Why IT sucks now

[zarathustra]

20 years ago, all that I really wanted to do with my life was to work in the IT industry. The fact that I begin with this sentence implies (correctly) that what was the case 20 years ago is no longer the case today, and I suspect that many people would be quick to simply say "Careful what you wish for," as if the change in the state of things is largely my fault for not recognizing the consequences of what I'd wanted (or thought I'd wanted), but the honest truth is that the IT industry was a great field to work in 20 years ago, and that the general change in things is not through some dissatisfaction with the industry which I set as a goal for myself 20 years ago, but rather the fact that the IT industry of 20 years ago no longer exists today. The general reality is that working in the IT industry sucks today, especially for technically-minded people who want to work with computers or other devices, and there are many reasons why.

One of the core reasons why IT is no longer a good field for technical people to work in is the simple fact that IT has become entirely business-focused. 20 years ago, people working in the IT industry still regularly performed tasks like procuring a PC based on the physical hardware specs and then building that PC to those specs. Today, all computer hardware sold in any store is more than adequate for what most people need their PCs to do. Even basic monitors are capable of resolutions vastly in excess of what was considered "high resolution" 20 years ago; it's impossible to buy a monitor that won't satisfy the needs of most users, so you don't need a technical expert to advise on what monitor to buy. The same goes for the processor, RAM, hard drive, and so on. The only people who need quite particular computer specs are people working in specialized fields, and those people's needs are specific enough that they usually know how to articulate what they need independently, so they don't need the help of an IT specialist to tell them what they need. In general, people and businesses do not need devices, but rather the functions which those devices perform, and as time has gone by, businesses have developed ways to perform the data-processing functions they need without a lot of assistance from technical workers, particularly through the use of "cloud-based" services which you pay a monthly fee for and then don't need to administer. Many people who have no idea how IT works claim that technical people can then simply go and work for these cloud providers, but the thing is, these cloud services are largely self-running, highly-automated systems; once you build them, they need only minimal maintenance, and the work which they do need can be done by people with very little knowledge or training. People who work in physical datacenters generally do not need much technical understanding; it is work which can be (and often is) done by unpaid interns, even in large hosting providers which base most of their business off the hosting of data services.

Today, people who do nominally work in the IT industry are, almost without exception, people who design business functions rather than technical ones. It is no longer possible for a person to make a living by saying "I'm going to build a hardware device or a software program which performs some technical function," because neither businesses nor consumers are particularly interested in technical functions; they don't want fancy gadgets that do things which interest nerds, because nerds are no longer a big enough or wealthy enough segment of the consumer market to sell to, largely because the market has made them obsolete. Today, someone who works in the IT industry is more likely to describe their job function by saying something like "I am developing a web-services platform that helps enterprises manage their customer data by synchronizing new transactions with the existing body of customer data through a middleware layer that interfaces the financial system with the e-store front-end." How many technical terms show up in a sentence like that? To a businessperson, words or phrases like "web services," "platform," "data," "synchronize," "middleware," "e-store," and "front end" are all technical terms because they are handled by workers in what would be called the "technical" department (they are certainly not developed or administered by accountants, salespeople, marketers, or any other company department), but I think it's clear that all of these systems are business functions and not technical in nature: the technology focus for a business is not on what technology they have or even how they use technology, but how technology can enable their business goals. To any person with a head for business, this seems self-explanatory (why would it be any other way? Why would a business want to concern itself with technical details unless it was very specifically in the technology business?), but 20 years ago, a person handling IT for businesses could focus on technical tasks and not have to worry about these business factors.

