MONEY Magazine and Salary.com researched hundreds of jobs, considering their growth, pay, stress-levels and other factors and Software Engineering came out number one! From money.cnn.com:
Why it’s great Software engineers are needed in virtually every part of the economy, making this one of the fastest-growing job titles in the U.S. Even so, it’s not for everybody.Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you’ve got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.
The profession skews young — the up-all-night-coding thing gets tired — but consulting and management positions aren’t hard to come by once you’re experienced.
What’s cool Cutting-edge projects, like designing a new video game or tweaking that military laser. Extra cash from freelance gigs. Plus, nothing says cool like great prospects.
What’s not Jobs at the biggest companies tend to be less creative (think Neo, pre-Matrix). Outsourcing is a worry. Eyestrain and back, hand and wrist problems are common.
Top-paying job Release engineers, who are responsible for the final version of any software product, earn six figures.Education Bachelor’s degree, but moving up the ladder often requires a master’s.
“Engineering” actually came up 17th. I agree with the above commenter that these rankings are worthless, but for different reasons. How can they group engineering into one big category, but include software engineering separately? Stupid.
I agree with Steve. You cannot lump engineering into one big category. Mechanical Engineering is quite different from civil engineering or telecommunications.