Engineering students are often associated with the stereotype of being depressed nerds but not a lot of people acknowledge them as some of the most hard-working chaps, overall.
So with the apparent presence of a strict work ethic and an abundance of technical skills, why is it that they don’t take up jobs related to their field of engineering at all?
Why is it that a power shift of engineers flocking to marketing, sales, finance and entertainment related jobs is so prevalent these days?
Being a final year student of engineering myself, I’m here to clarify this phenomenon for you.
So without further ado, let’s analyze:
#1. The basic problem starts with the unrealistic expectations on the student and of the student. On, because the parents want their kids to be placed in a big-shot IT firm and of, because the students believe that they’ll become coding experts overnight.
A volatile amalgamation of these two concepts leads to a gory mess where the student in question either goes into crisis mode about his job security or even worse, attempts suicide.
Most engineering colleges give the basic skill-set necessary for a degree but the essential idea with pursuing a technical degree is to be a self starter and learn more coding as well as other technical skills on your own. The college authorities don’t spoon-feed kids (which is right on their part) and that breaks their bubble in 2nd or 3rd year.
When the kids realize it, it’s generally too late and the only option which remains feasible to them is an MBA degree.
#2. The MBA Problem Is One For The Ages:
Generally possessing strong analytical skills, engineers tend to get decent CAT scores but even then, only the ones with a strong overall profile and professional experience make it to likes of IIM and XLRI.
The ones who don’t, they generally have to suffice with a private degree in order to have a chance to maximize their prospects of a lucrative job in a setting where the finance and marketing sector (especially advertising or brand development) have shown a massive scope of growth and a generally high inflow of money.
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#3. We Talk About Skills But What Are Those Skills?
Engineers often flock to other jobs because of an inherent lack of skills, which was briefly mentioned in the first point but nobody really talks about what those skills are. Long story short, coding and developer-based skills.
Sure, a regular engineering degree will acquaint you with Java Core and C or C++, but with the growing demand of jobs that belong to a niche category (Android app development, iOS app development, Python coding, web development with HTML and CSS, Bootstrap coding, JavaScript, etc.), survival by solely relying on Java and C++ just doesn’t cut it.
Engineering students often rely on limited skills and that’s why they’re either happy via a low-pay package offered by a mass recruiter or find it better to switch professions for a high-pay job profile.
#4. Money Talks:
Skills lead to money, money leads to a good life and whoever tells you that an engineering degree won’t get you money, you have the right to laugh vehemently at that person’s stupidity.
The engineering students who possess great coding skills often fetch packages that are north of Rs. 10 lakh, easily (even if they study in a tier-2 or tier-3 college). But add that to a management degree and you have a shot at making 20 lakh instead of 10 so why not? The hunger for money is enough to drive any student to get a management degree.
Add that to the inherent idea of job automation being the norm in the near future, most engineering students wish to capitalize on their availability for jobs that require human resources.
#5. Why Entertainment?
Engineering students often involve themselves in various extra-curricular activities which include content writing or copy-writing, comedy, music or basically anything which has no connection to engineering.
This in turn leads to them to the entertainment sector where you see a lot of engineering graduates take up stand-up comedy or pursue music as their choice of profession.
After that, it just depends on them as to how good they are at what they do.
On that note, I’d like to wrap up this piece as I gleefully share my experience from what I’ve seen and observed and as for the aspiring engineers, I’d simply tell them to take it easy and not over-expect from themselves or their college and just enjoy their college life and academics without pressure.
Why? Because we need people with good technical skills so we got to let them flourish.
As for the arts and commerce students who get mad at us for taking their jobs, well we can’t help it if we are more talented than you. Haha.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The Economic Times, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and more.
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