I'm a software engineer for a very large company. I'm based in St. Louis. I have coworkers literally scattered across the country....from California to Connecticut and everywhere in between that I work with on a daily basis, yet I've never had to set foot on a plane for business purposes thanks to teleconferencing. Yet, a friend of mine, also a software engineer was interviewing for a job where he'd be in a new city every week taking on more of a consulting role (he didn't get the job, but found something better where he doesn't travel either) So, it can go either way. Companies are looking to cut expenses in this economy, and I'd imagine that travel is the first thing to go.

I think travel for internal purposes (meetings) is definitely dead at most companies. It's hard to justify the cost. However, when you are in a client-facing role, it is completely different.... especially if you are billing your travel expenses to the client :cool:. Clients want to see the people they are paying to do work.

True, but as a software engineer, you're probably going to be the guy sitting in the cube all day writing the software, and someone else will be a middleman between you and the client and will do all of the traveling.

Look at the DOD. I'm a computer engineer that spent the first 5 years travelling pretty much non-stop. It's pretty common that people with families aren't as enthusiastic about travel so there are a lot of opportunities with travel involved.

Lately it isn't the case but it used to be that I always got Y class fares for a 50% EQM bonus.

Wow, lots of great feedback, I appreciate all of the great comments! I figured now is probably the time to really figure out what I want to do before its too late.

I highly recommend that you look into a co-op/intern program. Takes a little while longer to graduate but your job prospects will be much better and you'll have a better idea of what type of work you'll like to do.

I did a total of 7 semesters of co-op at 3 different companies. All interviews I took led to offers where a lot of my friends were struggling to find a job. Of course YMMV but any experience is good experience.

The other side of the IT "coin" is, of course, hardware. Unlike a software developer, a hardware engineer often needs to travel to assess a customer's site issues, attend project planning meetings, and to perform the actula hardware implementation (including integration of the new equipment into the customer's existing IT infrastructure).

The bottom line is, there are certain things that cannot be done over the phone or on a WebEx onlineconference.

Also on the topic of Co-op/internships....if your more like me and are trying to get out in 4-years (I am in my third year of an Electrical Engineering degree), find an internship that lets you work on your breaks. I started an internship the summer after my freshman year and I head back into the office on my summer and winter breaks. I know people who are doing the co-op semester thing and it works for them, and I also know people who intern around 15 hours a week while going to school. There are definitely plenty of opportunities out there for someone studying in a technical field to pick one up...just don’t be afraid to apply, even if your early in your studies...

I did a 3 co-op program at Drexel and I think it was beneficial in many ways. I worked my last 2 co-ops at the same company and worked part time for them during the school year. I got an offer from them upon graduation, but also got offers from several consulting and financial firms.... I took the consulting road and am happy. The co-op experience gave me a leg up, in terms of having hard skills I could apply, which got me staffed relatively quickly. It also provided valuable connections for future job prospects, if I ever decide to leave consulting.

The job requires traveling? No, the job may require traveling. It really depends upon what you're doing. Software engineer can mean many things. There are plenty of career paths in technology that are more customer focused than technology focused. Those commonly come with customer facing time. With that said, the most true definition of software engineer generally requires face time in an office with other engineers to create software.

People who do the actual coding/engineering work do you have to travel to customer sites where there are serious issues, visit trade shows and possibly go on sales calls, but this is pretty minor. It is often not the venue of the newest person hired.

The opportunities will really depend on what the job is you get. Just because you study computer science doesn't mean that you will be elbows deep in it. There are opportunities there. It just depends what you are more focused on when you get in the workplace.

With that said, please realize that travel is not some joyful experience that you probably think of in college. Picture if you had to spend all day in a site an hours flight away being at a customer site helping them and then you had to go back to your hotel, eat dinner and do all of the course work that you'd normally do in the run of a day, but in a few hours. Picture that while you're gone it's the final of the World Series, but you're too busy to watch, your girlfriend is thinking about starting a new romance with the guy from accounting because you're gone so much, you notice your waistline bulging because all you do is eat hotel food and you never get to see anything outside of the hotel. You end up with all of these points, but when you get vacation you actually want to be home to enjoy the benefits of the house you have, but never see because you're gone all of the time.

