I wanted to do some sort of survey. If you're an IT worker that started out in the mid 90s when everything was in the beginning stages, do you still enjoy what you do? I've been a network engineer for over 27 years with other lower-level IT jobs before that as I began my career n 94. Are you getting weary having to deal with not just constant cyber threats, but the everyday grind of it all? I'm eligible to retire now but my plan is to give it another 5 years. I was just wondering how many are in my boat ready to hang it up and how many still enjoy geeking out over it all.
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Any first generation IT workers here?
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Last: 6 mo ago by LOYAL AG
I'm right there with you. When I started with my company 20 years ago there was pride in operational excellence and a fantastic familial culture that made all of the effort satisfying.
About 10 years ago we shifted to an attitude of "good enough" and began outsourcing everything. Major outages are now an everyday occurrence and since managed service providers in India could critically think their way out of a paper bag the ****storms get tossed back to the few US based folks we still have to deal with it.
The cyber stuff is also fatiguing. We moved to a zero trust model so now doing anything besides writing emails takes for-freaking-ever. What jump server do I have to log into to get to the right tools I need?
It's a mess. I am five years from retirement eligibility (50 now) and am holding on for dear life as they scrape more and more US folks out if our workforce.
I am burned out and absolutely hate tech now.
About 10 years ago we shifted to an attitude of "good enough" and began outsourcing everything. Major outages are now an everyday occurrence and since managed service providers in India could critically think their way out of a paper bag the ****storms get tossed back to the few US based folks we still have to deal with it.
The cyber stuff is also fatiguing. We moved to a zero trust model so now doing anything besides writing emails takes for-freaking-ever. What jump server do I have to log into to get to the right tools I need?
It's a mess. I am five years from retirement eligibility (50 now) and am holding on for dear life as they scrape more and more US folks out if our workforce.
I am burned out and absolutely hate tech now.
Late 90s start here - started working just in time for the dot com crash.
Have transitioned to cyber over the past decade. Kind of feel like I am drowning and can never learn enough to keep up with all the tech and adversaries. Zero trust, AI, DLP, privacy laws....just so much crap piling on now on top of the usual firewall, EDR, and IAM/email protection from the past (which hasn't gone away).
I am not at retirement age - but I do look forward to it. Wife is in software dev - she is just trying to run out the clock before AI completely takes over. Both of us wonder if we'll ever find another job if we lose our current ones.
Have transitioned to cyber over the past decade. Kind of feel like I am drowning and can never learn enough to keep up with all the tech and adversaries. Zero trust, AI, DLP, privacy laws....just so much crap piling on now on top of the usual firewall, EDR, and IAM/email protection from the past (which hasn't gone away).
I am not at retirement age - but I do look forward to it. Wife is in software dev - she is just trying to run out the clock before AI completely takes over. Both of us wonder if we'll ever find another job if we lose our current ones.
Agree with pretty much everything said here. IT used to be fun but now it sucks and I always advise young people to find a different career path. Totally agree with then crap coming out of India. Most of those buffoons lack any critical thinking skills and cause more issues than they fix.
I'm class of 01 and a software developer. It's frankly never been my passion, I've just always been good at math and logic and it was the hot thing to get into at the time. I like problem solving but other than that don't love it. I've spent a lot of time wishing I could go back and change majors.
We've had a big push to AI recently at work. I work on a windows program (C# and XAML) and have recently switched to help with the web product equivalent (java front end, C# back end). This is my first time working on that product and I have very little java experience. One of my first tasks was from the security team that wanted us to add validation on the API. We have validation on the UI, but not on the corresponding API side, so conceivably people could go straight against the API with unvalidated data.
I was able to use Claude Code to:
- Scrap the UI and identify how validations work in our system
- Go through each section of the UI and produce a document for each outlining the validations
- Use the documents and a simple example to add validators to ServiceStack for all the validations
- Add about 200 unit tests on the API for the new validations
- Validations include: required fields, max length on fields, datetime formatting, data types (string/int/number/datetime)
Claude Code wrote 95% of the code. It was a good lesson that AI is awesome at some things, but also a lesson that it all comes down to who is driving it. I think my job will change for sure, but they will still need me and expertise, I'll just be "coding" using a different kind of tool.
