Your Career As An It Professional

IT careers are needed all over the world. One that I have showed interest in has been the Computer engineering field. Computer engineers are usually split into two groups Hardware and Software. A Computer hardware engineer designs computer chips, boards, systems, modems, and printers. They are very much like electronics engineers, but work only with computers. As the computer world advances at a fast pace the need for these people will continue to grow. Computer software engineers apply computer science, engineering, and math to design, develop, and test software. By analyzing a user's needs they design, construct, test, and maintain the needed software. Software engineers need to constantly learn new skills if they wish to remain in this very dynamic and ever growing field.

I have always been attracted to computers in some way or another. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to see how they worked and operated. My very first computer was not even a month old before I tore open the case to see what was inside. Before I was out of high school I was upgrading and building all of my friend's computers. I fell into a very fast growing and ever changing hobby. For the last ten years that is all it has been for me. I figured why not try and make a career out of something that I already held so much passion for. In the summer of 2007 I started attending college to pursue my career choice in the IT field.

The average IT person in my area has a salary ranging from 50k to 90k a year. Not only is that three times my current pay but I would be able to work and perform in a field that I love and is already a big part of my life. I love the idea of being able to work with new software and hardware. There are also many benefits to this type of job. As I have stated this is an ever growing field and as long as you stay up with the latest and greatest you will have job security. Job security is one of the top reasons why a person would stay with a company. I hope to learn more about the field during my research. There is so much to learn about this ever growing IT field. One thing that keeps me going is the fact that you never know when the next Bill Gates is around the corner.

In this research report you will see many things that would fall within the duties of a computer engineer. One of the first items you will encounter is an example of how a computer engineer could set up a network system for any type of business. There is also a short survey on the current job market and how critical your educational background must be if you are to succeed. Diagrams have been given to show some task that computer engineers could do. I have also included a short summary of the presentation as well instructions on taking the right steps to success. Success, I would think, is the goal of any ones career.

Diagram one shows how a computer engineer could set up a computer network for a store or office building. This is only one of the many tasks that a computer engineer would perform during their work. They could be responsible for all the components all the way to installation and networking. Computer engineers can cover many fields in IT work.

Diagram 1

In week four of my studies I preformed a survey on how an individual's educational background relates to his or her career choice. The results showed that people with a good educational background were better able to receive a higher paying and more rewarding job. The results are as follows:

There were four people that took my survey. Of the four people there was one person that did not attend college of any kind. There were two people that attended a State University one of them attended a Community College as well. I had one person that did not attend college at all.

This is a breakdown of who attended college in my survey test.

It is clear from the survey that having a degree directly affected their salary. Having a degree allowed each person to get a better job. The one person that did not attend college made less than 20,000 per year and worked in a dead end job, while the one with the master degree was able to make over 60,000 a year and was self employed.

This is a breakdown of Salary based on their level of degree.

It would also seem that the people with degrees have stayed in their career choice longer. This could have more than one meaning. One meaning could be that they truly enjoy their job and there for stay longer. The other meaning could be that money can truly make a person happy.

In the next set of diagrams I would like to show you some