Discussion on:

10 things you gotta have to succeed in IT

I retired from the industry many years ago and I was amused to read Jack's article as it seems that all those problems we had back then still exist. Ever-dissatisfied users, incredible frustration over system problems or legacy program glitches, urgent need to keep abreast of ever changing technologies etc etc. You still need 9 out of Jack's 10 "things". Yes I omitted the age thing, agreeing with the shouting in previous posts. I got in at 34 and retired at 60 still with an active brain (did part-time teaching to keep in tune). I''ll never forget a colleague who was almost hired by another company, until they realised he was (horror of horrors) 40. He was an excellent programmer and ticked all their boxes - except for their self-defeating age policy,

I 've been reading techrep for a couple of years now.Never thought I should write cause I felt i lived in a country were IT is perceived to be an all kinds of things ready to be plugged in AC/DC(greece).
I am 28 and already in the field for 10 years. Never had anything else to live by except IT. I simply can't refuse the fact that I agree with every one of you. Not only because the older more experienced ones still give me a hell of a hard time everyday I go to work but the younger ones still challenge me to teach them. I am in the exact middle of things (older bosses/younger IT) and can't help but noticing how both sides react. Yes its true that younger ones do give up early but give me a break how did you feel when you were younger. There is no such thing as equal opportunity once money gets involved or even "opportunity". The cheaper survives. No one gives a damn if you know Remote Desktop upside down.Young or old.It's money that counts in all fields.Bottom line is (speaking as youth) we should always try to doubt what olders are doing if we want to create a better place for the new ones to come. Never forget that. I never wear out quickly nowdays (ps:take a good look at the next sentence) I am experienced.

Both my manager and I are "older" IT workers. I challenge anyone to keep up with us and to have the same broad-based knowledge!

If your comments where directed toward race or sexual orientation no one would publish you again, and your statement about age is baseless and false.

I started my IT career when I retired from the military in 1996, long after your frame of the acceptable age, and I have been going strong ever since. It is not the old that have problems getting our of bed at two o???clock in the morning when a text message says a server is down, it is not the old that speed their work days on instant messenger when they should be doing the work their company pays them to do, and it is not the old that have the entitlement mentality that is ruining our country making us fall behind the rest of world in productivity.

Perhaps if the job required what some occupations in the military do, ruck 20 miles to targer through the night to do a dawn attract, except I knew solders that where 50 that did that.

You are full of crap, and it is you who needs a new career.

Nearly a complete failure here so far.

IT in general, favours the young for consumable positions, that is, the positions that consume lots of hours. Throw enough "monkeys" in a room and they will build a system. But they are flighty. They don't stick around to maintain the systems they build and don't see post implementation faults either. They jump ship at the slightest distraction for bigger and better assignments (larger trees with more green stuff). Many are simply not interested in a long career in one domain, where caretaking critical business knowledge is more important that fast following. They apply IT skills and do learn valuable business acumen but do not stay long enough to really leverage those skills in the one domain.
Speaking from 25 years experience in a quite tight domain of automation systems, knowledge and its application far outweighs fancy programming when the installation of new technology only sees light of day every 10-15 years. That would certainly be a long time between drinks for a young IT professional. Hence our current push for bypassing uni graduates and targetting mid-career professionals with big mortgages and lots of kids. These stable professionals are more likely to stick around and prvide long term value.

I don???t agree with what author has written. He may not know the real world. Most of the IT pros are of age range between 40-50 and They are real good. Age is not the criteria, it is the skill. Pls. stop publishing such articles.

Yes I agree, these articles are derogatory towards older employees, and may even put people off a career in IT, which otherwise may be well suited to them

But I suspect that you will not be in IT any more. At 57 I don't find it hard to work at all hours of the night and often send younger workers off to home because they are exhausted. Then again I am also a volunteer firefighter and notice that it is again the younger ones who think that they have all the energy but it is actually the older ones who are on the fireground at 3AM. Not having young children at home to look after also liberates the older workers.
If you at 40 think you are nearly past it then YOU possibly are - start looking for an alternate career (with less demands and responsibilities) right now. In the meantime don't insult those of us who can and will continue on regardless of physical age. I am fascintaed by technolggy and have no desire to remove myself from it, nor stop earning money from it while I can enjoy it.

Jack Wallen is an age discriminate moron and just one more of the useless who write blogs about things they know little about. I shall waste no more time reading his blogs.

I fit into the 'older' category of IT worker and am finding no troubles with age discrimination. Its actually quite the opposite. We are finding it hard to find good junior techs with the motivation and focus required to succeed. This has led to guys my age being in more demand than ever. So I cant complain!!

