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Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
51–58 of 58 posts
Re: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
#52Simple. Money, money, money.
Re: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
#53For the wage, being a manager is better. If you really like programming, you'll find that boring.
My strategy is to build stuff with other folks, create a value and try to transform that to real money (with a startup for example).
I think your real question is more around what you wanna do with your life.
Re: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
#54First of all, you don't have to stay in the software domain if you don't want to. However, your concerns do not seems to be very specific to the software domain:
* Everyone can be a "software developer". Everyone can also be a [whatever]. Why would you want to have a whole profession for yourself? If you don't have to prove yourself during the interview, you'll have to do it on the job. This is not going to be different somewhere else. In general, is better for you if your colleagues have to meet a minimum competency standard.
* You have to know _a lot_. There is a lot and there is a lot that changes. There is also a lot that stays the same and a lot that you can transfer from an area to another. Once you are a good at design, architecture, Test Driven Development, Pair-Programming etc. you are not going to forget everything just because you have to use a new programming language.
After all it's "just" software. How you solves the problem and write your code internally is going to influence how good it works (bugs, performance) and how fast you can change and improve it. People will care about that. Usually, you are going to work in a team and your colleagues will also care about your solutions.
Re: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
#55I was recently speaking with a recruiter who advised me to “prep” for tech interviews. “Read Cracking the Coding Interview”, he said. “Do some programming problems so your skills are fresh”. I’ve never prepped for a tech interview and I’m never going to read a stupid book that’s supposed to coach me. What am I prepping for? I’ve been a programmer 10+ years. I’ve had 10+ years of “prep”. Is that “fresh” enough for you…
tl;dr: - None of us know everything about every environment, even though we often imagine we do - If you want a job, and spending a few hours prepping on data structures and algorithms (either to improve your performance, or to verify your performance is in fact perfect) will help your chances of success or your confidence, why not do it? You might want to consider: - Just because you don't want to follow the recruit…
> would improve their chances of succeeding at a given interview loop, by preparing
It seems to me that you're presupposing that "success" equates to ending up with an offer.
I posit that for some professionals, success is actually deciding (ideally mutually) if employment is desirable/beneficial. The decision may well be that it is not, but that would still be a success.
In this latter situation, preparation time might be better spent researching the background of the team on would be joining, the company itself, and technical and cultural environment, in order to ask better questions during the interview, rather than studying so as to achieve what could be, arguably, described as gaming the technical screening portion of the process.
Re: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
#56The effort to reward ratio is as good as it gets. Professions with similar or higher reward usually do so only with a lot of effort. Think litigation lawyers or doctors that pull crazy amount of overtime. There's a lot of jobs in the software field that will pull in 6 figures with great conditions and reasonable effort. That's why everyone is fighting each other to enter the field, for better or worse. And while "eve…
I've been hearing about saturation for about 15 years and honestly there are no signs of it, not even close.
Oh, there is. You can have saturation in the field, and employers having trouble finding people, at the same time.
Real world analogy: When I was trying to renovate my place, I had to look for contractors/carpenters. All the good ones are overbooked for 4-6 months out, many only take referrals and won't even talk to you otherwise. At -the same time-, a bunch of contractors I called said they retired or changed field because there was no job and business sucked.
Software engineering is heading a similar way. The barrier for entry for "I know how to build an app" is very, very low. But the "skill ceiling" is very, very high. There's a ton of positions, but when anyone can self teach or do a quick bootcamp and get in, well, there's a lot of competition for these jobs. At the higher end though? There's also a lot of jobs...but competition is non-existent.
Re: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, a web job can net up to 4x salary vs a much more difficult hardware engineering role. I know because I went form hardware to web and the average compensation is much higher. Additionally, web jobs tend to be less stressful.
But why?
I think, because of smartphones and smart gadgets, the demand for hardware and gadgets has reduced dramatically. A lot of gadget ideas can be built as an app. Plus, most businesses need websites or web apps now so there is much, much more demand in for web engineering.
Re: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why?
I think, because of smartphones and smart gadgets, the demand for hardware and gadgets has reduced dramatically. A lot of gadget ideas can be built as an app. Plus, most businesses need websites or web apps now so there is much, much more demand in for web engineering.
You are right about phones. I saw this a lot over the past years myself. I started in hardware back in the 80's when it was all big components. Then, with smartphones, it became clear that most little pocket gadgets of the 90's were obsolete. However, doesn't someone still need to make the phones and computers of tomorrow? Aren't those people going to be paid well since there will be fewer of them? I'm not saying it's not true, it just seems odd that software would be compensated so much better than hardware. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?