Selecting a study field
I have received several emails asking about software engineer skills that global companies need. As the need for knowledge workers increases and there is a shortage of skilled people in industry, many global companies have to hire skilled software people from oversea to meet their demands. Each year, The U.S has to “import” over 80,000 software engineers, mostly from India via the H1B visa (Work visa) program to work in the U.S. Many countries in Europe also have to bring skilled people from Eastern Europe and Russia to work in their countries. Even India and China also have to hire software people from other countries to work “temporary” in their countries until they can train enough skilled workers.
We are living in a globalized world where people will travel wherever they can make a comfortable life and the most important skill is the ability to communicate in a foreign language such as English. If you do not speak English very well, the chance for working oversea is probably not very good. The second is the technical skills in basic programming languages such as C, C++, C#, or Java but then you also need to have knowledge of.NET, Unix, Linux, HTML, XML, SQL, MySQL, or J2EE. These are the foundational skills that allow you to work at the programmer or tester level. The more advanced skills that you would need are Business analysis or Requirements Engineering, software project manager, system architecture, or network designer that will qualify you to work at the next level as you moving up your career. You need to specialize or having experiences in the integration of commercial of the shelf (COTS) such as Peoplesoft, SAP, Dynamics, Siebel and Oracle business suites. These skills will help you to advance in higher level of technical area. You could specialize in network management systems such as CISCO, Novell, EMC, VMware, IBM Tripoli or BMC. Currently, there are high demands in database management and business intelligence systems such as Enterprise data warehouse construction, Business performance management, OLAP development and Metadata solutions based on OS platform (Window server, Sun/HP server), Oracle, SQL, DB2, Hyperion Essbase, Cognos powercube, Oracle OLAP, and Websphere etc.
Last week, I have conversations with our job placement office at Carnegie Mellon and they told me that the best job outlooks in the next 10 years are: Software Engineer, Nurse, and Network Security. They based their predictions on global supply and demand from the job market but they do not know how many students would change their field of study based on that data or would they still continue to study what they like?
Would you select a study field that you really like regardless of the job prospect? After all, you only get one chance in life since you can not be students forever so why not study something that you like? However, if there is oversupply of certain skills in the market, would you still want to study them? Education is a major investment from you and your family in term of time, effort, and financial. Would you still consider what you like as it may impact your family's investment? Your parents are struggling to pay the tuition for your school, would you consider their efforts and expectations in selecting your field of study?
These are interesting questions that there is no right or wrong answer. I do respect whatever answer that you choose, after all it is your choice and your life. My issue in this blog is today many students still lack “visibility” of the market supply & demand for their chosen fields of study. Many do not know what the market needs and what will be hot by the time they graduate. Of course, the market does change so no one can be 100% correct. Few years ago, some people predicted that business, banking and financial are hot jobs but no one can predict the financial crisis and today most business students could not find jobs. However it also does not mean students should ignore job forecasts as we are entering the globalization era where people can travel to work anywhere.
As I discussed this question with my colleague, they also offered different opinions. One professor told me that students should study what they like because they will not be a good student if they have to study something just to get a job. If they do not like what they study then they may not be good at it. Education is about learning and maturing and should not be a suffering work. After all people can get a job even if the other people won't so there are chances if they are good at what they study, they can always get good jobs.
Another professor has different opinions. He believe that students must understand about competition in pursuing career and it would be wise to select a field of study that is in high demand because when you have good jobs, making good money then you can pursue anything that you like. He told me that he like music but he knew that it was very difficult to find a job so he chose computer and after many years working in computing industry he become a professor at Carnegie Mellon where he teach computing music in the Entertainment Technology Center, he said: “I have both worlds, my passion is in music but my career is in computer music for entertainment industry and I love every minute of it.”
Even though we should know the outlook for our chosen field of study, for better or worse, most of us will make our own decision because we are responsible for our lives.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
