Well paid IT jobs

[Darzil]

Personally i wouldn't aim to get skills based on salary as that will always be changing (certainly there isn't stupid money being paid in IT these days like there was 5 - 10 years ago) pick something you like and have a natural aptitude for and give it a go.

This is very true. The best pay at any given time is often the support of obsolete code, like Cobol at the moment, which is still needed, but is declining, so the jobs will vanish entirely in time.

Personally, I've done well be getting varied experience, both in types of IT support and development, and more importantly in different types of Business. It's understanding Business and the way IT helps/hinders it, and the pitfalls to avoid, that the real money is in. It's also an area that's hard to outsource to other countries, as Businesses still want face to face contact (I'm hoping).

Darzil

 

[Ballard]

From my personal experience contracting for design/development work is pretty good. I spent about 4 years as a contractor designing OO systems for finance companies (at the team lead/high level analyst level) and made about 5-6 times what my normal salary was for similar work on a full time basis. I worked almost solid for those 4 years and took close to no holidays, sure it wasnt fun but it really set me up for the future and now I can relax alot more and let my investments/savings from that time do the hard work for me.

The key things in my opinion are;
- develop some good industry experience in a particular field ( e.g finance/supply chain/manufacturing systems will always be high paying ) so you can be confident in selling yourself as a valuable resource to companies.
- Be smart and confident (especially at interviews). This is the most important part.
- Dont accept less money than you are worth. Negotiate hard and dont be afraid to walk away.
- Some sort of qualifications is an aid to get in the door for your first lower level job, not so important after a few years experience.
- Never trust recruitment agents. They are worse than real estate agents and will try and rip you off at every turn.