There are also other core structural problems with IT as a job these days. One of these is a pervasive reliance on proprietary systems which have inadequate documentation. This is quite unfortunate since today, there is more than enough information on how to build good hardware and software that companies could run on open-source software which costs no money and can be readily modified to suit a company's needs. The problem is that businesses are not interested in a system which can be modified or fixed according to their needs; they are interested in an off-the-shelf system which they can use without performing any customization, drop-in solutions which they can use immediately and which are backed by strong technical support from the provider. In theory, you can make an open-source program do whatever you want since a programmer can modify it to do what you want, but businesses are not interested in retaining programmers to modify their own software; even companies in the IT industry generally avoid performing in-house software development or customization, because that becomes a money sink: it requires you to pay your own developers to modify your software to do stuff which businesspeople expect it to do without modification. Microsoft is a huge market force not because their software runs flawlessly, not because their software has a lot of features, not because their software is highly customizable, but because their software does what businesspeople expect it to do (or at least, their software is perceived as doing what businesspeople want it to do) and it can do this with a simple mouse-click without needing a programmer or other technical person on hand to make the software work. Businesses don't want powerful, feature-rich programs, because that costs money; they want simple software that does business functions. You can build a big, feature-rich program as a university project or a proof-of-concept, but it won't interest businesses, since businesses don't want their software to do anything more than what their business needs.

The result of all this is that today, about 20 years after Linux started developing a significant presence in the public mind as an alternative operating system, most businesses still run on Windows, not because Windows is technically better than Linux in any meaningful technical way, but because Windows is targeted at business users and does what those businesses expect without involving a lot of the technical details which Linux would inevitably expect the user to understand. I'm just using Microsoft as an example because it is probably the most visible example in the IT industry today, but this same pattern can be observed in countless other products used by businesses: the focus is not on how well the hardware or software works, but rather on whether it is targeted towards a business' needs (as opposed to the needs of a technical user). This creates enormous problems for the IT staff who are expected to support this software, because software vendors (again, Microsoft is the most visible example, but this is true for countless other proprietary software vendors) are certainly not interested in publishing details about how their software works internally, meaning there is really no way for technical workers to gain any technical understanding of the software. Instead, the software vendors typically produce a set of pre-packaged tools for technical staff which are intended to diagnose software problems and suggest possible solutions. It's all just simple point-and-click stuff: Got a problem? Run this program which automatically detects problems and tries to fix them, or tells you what to do if the problems can't be resolved automatically. Often these systems fail, leaving even the support staff of the software vendor to shrug their shoulders and say something tantamount to "We don't understand why our own software isn't working." A deeper understanding of the underlying system would make troubleshooting and error-resolution vastly easier for everyone involved, but again, publicizing details of how the software works is, for a software vendor, tantamount to giving away your business' moneymaker for free. No software vendor has any reason to give their stuff away for free. And so we have the situation we're in today.

Perhaps the single biggest problem for people who want to work professionally in IT today, however, is the simple fact that the major problems have been solved. A few decades ago, the world was asking itself the question: "How are technology's wiz-kids going to develop a system which enables both businesses and individuals to look up information online, store their personal information safely, and carry that information around with them?" Today, we have systems in place which have answered these questions. We already have the Internet, smartphones, and online systems that let us do our shopping, pay our bills, and communicate with other people, and all of these technologies have already been around for long enough that they are refined to the point where they work pretty well for nearly everyone. No one needs to develop or design any such technology; it has all already been designed and developed. On a purely technical, academic level, university Computer Science students may encounter unsolved problems which some genius might still be able to unlock, but even most of this type of work is already finished: we already have a lot of algorithms that enable us to do most of the information-processing work that we need, and outside of specialized research, it's unlikely that anyone is going to develop new algorithms that solve existing problems. Most of the most important algorithms being developed today are actually self-correcting: things like Google's search engine are not hand-crafted by a team of geniuses who know exactly what the world is searching for; rather, the search engine self-modifies its behavior in response to what people are looking for and autonomously recognizes when it has delivered what people are looking for. A computer can program itself faster and more thoroughly than a human could program it.

