Making it in Financial IT

I subscribe to the Dice newsletter and there was an interesting article recently on Five Skills you need to Succeed in Financial IT. Click here

It's a good article and very accurate. Some of the things they get spot-on are:

• "Educate yourself on both financial terminology and IT best practices," "This will allow you to truly understand your internal and external customers and provide a much higher level of service than someone who just has IT experience."
• While your job may include creating and managing trading platforms, that's not your real job. Your real job is to serve the clients, whether they're internal or external. You must know to communicate with people who are very different than you, who are under extreme pressure, and probably not very nice

I really like that they point out that the people we deal with are under extreme pressure and probably not very nice. Very true! You need to develop some objectivity and learn to not take things personally. It's about getting the job done. If you're worried about a bruised ego, you'll probably do better somewhere else. I learned this over the course of my career.