3 answers
Benjamin
Student
Ball Ground, Georgia
1
Question
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What do most people do in computer engineering?
What are the main tasks people do while working in computer engineering.
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3 answers
Wayne Archibald
Cybersecurity Associate Director here to share knowledge!
210
Answers
Silver Spring, Maryland
Updated
Wayne’s Answer
Hi Benjamin. A Computer Engineer performs many technical and collaborative tasks to develop, fix and update the systems they work on. Their duties and responsibilities often include:
• Collaborating with senior Engineers, Designers, Developers and Project Managers to establish goals and deadlines
• Researching current and new technologies and programming solutions
• Using the development plans and designs from other team members to build software and hardware
• Writing and creating programs for specific uses per company or client needs
• Troubleshooting database anomalies, problems, inefficiencies and data loss
• Compiling and presenting monthly progress and operational reports to the management team
• Handling technical support queries on major and minor bug fixes and other issues
• Integrating updates and new features to existing software and hardware
Hope this helps.
Good luck!
• Collaborating with senior Engineers, Designers, Developers and Project Managers to establish goals and deadlines
• Researching current and new technologies and programming solutions
• Using the development plans and designs from other team members to build software and hardware
• Writing and creating programs for specific uses per company or client needs
• Troubleshooting database anomalies, problems, inefficiencies and data loss
• Compiling and presenting monthly progress and operational reports to the management team
• Handling technical support queries on major and minor bug fixes and other issues
• Integrating updates and new features to existing software and hardware
Hope this helps.
Good luck!
I'm excited to put your great advice to good use!
Travelle
Dan Wolf
Retired Electrical/Software Engineer and part-time College Professor (BSEET and MS Engineering Management)
124
Answers
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Updated
Dan’s Answer
This is a hard question to answer because you could be doing almost anything related to computers so I will try to describe an approximate growth description.
When you first start working, you are likely to be assigned technical tasks related to software and/or hardware (and the technologies that you learned in University might not be the same as what you will be actually working with). Within 1-3 years, you may be asked to generate documentation for design and test tasks, work estimates (how long will tasks take) or proposed design approaches. As you acquire 4-7 years of work experience, you will be increasing in responsibility for a project, including the mentoring of other engineers. Eventually, you may consider moving to a supervisory or management.
Note that you might immediately be assigned to full project responsibility – it depends on the company (more likely to be a smaller company for this to happen). In a larger company, you may have the option to stay technical and avoid the project and management tasks. It all depends on the company and your desires and capabilities. If you have good communication and writing skills, the transition to project management will be easier and more likely. Likewise, a very strong technical background will allow you to stay technical and avoid the administrative, clerical, management tasks. A good company will recognize and value both the strong technical and the strong managerial engineers as both are immensely important. The best path is the one that you are most comfortable with.
And finally, you don’t need to know exactly what you will be doing because your tasks will be evolving over time, depending on the industry, company, available projects, company staffing changes, as well as your strengths and desires.
When you first start working, you are likely to be assigned technical tasks related to software and/or hardware (and the technologies that you learned in University might not be the same as what you will be actually working with). Within 1-3 years, you may be asked to generate documentation for design and test tasks, work estimates (how long will tasks take) or proposed design approaches. As you acquire 4-7 years of work experience, you will be increasing in responsibility for a project, including the mentoring of other engineers. Eventually, you may consider moving to a supervisory or management.
Note that you might immediately be assigned to full project responsibility – it depends on the company (more likely to be a smaller company for this to happen). In a larger company, you may have the option to stay technical and avoid the project and management tasks. It all depends on the company and your desires and capabilities. If you have good communication and writing skills, the transition to project management will be easier and more likely. Likewise, a very strong technical background will allow you to stay technical and avoid the administrative, clerical, management tasks. A good company will recognize and value both the strong technical and the strong managerial engineers as both are immensely important. The best path is the one that you are most comfortable with.
And finally, you don’t need to know exactly what you will be doing because your tasks will be evolving over time, depending on the industry, company, available projects, company staffing changes, as well as your strengths and desires.
Diana Y
Senior Consultant
6
Answers
Denver, Colorado
Updated
Diana’s Answer
Great question! I think this can greatly vary based on the person. Computer engineers have education that allows them to work in a variety of rules around software, middleware, or even hardware. For me personally, my first job out of college happened to be very specifically around software programming, and that kind of set my path down that road. Years later now I still do some software development, but I do a lot of consulting and working with clients on how their business can use that particular software better. I spend more time around designing software changes, and helping to write documents guiding other developers how how we want them to development new software changes and less doing the coding myself. Other classmates of mine went more the direction of programming circuit boards, or various types of hardware, others are working for Google and helping with various programming projects that they have going. Lot's of fun options out there for computer engineers. One thing you could maybe do is look up job postings on LinkedIn that are looking for people with a degree in computer engineering and read the job descriptions. That might help you get an idea of what type of companies and jobs are looking for computer engineers and what the roles would be focusing on.