Women of Color in Tech

CHAPTER 2The Different Flavors of Tech Careers

In this chapter, we'll look at some popular career paths you can take within tech. For each, we'll look at the following:

• General overview of the field
• Typical job roles and titles
• Average median wage
• What they do
• Top skills needed
• Educational requirements
• Where to seek additional information

The positions, salaries, and responsibilities outlined will vary greatly between organizations and geographic locations. The information is more to help you have a general understanding of the careers.

For many of these jobs, you'll notice that they require several soft skills, including communication and interpersonal skills. While developing technical skills is no doubt important, some of these roles may be more business or customer-service oriented, and the type of technical skills you need will vary greatly.

The career fields and positions outlined assume that you have basic computer and information technology skills, specifically:

• Computer hardware: The internal parts of a computer, what these parts do, and how they work together to perform operations. Important parts include the motherboard, memory, and the processor.
• Mobile devices: With tablet and smartphone usage outpacing the use of traditional computers, understanding how mobile devices work will become important.
• Operating systems: Software installed on computers that allow you to execute programs, as well as manage a computer's resources, like memory. The three most used operating ...