Also, the most valuable guys I have worked with are all 40+.
Experience, plus coming from a time when hard work was normal means these guys take long hours and complex problems in their stride. Just hope I can be at that level when I'm mid 40s!

Jack please! I have been at this since 1973. And guess what came across the desk last week. Old time IBM EBCDIC format data containing packed decimal. And of course none of the young pups had a clue. They wasted many hours Googling it before it landed on my desk. There is a reason for seasoned mentors. It is called institutional knowledge. And a skills exam I took not long ago placed me far higher than my young counter parts and I still can do the hours. Although I stopped the late night partying years ago.

Do not continue to discriminate based on age. Young in IT tends to mean dumb.

Hi all you good IT guys out there.I am going on 70 come July. I started in the electrical trade, moved on to Electronics then TCM got hold of me to do IBM outsourcing.Thats where the IT virus got hold of me and i've got the passion ever since. I am running a small business network at the moment [heaven help them} learning new tricks as i go and enjoying every moment of IT. God is good and age just a number!

I got my first job in IT at age 43, after staying home and raising my children for 20 years. I work in the public education sector and most of our IT people are over the age of 40--many much older. Although we may not have the energy of a 20-somthing, we more than make up for that with patience! I am told time and again by the end-users I assist that my unflappable calm is simply amazing. No amount of chaos can rattle me at my age, which make me more productive than a younger worker who is too stressed by the situation to accomplish anything. I do agree that the desire to learn is a key to success. If you aren't willing to keep up with the latest and greatest, you will fall behind.

with the age nonsense you spouted. In my fifties, I have more energy, drive and persistence than the twenty-somethings in my office, for example. Plus, I can spell ...

I've been in IT since 1960. My experience makes me better. Recently I recovered data for a client who had two younger people in for hours and couldn't find it!

You are right, at age 54 I'm ready to to take a nap by 3pm. Give me a break. And why not include married people with kids. After all how can you expect someone with family commitments to to put in such long hours?

Thanks for the chuckle this morning.

One thing that makes a difference IMHO is the type of environment that you work in. I have 25+ years in IT and can say that I was absolutley happiest when the company I worked for did not outsource anything and we did the work - regardless of all the pluses and minuses of the job itself. I worked as a contracted outsourced IT staff member, currently as a IT manager wholly dependent upon outsourced people and very early in my career as a person who did the IT work for the compnay that paid me. By far that was the best becuase everybody there had a stake in the success of the company. No lawyers, contracts and amendments. It was very peaceful by today's standards.

Once upon a time, one of my bosses had a sign on his desk:
Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.
Ha, now I understand....

If you are an American worker, no matter what age, corporate management will judge you overpaid when compared to the $2 an hour talent available in Bangalore and those come without benefits. Big plus. Outsourcing has killed off great sectors of the IT field in this country, all for "cheaper,faster,better" (one word) and if you fire all that IT DEADWOOD, shareholder value will skyrocket. Lies but American management believes it. So, move to India, live badly and the jobs will come to you.

"Cheaper, faster, better" should have been "cheaper, unable to understand, worse than before the call" ( 9 words)

Your comments are all true. Support from India generally is soooo poor it is not funny. Painful really. And the loss of productivity for the company is horrendous, but invisible.

Cheaper, cannot do it unless you plug into the "New Dehlia network", and God help you if you need an answer in a meeting. Can't..."Let me think about it" well at close as you can get to that in butchered english. Then they go back and call there buddies and get an answer... and 9 times out of 10, it's not right or will not fit all of the reqs. Fortunately I'm see a trend that Management Sees that the cost of this is double - because we have to fix everything. And don't get me started on the consulting firms. - OMG they are even worse!

As a country, we've outsourced hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs. But, it's not just India. The rest of Asia is getting a piece of the pie and getting bigger. I've heard from several recruiters that China is the next India. Mexico and several South American countries are getting their outsourcing gigs up and running. Even some of the old Eastern-Bloc countries are making a play for outsourced IT work...

I am not a racist or sexist. It seems to me that some people are out of touch with the reality. To be successful one needs to be lucky.
It is very important which technology to go with say Microsoft, UNIX, web etc.
Interviews are very important. These days IT is dominated by Chinese and Indians, and 99% they give jobs to their people.
Recently I was invited to an interview by the name of Richard. I was expecting Anglo-Saxon white man, but it was an Asian! I had all qualifications, experience ??? but not the right skin or country of origin!
Let us publicly speak about the real world.

