In January 2019, this site published its very first post. It was called So You Decided to Work in IT. Now What?, and it opened with a picture of someone tired of counting tips after midnight, tired of working outside in the heat, maybe sitting in a college lecture hall wishing the professor would get to the point. The premise was simple: IT is a broad, rewarding field, the unemployment numbers are great, the salaries are solid, and if you’re willing to do more than just like gadgets, there’s a real career waiting for you. Seven years later, every one of those statements is still true, but the path from “I want to work in IT” to actually landing that first role looks meaningfully different than it did when that post went live.

The field has been through things that nobody writing in early 2019 could have anticipated. A global pandemic sent entire companies remote overnight and turned IT departments into the most essential function in every organization. An AI revolution rewrote the expectations around what technology workers should know. A wave of layoffs in 2022 and 2023 shook confidence in the tech industry’s reputation as a safe harbor for employment. The federal workforce underwent unprecedented upheaval. Return-to-office mandates reshaped the geography of work. And through all of it, the fundamental demand for people who can build, secure, and maintain technology infrastructure never went away. It just got more complicated.

The Numbers Are Still Good, but the Story Is More Nuanced

The original post cited sub-two-percent tech unemployment, a median salary of $52,810 for Computer Support Specialists, over $100,000 for Network Architects, and projected job growth of eleven percent year over year. Those numbers were accurate at the time and the overall trajectory hasn’t reversed. As of 2025, tech unemployment sits at about 2.8 percent, which is still well below the national average. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now reports a median annual wage of $105,990 across all computer and IT occupations, and it projects roughly 317,700 job openings annually through 2034. The demand is real and the money is still there.

But the texture has changed. Entry-level hiring at the fifteen largest tech firms dropped twenty-five percent between 2023 and 2024, and job postings specifically tagged as “junior” or “entry-level” in software and IT roles have fallen about forty percent compared to pre-2022 levels. That doesn’t mean entry-level IT jobs have disappeared, but it does mean the on-ramp is narrower than it was in 2019, when companies were more willing to hire people with potential and train them over three to six months. In 2026, most employers want someone who can contribute meaningfully from week one, and the screening process reflects that shift. Recent computer science graduates are seeing unemployment rates around six percent, and recent computer engineering graduates are closer to seven and a half percent, both notably higher than the overall tech unemployment figure. If you’re trying to break into the field right now, the broad industry numbers can make it feel like opportunities are everywhere while your actual job search tells a different story.

The Help Desk Isn’t What It Was

In 2019, the help desk was the most common entry point into IT, and for good reason. It was where you learned how organizations actually use technology, how to communicate with non-technical people, and how to troubleshoot under pressure. That role still exists, but it’s changing in ways that matter for anyone planning to start there. BLS data shows that basic computer user support roles are in a period of modest decline, around four percent, driven largely by AI-powered chatbots and automated ticket routing systems that handle the simpler requests before they ever reach a human being. The easy tickets, the password resets and the “how do I connect to the printer” calls, are increasingly handled by self-service portals and conversational AI.

What that means in practice is that the tickets that do reach a human analyst in 2026 are harder, weirder, and more complex than the ones that reached a human analyst in 2019. The floor has risen. If you’re starting on the help desk today, you’re walking into an environment where the straightforward stuff has been filtered out and what’s left requires real diagnostic thinking, patience with ambiguity, and the ability to research problems you haven’t seen before. That’s actually a better training ground than resetting passwords all day, but it also means the learning curve is steeper from day one, and the expectation from employers is that you can handle it.

The silver lining is that computer network support, the more technical and systems-oriented side of the support function, is holding steady. If you position yourself toward infrastructure, networking, and systems work rather than pure end-user support, the job market is considerably friendlier.

AI Changed the Conversation, Not the Foundation

The single biggest difference between entering IT in 2019 and entering IT in 2026 is that artificial intelligence has become part of the baseline expectation. About ten percent of all new entry-level job postings now explicitly require AI-related skills, and that number isn’t limited to developer roles. Customer support, operations, marketing, and IT administration positions are all starting to list AI literacy as a preferred or required qualification. When we wrote about the AI skills premium in mid-2024, it was already clear that the market was pricing in AI competency. Two years later, that trend has only accelerated.