We've had a big push to AI recently at work. I work on a windows program (C# and XAML) and have recently switched to help with the web product equivalent (java front end, C# back end). This is my first time working on that product and I have very little java experience. One of my first tasks was from the security team that wanted us to add validation on the API. We have validation on the UI, but not on the corresponding API side, so conceivably people could go straight against the API with unvalidated data.
I was able to use Claude Code to:
- Scrap the UI and identify how validations work in our system
- Go through each section of the UI and produce a document for each outlining the validations
- Use the documents and a simple example to add validators to ServiceStack for all the validations
- Add about 200 unit tests on the API for the new validations
- Validations include: required fields, max length on fields, datetime formatting, data types (string/int/number/datetime)
Claude Code wrote 95% of the code. It was a good lesson that AI is awesome at some things, but also a lesson that it all comes down to who is driving it. I think my job will change for sure, but they will still need me and expertise, I'll just be "coding" using a different kind of tool.
Kind of?
Product designer here, but I started as a graphic/visual designer designing and building everything from logos and print materials to websites, then shifted to work as a marketing designer for a tech company and took an interest in product design.
Took some courses, taught myself, and winged it on a few freelance projects till I got good enough to get a job, now 6 years in on my product design journey and am a senior product designer at a smallish tech company (300 people) that's been around for quite a while but are undergoing a big shift from traditionally installed software to a SaaS model.
Way better money than graphic design if nothing else, and I enjoy the focus on problem solving.
Product designer here, but I started as a graphic/visual designer designing and building everything from logos and print materials to websites, then shifted to work as a marketing designer for a tech company and took an interest in product design.
Took some courses, taught myself, and winged it on a few freelance projects till I got good enough to get a job, now 6 years in on my product design journey and am a senior product designer at a smallish tech company (300 people) that's been around for quite a while but are undergoing a big shift from traditionally installed software to a SaaS model.
Way better money than graphic design if nothing else, and I enjoy the focus on problem solving.
Can't star this enough.The Sun said:
I'm right there with you. When I started with my company 20 years ago there was pride in operational excellence and a fantastic familial culture that made all of the effort satisfying.
About 10 years ago we shifted to an attitude of "good enough" and began outsourcing everything. Major outages are now an everyday occurrence and since managed service providers in India could critically think their way out of a paper bag the ****storms get tossed back to the few US based folks we still have to deal with it.
The cyber stuff is also fatiguing. We moved to a zero trust model so now doing anything besides writing emails takes for-freaking-ever. What jump server do I have to log into to get to the right tools I need?
It's a mess. I am five years from retirement eligibility (50 now) and am holding on for dear life as they scrape more and more US folks out if our workforce.
I am burned out and absolutely hate tech now.
Class of '00 here. Worked as an SAP consultant out of school and 25 years later still work with SAP, now as a system architect (20+ years with my current company). I like it as much as I ever did. Lots of large implementation projects which are enjoyable to me. 10-ish years from ability to retire comfortably.
So first generation IT started in the nineties? That will come as a shock to the people who worked IT in the seventies. Carry on, though.
No one was connected in the 70s. Yes, the 90s is when IT really began to shape the way the world does business and the support that had to come along with it.G Martin 87 said:
So first generation IT started in the nineties? That will come as a shock to the people who worked IT in the seventies. Carry on, though.
Same. Sun said it well. It's just not fun anymore though I still do like keeping up with the latest in personal cybersecurity habits and data breach news. I like teaching and advising the everyday consumer user how to better protect themselves with things like password managers, MFA, etc.mickeyrig06sq3 said:Can't star this enough.The Sun said:
I'm right there with you. When I started with my company 20 years ago there was pride in operational excellence and a fantastic familial culture that made all of the effort satisfying.
