A fresher sent me the following query:
Hi Necemon, thank you for accepting my invite. I am new to the IT field and I would appreciate if you could give me some guidance. Based on your work experience, can you tell me what companies look for in a computer guy?
I heard about you from senior students at Christ University, I am in Bangalore and I like computer science but I do not know what to learn and how to begin.
Actually, I think I like programming but I am told that the C language is no longer relevant, and I am also told about Ruby, C#, Python, etc. I'm confused.

Please don't get confused. Technology is simply a way to solve a problem or to achieve a goal. What is your goal?
Create apps? What apps do you want to create and why?
It's a bit as if you come to me to ask me what vehicle you should be driving. If I ask you what you want to do with that vehicle, you wouldn't just tell me that you just want to move away, right? I know you want to move... My question is, where are you going?

What companies are looking for ? Ok, I fully understand what you are asking here. You want to make sure your education will guaranty an interesting job later in the IT development Industry. Obviously, I could tell you that a certain technology T is in high demand right now, but it's not that simple. There are a few other things to consider:

1. The requirements may vary with location (country or region). The hottest jobs in the US are not necessarily that popular in India. So unless you know already where you are going to work, it's not that easy to target on a trend basis.

2. The demand changes with time. What is relevant today may not be (as) prevalent tomorrow. The technologies evolve and replace each other. So what's fashionable now might be different from what will be popular by the time you get your degree.

3. You might not like the technology in vogue or the uses of that technology. If I tell you that a given technology T is in high demand, that it allows you to locate and fix bugs / errors in a super boring / huge / complicated banking system, plus there are plenty of calculations... What if you don't like calculations? Are you still going to embrace this technology and to accept this path for the rest of your career?

4. Even if we consider only one city and a given time, various companies are seeking different things, depending on what they do. There is no perfect technology that is better than all others in all areas. Each technology has its own sets of advantages and disadvantages. C and C ++ may be better than Ruby at a few things (and vice versa), Python is better than C# in some respect (and vice versa), etc.

5. As I said above, the technology is just a mean to get somewhere. When you consider Facebook for example, most users don't care if it was built with PHP, C, Java, Perl, C # or Python. What is important for people is, how the site or application can help them in their lives.

I think that's where you should start. What strengths and assets do you already have? (don't tell me you don't have any). What contribution do you intend to come up with for your family, your friends, your community, your country, and for the world? And what do you expect in return?

If you do not know what to do with your life, some time ago I wrote an article that might inspire you : What will you do in life? Take time to reflect on your ambitions and we can talk about the resources you will need.

If you know WHAT you want to do, it would be easier for me to tell you HOW to do it.

Let's speak soon,

N.

 

UPDATE - Shabbir Kahodawala shared a few clever insights on this matter :

I agree very much with your response to the fresher - about the need to realise and work on his talents and concentrate on writing good code and immersive UI.
I would like to add a few points as well taking the perspective that every Indian student goes through the same dilemma due to lack of job oriented education, because institutions focus on technical oriented education.

IT is not only about writing code. Think of it as a factory where there is Marketing, Client Requirement gathering, Planning, Product development, Product Testing, Infrastructure planning, Product Deployment, Product Maintenance, Customer Support, Issue Resolution and Product Improvements.

Each of these creates many job opportunities for IT students and one needs to understand where his strengths lie. He can do that by talking to IT professionals who can introduce to other professionals in each department and willing to share what skills they require on today's world. That will make his goals more clear.

Secondly, a competitive IT professional should always have his basics right. To be able to write good and neat code. He should be always able to visualize a requirement into an algorithm and then the language syntax that he uses can always change. That's why colleges teach C & Java (object oriented) because these help a coder develop his basics about Data Handling, Functions, Objects, Classes and runtime environment.