Techies Keen to Keep Jobs In the Family 260
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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Being a professional artist is where it's at. You all laugh, but know that automation will replace you all much sooner than it will replace the artist.
Muah ha ha.
Re:Rebellion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rebellion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rebellion (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think this further supports the theory that computers are not ready to become artists... unless your idea of good art is a Jackson Pollock painting....
Re:Rebellion (Score:4, Funny)
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http://www.thepaintingfool.com/ [thepaintingfool.com]
It's impressive!
Electric Sheep (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.electricsheep.org/ [electricsheep.org]
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Uh, don't laugh. Entire classes of 'professional artists' have had their chosen profession eliminated before.
Ever heard of a 'sign painter'? Chances are, if you're much under 30, you haven't. That's because about 25 years ago, sign painters were replaced with computer-aided manufacturing technologies. Those who failed to learn computers and vinyl-cuttin
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At least when it comes to graphics/games, I have noticed that half of the work is making the engine (physics/game) and the other half is the actual graphics nowadays (from textures - models). Story-writers/musicians fall far behind in the necessity for these jobs, since a game tends be based off a story already as is (so fine tuning it is all that's left), and musicians can be a dime a dozen believe it or not.
Kudos to you being an artist, and good luck.
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If you want a job with no job security, pick "professional artist." Painter, sculptor, web designer, graphics designer, you pick it, you will have hell of a time finding work. Unless you're independently wealthy, I'd do it as a hobby.
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Computers can be done overseas, but it requires all kinds of infrastructure and education. Art though? There are good artists all over the world.
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I have no career, and recommend it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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and he's only 3.
:D
Re:Rebellion (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Rebellion (Score:4, Funny)
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All the technical jobs are being offshored to India, Brazil, Argentina, etc. and anyone who keeps their job will likely get their pay continually cut. I hate to put such a cynical view on this, but I am witnessing this first-hand working for one of the biggest strategic outsourcing companies in the World.
Upper management prefers to invest as little as possible in brain and people capital and prefers to s
Re:Rebellion (Score:4, Interesting)
So, in today's dollars, pay will shrink over time -- but cutting pay is a huge no-no in the business world. Wage freezes + inflation will create the same effect with much less impact on employee morale.
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I didn't know traveling to Canada affected nes chances of citizenship.
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Your children? Yeah, what the heck - they're small so we'll take those too.
But your beer? Not even at gunpoint...
Re:Rebellion (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Rebellion (Score:5, Insightful)
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!!!!
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Dude, don't worry. Wii Sports and virtual girl aren't real.
They can pick any career they want (Score:5, Funny)
In related news... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In related news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Thing was that I didn't care in retrospect. I latched onto the best parts I could and used them and my own curiosity to fuel my own desire to be in IT. While your parents having the same profession and encouraging it can have an impact, I don't think everyone just, "does what their parents do."
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And then you bet I am going to teach them how to use *nix, which might predispose them to being a techie...
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Everyone wants their kid to do what they do. My father (when he was still one himself) wanted me to be a sign maker.
Yeah, I don't think Laius was looking for his son to follow in his footsteps. Though he was more management than IT.
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a) Self employed.
b) A civil servant.
Naturally, I am neither.
wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
That's what I was wondering ... (Score:2)
Maybe I've just worked at places with younger staff, but I've never seen more than 35% of the IT staff have children anywhere I've been, and if their kids are at the age to get career advice (ie, high school or after), the parents were jaded enough to not recommend it as a choice.
Well of course! I'm part of that 75% (Score:5, Funny)
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.
The future of IT as we know it (Score:4, Insightful)
When the technology is first new, you have the pioneers and the first maintainers who are paid a lot because the field is new and is in such a state of flux, it that you need the best and brightest people if you hope to hold you own in the industry. Eventually that field becomes more solid, easier to learn and there is a generation or two before you that are there for backup. Soon, management doesn't see the point of paying a lot (and probably rightfully so) to those technicians and everybody's mom and dad is capable of doing it. Its not something that you have to grow up knowing like a lot of us did, its something you can pick up out of high school. Its been said that being a system administrator is more of a lifestyle than a profession, but I think that will eventually change. Its unfortunate but I think we have to think about the future since a lot of us are young and will need to think about what will happen to the profession in our working lifetime. Programmers will probably be less commonitized to a degree, but still the value of the role will decrease a bit because software.
