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IT: To leave and not to return

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Previously, a lot was written about the “enter IT” trend. It seems that the opposite trend is gaining momentum. More and more often recently you can find articles on the topic of leaving IT. In them, quite successful people describe their experience and name the reasons why they want to leave this "well-fed" sphere. Moreover, sometimes they just go "nowhere."

In this article, I tried to summarize the reasons why people voluntarily leave the sphere that thousands of others just dream of getting into. I also recently stood at the crossroads of IT roads. I will share with you those simple recommendations that helped me in my time not to get stuck on the doorstep, but to take a step forward. So, let's begin.

3 reasons why professionals leave IT


1. IT - a cozy world of degradation . Despite numerous claims that IT needs to constantly develop and engage in self-education, this is probably not the case for everyone. As it turned out, very many, having settled in a warm place with a good salary, lose their motivation for development. Perhaps she was not there.

We all know that over time you can automate your work so much that you won’t even have to strain. Routine, as well as daily hours of sitting in the social. networks and reading news can be so annoying that even a good salary by general standards will not keep you from working. As a rule, people who have not yet found the field of activity that will really drive them fall into this category. Those who have not yet set long-term goals and did not consciously build their careers.

2. Money. Yes, very many have chosen the IT industry for money. Shh. Just don’t tell anyone. Being rich or simply wealthy is not a calling. Having closed material needs, people lose the meaning of their work and no longer want to spend time and energy on it. Many are just tired. Even in IT it is impossible to earn a lot without doing anything. Therefore, those who earn a lot, in most cases, work hard. These people have already provided for themselves. Money is a weak driver when it is. The motivation to be secured loses strength, but the new one does not appear. Hence fatigue, professional burnout and failure. Old meanings are lost, and new ones have not yet been found.

3. "The Golden Cage. This group can unite people who have already realized that they are not doing what they would like to do, have decided on their professional preferences. But leaving IT is scary. "Well-fed" work prevents you from realizing your own dreams and doing what you like there. Many, having secured a decent standard of living, want to do what really “makes them alive.”

It's funny, but only after writing these 3 reasons, I realized that they describe not 3 groups of people, but 3 stages of professional self-determination . It doesn’t matter in which industry. And I realized this because I managed to get through all three. Let's call them like this:

  • I want money. And more. In IT they are.
  • There is already enough money, but he is dead tired. I'm tired of all. I want to find a thing to my liking
  • I know what I want to do, but I'm afraid to be left without money

That's right. Professional self-determination does not apply only to IT, it is a universal concept. It does not lose its relevance not only in fat years, but also in lean, in a crisis. It's just that in a crisis it’s worse and harder to change everything yourself.

Looking for yourself


In my opinion, they leave IT not because it is bad there, but in search of themselves. This is the main reason. Few people manage to find something to their liking and follow it for 17 years once and for a lifetime, starting from entering a university in an appropriate specialty. Yes, IT is cool, it's prestigious, it's promising. In Soviet times, schoolchildren wanted to become astronauts, in the nineties - bandits, and now - IT people. Why not?

IT is a very large industry, you can be an engineer, a writer, an artist, and a marketer in it. And they pay well. But after working for 5-10 years, you close most material issues, grow up, start asking yourself questions: is it really what I do, the work of my life? Is it worthy to be called a deed?
Having matured, you begin to better understand yourself and look for something that, in addition to money, would give a sense of pride in your own work, its usefulness to others. Sometimes I’m even ready to do business to my liking, even without money. Self-realization is the top of the pyramid, if you remember. It becomes relevant when closed needs are simpler.

And vice versa. After leaving IT, a person begins to do what he loves, and he is happy. But material needs again become relevant, since outside of IT, large incomes are a rarity. When the standard of living falls, a person thinks about returning to hiring, in IT with large and measured incomes. Such are the swings.

Have you read Elena Rezanova’s ever book? There are many sensible recommendations. One of them is directly related to the topic of leaving IT. It reads:

Find yourself where you lost


Here is what Rezanova writes:
“Do not rush to abandon the current sphere. It is possible that you will find yourself almost in the same place where you lost. ”
“If you came to this topic now, what would be interesting for you?”
“Find a different format in your topic and use your skills in unusual areas.”

I will describe how this works on my own example.