About 10 years ago we shifted to an attitude of "good enough" and began outsourcing everything. Major outages are now an everyday occurrence and since managed service providers in India could critically think their way out of a paper bag the ****storms get tossed back to the few US based folks we still have to deal with it.
The cyber stuff is also fatiguing. We moved to a zero trust model so now doing anything besides writing emails takes for-freaking-ever. What jump server do I have to log into to get to the right tools I need?
It's a mess. I am five years from retirement eligibility (50 now) and am holding on for dear life as they scrape more and more US folks out if our workforce.
I am burned out and absolutely hate tech now.
saw em off said:No one was connected in the 70s. Yes, the 90s is when IT really began to shape the way the world does business and the support that had to come along with it.G Martin 87 said:
So first generation IT started in the nineties? That will come as a shock to the people who worked IT in the seventies. Carry on, though.
A quibble but I would just use a different name. Maybe you should use something like Internet Era or something.
90s isn't first generation. My 82 year old Dad would probably have something to say about as one of the first corporate IT people in the early 70s who started his career on punch cards.
Not sure what version of history you are operating under. Arpanet was developed in the sixties and even our cohorts to the west were connected to "the net" by 72. I lived through the conversion (flag day) to TCP/IP in 83 and even the Morris worm in 88. Lots of things connected before the 90s by Arpanet & NSFnet. The fact that al gore pushed to rename existing networks of networks as the "internet" does not define my timeline. Unfortunately the pranks of the early net years have become malicious over the years in my opinion due to human nature decline and how interconnected business is to networks. Maybe the physically separate networks of old were not such a bad thing. To me the microcomputer revolution starting in the mid 70's shaped what we have today and made the network a required thing.
So been dealing with computers, software & hardware development, networking since the late 70's and still do today. Yes VC & private equity have pushed the good enough to not be sued out of business development mentality in pursuit to the last cent of profit. I don't like it but not much I can do about it at my age. But I still build embedded systems that are deployed and connected world wide. And likely will continue until the day of my appointment with the undertaker.
So been dealing with computers, software & hardware development, networking since the late 70's and still do today. Yes VC & private equity have pushed the good enough to not be sued out of business development mentality in pursuit to the last cent of profit. I don't like it but not much I can do about it at my age. But I still build embedded systems that are deployed and connected world wide. And likely will continue until the day of my appointment with the undertaker.
worked IT in the 90s and I felt late to the party. There were old folks in thier late 30s that had been using unix since the 80s
My first computer use was decsystem 10 in 74 and unix v6 in 75. Vax in 78, already had my cosmic elf, altair 8800 and swtpc 6800 by 80.
But i live below the user, device drivers, boot environments and kernels my speciality. Machines much more consistent than users.
But i live below the user, device drivers, boot environments and kernels my speciality. Machines much more consistent than users.
This was at one of the many mom and pop ISPs that sprang up almost as quickly as they went under. specializing in dial up or ISDN, a dual cpu pentium pro running freebsd ran the show with a full T1 data link.
as a kid, reading newsgroups on a sparc solaris box was my babysitter when dad drug me to work on weekends, and somehow that was enough qualification to sysadmin
This thread reminds me. Anyone who hasnt read Cliff Stoll's ****oos Egg should pick it up
as a kid, reading newsgroups on a sparc solaris box was my babysitter when dad drug me to work on weekends, and somehow that was enough qualification to sysadmin
This thread reminds me. Anyone who hasnt read Cliff Stoll's ****oos Egg should pick it up
I've been a IT consultant/software developer since the 90s. I still LOVE what I do, I can still get lost in a coding solution for 14-15 hours. Now is a crazy time to be a developer... it is moving so fast with AI. But I'm accepting it and welcoming it, it is a wild, fun ride to see how much it is changing what I do. I can see the end of the road as a pure developer coming and will probably have to move back into consulting. But I have learned so much about the application of AI to being a developer and the solutions that I provide, that I know I will have a place at the table.
****oo's Egg should be required reading for all IT and anyone interested in the history of cybersecurity. Absolutely fascinating true story.