The age thing was of course completely nonsense. But if I read this dude's bio correctly, he's in his early 30s and is a technical writer. I too was once a technical writer. While a good tech writer is hard to find, this position in no way qualifies one to be an expert on the IT field itself. You're outside looking in. It's like a nurse writing about the experience of being a doctor.

Btw, I'm 58 and have been in the IT biz for 15 years, after a 25-year military career. I'm not quite ready to be put out to pasture, yet.

Ok, you did get 9 out of 10, but age is a great asset. I have been doing technology for 47 years and run rings around the youngsters in the technology company that I own. In fact, I run two shifts of staff and I work both shifts personally. Give it a few years and your opinion on age will change as you finally gain real wisdom!

Jack,

Who asked you to troll this one through the forum? Because this sure seems inflammatory. When I first read it, I thought: "Yeah, he's right. I've not picked up a new gig in a few years for that "age" reason (Learned about it through a friend on the inside, and I'm only 46. Been doing this for about 30 yrs though.)". Just cheaper to hire the young guy. I get it....

Then, before I decided to respond to the obvious flame-bait, I read the current responses. Lo, and behold, you got the desired effect. And don't tell me that this wasn't the intent.

Reminds me of that post somewhere that implied Corp IT staff were "minor leaguers", but Consultants were "PROS". Now THAT one, I left alone. Way too much emotion behind that one! (Not mine, I do have that thick-skin thing and am getting wise enough to recognize flame-bait when I see it.)

I commend you guys here at TR and ZDNet for the loss of interest in discussing matters technical, and resorting to trolling for arguments. Please tell me, when you selected the order of the items in the list, did you already expect to prove a point?

Allow me:

1) Thick Skin - In a nutshell, what follows is going to test that "Thick Skin", aka "No Offense intended, but..."

2) Persistence - Are you brave enough to read all of this? Or will you be p***ed by my next statement?

3) Youth - The ultimate in flame bait, guaranteed to get the readers uptight, and my eyecount up.

(Breaking the fourth wall here: I imagine most readers of TR - ARE - more mature, seasoned IT types.)

I'll stop there, but if you read the rest of the list, you can add your own.

4) Patience
5) Skills
6) Ability to Improvise
7) Sense of PR
8) Connections
9) Desire to learn
10) Passion (Oh yeah! We got the Passions up. Read the replies.)

It becomes more difficult each day to find good discussion forums. But the search goes on. If little else, at least I'm assured of one good laugh daily here.

M.

So at age 45 you what? Retire on 1/2 a 401k? Start you own IT firm? Please, IT has no age limit. You are soooo wrong on this. I know some retired or near-retired IT people that put some 30 somethings to shame. Plus most colleges now are tuning out idiots that your company has to train! The age thing is a HUGE misconception promoted by aging IT management that don't want to deal with smart, mature talent and instead want ignorant "moldable" young slave admierers around them. Yechh.

Given the reaction to your comments Jack, I would like to wish you all the best in your search for a new career.. Maybe a careen in comic book writing would more suit your talents. In that genre fantasy is highly prized.

An observation: Most of the responses here seem to be by folks lacking in item number 1. Where's all the discussion about the other points?

Item 10: Totally agree, without passion for the implementation and support of technology, I would have ditched this field years ago. I love implementing improvements and improving implementations of technology.

You may as well become a MD. You'll be doing something that has meaning and make more than $38,000 a year.

Just sayin'.

So maybe I'm biased, but I think #3:Youth is Mutually Exclusive of #4:Patience and #5:Skills. I don't think you can get Patience and Skills overnight. It takes time.

It's a bitter pill to swallow when they told me back in the 80's - "Get into computers - You'll always have a job" and I've been unemployed for a year now.

I CANNOT believe in this day and age someone would actually practice AGE DISCRIMINATION so openly and flagrantly!!! This guy would NEVER be hired by ANY corporation that at all values the fact of not wishing to be sued for employing someone who ACTUALLY PROMOTES AGE DISCRIMINATION!!!

His article shows just how IMMATURE AND IGNORANT he is about anyone who has been in the IT field for any length of time. I can do more from home, at a restaurant, in fact, ANYWHERE and it doesn't tire me or anyone else my age out.

Methinks Mr. Jack Wallen needs to grow up and think twice about EVER writing anything of a public nature again.

I am also flabbergasted and unsure how TechRepublic could EVER let any of this drivel ever be associated with their organization. Does the publishing of this article mean that TechRepublic actually endorses the immature and incorrect conclusions of this illiterate and immature author?