But here’s what’s important to understand, especially if the AI conversation feels overwhelming: the foundation of IT work hasn’t actually changed. Networks still need to be designed, configured, and secured. Systems still need to be provisioned, monitored, and maintained. Users still need support when things break. Data still needs to be backed up, governance policies still need to be enforced, and someone still needs to be on call when the production environment goes sideways at two in the morning. AI has added a new layer to IT work, but it hasn’t replaced the layer that was already there. If you’re entering the field in 2026, understanding AI tools and being comfortable working alongside them is genuinely important, but it’s an addition to your skill set, not a replacement for knowing how to subnet, configure a firewall, or troubleshoot a Group Policy issue.

The most interesting finding in recent hiring data is that seventy-three percent of talent acquisition leaders say the skill they actually need most in 2026 is critical thinking and problem-solving, even as executives keep demanding AI skills. The market is telling you two things at once: learn how AI fits into IT workflows, but don’t neglect the fundamentals that make you useful when the AI tools don’t have an answer.

Certifications Still Matter, but the Hiring Model Shifted

In 2019, the advice was straightforward: get your CompTIA A+, maybe a Network+ or Security+, and use those credentials to get your foot in the door. That advice isn’t wrong in 2026, but the context around it has shifted. More than seventy percent of employers now say they prioritize demonstrable skills over traditional degrees, a trend that’s been building since the pandemic accelerated skills-based hiring. Certifications still carry weight, particularly AWS credentials, CompTIA Security+, and increasingly AI-focused certifications, but they carry that weight as proof of capability rather than as a checkbox. An employer in 2026 wants to see your Security+ and then ask you to walk through how you’d respond to a specific incident scenario, not just verify that you passed a multiple-choice exam.

The practical implication is that certifications are necessary but not sufficient. You need them to get through the initial screening, especially at larger organizations where HR filters on credentials before a technical manager ever sees your resume. But the interview process itself has become more practical and scenario-driven. Standing up a home lab, contributing to open-source projects, documenting your learning publicly, and being able to talk through real problems you’ve actually solved all matter more than they did seven years ago. The candidates who are breaking through the tighter entry-level market aren’t the ones with the longest list of certs. They’re the ones who can demonstrate that they’ve actually used the skills those certs represent.

Remote Work Rewrote the Rules, Then Partially Unwrote Them

The 2019 version of this conversation assumed that most IT jobs were on-site. That assumption was correct at the time and then spectacularly incorrect for about two years before partially reasserting itself. The pandemic proved that a huge percentage of IT work could be done remotely, and for a while the market adjusted accordingly, with remote roles commanding competitive salaries and geographic barriers to employment falling away. By 2025, fifty-four percent of Fortune 100 companies had reimposed five-day in-office requirements, and fully remote roles became less common and more competitive.

The current state, as of early 2026, is a messy compromise. Hybrid arrangements are the norm at most mid-to-large organizations. Fully remote roles still exist but tend to attract enormous applicant pools, which makes them harder to land, particularly for people without established track records. For someone entering the field, the realistic expectation is that your first IT role will probably require some on-site presence, particularly if it involves hardware, infrastructure, or direct user support. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the in-person exposure to how an organization actually runs its technology is genuinely valuable early in your career, but it’s a different picture than the “work from anywhere” promise that briefly seemed like it would become the default.

The Advice That Still Holds

The original post said something that remains just as true in 2026 as it was in 2019: there is more to this field than your interest in consumer technology, gadgets, video games, personal computers, or mobile devices. That line resonated because it captured a real misconception that draws people toward IT and then frustrates them when the reality doesn’t match. Liking technology is a fine starting point, but what actually makes someone successful in this field is the willingness to learn how systems work at a level deeper than the user interface, the ability to communicate with people who don’t share your technical vocabulary, and the patience to troubleshoot problems that don’t have obvious answers.

What’s different in 2026 is the speed at which the field expects you to develop those skills. The runway for “learning on the job” is shorter, the tools are more complex, and the expectation that you’ll be comfortable with AI, automation, and cloud infrastructure is present from the beginning in ways that simply didn’t exist seven years ago. But the core qualities that make someone good at IT work, curiosity, persistence, clear communication, and a genuine interest in understanding how things work rather than just using them, haven’t changed at all.

If you’re reading this in 2026 and you’re in the same position that the original post described, tired of the job you’re in and looking for something better, the IT field is still a strong bet. The salaries are higher than they were in 2019, the projected growth is robust, and the skills shortage means that organizations still need more qualified people than they can find. The path in is just a little more demanding than it used to be, and the people who succeed will be the ones who approach it with realistic expectations and a willingness to build real competency rather than just collecting credentials. The field hasn’t gotten easier to enter, but it hasn’t stopped being worth entering either.