Lifetime Career in IT: Is It Possible?

Date: Sunday, February 16, 2003 4:07 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

http://editorial.careers.msn.com/articles/itlifetime/

Lifetime Career in IT: Is It Possible?

Allan Hoffman

In occupations with histories reaching back generations -- medicine,
for instance, or even public relations -- professionals have been able
to look to senior personnel for guidance about career paths. Not so
with information technology, an industry of relatively recent vintage.
But understandably, IT professionals still wonder what to expect if
they choose to devote their entire career to IT.

In fact,this topic was posed to MSN Careers members: Is it possible to
have a lifetime career in IT?

"Can anyone imagine retiring from a 30 or 40-year career in IT at age
65?" wrote MSN Careers member EsTeeJay, who initiated the discussion.
"With distinction and accomplishment? With a comfortable retirement?"

There are lots of different answers to these questions, but IT
professionals generally say it requires savvy career management,
networking and maybe some luck to thrive as a computer professional
over the long-term. What's more, unless you know a specific industry
very well, such as defense or healthcare, or choose to move into
management, a lifetime career path may be an uphill struggle. Some
techies are pessimistic about their prospects, citing outsourcing of IT
projects overseas and workplace competition from H-1B visa holders.
Others see this pessimism as a symptom of the current economic
downturn.

"It's a great question, but it's still a theoretical question," says
Phil Preston, 49, who started to work with computers while in the Navy
in the early 1970s. "I'm really the first generation to come up
spending their whole career in the IT industry, and I'm a ways from
retirement."

To Preston, now senior vice president of Comforce Corp., the staffing
firm, a conscious effort at career management is essential to thriving
in the industry. That's true even during boom times, when in-demand
workers can move from job to job and demand salary hikes. "A lot of
people in the 1990s got caught up in the job market, or lost sight of
the fact that you need to manage your career," he says. "There are a
lot of people who considered themselves IT professionals in the 1990s
who will never work in the industry again."

But others see economic factors working against the idea of a lifetime
IT career.

Linda Nesheim, 50, has been in the industry for 26 years, consulting
for the last 19 of these as a mainframe programmer. When she got
started, no one who was her current age, she says, was working as a
programmer. And she doesn't think US citizens will be doing so 10 years
from now. "Because of the H-1B and offshoring, I don't believe my job
will be around," she says.

EsTeeJay pointed toward the "exceptional volatility" of the skills
being valued by companies as one factor making it difficult for
individuals to stay in the field.

One key to longevity in the IT industry may be an ability to take
charge of your career, no matter what the state of the economy or your
current company's business. "You have to keep yourself trained even if
management will not pay for it," says Edward Pilling, who participated
in the discussion. "You have to have one critical skill set that is in
need."

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