Anyone here have experience in "IT"?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Yadster101

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
Messages
487
Reaction score
144
So one of my friends from college recently told me about his pursuit of a career in IT and how lucrative the field is. He described how many IT jobs don't require a degree and after a few months of studying something like SAP, Java, C#, Oracle, SQL, one can easily be making 60k+ a year as a 20 year old. He also described how after ~5 years of experience it's definitely possible to make ~150-200k if you improve your skills.

Is the field really that lucrative that a 27y/o kid, with a few years of experience, can be making well over 6 figures? If that's the case then I'm pretty much recommending IT to anyone that's just looking for a well paying 9-5 gig.
 
Usually you need a degree to be making mid 6 figures, but yeah, that's a common salary for computer scientists in some areas. It's very geographically dependent though -- don't expect to make that in the midwest. Also, salaries probably won't stay that high forever.
 
first of all, there's a big diff between computer science and programming and IT. but those IT people make money but they ****in earn it. there's no 9-5. you are running your patches and updates off of office hours, and when everyone in the office is telecommuting and VPN-ing into the office serverthey are on call 24/7. its not like being an interventional cardiologist, but they ****ing hustle man. not to mention dip****s constantly downloading viruses and deleting the database file etc. grass is always greener.
 
first of all, there's a big diff between computer science and programming and IT. but those IT people make money but they ****in earn it. there's no 9-5. you are running your patches and updates off of office hours, and when everyone in the office is telecommuting and VPN-ing into the office serverthey are on call 24/7. its not like being an interventional cardiologist, but they ****ing hustle man. not to mention dip****s constantly downloading viruses and deleting the database file etc. grass is always greener.

Interesting...Were you previously in IT or something? My brother is actually a "database administrator" and he's making ~70k (but no benefits) and hasn't finished his degree yet. What would you say are some of the more lucrative IT jobs? I'm guessing database admins are high on that list?
 
So one of my friends from college recently told me about his pursuit of a career in IT and how lucrative the field is. He described how many IT jobs don't require a degree and after a few months of studying something like SAP, Java, C#, Oracle, SQL, one can easily be making 60k+ a year as a 20 year old. He also described how after ~5 years of experience it's definitely possible to make ~150-200k if you improve your skills.

Is the field really that lucrative that a 27y/o kid, with a few years of experience, can be making well over 6 figures? If that's the case then I'm pretty much recommending IT to anyone that's just looking for a well paying 9-5 gig.

Efficient market theory applies here. If a career looks dramatically better than all other careers, odds are you're missing something. Maybe its a lot harder to get than you'd think (UPS driver, police/military officer, college professor). Maybe it doesn't pay as well as you think (plumber, chiropractor). Maybe it's got really bad job security (see Ibanking, Law). Or maybe it just sucks way, way more to be at work than you'd expect (Amazon). Most people spend their time trying to get rich, and don't actually get there. When you hear about a field were a 20 year old HS graduate can easily get a starting salary that's twice the average American individual income, and in 5 years can be making three times the average household income, chances are that you're missing a huge catch somewhere.

FWIW I was an engineer at an engineering school. My CS friends had the same wide range of career experiences as most other majors. When it comes to pay STEM degrees are always > not STEM, but there just aren't that many 200K jobs to go around.
 
Making $120 K - $170 K in technology is not unheard of in the Bay Area, but...

the cost of living is perhaps the highest in the country
paying California taxes adds up
you will have to work well over 60 hours at the minimum
you will have to be a top-notch programmer, the cream of the crop
 
One of my friends taught himself HTML with Youtube videos, got a job at a friend's website development company as a freelancer, and is now making 75-90k depending on how hard he feels like working. He's got a home office set up, controls his own schedule, and decides what projects he wants to work on. Combined with a low COL in our area, he's set. Him teaching me basic programming skills was my back-up plan for not getting into med school.
 
