Buu Nguyen's Blog

I was invited to speak at RMIT Vietnam on its Application Day.  The target audiences of the speech are those who are considering applying for the IT program at RMIT and may not be very certain about the opportunities the IT career may bring.  Because the IT program at RMIT is very software development-focused, so you will see a focus on software development in the speech. Also, as it was meant to be a 5-minute speech, I did not spell out all the details as well as many aspects (like challenges of the IT career) in the speech.

Below is the transcript of that speech. Note that the speech was delivered in English, so I will publish the transcript in English. Also, I left out the boring introduction about myself in the transcript.  Without further ado, enjoy the reading.

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Good morning. My name is Buu. I’m here as an RMIT Vietnam alumnus. I’m going to talk about the misconceptions that many people have about the IT career. And throughout my speech, I hope to make you have a clearer and more accurate picture about what it’s like studying IT and being an IT professional.

1.   IT is difficult. You probably have heard people said things like “learning IT is much more difficult than learning commerce, accounting, and so on,” or “you need to be excellent at mathematics to become an IT expert.” I disagree. Find me a person who thinks a major, say commerce is easier to learn than IT, I will find you another person who thinks dealing with the computer is much easier and joyful than things like accounting, law, and marketing. The thing is, each career has its own challenges and some career is more suitable for some people with certain personalities than other careers. So, the keyword here is not difficulty, but suitability. If you possess characteristics that are suitable for the IT career, I can guarantee that you will find studying IT not very difficult and at the same time very joyful. That’s my personal experience and many of my colleagues. So, if you have pretty good analytical ability and you are interested in the computers and its technologies, it may be the case that IT is a suitable career for you.

2.  IT people have low pay. You may also have heard that people in IT are not paid well. That’s not true. The truth is, like any other career, if you are the top of whatever things you do then you can receive the top pay. As of today, it’s not unusual to see a very good software engineer who is paid about 1,000 dollars per month. And if you are really good, after a few years you can step up playing a managerial or architect role and receive even bigger pay. Or if you don’t want to work for other people and you have a great business idea, there’s nothing stop you from setting up your company. And guess what, IT people seem to be good at building successful companies. Bill Gates was first and foremost a programmer before being a businessman. Google’s founders were graduate students at Stanford when they had the idea that the world needed a better search engine.

3.  Studying IT only lands you into programming job. While it’s obvious that many people graduating from the IT program will start their career as software engineer, there are a bunch of other options for IT graduates. They can work as business analysts who are responsible for working with the clients to understand their business needs and help bring that understanding to other members. Or they can work as software testers who are responsible for the quality assurance of the whole project life cycle. And of course, if a person possesses sufficient managerial capacity, after a few years working in the industry, he can land into a managerial job. And that’s not everything, there are a bunch of other jobs for IT graduates including database administrator, software process engineer, researcher and so forth. The point is, there is no short of interesting jobs out there waiting for IT students and programming is definitely not the only choice.

4.  IT people deal with computers, not people. If you’re afraid that your only interaction during work is with a computer then let me be the first to assure you: that would not be the case. Most useful software projects are done by teams and each member needs to be a good team player to be effective. Besides, in many companies, esp. outsourcing companies, engineering team will work with clients from foreign countries like the US. In such cases, engineers with good technical and foreign language skills will typical be sent to those countries to work directly with the clients. And they obviously need to do a lot of interaction with their clients to get the job done. Finally, depending on the role that you are assuming in the project. If you are a business analyst or project manager then there are a lot of client-facing, documentation, communication and possibly marketing duties that you would have to take on. So, the key takeaway of this is: yes IT people do work a lot with computers, but they also need to collaborate with many other people to really get anything done. Therefore, if you already have good skills in English, presentation, marketing and so on you already have a big leverage in the IT career.

That’s it. The four misconceptions about IT careers. I hope my talk has clarified some of your concerns and give you a more accurate idea about the IT career as well as the opportunities it may bring. Let me conclude my talk by sharing some personal thoughts about the IT industry as a whole. Nowadays, software has blended itself into almost every aspect of life.  From the embedded software running in your iPhone and television to the line-of-business applications which are helping users pay electric bills online, helping doctors and nurses take better care of their patients, and Internet applications like FaceBook or Google which make it easy for people to collaborate, contact, and retrieve information, software are in one way or another affecting our lives. One of my most admired industry thought leaders, Alan Kay, once said “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. I can’t help thinking that with the significant role of software in today’s world, IT people are those who have the best opportunities to make an impact to the world and sharpen its future.   That’s it for my speech today. I wish you success in everything you do. Thanks for listening.