IT’s not all doom and gloom

Schrodinger’s Dog wants to get out of IT, and that sounds like a good thing, for the rest of us (Young people know IT is a dead end).

Some skills have fallen by the wayside, and graduate unemployment is high, but there are IT skills that are very much in demand. The problem facing a lot of IT graduates is that the skills in demand don’t necessarily fully match up with those taught in the degree courses – .NET is rarely taught, and business analysis only to a limited extent, for example.

There are also quite a few IT graduates who are incapable of writing more than the most trivial code, and are therefore almost unemployable. Some of the best programmers I’ve known have tended to lack confidence in social situations, so also have a harder time doing well in interviews, unfortunately.

IT is perhaps not as well paid as finance, law or medicine, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend IT for chasing high salaries, but it’s better paid than careers in some other sectors. IT teams don’t get the attention that business development roles do, because IT is generally seen as a cost centre rather than a revenue driver, but there are still companies and managers who recognise the value of hiring and retaining real talent, so the opportunities are there for those who are willing to move with the rapidly changing IT landscape and progress their skills year in year out.

David Burton