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Software development is not an easy gig, either: a) those of us who are good at it have spent years and years at it b)the field keeps evolving at a rapid pace. Yesterday, it was Java and XML and SQL. Today, it's Ruby, cloud, and Docker. It's a pain in the ass to keep up unless you are genuinely interested, or carefully find an evergreen niche, or a gig at Google which will compensate for not staying sharp. c) remote jobs are on the increase. I am the happy employer of an IT person in India who wants a non-traditional job (he wants to work only half a day), but has 10+ years of experience, is fairly intelligent (has a mathematical conjecture to his name), has worked in Lisp, has a degree in AI, and works for $833 per month. All the brouhaha about the H-1B visa is direly misplaced; the tournament is on the other court : outsourcing via remote employment. There are a ridiculous number of job sites that advertise remote jobs, and a good number of employers are able to get themselves to trust remote employees enough to reap the cost benefits. In IT, you compete with the world, literally. In traditional banking and other "locale specific" / seat-warmer-is-a-must jobs, you probably only compete with the rest of the folks in your city. d) The barriers to entry to a programming job are falling every single day. Previously, having a degree was a must. Now, you could be a dropout with great self-taught Ruby on Rails skills, and you're in. This is a positive IMHO; people in programming are much more ready to break convention and I'm proud to be part of such an industry. I have tried to help a couple of waiters and electronics salesmen transition to a programming career, too. But it means that the field is that much more competitive, too. Sorry to sound negative; I really don't want to encourage you to get into this field unless you are genuinely passionate about it. |