For the past 10 years, I’ve had a front row seat to the transition of they way young adults approach IT work. As a professor teaching software architecture at the National Technology University, I’ve witnessed a lot of changes in students today.
First, I need to point out that my class is an elective for students in the final year of their degree. They typically enroll in my “IT Project Architecture” class because they want to learn and they want to get a job after they graduate, which tends to eliminate any slackers from my class.
So what’s different about the students I’ve seen pass my class in recent years? First of all, they tend to be big supporters of the open source way of doing software. I don’t think they see another way of building software than through open source.
Another difference in today’s young adults in IT is that they are a lot more engaged in the quality of their work. They don’t just rush through assignments. They put a lot of focus on the quality of their work. They like crafting things.
They also seem to be more passionate. They are like artists. They don’t do things they don’t believe in. And when they believe in something, they really put forth their best effort. If they don’t believe in it, they won’t do it right. In some cases, they won’t even do it. That’s not necessarily a good thing, because in today’s world they will have to deal with good and bad things.
Another thing I’ve noticed about today’s generation of IT workers is that they’re often more willing to learn new skills that fall outside their day-to-day duties. I’ve seen this in my other job as IT manager for the public government social and health services agency in Argentina. For example, one thing I try to do is to have our IT infrastructure employees trained to code so that they can automate repetitive tasks. For young people, it’s easier. For older ones, they don’t want to become a developer.
What differences do you see in today’s younger IT talent?
ALSO READ
Venki Rao, CIO of GE Digital Energy business on, "How GE Energy sets up Millenial talent for success."
Gustavo is an Information Systems Engineer graduated from the National Technological University (UTN), with over 15 years of experience in IT in different industries, holding varied positions. At present, he is the Information Technology and Communications Manager at PAMI (INSSJP) where he has been promoting the technology upgrade of the Institute with the aim of improving the Argentine health care system. He has been teaching courses on Software Architecture for 10 years and has created the IT Project Architecture subject at the UTN. Gustavo participates in different IT conferences addressing topics like health, creativeness and free software, lecturing about experiences and research in Agile Methodologies, Programming Languages, Software Architecture, Technology and Programming for Children.
