Working in IT: nerdy or trendy?

A dark workspace full of servers, cables and screens. And bespectacled young men busy working on codes. Among some people, this image of the IT department still stubbornly persists. But is it accurate?

“You work with computers, right? Mine isn’t working, could you take a look at it?” Admitted, it’s an extreme example, but IT employees can often face these kinds of requests at parties. Sound familiar?

Many people still have the classic image of mostly nerds working in IT. Techies who sit alone at their computers all day programming. And who know everything about computers that won’t work…

Old vs young
Our younger generation undoubtedly has a different view of IT workers. After all, they grew up surrounded by technology. IT employees therefore have a much less nerdy reputation. Still, young people don’t always have a positive view of what working in IT really entails. With smart technologies that enable you to easily build your own website for example, sometimes they even feel that working in IT isn’t that impressive. How hard could it be?

Many different IT jobs
Of course, there are some code-punching nerds working in IT. And of course, there are solo programming jobs out there. But in 2020, the average IT employee is really something else, says Mark Overduin, consultant at BPM. “It’s such a broad field, with such a vast range of professions. From hardcore developers to consultants, testers, architects and business analysts. Or rather: IT is full of jobs where you don’t spend all day at your computer, but instead be creative and work with colleagues and clients.”

More configuring than programming
One IT job is clearly different from the next. The same goes for the technology you work with. For example, Mark works a lot with the low-code platform Pega. “For me personally, working with low-code is ideal. To be honest, high-code – real programming – does not appeal to me as much. Actually, I never even really learned all that technical IT work. Low-code is much more configuring, or putting together a puzzle, using building blocks. You can be very creative in that. But, more importantly: you can surprise clients with the applications you build for them in a very short time.” You can definitely work in IT without an overload of technical programming knowledge. Working in IT has become a whole lot more accessible. And so have the IT workers…