A career in IT

ageary08

Hey, I am a science graduate fresh out of college, Im looking around for work and I was thinking of working in IT as I am quite interested in it. I have found a few jobs (they are described as IT technician, but I am wondering what kind of future is in it regarding pay. I worked in the pharma industry for work placement in college, the work is similar to IT but involves programming control systems and so on. Starting in that area nets about 25k a year, as does the IT jobs I was looking at. I know the industrial jobs can end up around 60k, maybe more espically if your contracting. Trick is it is quiet on that front at the moment. Any tips would be welcome

beserker

Heya,

Sounds like you're doing what i'm doing. I did a degree that generally leads to DeltaV or Siemens programming after (which is great $$$) but there are no big pharma projects coming to ireland anytime soon so i started doing .net development & I'd highly recommend it.

It opened up a load of oppertunities with companies that work in the ERP layer of pharma (S95/above S88) and other businesses for me.Knowing about the control systems underneath is really valuable because people who do a general programming degree wouldn't tend to have this knowledge or many people who have done a physcis degree don't like programming.

For example, I have an interview for a good job with an energy company outside of ireland solely becuase of this. Like you said, it's a bad time to be lookin for work with control systems in ireland but there is loads of work abroad in this if you are willing to stick out the next 6 months. try emerson/siemens etc becuase america is booming at the moment and there will be loads of work in asia soon too(apparently). At the moment the big names will tend to hire when smaller companies wont.

Oh and be wary of a general IT job. I'd imagine it would be repeditive tedius work and nothing like what you were doing on site but this really depends on the company/type of job. As you're a grad like me I'd recommend looking for initial training & exp over money. slog it out on bad money but train well and get exp in the first two years and you'll never take a job that doesn't pay well after that.

Dar

beserker

another tip. If you can learn provox by yoursef somehow and know deltav, there will be LOADS of work over the next couple of years converting provox systems to deltav 9 and upwards. there are hundreds if not thousands of provox systems around the world and emerson are not supporting them past 2009 i think it is. its gonna be a money tree:)

ageary08

I was actually in an automation placement in cork, was very good and im definitely considering it. What I am torn about is the fact if i get a job as an IT tech then the experience will be considered useless for automation, where the ole 5 years seems mandatory. The main reason I am considering it is because its a large international company offering the IT job, which means there might be room for promotion etc.

Your defintely right about provox, they had it at work, only a handful of people know how to maintain it now and parts are rare and expensive, check out ebay

nads

don't take the general IT job anyway, you'll be explaining to secretaries or office/hr/finance staff why their excell crashes their PC or something.
don't go into that company on the IT job then hoping to convert over to your desired programming job too - they'll look down on you having humped monitors from desk to desk or whatever you'd be doing in the General IT job