[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by FiestaST

skewed towards low cost of living locations of US

That is the reality. More new jobs are coming up on low cost locations like salt lake city / phoenix / baltimore / detroit .

Originally Posted by FiestaST

same role on internal transfer and the difference in salaries and benefits is astounding.

In some extreme cases, the bonus paid out in the US is more than a year's CTC sometimes.

That is the point. Same role is being done in India , and saves ton of money. That is even after paying 40 - 60 lakh (average cost for a team across various levels).

[catchjyoti]

Originally Posted by clevermax

I humbly disagree with this viewpoint.

The young programmers start coding in interpreted languages like python or in languages like C# or Java, which has their run time, memory management, and all such safety valves. What I have seen is, they don't care about performance or memory usage, or being 'frugal' on the usage of system resources to achieve something - this is when you compare them to those who grew up coding in C or C++.

I agree to the above sentiment. I am in IT Services industry and most of the newcomers we get nowadays lack the core software engineering skills that were common a decade or two back. The newer languages have freed them from managing memory and other attributes. This has resulted in more "loose" programming. I guess the fall in memory, storage and network cost have also meant that programmers need not look at this memory management or calls to the database factors that closely.

My first job was to code in C using Borland C++ editor where the programs had to run in Windows CE machines. Man - did we have to be super diligent in managing active variable usage! Every bit counted

[subraiyr]

Originally Posted by udaydesai

Hi,
I have one question,
I am from oil and gas industry and have 20 years of experience in project management, what are my chances of getting into IT industry.
Also my age is around 49

If I have to upskill, should I do it in data science?

Regards
Uday

I would suggest you to focus on either consulting firms or product (platform based) firms. With your domain expertise, you will be a valuable asset in consulting firms esp when it comes to areas such as supply chain. Also, look at areas such as Digital, Blockchain etc for upskilling to be relevant in conjunction with your industry expertise. In the firm I work for, we value people with strong and deep domain knowledge. I remember when I joined the firm a decade ago, I was sitting next to a person from Oil & Gas industry and happened to eavesdrop on one of the client meeting he was having. He was talking about pipe bores, nipples, valves and flow rates, extraction rates etc. I was surprised that the firm I joined (read more as an IT firm) was helping clients decide on how to set up their supply

[abhi3284]

I will be there in a couple of years...touching 40 i mean. And this Thread has got me thinking about my current situation and about my future plight. About me, i am a normal middle class guy working in the IT Services Industry for the past 15 Yrs in the Infrastructure Management Services Domain (managing Servers, Storage, etc.) I started off as a Systems Engineer and currently am a People Manager managing a Team of 12. This is just my 2nd Organization in my 15 Yr. Career and going to complete 12 Yrs. with my current Organization. Thinking back, maybe i should have been a bit more proactive and made a couple more switches and bumped up my Salary. But, unfortunately, a bit of laziness and being in my Comfort Zone stopped me from exploring outside. Coming to my current scenario, have been a People Manager for close to 3 Yrs. now and i like it. But it feels like i am stuck and thinking how do i progress my Career being in the Infrastructure Domain. I feel i am not progressing. I currently do not have any Management Certifications, apart from ITIL, which is pretty basic. And i do not think PMP / Prince / Ajile is relevant in my Domain. I am aware currently you cannot just be a People Manager and have to be more of a Techno Manager and be up to date with latest Technical trends. Any pointers from the experienced folks over here in Infrastructure Domain on the Career progression Path? And No, i do not have any ancestral land or any other source of income.
So, this is my only Bread and Butter source.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by abhi3284

And i do not think PMP / Prince / Ajile is relevant in my Domain. I am aware currently you cannot just be a People Manager and have to be more of a Techno Manager and be up to date with latest Technical trends. Any pointers from the experienced folks over here in Infrastructure Domain on the Career progression Path? And No, i do not have any ancestral land or any other source of income.
So, this is my only Bread and Butter source.

Hopefully no one will declare holy war on you for misspelling Agile.

