Tech jobs continue to be the growing employment wave of the information age. Also, they manage to be cool while shaping how the world conducts personal and professional business.
Tech jobs are not the employment wave of the future. They are the employment wave that people have been surfing for over a decade. The market,
however, continues to build and grow. Technology evolves at such a staggering rate that nearly every industry needs to hire skilled personnel to help them to develop and maintain the business practices necessary to function in the current economy.
Also, tech jobs are cool. At least, they seem that way to everybody not working in one. Whether the position is in IT (information technology), security, web development, biotech, software engineering, sysadmin, autocad, database development, web design, infrastructure engineering or cloud development, it all sounds (and is) still part of an at least semi-mythical land of magic the rest of world cannot create.
Sure, some of the occupations in the above list are actually the same position. Yes, most people use technology every day. Still, most people are about as capable of understanding or creating it as they are of doing so for the electricity they use. Those who create what is vital for both work and play, and continue to up the ante on both, are going to be their own variety of rock star. In the immortal words of Alec Hardison on the television show, Leverage, "Age of the geek, baby."
"Code Monkey," as sung by Jonathan Coulton, intimates that the only reason that programmers bother showing up to tolerate their coworkers from other departments each day is so that they can flirt with the cute girl at the front desk. It seems a bit dismissive of the possibility of ambition within the programming community, until you consider how happy and thriving many independent contractors are. Since "Manager Rob" is neither interested in nor capable of writing "a login page himself," it seems certain that programming is a valued trade.
Beyond the actual code itself, those holding tech jobs are shaping how the world does business. With the development of every system and site, they change how interactions occur both online and offline. The methods by which any project is achieved or contract is fulfilled is determined and defined by the protocols put in place for the transfer of information, the tracking of progress, the delivery of materials, and the communication between departments, clients, and consumers.
The intersection of form and function generated by experts in technology continues to adjust how people view the world they live in. Whether compatibility between programs allows for smooth integration of creative and pragmatic components of a business project, the visual and operational design of a website increases user access to information, or the use of a niche pop culture reference expands the popularity of an app competing in a broad market - the Ice and Fire weather app, anyone? - the results generated by those working in tech jobs affect how the world turns, in and out of the office.
