Advancements in Technology has been one of the fastest point of growth in humanity for over a century now and its impact in the affairs of humanity has been unmatched, humanity have developed so many means to which technology can be used to better aid our lives, two of which are; "being as a way to better solve our problems" and "earning a living" and these means have further expanded its growth over time.

Hi, my name is Oscar and one of the major issues I faced when starting out in tech was that of figuring out where and what to start with because at first everything felt overwhelming and at the same time inspiring too, which is why am writing this for you and its purpose is to filter out the excesses and enable you decide on what you would feel happy doing. In this article, I would be talking about career paths that I have come across in the ever expanding field of tech in order to guide you toward making that career choice that will remain of high relevance in the future. There are so many fields in the I.C.T world and unifying them under a single classification model is somewhat difficult but in this case I am going to divide them into three:-

1. Design Driven
2. Technically Driven
3. Service Driven

Design Driven

Most people see design as just the aesthetically pleasing element with a visual we see but in truth design goes beyond that. In tech design includes the Processes put into place for an element to exist, the feedback on how we perceive element, the way elements interact with each other and also the way a client, user or consumer interacts with these elements. Designers showcase their works on sites like Behance, dribble, Instagram, Youtube. Design driven careers in tech include:-

a. Graphic Design

This aspect of design deals mostly with raster's and vectors and includes art/illustration design , posters, image manipulation , Branding and some forms of motion designing. Graphic designers mostly work with tools like

#Adobe Photoshop, Adobe illustrator, Canva(yes canva designers are designers too), Affinity, Adobe Indesign, Artboard Studio.

The average pay of a graphic designer per year in the U.S is $38,827 and in Nigeria N720,000 ($1,731)

b. UI Design

User interface design strictly involves the design on digital environment, this branch of design deals with design of digital interfaces which could be for mobile, web or even the interface on an ATM machine. They deal on the prototyping of design from Low fidelity prototypes to High fidelity Prototypes. UI designers work with tools like

#Adobe XD, Figma, Sketch , Art board studio , Placeit.

The average pay of a UI designer per year in the U.S is $73,000 and in Nigeria N42000($1,010) per month

c. UX Design

User Experience designers are sometimes required to posses UI skills but they stand alone in most cases, they work on interaction design, their main focus is on the impact a design has on a customer in terms of feeling and mood and they are also a key factor in the ideation and testing of any design process. UX designers work with tools like #Figjam, Miroboard, Microsoft Powerpoint , Google slide, Figma, AdobeXd

and have an average pay a bit higher than that of UI designer.

d. 3D model Design

3D modelling involves the use of simulated software for the design of three dimensional elements , it is one of the complicated category of design but comes with a high paying jobs in Video game, Advertising and Modelling industries for those who achieve proficiency in it. 3D designers work with tools like

#Blender, Unreal engine, Cinema 4D , ZBrush.

The average pay for a 3D designer in the U.S per year is about $58,500

e. Motion Design

This includes video editors and motion graphic designers , their design is done on different frames of imagery and it is one of the most tedious aspects of design. To be a motion designer one most have the ability to work patiently , they work with many tools which includes

#Adobe After effects , Mochha AE, Cinema 4D, Adobe Premiere Pro, Filmora.

Motion designers have salaries that vary depending on the complexity of work done by them

Technically Driven

Technicalities in tech are diverse and it covers a level of proficient knowledge in core working principles in tech. The most additive bonus to simplifying getting into a technically driven sector in tech is to understand how the fundamentals of the technology works and be familiar with terms within the scope, before working your way up to specializing in a technical path. Knowledge in Programming, Information and Technology and even on Fundamental sciences in some unique cases are highly required. Programmers generally set up work portfolios in platforms like Github, Gitlab, Cloud platforms. Technical career paths include:-

a. Mobile Development Mobile development deals with the deployment/development of mobile applications on various mobile operating systems such as Android OS and IOS , these operating systems control over 90% of mobile devices out there and can have its applications built using various frameworks. The Android OS apps can be built on platforms such as Android studio , Intellij IDE and Eclipse (not officially supported) using High level languages such as Java, Kotlin and C++(for native reusable code). IOS apps can be built on platforms like Xcode , Swiftic using languages like swift and objective C. There are other frameworks that allow the development of cross platform deployable mobile apps which run on both operating systems with some offering extra mobile operating system reach. These include

i. Flutter developed with Dart programming language (which most recently include support for deploying to desktop OS)

ii. Xamarin developed with C# programming language

iii. React native developed with JavaScript programing language

iv. Ionic developed also with JavaScript Mobile developer salaries are at an average of $71,000 a year in the U.S and in Nigeria N 4 million ($9600) per year.

b. Web Development

Web development is no doubt a very competitive area of tech and statistically they make up at least 40% of software engineers out there , which is also why it is the most resource enabled path to take for those trying to break into tech. Web developers are primarily divided into two; Front-end developers and Backend developers, those with proficiency in both are referred to as Full stack developers. Generally web developers are required to have skills in working with technologies like HTML( Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) along with knowledge in one or more programming language such as JavaScript, Python, Php, Java , Ruby . Web developers also work with so many frameworks for ease and better work efficiency ,

#for Front-End developers frameworks such as Angular, Jquery, Vue Js , Ember js, React

#and the Backend frameworks include Django developed with Python, Laravel developed with PHP($hehe), Ruby on rails developed with ruby, Express Js developed with NodeJs(runtime environment), Spring Boot developed with Java.