I think to some degree, this has already all happened if you compare the 90s and before with this decade. I hope I'm wrong about this though. The thing that really keeps us all going though is that the computer industry keeps reinventing itself with every new groundbreaking technology. I wrote about this before in a comment.
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=371825&cid=21492415 [slashdot.org]
Re:The future of IT as we know it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Programmers will probably be less commonitized to a degree, but still the value of the role will decrease a bit because software.
Hrm...I am not sure I agree or not with this statement. A few years ago, would've totally agreed (being a programmer myself). However now, as a software architect, I am not so sure. Everyday I am encountered with users that are unhappy with the home-grown systems due to performance, bugs, whatever. In almost all cases the root cause of the problem is that programmers are human. And like all people (although most won't outright admit it) they will make mistakes. So will the testers and the users. So
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
The Perfect /. Article (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not particularly approving of this, mind you. At least, tell me where I can get the survey, so that I and the other four guys can loo
Who ARE these people? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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H1-B is not bringing in enough ppl to worry you.
So let's make a new work visa to bring in more workers
when the H1-B's fill up, we will call it the L-1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-1_visa [wikipedia.org]
Also because of pesky limits on H1-B's, lets make sure
L1's HAVE NO LIMIT.
http://www.immihelp.com/visas/l1/faq.html [immihelp.com]
(see Q & A #6)
Just in case ppl figure out the shell game we will also create
dozens of other alphabet letter visas too !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_visas#Select_List_of_the [wikipedia.org]
Re:Who ARE these people? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Achieving through your children (Score:3, Interesting)
Father-to-son bonding and passing a trade down has been something that people have been doing for ages. Apart from keeping the job in the family (not really an issue any more), it really allows the parents to boast to their colleagues about their children. Fathers also like it that their kids take interest in their work as it gives the father a good feeling that his son admires him. Then there's always the hope that your kid will do great and you can get some of the ego-shine.
Re:Achieving through your children (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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^Teaching your son or daughter..."
I have one of each and just think faster than I type.
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None the less I just feel the need to point out that I'm a father who has 2 daughters and it's no different to me in this regard than if I were to have sons. I would still love to teach them everything about my trade and to have them follow in my foot steps.
Of course it's balanced by my desire to see them shine in whatever they chose to do. I'm careful not to push anything on them and to en
Steve Jobs? (Score:5, Funny)
move jobs voluntarily (Score:2)
The survey also found that 86 per cent of respondents expect to move jobs voluntarily in the next three years.
86% sounds high. Is this really true? Given the expertise needed to competently manage customized server and network configurations, I would think that an enterprise would be very willing to meet the salary demands of the best IT staff to prevent them from jumping ship.
Neither would I think it is a good thing from an employers perspective for an employee to have in the back of his mind that he *wants* to leave in the near future.
What gives? Why are 860 people out of 1,000 reporting the desire to le
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Re:move jobs voluntarily (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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This is dead on.
The HR ppl have been told not to counter offer at most companies,
because they believe that new job fear, and being on probation
at another company will keep the sheep inline.
Apparently with 86% considering moving on up, they are wrong.
Imagine HR being wrong about something as hard and as fast as
they work, the blinding speed, and diligence, *gag* *puke*
Ok, couldn't stoma
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What gives? Why are 860 people out of 1,000 reporting the desire to leave their current employers?
I think the keys phrases you are missing are "expect" and "three years".
Many people mumble about burning down the building. How many people actually do it? Out of the 860 people planning on moving in the next three years, many will not make the move, just as many will be moved by their employers before they can do so voluntarily.
But still, that number represents reality. The lifetime career with a sin
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That's a smart way to look at things but I'm not sure I would agree that it's completely accurate. You can train your replacement when you're promoted but not when you've been fired.
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86% sounds high. Is this really true? Given the expertise needed to competently manage customized server and network configurations, I would think that an enterprise would be very willing to meet the salary demands of the best IT staff to prevent them from jumping ship.