I remember the moment, or even the moments where I lost myself. In the last classes of the school I wanted to become a psychologist, it was interesting to me. I went to preparatory courses at the Pedagogical University. But closer to the time of receipt, it turned out that more than 2 medalists are applying for one place and I have nothing to do with my good-graded certificate. A tricky plan has ripened in my head: to go to the physics department, and only then to psychology. Fizfak - because I studied one year in physical. math classroom with a pedagogical bias. No sooner said than done. Entered. In the third year he won the University Olympiad in Psychology, after which he passed the exams and entered the second year of the Faculty of Applied Psychology, remaining to study at the physics department. While still a student, he began working as a psychologist in a gymnasium and as a computer science teacher. He worked at 1.5 rates (50 hours a week), received as much as $ 20. Per month.This was one of the top salaries in the gymnasium. However, after a while I realized that it was not right for parents to sit on their necks.

So I ended up in a commercial firm as a marketing specialist, completing my psychology studies at the university. And who else could be the person who came to psychology through the study of manipulation?) Then there was much more: immigration, business education, website promotion, reverse immigration, development in digital marketing already in Belarus.

And so, after many years of search promotion, setting up advertising, content marketing, building strategies, and much more, I also ran into burnout, thinking about what I’m actually doing?

Digital marketing, in fact, a set of tactics. Click on the button to get the result. These are numbers, experiments, actions, and again numbers. Behind these numbers you stop seeing specific living people. Not even consumers, but those who press the buttons, walks along the conversion paths and steps of the basket. Abstract Mary - Jane from Oklahoma, who has a schoolchild, cat and college debt.

All efforts are focused on the sales funnel, conversion, usability, links and traffic. People, huh? Once I worked in an office where there were 3 people with me. Despite the fact that the tables were nearby, we talked on skype. A year later, I began to notice that I had to make an effort to just talk.

What I had to do is not marketing, it is a conveyor belt, solving many small routine tasks. Even the development and implementation of a strategy in digital marketing is a recombination of real and experimental methods, only the accents differ.

It can be difficult to break out of the world of Figures and see the whole situation. Just the case when you do not see the woods behind firewood. And the point here is not even that digital marketing is tactical marketing. You can argue with that. And the fact that this is my view has become too narrow. When you concentrate on specific tasks like getting traffic, it’s better to convert it, increase the visibility of the site, you really lose understanding of the ultimate meaning of all this. As in the old parable: one puts bricks, the other kneads clay, the third brings water. And only very few build the temple.

For developers, the situation is even more complicated - they are even further away from users. Their knowledge and skills are more specialized. I completely agree with Rezanova, who in her book suggested, for starters, not to radically change the sphere of activity, but to look at their work from a different angle. For me, that angle was the people I worked with. And for whom I worked. I seemed to see them for the first time.

We needed to get together and take a picture for social. networks. And then it turned out that many bright people and successful professionals, guys and girls, at heart are very shy. It is physically difficult for them to take pictures. Others, on the contrary, were surprised at their willingness to help, in word or deed.

All this made such a strong impression that switched me on my own. Now I am rediscovering classic marketing, rethinking my experience. And I’m beginning to understand that it’s not so far away from the place where I lost myself, from psychology. Just stepped aside. And I do not have to look for a completely new area.

I study related fields, discover new ideas and approaches, staying within marketing and rethinking the experience of others through the prism of my own and write about it on my blog. I am very interested in people who are able to generate original ideas and bring them to life. Those that burn themselves and light others.

Therefore, I will repeat in my own words the advice given by Rezanova in the book "Never - ever". If you are tired of what you are doing, but you don’t know what you would like to do, expand your horizons. Stop kneading mortar and laying bricks. Build a temple! Study related areas, shift emphasis and angles, try to go beyond the scope of your work and consider starting incentives and results. Perhaps this will give a new breath, and you can find yourself without radical changes in occupation or even without a change of work.

Here are some more quotes :
“To test whether you have a real dream, you need to test it and live it.”
“It is not necessary to give up everything and start a new one; you can separate the task of money and the task of self-realization, having stable work for money.”
“Self-realization is not a point on the horizon, but a process. And it does not begin sometime in the distant future, but as soon as you decide and take the first step. "
If you decide to take the path of self-determination and self-realization - good luck on this path!

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