What is the career path to a successful career in technology?

Here's my stab at an answer:

• Take programming classes or teach yourself how to code


• Build stuff (products): code programs, design a website, etc. Best learning is to build, put something out there, learn, and repeat


• Read a lot, get a sense of what's happening out there: TechCrunch, blogs, etc.


• Get internships! Anywhere, doing anything - obviously, explore functional areas you're most interested in (engineering, design, UX, marketing, etc)


• Talk to people who are doing something you might be interested in - people love to talk about their own experiences, take advantage of it

Interestingly of the key career advice I would say is learn how to communicate, talk to people, and get right people skills. Technically skills such as math, science, programming, etc are important. However, sometimes most 'liked' people in a company will get a promotion over more smart person. You need make sure that you are heard and that your hard work is recognized at job.

You will need this skills even going to through university. It good have professor that like you and are willing to give you reference or even leads to jobs in the future. So here is my list of skills to get:

1.) People Skills (you will never everywhere in life!)
2.) Learn the fundamentals of technology as such programming, electrical engineer classes, etc.
3.) Do make sure you are having fun doing what you pick. Otherwise you can burn out real fast in college and at the job
4.) Internships are essentials. Get as many internships are possible and network with future employers.

(Posted on behalf of a professor of computer engineering at Boston University)

In my opinion, the single most important ingredient of a successful career in Technology (or any field) is to have a passion for it. The surest way to fail is to force yourself into a field that you despise. Having said this, a successful career in technology can mean at least two different things -- a successful career in engineering, or a successful career in technical management. The paths for the two are different. To become a staff engineer at Intel for instance, you are almost required to have a graduate degree and quite possibly a Ph.D. To become a Director/VP in the same company, you are almost required to have an MBA. Asides from the degrees, you need to show progressive team and management skills. For instance in the first case (engineering), you need to rapidly move through junior and senior developer positions to a position where you are leading and creating the next generation of technology for that company/sector.

In order to prepare yourself for a career in technology starting in High School, I suggest several things:

1. Excel in your math and science courses - particularly math and physics. Doing well in these courses will serve you well when applying to college, and will hopefully spark interest in techologies and technology development along the way.

2. Be creative. Literally, create things - websites, gadgets, whatever. And (with permission!) take things apart, too - to understand more fully how the technologies around you work. Tinkering is not a waste of time for a future technologist.

3. Follow your passions. I agree with the sentiment of Jared's friend the BU professor - you'll do best if you do what you love.

4. Learn what you can about the business of technology. Think of a technology that you admire - whether it's the latest smartphone or a digital thermometer. Ask yourself: How is it developed? How is it mass-produced? How is it marketed? How is it distributed to stores? How profitable is it? Do a bit of research on the web to try to answer those questions about a few products that you happen to think are great.

1. 
   

   Be true to yourself. Definitely be passionate about technology and show that passion through internships, networking, etc. Make sure tech is a field you want to be in, not just a path that everyone takes! Start by reading through blogs and different tech platforms. Slowly build out your skills (technical or interpersonal) and everything will fall into place :)

   
   


2. 
   

   Talk to people in tech. Network not for the purpose of increasing your likelihood of getting a job, but network because you're genuinely interested in what people do at tech companies. Whether it be with a large tech company or with a start up. The only way to be sure if you want to be a part of tech is to talk to people who have gone down the same path.

   
   

Best of luck!

Andrew

There are very exhaustive suggestions up there in this thread, with which I agree a lot. For me one very important skill that you would need to hone to be successful in the Technology industry is Problem Solving skills. Most of the times there are many different solutions for the same problem but you will be more successful if you can find the most efficient and elegant ones. So thats a very important skill, keep solving puzzles, try breaking things and keep questioning. Remember even Einstein asked questions!

There is already so much great info in this thread. One thing I'd add is that you have to be prepared for learning a significant amount of new information for your job and being incredibly adaptive and flexible.

For example, for a new project, you might be required to learn:
- A new programming language
- A new web application development framework
- New code deployment tool
- A new unit testing framework

Plus you'll need to:
- Learn how a legacy system consisting of 100,000 lines of code roughly works
- Fix bugs in the system
- Add new features into the system.

You can't always count on external training courses and time to read books before you start either. Your thrown into the project and away you go.

Now while this may sound daunting, once you've got good skills and a decent amount of experience under your belt, it's not. You take it slow, chip away at the challenges and before you know it, BOOM, you've got a bunch of new tools to add to your tool belt and your productive in the new system and/or language.

Another thing that will help ensure your success is to stay adaptive and open to new languages and systems. You've always got to be on the lookout for ways to improve your productivity and usefulness to your team, organization and community. While there are numerous experts that know only one language and make a killer living out of it, I think you do yourself a favor by being open to learning new language, any framework, any system at any time.

Hope this all that helps.

There are multiple paths that one can take to a successful career in technology. Broadly speaking, software development is a big area of opportunity, whether it is developing software for the web, mobile or enterprise. And, for this area, one definitely needs to develop programming skills and also decide on a core set of programming languages or platforms to focus on

Technology Infrastructure (specially storage) is another major area to choose and again will need one to decide on a core area within infrastructure followed by developing skill sets within that area.

Finally, Technology Management is one area, which is certainly lacking really good managers. And, that is a key opportunity for anyone who wants to focus on the management track with specialization in Technology

There's a wide range of opportunities available in the technology field.

I agreed with all the suggestions that everyone have posted here. I also recommend you to participate in any local youth program that allows you to join an internship.There are businesses that permit field trip or organize career day to promote youth to explore different career option in their respective industry.

Education is very important regardless what interest you the most. Traditional education foster a solid foundation for your development. Additional basic technology certification courses are beneficial too (Ex: A+, Network+ and many more).

There are varieties of online resources available now for free if you are interested in software programming and development.

Additional skills or classes that will benefit you are communication, project management, and business development.

The most important key is you must enjoy what you do and have the heart to learn. Otherwise you will get burn out really quick. You will never stop learning new thing in technology. The Tech field is organic, it will keep on expanding.

For me the most useful thing I did in high school was to mess around with computers on my own a lot. I taught myself to program from books, installed a bunch of Linux distributions and learned a lot about how Linux works, and generally spent a lot of my time on the internet.

I didn't realize at the time that messing around with computers would be useful, but in retrospect I learned a lot of things that I now use every day at work.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that a lot of stuff that is hot today will be obsolete in 5 years, just when you graduate from college. So learn the fundamentals that do not change - that is math, computer science, physics etc. Also, as others pointed out, you will always work with other people, so communication skills are real important. In particular writing. Good technologists who can express themselves well in writing will always be in demand.