→ Is studying engineering a waste if u work in other fields

[midlet2013]

I agree that being good at one thing and ignoring the rest is bad. But not being good at anything and just be so-so at everything is also very bad.

What is see here mostly is that most people who have become managers and directors in data science in Singapore (bank or elsewhere) are just people managers who can talk well. They have soft skills but not hard engineering skills. They have not kept in touch with the knowledge demands. That is equally bad.

First, be good at something , then spread yourself in broader areas such as leader n management.

What I mean is it is better to focus and build depth in one area where u can excel since u have the right skills rather than being tempted by luncrative/excellent areas where u dont have the right skills.

I know that lot of people change their focus n interests in life. But to think that a different undergrad degree is the key detriment is wrong. One can always learn n improve.

One of the things i notice in industry generally is that most people do not self-learn.

More-over, even excelling in one area a reasonable person would not avoid taking up challenges in different areas related to the main one. Excelling in one and ignoring the world around would make you fail in your excelling - this is one of the most common mistake I can see in the local unis graduates. It would also make one very vulnerable in the skill based job market.

[midlet2013]

Chasing hot fields is not the way forward. Continuously learning new stuff and adapting to change is . One of the problems with most people is an inability to learn by themselves. No wonder everyone blames employers for not providing training.

Big data will last but even if it does not, one has to get the fundamentals right and focus on learning and improving. I think that matters more than the area or technology.

Even Google and Microsoft test people mostly on fundamentals and learnability more than domain specific knowledge.

Another point I would like to make about chasing hot technologies, Big data is hot now, but how long is it going to remain hot? If you are in Big Data, make hay while the sun shines, just remember, its not going to be like this forever

[nakatago]

Chasing hot fields is not the way forward. Continuously learning new stuff and adapting to change is . One of the problems with most people is an inability to learn by themselves. No wonder everyone blames employers for not providing training.

Big data will last but even if it does not, one has to get the fundamentals right and focus on learning and improving. I think that matters more than the area or technology.

Even Google and Microsoft test people mostly on fundamentals and learnability more than domain specific knowledge.

Computing professional here. Was a computer engineer*, became a code monkey** then back to being a computer engineer***.

Google and Amazon almost never test for very specialized knowledge. Your specialization will catch the eye of their recruiters and then these same recruiters will advice which topics they test for: computer science basics, architecture, algorithms. Google has tons of resources available online that practically walk you through their recruiting process. They don't even care about your edumacation; if you profile shows you have potential, they will pay attention.

So yeah, studying engineering is a big help but if you didn't have formal training but can provably demonstrate that you've acquired the skills, the big ones won't hesitate to see what you're capable of.
That said, you may come from a prestigious university and have a long list of certifications in your CV but if you can't describe the pseudocode to identify if a string is a palindrome or not, you better take those intro to computing courses available online.

*I have a degree.
**If you have a million monkeys typing away on an IDE, you may eventually come up with an operating system.
***I can prove it. I had a professional engineering organization certify me. Also, currently evaluating which hardware platform to use on our super-duper, secret, totes-amazeballs invention for which I have to write the software for.