IT is a lot more than actually managing customized server and network configurations. There are plenty of code monkeys out there, and they're as easily replaced these days as burger flippers. Sure, some of them are more talented and harder to replace with competent people...but have fun convincing management of that.
Neither would I think it is a good thing from an employers perspective for an employee to have in the back of his mind that he *wants* to leave in the near future.
What gives? Why are 860 people out of 1,000 reporting the desire to leave their current employers?
Job security and job loyalty are, at least in IT, a thing of the past. Folks rarely get promoted within the same company. If you want a raise, a change of duties, different responsibilitie
Hell No! (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe all professions have boom-and-bust cycles, but I would prefer my kids focus on something that is a bit more general so that they can flex during hard-times or fad-cycle speed-bumps.
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You want a sad work experience? I just coded the infrastructure to outsource ~100 graphic artists, some of whom were my friends. Life sucks, wear a helmet.
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It's called competition, and you know what? It's going to take jobs regardless of who you vote for...Fighting supply and demand is like fighting gravity. Other people in other countries want to do the work for less? They're going to get jobs.
Trying to vote people into office who will protect your industry with regulations and tariffs is as likely to destroy the industry as anything els
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I'm not going to say I agonized about it, because I didn't. I have my job, and I do it. Jobs aren't a god-given right. You have to work to find work, and yo
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For example, if I were to say
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I guarantee you if I came to your country and the politicians
started favoring me over you and your family due to bribes
paid to them you'd be upset.
I also say that if you truly are a citizen of your own country
you would stay there and work to make conditions better there
instead of running away from it.
The grass is often greener elsewh
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I could not agree with this more, and I say that in all honesty. However, you have to admit, America has largely benefited from people _not_ doing this.
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Yeah I worked at Crisco *cough* I mean Cisco and about 6 months
before the bubble burst the vast majority of new hires were
visa holders. I got canned 6 months after the bubble burst,
and most of the Visa holders kept their jobs.
Most were NOT H1-b th
They didn't survey me. (Score:3, Informative)
Why would I want to pass that down to my kids?
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Unplanned pregnancy ?
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Kind of surprising... (Score:2)
Sure there is good money and benefits and job security but I don't think it is very rewarding, especially early on in your career. My eldest wants to be an architect and I'm going to support him in that goal. If he ever were to ask me what I think he should do with his
So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
That they found 700 techies who were kidding themselves about where the economy is going and what their place in it was. Fish, meet barrel.
I think that some advice from The Woz [woz.org] needs to be brought in here:
"f my son wants to be a pimp when he grows up, that's fine with me. I hope he's a good one and enjoys it and doesn't get caught. I'll support him in this. But if he wants to be a network administrator, he's out of the house and not part of my family."
Consider the source (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
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Let me clarify "non-idiot". A non-idiot is someone who:
Oh, it's Australian IT. (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the source (Score:3, Insightful)
Three-quarters of nearly 1,000 IT professionals surveyed said that they would 'definitely recommend' a career in the business to their offspring
You'd get very different results if you interviewed nearly 1,000 laid off IT professionals. It is really no surprise that people who already have a steady job in the field are under the impression that there are plenty of jobs to be had.
I thought this was /., don't you fools know jack about statistics?
child abuse (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe the survey was conducted in India? (Score:2)
BTW: here is quick photo of India - you know the place with all "best and brightest" computer geniuses?
http://techtoil.org/ [techtoil.org]
That's My Boy... (Score:5, Funny)
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???
Insisting... (Score:2)
I dismissed his idea at first, but the more I thought about it, my in-person and over-the-phone communication skills have
I would never recommend a career in IT to my kid (Score:2)
By the time people reach the age of 18, they should have some ideas of what they want to do for living. My only recommendations to my future kids are:
Do not be an asshole.
Try to do something to benefit this world.
Do whatever you like as long as you're financially independent and not a burden on anybody.
If they ask me about IT, it would not say anything except for the fact that it worked for me and that I did not mind it because with my character (work to live) and a decent income I was able to enjoy
I'm about to become a father... (Score:2)
What I'd really love would be to be able to give the boy a revenue stream that doesn't make him a wage sl
Also to "grandkids" (Score:2)
Uhhhh (Score:2)