# <center>"Maintain your technical abilities current and discover the art of professional consulting too. You will most likely be required both kinds of knowledge to achieve success within your professional IT professions."</center>
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A number of years ago, I had been performing a research with respect to about three colleges in which I had been asked to research what computer programming courses have been being educated at that universities compared to what programming languages students had been really needing to find out to acquire work once they actually rejoined the labor force.
My research during those times led me to the breakthrough that the technical colleges had been performing a far greater work of staying technically present and relevant course wise compared to the universities were doing. During those times, it got quite a bit much more time to construct curriculums for college students than it does nowadays and getting in-depth courses online was pretty much an impossibility – it needed to be completed in classroom classes. So when a professor had constructed a working curriculum for his pupils, he tended to utilize it for several years almost without a modification.
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I especially remember while evealuating one aged professor at one of the universities I was working at stating to me right after I had contronted him about the truth that he was still supplying a course on a 3GL programming language (Cobol) tha nobody was hiring anymore, the entire world having relovated forward to a lot more technically present 4GL and above languages like C, C+, C++, Forte, SQL as well as others then being utilized; who said to me that he was “eduating pupils the way to learn – not ways to get careers employing a particular computer language so the language being educated within the class was insignificant.”
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This phrase remained with me all through that day as well as in an eerie coincidence later on that same afternoon, I happened to take a taxi cab drive with a driver who as it appears, had taken for years of university classes in the area of Information Technology and programming and this is among the instructors he had taken a course from. I inquired him why he was driving a taxi and he told me nearly weeping at the memory of it, that to attempt to create a much better life for his loved ones, (he had a wife and two young children); he had lent hugely and invested every little thing he was required to get his IT based degree from university in the hopes of producing a better income as soon as he had his IT diploma.
After getting it, he discovered he could not look for a work with his degree simply because what he had invested his cash learning had been programming languages which were fundamentally outdated; firms had been no more employed for them. They were actually, laying individuals off who had exactly the same abilities he had just learned as well as the companies were replacing current employees with more technically present sources so that they could develop systems which were a lot more technically present, much more scalable, effective, versatile and finally, a lot more profitable.
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I have been in the IT consulting career for more than a decade and the truth is that we as consultants have almost always been introduced to systems delivery circumstances simply because we had been a lot more technically present and well-informed compared to the inner employee's corporations had aboard. Instead of investing the cash in their own internal personnel to bring them to technical currency, I have frequently viewed where they would employ consultants to construct the new systems needed since they were in a rush to restore company competition; as well as their present employees, were left to keep the old systems while the new has been being constructed. When the new systems had been designed to substitute the old:
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The consultants used left because they were too expensive to keep around longer; and,
The existing staff was let go and new, more technically current staff were brought in to replace them.
This pattern in the IT community repeats itself again and again, to this day. Not everywhere, granted, however, it appears enough occasions to enable you to check this out as a genuine pattern of companies. Actually, knowing this pattern exists is one thing that expert consultants use as part of their sales pitches with companies to get consulting and IT delivery projects. “Are your sales reducing? Our new systems could help you get back your competition in the industry” – is a quote frequently listened to.
So the harsh truth concerning the IT consulting career and about IT generally as it pertains to IT employees within corporations, it really is my experience that no place in this particular job is there and real career security. Corporate systems possess a “Lifespan” plus they rotated out just like the IT staff supporting them do unless of course they are internal “Superstars” and once the consultants come in to construct the brand new systems, they are able to join the new development groups.
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My main point here to this article up to this point is that fact that in order to keep getting compensated, you totally need to always keep technically current being an IT professional which is on you only to notice that you keep getting the training and experience in present languages, infrastructure technologies, advancement conditions, SDK’s, and so on, and associated systems execution and implementation techniques.
Once you have learned the languages via your courses, what should you do with them? How do you make use of your new skills to generate money? Well, you are able to search for a work and obtain on the employee wagon when this occurs with a firm and you could ride the job as long as you are able to stay technically currently or “perceived” to be technically current by that corporate administration and HR squads.
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Your second choice is to learn the art of professional consulting so that you can make use of the abilities and wisdom you posess to self and land a really lucrative consulting engagements. Be aware that you could make a much more cash being an expert consultant if you remain hectic at it and technology is evolving so swiftly out there, that there is lots of work available if you are technically present. You need to simply learn how to to get the job and the way to safeguard oneself economically while discussing the terms of your employment.
In conclusion, maintain your technical abilities current and discover the art of professional consulting too. You will most likely be required both kinds of knowledge to achieve success within your professional IT professions.
References:
http://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/technology/blog/is-computer-programming-hard/
https://www.brazen.com/blog/archive/career-growth/want-to-become-a-programmer-the-truth-behind-10-common-myths/
http://www.flare.com/tv-movies/9-5-what-its-like-to-be-a-computer-programmer/