The gap

Most people in IT have a version of this career in their head. Not the job description, not the salary. The earlier version. The one where you stayed up too late trying to get something working, where you pulled things apart just to see how they fit back together, where figuring something out actually felt like progress, not just closure.

That’s usually what got you here.

There’s a gap between that version and what the job actually is. Not because the job is bad. Just because it’s different.

A lot of the day-to-day is keeping things running. This could be systems that already exist, tools you didn’t choose, platforms you don’t control. You’re translating constantly: between users and systems, between expectation and reality, between this should work and this is what we’ve got. Most of the time, neither side fully understands the other.

You’re also expected to stay current. Not just competent, current. Things move quickly, that’s part of the deal, but the expectation is that you keep up in your own time because you’re interested, because you enjoy it.

And you probably did. You probably still do, somewhere under the noise. It’s just harder to access when you’re tired.

The environment changed too. The internet you were curious about isn’t quite the same one you work in now. More centralised, more controlled, more owned. Tools are platforms, software is a service, infrastructure lives somewhere else, and a lot of it isn’t really yours to understand in the same way. You can still work with it. You just don’t relate to it the same way.

That’s where the gap shows up. You’re still doing the work, still good at it, still paid well enough. But it doesn’t feel like the same thing you started with.

That doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice. It just means you’ve noticed the difference.

People talk about burnout in terms of workload, pressure, stress. All of that is real. But there’s another layer underneath it; quieter, slower. The distance between what you thought this would be and what it actually is.

That’s the gap. And it’s worth naming. Because once you see it clearly, you can decide what to do about it. You can either ignore it, adjust to it, or change something. Pretending it isn’t there just makes everything heavier than it needs to be.