Reflections on a career in IT and tips for beginners

Hello, Habr! I recently thought a lot about a career, the future of our industry, and so on. I decided to write an article for those who are just going to enter here, and indeed, maybe someone will be interested, all of the following is purely my IMHO and much of what I say applies to other areas, and about half of this is also cap, but let's get started .

1. The first thing you need to know: many programmers perceive themselves as latent millionaires, this is fundamentally the wrong approach. Do not go here for huge sums of money, the age of startups has passed, and a single programmer is worth little. 95% of developers is a resource that does not solve anything, it makes a profit by reselling its man-hours, you will not be able to remove the cream of your labor, as in many professions.
2. It’s salary always has a ceiling above which 99% will not jump, they will not become evangelists, stars and other technical directors.
3. Based on the previous paragraphs: if you want to really make a career or at least not be in the trash when the boom in it industry passes (I don’t presume to make forecasts, but, unfortunately, it all looks like a bubble, which is also being blown away). Then pump soft skills, cool cool, give it no less strength than technical skills. Even Java can be bent, but boltology has been an effective tool for promoting yourself on the career ladder for centuries, there are no new frameworks in it, your ability to pair something will never become obsolete.
4. Following the same arguments: Learn English. I understand, you think, what did I say so new? After all, everyone writes everywhere that you need to learn English? And nevertheless, not even half of it-people know English at the proper level. And this part loses to those who know him. At the moment, there is a trend for machine learning, big data and other artificial intelligence. In Russian, you will not find or almost no information to start a career in new areas. All you can do is wait until some enterprising guys start paid courses, but then the number of people wishing for such positions increases sharply, and wages fall, and how to develop further if the areas go forward, and you can’t upgrade your skills from for language? You will again wait for courses.
   
   And again, English will not become obsolete, you want to change the scope of activity, and this will be a plus wherever you go.
5. Do not believe those who say that QA / QC / 1C / “inserting the name 'prestigious career' is stupid, boring, some fools and losers work there. For some reason, young specialists roam around Java, Angulars, Python and other languages ​​and technologies that seem to say: I’m watching the elite. Most likely in your programmer career you will write forms and drive data from and to the database, which is no different from what your 1c-nicknames will do. The difference will be that any business needs 1s-nickname, always, and will be needed for a long time. In addition, such specialists are often pumped in related areas such as accounting, and generally keep their finger on the pulse of the business, if this is a regular 1-book. They are much more likely to open their non-technological business, as they know how the processes work. They know how to communicate with aunts from accounting and sales, themselves, of course, they always complain that this is how we got tired of it, we don’t want to communicate with them, but we can’t deny the benefit of such a skill, the ability to get along with such an audience opens up different possibilities in life. Not to mention that it is much easier to make useful business acquaintances there than in an outsourcing company.
   
   While among qa there is a record high concentration of random people, there are much fewer good specialists than in development. Absolutely real case: a person with an outstretched hand curled over the thresholds for the intern / juniora position, having a good background, but without fanaticism, even refused $ 500, because the market is teeming with various kinds of joons with burning eyes. Tired, disappointed, spat, learned the theory of testing, as a result, due to real skills in writing code and working with a debugger (which is especially not superfluous in cueing), I received 4 offers per week and a starting salary of $ 1000 without work experience.
6. Do not become attached to frameworks, study the foundation. Every year new frameworks come out.
7. Do not put eggs in one basket, you may burn out, you want to leave here, but the world is big and scary, and all you can do is write code. Study related and not so areas, digital marketing, smm, law after all, something that you are interested in and that you will be able to apply in the future. By God, they’ve been able to master Java and deal with it somehow.
8. Watch your money, IT at the moment is an amazing area where you can earn good money as an employee, but, as I wrote, it will not make you a millionaire. I know many specialists in our field with salaries starting at $ 3,500, who nonetheless live from paycheck to paycheck, because by the age of 35 they managed to amass a huge bunch of liabilities that pump money out of them every month. Do not fall into this situation.