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Information Sep 2, 2021 9 Comments

Today’s Worlds Need IT Experts, Horizontal Career Growth Reduce the Opportunity to Make World your Oyster, IT Career Myths Busted

Most of the time best path was horizontal career growth. Someone who started as an Accounts Assistant could progress as an Accounts Executive, Accountant, Assistant Manager Accounts after 15 promotions with great effort and some luck could be a CFO.




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But it is not the same case in the dynamic IT industry. With important knowledge workers; changing cultural & generational values, lean organization structures facilitated by the technology demands for technical expertise rather than the expertise in managerial roles. Managerial role might be an attractive in multiple ways if in a context of a single geographical location. But it has no significance globally in IT industry similar to industries such as manufacturing where labour force is not consisted of knowledge workers.




Globally there is a huge demand of technical expertise in IT industry, it is equally visible in all subdomains including, programming/ development, business analysis, IT infrastructure technologies such as data base and operating system professionals. As far as you are capable to beUpToDate with the technology evolution, years of experience comes in handy. Unlike the good old days most of the technologies are also automated. Few decadesago programmers used code and test everything manually with great effort, now everything has become the craft of articulating with era of frameworks, tools & services. Web sites are built with CMS such as WordPress& hosting services evolved to cloud platforms like AWS offered hosting with amazing number of tools which can help you to build great solutions.




Everyday so many technologies are emerged and to pick and choose the right combination to achieve a great solution at the most competitive cost is purely dependent on the experts who are engaged for the cause.




Building such expertise, remain in the profession as a technologistthroughout the career will build immense marketable value. Today’s demand around the world is high for IT professionals with great years of expertise, the knowledge build experience gained being associated with something is invaluable. It helps to define the right path for a solution and manage the issues when it arises. Traditional example for a knowledge worker is a doctor. Demand for a doctor thrive on an expertise rather than the designation in a hospital. People flock around a doctor or a surgeon with expertise rather than a doctor who climb the administrative ladder. This is same in IT industry for all verticals.







Knowledge workers thrive on freedom. Strict supervision might harm both volume and quality of the delivery. Even largest organizationshaveflattened the hierarchy, given freedom,and purely focused on deliverables. IT industry has great deal of cross borderrecruitment than any other industry where companies look for the right talent across the borders instead of reducing cost which happen with manufacturing & BPO.




Younger generation demands more freedom than their seniors, “working for self” is something heard every day, building marketable technical expertise gives you great control over self to generate great value without being part of a sophisticated organizational machinery.




Digital nomad is the greatest extend of this, travelling around the world and still working for single or multiple organizations with your own terms is possible when someone builds a great expertise on a profession. Whether it’s a Java developer, Oracle expert or Digital marketer as far as the expertise and deliverables are great you can have a flexible lifestyle with confidence rather than focus on protecting a job that dominates the lifestyle.




With immense information available about different places its common many like to live in a different country or place than they were born. Migrations rates have been growing, once you build a great technical expertise, managerial experience barely have value across the borders, management has deemed to be consist of mostly local or unique community but technical experts are equally valuable in every location whether its New York, Bangalore or Melbourne.




Vertical career growth comes with great perks as well. If the desire is to be a great manager climb the ladder to the senior level is the clear goal, then pursuing that make sense. But anyone not carved out for managing and not equipped with qualities to thrive in such career must focus on being remain in the technical profession and build great years of expertise and knowledge around it.




Technical experts can gain multiple ways to earn as well. Apart from working for an organization they might have an opportunity to seek better paying jobs across the border or move to freelance work where serve multiple clients with much freedom and migrate to the favorite country. Further many organizations have identified the value of technological expertise and has taken steps to nurture and reward such talent accordingly.




If you are in IT profession and always better to have a plan the direction you are heading. Premature promotions might excite you and generate better financial rewards in short term, but it might eliminate the freedom of being valuable to larger market which might offer better life choices and greater financial rewards.




IT industry has many different verticals. Above applicable to many but may not be all. It’s always important analyze the own career and make adjustment accordingly.




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Haris Mirando

Writer is an ERP expert who help clients to formulate better ERP strategies. He could be reached on mirando@topraworld.com ; Linkedin

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