Web developers salaries range from $37,000-$126,000 in the U.S yearly and a yearly average of N3.5 million ($8,400) in Nigeria.

c. Game Development

Game development is a challenging career and requires commitment for one to be very successful in it. They put in a heavy amount of workload to achieve results. It is a very attractive path to follow from the outside and very challenging when gotten into. I would probably argue that it is one of the top 5 challenging tech career paths to follow. If you dream to be a game developer then you should be prepared for the challenges that come with it. Game developers use many tools but I would be focusing on frameworks as connected to the language used in its development, these frameworks include;

#ThreeJS developed with JavaScript, Unity developed with C#, libGDX developed with Java,Phaser developed with Javascript (built with canvas and Webgl) Unreal Engine developed with C++

Game developer salaries vary most game developers work as freelancers and this makes their salary/earning data hard to be accurately computed in Nigeria. They share a joint work format with game designers at a salary of N 3.2 million ($7,600) yearly and in the U.S $86,200.

d. Cloud Engineering

They build and maintain cloud Infrastructure. Cloud engineers are mostly IT proficient with skills in (Operating system(mostly Linux), Networking, Database, Virtualization, Programming, DevOps , Container management and understanding various cloud platforms). they work with cloud platforms like

#Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Service (AWS) and Google cloud platform (GCP).

They are mostly subdivided into three which includes the : Cloud architects , Cloud developers and Cloud Administrators or SysOps Administrators. Cloud Engineers oversee various cloud Integration processes Cloud engineer have salaries ranging from $90,000 - $150,000 a year %[glassdoor.com/Salaries/cloud-engineer-salar..

e. Data Science

Data science encompasses data analytics , data mining, machine learning and data mining. Data scientist create forecast on future occurrences based on past data, these forecasts are generated by gathering data from multiple sources and applying machine model to it in order to successfully generate a data model. Data scientist are required to have cyber security skills, mathematics and statistics knowledge and an expertise in a major field of application. The data analyst role requires the extraction of useful data from multiples sources for insights on a field of application. Machine learning being a key part of data science is the use of algorithms to extract data from multiple sources. Data scientist use tools such as

#Matlab, SAS, Apache spark, BigML and are mostly proficient in programming languages like Python and R .

The average annual salary of data scientist in Nigeria is N1.3 million($3,126)and $166,000 per year in the U.S.

f. IT Support

IT support requires knowledge in Computer hardware, Networking, Operating systems, System Administration. They are specialists in Information technology and also work with an unlimited array of tools both physical and virtual tools IT support serves as a tech backbone for enterprises and have salaries varying depending on their work functions within a company

Service Driven

Tech services come in many ways and sometimes might be hard to differentiate from technical services in tech, here I highlight the top service driven parts of tech

a. Digital Marketing/Sales Engineering

Sales Engineering covers the process of introducing a product to the market, developing strategic methods to promote it, and ways to market it to customers. Digital marketing involves the methodologies employed to increasing the market reach and availability of products and services to a target audience. Digital marketing tools include

#Social media, Email and SEO(Search Engine Optimization) tools

b. Content Writing

Content management involves writing and deploying blog posts , stories, infographics and other modes of disseminating information about a product for the purpose of marketing and advertising.

c. Human Resource

Human resources refer to the branch in an organization/Company that deals with the people that work in the organization and the occurrences that involve these people. Roles of the HR department can be training, compensation and benefits, recruitment, hiring and onboarding of employees. They are required to possess basic knowledge on the field of knowledge governing a company or the product the company offers

d. Product Management

Product managers help plan and initiate market positioning for their products. Product managers usually assume the character of a product owner and are responsible for coordinating and planning product improvements, feature upgrade, and product version release. Product mangers in tech are required to have DevOps skills and they work with tools like

#Jira, Trello , Asana , Pitch and much more

Bottom Line

As much as these skills are categorized in separate divisions , it is perfectly normal to possess as many of them as you could, it is okay be the next Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley. I know everything wasn't mentioned so feel free to comment on your skillset if not mentioned and elaborate further if already discussed here. Remember that what matters most is the impact you can make with the skills you possess and how well you use and apply them.

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