Software engineering job is highly overrated. Prove me wrong if you can.
- You are building a software that otherwise could be built by a 12 year old kid, if given proper training.
- You cannot code if I cut off google, stackoverflow & related websites.
- You are just concerned about producing the output quickly because a. your work is time bound, b. you want to stand out from others.
- You attend countless meetings that carry no value, thanks to Agile.
- 10 people write code for the same software which otherwise could have been written by 1 person.
- You write pages of documents just because you are expected to write for the team, compliance & stuff.
- You don’t care about non-functional requirements as nobody asked for it.
- You are spending hours together in coding a simple thing & you are branded a hard-worker.
- Or you don’t spend much time in coding because you impress people with tech jargons that you learnt recently. You are branded a smart-worker.
- The code you write will be completely rewritten in next 3-4 years just to catch up with the industry trends.
- Your only goal is to earn loads of money which otherwise could not be earned in other engineering fields. That’s one of the reasons why you are on grapevine.
Prove me wrong if you can, by commenting your opinion.
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Tell me you are a mediocre programmer/ work with mediocre programmers /an idiot without telling me you are.
Tell me you are offended by truth bombs & have no points to counter argue without actually telling me that.
This post is like a person shouting nonsense, wanting people to stop and entertain his delusions.
When being told your premise is false and biased getting countered with "no you are".
Point 2 mentions tools. Every professional needs tools to perform a task.
Now ask a doctor to perform surgery without any anaesthesia. Ask a mechanic to repair your car without a wrench. Ask a pilot to locate the airport without radar etc. etc.
Your post is super dumb. Looks like you've lost some brain cells.
Of course. And imagine the same doctor using google search in the middle of a surgery to restore some lost brain cells. Yes, even doctors can justify the use of google as a tool. Why limit it to a software engineer alone? 🤔
Doctors study from books and for experience they work in hospitals/clinics, The nature of the job is different, and someone's life depends on it.
Whereas SWEs can ask google/chatgpt or their seniors in case of doubt.
Most of your points are bs, countering few of them-
-
Almost all jobs can be done by a 12 yo with training whether it's labour, accounting, etc.
-
You need these when youre stuck with a prob which is uncommon(or you haven't encountered it yet). Even lawyer with 2 digit experience check references thru books multiple times, accountants need calculators, civil/architect engineer needs to check Clauses fand IS codes multiple times.
-
That's literally universal for any field, if you're not interested you'll do bare min to meet deadlines or do your work quickly to climb the ladder.
-
Happens in every other job from teaching to core engineering.
-
A single labour can also do work of 10 labours with 1/10th efficiency.
SE are paid more because of supply demand, otherwise their isn't much difference when compared to other jobs, it requires more mental work then physical..
I like your approach to put forth points to counter me unlike some others that resort to name calling.
Well, one fact that I would like to add to my point is the reason lay-offs are so prevalent in software engineering jobs is companies know they can survive without the number of software engineers.
Quantity matters only when the industry is doing well, but when the industry is not doing well, it’s the quality of people that matters.
Software demands can be met with right quality and not the quantity as adopted by large scale companies.
@Coolgoose That's not true at all. More people are needed to build things then to maintain it, companies become less experimental during recession and build less stuff rather they focus more on survivability(maintenance of their pre existing tech). Plus the number of layoff in big techs are really insignificant (5-10%).
So your view is still wrong since youre implying that 1 person can do job of 10, but from the data itself it shows 95 people are needed to do job of 100..
If you eventually get to work with actually good engineers, you will realise none of the points you raised holds ground. Software engineering just like any other field is diverse field, and you will find people who are not working on something groundbreaking everyday, but that does not negate the fact there are people who are actually building cool shit. Your generalisation shows your naivety. Writing code is not why good software engineers are paid hefty, its for the problem solving mindset that they have developed which is unmatched to everyone else around them.
You can train a monkey to press keys on a keyboard to do some task, but the problem solving mindset needs talent, it needs grit, patience and determination.
While people who ended up in product/marketing/sales job were enjoying their college fests and drama clubs, the so called “overrated/overpaid software engineers” were banging their heads against the wall solving a NP-hard problem for their preparation for ACM ICPC.
I’m not living in denial. I do acknowledge the fact there are good and genuinely smart software engineers. I’m myself one of them, if I can boast shamelessly 😄. And there are many more around.
My concern is more toward companies(esp. large scaled) indulging in building a herd of software engineers making every single software engineer think they deserve no less than an elite stature.
Your frustration is more on the side of how software as a commodity is sold. For a big organisation selling a software to huge number of clients will naturally require good amount of engineers in support and maintenance role. That’s just the customer requirement at this point. Big organisation solve this problem by hiring herd of engineers as you mentioned. All the points that you have mentioned has less to do with core software engineering but more to do with how these big organisation are dealing with big software engineering teams.
