Career in IT – the charm is gone

A lot of engineering graduates aspire to make their careers in the IT industry seeking to ride the gravy train.
Is the charm still there? A reality check.
IT’s adrenalin charged growth is already showing signs of plateauing. By 2015, it would be a fairly mature industry and would be subject to the business economics of volume, cost control, competitive margins etc. What would it mean for a software engineer joining now?
There are essentially three operational wings to an IT company.
1] low end maintenance: characterized by large numbers of employees and a near flat hierarchy [equivalent to workers to supervisor ratio in the shop floor]. So chances of promotion are limited. In any case, one really can’t grow into the top management levels through this route. And the acquired skills and experience will be of minimal value to other disciplines, thereby stifling any break out options.
2] customizing applications: with proliferation of vertical specific solutions, reusable components and machine generated code, this wing will go the same way as maintenance.
3] high end consulting led assignments: This wing will be the focus area of growth. The discriminating skills and background required are management education,a high level appreciation of IT and deep industry knowledge. At senior levels, there would also be lateral recruitments from the industry domains as well. Hence, the software engineers can’t easily aspire for senior management positions.[even a highly skilled mason will be hard put to become an architect!]
In summary, in a few years, the software engineers, who by then would be in their early thirties, would be stuck in a stagnant career path with only modest remuneration to boot.
Sensible long term options are careers in stable sectors such as manufacturing and infra structure or moderately risky emergent sectors such as bio/ nano technology. These are better options for sustained career growth leading upto senior management positions and higher cumulative remuneration over the working life span.