To think that computing/IT is a poor career choice?

[iamarobot]

Hi,

In terms of earning potential and barrier to entry, is IT as a career path really a bad one in 2011? I see the news report that there is a shortage, and then there is a story about Indians being shipped in by foreign companies. It's a shame really, as I quite like computers. Maybe I should take a look at the green energy careers leaflet i have around here somewhere....:s

YABU. Computing is still a very good choice of profession.

DH is a very senior bod in multinational corporate IT (CIO/occasionally deigning to be a CTO). He desperately wishes there were more women working in IT, and will usually hire a women ahead of a man all things being equal. There is a real problem of diversity in the IT world as 90% of his staff are male middle class geeks (of all hues/disabilities/sexual orientation etc etc, but still too many male geeks). This really restricts the pool of life experiences that a company has to draw upon.

IT is not nearly as sexist as banking, finance, many areas of law, the City. A women who has the wits about her and is prepared to put in the time, will do well. The problem is women are smarter than to willingly live out of a Travelodge for months on end as a project is preparing to go live. I wouldn't.

All the geeks I know who work in IT also do programming etc as a hobby. I remember at Cambridge the CompSci course was allegedly open to people with no prior computer experience, but in reality if you hadn't been playing around with programming for the last decade and weren't into playing with assignments for hours into the night, it was impossible to keep up and the inexperienced students (almost all female) almost all gave up.

The industry is odd - MrNC worked for a small company (sadly joining just as his share options plummeted) that's been taken over by a certain huge multinational. They don't pay that well, but let him work a 4-day week, 1-2 days at home, and are hugely flexible. Out of his team of 50, about 1/4 are female and ALL have children under 5!
It's not the most interesting work, so he's signed up with recruitment firms over the last few years, explaining he doesn't really want to get into management but has lots of skills which are up to date. And he needs to stay based in London. So every few days we get calls asking if he's interested in some job earning maybe twice what he currently does. Yes - but will they let him work 4 days, or failing that partly at home?

In 3 years about 100 firms have refused to interview him simply because he wants to work part-time - the agents have been shouting at the firms and telling them how stupid they are to not even consider his skills, seeing as he could do in 4 days more than a less-experienced person would in 5 that they'd otherwise get for their money, but they just won't think outside the box. These are mainly finance firms.

In a couple years' time he'll consider full-time work again and then once in a job argue for flexibility, but currently we're preferring the cushy flexibility and he's got good colleagues, which counts for a lot.

Thanks. She has been doing a Microsoft training course this week on networking, paid for by the company, though not the associated exam apparently.

I'm surprised and saddened that the industry seems so inflexible and male dominated :(

The 'industry' is not inflexible - though it is male dominated (which is probably why it pays so much :)

There are thousands of different jobs, some are flexible, some aren't.

A networking course means she'll probably end up working for a big company, and they'll probably be fairly flexible.

I certainly never took a job which required travel. I currently choose to work 4 days a week.........

This thread has got me thinking. I worked in IT from 1999 to 2003 and then had my children. I've retrained as a teacher but am fed up with having to work every evening and every weekend and not spending enough time with my children.

I was a web developer and know php, coldfusion, asp, html, javascript, css, sql, mysql, etc.

I'm wondering if it is worth me trying to get back into IT now - I did REALLY enjoy it. Anyone in IT got any thoughts on this?

Absolutely, all of those things are still used and in demand by web agencies.

You will shorter hours and earn more than a teacher.....

May or may not enjoy it more, depends on your personality :)

Pre-kids, I worked for as an IT consultant in the financial services & CRM sector for 8 yrs. I did do a MSc in IT postgrad conversion (from a LLB) in my mid twenties though and received a handful of job offers from major IT companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Logica which was majorly competitive at the time but I'd imagine even more so now! This was in the mid-late nineties though when the economy was booming and contractor rates were on a high. Frankly, it is male dominated and you need a combination of technical/client facing skills to do well. I worked in the private sector and on client projects - spent the first 12mths as a developer and then grabbed the opportunity to go into Product Management. Often worked Mon-Thurs away on client site (to implement bespoke software) including abroad and when deadlines to 'go live' approaches, 16 hr days for the final few weeks' push was not unknown. I did get paid well (although was not a contractor but worked alonside many!) I was basically a senior business analyst outside of London on £50K basic and that was 8 yrs ago! The consultancy I was working for charged me out at £1200 per day to the client although that rate changed according to project and the economy. I remember times getting tougher in 2003 when my day rate dropped to £500 per day. I had my first DC 8 yrs ago - it is not condusive to family life unless you have live-in childcare or lots of free help from family close by. I still have a friend who returned to work in the industry after having children and she finds it extremely tough - I don't envy her. I tried and failed to get a public sector IT job after my maternity leave (in the hope that it would involve less travel and be more family friendly) so that was that. Loved it at the time though - never boring and even worked in San Francisco for a year.

headnotheart, it might be worth her while seeing if she could pay for the exam and certification herself as it could be a useful thing to have on a CV.

IT can be inflexible - or, rather, it can be very demanding on time and availability. If you work in IT support then you will likely be required to do a fair amount of your work outside normal business hours. It's cheaper for the business to pay you overtime to rebuild a server on a Saturday than to pay for a hundred staff to sit there twiddling their thumbs while you rebuild that server on a Tuesday afternoon.