Are you on the cloud? If not, start learning about Kubernetes and cloud technologies like AWS, GCP and Azure. Each has its own set of certificates. I hate certification courses, but then they have become like vaccination certificates, or a gatepass to enter.

[pandabear]

Originally Posted by udaydesai

Hi,
I have one question,
I am from oil and gas industry and have 20 years of experience in project management, what are my chances of getting into IT industry.
Also my age is around 49

If I have to upskill, should I do it in data science?

Regards
Uday

Considering that you have 10 years of employment left why would you start a new race? Isn't it smarter to leverage these 20 years of domain knowledge. Am I missing something here

[sukhoi]

Originally Posted by clevermax

The ability to think about solutions and most importantly, to visualize the proper design & architecture - you know this is easy when you have a senior guy onboard.

Nowadays, service companies want to recruit anyone with an AWS solutions architect certification - even 2 or 3 years experienced guys are taking that certification and are suddenly becoming 'hot properties' in the job arena. I think everyone will start to realize slowly that certification is just a certification and one's core experience matters a lot. A colleague says he has a couple of guys in the 2-3 years of experience category in his team and they have AWS certifications (architect!). But they can't solutionize anything without consulting - why? Because they haven't seen or been involved deeply in the game of software design from scratch. They aren't conditioned enough to think about the best solution, yet.

So, experience is experience. A guy with 3-4 years in the industry with a plethora of certifications isn't any match for a 15 year or 20-years experienced principal software developer. Not even close. There could be exceptions, but they are a rarity.

I am in my mid-forties, and I head the engineering side of a product in my company, and I still code too. There is one C++ component in our product, and guess what, I am maintaining that since the juniors are either scared to touch it or if some are allowed to touch it, the maintainability will go for a toss.

Totally agree with and relate to this sentiment. Certifications are good, they provide knowledge but if that knowledge is not supplemented by actual hands-on exposure then over a period of time that knowledge looses value. On related note, came across this on LinkedIn.

Someone who has gone through the ladder of starting out as a junior engineer/developer and graduated to being an architect, while working on development projects from scratch would have seen various possible pitfalls and learnt from them. Such a person would be able to conceptualize solutions, prepare architecture or high level designs much better than a junior with certifications (exceptions may be there).
Also another point which I am noticing is the quality of new engineers that we are getting as new joinees. Compared to the early 2000s, the quality has taken a hit and the approach to solving problems by reading up the documentation seems to be lacking in the new lot. They face a problem and either go to StackOverflow for a solution or google it and if nothing found they simply walk up to the lead/architect saying that they are not sure of how to proceed. Sometimes the solution is as simple as reading the documentation of language and solution options would present themselves. Such people, with an XYZ Cloud architect certification, would not add a lot of value I feel. Again, here also there are exceptions and we see folks who would put in the effort to do a small POC to try out alternative features/approaches and learn in the process but that is the exception rather than the norm.

Originally Posted by abhi3284

I will be there in a couple of years...touching 40 i mean. And this Thread has got me thinking about my current situation and about my future plight. About me, i am a normal middle class guy working in the IT Services Industry for the past 15 Yrs in the Infrastructure Management Services Domain (managing Servers, Storage, etc.) I am aware currently you cannot just be a People Manager and have to be more of a Techno Manager and be up to date with latest Technical trends. Any pointers from the experienced folks over here in Infrastructure Domain on the Career progression Path? And No, i do not have any ancestral land or any other source of income.
So, this is my only Bread and Butter source.

I do not have a lot of idea about the infrastructure domain but in general I would suggest that you brush up on your skills with respect to what is happening in the industry. You are right that the preference would be for a techno manager over a pure people manager so being relevant with the skills of the market would help. If you feel a better salary is possible via a switch, work towards that and get the higher salary. Also, since you implied that you do not have any fall back options like ancestral, start planning for your retirement by making appropriate investments (lot of threads around that in the forum as well).

Originally Posted by Samurai

I hate certification courses, but then they have become like vaccination certificates, or a gatepass to enter.

Very well said.


