IT Careers: 10 Things IT Leaders Would Tell Their Kids Today
Given that IT is evolving faster than ever, if seasoned IT professionals wanted to guide their offspring in how to prepare for a career in IT now, what would they say?
March 24, 2022
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Muhammad Ali, a famous American boxer who was the first to win the world heavyweight championship three times, uttered that sage advice although not to rookies heading into IT. It still applies, however. Stay agile enough to learn more and newer technologies, but also stay on point enough to make an impact.
“Raise your hand to work on stretch assignments with others where you can gain experiential learning. Also, remember that IT doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Take the time to understand the ultimate mission or goals your organization is supporting to help inform how you prioritize your time. People who can see the bigger picture and support it, plus work well with others, will be sought after for new roles,” advises Jon Check, Senior Director of Cyber Protection Solutions (CPS) at Raytheon Intelligence & Space.
It’s ok if you don’t feel like you’ve mastered everything yet – or ever. In fact, that feeling isn’t likely to go away, so embrace it and move on.
“You're going to have imposter syndrome a lot, largely because of how often everything changes. Don't be afraid to take on new challenges. Go slow and take advantage of the huge swath of free resources and communities the IT space offers. As you gain more and more experience, you'll be able to take more complex tasks, which will improve your prospects immensely,” says Mike Mosher, director of Technology at Cinch I.T., a managed IT services company.
As soon as you stop learning, your career in IT is over. Therefore, understand early on that learning is your core job responsibility. If you’re not willing to do the homework every day and continuously test your limits, then clearly IT is not where you should be.
“Learn how to learn. The industry changes constantly. The fundamentals will always apply, but you will always need to be learning about new features, policies, regulations, etc. Being able to quickly process new information and learn new products and ways of doing things is critical to success,” says Cinch I.T.’s Mosher.
Make sure you come onto the field with a strong working knowledge of the basic building blocks in IT, which are data management, networks, security, and applications. But don’t cling to any specific or line of tech just because it is familiar.
“With the ever-changing technology landscape, sometimes the area you decide to be devoted to can fade away. Keep your skillset diverse so you can pivot to something new. When you attach yourself to a specific technology that defines you, others will think that you are locked into that technology and not consider you for other opportunities,” says Gregg Ostrowski, Executive CTO at Cisco AppDynamics.
The 3 Ms are morals, meaning, and manners. These are the things that help people see you as trustworthy. The business and your colleagues need to know they can trust you to move the company ahead while guarding its flank. Being trustworthy is to your own advantage, too.
“For example, when I'm looking to make a hire or promote someone internally, I always pick someone who is trustworthy and that I enjoy working with over someone based purely on their degree of performance,” says Alex Iceman, founder and CEO of Genium, a premium software development and agile consulting firm.
Be careful to avoid career stagnation either from accepting dead-end jobs or because you’ve simply occupied that chair too long. You want to work at steadily and smartly progressing your career.
“You will probably outgrow many companies you start with, but never commit to a job with the intent of leaving it. If you do, you'll always be looking past where you are to the next foothold and won't really be committed,” says Chuck Brown, CEO of Infinity, managed IT services provider for SMBs in Savannah, Georgia.
“You have to get the day-to-day job done and done well, but always be thinking bigger. Ask yourself, what are the larger goals of the organization and how can you be part of those goals. If you keep your head down in the day-to-day, you'll miss huge opportunities,” Brown adds.
There was a time when bro mentality and lone wolf performance was the hallmark of tech culture. But today that kind of behavior will shoot down your IT career.
“If one of my sons wanted to go into IT, I’d tell him that, contrary to what some people believe, working effectively as part of a team is important in IT. Being a good collaborator and an excellent communicator are key; there are very few roles for individual contributors in IT today,” says Jay Upchurch, CIO at SAS, a global provider of analytics.
Not every opportunity leads to success so consider your options carefully. Decide where you want to go in your career and map a path to that role.
“Be mindful when the opportunity to move into management presents itself and carefully consider whether or not that path is right for you. Developers and engineers can quickly lose their technical abilities when moving into a management role,” says Haim Glickman, Senior Vice President Business Operations at Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS).
Make your moves with confidence and own them, whether they worked out or not. This steadfast and focused approach is the mark of a leader.
“Understand that you have to take ownership of your career – it’s yours to manage, no one else can do it for you. The expectation that future bosses will hold all the keys and help guide you to success will have varying degrees of returns if you don’t own it yourself,” says Darren Person, Global Chief Information Officer at The NPD Group, a global market research company.
“In every role you take, look at how that role is preparing you for the next opportunity, and how you can make sure you are the clear choice for when that next role becomes available,” Person adds.
While tech is the very backbone in everything about the modern world, the value is in its usefulness and not its cool factor. Don’t lose sight of that.
“An entry-level IT person can spend a lot of years in the trenches focusing only on the technologies themselves, but there will come a point in everyone’s career where business knowledge – and the willingness to speak both business language and technology language – makes the difference between a good IT pro and a great one,” says Greg Shields, Senior Director of IT Ops Skills at Pluralsight.
While tech is the very backbone in everything about the modern world, the value is in its usefulness and not its cool factor. Don’t lose sight of that.
“An entry-level IT person can spend a lot of years in the trenches focusing only on the technologies themselves, but there will come a point in everyone’s career where business knowledge – and the willingness to speak both business language and technology language – makes the difference between a good IT pro and a great one,” says Greg Shields, Senior Director of IT Ops Skills at Pluralsight.
IT has come a long way from the days when CIOs wrote the code that made the business work. Some of them even had a hand in hardware design. Back then, IT might as well have stood for Innovative Tech department.
For example, I remember Dave Barnes, who was the CIO at UPS in 2005, telling me how proud and happy he was with the company’s custom tech but most especially the newly minted DIAD 4, which most people, he said, knew as “the thing you sign to get your package.” The DIAD 4 was a custom piece of supply chain tracking tech that was chockful of UPS’ proprietary engineering. Although Barnes did say partners were also involved in its creation, most notably Symbol, which has since been assimilated by another company.
Since then, IT has changed as rapidly over the years as the technologies it depends upon. It’s rare to find a CIO today who spends most of the workday writing code and building proprietary tech. That’s neither a diss on the industry nor a surprise. After all, change is the only constant, and nothing constantly changes more than technology – other than the associated technology roles.
Today IT could conceivably be interpreted as the Integrated Technology department because it’s an API, low code, data connected, still lugging around legacy stuff, cloud-to-edge world.
Given that IT is evolving faster than ever, if seasoned IT professionals wanted to guide their own kids in how to prepare for a career in IT now, what would they say? Would they steer young people away from the field entirely? Or would they give them pointers on how to succeed in a career where the ground constantly shifts under your feet?
Let’s ask them…
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