Technical Stuff

The money spinners

The intake of engineering students is increasing and the packages being offered to them are higher than what is being doled out to the IT brigade. But, placements of IT graduates are higher simply because more IT professionals than engineers are needed in a corporate house

Aditi Thirani Eastside

Pune is now being known as the Silicon Valley of the country with more and more II firms deciding to set up base here. Colleges too are gearing up with higher student intake to keep abreast with market demands. In fact it has been noticed that the intake of engineering students is increasing and the packages being offered to them are higher than what is being doled out to the IT brigade. Prof. Ganesh Bhutkar of the department of computer engineering at VIT college felt even though an engineer earned more, IT students found placement offers more easily. "

A company that comes to pick up engineers from our college will take interviews of 100 students and choose four or five, whearas a company in search of IT talent will absorb most of the students put up by the institute. Engineering students in general require a higher aptitude than the IT lot," he says. Bhutkar adds, "Companies that come for campus placement can be broken up into two categories — Flower and bucket or truck companies. Flower companies are the ones that need few but high quality professionals. They pick up engineers in different fields - mechanical civil and the like. Bucket or truck companies pick up people in bulk.

It is not that they don’t need quality, it’s just that they require a particular kind of talent. It is here that IT students fit because they are absorbed in larger numbers." Agreeing on the high intake of IT students, Prof. Ashutosh Marathe says, "The aptitude required by IT students is lower that their engineering counterparts but demand is high. So once an IT student completes his course, he finds a job easily. On the engineering field you need to be both good and hardworking.

One reason behind this is, engineers from that field — mechanical or electronic — will be required to handle a particular project of the same field. In the IT world, students can find placement in most processes without having to be a specialist in any particular project." Prof. Shashank Joshi from Bharti Vidyapeeth says, "In engineering, a student cannot flit between the work of a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer. Their job profiles are different and the skillsets required are also not the same. The IT student on the other hand can move from one project to the other seamlessly."

So despite engineering graduates earning more, those in the IT stream can be lapped up faster. In the end the choice rests on the individual -- whether he is keen on a field that will get him placed almost immediately or one in which the placements may be fewer but earnings are higher.