The technology industry scares away most job hunters. There are two main myths surrounding this field – first, that you have to be a genius with decades of schooling to understand computers and second, that you’ll eventually get burned because the industry sees huge fall outs all the time.
Neither of these two myths is true. The fact of the matter is that the average person can easily make over $100,000 annually in a technology job, even if you don’t have a doctorate, and that money isn’t going anywhere.
“Technology” is a really broad term when you’re talking about careers. One of the reasons this industry has such a bad reputation is that many of the job in technology are extremely risky. For example, many website investors make millions of dollars every year, but there are also website investors who make less prudent choices and lose millions. In the technology industry, however, you don’t have to take risks. There are many $100k+ jobs that aren’t typically any riskier than any other job in any other industry. When it comes down to it, Information Technology is where most of the high-paying, low-risk technology jobs are found.
IT is just one sector of the technology industry, but a job here can be very lucrative. The highest-paying jobs here all make over $100,000 annually on the low end of the spectrum. The top of the IT ladder is the Chief Information Officer position, where you’ll start, on average, at over $126,000, according to recent statistics. Most CIOs, after just a few years, actually make well over $200,000 a year, and for huge corporations, that number is even higher.
According to Robert Half Technology, other jobs with average salaries of over $100,000 include consulting, IT auditing, software engineering, data architecture, and applications development. That all sounds extremely difficult to understand, but in reality, information technology is nothing more than using computers and software to organize, store, share, protect, and otherwise use data. You can start in an IT job with nothing be a high school degree, and some $100k+ employees have just an associate or bachelor’s degree.
This is also a field where your employer will often pay for you to go back to school, earning a higher degree.
One tech industry field that is evolving right now is green technology. Even in an economically bad year, people are investing more and more money in new technology that will help save energy, cut emissions, and otherwise “go green.” Technology also combines really well with other high-pay industries. For example, you can get into the medical technology industry or the media tech industry. Of course, the highest-pay technology jobs are often with the government, and there are no shortage of job openings. Don’t let the technology industry scare you; it’s a profitable and ever-changing world in which to work.