I think a PUBLIC APOLOGY by the author as well as a statement from TechRepublic is needed here. Where is Toni Bowers? WHO was the editor that allowed this drivel to ever be published? Doesn???t TechRepublic have any kind of editorial prerogative?

You give ten things an IT pro needs. What a real success IT pro needs is two tricks. If you are good at technical issues - whatever the job entails, that is only one trick. Match that with good communication skills (can communicate with IT people, managers, end users), and you go from being just like anyone else, to someone who has something valuable to add to the organization.

......you'll be fine. If you're missing 2-3 of the others, then yeah, you better have youth cause you gonna be up late nites gaining the experience that age has. I am thankful cause at 53 I am still truckin'. I moved into IT full time about 11 yrs ago (I was "computer technology" oilfield trash for 21 yrs before that, you want to talk about youth as a requirement, try that one). In corporate USA I clawed my way to IT Mgt before dumping out (my choice) due to the politics (think knives in my back). Consulted for a year or so and then took a position (from one of my contracts) with a small, but successful, family owned and focused business. Note: I will never be CIO or CTO, but then still I like to actually touch the technology (and not in a duisturbing way ya perverts...)

A passion for the possibilities presented by technology combined with the years of experience from the school of "Hard Knocks" sounds like the recipe for a great IT person. When the operational security and data integrity of an entire organization is hanging in the balance you had better have someone who always "plans for the worst and forever has an alternate plan in place. In a time of panic you can't afford to be bankrupt of plans, preparation or nerves-of-steel. All those come together in their strongest form in "some" of the older IT staff. When you can find one, use them to teach others If they are prepared to learn and managers have the courage to manage the skills training of their staff.
Unfortunately, managers generally feel threatened by the experience and knowledge of older staff, when instead they should be happy to have that knowledge and experience available.
"Joy-Stick-Jockeys" with the reboot/restart mentality are a danger until they are paired with older, more experienced workers.

You need to be able to function while living in fear.

Brush up on your Hindi. Although you may not have even heard of it, India's second official language is English.

Jack,
I really enjoyed reading your article. All the whiners on here giving you flak about the age comments are either haters or super egomaniacs who will probably implode from all the stress built up in their old bodies. I believe you hit the nail head on stating the younger the age the better the ability to work the hours on a continued basis. There's nothing wrong with that. Anyone can work long hours however the human body performs better at a younger age.
Every point you made was well thought and written. I've worked in the IT field now for over 10 years and I love what I do and it is time consuming, continued learning, demanding, and often stressful job. Patience is key to success in this field. If you don't have it, you shouldn't be working in IT. You also have to wear many hats including, helpdesk, desktop, security, and networking as well as server and DB administration and Telco. It's more than just having an MSCE certificate. Thank you for writing this article.

Dittobot alert.

And how are you supposed to get the hats if you don't have a few years on you...give me a break.

I have been in IT for over 20 yrs and I am enjoying the challenge that the discipline brings. I am now 48 yrs old and I have noticed that the younger generation do process technology faster, but with many mistakes and not a deep understanding of IT. What I know now, I would not trade it for the opportunity to be 20 again. I have grown with age and so will the youth, if they can sustain.

1. My ex-husband, soon to be 60, is DESPERATELY hung onto by his company, because he is one of the FEW PEOPLE THEY HAVE who STILL KNOWS IBM Assembly Language (and, YES, there are BANKING and FINANCIAL systems that are still based on IBM Assembler - more than you would think). The younger people eschew COBOL, etc - they only know the "sexier" languages such as C, C++, Java, etc, etc
2. This 1958 Baby (yah, do the math) - just went through the THIRD data center move in 12 years, and put in 70-80 hour weeks because the OUTSOURCE COMPANY FROM INDIA had NO CLUE, MOSTLY, about our servers, operating systems, etc, etc. Even now, when I and one other DBA are left, we STILL have to do "operational DBA" work (when someone figures what this actually means - let me know) - keeping systems up and running, bailing out Outsourcer Butt. The outsource company has many, many bright young people working for lower wages, but when they DO NOT have the LATEST operating systems, applications, databases, etc - they are thrown for a loop - in the REAL world, you have companies STILL running Windows NT4, SQL Server 2000, Oracle7 and Oracle8 - because end-users either lack the $$$$ and/or the will for upgrades - and, many times, it is the Old, Tired, Decrepit People Who Still Know How To Keep Them Running, Thank You Very Much......