Published January 29th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Lifetime Career in IT
MSN Careers (via slashdot) talks about a lifetime career in IT, asking…
Can anyone imagine retiring from a 30 or 40-year career in IT at age 65?
Its an interesting question. I guess my first answer would be that I hope to be able to afford to retire well before 65. I’ve been working in IT for 8 years now. If I retire at 55 (not 65), I’ll spend another 27 years in this industry.
In the almost 10 years since I started my IT training I’ve seen an almost total change in the industry, moving from character based DOS systems, to a graphical Windows based systems, and the rise of the Internet. Its fair to expect that the next 10 years will deliver the same or greater level of change (changing to what? I don’t know).
In the 27 years I have remaining I guess I can expect to see the total change cycle repeated another 3 times. Three times over I get to forget everything I once knew and learn all over again. Thats something that I find harder to do these days. The challenge, I guess, is to maintain your skills, so that you don’t become outdated and unemployable. The internet is a boon in that department, but you’ve somehow got to make time to work with the new stuff you’re trying to stay current on.
I don’t have the answer. Maybe in 30 years I might (assuming my eyesight hasn’t completely failed me). It must be possible, because theres a few of the old heads still floating around doing good work like Dave Winner, and Mitch Kapor, etc, or maybe they’re just a minority.