Ukrainian IT specialist Anton Kotyk, who has been working in the industry for over 16 years, said that he would advise his child not to limit himself to choosing an IT profession. In his opinion, promising areas could be robotics, radio electronics, mechanical engineering, chemistry, biology, and fundamental sciences.
Ukrainian IT specialist Anton Kotyk, who has been working in the industry for over 16 years, said that he would advise his child not to limit himself to choosing an IT profession. In his opinion, promising areas could be robotics, radio electronics, mechanical engineering, chemistry, biology, and fundamental sciences.
He wrote about this in Threads.
«Talking to my little one about choosing a profession, I suggested to him not to go into IT. And I’ve been in IT for 16+ years and have already achieved something. I continue to work in IT, but at the same time I build humanoid robots in my own startup,» Kotyk wrote.
According to him, it was working on a robotics startup that allowed him to look at promising specialties in a different way.
Among the areas he recommends paying attention to are robotics, radio electronics, and mechanical engineering. At the same time, he calls specialties related to chemistry and fundamental sciences even more promising.
In particular, Kotyk drew attention to inorganic chemistry. «There is a boom in new materials in the world right now. Batteries, semiconductors, composites, new coatings. Companies that do this are making unbelievable money,» he noted.
Another promising area, in his opinion, is organic chemistry and biology. Here he mentions the development of longevity technologies, new drugs, biotechnology, and genetic engineering.
The IT expert advises paying special attention to mathematics and physics, which can become a basis for work in various technological fields. «After them, you can go anywhere. From rocketry and robotics to finance or AI,» Kotyk explained.
He explains his logic simply: difficult specialties have a higher entry threshold, so they can potentially mean less competition on the job market. «The more difficult the training, the fewer people want to go through it. So, after university, you will have much less competition,» he believes.
The discussion under the post accumulated over 200 comments and went far beyond IT.
One commentator suggested that energy professionals will be in high demand in the coming decades, both in Ukraine, where generation will have to be restored after the war, and around the world. «Energy will be the new IT industry,» he wrote.
Other users mentioned the shortage of radio physicists, the development of new materials, biochemistry, and even cosmobiology.
However, not everyone agreed with the thesis that fundamental education automatically opens the door to modern technological professions. One of the participants in the discussion, who has a mechmath education and a scientific degree, noted that theoretical mathematics can be quite far from practical tasks of AI or robotics. «After mechmath, you will not become a specialist in ML/AI, you need to turn off the road in the right direction in time,» he wrote.
Kotyk responded that fundamental education should not replace applied skills, but can create a strong foundation for further specialization. Among the possible directions for mathematicians, he named AI/ML, aviation and rocketry, robotics, and finance.
At the same time, some of the discussion participants recalled another important factor — the interest of the person himself. In their opinion, choosing a profession only based on the principle of prospects can be no less risky than blindly following fashion. «The most important thing is to choose a profession based on your preferences,» wrote one of the users.
Kotyk himself agreed with this, but added that children often lack the horizons to know about the existence of a large number of professions outside the most obvious areas.
