Techies Keen to Keep Jobs In the Family

Stony Stevenson writes "IT staff are 'overwhelmingly' happy to recommend their profession to their children, a survey has found. Three-quarters of nearly 1,000 IT professionals surveyed said that they would 'definitely recommend' a career in the business to their offspring. Around 70 percent also felt that their jobs are secure, and that they are expecting a salary increase next year. The survey also found that 86 per cent of respondents expect to move jobs voluntarily in the next three years."

Rebellion

You have this idea of how your child should be and what they should like, and then they shatter your dreams when they start playing sports and getting girlfriends.

Re:Rebellion

I did not encourage either of my kids to enter IT for one simple reason, neither had the skills. I introduced them both to programming, and neither one was really interested in it.

My son became a anti-establishment hippie (for lack of a better word) and is very happy living a minimum-impact lifestyle outside of 'the system'. My daughter makes an obscene salary for someone her age as a pet groomer, she is extremely good at it and has many repeat customers with large pocketbooks for tips. She should be able to start her own business by the time she turns 25 and I've been encouraging her to get a business degree.

A responsible parent will encourage their child to do whatever they are good at and enjoy, since job satisfaction is far more rewarding than a large paycheck. I took a 10% cut in pay to get my existing job, and never regretted it. Miss the larger paycheck, but don't regret it. Simply adjusted my lifestyle accordingly.

Raman noodles rule!!!!

Re:Rebellion

Sure it will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_art [wikipedia.org]

Electric Sheep

Coolest screensaver ever. In the ~4 years since I first downloaded it, I've run it at work, on my laptop... always get positive comments.

http://www.electricsheep.org/ [electricsheep.org]

I have no career, and recommend it.

In the spirit of 'work to live' I have avoided careerism. Ten years ago I wondered if I was shiftless or a novelty addict. Now that I'm middle aged with kids, I realize that I'm just a stereotype gen-Xer and I hope they will be influenced by my dilettante ways.

I've been: a landscaper, fisher, youth care worker, performance poet (yah, for real), factory worker, journalist, university instructor, tutor, warehouse grunt, retail sales manager, documentary producer-director, web designer, database programmer, substitute teacher, administrator, driver, and IT hack at various startups, plus odd jobs and 'hobbies that pay.' Right now I'm carrying various IT contracts and getting ready to open a computer service and home theatre business in a small but underserved market.

Naturally, I'm better at some of those things than others, but I only suck at a couple of them and do well at most. Mostly, though, the kids have seen me with computers and cameras, and hear these strange stories about my past. Hopefully, what they'll get from it all at the least is a sense of independence and adaptability, and to focus hard on what is at hand.

What I really want them to get, though, is the ability to combine creative insight with technical facility, for I think you're partly right: in a mass-produced world, what is in short supply is well-executed creative expression.

Teach your kids to think clearly, to keep playing, and to adapt--because you can't predict the job market at this rate of change.

Re:Rebellion

My daughter's seven and has already told us (wife and I work on same help desk) that fixing computers is boring and she wants to be an artist. Luckily, we're setting up a clay studio, wood and metal working shop and painting studio at home for all of us. I figure, around 12, she'll rebel from hippy artist life and become a programmer or dba.

Re:Rebellion

I'm in the same boat. Every time a young hopeful asks me about the tech industry, I give them my cold, hard version of the truth: run away, run like hell!

In any career, you'll have fanatics at both ends of the spectrum. Me, I'm into computers because I was a computer freak for the first 25 years of my life, and now I'm stuck with no other milkable skills. Today I'm mostly indifferent. I like computers as toys and tools for scientific creativity, but the work has become old, repetitive and thankless. The pay sucks, job security is a laughing matter, everybody winds up hating you, and you hate all the ones that don't.

I'd much rather tell someone about the negative aspects of a career, than to blindly glamorize it like religion. If they're tough enough to see the pessimistic points as challenges, then they're both insane and motivated, which is precisely what you need to work any client-facing job.

It's one of those careers where you rarely ever get a compliment for a job well done, but everyone wants to rip off your head and fuck the wound when their email skips a beat. I'm not the most well adjusted fellow in the first place, so I tend to develop this explicitly vengeful distaste for the common whiney client. Homicidal fantasies are my way of coping with the daily stress. I'm perfectly fine with people who don't know or understand tech, but that patience flies out the window the moment they start arguing.

