What are my career opportunities?

Career Choices: I am confused about career opportunities after a BE Comp. What are some suggestions?

• I am a final year of computer engineering student. My family thinks teaching is good for me but I don't want to be lecturer. I can program but I don't know about career opportunities in it. I want to do some dynamic work. Now I have told my family that I want to prepare for GATE 2015 to take M.tech admission. I am still confused. What to do?

• Answer:

  First of all I would like to mention that i understand your confusion. I was in a similar dilemma during my final year. I opted for GATE examination and did put in a bit of efforts. But the result was exactly at par with my efforts (:p) and so i had to look out for other options. I would divide my answer in multiple parts based on your points. 1. Dynamic Work: every generation is more fast than the previous ones and we are constantly in search of Change. So expecting your work to be dynamic is a normal mindset for most of us. But the definition of dynamic is defined by an individual. Consider the following 2 people. A. A Business Man who travels almost daily to different cities for meeting clients or material providers. For him his job is too dynamic and constantly changing. B. An Air Hostess who travels daily for at least 2 domestic flights (this is an average I got to know form a friend) she might be flying to different cities daily but still feel that her job is static and is same routine. So its your mindset how you perceive things. To make life interesting stick to some hobby which is completely irrelevant to your job (like I do travel and photography). No job is going to give you feeling of dynamic after some time. 2. Family pressures and lectureship: Being a child your family wants you to be at peace and safe. So they are pushing you for lectureship. I would suggest you to give it a thought, not because your parents are pushing you but because it is also a good career choice in terms of effort to salary ratio. [By no means i am demeaning lectureship. My cousin is a lecturer and I know how stressed her days are during paper checking period and peak times.] Lectureship is a difficult profession as it tests a lot of your patience. I loose my cool when my peers do not listen to me in meetings so i can imagine the feeling when someone is snoring in front of you when you are trying to teach and similar other scenarios. But if you think you can tolerate such things then go for it. Do not worry about teaching being a non-dynamic profession. As mentioned in point 1, nothing is static unless you let it be so. 3. Programming / Career in IT: This is a touchy subject for me as I am an IT guy. Join IT if you are really interested in Software domain. Its not only about programming, there are other domains like testing (manual and automated), business analysts and so on. The best part is you can join IT after giving a shot to teaching. Do a year or 6 months of teaching and then Join IT. Or vice versa. You can have some hands on experience in IT and then join teaching. If you are worrying about dynamic work in IT then no need to worry. You can work on technologies where projects are smaller in duration. So that you can work on multiple projects and not feel stagnated. I am a mobile app  developer and average duration of a project is not more than 5-6 months . I work on approx 2-3 projects per year and its quite dynamic. Same goes for Front End development. Even their work is quite dynamic. And if you join big organizations you can get a chance to switch technologies so that  you do not get bored with only one. 4. MTech : As I mentioned even I appeared for GATE examination and was planning to do PG. I have a couple of cousins and friends who have done PG and i didn't get a really optimistic feedback from them when i was in dilema. So i ddint try hard enough for it and was not really sad of not geting a chance for that. Also i was done with studying and college life and wanted to do something on my own. But everyone can have diferent perspective and i wont disagree if you want to do PG. but think twice before actually joining college if you are ready to give more "Theory examinations" and "mug up" the syllabus. 5. Other Options: If you really want to study more or do a PG, You can also look out for other options like 1. MBA in various domains and then join banks or as HR [My younger bro has just completed MBA operations and waiting for result and Job :p] 2. User Experience [UX designer in IT]      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience_design , http://www.sitepoint.com/ux-designer-actually/ 3. Join a software testing course and then get a Job in IT. and similar other domains. PS: Do not get confused over so many answers and always remember that even if there is no reverse gear in life, you can always take a U turn and switch to another path. Even if you choose any of the above options or and option mentioned by someone else, it is really east to change your path. the only tough thing is to get rid of the Fear in mind we have about changing. Thanks for A2A. Hope this helps!