The only conclusion which I think anyone can reach from a situation like this is that IT no longer presents a feasible career path for the same types of people who entered IT 20 years ago. Back then, if you had a head for logical thinking, understanding of technical systems, and perhaps a knack for creative solutions to problems, you were a natural fit for the IT industry. This is no longer the case today. Today's IT job market expects a vastly different mentality from its people: people are no longer expected to think logically or technically, but in terms of what makes sense for the business. People are still sometimes hired after graduating from university Computer Science programs, but I believe that this is increasingly a relic based on corporate misunderstanding of what people actually learn in such educational programs and what business needs really are. I have noticed an increasing trend of people being hired into IT not from traditional Computer Science majors, but rather from business-oriented majors, or else from hybrid programs calling themselves something like "Business Informatics" which present the aspects of information technology from an entirely business-oriented perspective which removes most of the technical understanding and emphasizes what businesspeople like to hear. This is, increasingly, the way of the future for IT people. The nerds who can write code and design circuits are increasingly obsolete and will soon regain the pre-modern status they had of misfits and freaks, people who are excluded from both professional and social life because of their perceived status as poorly-adjusted autists. The age when nerds were glamorous is over, and everything has reverted to how it was before.

This does not mean that the IT industry no longer represents a viable career option for anyone at all; certainly, there are still people entering IT for whom the field might make sense and who may thrive in that environment, but the people who are likely to succeed long-term in that field are not the people who create the best technology, because programs and products are no longer designed by a single person. These technology products are now designed and developed by teams of bureaucrats, and to fit into that environment, you have to think that way too. Teamwork and a group mentality are requirements; the days of individual-minded developers being able to become superstars through the technical superiority of their work are long gone. Developers are now expected to have a sales mentality and be able to make something that sells itself on appeal to corporate values rather than technical ones.

All of this is sending (and has sent for several years now) a loud-and-clear message, not only to myself but to many other people like me, that IT is no longer the right career choice for someone like me, and that I should start making plans for a career change. The problem that I and many people like myself now have is that there is no other industry for us. I have more than 10 years of work experience in the IT industry; where else could I go? More than once, it has happened to me that I have applied for a job and gotten a response back saying "We don't think you are a fit for the job you applied for, but your résumé looks like a great fit for our IT department and we would encourage you to apply there," or sometimes even "We already forwarded your résumé to them," resulting in enthusiastic phone calls from people who say that they have open positions perfect for someone like me, after which I say "Actually I am trying to move away from the IT industry," resulting in the caller suddenly saying "Oh, okay then, we'll let you know if anything turns up," followed by a quick hangup and, of course, no further contact. I am thoroughly stuck here; for a guy with a work history like mine, there is no way into any other field unless I decide to work in a fast-food restaurant. At this point, my college degree and 10+ years of work experience give me precisely the same prospects as a person with zero qualifications who would be lucky to work in a factory or on a construction site. There is no path forward from here.

I sometimes ask myself if I should have done something different. Should I have aimed for a different career path 20 years ago, when I was about to turn 18 and taking my first steps into the big wide world? I have thought about this a lot, but I don't think I could have done anything else; what else would there have been, really, for a guy like me? At the time, I went into IT because it seemed like the only logical choice for a person with my set of skills, and even today, looking back, I don't think that I could have done anything differently even if I'd wanted to. I don't feel like I made a terrible mistake working in IT; 20 years ago, it really was a great industry to work in, and I don't regret the time I've put into it. I just realize that the industry has changed, so much so that the people like me who were right for the industry back then are no longer the right people for the industry today. Is there in fact a "right" industry for people like me today? I don't think there is. We are probably destined to follow the course taken by such people in the pre-modern world, picking up odd jobs wherever we can but never settling into a safe or stable career path. The world has rejected us, as it always has, as it always will. There is no place left for us but obscurity, a forgotten and neglected demographic swept into the dark and dusty corners where no one sees or wants to see. This is already the same fate that was given to many once-honored professions like being a writer, so there is no reason to expect that computer workers should be any different. Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened.

[zarathustra]

Long read, but enjoyable

Source: https://lateblt.livejournal.com/278369.html

[jefferson1]

Tldr pls 

[zarathustra]

9 minutes ago, jefferson1 said:

Tldr pls 

Now all IT is controlled and dictated by business who often are clueless about the tech behind IT and don't care about it. 

So unless you look at IT from a purely business perspective, it sucks to work in IT ani kavi uddesam. 

Plus now everything is pay as you go cloud based service model, atleast in the near future it will be that 100%. Needs very few resources to maintain them, and they don't need to be that technical either. So no need for technical people once everything is on the cloud and automated. If you love being a techie, your days are numbered. 

