Jacqueline Said:

What minimum credentials should one have in order to be a powertrain development engineer in formula 1?

We Answered:

I'm guessing you wont be able to start in F1. It is after all the Highest class of racing/research&development that exists in the automotive world. I'd be forced to think that you would need a decade or more in the racing world before even being considered for such a position. Maybe try Nascar, I know it sucks, but it is alot more plausible as a first step than F1.

Felix Said:

Which are the best careers of computer engineering except programming code/development for Fresher?

We Answered:

For entry-level folks, I would recommend the following:

1) Systems administration (Linux)
2) Systems administration (UNIX)
3) Database administrator (MySQL)
4) Database administrator (Oracle)
5) Network/Firewall administrator (Cisco)

It really depends on what you like to do, as far as playing with hardware or software. You will primarily be working with software above.

There is also the field of customer support and technical service. I would stay away from call centers, and try to become a software support engineer on one of the five items listed above.

Virtualization is huge right now, but you will need decent experience with a good operating system such as UNIX or Linux in order to apply that well. I would avoid supporting the Microsoft operating systems as they tend to pay less and I'm sure you want to pay back your student loans quickly. I'm not being flippant - for anyone who wishes to question this, please first compare the average salaries on-line.

For free virtualization experience, try Xen on Linux as it's free. You can also gain a lot of experience with this using VMWare ESX, which has a trial, but this probably has a much higher threshold of hardware requirements, and you can only use it in the trial form at home unless you want to pay for it.

Computer experience seems like a chicken-or-the-egg, Catch-22 scenario, but it's not really. Simply get a computer or two, play around with either dual-booting into Linux, or get a few hard drives cheap or free, and load Linux onto them. For a more challenging experience, try breaking things in Linux, and fixing them by using Google on another system.

I've obtained three major computer certifications (MCSE, RHCE, SCSA) by using this method.

In my opinion, Linux (or anything truly open-source) is the way to go for someone looking to get into the operating system support business long-term.

Hope this helps and, of course, this is totally my personal opinion as a very biased, veteran, open-source evangelist.

Good luck!

EDIT: P.S. the biggest money is in Oracle DBA field and the higher levels of Systems Architecture. If you can think big - like a company with a budget - and design systems that will flow well, that are also redundant and highly available, that also save the company money and time in the short- and long-term, and that you can then turn around and sell to upper management, you can make huge money.