Don't work in IT, unless you want to become an IT specialist

[kiwitt]

Don't get me wrong I have enjoyed working in the IT field, and never really became a geek (with lot's of different gadgets), but it has been lucrative.

Actually, I have seen a trend. Corporate IT as we know it is ending; it's becoming too complex for the average small / medium business to look after it's own servers and infrastructure. They are moving more and more of it into the cloud. Even NZ Post is moving to the cloud. The future is really for highly specialised engineers looking after the servers, networks and applications. Sheesh, even MCSE and CCIE have specialisations these days.

Inside the cloud, there will be virtualised servers, running virtualised applications using virtualised databases. All of these will be protected by multiple firewalls, and anti-virus/anti-malware systems and connected over public or private encrypted VPNs, and even hosted on multiple sites for resiliency.

This is one of the reasons I have decided to stop and retire. I am an IT generalist, and found myself calling on IT specialists more and more. While I understand the technology, the complication of VoIP, Video Conferencing, Firewalls, Networks, VPNs, Anti-Virus, Servers, Branch Servers, etc. was just getting too much for just me. I much prefer to help the average PC user get connected and working, then do all of the above, these days.

So there you have it, your future in IT is either as an IT specialist or working on the IT Helpdesk. I will not recommend anyone get into IT these days, unless you are willing to specialise and get a job looking after particular component inside the "cloud". i.e. one of the areas I mentioned above.

Before you comment, remember I have been doing IT for approximately 30 years (writing my first computer program on punch cards at high school), so I do have a bit of a background in it.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

This thread needs more of Tim Curry dressed as a clown.

 

[Justo]

I'm in IT as well and while generally things are moving in those directions there will always be holdouts. Personally I quite like the constant changes with IT and having to learn new things. While it can be time consuming it beats the same old same old that comes with other jobs. Anyone going into the field should know that it's constantly changing and your skillsets will never be enough.

 

[innonimatu]

It's always good planning to retire before things get bad in your field. But I think that you're being too pessimistic. Specialization happens as all technologies mature, if there is room for continued development. It is happening in IT and will continue to happen, but... it's nothing new!

Actually, I have seen a trend. Corporate IT as we know it is ending; it's becoming too complex for the average small / medium business to look after it's own servers and infrastructure. They are moving more and more of it into the cloud. Even NZ Post is moving to the cloud. The future is really for highly specialised engineers looking after the servers, networks and applications. Sheesh, even MCSE and CCIE have specialisations these days.

Inside the cloud, there will be virtualised servers, running virtualised applications using virtualised databases. All of these will be protected by multiple firewalls, and anti-virus/anti-malware systems and connected over public or private encrypted VPNs, and even hosted on multiple sites for resiliency.

All this costs money, lost of money, to set up, and then to maintain the complex design of the system. If you look back at when virtualization first became common (outside IBM big iron), it was only a few years ago. I'm willing to bet that some new paradigm is bound to replace it soon. And then the people who began their careers in IT in our current environment will be making the exact same complaints about increasing specialization.

It's true that (for example) the number of standards approved by the IETF has been steadily increasing. But much of that increase happened as older proprietary protocols were replaced! Has complexity in computer networks, for example, really increased?
Likewise for "the cloud" and virtualization. The "cloud" (I hate the term) is now often no more than glorified hosting. And I'm not seeing companies moving en masse beyond that, unless their business data is not valuable for them. Virtualization is no harder that setting up clustering or partitioning proprietary systems once were. Depending on the tools and scale, it's usually easier! Shared storage, networking the whole think... nothing of that is new either. It has just been "commoditized" and now reaches a greater user base.
Even OSs seem to be going through process of consolidation. Many of the former proprietary systems are ceasing to to be used: when was the last time you saw someone setting up a new OpenVMS system? Do people still insist on using AIX on POWER, or are they mostly using Linux nowdays? The trend, forced by the commoditization of virtualization and the ubiquity of x86 hardware, is to simplify the IT setups, it seems to me.

 

[Perfection]

The more things change...

 

[Shylock]

Does that mean there are jobs now?

 

[nc-1701]

I think the problem is that anybody thinks they could be a general do it all IT person. All reasonably complex fields ultimately diverge massively and in order to be an expert you have to specialize. It's no different than the old saying that nobody in the world knows how to make a pencil, you need to specialize because everything in the modern world is complex and nobody should expect to be a jck of all trades even within their own field.

 

[Brighteye]

What he said.
Don't study biology: you have to specialise, and being a juxta-glomerular specialist is much more boring than a Hollywood biologist.
Don't do medicine: you have to specialise, and being a paediatric surgeon is less flexible than being a Hollywood doctor.
Every field of work involves specialisation. You study nice broad subjects and find the thing generally interesting, but jobs require you to specialise more and more until you're in such a niche that your skills are only appropriate for very few jobs. Being a flexible worker who can apply to many jobs means applying for undemanding jobs that don't pay well.
Of course, being very specialised makes it hard to escape your career, and so you get trapped, which is exactly where your HR bosses want you.

 

[Mise]

Yup, companies are outsourcing IT like crazy, and have been for a long time. "The Cloud" is nothing new as a concept; as innonimatu said, it's an extension of hosting. What's new is that more and more applications can be run on remote systems; it used to just be about data storage, but it's becoming more and more about data processing too. Either a company can upgrade every single workstation and server in the company as the demands on processing power increase, or it can go and buy processing time from The Cloud. I think that's a pretty important paradigm shift.

Anyway, like others have said, you're really surprised that you had to specialise? That happens everywhere. As you go up the ladder, you either become more and more specialised in some technical field, or you become a manager of specialists and/or projects (you'll still have to know about the technical stuff, even if you don't have to do it yourself). Maybe you should have gone down the managerial route?

 

[kiwitt]

Maybe you should have gone down the managerial route?

I did for 10+ years of that career. After they shot down the local IT department and outsourced to overseas HQ, and there was not many IT managerial positions available after the "recession" started, I managed to get a job as an IT engineer in a small company.