[ManOffSteel]

I am 35 now and I have been in IT for 14 years now. Staying in IT beyond 45 years is unimaginable for me.. Hopefully my plans will make me financially free so that I can enjoy my life rather than being stuck to my laptop for 10 hours a day..

[zarathustra]

3 minutes ago, ManOffSteel said:

I am 35 now and I have been in IT for 14 years now. Staying in IT beyond 45 years is unimaginable for me.. Hopefully my plans will make me financially free so that I can enjoy my life rather than being stuck to my laptop for 10 hours a day..

45 ki road map unda bro, if you haven't planned well it's impossible. 

I have no road map, but wanna get out of IT. But don't know what else I could do

[ManOffSteel]

Just now, zarathustra said:

45 ki road map unda bro, if you haven't planned well it's impossible. 

I have no road map, but wanna get out of IT. But don't know what else I could do

I have been investing in rental homes and lands in India for the last 10 years. I have built a decent portfolio, currently getting around 1L per annum in rents but by the time I am 45 I expect the land prices to appreciate and also the rents to increase to 2 to 3L based on my purchases from now to then..

[zarathustra]

2 minutes ago, ManOffSteel said:

I have been investing in rental homes and lands in India for the last 10 years. I have built a decent portfolio, currently getting around 1L per annum in rents but by the time I am 45 I expect the land prices to appreciate and also the rents to increase to 2 to 3L based on my purchases from now to then..

Good bro atleast someone has it planned better than me. 

I think naa situation lo jeena yahaa marna yahaa as far as it comes to IT

[ManOffSteel]

Just now, zarathustra said:

Good bro atleast someone has it planned better than me. 

I think naa situation lo jeena yahaa marna yahaa as far as it comes to IT

It's never too late. Rental returns are very good in the US too. I know many people that started late but are financially stable too.. I don't have GC so I never really invested in US except for our 401ks but if you have GC try other businesses, half brain gujju and bangladeshi people are earning a fortune in liquor stores, restaurants, gas stations. A guy I know in NJ is earning 30 to 40k per month in liquor stores and he doesn't even work there, he simply manages them..

[zarathustra]

3 minutes ago, ManOffSteel said:

It's never too late. Rental returns are very good in the US too. I know many people that started late but are financially stable too.. I don't have GC so I never really invested in US except for our 401ks but if you have GC try other businesses, half brain gujju and bangladeshi people are earning a fortune in liquor stores, restaurants, gas stations. A guy I know in NJ is earning 30 to 40k per month in liquor stores and he doesn't even work there, he simply manages them..

Yeah that's what I am looking into bro. Half brain pakodi gallu naaku telisinolle chala mandi making good money. IT isn't the only career path I guess if you want to make a decent income. 

[Picheshwar]

8 minutes ago, ManOffSteel said:

I have been investing in rental homes and lands in India for the last 10 years. I have built a decent portfolio, currently getting around 1L per annum in rents but by the time I am 45 I expect the land prices to appreciate and also the rents to increase to 2 to 3L based on my purchases from now to then..

1L per annum or per month

[futureofandhra]

2 minutes ago, zarathustra said:

Yeah that's what I am looking into bro. Half brain pakodi gallu naaku telisinolle chala mandi making good money. IT isn't the only career path I guess if you want to make a decent income. 

bro akkada mestri dukanalu on H4 

neekenti bro kummachu if you really want to

[Shameless]

26 minutes ago, zarathustra said:

20 years ago, 

IT suck because all these years everyone thought IT is a woman but they found out that IT is a transgender...inni rojulu ammay anukoni full ga enjoy chesaru...eppudaithe mundhu m0dda kanipinchindho appude IT sucks ani thelusukunnaru....

[zarathustra]

5 minutes ago, Picheshwar said:

1L per annum or per month

Hehe I think per month

[zarathustra]

4 minutes ago, futureofandhra said:

bro akkada mestri dukanalu on H4 

neekenti bro kummachu if you really want to

Hmm