Which engg stream in 2014 and beyond - ECE, CSE, IT or EEE

renegade

renegade

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Someone asked me for my opinion and I was completely clueless.

So whats the most sought after engineering stream these days and in the coming few years between ECE, CSE, IT and EEE. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that electrical engineers are in good demand.

Of course for a candidate the inclination is important but the prospects should also be there.
 
ECE and CSE are the most sought after. Those who can't get CSE opt for ISE, which is almost the same as CSE minus some stuff about hardware. EEE is harder than all the above, but I haven't heard it to be in greater demand than ECE or CSE. The job prospects are good with any of these courses though.
 
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Now-a-days there is no such mandatory thing like we need to be a CSE student for jobs.
I've seen many people from MECH, ECE and EEE coming into the Software field.

So it depends on the area of interest of the person who is going to study. Sadly most of these decisions are made by parents. :(
But what I would like to say is just go with EEE or MECH. Those are jobs on the core side and will be evergreen. Growth may be slow but there will be some standard jobs. Not like the Software Industry.

OT: This is a funny pic I've seen online some days back.

SE.jpg
 
Go with EEE, you have 2 streams open here, Electrical & Electronics which gives opportunities to be in almost any domain related to Elect field.

Excellent career prospects for EEE engineers especially in PSUs which have a pay revision lined up in 2017.

CSE/IT is almost same except few subjects in final yr.
 
If you want to get into govt jobs in telecom etc. and don't mind cut throat competition and can pay bribes, then EEE or ECE is good.
ECE/EEE is also good to get you into ISRO, DRDO and NRSA kind of organizations, but so are CSE and IT.
If you want to get into good jobs in private sector with EEE or ECE and within the field, then you need to get into an IIT be it at graduate or post graduate level and get though campus recruitment's.

For software, I would say CSE is the most preferable stream from an overall course content and the suitability for the jobs. B.Tech in IT is more akin to an MCA than an engg degree these days. But it would still get you jobs no doubt as it is with MCA, but still the potential for CSE is much better than IT.

Ofcourse, don't forget that if you have the necessary skills, the stream of engg doesn't really matter in software field.

In many cases, I have found that people prefer to get into software testing which is much easier to get into with any degree as compared to development. But I should warn that "software tester" and "manager" are two roles that are gradually vanishing from the software field with the increasing transformation to agile methodologies. Companies are moving to a combined engineering culture where a self organized teams consisting of software developers are responsible for both writing code as well are testing it though automated unit and integration tests. There will be no longer any dedicated software tester roles. There will of course be a small number of QA roles however.

So if anybody wants to get into software in forth coming years, they have to make sure that they can write code and test it. Those who are already in the field as dedicated testers are also in for a nasty surprise some time in future if they don't adapt to both development and testing. From what I have read and heard, the majority of Microsoft layoffs apart from the Nokia division is of dedicated testers who were made redundant after adopting combined engineering culture. Even my present company no longer has managers or testers.
 
Hmm. I disagree with the above post regarding Software tester's vanishing. Yet to see that.

Scenario 1: Even if one take Agile(which by the way people is moving away especially in US and US oriented market) and PSP process, the developers are only responsible for smoke testing or till unit testing. And off it goes to verification team. That's where the software testers actually comes in.
Scenario 2: Soon enough SEI will be holding a national conference in US along with likes like NSA for a new arena of testing, The automated testing. SEI been taking some data for last few years how they impact traditional testing and defect removal rates. In 2 or 3 months that event is coming up in Washington DC. With the likes of labview and all. Even though they involve "developing" the activity, it is to done properly with someone with testing ability. Not the one with developing mentality. Developing in this scenario is a very loose word and it has nothing to do with developing the actual software that needs to be tested. but one might say that they are Software Test Developers. Which some companies actually do now. :D

Developers will only develop. Testers break things. They always do. Software testing is not going anywhere. I have seen way to many issues just arise when creating test plans where developers and testers interact. Developers mind will only go through the good path. :D.
If testing is going away, There is a very well known project that for the last 4 years, they been just doing software testing. NOTHING ELSE. I think its in 50K LOC area too. :S :S :S

Rather I would say the need of "unit testing" the software goes away. As the new process's are gearing towards 0 defects or shall I say 0 critical defects before verification. As they did for the space shuttle.
 
