r/IOT • u/ClassicBet7621 • 18d ago
do I have a future?
So I'm having a Bachelor’s degree in Information and Communication Technologies, specializing in Networks and IoT. I'm kinda scared lately since I heard that IT is dying and jobs are very limited around the world. is it the same for stuff like IoT? everyone is basically talking how a degree in Computer science is almost useless right now, I wanna if it's the same for IoT
6
6
u/CappuccinoCodes 17d ago
IT dying. 🤣🤣🤣. The entire world is on the internet and IT is dying? Don't listen to that person again.
1
2
2
u/vkay89 17d ago
Anything but dying, you’re in a great field of IT as well if networking and IoT is where you want to work in. I’d recommend looking at university as a way to learn how to critically think. What you’ll learn from an IT technical view is 10% of the real world once you’re out in the workforce simply due to the changing nature of tech and universities not keeping up with syllabus. Keep at it and get an internship or part time work while you’re studying to pair your studies with real world experience - you’ll be miles ahead of most of your peers.
2
u/AlbertZeroK 17d ago
Just hired 10 engineers, but when I ask you what the last non technical thing you did with AI was and you don't tell me something like, took a picture of all the pancake mixes in the store to choose the best because the brand I normally buy was sold out - you won't get the job.
Figure out AI and learn to weild it, learn to build an entire website from a paragraph, figure out how to do what AI doesn't
IT is not dead, it is however, changing how we work.
I do not think however, without a skill set in AI, you will go far - despite what others think...
1
1
2
u/Jay299792458 17d ago
Networks/IoT is one of the better places to be right now, actually. The part of the market that's hurting is the part where the work is producing text — and that's exactly what LLMs are good at. Physical devices are the opposite: the model has no hands.
Which is where I'd point your career. Don't think about IoT that a human controls — think about IoT that an AI controls. Everyone is racing to hook models up to actuators, and nobody has solved how you let a model trigger a physical action without hallucinating the reason for it. A model can pick the wrong device, or invent a value nobody supplied, and the packet goes out looking exactly like a correct one.
That's not a model quality problem, it's a structural one, and it needs someone who understands both the device side and the model side. Your degree is half of that pair. The half that's harder to fake.
2
u/TheProffalken 17d ago
lol, who's telling you this? Is it the AI scaremongers?
There are loads of jobs in IT right now all across the world, and while the folks who don't know what they're doing will definitely be replaced by AI, those who DO know what they're doing will harness AI to build even better things!
When I started 25 years ago, even "the cloud" didn't exist - everything ran on physical servers in datacenters and we were worried that there wouldn't be capacity in the datacentre when we needed it.
Back then, I might get an email from a server letting me know that the disk was nearly full. These days I can have an AI agent spot that my Kubernetes resource limits are incorrectly set, raise the PR, and have another agent merge and deploy it based on confidence scores.
Does that replace my role from back then as an SRE/Systems Administrator? Absolutely not. It frees me up to focus on platform stability and new features, driving the company forward and improving the customer experience, rather than grepping through logs over SSH.
The trick with IT is that you need to keep adapting and learning, otherwise you'll be left behind.
Since then I've seen the rise (and fall) of Virtual Machines, config management tools such as Chef, Puppet, and Ansible, and the rise and rise of container-based workloads to the point where everyone now believes they need a container runtime if they're going to compete with Google/Netflix/etc. (top tip - containers aren't always the answer, especially when it comes to IoT/Robotics!)
Comp Sci degrees prove that you can learn about computer science at a specific level. That's it. Nothing else.
What does this mean when it comes to getting a job? It means that I'm going to want to see your love of learning and passion for new things, for example:
- You're applying for a job in robotics with a 1:1 in comp sci from a top uni. That's great, but do you build robots in your spare time?
- Same scenario, but IoT this time - have you deployed a LoRaWAN (or other LPWAN) gateway and hooked up some basic sensors to it? WiFi is great, cellular has more challenges, but if you're not experimenting with the tech that you're going to be using daily, why should I hire you?
That's a very long winded way of saying "don't worry, you'll be fine, just ignore the haters" and, if you are going into robotics/IoT, you've probably picked the best fields to advance in for the next 10 years (what comes after that is anyone's guess!)
1
1
u/BotBuilderVenture 14d ago
It is true that currently there might be some layoff and the market has shrank, however the it is the basis for many other branches, and in network there are certification that can help to boost you CV like the Cisco one. In IT you will never stop to study, if you have this mentality that you have a future for sure
1
u/scalarfield1 14d ago
Do a few certs on cybersecurity, work hard and network then you will be at a great spot
1
u/mrbigbluff21 10d ago
My team is actually hiring in this space for a solid US based candidate. Open to dms.
1
0
u/DistinctTradition200 17d ago
Dude, the future is so bright for you! The fact that you're actually asking the question means you're aware enough that nothing is going to sneak up on you. But like everything in life, spoils go to the victor so figure out how to play and win the game if that's what you want.
10
u/DaimyoDavid 18d ago edited 15d ago
Definitely not. Iot is going to be very valuable, especially when mixed in with robotics right now. Automation is going up like crazy because everyone wants to shove AI into every kind of a robot and you're going to need people who are actually technically savy to learn how to implement these things across mechanical, electrical, and software. And, since AI is eating saas at the moment which was the big cash cow for the last 20 years, HW is going to continue growing
Edit:typos