Thing is, you get the same bullshit in any service-oriented career. Mechanics come to mind, as well as doctors, bureaucrats of all shapes and sizes. The sticky issue is that, at least in my experience, there are a LOT of morons in any industry, which means often times the client really is smarter or more competent than the service provider. That means for the remaining 20% that truly are experts, we take the flak for the other 80%.

You'd think doing I.T. stuff in bars and clubs would be fun, right ? It stops being fun right around the 3rd time I have to repeat some basic immutable concept to the end-user like "No, you can't use a scanned image of your Visa card's magstrip to pay your tab". That's right folks, I had to explain the concept of magnetic storage to a cocky little martini-snorting iPhone-humping trendy douche. Three times I explained the facts, and he still complained that we were being uncooperative. As a rule, we don't do manual transactions (fraud is all too common in bars), and this guy's scanned image of his card gave new meaning to the term "Photoshopping." I mean, a physical card can be forged, but that at least requires skill, equipment and/or contacts. Photo editing requires a computer or a Kodak booth.

Hell, if they accept that bullshit in stores, I could easily fabricate doctored images from the wealth of credit card data that goes through my business any given week. Hell I could write a short PHP script to cook up the image every time a transaction goes through, then email it to my iPhone! That's just plain ridiculous.

They can pick any career they want

Though one advantage of IT is they can earn quite a bit of money to help me afford a retirement home, and then when they are a burned out husk of a person after 20 years of stress they will have more time to come take care of me.

In related news...

In related news, 75% of all firefighters would recommend their profession to their children. 80% of all police officers would recommend their profession to their children.

Duh. Everyone wants their kid to do what they do. My father (when he was still one himself) wanted me to be a sign maker.

Re:In related news...

Dunno bout that. My mother warned me never to become a teacher - that is properly stressful because you're really affecting peoples lives, and the pay isn't good. My father warned me IT was boring and to do something else more interesting. My wife's parents warned her being a nurse was very hard work for not enough money and being in the police was too dangerous.

Even so I went into IT, and my wife's sister is training to be a nurse. I think the main drive to follow in your parents footsteps comes from the children not the parents.

Re:In related news...

I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps and become a teacher until teaching became professional babysitting.

Re:In related news...

I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps and become a teacher until teaching became professional babysitting.

As someone who works for a school district and is actually in different classrooms hearing different teachers (K-12) teach all day long teaching is one thing and one thing only: what you make of it. It's like Project Mayhem - you determine your own level of involvement - and it's blisteringly obvious to any observer which category any given teacher is in. Those that want to make a difference in children's lives do so.

wow

They found 1,000 IT professionals that have offspring?

Re:wow

They found 1,000 IT professionals that have offspring?

An interesting coincidence is that none of them have Slashdot accounts.

Well of course! I'm part of that 75%

Three-quarters of nearly 1,000 IT professionals surveyed said that they would 'definitely recommend' a career in the business to their offspring.

I'm part of that 75%.

I would unhesitatingly recommend a career in IT to my offspring, were I having kids.

Except that I don't want kids. So I would also unhesitatingly have a vasectomy, were I planning on having sex.

Except that this is Slashdot... So even the sex part is a pretty big stretch.

But if I were to hypothetically have sex, and if I were hypothetically not going to sterilize myself to prevent kids, and if I were hypothetically to have kids, then by all means, I'd be damned if I wasn't going to get at least some measure of revenge on 'em.

In other news

75% of IT professionals hate their children.

Who ARE these people?

I'm a programmer. My viewpoint is the opposite. I'm always feeling a bit worried in some part of my mind that H1-B visas or outsourcing will diminish the jobs in my field. At the least interesting and/or well paying ones. Even without that worry it seems like programming jobs last 1 - 2 years tops before something dries up at the company you are at. Not a career I would recommend to people unless they really loved tech and didn't feel that strongly about another career.

I have to wonder what planet these people read their news on, but I hope they are right and I am wrong.

Re:Who ARE these people?

I'm always feeling a bit worried in some part of my mind that H1-B visas or outsourcing will diminish the jobs in my field.

Interesting, I guess it depends on what part of the field you play in. With H1Bs maxing out after a few months, I don't worry about loosing my job to any hack with a work visa. Out sourcing, well can't say I worry about that either, while there have been some success in a few areas, I hear far most negative stories.

Also, if you're actually good at what you do then it's not hard to be in the top few percent of your field/company. If you've got plenty of experience and an ability to learn, there are almost always companies in need of your services. Always new techs emerging, always issues with older techs that need addressed. I'm pretty sure I can do a better job than a small team in India or China.

Re:Who ARE these people?