Before I decided to go back to med school I worked as an agency headhunter in IT in LA for several years, and then also as an in house IT recruiter for a Fortune 500 company in the midwest. At the time a good senior SW engineer in LA could expect to pull between 90-120 (after 7-10 years experience), the BEST architects could maybe get 180. At the midwest company, that same developer would be lucky to get 90-95. And then the recession happened. A lot of these highly educated and talented people spent a good amount of time unemployed, and many others were taking pay cuts. It's a very volatile field subject to market influences. Keep in mind, for most companies, IT is an expense not a direct money-maker. Also if you're not constantly upgrading your skills, you're basically unemployable by age 50. Saw that happen to a lot of the old mainframe folks who eventually just give up. From what I hear, the market is better now, and you can make good money, of course, but it's not the pretty picture you're painting either.
 
Efficient market theory applies here. If a career looks dramatically better than all other careers, odds are you're missing something.
Does this not also apply to medicine? What are we missing?
 
I majored in CS in undergrad and yes, those are reasonable starting salaries (in fact it's a bit higher; I got offered $70K/year for an entry level software engineering position in a large city as a potential gap year job.) However, there's a big difference between IT and software development - the former keeps the servers running, the latter writes code to run on the servers 😛

For the few medical students out there who also have a programming/engineering background, look into the up-and-coming field of medical informatics. It's incredibly hot right now - academic departments are popping up all over the place and there's no shortage of startups doing really cool work in areas like EHR/EMR, telemedicine, personalized medicine, medical devices, etc.
 
Also if you're not constantly upgrading your skills, you're basically unemployable by age 50. Saw that happen to a lot of the old mainframe folks who eventually just give up. From what I hear, the market is better now, and you can make good money, of course, but it's not the pretty picture you're painting either.

W.R.T to the old "mainframe folks", I have to disagree - the only people left who know mainframe-type languages like COBOL are the dinosaurs, and because no one bothers to learn "dead" programming languages anymore those dinosaurs end up getting paid a LOT to maintain legacy code for big corporations/banks/etc.
 
Does this not also apply to medicine? What are we missing?

Most people don't miss it with medicine. Almost everyone understands that medicine is a very hard job to get, and most actual applicants understand if you're lucky/talented enough to get this job it is very stressful for many years before it gets fun.

When people like the OP find a perfect job, they're never talking about a job that would be great for a small number of very lucky/talented people (CEO/NFL/Medicine/whatever), they're talking about a job that they at think ANYONE could do, if they only everyone knew what a sweet deal it was.
 
Good friend of mine saved up 3 months worth of money, quit his job, and taught himself basic programming. Got a job offer in 2.5 months making 60k, now he is in Santa Monica making 6 figures - all programming baby.
 
Good friend of mine saved up 3 months worth of money, quit his job, and taught himself basic programming. Got a job offer in 2.5 months making 60k, now he is in Santa Monica making 6 figures - all programming baby.

Do you know what language(s) he learned? Did he say that he used his previous career/connections to get his first job as a programmer?
 
Do you know what language(s) he learned? Did he say that he used his previous career/connections to get his first job as a programmer?
No idea on languages, but he had zero connections and just blindly applied to positions.
 
So one of my friends from college recently told me about his pursuit of a career in IT and how lucrative the field is. He described how many IT jobs don't require a degree and after a few months of studying something like SAP, Java, C#, Oracle, SQL, one can easily be making 60k+ a year as a 20 year old. He also described how after ~5 years of experience it's definitely possible to make ~150-200k if you improve your skills.

Is the field really that lucrative that a 27y/o kid, with a few years of experience, can be making well over 6 figures? If that's the case then I'm pretty much recommending IT to anyone that's just looking for a well paying 9-5 gig.


Some of what your friend said is true. I had a 10 year career in IT and people would lie on their resumes all the time about their "experience." In IT experience is king and it is more highly regarded than a degree (which I think is stupid). The only way someone will step into 6 figures in IT at a young age is if they have a unique set of experience that a company needs. This is highly unlikely and most people will step into the field around 50k and after several years can move up to 70k+. If you are smart and follow technology and see where things are going you should position yourself to be in demand and that is how you get into the 6 figures range at a young age. The other way is to park yourself for 10+ years and wait for the obligatory raises to come.

I quit IT because of the false advertisement in candidates. I really hated working with unqualified individuals. Plus it is a boring ass job. No amount of money in the world could make me go back. I enjoy preparing for step way more than I did working in IT (and we all know prepping for step blows)
 
Top