Today, a reader asked us a very interesting question – What does it mean to have a career in IT?
It took us a whole day to come up with a reasonable answer.
IT, as everyone knows, is a HUGE field. How huge is it?
Let’s take a look:
Overwhelming, isn’t it? What does each of the bubbles mean?? What exactly do they do?
Don’t worry. The Children’s Post was once called The Children’s Dost by some of our readers. And like a friend, we will break it down for you.
All the Careers in IT
First, let’s understand that the number of careers and career streams in IT is INFINITE.
Computer Science is such a popular course because it pretty much forms the backbone of modern life.
We cannot get a pack of bread home today without a billing machine. That is where IT begins. All our documents are digital. Our money is digital.
We understand that it can be very overwhelming for a high school student.
So, let’s first try to understand the broad applications of IT, and then take it from there.
Applications of IT
For simplicity, let’s just understand a few basic categories:
A. Gov Tech – Use of technology by government
B. Enterprise Tech – Technology used by organisations to help their business. This includes ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning, CRM – Customer Relationship Management, SCM – Supply Chain Management, and other business specific software.
C. B2C Tech – This includes all tech that is used by normal people as part of their life. This can be browsers, social media, or individual productivity apps like Office, etc.
The kind of work you do
It varies very, very widely in the kind of work that it offers to professionals.
Hardware – Research, Design, or Production
You can design cool gadgets with folding screens, work on faster chips and storage, even batteries, work on making hardware sleeker – from household gadgets to large crystal displays. Or make something entirely new – like a display that has no hardware – it just appears in front of the user! You can see some of these careers on the right side of the graphic, just under IT support and Database Administrator.
Network and Cloud
You might have heard that jokes – There is no cloud – its just someone else’s computer.
Well, that is actually true.
The servers are stored in a different location and are managed by a company that specialises in managing large data centers.
But some companies still keep their data on their own server and need network professionals to manage that.
Either way, there are many professionals who work hard to ensure that you are able to attend your online classes without any disruption.
These professionals work on the network and data center side. Some of them design the networks – deciding how many servers, how much storage, how much RAM a data center should have, when it should back up, etc.
Some others work on ensuring that the network is always working and users are able to use the applications that they want. For example, the network engineers at Google are responsible for those super-fast searches that Google offers.
You can see these roles listed on top – center in the image above.
Coding
When we think of IT, this is the first term that comes to mind.
There are many kinds of coding.
But for this section, we will talk about application coding – the application may be used as a website, an app, an enterprise app, etc. Irrespective of the application, coding tends to have the following types of careers:
Front end, Back end, Full Stack
The screens we see when we interact with the interface (app) is the front end. All the work that happens behind the scenes – getting our information when we login, doing our transactions, everything, is called the back end.
A person who can code both front end and back end is a full stack developer.
This super specialisation is necessary because the technologies used in front end and back end are very different.
Website, App, Fin Tech, etc.
On top of the front-end/back-end differentiation is the layer of industry and application.
Website developers use different technology, Fintech (Financial technology companies like PayTM in India and Alipay in China, Paypal in the US and other parts of the world, etc.), and some other industries have their own specialised technology needs.
Tech Writer, Recruiter, QC, UX design, and other roles
A person who does coding knows, for instance, Python. But someone has to tell them what to do, right?
Someone else has to check their work. Someone has to write the documentation – both for the testing team and for the end user (that Help text that you see in websites).
All of these roles are crucial.
Before a simple thing like an Insta feature reaches you, it has been:
A. Prioritised by a product manager.
B. Added to the scope by a Project Manager.
C. Designed by a UX designer
D. Developed by a coder
E. Tested by a QC professional
F. Documented (including the Help texts) by a Technical writer
G. Tested again on a testing server by a Business analyst / QC professional
H. OKed for release by the Product Manager
I. Released by the Release team
J. Usage Monitored and issues managed by a Monitoring team. The first release is sometimes made only to some users.
K. Finally, the feature is made available to all users.
As you can see, every small thing requires a lot of team work, and many professionals doing their work perfectly.
Run the Business – Keep the Engines Running
Whenever you have a problem, you try and reach out to a Helpdesk person. Sometimes, this is a chatbot. When the chatbot is not able to solve the problem, we get a real person who works with us to solve the problem.
Good old IT Support executives are still the backbone of the IT industry.
They are the ones who ensure that all laptops and other devices work perfectly, are serviced on time, new users are trained on the company’s infrastructure quickly.
The other set of professionals that keep the business running are IT Service Management professionals. These are the people who log every single incident that happens in an IT system, rectify it, keep the engines running, and ensure that applications are available whenever a business or individual user wants to use them.
Security
IT security or cyber security is not just a sub stream within IT. It is, today, one of the fastest growing parts of IT.
Let’s understand some of the most important career tracks:
CISO
The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is responsible for the overall strategy, execution, and monitoring of a company’s cyber security.
Security Architect, VAPT, and other planning functions
These professionals work to create the overall strategy that the company will need. They decide what kind of security will need to be put in place. These are super specialised professions.
Firewall, Network, Incident Monitoring
Once the security is in place, someone has to maintain it. This set of professionals ensures that the network is always protected, the firewall is always in place, and at all times, the periphery (boundary) of the company’s systems is being monitored for any infiltration attempts. Think of it exactly as monitoring and protecting the boundary wall of a house.
Forensics, Incident Management
If, in spite of all these precautions, the company suffers a breach, a ransomware, or any other IT attack, this set of professionals helps the company manage the incident, and also checks to understand why such a thing happened.
In addition, there are some other roles like CDO – Chief Data Officer, who is responsible for data security, DRM administrator – whose job is to ensure that Digital Rights attached to the company’s documents in soft copy are enforced. A DLP (Data Leakage Prevention) administrator uses a specialised software to monitor what kind of attachments or text information is being shared within and outside the company.
Analytics and Dashboarding
These are the professionals who help us make sense of the vast amounts of data that has been generated by people and companies since the start of the digital age.
These professionals have to know technology, data visualisation (the best way to show data), and statistics and other types of data analysis methods.
AI/ML – Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
After coding, this is the set of terms that we hear the most.
Simply put, this is the fastest growing body of work that is being adopted by the masses.
Artificial Intelligence is when a computer is able to take multiple inputs and give a reasonably intelligent response.
The simplest example of this is when you type a search query in google and make a spelling mistake. You probably see something like this:
As you can see, Google understood that there is a spelling mistake and also corrected it.
We have, in the past, covered other upcoming applications of AI/ML.
Emerging Tech
This is everything that we are just starting to see, or will start to see in some time.
Perhaps the easiest example is Blockchain. There are other emerging technologies that researchers all over the world are developing.