Taking up engineering no longer means that you are bound to end up in a multi-national software company. With time, tech careers too are evolving. However, unless the upcoming careers become main stream, it is the students who are interested in them who are in an eternal dilemma. Is it worth it to pursue being a drone programmer or a virtual reality designer or should I just pick a traditional field like civil engineer or electronics or the evergreen software engineering? Since it is not always possible to find a course especially for the career that you are looking forward to, ideally, you should major in a field which is closest to the one that you feel there is huge scope in future and do additional courses to acquire any other skills that you might need to pursue your dream career. Whether you are looking to find a software engineering job, or desiring to be part of a tech team, you should possess specific skills and passion towards the career you want to pursue. Here, we try and bring to you four tech careers that you can look forward to in the near future –
1. Big Data – Data is the new oil. This is not an exaggerated statement even though it may seem so. Data is that resource which can not only help you augment your business incrementally by catering to customer tastes but also lead you to hitherto completely unknown pastures. At present, data enables organizations to take faster and smarter decisions. In the future, business models will be built around data. That is where the demand for knowledgeable IT personnel who can handle and analyze data comes in. So, it would be wise to try and learn more and more about the field of data so that you can use your skills to grab the opportunity when it comes your way. As regards money, budget allocations of businesses to data are increasing day by day so you might just get richer if you set your sights on the future. This career is suitable for those who can efficiently deal with huge data and make sense out of it – a multi-thinker so to say.
2. Drone Programmers – From the intelligence agencies to the pizza delivery guys to Amazon, everyone is either using or talking about using drones in the future. What this effectively means is that in order for them to become mainstream, the industry will require a lot of people – designers who can design drones, engineers who can build prototypes, technicians who can test and repair them and semi-technicians who can dumb down the usage guidelines to the end user. So what should you do if you are interested in this? While pursuing your engineering course, try and get into specific courses related to this sphere such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) engineering so that you can devour more information and make an informed choice.
3. Artificial Intelligence Programmer – Artificial Intelligence is already making its way into our lives without us even realizing it. Artificial intelligence is the intelligence displayed by machines or software. In little ways, it already exists. Be it your smart phone slipping into power saving mode when the battery reaches a critical level or your thermostat adjusting the heat in order to conserve energy – artificial intelligence ranges from something as small as these to something more substantive like routing satellites in outer space. Artificial intelligence is sure to make your life easier and anything that does that is sure to make huge waves in the future. However, this requires people who can think out of the box and who also have the programming skills to execute their ideas. Coming to think of it, there is no limit to this field. Programmers have already created so many codes that make work easier (from executing code that auto sends an email at a pre-determined time to software that works in the background to detect viruses) but artificial intelligence requires people to take their programming knowledge to the next level by working on solutions which do not seem possible now but can become a reality with the help of machines and software.
4. Virtual Reality Designer – Inception – if you were fascinated with this movie, then there is a huge chance that you already know a lot about virtual reality. Still, let’s break it down for you. When you dream, you experience a lot of things. Sometimes, those things are real, sometimes unreal. Virtual reality, as the name suggests, is the technology which lets you experience something which is not actually there. The first example that comes to anyone’s mind is that of the various games that we play where we are transported to a whole new world which seems so real but which actually does not exist. However, the application of this technology is not restricted to games but spreads to medicine, agriculture and science. It goes without saying that this job would require a sophisticated knowledge of technology. But that’s not it. As a virtual reality designer, you would be creating something new for others to experience. Hence, the technical competencies aside, you must be one with a high level of visual creativity.