Why a career in IT is quite unique

Why am I blogging?

Few reasons; firstly, I think I have some ideas and opinions that I want to express. Secondly, as I moved forward in my career I found out things that I wish I had known earlier, so I am hoping someone will benefit from those ideas and thirdly, I love writing.

In this series I will talk about IT careers and particularly about mid-career, which is in the IT world might mean having 4-10 years of experience. Why IT and why this is relevant? Many reasons

1. The fact that I am an  IT professional myself and I can claim I have gained some experience in this domain over the years. 
2. IT is quite unique in terms of professional experience. Every few months there is a new hot topic to learn and be an expert in and the very same topic might be the norm later (e.g. new JavaScript frameworks). This means you can be very senior in terms of knowledge after a few months of learning about a topic. This unique feature of innovation might take years in other industries (e.g. when was the last update to how you do tax or write a financial statement?).
3. The need for IT is not expected to go down anytime soon, on the contrary we can’t get enough people to work in a few areas (e.g. security).
4. This is a very fast paced industry where career progression might happen over a few years compared to other industries where you need decades to reach the same level of tenure (e.g. compare a team lead in a factory to a software team lead).

Now that we have some high level agreement on what I am going to discuss, let’s talk about the intended audience for my thoughts. It is mainly all IT graduates or anyone who is looking to find a job in the IT domain. I will take a deep dive into some career options including being a developer, team leader, business analyst, technical architect, ...etc. and try to highlight what each role should be doing and its importance in the software development life cycle. Hope you find value and insights in this.