I tend to agree on this, the scope for testers are going down in comparison few years before... This doesn't mean in future there will be no testers, but the likes of TDD based approaches makes less dependency on testers.
 
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Maybe this is OT for this thread in which case this can be forked to a separate thread.


m-jeri said:
Hmm. I disagree with the above post regarding Software tester's vanishing. Yet to see that.

Scenario 1: Even if one take Agile(which by the way people is moving away especially in US and US oriented market) and PSP process, the developers are only responsible for smoke testing or till unit testing. And off it goes to verification team. That's where the software testers actually comes in.
Scenario 2: Soon enough SEI will be holding a national conference in US along with likes like NSA for a new arena of testing, The automated testing. SEI been taking some data for last few years how they impact traditional testing and defect removal rates. In 2 or 3 months that event is coming up in Washington DC. With the likes of labview and all. Even though they involve "developing" the activity, it is to done properly with someone with testing ability. Not the one with developing mentality. Developing in this scenario is a very loose word and it has nothing to do with developing the actual software that needs to be tested. but one might say that they are Software Test Developers. Which some companies actually do now. :D

Developers will only develop. Testers break things. They always do. Software testing is not going anywhere. I have seen way to many issues just arise when creating test plans where developers and testers interact. Developers mind will only go through the good path. :D.
If testing is going away, There is a very well known project that for the last 4 years, they been just doing software testing. NOTHING ELSE. I think its in 50K LOC area too. :S :S :S

Rather I would say the need of "unit testing" the software goes away. As the new process's are gearing towards 0 defects or shall I say 0 critical defects before verification. As they did for the space shuttle.
Click to expand...


I think you have got several things wrong. Some observations and comments below. Do note that my observations are primarily from the point of a product development houses (ones that build and sell their own software) and not ones that offers development or testing services. The lessening focus on people who have only testing skills is something I have experienced at both the product development houses that I worked. Certain IT services companies offer both development and testing services and they generally like pick both developers and testers cheap and what matters to them is their ability to bill customers in terms of time and head count. So they may not suddenly stop hiring people only skilled with testing.

- A software engineer/developer who cannot test software or better than a dedicated tester is not even qualified to be called a software engineer/developer. Good software engineers are well equipped with the skills and mental outlook to both write and test software. Breaking is something anybody can do to an extent, but who in the world is better equipped than the the guys who built it and knows all the weak spots and all the ways something can be broken. So you are basically using bad developers as your frame of reference to justify the need for people who can only test. For instance, at my last work place, we earlier used to have dedicated testers who can only test. But we also had the concept of occasionally having bug hunts where developers also used to participate. During one release where major features were added, after the testers gave the final certification, we had a bug hunt where developers participated and 400 bugs were logged out of which around 80 were of severe category. This is despite the fact that considerable part of the code was unit tested and bug free. This incident itself exposed the fact that developers were better at that sort of testing than dedicated testers. The dedicated testers were largely unsuccessful in looking at the right places for bugs. This makes perfect sense because somebody who can only break software does not necessarily have the knowledge or skill required to find all the weak spots. They may quickly find one or two ways to break the software, but the rest remain elusive.

- I never said that software testing is going away. Its not going anywhere. But at the same time, people who can only break stuff will be made redundant by people who can make, break and fix the stuff. There will be no longer dozens of dedicated software testers doing nothing but testing. Everybody in the team is expected to be able to both developer and test. This is exactly the scenario at my current work place as well. The teams are made up of software engineers. There is no developer and tester distinction and everybody is expected to be capable of both. If somebody has been good at testing, well good, they will still continue getting testing tasks, but if they cannot or do not want to write code and deliver features when required, good look finding your next job is want the company says.