I don't have the dead-tree source anymore, but I read some interesting statistics in the paper a while ago.

There are only around 65,000 (IIRC) H-1B visas handed out each year. These are snapped up the day applications are accepted.

There are millions of IT and programming jobs. Drop in the bucket.

But, visas won't end programming work. Nobody needs to come here to do programming; it can be done in India (almost) as easily as it can be done here, and adding/removing visas won't change that. I'm personally more worried about those smart gentlemen from India.

I actually like the H-1B visas; something about sucking talent from the rest of the world appeals to me. Like Einstein and all those rocket scientists we got from Germany.

Steve Jobs?

Well, if I were related to a guy with that much money, I'd like to keep him in the family as well!

Consider the source

I have been in IT for an embarrassingly long 28 years. I have seen shortages, and gluts, of IT workers. I have seen strong economies and recessions, I have seen technologies and products come and go.

But one thing never changes, those with a clear agenda: dice, msft, ibm, robert half, tech schools, etc. always claim that IT is great field, and now is a great time to get into IT. These claims are often backed up with some sort of dubious numbers. Speaking as somebody with a degree in math, who has worked on credit scoring systems, and the like, I can assure you that there are people who can make the numbers say whatever somebody wants the numbers to say. Did you know that every time a company requests an h1b, another 5 US jobs are created? It's true, it was in a think-tank report, and bill gates quoted those statistics before the US congress. But, you never seem to see these "happy happy joy joy" surveys from those who don't have an obvious agenda.

Often the claim is that there is some new technology, that will take over the world, and in the near future there will be desperate shortages of people who are qualified to support that technology.

IMO: unless something unforeseen, and unforeseeable, happens, stick a fork in the US IT job market - it's done.

You can probably find a dozen of these types of optimistic articles on any given day. Here is another one from exec at dice.com:

http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid183_gci1313503,00.html?track=NL-973&ad=639083&asrc=EM_NLN_3643525&uid=1339323 [techtarget.com]

That's My Boy...

I'm very proud of the son who followed me into IT. When he got his first "real" job, the joke was that he handed them a copy of my resume and said, "You have to hire me. This woman is my mother, and I have her DNA." (He didn't actually do that, but it's become a tradition to say so.) The other joke, which is actually true, is that people in his shop do not refer to side cutters as "dikes," out of deference to my gender if not my inclination. They're always called "side cutters" or "diagonals" in my honor.

Since then he has far surpassed me in knowledge and skill. I listen to him with great care, ask his opinions, and often follow his advice. Above all, I delighted with him and of all he's accomplished. I do worry a little bit about the twitch he's developed in one eye...

If he's reading, I'll just add: Son, I'm really, really sorry I bought the DLink router. I was in a hurry that day. Next time, I'll buy the one you suggested. Oh. And, grandchildren???

Re:Achieving through your children

Teaching your son a trade or profession at a young age is something that is time honored and good and well, have you heard the saying that a cynic is just an idealist with a broken heart?

Teaching by example is the most important way to teach your children. How else do you show them a good work ethic; persistence and determination and also the ability to take joy in labor and it's fruits. You can't just read that out of a book. (Chores are not the same thing. Chore is just another word for all the good habits that aren't much fun.) So yes, I'd say if at some capacity you can bring your children into your profession then you're teaching them valuable skills and also a lot more than that. When you teach children you're doing the opposite of limiting them.

Re:The future of IT as we know it

The advice that I give most people who go into the "IT" field is to specialize as much as possible.

Programmers are getting outsourced more and more but there will always be high demand for researchers, architects, DBAs, network administrators (referring to the physical local network) and other very specialized areas where it takes someone local with a special skill.

If you get a general computer science degree and go looking for a position as an entry level Java programmer you're not going to be as valuable as someone who wrote their PHD thesis on searching and indexing algorithms, for example.

Re:move jobs voluntarily

You must not work in the IT industry. You don't get promoted up the ranks, you get hired at another company for higher wages.

There's a lot of truth to this.

Further, businesses have gotten pretty good at providing advancement tracks for non-technical people (maybe you start as an administrative assistant or working on a production floor, transition into some kind of more advanced office job, transition into some kind of middle management, etc.) but are generally much less good at or able to provide the same thing for technical people. For example, imagine a manufacturing business that has some internally-developed software that runs some aspects of their business and has a constant need for 2-3 developers to improve/maintain it. There really isn't an advancement track for those developers within IT in that company -- they either need to transition to non-technical middle management (probably not a good fit for them) or change jobs completely to get better pay or more challenging work.