant engineers (and managers).

45% to be unemployed in 2 to 5 years

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this [computerworld.com] and this [computerworld.com] article, close to half of all IT workers could be displaced in as little as two years. International outsourcing, contractors, part-timers and consultants will do most of the work. If you want to work in IT for the rest of your career, you need to be planning your strategy now. So quit munching pizza and watching cartoons and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

Maybe the analysts are wrong, but do you want to bet your career on it?

The warning signs are out there.

Engineers are destined to get fired!

[ToastedBagel]

Engineers are destined to get fired. Engineers including software engineers typically work on a project, which means that once the project is complete, they don't have to be around. Of course, some people need to be maintaining and debugging, but roughly 90% of engineers can go. I am not just talking about IT, but engineering in general. Let's say you are a construction engineer and designing a building. Once the construction is over, who needs you? We've got to move around and keep finding new projects, and that's the nature of our profession. Sounds kind of like prostitution, but it's not. Prostitutes might have regular customers, but we (real engineers) don't. If you feel OK about it, you'll have lifetime career in IT, if not, you'll find some other job. Simple is that.

Re:From hobby it came, and hopefully will soon ret

[prozach]

You'd be surprised, a good mechanic and a body technician (repair wrecks) can make really great money. It's really hard work but good mechanics can make 65K and body guys can top 6 figures and that's just working for a shop. Most of those guys get paid by the bill hours and the job hours aren't how long it actually takes. There's a big book with how many hours it takes to do EVERYTHING but if you can do it in half the time that's twice the money.

Re:People.. one word: INVEST.

[jonatha]

When you retire you can sell the land and if you're over 59 you can skip paying the taxes (this is a one-time benefit).

One that the IRS doesn't know about, apparently...

Re:Engineers are destined to get fired!

[afidel]

Actually many engineers have regular sustainable gigs. For most of them its about a product family or constantly improving technology. Sure I'm a little biased towards IT and related fields since I worked with Cisco's wireless division but most of those engineers would oversee generation after generation of the product, they wouldn't let people go just because a product would finish, not when they finally had some knowledge of how they do things. Firing everone just because one project/product is finished is a short sighted managers way of doing things, unless there is little overlap in knowledge domains between projects it makes sense to keep a good team together. It takes time to ramp up to speed on any project and it takes time for people to learn the ways of their coworkers to form the best teams so why scrap all that work just because one thing is done?

Re:BMW Mechanic

[crea5e]

Hey I'm going to school @ UTI. The web addy is like www.uticorp.com . You go to school to learn like your basics, if you have good grades you can go to the manufacturer's programs. Not just BMW, but Porsche, Mercedes, Volvo, VolksWagon. The fun part of going is the few classes that add up to make hotrod u : power and performance classes, street/hot rodding/ NOS ... I'm taking Diesel as well and industrial which adds refrigeration and hydraulics.

BMW's by the way use fiber optics to drive all sorts of systems. The courses I believe take 22 weeks.

I used to work in computers. Overclocking just doesn't feel the same when you tweak an engine and hear it break class and make car alarms cry.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about UTI , the BMW manufacturing program, let me know. I'll be glad to help. email: crea5e AT yahoo dot com.

Re:A lifelong career IS possible, IF..

[vsprintf]

you blow your brains out at age 30. This is the only industry I know of that eviscerates itself every few years and rejects the knowledge of its senior experts.

That's graphic but well put. It's (not) funny that the IT-heavy companies are all run by old codgers who think that anyone over 35 is a has-been (except for themselves who are all eternally brilliant because of the MBA, of course).

After 40, I've found the only way to get an IT job is to know someone in the company who is willing to present in your resume (many times a company won't advertise a position - they just ask for recommendations from current employees). Once you're hired and working, they're thrilled.

It's bad. Just keep talking to anyone and everyone who might turn up a lead. Good luck.

Re:calm before the storm

[Anonymous Coward]

So I went and talked to a professor that I'd had a year ago, and told him that I was interested in pursuing a PhD and eventually teaching at the college level. Let me tell you, if you all had heard what he said, you'd probably be lining up to get in a doctoral program and get a teaching/ research position. There are clear benefits such as job security, a low-stress environment (generally), and the ability to do consulting work on the side. And on top of that you can influence students in a way that nobody else can.

Many people (including myself) would offer the opinion that you've been given a highly propagandized, idealized, and distorted version of reality. Getting career counseling from a tenured professor is like asking Michael Jordan if a professional basketball career is worthwhile. The professor's opinions may also be strongly colored by a desire to have low-cost slave labor to build his research empire, regardless of the actual chances you may have pursuing an eventual career on your own.

Where, oh where to begin? You can start by reading a recent Slashdot thread [slashdot.org].

Other points to consider:

• The odds are stacked well against you. According to Robert L. Peters in his book Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or PhD [amazon.com] (which I would consider an OPTIMISTIC tome in general), you have about an 8 percent chance of getting from a bachelor's degree all the way to a tenured position at a University (half drop out in the PhD program, 20 percent of PhD graduates get academic jobs, and 80 percent of those eventually get tenure).
• It's a workaholic, ascetic life of 6-10 years of 80-100 hour weeks at poverty wages (assuming funding doesn't run out halfway through) to get the PhD, then a workaholic, ascetic life of 2-4 years in post-doctoral positions, then a workaholic, ascetic life of 7 years chasing tenure, then... (starting to see a pattern)?
• A successful academic career requires extreme hyper-specialization and prolific publication of arcane journal articles. If you are truly successful, there will only be about a half-dozen people in the world who will fully understand what you are talking about. You will look forward to meeting those people year after year at the annual conference for that extremely narrow speciality.
• Even if you overcome all of these odds and adversities, the sheer amount of time required to achive a tenured academic career (15-20 years) is more than some people spend in a given career itself! A lot of things can change ("hot" areas, industry trends, employment outlook) over the YEARS that will be required to develop an academic career.
• The opportunity cost (in terms of not having a professional job and salary during that time) results in lost income that will take DECADES to recover, even with a generous PhD salary (some would say that with inflation, the expected return on investments, and one's reduced ability to enjoy wealth at an advanced age, the economic advantage of a PhD is neutral or even negative)
• The six-figure salary is for those that make full professor, and have enough grants and outside funding sources. Average time to make full professor is about 15 years. Many professors who are unable to build research/grant empires around them will top out at Associate Professor, with wages about 50-70% of full professors. Their career outlook will be one of teaching 2-3 sections per semester of introductory courses to mediocre students.

Retirement?

[tomgarcher]

It should be noted that retirement is actually only a relatively recent idea. Chancellor Bismark introduced old age pensions at the age of 65 about 100 years ago. Why 65? Because he looked at the numbers and found that only about 10% of Germans would actually live to that age.