The Need for Software Engineering Skills

An interesting video on the need of Software Engineering skills. It discusses the gap between academic and practical learning critical skills in Software Engineering

Transitioning to a successful career in Software Engineering

It is quite interesting to read about JazzHub, a logical extension of IBM initiative in collaborative software development, taking it to academic community. This will drastically change academic projects in software engineering, taking academia closer to industry.

Just as highlighted in the writeup, vast majority of projects done by students as done as individual effort than a teamwork. Of course, there are cases which are done by a very small group as well.

This is a far cry from software development projects are done in industry. That is, when students join a company as programmers, they are part of a larger team.

This introduces new dimension to work that they are not exposed to. Now, they are required to collaborate with other team members. They gradually realize, as they evolve into a professional, that individual excellence is good but useful only when it is in collaboration with other team members.

Larger team would also mean larger scope of work, larger complexity and larger overhead. Well, it is technically viable now with IBM's JazzHub. JazzHub provides software development platform hosted in cloud, free for academic research and classroom projects.

This platform takes away overhead of server and project administration, letting professors to focus more on their students working together, guiding them through the project

"Computer science tops list of best major for jobs"

A recent news in SD Times indicate that Computer Science as a major offer more job potential and hence most preferred from that perspective. Click here to read more

Career Guide to Industries, 2010-11 Edition: US Department of Labor

The report 'Career Guide to Industries, 2010-11 Edition: US Department of Labor'is quite encouraging from Software Engineering career perspective. It provides a good overview of Software Engineering career, from a common man's standpoint. It also provides an idea about what it takes to get into, specialize and to have a great career in Software Engineering. Particularly encouraging is the part that it will among '5 industries with the largest job growth'and that wage-and-salary is expected to grow 'about 4 times as fast as the 11 percent growth projected for all industries combined'.

Balanced learning in Software Engineering Career

For most of the roles in Software Engineering, it is important to have domain knowledge apart from technical knowledge to be truly successful. For instance, programmer working in a software project for banking industry is expected to be familiar with terminologies used by banking industry. These terminologies are used in daily discussion just as much as technical jargons.

How do we balance learning? All software projects are not the same. It depends on what are the kinds of projects that you are working on and what you expect to work in future.

What is great about Software Engineering Career?

What makes Software Engineering important and interesting? It helps business, It helps customers solve problems in their business.

Career Focus: Software Engineering

It is interesting to read about a write-up on Software Engineering Career  in Todays's Engineer Relevance of Software Engineering is not only  because it is one of the fastest growing field but also because it enables and connects every other fields as well. It is both privilege and responsibility work in in such a field, and build a successful career

What is equally striking is that this writeup highlights the role of communication and analytical skills, product orientation, etc alongwith technical skills. For a truly successful career in Software Engineering, one needs to have technical skills alongwith relevant soft skills. It is not a choice of one or other but it is both together than makes a successful career in Software Engineering