May 16th, 2012 — Career
An employee who has served well for a company usually gets a salary increment or rise (e.g., every after a year of service). The amount of increment depends on a number of factors. These include the company policy (or government policy for civil servants), work performance (based on KPIs or performance appraisal) and terms may already be stipulated in employment contract.
There may be a situation where you discover that you are being paid below the market salary. Your earning may not reflect the number of total experience you have accumulated. Also, the meteoric rise in cost of living may deem the 4% increment unjustified. We all know you have been working hard and all, and hence being confined into a lower salary territory can really be frustrating.
So, how do you ask for a salary increment?
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May 10th, 2012 — Career
Someone who has landed on a steady career would want to commit progressing in his or her profession, accepting bigger roles and responsibilities as the years pass by. Adequate working exposure backed with the respectable knowledge and necessary human related skills will create a professional poised to shoulder even bigger leadership undertakings.
To achieve this, the right approach would be to continually improving the hands-on skills and updating the relevant know-how. In the fast-changing professional world, what is relevant today might be totally obsolete in the next couple of years.
Therefore, keeping tab with the latest knowledge and technology will be prerequisite for a worker to be on top of his game. Someone with a diploma can definitely enhance his career by obtaining a degree. Similarly, a post-graduate study will create more opportunities for a degree holder.
One of the popular ways to updating the knowledge is pursuing academic studies. Are you one of those thinking of going down this route? If you are, have you considered the following factors?
1. Location
Where is your intended school or university for your studies? Remember, you already have a career to take care of, so optimally this location of choice should not inconvenient you to making the trips back and forth between your place of stay, the workplace and the university. Scouring the list of all universities in Washington DC would be essential if your workplace resides somewhere within the vicinity. Make consideration of the distance, travelling cost, ease of transportation, traffic jams etc.
2. Funding
If you are pursuing a degree in law, etc., where will the funding come? Regardless where it comes from, this funding should be adequate to cover the tuition fees as well as other peripheral budgets necessary to complete your yearly academic course. You may also end up having to source for a loan to pay for the fees; in this case, do ascertain that you have the appropriate plan for the repayment of the loan upon completion of your academic course.
3. Physical or online?
Will you be attending school physically, meaning that you will be traveling back and forth to the university? Or are you considering the more popular route nowadays: getting a degree online?
Today, you can now work as an accounting associate while pursuing an online accounting degree. This works as a two-pronged attack: while serving the professional world, you can conveniently get updated and exposed with the new information, skills and accounting related knowledge that you can immediately used in your office.
Last but not least, you should make thorough consideration whether to pursue your studies on full time basis or part time basis. If you are pursuing this full time, you have to let go of your current job and lost an important source of income. Make due consideration; if it is worth it, you can consider it an important sacrifice and an investment to creating better career.
May 6th, 2012 — Career
A software engineer is a technical professional who is involved in the design, development, testing, debugging and maintenance of software-driven systems, applications and tools. Since the inception of the world’s first Computer Science degree course in Imperial College, London, the field has continued to become one of the hottest academic courses of choice until today.
A software engineer might also carry slight differences in the job title, such as software developer, computer programmer, system developers and so on, despite carrying very similar duties. Some companies just prefer to designate their employees with different titles.
While the title clearly carries the “engineering” word, someone works in this job might not actually graduated from the engineering background. Rather, qualifications in information technology (IT) or related areas are usually more preferred. It is estimated that out of the total population of the world’s software engineers, roughly half of them earned academic qualification in information system, computer science or information technology.
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April 19th, 2012 — Career
What is the best job in America and possibly in the world for this year, 2012? It is software engineer, a recent finding suggests. The job is in high demand, pays good salary and offers promising growth. A software engineer also usually works in a ‘cool’ environment (think Google, Apple, Amazon and the like).
Also, with the Silicon Valley now booming with IT and computer related start ups, the prospects of being in software engineering field could not come at a more opportune time.
CareerCast, a US-based career website, evaluated 200 different professions across a number of industries, level of skills, salary range and the current demand of the job to rank the job. In the study, both best jobs and worst jobs are ranked.
On average, a software engineer earns about US$88,142.00 annual salary (good Silicon Valley start ups are willing to pay between $150k and $200k for talented programmers). In addition to good salary package, software engineering is one of those jobs subject to the least physical demand.
Software engineer (some people call them computer programmers or developers) typically develops, designs, tests, debugs and maintains systems or applications to make them work in the desired specifications. Software engineering requires competency in computer science, mathematics and logics, as well as good know-how of analysis, execution, testing and re-engineering.
Other jobs that make it to the “best job” list include actuary, human resources manager, financial planner and dental hygienist.
There is a catch though. Despite its popularity and growing demand, graduates in software engineering field are warned not to settle with what were being taught at school; they themselves should pick up new skills as the industry evolves. The way applications and systems run change pretty fast with time, and this requires prompt adaptation to the way software engineering is managed. Those who fail to catch up will find themselves behind in no time.
Six years ago, in 2006, the Money Magazine and website Salary.com also ranked software engineer as the best job in America.
