Technology

Within a span of just a few years, the entire globe has seen many technological advances. It indeed is true that different sections of the globe has seen varying levels of growth, but there has been one thing in common and that is growth. Just a few years back, when there was no technological revolution in place, people had to stand in never ending queues for almost every other thing, be it paying some utility bill or doing some account transfer or even a query as small as the accounts balance enquiry. Individuals had no option but to spend hours for booking the railway tickets and make a million phone calls to enquire about hotel room reservations for a place hundreds of miles away.  Then we jumped onto the era of information technology where most of the needs of the day are resolved using a click of a mouse itself.  Few individuals could now be seen doing the transactions standing at the bank.

We now do not have to wait for our turn to know our account balance and do not have to wait for the banks to open in the morning in order to withdraw cash for emergencies. We need not carry huge amount of cash in the pocket and risk theft but can swipe our cards at any place in the world. We do not have to physically be present at the bank premises to open a fixed deposit account and we can transfer millions from one account to one account irrespective of the accounts located in diagonally opposite side of the globe. Thanks to the software companies present in the financial maintenance who have done this vast wonders for us.

In order to gain information on any subject, in fact even researching the career path, the very first thing that an individual does these days is to google the best possible option for him. For every single question boggling anybodys mind, google has now started to come as one of the first way to find a solution. Information technology has enabled every comfort at our door step with presenting the user an access to online ticket booking, access to the latest movies and even shopping. Softwares are getting developed in the market which can reduce the need of doctors to a bare minimum level by tracking the symptoms of various diseases and the available medicines for their cure. Unmanned fighter planes are nothing new these days where the complete fight operation is performed by the fighter plane which has an integrated computer system remotely controlled by an operator. Some of the other software companies in various important sectors apart from those listed above are-

Offering the automation of all insurance claims to the customers thus saving him from the pain of arranging cash for the hospital while he is still in the hospital.
Maintenance of accounts of different organizations.
Maintaining Customer Relationship with the help of auto response that includes doing customer communication with the help of letters and statements.
Websites and chat servers allowing social networking including online gaming.
Softwares designed to perform online stock trading and the list goes on.

Obviously Information Technology has been the backbone of the growth for the world as a whole.. These software companies employ sharp minded software engineers who and these software engineer being the architect of this exponential growth. For most of the individuals nothing could be as exiting as leading the world to the forefront of this development.

The field of computer systems can be broadly divided into two sub fields-
Software systems
Hardware systems.

While software system includes machine level representation of data and softwares, controlling the program execution, programming, development of various software products, packages, designing of the operating system, the hardware technology involves designing of various logic processors, organization of machine and devices in different technology like the very large scale integration technology.

As apart of our study we will concentrate on the software side of the computer field. Important skills that a computer programmer must posses include good analytical skills, reasoning, logical ability, paying attention to details, good level of math, and a good written and oral comprehension skill. The training generally required for this field is a bachelors degree. One of the other fundamental requirements of a programmer is knowledge of programming languages. Having knowledge of multiple programming languages is an big plus positives and multiplies the possibility of fetching a good job for the programmer. The skills mentioned above are achieved primarily by a four year bachelor degree course at any vocational schools or universities. More than 23 of the programmers have a bachelor degree and their preferred subjects include a degree in mathematics, computer science, information technology or engineering.

If we go by general logic then the remuneration earned by an individual who carves the success of an organization by acting as an anchor for the growth, should be good by any standard. We will have a look at the statistics presented by various groups in order to support this claim.

If we look at the statistics of the number of jobs and an average payout then there were approximately 1.71 million computer experts in United States in the year 2002 who were earning more than fifty thousand US dollars per year. The computer experts include computer analysts, computer scientist, database administrators, system administrators and software engineers and are counted on the basis of data published by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As per the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), following is the breakdown of employees
BLS Job Category Total Employed 90 above 75 above 50 above 25 above 10 above Est. Above 50kcomputer programmers 499,000 35,080 45,960 60,290 78,140 96,860 339,080 computer application software engineers 394,000 44,830 55,510 70,900 88,660 109,800 325,991 computer systems analysts 468,000 39,270 49,500 62,890 78,350 93,400 346,631 computer systems software engineers 281,000 45,890 58,500 74,040 91,160 111,600 239,162 network and computer systems administrators 251,000 34,460 43,290 54,810 69,530 86,440 151,700 network systems and data communications analysts 186,000 34,880 44,850 58,420 74,290 92,110 121,853 other computer specialists 192,000   54,070   103,226 database administrators 110,000 30,750 40,550 55,480 75,100 92910 65,094 computer and information scientists 23,000 42,890 58,630 77,750 98,490 121,640 19,142 Approximate Number Of Computer Specialists Earning Over 50,000yr in 2002 1,711,879

As per the data from City TownInfo.com, the median salary for computer professionals in the year 2008 was as high as 69,620 U.S. dollars in the year 2008 and it terms the unemployment rate as compared to the other sectors as fairly low. Apart from this, the company also suggests that as high as four hundred thirty five thousand individuals were employed in the sector in the year 2006 in which 73 of the programmers had at least a bachelor degree attached to their names.

If we look at the lifestyle of a computer professional working in a multi national company then he has to spend almost 40 hours in a week working for the organization. The work place is generally cozy and comfortable and equipped with almost all the modern amenities. A novice software engineer generally starts his career with the designation Associate Software engineer and gets an on job training to perform his roles and duties. He is then promoted to act as a software engineer and then Senior Software Engineer in a span of next 3-4 years depending upon his performance and the rules of the organization. After an experience of around 5-6 years he generally gets promoted to a level of Team Leader in which he is generally allocated a team of 8-10 people, once again depending upon the employee strength and various other factors specific to the organization.  Needless to say there are decent salary hikes at every rung of this path. After an experience of 7-8 years an employee is generally promoted to Associate Project manager and then project manager. A project manager generally handles a team size of 100 under various different projects headed by various different team leaders and he also generally starts his career as a simple software engineer, although having an experience of around 12-14 years in total. Apart from managing the team, the other primary responsibility of the manager includes satisfying the team members while working in the best interest of the company by providing good level of satisfaction to the client. Moreover the budgeting analysis as well as convincing the customers for the expansion of project comes under one of the responsibilities of the project manager. Salary of a project manager is generally 8-10 times the salary of a software engineer and the project reports directly to the businesses head. Fetching the projects for the company in various sectors and setting the targets for resource acquisition is the key responsibility of a business head who directly reports to the CEO of the company. At the level of business head and CEO, an additional degree of management is also desirable but they still have to have a good exposure in the field of computer programming. So indirectly computer programming is the stepping stone to even higher designation in any software company.  The path mentioned above is good for anyone who is intending to serve a software based company starting from an associate software engineer after a bachelor degree.

Apart from serving any particular organization, some of the computer programmers also prefer a path of contract jobs or act as consultants for the company. For companies too, employing programmers through contractual agreements rather than going for permanent employees is a good way of harnessing people with the specific skills needed for the job, without the trouble of training or re-training newcomers. Contractual agreements range from a few weeks to even as long as a few years. However, the contract employees charge marginally higher than the regular employees. Some of the computer programmers also foray into the field of training institutes by starting education for the young guns.

Being a computer programmer is fun at the work place by application of mind in new directions at every second to develop a new idea that can change your life. As per my opinion, being a computer programmer is one of the most attractive jobs at the moment because not only does it offer good growth prospects for oneself, but also it offers an individual the opportunity to pay back to the society with the help of new innovations thus serving the entire mankind