Engineers who are certified managers in their field with 5 to 8 years of experience earn on average from $110,000 to $130,000 annually. America’s businesses are eager to hire more engineers and IT professionals, and this makes engineering and IT two of the highest paying and best hiring industries to work in.
The Need for Engineers and IT Employees
Businesses need engineers and information technology experts now.
The reason is three-fold:
- Because of industry wide growth—the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates nearly one million IT jobs will be created by 2014.
- Baby boomers in the field are starting to retire.
- Fewer college students are choosing to major in computer science, engineering and math to refill the ranks.”
The US Department of Labor has said, 'Employers will need more engineers as they increase investment in plants and equipment to further increase productivity and expand output of goods and services.'
America needs engineers and IT professionals, and American companies still like to hire home grown and college graduated American citizens as engineers and IT professionals. It’s also easier for companies to hire US citizens then engineers and IT workers from abroad.
Engineering and IT College Graduates Make Great Money
Georgetown did a study of the annual earnings of 171 college majors over a projected lifetime. It revealed that there can be up to a $3.64 million dollar earning difference between various college majors. This gap was greatest between what petroleum engineering majors make (4.8 Million over a 40-year career) and what counseling psychology majors could earn ($1.16 million).
The IT Industry (Information Technology) is no different. 4 of the top 10 technology careers from the US News and World Report Top 50 Careers of 2011 were from the Information Technology sector. These jobs were computer software engineer, computer support specialist, computer systems analyst, and network architect.
Engineering and IT Personality Traits
What type of person does well in this industry? Here is a break down of the personality traits needed in the industry:
Curious and creative: Curiosity never killed the cat in this industry. You need to constantly be asking question and finding ways to innovate.
Detail oriented and organized: everything you do matters, even at a granular level.
Good communicators: Communication skills continue to be a growing need in the engineering and IT fields as engineering and IT professionals in different specialties work more and more with others outside of their areas of expertise. They have to be able to communicate their knowledge and skills into terms that normal people can understand.
Collaborators: Many engineering staffs are made up of team groups.
Have math and technical abilities: You can’t get away from the need for strong math skills in engineering and IT fields. It’s why you go to college.
Is getting a degree in Engineering & IT too hard?
The biggest downfall to engineering and IT jobs is that people think obtaining a degree in these fields is too difficult. New college students consider them to be more difficult degrees to obtain then other liberal arts and social science degrees.
Also, colleges aren’t always good at replacing students who drop out of their engineering programs in the first few years. Colleges are finding that in order to improve US college graduation rates in both the IT and engineering fields, they need to:
“Develop a two-pronged approach to increase the number of engineering graduates: identify which programs best retain students and determine why they are effective, and develop programs and policies that allow students to more easily transfer into engineering from other majors .A report prepared by the National Academy of Sciences found that a federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in engineering and science. Meanwhile, emerging nations such as India and China far outstrip the U.S. production of engineers.”
So although there has been an issue with program drop-outs, an effort is currently being made to make the program more effective.
Engineering and IT Offer Intense Diversity
The field of engineering and IT is intensely huge and diverse. People might think it’s only limited to one specific area, but they are wrong. Take a look at the following short list of IT and engineering careers:
- Computer engineer-engineers computer systems
- Software engineer-engineers computer software
- Civil engineer-Engineers buildings
- Mine engineer-engineers mines
- Biomedical engineer-engineers new biomedical technologies and medicines
- Manufacturing engineer-engineers parts and equipment for manufacturing industries
- Electronics engineer-engineers electronics
- Network systems engineers-engineers computer systems and networks
- Environment engineer-engineers environmental and green systems
Engineering and IT are IT Careers
The engineering and IT fields are the careers of today and the future. With a degree in engineering or IT, your career potential goes through the roof. The fields offer huge variety and huge potential with some of the best paying salaries on the planet.
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