Regards,
S

[subraiyr]

Originally Posted by abhi3284

I will be there in a couple of years...touching 40 i mean. And this Thread has got me thinking about my current situation and about my future plight. About me, i am a normal middle class guy working in the IT Services Industry for the past 15 Yrs in the Infrastructure Management Services Domain (managing Servers, Storage, etc.) I started off as a Systems Engineer and currently am a People Manager managing a Team of 12. This is just my 2nd Organization in my 15 Yr. Career and going to complete 12 Yrs. with my current Organization. Thinking back, maybe i should have been a bit more proactive and made a couple more switches and bumped up my Salary. But, unfortunately, a bit of laziness and being in my Comfort Zone stopped me from exploring outside. Coming to my current scenario, have been a People Manager for close to 3 Yrs. now and i like it. But it feels like i am stuck and thinking how do i progress my Career being in the Infrastructure Domain. I feel i am not progressing. I currently do not have any Management Certifications, apart from ITIL, which is pretty basic. And i do not think PMP / Prince / Ajile is relevant in my Domain. I am aware currently you cannot just be a People Manager and have to be more of a Techno Manager and be up to date with latest Technical trends. Any pointers from the experienced folks over here in Infrastructure Domain on the Career progression Path? And No, i do not have any ancestral land or any other source of income.
So, this is my only Bread and Butter source.

The key is to upskill and cross skill and be relevant in the industry. With your background, I would suggest look at cloud technologies. This is the biggest bet and I see a lot of organizations carrying out cloud transformation journeys. Amazon, Google, Azure are the top players and getting skilled in any one of them or more than one should aid you moving forward. This itself can be a ladder for growth in salary.
Certifications is a way to move forward. While certification by itself does not help in you becoming a solution architect, it does open doors for you. Given these technologies are in their initial stages, firms look at people who understand them and hire them so that they can grow into experts through projects.
I am a management professional and focus more on CX consulting. However, my firm has been pushing all of its thousands of employees to be digitally relevant and for now I have got myself skilled on a number of technologies (some with good skills and some with just knowledge). This itself helps you becoming relevant in conversations with clients and improves your valuation within your firm

[abhi3284]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Hopefully no one will declare holy war on you for misspelling Agile.

Are you on the cloud? If not, start learning about Kubernetes and cloud technologies like AWS, GCP and Azure. Each has its own set of certificates. I hate certification courses, but then they have become like vaccination certificates, or a gatepass to enter.

Thanks for pointing that out. Apologies, if i have offended anyone. Unintentional Honest mistake... Agree on your Certification statement. However, Cloud Certifications are more IC Role oriented and for those who are hands on working the Technical stuff on a daily basis. I was more looking for a growth path for a Manager Role. Maybe that's the path i need to take, even though my Role is primarily People Management. Will have to evaluate.

Originally Posted by sukhoi

I do not have a lot of idea about the infrastructure domain but in general I would suggest that you brush up on your skills with respect to what is happening in the industry. You are right that the preference would be for a techno manager over a pure people manager so being relevant with the skills of the market would help. If you feel a better salary is possible via a switch, work towards that and get the higher salary. Also, since you implied that you do not have any fall back options like ancestral, start planning for your retirement by making appropriate investments (lot of threads around that in the forum as well).

Regards,
S

Thank you for your inputs. Have been following those Threads with the hope and aim of achieving F.I.R.E. But, looks like i have to forget about R.E., looking at the corpus amounts being mentioned there.

Originally Posted by subraiyr

The key is to upskill and cross skill and be relevant in the industry. With your background, I would suggest look at cloud technologies. This is the biggest bet and I see a lot of organizations carrying out cloud transformation journeys. Amazon, Google, Azure are the top players and getting skilled in any one of them or more than one should aid you moving forward. This itself can be a ladder for growth in salary.
Certifications is a way to move forward. While certification by itself does not help in you becoming a solution architect, it does open doors for you. Given these technologies are in their initial stages, firms look at people who understand them and hire them so that they can grow into experts through projects.