There are also companies like Instagram, Zerodha, who work at similar scale but with extremely small engineering teams.
Again this has to do with how software is sold by these companies.
All this has nothing to do with software engineering job being overrated/underrated but more to with how business is conducted by these org and how do you meet client’s expectations.
If it’s so easy why can’t you build your own software and make it worldwide
It’s people like you and me that built this app which is why there is a conversation happening between you and me.
Also you do not know me, so don’t come to conclusion that I’ve not built any software to be made available to the world. Peace ✌️.
Yeah bro, I have read about you. You are the secret developer/hacker who is shown in movies who can build apps in a matter of minutes right?
Your only goal is to earn loads of money....... What else should I have as a goal? Work harder so my CEO gets richer?
Everybody has a goal of earning loads of money, including me. But if that’s the “only” goal you have then read my post again and answer it to yourself.
Truly though what else should be the goal? I only care about making money so that I can use it for myself or for my loved ones in any way that makes all of us happy
Hey @Coolgoose , I see you are an engineering manager. So I understand where you are coming from in this regard. Your points are definitely opinions you have formed, and would definitely be true from your perspective.
All I want to add is, there's more to software engineering than coding.
So many aspects to consider -
- Error debugging
- Code readability, extensibility
- Working for scale
- Decisions on tech stack(dbs etc), making sure software can efficiently handle higher load
- Chaos engineering - testing for resiliency, load testing etc
- RCAs for when issues happen, fixing those, owning them
So, I would disagree that a 12yr old can do all this despite proper training. People can code, but how many people can actually use their brains to create something amazing out? And yes software does pay well, but just see how much efforts they have to put in to learn so many skills before they can be hired
The points people have already tried countering them, I cannot counter it better than them hence won't be countering
Excellent points these. Perhaps this is one of the comments that elucidates every aspect of software engineering job. Add to your list: CI / CD, security testing, Automation tools, & so on. I know it doesn’t seem as simple as I have opined here. But trust me, given necessary support and motivation, you can up-skill the dumbest of people to make them productive. It does take some time, though.
Kids as young as 14-15 year old build frontend apps for fun & they share some great insights too on #techtwitter. Imagine the benefits of mounding them to do all these work. You just need a mentor that can make them productive.
@Coolgoose , thanks for the points for the list! I won't disagree when you say with enough support and motivation you can upskill dumbest of people. But do you really want that in your job to upskill dumbest people? Wouldn't that make your life more difficult if you do hand holding though?
And yes, kids do build great front-end apps. But those kids are an exception to this. Normally, people do engineering/boot camp and get into this field. But, shouldn't there be a difference between boot camp developer and CS Engineer? There is! There's a reason people learn subjects like OS, DB, Computer Architecture, DSA, Networking. It makes them better engineers.
Because as we all know, every problem breaks down to fundamentals!
Just an example -
If you want to know why a instance went down, you need to be able to monitor it, see what has spiked, let's say memory, figure out what in memory has spiked(say page faults), then you need to know when you find major page faults, then find what are page faults, then figure out why it happened. All these things comes from knowledge, experience. These things not always can be answered on Google, chatgpt or stackoverflow!
Knowing what to do when crisis comes is an important aspect of working individual as I am sure you would agree
- Remove child labour laws and you'll see 12 year olds with training churn out software in corporations, most of the education we get after 12 anyway isn't very helpful towards software dev, so might as well skip it if allowed
- I've got no shame to admit that I can't code shit without SO, Google etc. What I do believe though is having access to them isn't enough, not everyone knows how to debug stuff efficiently.
- This is a brain-dead take. In which profession is work not time bound? There's a compromise b/w quality and time yes, and that is variable depending on where you work, but everything is time bound imo.
- In my company thankfully we don't follow any such BS methodology, but can hard relate.
- True. But I don't have to be the absolute best in my domain, I just need to be at the right place right time to pitch myself as a good developer as compared to others at a given time for a given profile at a company. It's the company's headache to find the 10x engineer, all I provide is a more immediate solution, don't like me then don't hire me, I won't be butt hurt.
- Personally never had to write as I've always worked in early stage startups, so can't relate. But wouldn't like doing it.
- Many don't, but I like to. I like calling myself as a product developer than a software dev,and having worked in all product based startups, I get to try my hand in other non functional requirements as well.
- Current structure disincentives efficiency. If I complete the same task early then I'll not be paid more or get some free time, instead I'll be assigned more tasks. That's unfair imo
- Gross generalization, that's a subset of people.
- Given how fast tech moves, even frameworks are getting rewritten within years, my code existing 3-4 years in production is good imo. Don't see how that's a bad thing, keeping up with time.
- Yes, and I don't see anything wrong in it.
Honest confession 👍. Keep them coming. It takes humility to write facts about your own work that are not so pleasant. 🤌