Yes and no and bleh, in no particular order

1) Do people change careers out of IT and move on to something else? Yes of
course, but that is true of almost any career.. I've heard it said that the
average person has 2-3 career (not job) changes in their life. But:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575468162805877990.htmlsays
otherwise and the data isn't conclusive. Does the include high school
and college jobs?

2) I'm not average, so what? Who is? Does it matter?

3) I wouldn't call Google or Facebook or Zynga representative of the entire
IT industry. Do they make up a growing chunk? Maybe so. There's a lot of
Web 2.0 or DevOps or <insert_buzzword> type shops out there doing a lot of
similar things, but there's also a lot of universities, pharma, government,
business, and other entities too.

4) Should you be worried? no. If you want a career in IT, I'd be hard
pressed to say one won't be there. Do the interview questions change as you
become more senior? Probably. You're expected to know more about various
things, have more experience (some of it obsolete: again true of ANY
career). And if you want to change, nobody here will hold it against you.
By all means get that degree in finance or whatever. Become a CPA or an
architect or a RN... if you want to.

5) age-ism affects almost every career to one extent or another. Take
marketing for an example. Yikes! Of course, one could always become a
subsistence farmer.  But, if you want opportunities for growth and
advancement, I wouldn't recommend it. ;) On the other hand, absent global
climate change, there's some career stability and you won't be
discriminated upon for your age, though you might be sore and creaky
working the fields at 60.

5) I think the Bloomberg article is just basically taking one career title
and putting a sticky note over it for another. You could say the same thing
about architecture, marketing, sales, whatever... Keeping current is not
career specific. Even doctors who don't sharpen their skills with the
latest miracle procedures can become functionally obsolete. In other
words.. Bah! Humbug!



On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Martin James Gehrke
<[email protected]>wrote:

>
> http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/04/23/1928202/software-engineering-is-a-dead-end-career-says-bloomberg
>
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/03/1435217/half-life-of-a-tech-worker-15-years
>
> I do try to grow professionally as a sysadmin on the younger side, but is
> this something I should be worried about?
>
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