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The Information Technology (IT) space is vast. Trends like AI and Data Analytics have taken centre stage in the last few years. Back in my day learning in school and university these trends we’re yet to be discovered or in its infancy. Today these trends are expected knowledge for IT professionals. My question to employers and educational institutions, ‘what has been done in the last 5-10 years to teach these new trends?’ I have checked curriculums at high schools and universities and the learnings on offer are quite scarce. In this age of advanced technology trends, we’re not teaching this effectively to students and young professionals. This is leaving a gap when students and young professionals move into the IT workforce.

Even before learning these advanced technology trends. Fundamental technology trends like Cloud Computing and ITIL are not being taught at an early level. It’s very important to teach the basics of IT before learning trends like AI and Data Analytics.

Below are some IT fundamentals students and young professionals should be aware of and be proficient in. These fundamentals will lay a foundation for your IT career and demonstrate to your employer the vast fundamental skills you can bring to their organisation.

(For the purpose of demonstrating the use of ‘dot points’, I will be utilising them in my explanations below).

• Cloud Computing
  • You would have heard of vendors like Amazon Web Services (AWS) Googler Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle etc.
  • These vendors provide IT services in the cloud.
  • At a high level, these vendors offer virtual and scalable servers, storage, private/public/hybrid networks and other services.
  • IT professionals develop, build and scale their applications in the cloud.
  • I utilise AWS in my workplace. Start by reading and understanding some basics
    • Lambda’s – serverless
      • Run event driven events without provisioning servers
    • EC2 – Elastic containers
      • Used to host and run applications and services
    • S3 – Simple Storage Service
      • Storage service for data and files
• ITIL – Information Technology Infrastructure Library
  • A template covering all things IT.
    • E.g.
    • IT management
    • Incident management
      • How to handle issues related to your services
    • Problem management
      • Related to incident management, are incidents recurring? A larger root cause / problem may be at play.
    • Change management
      • Following correct procedures (via CAB)
  • This foundation learning is underutilised by many IT professionals
  • In my opinion anyone wanting to have a career in IT should learn this foundation
  • Learning this will provide a large perspective of how challenging the IT landscape can be. It will also provide some appreciation for other teams working in these ITIL fields.
• Learning to read code
  • This one is a bit of a curve ball comment.
  • I’m not a programmer by trade, but my time in the IT workforce at some point during my career I’ve been exposed to some form of code.
  • When in high school and university I wasn’t proficient in coding
  • Over the years, I’ve been exposed to different programmers and observed their ways of working
  • Their ways of working
  • I’ve used resources like www.w3schools.com, www.youtube.com/user/derekbanas, www.devopscube.com to assist me in my journey on reading code
    • Note – I have no affiliation with these resources. The resources I used above are from recommendations from colleagues and research on the net).

An IT professional’s learning journey should not be limited to these items only. Continued learning is essential to have a prolonged career/journey in this industry.

Summary:

• Important to learn Cloud Computing since most services and applications (E.g. Uber, Slack etc.) are based in the cloud
• Learning the ITIL framework will provide a broad understanding of the IT service landscape. IT isn’t just down to computers, PC’s and coding. There’s a vast ecosystem of IT management to grasp.
• Learning how to read code (not necessarily write, unless that is what you want to pursue) will add value to your employer. Reading the application / service code will add an extra layer of knowledge. You will be able to contribute troubleshoot assistance alongside other developers.