For right now, I'd concentrate on school. When you're done, deal with what you want to do in terms of your career and progression. you'll get a taste of some travel at that point, but realize that doing it enough to get the benefits of doing so (elite status, etc) come at a price.

"I figured now is probably the time to really figure out what I want to do before its too late. "

I highly doubt that you'll figure that out with only one year under your belt.

Heh, as others have said it's basically client-facing or consulting stuff. It's not that common for hardcore coders to have the customer skills needed, or necessarily to want to deal with customers enough.

I mean, I'm a pretty hardcore Java guy, ~10 years in the industry, and I'd love to be able to travel for work. OTOH, I'm also a pretty classic programmer's personality - NOT the guy my company wants anywhere near customers, and that's why we have PMs and consultants, as much to insulate the customers from people like me as to insulate people like me from the customers.

Very well put. Everyone at work thinks of travel as a magical mystical time. Honestly a cubical or computer lab in one part of the world is the same as any other. It's just sometimes you have to sit in a middle coach seat for 8 hours to get there (though Flyertalk info helps with that). A few coast to coast trips for 1-2 days to solve a critical problem get old after a while.

When I was younger I always took the longer term travel opportunities. Anything that was 3-6 months continuous that they would provide all travel costs for so that I had time to explore a particular city. It doesn't get you the airline miles since it might mean less than 5 flights a year but you can get a lot of hotel points.

I've been out of college for almost 15 years and don't know what I want to do before I grow up.

I am a Support / Systems Engineer for one of the Top 200 Software Companies.
Fortunately, I do a combined role, where I sit in Office about 50% of the time and travel about 50% (in average). However, I realized that traveling (for biz) isn't only fun.
I hardly get any (miles or other) compensation for personal use (deep discount economy, e.g. BA = 0 Miles, Hotel booked by Customer, none of the Big chains = 0 Miles, Corporate Apartment = 0 Miles).
Then it can also get frustrating if you're in a really nice city, but don't find the time to see anything apart from the Hotel, the customer site and the Airport (happened two or three times already on a very tight schedule).
Also traveling can make you (sort of) lonely. Since I was more on the move than at home (where I am new as well) in the last 12 months, I found it more and more difficult to make friends, develop relationships etc.

Traveling is only one side of the medal. Your priority needs to be that you enjoy your job (whether it's in a cube, office, at home or whereever) and like what you're doing. The next aim should be to make enough money so that you can take your time to explore and travel to places when you can enjoy it... :)

I am very glad that I can do both. I found that I wouldn't wanna be on the road 80+% of the time (how to ever find a gf that is willing to accept that?), but being stuck in the same place would bore me as well.

I suppose it depends a lot on whether you 'like to travel.' When I was younger (early to mid 20s) and working in IT, whenever I travelled somewhere I almost always 'tacked on a weekend' to look around wherever I was. From Kansas City to Atlanta to San Francisco to Chicago to an afternoon/evening at Disneyworld - I always did it.

Now that I'm older, married, with a kid at home I'm less likely to 'tack on the weekend' (but I still fly home West as late in the day as I can, so I can 'play tourist'...)

Although the OP is still in school and has aspirations of being a software engineer, that could very likely just be one of many different positions he holds during his career. In my experience it is more common that IT people circulate through many different positions - development, training, deployment, customer support, tech lead, management; any of which have differing travel requirements.

As of right now it is definitely not hard to find a job in IT that requires traveling. Any globally deployed system has various needs that must be met on site. I've met all kinds of people that fly continously to support such things as ship board systems, remote antenna farms, radar stations, etc. I have one friend who supports military systems in virtually every place on the globe, including Antartica, Greenland and every place in between. His travel schedule is exhausting and is virtually point to point from any place in the world to any other place.