Surviving as a Bread-and-Butter Developer in SI

It was short and entertaining, so I finished it in less than a day. I, too, started my career as a developer in SI. I was a business school graduate with no IT background, and I had no knowledge whatsoever about development. That was already nine years ago.

Back then, the world was very different from how it is now in 2021. People didn’t want to become developers. Even among computer science graduates, most felt the same way. Being a developer was the kind of job where the work was grueling and the rewards were meager. It was far from the polished image of cutting-edge technology. If anything, it was closer to being a construction site laborer. Developers were the kind of inconspicuous people who quietly toiled away, building the foundations of the world. Even so, having chosen to become a developer, I belonged to the group with a rather unusual background.

But now the world has changed. There are plenty of people who want to become developers. We are truly in the midst of an IT boom. The news is flooded with stories of developers earning hundreds of millions of won and starting salaries of 60 million won. Even the government-funded IT academies have changed their sales strategies. In the past, there were many ads saying that you could receive a living allowance if you completed the coding curriculum at an IT academy. Of course, the target of those ads was the unemployed. But now, their ad copy reads: “Get hired at Naver or Kakao! Starting salary of 60 million won!” It has changed this much in just five years.

As a developer, this shift in the times is exciting. But at the same time, it also gives me cause for concern. Even at this very moment, when praise and envy for the glamorous and sophisticated life of a developer abound, most developers begin their careers with a starting salary of 20 to 30 million won. Naturally, the majority of them work in SI, which is the subject of this book. And when supply is plentiful, prices are bound to fall accordingly. The flood of developers pouring out of government-funded Java academies in the early 2000s greatly drove down developers’ market value, which until then had been fairly high.

Even so, there is one thing I’m sure of. Just as the senior developers of that era achieved the computerization of this land, I believe that the countless developers just starting out now will also be able to accomplish something. After all, it seems that supply can create its own demand.

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