Hello dear community. Yesterday (being drunk) after reading a post from , I thought, because a really good question is: “Why ..?”
Due to my place of residence in the sunny city of Los Angeles, I decided to find out if there are people in my favorite city who, for one reason or another, have left (to the dark side of the force) from IT. Googling the statistics of unemployed/lost jobs/changed careers (choose one you like) of people, kindly provided by (Alcoholics Anonymous) , I realized that this does not apply to us, so I decided to take a different path and contact people who are cooking (in hell) in the IT boiler.
After flipping through my business card album (yes, imagine, this is still in vogue with us), I quickly found the contacts of Mr. Ijiman, the Cisco engineer who designed the circuit and installed the smart home and alarm system in my hut. It turned out that turnover in IT is a more serious problem than I imagined. During the conversation, Mr. Aijiemen offered to introduce me to his “guru”, who helped him open the gates to the world of the IT industry, but who, by coincidence, no longer works in this area.
So get acquainted: RJ, a man who spent 13 years in IT and his story of divorce from his favorite business ...
For those who got under the cut, firstly, thanks, and secondly, it turns out that there are not so many of you (sorry, I could not resist). To omit a long and sometimes boring story (combat wounds) places of work and the number of projects, just summarizing:
RJ met IT in the 5th grade, and at the age of 16 he married her. They had intense love. These are localization tests with SypeX Dumper, as well as a long love with her (yes, he is such an ancient person). And all the tourism beloved "Secure", and VolVox (like Bitrix), and xRotor (the kingdom of heaven to him), and everyone's favorite "Wagtail", all sorts of automation for factories and factories. In general, he worked (according to him he loved) with IT on 4 continents and eventually settled in the USA. The first year of his life in this country, he worked at Universal Studios and Reboot on ordinary and not so projects (NDA) until his life changed.
RJ, what has changed and why did you decide to leave IT?
Firstly, no one refused anything, and IT is still a part of me. Sometimes it's my shield, sometimes it's my weapon. The only thing I refused was participation in projects and work for someone; it's like a late epiphany, if you will. I was developing someone's dream for a very long time, I was one of the millions of those workers, yes, yes, you heard right - exactly those workers.
At some point, in the pursuit of mirages, I forgot that first of all I am an engineer, I am an artist, I am an artist after all.
Was there any signal or event that caused you to leave IT?
It all happened on June 10, 2017, I visited JPL (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), on the very day when I was standing at the copy of the Curiosity rover, I remembered why I wanted to become an engineer. I understand that it probably seems childish to you, to trade a career in IT for something that is not yet tangible, for some kind of quirk in my head, but this is exactly the moment when I decided that it was time to change something in my life.
Can you say that "IT did not live up to your expectations"
Oh god, of course not! You are still looking one-sided. You understand that the wrong employer or project is not a reason to say that someone's path is not correct and it needs to be urgently changed. I may sound like a hackneyed record of Chaliapin in my grandmother's gramophone (CEN), but I believe that in one form or another, each individual must be or at least have some kind of IT literacy, in the aspect in which you have it (IT literacy) consider, namely to be able to program.
What can you say about the lack of calling in IT
Twenty-five again! Let's, please, figure out what IT is, otherwise our conversation will always come to a standstill. IT today is not all about mathematics and programming, as it was in the 60s or, say, in the 90s. Do you know what is the most difficult thing in the work of an IT specialist today - “The ability to work with people!”, But do you know what is the most important skill, say, in the field of sales? That's right - "The ability to work with people!", Hence the simple conclusion, IT today (and indeed always) is not only programming.
The average salary in this area in the country (note I mean the USA) is $5500 in internal states and $8000 in IT triangles, the average salary in the country, let's say a UBER driver has $6000, hence another simple conclusion - IT today is no longer something super prestigious or highly paid, and IT in general is a huge machine or a millstone if you like, in which there is less and less room for creativity in the middle management or, say, among software developers. So, calling is a fiction, as well as the fact that talent is a guarantee of success!
Is it possible to say that you "burned out" as a specialist?
No, definitely not! Did I burn out as an employee - perhaps as a specialist - by no means. I will not talk about other areas within IT, but I will speak specifically about software developers, because this is the moment you are most interested in, programmers and networkers leave because of disagreements and pressure within a particular project. Often, programmers are seen as semi-robots who write code, but in fact, most of them are very creative, artistic people who are driven into frames that hinder rather than help in work. And as you know, melancholy sets in for artistic people, and in order to discharge from the negative and recharge with positive, they go “for a while” to other professions, but unfortunately it’s more and more difficult to return back later.
So you want to go back?
Specifically, no, but a couple of my friends would not mind. Even if I don't work in IT, I try to make up for the loss of "me" to the industry by perfusing new blood. By analogy, cut down an old tree, plant 10 new ones.
Is it possible to say that competition is ruining IT people?
Absurd. It's like saying that antimonopoly destroys monopoly. In fact, competition is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. It is thanks to her that today we know about Stroustup or Burns LEE, about Zuckerberg or Durov in the end to the end. Yes, I do not argue, competition reduces the likelihood of a good salary (which, by the way, is increasingly becoming the reason for leaving IT), but in itself is not a killer of personnel in this or any other area. In fact, the fact that IT is very dynamic is disastrous, and today a person who has completed only 3 months of training at some bootcamp (sorry for anglicism) can receive more than a person with 10 years of experience in IT, just because he has the skill current at the moment. And if you are not engaged in self-education, then literally in three months, your knowledge will be considered obsolete in the world of programming, and you may find yourself on the labor exchange.
