Posted by What are the options available for Indian students ?
Campus Recruitment
Campus Recruitment is the best option if there are core companies visiting in your engineering college. This requires some preparation in advance because there will be tough competition and cutoff for academic performance. If you get opportunity to enter in development job , there will be enough opportunity to learn latest technology and access to advance tools.
Self Study
If you have learning attitude, self study will always help. Since embedded is very vast field , you must keep in touch with your seniors in the industry. Random learning may create frustration if you don’t see any success in getting internship/job. You need to make balance between theory and experiments.
Joining Start-up or Small companies
Joining such companies will help to get actual experience within a limited time frame. However you should do some home work to understand the company better. There are multiple ways to find about company and it’s management. Company website and background of employees at linkedin provide enough information. You can also look into platforms like Glassdoor, Mouthshut etc.
There are many startup companies which encourage their employees for enhancing technical skills. One of my student lost two years due to GATE preparation , but now got placed in start-up. Luckily that company is encouraging for upgrading skills.
M.Tech
M. Tech is beneficial only if core company visit the particular engineering college . Otherwise it will create further gap in career. MNCs prefer M.Tech students as intern. Most of the semiconductor companies in India hire M.Tech students every year for their R&D from specific engineering colleges.
MS
If you can afford the expanses for MS , Nothing can be better than that provided you are prepared to grasp things quickly. You may not find enough time to clear basics due to regular assignments. So you must adopt self study to clear your basics in advance.
Post Graduate Diploma
I recently conducted one survey and many working embedded professionals participated in that.
Testing/validation is one of the area where you can get job very easily. If you are just targeting a job , learn shell scripting in Linux environment and some domain specific IPs . One can learn these things within three months even with self study. However development role is much better for long term career as compared to testing. One can easily switch to any other career from development later.
Why are embedded programmers underpaid even though they require more technical skills than pure software programmers?
This question was asked in Quora today. Here is my response
My answer is specific to India. I am dealing with recruitment of Embedded folks from 0 to 30yrs experience. As per my experience , It totally depends on individual person. Each profile can be unique in terms of experience, so one has to be proactive in selecting the technical domain. Additionally if you remain stuck at small company for long time , you may be not updated with latest technology. Only hard work is not sufficient , you have to work in right direction.
Those who are working either onsite or in MNCs, they used to get very good salary. Small companies are hiring B.Sc, Diploma , B.Tech etc for technical job. I noticed even simple graduate with some IT diploma in management position of small companies. These companies prefer such folks because they can’t retain engineering folks for long time at low salary. This is one of the reason , they will limit the skills of employee in specific area so that s/he can’t switch job easily. In nutshell , It is employee’s responsibility to enhance his/her skills to get better option. I have successfully upgraded many embedded folks with proper training and mentorship.
These days smart & experienced engineering folks are getting multiple offers and excellent salary packages. Recently one of my student got four offers including one MNC. But such folks keep working hard for career goals in parallel to job.
Now who are running such small embedded product or services companies and making crores (1crore =10millions) in a year. Majority of them are embedded professionals.
Which one you prefer Good Salary, Good Working Environment or Career Growth opportunities?
The outcome of this survey is useful for both employees and employers.
It is obvious that majority will prefer all three. However , there are employees who are willing to continue job because of Good working environment and Career growth opportunities.
So the key of retaining employees is the working environment you provide as an employer. It is very important to understand employees and the issues faced by them on day to day basis. I always consult the my friend and executive coach Mr. Aditya Kuchbhotla and highly recommend him for corporate training for such things. You may refer to his post here.
You may like to read Embedded System Jobs in India .
Thanks for reading till end. Hope you find this information useful.