Similarly, if something important breaks at 4:30pm on a Friday, you're not going to win any friends if at 5pm you say "Well, sorry, it's still dead but I'm off home now." You stay and get it fixed.

Development can also be very demanding, particularly for commercial products. I know a couple of people who work in the games industry and they sometimes work absolutely insane hours to get a new title out by the deadline.

On the other hand, the pay can be very good. There are often opportunities for working from home or other kinds of flexibility but you typically need to have been in a position for a good while. In my last job I went to what was effectively a four-day week with working from home on a couple of days. That killed my career stone-dead as there was no way I was going to be promoted from there but I think that's often the case when you go part-time.

Anyone else not in computing thinking they made the wrong choice yet? (that includes me, I'm an academic)

YABVU- My DH is a software developer, he loves his job and earns fab money for it. I am a PA in a large corporate software company and none of the guys in my team will earn less than 500k this year in bonusses alone. Their roles are not technically IT as they are sales within the IT industry but they all have a background in IT at an operational level.

headnotheart The exam relatively speaking isn't that expensive. If she's confident, there's no reason why you couldn't pay for it yourself. There's a wealth of information online to help your DD, books from Amazon, practice questions.

I think IT overall is a very flexible career compared to most but the flexibility cuts both ways. It's not a 9-5 job but most decent employers will offer flexible working. So for example, my official hours are 9-5 but in practice my boss doesn't care as long as the work gets done. The basic rule is he doesn't moan if I take a few hours off to go to see my kids at school plays etc. And I don't moan if I have to work at 11pm and reboot some boxes.

When you take into account the pay, experience, travel & working then I honestly think it's hard to beat.

niceguy2 she could afford it herself, and I sort of suggested the exam would be a good idea. We are not getting on very well, for reasons I won't go into.

Years ago I worked in the fringes of computing - think working on 8K PETs with tape drives, and Apple II with (gasp) disk drives. Then as a YTS trainer, eventually running a network off an 8MB hard drive! Then had kids...

Totally disagree. BIL is a software programmer and has been doing contractor work for NATO in Afghanistan. He's paid about £400 per day, though he is never there for more than a few weeks at a time.

IT contractors, minimum £500 per day in the city.

I think it's worth bearing in mind though that whilst contract rates do seem high, when we hear day rates of £500 per day that out of this, the person needs to pay their taxes etc.

Plus often there will be dead periods where you are inbetween contracts though some will be lucky enough to get continually renewed. Certainly when I was a contractor I was never out of a contract but that was back in the good old days.

Being a contractor also means there's no pensions, no perks, no paid holidays and no job security.

My point is that it's not £500x365 and that's what you get a year.

If you are lucky then you get a lot of money but it also can seriously go wrong. But then that's why you get paid more, there's more risk involved.

yes, niceguy, that's why contractors get paid so much, no job security, holiday pay etc, but they also only pay 20% tax/ins and £500 is minimum.

I know people paid £1k a day and are continually getting their contracts renewed, although there is a move away from this now

I work with someone who has been contracting for the same company for at least 8 years. He has VERY specialised knowledge. Nice work if you can get it.

remember that when you're a consultant mercenary prostitute contractor, your daily rate also pays for your holidays, pension, sick pay, time off between assignments, training, sometimes travel and accomodation when working away from home, days spent keeping in touch with the business and developing contacts; lawyers and accountants fees, medical insurance, life assurance, widows pension, unemployment pay and early retirement or disability pension (if needed). If your line of work suffers a downturn, there is no redundancy or redeployment except what you find yourself. No one will keep you on when times are hard, or if they think you're not the best they can find. There is no career path or promotion prospects except what you make yourself. Not complaining but it's worth being aware that it might not suit everyone. If you're not a permie it can be hard to get an ordinary mortgage. The market really does have up years and down years (perhaps some of you have not been in the game long enough to have taken that on board).

If you're lucky, you'll have about 200 revenue earning days per year, maybe 220. That might involve 220 nights away from home. There is a high rate of marital breakdown.

I had the misfortune to be badly injured in an accident and off work for a year. You have to fund that kind of contingency yourself.

Looking on the bright side, a contractor can be laid off with little notice and no compensation. On the other hand, a permie can also be laid off with little notice and minimum compensation.

witchyhills "they also only pay 20% tax/ins" not true.

Piglet - Paying yourself minimum up to the LEL as salary and the rest as dividends is pretty standard practice for contractors. A lot of the ones I know actually have their limited company set up in Switzerland so they don't even pay the tax on the dividends.

er pigletjohn, it is true, I have been one of them, not IT
standard practice
I only have knowledge of IT contractors within Banking, and none of them work from home

sorry, none of them worked away from home, plenty of them actually worked from home occasionally

malinois, arer you suggesting (1) dividends do not count as taxable income, or (2) a UK citizen who is working in the UK does not have to pay tax on dividends of foreign companies?

witchyhills, can you outline how a person who is UK domiciled with an income of (say) £1000,000 only pays basic rate tax?

We can talk about IR34 later.

£100,000 I meant, for simplicity.