Very valid points. Thank you for valuable suggestions. Part of which i have mentioned in my reply to Samurai above.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by abhi3284

However, Cloud Certifications are more IC Role oriented and for those who are hands on working the Technical stuff on a daily basis. I was more looking for a growth path for a Manager Role.

These days Managers with hands-on knowledge are valued more.

I have been an active programmer for 32 years now, and more than 90% of it in C++. I have designed multiple large distributed architectures, often developing the most critical parts of it. I started programming when PCs didn't even have networking, and now I am in the process of migrating everything to kubernetes. Because I mostly worked in small companies, I was never a pure developer. I am regularly part of pre-sales, design, coding, testing, deployment, operation and even customer support. I have even played the role of system administrator and network administrator for decades. That means I had to learn traditional IT administration, and later cloud and micro services administration (docker, aws, k8s). I also do HR & accounting when required, thankfully not that often.

Never let your job title come in the way of being hands-on.

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I have been an active programmer for 32 years now, and more than 90% of it in C++. I have designed multiple large distributed architectures, often developing the most critical parts of it. I started programming when PCs didn't even have networking, and now I am in the process of migrating everything to kubernetes. Because I mostly worked in small companies, I was never a pure developer. I am regularly part of pre-sales, design, coding, testing, deployment, operation and even customer support. I have even played the role of system administrator and network administrator for decades. That means I had to learn traditional IT administration, and later cloud and micro services administration (docker, aws, k8s). I also do HR & accounting when required, thankfully not that often.

Saar you are a founder entrepreneur. Very different breed.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by abhi3284

Cloud Certifications are more IC Role oriented and for those who are hands on working the Technical stuff on a daily basis. I was more looking for a growth path for a Manager Role.

Pure people management will not scale beyond a point.

My Opinion :

One needs to either move into sales or problem-solving to grow. Say :

1. Cut down infra cost by X "%" by rationalising / moving to cloud / serverless / SaaS
2. Create a "repeatable" model that can be sold to multiple clients . Say automate certain DBA tasks and scale small(er) DBA team to handle more clients

You might notice that suggestions in this thread have been focussing a lot on cloud. A huge chunk of careers have been made by cloud, for example : cloud security (both sales of this skill to clients as well as building solutions), moving from traditional Oracle etc to AWS RDS.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by v1p3r

Saar you are a founder entrepreneur. Very different breed.

Saar, there is nothing special about us... except that we are too close to the fire. If we don't keep up with the changing technology, we feel the heat much quicker. Customer will drop us like a stone and move to a more proactive vendor.

[rakesh_r]

Originally Posted by udaydesai

Hi,
I have one question,
I am from oil and gas industry and have 20 years of experience in project management, what are my chances of getting into IT industry.
Also my age is around 49

If I have to upskill, should I do it in data science?

Regards
Uday

On the same shoes but two years shy of hitting 40. Basically started from the packaging industry then later served for 7.5 years in the Oil and Gas domain (desk job though). I got a break in the IT sector, telecomm to be more precise. Although i am just at the tip of the Iceberg, getting an opportunity is most important. I am exploring various possibilities where I can enter in the IT.

[selfdrive]

Need some suggestions on reskilling.

I have 20+ years of experience and am in a PM role since the last few years. I intend to downscale and take up an individual contributor role that will allow me better work life balance and hopefully quality time with the family, to support the older generation in their golden years and also spend some time with children before they move on with their careers.
I understand money will be less, am ok with that. Any suggestions on what options are available? I would like to avoid anything IT related as far as possible
I tried out at a few places but was told they are looking for someone younger, though I was willing to commit to a long term duration without any growth aspirations. Part time jobs would also be fine.

As we grow older, perhaps the rigidity is more. So I would be looking for something in Pune itself. In other words, not looking for any consulting/ trainer roles that require travel. I have had too many redeyes already

If nothing else works, I either take a sabbatical or try to start something on my own (really the last resort)
Timeline for putting this in place is end 2023. Happy to hear your suggestions.