10 Things to Know Before Getting Into IT
The top 10 things that you should know before
getting into the information technology business.
I'll tell you both the good and the bad about
being in the information technology business so let's go ahead and get started
so to be fair I've divided this content into two parts.
Benefits
The limitations or the not-so-good about being
in the IT business.
Advantages/benefits:
Disadvantages:
- Tight Deadline:
- Long Hours:
- Dealing with change:
- Stress:
- Burnout:
And the first part I'll talk about the good or
the benefits of being in the IT business and the second part maybe I'll talk
about some of the limitations or the not-so-good about being in the IT business
so let's go ahead and start and look at the advantages first.
- Good salaries:
the first benefit that we look at is being in
the IT business affords you a very good salary programmers architects DevOps engineers
cloud engineers and IT managers all command very good salaries programmer
salaries average 105 thousand dollars a year software architects 138,000 and
software engineering managers average over a hundred and thirty seven thousand
dollars I should note this is for the US and I got these statistics from
indeed.com. But you can get the idea that these are very good paying jobs so
let's go ahead and look at the next benefit.
The next benefit.
2. Demand:
About being in the IT business is particularly
right now there is a shortage of trained people to work in the information
technology business so for example if you look at cloud computing positions
there are over 50,000 cloud computing positions available in the u’s today and
it they are available from 3,700 run employers and represent 100 and 1913 open positions
worldwide today. So I got this out of Forbes it doesn't take long to look
around to see how many open jobs
there are in the information
technology business so this is a terrific time to go into this business because
of the high demand so let's go ahead and look at another advantage of being in
the
Information technology business
another terrific benefit about being in information technology businesses.
3. Mobility:
and that is you've mastered some core IT
skills or perhaps a programming language or a cloud computing platform it's
fairly easy to move to another company that uses the same hardware and software
platform so if you get stuck in a terrible job if you're well-trained and you
have some experiences it's pretty easy to move to another company that has a
similar type of technology so that's another benefit is you won't get stuck maybe
in a dead-end job if you have some skills you have the ability to move to another
company that perhaps has a better environment so let's go ahead and look at yet
one more benefit another advantage is
4. Work Remote:
many IT companies now support remote work and
so you can work from home this is a great advantage and that you can save a
large amount of time and money and IT jobs are particularly well suited for
working from home so the only thing you'll probably need is a high-speed
internet connection and some type of computing equipment so that you can do
your job remotely but this is a huge advantage it will save you that long
arduous commute every day and trust
me I now work at home and I don't
miss commuting to work it's a fantastic opportunity and this is another huge advantage
of many IT jobs so let's go ahead and look at our last advantage the
Last advantage.
5. Business knowledge:
I'll talk about is business knowledge since
you're involved perhaps in programming or maybe support of a system in terms of
DevOps or Operational support you'll be in the position to really understand
how the business operates many IT departments support mission critical systems
that are really the core of how the company does business and this knowledge is
very valuable and it can lead to a promotion or another opportunity in the
company since you can really acquire that detailed business knowledge you
really might become the go-to expert on how a lot of these business processes
really function on a day to day basis so let's go ahead and move on to the next
part ok so now we got the good out of the way let's look at maybe they're not
so good it sounds pretty good so far great salary high demand you can move
around you can work at home all great things but like all good things there's
also some drawbacks as well.
So let's go ahead and take a look at what some
of the potential drawbacks that working information technology business might
be the first area I'll talk about the limit or maybe a negative part of the
business.
1. Tight Deadline:
our tight deadlines around IT projects
can be critical to the success of the company and some projects might be driven
by legislative deadlines that really can't be changed your industry might be
regulated in some type of way and they may have a certain date that you have to
implement something by so fines or penalties might be involved for missing
these types of deadlines and all of these things can lead to a very high level
of stress some people are better at dealing this than others but tight
deadlines and that focus around getting something out the door on time can lead
to a high amount of stress so let's go ahead and maybe talk about something
else that might be a limiting factor for you in the IT business another
potentially negative factor with the information technology business is the
potential for very long work hours to go along with those tight deadlines might
be a lot of hours to meet those deadlines particularly when the project's
coming to an end and if you work in an IT support position you'll probably have
to work long hours.
2. Long Hours:
fixing problems if there are any
types of service outages most hardware and software upgrades also happen on off
hours and many times this is on weekends or holidays and the very time where
you don't want to be working so if you're not really up for long hours this is probably
not a good business for you so particularly at the end of projects I've worked
for startup companies and worked some ridiculously long hours and have spent
the night at work many times so if long hours are not in it for you then this
is probably not the right business for you let's go ahead and look at some other
things that are typical of a particular environment in the IT business another
thing that you'll have to learn in.
3. Dealing with change:
The IT business is how to deal with change the
IT business is constantly changing and you'll need to adapt to that change and
the pace of change is continuing to increase you'll need ongoing training to
adapt to all of this change so certifications languages
Are changing people are migrating to
the cloud all of this represents a ton of new technology and you'll need to continually
update your certifications
throughout your career remain
competitive and this can be a challenge for a lot of people sometimes people go
into this business and they master one type of technology like a mainframe type
of technology or they become a COBOL programmer years ago and they simply don't
want to change to the new platforms and but this is inevitable in this business
as things are changing very rapidly so you'll have to keep up with that so
that's something else to consider whether you're adaptable to change or not so
let's go ahead and look at the next area.
4. Stress:
the next area I'll talk about is stress so working with mission-critical applications is a stressful job many of these systems deal with large amounts of customer and a large amount of money and so when these types of systems go down you'll be called in to work on these production problems and tell their result and most of the time these systems have a ton of visibility so don't be surprised if senior management members the CEO himself or herself as involved in whatever happens with these system problems so if you don't really like that kind of exposure again this is a limiting factor but many times when you work on these systems it really is working on a tightrope without a net so it can be very difficult and very stressful in peak situations
particularly if something has been hacked
into or a service or a program is down
for an extended period of time so
Let’s go ahead and look at one more
area all of these limiting factors can lead.
5. Burnout:
to burnout so if you're working lots
of long hours and you have prolonged periods of high stress it really can lead
to a career burnout and really it leads somebody to find a secondary career or
something that they want to move into after twenty ten or twenty or thirty
years and the IT business and so my advice to you is to develop some secondary
skills along the way that youkan transition to a new career if and when you
need to I've really enjoyed my career in the information technology business
but after 30 years I've moved more into the education side of things and more
out of the production side of supporting mission critical systems and I'm happy
that I did both but I'm glad
that I developed some secondary
skills along the way so I had the option to do some other things later on Mike when
I was maybe not so fond of being under constant amount of stress so let's go
ahead and wrap this up thank you so much for your interest in this video I hope
it's given you a realistic look at.
What a career in information technology
might look like with some of the advantages
and also realistically what some of the disadvantages and hardships might be
when you work long hours and a career in information technology for me it's
been a great business and I hope you have some excellent opportunities ahead of
you in this business if you like this video please click the thumbs up button
or the like button and consider subscribing my site if you want to see more.
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