I have 20 years or professional experience and my conclusion, if someone asked, what IT boils down to: pain.
The pain is what filters who can succeed and who fail. Can you endure hunting a bug for 7 hours in your chair? Can you fix problem after problem to get a system running? Everything that can fail, will fail, and you have to deal with it.
Or when you encounter (another) corner case that requires a top down rewrite of your code. If you start to question your sanity or the meaning of life, you're probably on the right track.
I have 20 years or professional experience and my conclusion, if someone asked, what IT boils down to: pain.
The pain is what filters who can succeed and who fail. Can you endure hunting a bug for 7 hours in your chair? Can you fix problem after problem to get a system running? Everything that can fail, will fail, and you have to deal with it.