I am hoping someone can help guide me a little. I am currently looking to have a change in career direction and I am considering moving into the it industry as IT is something that has always been of interest to me. I am looking at the following training path CompTIA A+ certificationMicrosoft Certified Desktop Support TechnicianMicrosoft Certified Service EngineerFollowing this path is this an area where people are still needed or is it saturated.

Those jobs were offshored years ago as are all programming jobs, the only jobs left in IT are in network and security and youll earn about as much as a plumber circa £30k.IT is a dead skill now, as per Engineering, Chemistry and Physics.Unles your the crazy bloke on the computeach ads where he chucks in his £28k a year postie job with final salary pension to do desktop support on £17k.Take my advice, IT is as dead as retail banking.

"Engineering, Chemistry and Physics" dead skills? Bo locks Nahleen. Engineering is not dying, there is a HUGE demand. The fact is no one wants to bust a gut to get an Engineering degree nowadays. As a result, companies are forced to outsource/recruit from overseas to complete work. IT is an overhead, you can do without it. Engineering on the other hand, you can't. Nearly everything you use an Engineer has touched it in some form. Chemists and Physicists are the same. Lack of determined UK students failing to go and study these subjects. There is a demand for Chemists and Physicists. msrk h if you feel IT is your light, then plough ahead and do it. If you have done your research, then you wouldn't be asking us.

IT is an overhead, you can do without it”Yeah, sure, organisations like LSE or the Air Traffic Control Service could turn their back on IT tomorrow. Fool.How naïve – the highly advanced business consultants would like IT as an industry to go away; it has completely undermined the term ‘consultant’. However, let’s consider how many of the FTSE 100 could live without IT and the benefits of automation, er, zero.But sure, avoid IT. Don't pursue a career in it. It will leave more IT management roles open to me. Here's to many more years of six fugure income.

Got to go with Pl on this one.Too many management consultants are dismissive of IT simply because they've got a degree in SPS or PPE, a distain for anything mathematical or technical, and no real business skills. Modern business cannot run without IT and the best ones turn their skill with technology into a major competitive advantage. Failure to realise this is a major blind spot.On the other hand, most of the physicists, chemists and engineers I know are management consultants because they tend to be pretty smart and the pay in these fields often sucks.EC

In my experience, those who go on and on about how "technology isn't important, it's the people and cultural issues that really matter" or "IT is there to serve the business" etc are generally those who don't understand it. In fact, it's not just IT they don't understand - generally, I find that they lack any kind of 'hard skills' or logical/scientific credentials whatsoever. Invariably they have a background in some liberal arts subject where "there is no right or wrong answer". The fact that they cannot bullsh1t their way out of a situation where there IS a right or wrong answer fills them with dread. As a result, they will avoid these 'right or wrong' areas at all costs, because it actually requires an understanding of the issues and a logical application of knowledge. Instead, they will go on about how important it is to "communicate" and will emphasise the "change management" and "people issues". Even on these kinds of things they are often wrong, but sadly they are usually experts at bullsh1tting so it is harder for more introverted, smarter people to defend their corner and show these masters of manipulation and guff just how wrong they sometimes (often?) are.

Quite good description Cynic, i could add that they are the people that could not get even a C in pure maths A level but have shown amazing skills writting essays about how nice it was the last trip to the park

Dear Cynic and FredI had a very nice trip to the park today, and that nice man bought me an ice cream. I thought his idea to wrestle behind the bike sheds a little odd, and what he wanted to show me on his laptop even odder, but then I got a flake in my ice cream so that's ok. Can't wait to go again when I'm done testing this software.

can't win an argument with an idiot, he will drop the discussion at his level and beat you out of experience

it's been dead for years. I'm scraping an existence on 150K pet year. Jeez if only I'd stuck it out with ACN ....Tips? (1) avoid MS space(2) UNIX is good(3) Databases are betterMost people in IT are a bit dim - so if you are bright and have good soft skills you will do well.

Yeah, "IT is there to serve the business", whoever made up that rubbish, eh Cynic? You might have had a point, but you just make yourself sound bitter about missing out on a more business-facing role.

It's interesting to see people's perceptions of IT - even more so when it's clear most people don't have a f***ing clue what they're talking about. Systems development i.e. making stuff is far more complicated than most people think and requires not only ability but a lot of intelligence. It's not something you can bluff.

I believe the only aspect of IT that is going through change is the selling of services, TATA et al are speaking to clients and pointing out that TATA Indians and IBM Indians are Indians. That the reason the UK houses are more expensive is all those highly paid 'soft skill' people and 'process mappers'.Removing these people means that TATA spend more on their IT skills and provide a better product for less. Further to this they pay their UK IT workers MORE.I*ts turning the IT Services world a bit topsy turvy right now as WIPRO et all are now winning UK Gov contracts as the Uk Gov is a bit skint.So by all means go into IT, but for the love of mike make sure you can deliver and have multiple skills. Avoid IT Services Sales unless you want to be redundant in about October.

Cynic, I agree with most of what you said - IT is not just to serve business, IT and technology are to add value to business and be respectively valued for that. Otherwise the same business will suffer soon or later. There is a lot of pain among the IT communities probably also because there is not always "right" and "wrong" (as mathematicians expect) and "people issues" do exist. IT needs leaders to promote the IT experts among the rest in te organizations the same way other processes are doing (part of the game ...). IT is a business proccess as any other and needs to be treated so.