1. The Information Age
Congratulations! You live in the information age. 😎 That’s clear and obvious to everyone. But what does it mean? What opportunities and prospects does that fact bring? Let’s take a quick look back...
The 20th century was the industrial age. 🏭 In every country, thousands of plants and factories were built, along with power stations and nuclear power plants. Humans flew into space for the first time; the first Mars rovers were sent to Mars…
The largest companies were engaged in manufacturing and electronics. In the 1980s, Japan nearly overtook the United States in GDP and almost became the world’s largest economy. And Japanese cars, electronics, ships, phones, and even game consoles(!) were recognized as the best in the world.
The biggest fortunes and companies were created in manufacturing. General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen: if you worked in “industry,” you had a great career and amazing prospects.
Space, rockets, and technological singularity felt so close! It seemed like just a little more—and flying cars would appear, humans would land on Mars, and even the slowest airplane would be supersonic. But none of that happened. Something went wrong.
Japan never became the number one economy. No one landed on Mars, even though more than 50(!) years have passed since the Moon landing. Commercial planes are flying slower and slower. We don’t see flying cars in the sky either. So what happened?
2. The Information Revolution
In the 1980s, the personal computer revolution happened, and in the 1990s the internet (the web) appeared. And the world changed forever.
First geeks moved to the internet, then young people, and now even an 80-year-old grandma checks the summer water shutoff schedule online 🤦♂️. Today, it’s not just that everything happens on the internet—it’s literally everything! People study there, work there, relax there, and meet each other. In the U.S., for example, 60% of married couples met online.
If you want to find a partner—go online; to find a job—go online; want to study—go online. You can still die offline, but don’t forget to delete your browser history! :)
As Time magazine wrote 10 years ago: “If you’re not on the internet, you don’t exist.” And that was 10 years ago, even before the pandemic! (I don’t know when you’re reading this—maybe it would have been better to write “before the First Pandemic”?!) 😅
3. IT Companies in the 21st Century
Ten years ago, there were 5 largest IT companies in the world: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. Today, these are simply the 5 largest companies in the world. IT companies are now the biggest and the most expensive. And that’s because they don’t have millions of customers—they have billions!
Billions of people use these companies’ products. And if a billion customers bring in $10 a month each, you get a very nice sum. That’s why IT companies aren’t just worth a lot—they’re worth a lot 💰
They’re not worth billions, but trillions of dollars.
Now imagine a company worth one billion dollars. Is that a lot? Yes. What if it’s worth 10 billion? That’s a whole lot. And 100 billion? A gigantic amount.
Nvidia, at the time this article was written, was worth 4 trillion dollars. That’s 4 thousand billion dollars.
- Nvidia — 4,450 billion
- Google — 3,908 billion
- Apple — ~3,100 billion
- Microsoft — 2,981 billion
- Amazon — 2,133 billion
Amazon, in its miserable fifth place, is worth only 2,130 billion dollars. And you still don’t want to go into IT? 🚀
By the way, many IT companies, in addition to salary, also pay their employees in stock. For example, Amazon might pay a Senior Software Engineer a salary of $200k per year. And another $100k in stock. After 3 years, that stock is already worth $300k, and it turns out that by working as a programmer at Amazon, you can make up to $500k per year. And you still don’t want to become a programmer?
Internet companies grow very fast because they don’t need to open new branches—everything happens online. Uber doesn’t own a single car, yet it’s worth $195 billion. AirBnB doesn’t own apartments, yet it’s worth $105 billion. Booking doesn’t own hotels, but it’s worth $183 billion. Guys, go into IT: great atmosphere, amazing prospects. 😇