- When a company needed 50 people capable of writing software and 100 people capable of testing they went out and hired 50 developers and 50 dedicated testers and what the company really expects is exactly that. 50 people capable of writing code and 100 people capable of testing it. A dedicated tester is not a distinctly required role. Its just a cheaper alternative to hiring people who are capable of both. The new trend is that by incorporating better Engg practices and offloading majority of testing to developers, instead of 50 developers and 50 testers, companies can afford to hire 60 developers and only 10 dedicated QA experts (not software testers)

Recommend reading this as well.

http://blog.teleri.net/combined-engineering-microsoft/
 
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Hmm. I think you have a very short view of other engineers or their abilities. Or understanding of their profiles. You kinda dismissed a lot of people. But agree that you can have your opinion. And that's all I am going to say about that. :D

I see how in the first point you pointed out I got many things wrong. How can that be? None of my points can be wrong as its not even my data or information. :D. The data and numbers are all in SEI site. Which is more or a credible source than any individuals personal opinion. So If you think I am wrong, then.. :D. By the way, http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ is the SEI site. Its a good read if you are looking for stuff.. Even now if you are saying I am wrong, then ok.

I am a developer who is in a co ordination type of role. So had to attend a workshop for a week in Berkley(Again a big research university). There was a session about the Software testing and how to remove defects BEFORE V&V. All the information I have i got from during that. Perhaps sources like this are more reliable than blogs. Anyways not a personal taunt.So upto you.

I only worked for medical devices in their product development teams and in one team in a audit role, as a service provider. Worked for different process also. I don't think your point holds any merit in our field at least. FDA will have a field day. Last product had 9 reported defects and I cannot even explain the issues it raised. Not to mention the millions, yep millions it costed my company. So testing going away.. I dont think so. That was a class C product by the way. Even now I am working for Class C with even more critical application in C-M-V/H-I-V/H-B-V. If talks happen to even reduce the scope of software testing heads will roll. courtesy our own QA department. This is the QA not Software V&V. I also know some people in Boeing product development. One guy is in the dreamliner team. All he talks to me is about testing testing and some more testing. And a bunch in sikorsky/U-T-C product dev. And yea, all these guys work as part of their ODC. so the definition of service industry and actual employee gets very thin. Why I need to go all amrika?. I know 2 guys in HAL. One in my all time fav project the Armed Heli Gunship. For the last 7 months, he and his team mate is all in testing a certain new item in that machine. And this, not even in verification stage. :mad: :mad:. I dont know mate, I can keep going on.

But yea, I do tell my team to STOP relying on testing to get defects. I am a huge advocate of Design and code review.

Although from your post I understood most are your personal opinion from your own professional experience. respect that. But doesn't mean what my opinions are wrong.

But if debate is what you after in regards to merits of testing, perhaps you should talk to some credible people. I am not one of them. very sure about that. very very very small knowledge about this topic.
 
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Though dev are supposed to write automated test cases (TDD) etc... dev doing the testing is a BIG no no. being a dev and being a test is a "state of mind." you know what I mean.

but being that said, the definition of dev and test seems to be misunderstood in this thread. test needs to know coding too. And a lot of domain knowledge.[DOUBLEPOST=1407379775][/DOUBLEPOST]btw, before deviating from the topic... Why is it that students want to join a stream which is in demand rather than what they love to do?
I am pretty sure that many of the "software engineers" don't even like coding, they just do it.
 
^^ for lot of young, inexperienced indians, there is no money in what they'd love to do. engineering degree is a professional course and parents expect their children to earn handsomely after completing the course. money makes the world go round. if software engineers want to earn good and keep up with their style of living then they'll have to code, whether they like it or not.
 
^I can show you some programmers who cannot afford a car and a house. if you are good at what you do, money just flows in. even if that is sushi.
 
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