Information Technology (IT) Engineering - As a career option

Information Technology (IT) Engineers are the people who bring the full extent of computer hardware and software infrastructure into the hands of the common man in the street, at homes and in workplaces.

Given the present day dependence on computation and digital information storage, pretty much all organizations rely on proper networking and software support to function, making IT services a very crucial asset in the present time.

What does an Information Technology (IT) Engineer do?

• Developing new software for personal and commercial use – typically involves extensive computer programming.

• Testing existing software to ensure security, usability, and versatility.

• Providing suitable networking and computational solutions to organizations of various scales.

• Providing technical support and maintenance of computational infrastructure.

• IT Jobs are ubiquitous; making IT engineers some of the most employable engineers in the planet. Naturally, experience in the discipline is valued by a lot of employers and remunerated profusely.

How to Become an Information Technology (IT) Engineer?

To become an IT engineer, it is a good idea to start getting acquainted with computers as early as possible. If you are in high school and your school offers a computer science elective, go for it – the programming acumen you develop early in life stays with you for as long as you work!

After school, it is important to get selected by a premier IT engineering program in a good college. Therefore, most IT aspirants spend long hours studying for their engineering entrances.

Many people think that IT is a safe discipline because there are way more jobs in IT than in any other engineering discipline, but this is only half true.

There are more jobs, yes, but the number of IT graduates every year, combined with the number of graduates from other engineering disciplines who switch to IT, is equally high.

Hence, the IT engineer competes with a much bigger pool of competitors later in their life, making their lives considerably more taxing than that of most other kinds of engineers.

Eligibility Criteria to Become an Information Technology (IT) Engineer

• +2: Have to graduate in the science stream with an aggregate 60%.
• Bachelor’s Degree: Bachelor of Technology in Information Technology
• Master’s Degree: Master of Technology in Information Technology (Optional)

After your bachelor’s in Information technology, you are almost immediately employable. From there on, you can get higher up the ladder as you acquire more experience and hone your skills.

Some IT graduates go on to pursue master’s degrees in Business Information Systems and other similar specializations, but IT remains one of those streams where work experience trumps degrees.

A Day in the Life of an Information Technology (IT) Engineer

Hi, I’m an IT engineer working for the largest IT company in India. I’ve been on the job for seven years now, and have acquired enough experience and skill to be considered a senior software developer.

After my BE in Information Technology from a top engineering college, I switched jobs for the next two years until I gained enough experience to get where I am today.

10:00 AM: I reach work. Contrary to some other IT companies, my company doesn’t require their employees to stick to an iron schedule of nine to five. Many of us arrive as early as seven and leave work early.

Others, like me, prefer arriving late and working until well after dark. I’m going to spend an hour clearing my mailbox, as has become a ritual every morning.

11:00 AM: Given my seniority, I work on multiple projects at once that pertain to the same software – an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) package for one of our long-term clients.

The emails I get are usually customer queries and reports for bugs. I deal with them within the hour or delegate the work to a junior.

12:00 PM: The next three hours of my day are going to be spent coding. This part of my job revolves around developing new features and enhancing existing ones. Even after all these years, opening that code editor screen makes me excited.

3:30 PM: I took a half break for tea, and am on my way to a weekly team meeting. At the meeting, we’re going to be doing two major tasks – one, I’m going to catch up with the rest of my team to ensure that everyone’s on the same page.

Second, I’ve been mailed a list of troubleshooting problems that have turned up over the course of the past week, and we’re going to sit back and try to solve them together.

5:00 PM: Meetings like these are often the best part of the day because we get to solve tricky problems. Even though it has already been an hour and a half, everyone in the team is puffed up for more action.

We’re taking a half-hour break and would go back to the meeting room until we’ve figured out the lot.

7:00 PM: The meeting is over and most of my colleagues are going home. I like to stay back late because the relatively emptier workplace gives me enough seclusion and peace of mind to finish my coding efficiently.

I’m going to stay here for the next several hours, until I get tired. The job is mentally taxing sometimes, but hey, this is what I loved and signed up for, so I’m happy to be here.

Did you like my profession? Do you also want to become Information Technology (IT) Engineer? Still confused? We hope this article has added something valuable to search for this profession. Have your say in the comment box below. Enjoy Reading!