I sell cyber security software. Have been in some sort of software sales since 1998. I am completely burnt out and over it, however I cannot change and make anywhere near this kind of money (also have 3 kids, one about to start college). So, I'm in it for the long haul.
I have been a software engineer since the early 90s, Class of 89. There were guys that had been developing since the 70s. I learned a lot from them. I wouldn't consider the time as when I started as "first-generation" but rather an evolutionary time that saw a gradual progression from old mainframe-based solutions to Windows-based solutions and the early days of internet programming.
My experience has tended toward Windows development although I do have 3 years doing COBOL on the mainframe. Visual Basic, Foxpro, Delphi, Java, C++, C#. More recently have added Blazor, Angular, and React to the toolbox. And lots of database work, going back to DOS- based platforms like dBase and Paradox, to SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and the ERMs that are prevalent these days. More recently I have been with a consulting firm using many of these technologies on cloud platforms, AWS, Azure, and Google.
But AI is changing how I work. It is an accelerator to shorter dev cycles. While I still do my own work, I use AI through either ChatGPT or CursorAI to get me past blockers in my daily work (when I haven't figured something out and my progress is delayed, for instance). I have spent the last year learning as much as I can about AI. Still have a ways to go to get to where I want to be. Then in 7 years, I will call it a career.
My experience has tended toward Windows development although I do have 3 years doing COBOL on the mainframe. Visual Basic, Foxpro, Delphi, Java, C++, C#. More recently have added Blazor, Angular, and React to the toolbox. And lots of database work, going back to DOS- based platforms like dBase and Paradox, to SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and the ERMs that are prevalent these days. More recently I have been with a consulting firm using many of these technologies on cloud platforms, AWS, Azure, and Google.
But AI is changing how I work. It is an accelerator to shorter dev cycles. While I still do my own work, I use AI through either ChatGPT or CursorAI to get me past blockers in my daily work (when I haven't figured something out and my progress is delayed, for instance). I have spent the last year learning as much as I can about AI. Still have a ways to go to get to where I want to be. Then in 7 years, I will call it a career.
52 and sick of it. Ready to do something else.
YouBet said:saw em off said:No one was connected in the 70s. Yes, the 90s is when IT really began to shape the way the world does business and the support that had to come along with it.G Martin 87 said:
So first generation IT started in the nineties? That will come as a shock to the people who worked IT in the seventies. Carry on, though.
A quibble but I would just use a different name. Maybe you should use something like Internet Era or something.
90s isn't first generation. My 82 year old Dad would probably have something to say about as one of the first corporate IT people in the early 70s who started his career on punch cards.
90s def is not 1st generation IT but I understand the thought. My 90 year old dad was working with connected banks, computersand modems before I was born and I am no youngster. Hell I was on the old chat group internet in the 80s. 90s definitely made it trendy and glamorous though.
A few thoughts from a non-IT person. If your career started in the 90's you're around 50 now and that's a common time to reach burnout in general. I'm a fractional CFO and have been for 13 years. I hit that same wall last year and I love what I do. Nothing more satisfying for me than seeing a client's business growing at warp speed, helping them figure out why and how to manage that growth successfully.
It's also a time when we get tired of change in general and want things to settle down. Meanwhile we live in a period of rapid change and the pace is only increasing.
Lastly if you're a man it's a time when you're starting to feel the impact of your body producing less testosterone. I'm literally sitting in a lab waiting for bloodwork so I can schedule my next pellet insertion. I did my first four months ago and it made a massive difference in my energy level, focus and stamina along with a few other things.
Anyway, just something to consider. It may not be IT or your passion for it.
It's also a time when we get tired of change in general and want things to settle down. Meanwhile we live in a period of rapid change and the pace is only increasing.
Lastly if you're a man it's a time when you're starting to feel the impact of your body producing less testosterone. I'm literally sitting in a lab waiting for bloodwork so I can schedule my next pellet insertion. I did my first four months ago and it made a massive difference in my energy level, focus and stamina along with a few other things.
Anyway, just something to consider. It may not be IT or your passion for it.
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