Before we move on to the main question, where do people leave IT, I want to know if a lack of communication can be the reason for leaving IT
Unfortunately, this is another stereotype. In fact, in a healthy team, at least one meetup (morning / evening meeting), debriefing, pair programming and work with interns (yes, yes, that too) and in general, a bazaar inside the office, since teams work at a round table or in an open office. So there is practically no opportunity to retire if you were not provided with an office - which is not practiced for "ordinary" IT people. In general, people associated with IT are mostly social butterflies in an asocial world of limits and prejudices. In order to understand how sociable we are, come to the next San Diego Comicon, I'm not afraid to say that at least %70 of this audience will be associated with IT. Yes, within the framework of this world, we may be “strange” or people with oddities, but believe me, the lack of communication is not about us!
So, the main question is: “Where did you go from the IT world?”
Remember, I visited JPL, where I met Riya (a girl from CalTech, a former IT specialist), PhD. So here (I went to her), her group (like thousands of others on the planet) is looking for a cheap alternative energy solution. While working from 8 to 5, she managed to unlearn, build a career, start a family and become one of my idols and all this in 5 minutes of talking with her. I thought, how is it, I am the same immigrant as she is why, being a fragile woman (without sexism), she was able to leave the stressful world of IT and realize herself in something else, while not feeling guilty for having betrayed someone, especially yourself. When I asked her this question, you won’t believe it, she answered me with the words of my best friend Ali, who left the IT world 7 years ago (but who didn’t quit programming) and today breeds fish - and he is happy.
So she said: “Programming is like golden bracelets on my hands, at the right time they are my decoration, at other times they are my protection, they do not burden me and are not my fetters.”
In the evening of the same day, I called Ali and said that I met his female avatar (laughs). Of course, I began to think about it and remembered that my close friend Vadim, also a former IT specialist, an expert in streaming systems in the entertainment industry, but who works in a field that is far from both the entertainment industry and IT in general. After talking with him about the acute problem of ventilation and cryogenics in the world of space, he offered to introduce me to his friend Nikita, a cryogenic systems engineer, since he has more knowledge in this matter and could help me become something more.
“So where did you go from the IT world?” I blurted out impatiently
I became a NATE (North American Technician Excellence) technician, I develop, install and, if possible, innovate in the field of HVACR (Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration), as you understand, here knowledge in the field of IT helps me with modeling and system calculations.
If it's not a secret, how much do you earn?
Let's just say, I won't tell you the amount, but at the moment I'm earning three times more than I earned when I worked as a DevOps engineer at Universal Studios. I work mostly from 8 to 4 sometimes up to 7, I have two days off and a lot of free time that I spend reading books, Autodesk Fusion or xCode development environment working on my projects that are interesting to me.
And the last question, where else, in your opinion, do they leave IT?
- Let's be honest, if a person leaves because of money (basically this is a category with a salary of up to 5000), then anywhere where they pay the same or more for less labor. This is the sales sector, and the real estate sector, this is the repair of household appliances, and even become UBER or Lyft drivers.
- If a person leaves solely because of stress, then basically they take a break to return back, and often start their own startups or in the words of Jim Rohn, find something that brings them less stress, for example, go to teach or become university assistants (such as I know a lot)
- If a person is doing well in terms of salary (we are talking about a category above $6000), but he does not have time for self-education, then they often become drivers of heavy vehicles (truck driver), yes, I understand it sounds absurd, because half of the drivers dream of becoming IT people, but often escaping from the hustle and bustle, people wanting to maintain their level of income go specifically to the drivers of heavy trucks, since there they often earn from $ 8000 and more.
- Now, it has also become very fashionable to build your online stores on Amazon and other platforms, and as you understand, IT specialists are not the last people in this sometimes very profitable business.
This list goes on and on, and realizing that your readers are mostly highly educated people with above average intelligence, I want to note that IT is now the same area as thousands of others. Innovation in this sector is slowing down (in my humble opinion) in inverse proportion to Moore's law. Of course, I understand that this will offend someone very much, it will even offend someone, but dear community, it is no longer possible to live by programming alone, you need to develop and develop in other areas. You need to gain skills in any other business, if only because it will broaden your horizons and only help you find extraordinary solutions in your daily work as developers, networkers, team leads, etc. Good luck to you all in all your good undertakings, peace to you and your home.
Thank you RJ for a very informative conversation and a rather unusual look at the IT industry. Now, I would like to hear from the respected habrocommunity whether there are any “former” IT people among you and who you retrained into. I understand that this can cause a holivar, damn it, isn't that what we're here for? Haven't we gathered here to discuss our victories and defeats? I sincerely wish all our guys who for one reason or another decide to expand their arsenal of skills other than IT all the very best and I hope that you will leave your mark in the comments under this article (preferably with the address of residence, so that we can quickly find you)
On this note, I say goodbye to you and hope for shots in the heart and head in the comments, light wounds in the knee and a backlog of phages and curses due to your CPU freezes. Good luck.
UPD:
Many thanks to everyone who read this creation, pointed out errors in the text (what an illiterate person I am), gave me new ideas, and just cursed me (this is also criticism). Love you!
Source: habr.com