How did you know what you wanted in IT?

Skate to where the puck will be (Wayne Gretzky). AI is backward looking (where the puck was) technology. It is trained on what is already widely known. In experiments it handles bar exam type questions well. But not systems engineering questions that require understanding the problem domain.

Of course, you could develop foundational IT knowledge: at least one programming language, an OS, a framework or two. But the key to long term success is becoming wickedly knowledgeable about some problem domain, e.g. biotech, some niche in finance, supply chain, medical analysis automation, etc.

Once you establish core competence in the domain of your choice, your future IT learning will be directed by the needs of the problems you are solving.

To quote the great song: The most interesting people I know, didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

So, I started out as IT Helpdesk. Then life took me to systems administration. Then I got 'promoted' to 'site administration' (everything tech related in a food factory - even the machine that made the food - a train-wagon-sized machine that run German Win95 (that was back in the early 00's), networking, telephony, the whole thing.

Later I switched to Internal (IT) Audit (that is a good paying job)(including SOX). Then that took me to IT Security and (IT) Project Management. Then got an IT GRC gig that required IT, IT Audit, SOX, and Proj.Mgmg. There was always a Privacy thing in whatever I was doing so I later gave Data Protection a try, and it worked/is working out well.

So.. I like what the CEO of Spotify said on the DOAC podcast about "T-shaped" skills. You are TOOOOO YOUNG to get married to a specific job.

Keep an open mind, let it take you where it takes you. Sometimes a smarter/wiser/older person may see something in you that you haven't realized, and that will make you jump 'diagonally upwards' (not vertically in the hierarchy ladder and not horizontally in the same grade but in a similar role).

If you would have asked me at 23 "do you imagine having worked in 'these' companies, traveled in 'those' countries, and make 'that' money by your 30/40/50 I would have said that you're crazy. But life is crazy so embrace it, keep an open mind, keep an open eye, and be kind to others.

Here is some well meaning advice. Advice I tell my own children. Passion doesn’t pay the bills. You should be passionate about taking care of yourself and your family.

Why did I pick my specialty? Because people repeatedly told me I was good at it. And the experts said it was in demand.

I knew it was in demand by following the money. I simply looked at the revenues of the software companies in that specialty. Most of them were not sexy but people were literally screaming take my money.

My mom used to tell me when I was young to never run after money and choose a career in which I could do something that made me happy. As working on something you enjoy means you'll do it with passion, that will be seen by others in the quality of your output, so money (or fame, or whatever you're after) will come naturally. I was around 5, and video games was what made me happy. XD

As I grew up and learned more about the field, I figured it's not necessarily video games that I want to make, but definitely software science.

I ended up in electronic engineering because I was curious about how computers work at a low level. After that I ended up in ML/DL/data science because it looked cool and wasn't that hard to understand for me as I had all the math prerequisites from the EE degree.

In conclusion, I would say that, for me at least, the path came quite naturally, and every step I took in my career made sense at the time. I never tried to really force a long-term plan on my career, so whenever a move or a change felt natural for what I wanted, I made it. I would say I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing now, so at least it worked for me.

There is no other reliable way than to go where your intuition and excitement leads you to.

Choose whatever you like doing the most (the process itself), or at least hate doing the least.

Trying to guess the most profitable or less "ai-scary" niche is a 100% road to eventual frustration.

Don't listen to those toxic people scaring you with "paying the bills", while you're wihin the IT realm (and not playing ukulele for living) — you will not end up on the street as long as you're really good at something (anything).

And the only way to become good - is to enjoy it, because it takes time, willpower alone is a very limited resource.

My friend was a web developer. He pushed me to learn, and while I originally started with backend, I found a lot of joy in frontend work. I found that a lot of full stack devs I worked with sucked at frontend and didn't want to do it, so I embraced the opportunity to level up my skills and knowledge in that area.

When I was a child, my parents gave me a PC. I immediately enjoyed learning it. That’s how I started working in IT.

> How did you know what you wanted in IT?

By making money - but I'm not a capitalist. When I was 12 years old I made a website about Dragon Ball Z and it became a hit and checks started to come to my house (ads but it was before google ads be a thing). I got passionate about coding after creating something out of nothing but nights of work and turn that into a revenue stream.