It's funny. I'm seeing this, while I'm thinking about dropping out of this career. I don't want to be one of those girl dropout stats, but lately I'm feeling a desire to start a family. fwiw I just passed 32 and I don't know if I want to do programming/software engineering jobs anymore. I'm hoping its just a phase.
Don't let "I don't want to be one of those girl dropout stats" stop you from pursuing what you desire.
"I don't know if I want to do programming/software engineering jobs anymore"
I went through this too. You won't know unless you follow other desires you have and it sounds like one of those is to be a mom.
I am a 42 year old female that has been doing this for close to 20 years. I have 2 kids. Having kids opened me up to so many other things and actually made me better at what I do.
Don't worry about silly stats and being one of them. Worry about what you want and what is best for you.
I'm surprised at the education numbers; out of the respondents who attended university, 22% studied either Computer Science or IT.
Reading their 'how we made the survey' piece (1), it looks like they asked for responses across a wide variety of media and only branded it as a 'New Coders Survey'.
So I have to wonder if they caught a bunch of people with traditional computer science education in their net. That would definitely skew the data considering the sort of conclusions that they're trying to draw about coding bootcamps.
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*HsD7w8Y1rQL9... Looks like my job is secure, then
Wow. I've had what has felt to me like a varied and interesting career across the nearly-25 years I've been writing code for money, but with one small exception everything I've ever been paid for fits within this survey's "other" category. That's... an odd feeling.
In the Demographics and Socioeconomics section, I see 1% of respondents speak Chinese, and no data shown for China in country of citizenship. Also it says 8% have served in the military and a picture showing what I presume are soldiers in the Chinese military (I could be wrong).
Is it that there are few survey respondents from China? Is the survey accessible from China or blocked by the great firewall?
Just curious since the numbers seem very low and I presume there should be a far greater percentage of Chinese respondents purely by population demographics.
> 58% have earned at least a 4-year college degree. In the UK (possibly other countries), you can get a Bachelor's degree in 3 years.
It's the same in India. Most Bachelor's degree are 3 years, but a degree in Engineering, which is also a Bachelor's (BS/BTech) is roughly 4 Years (8 Semesters) long.
It's funny. I'm seeing this, while I'm thinking about dropping out of this career. I don't want to be one of those girl dropout stats, but lately I'm feeling a desire to start a family. fwiw I just passed 32 and I don't know if I want to do programming/software engineering jobs anymore. I'm hoping its just a phase.
I know a few women who did their own projects while raising kids. Often some web stuff about children/family, hehe. But it helped them to keep up to date and get back into the job with ease.
Also some of them made those projects to their main job, so they now work from home and have more time for their children :)
I know code camps are usually web focused, but I'm really surprised about the lack of any lower level, desktop, or non web back end options for "which roll are you most interested in". Coming from a CS background I was also surprised that more people were interested in front end web development than back end web development, because most of the people I interact with hate front end web development with a passion.
Front-end programming is very visual. You can immediately see/sense/feel what you have developed/program, so there is a expedited positive feedback loop. This can appeal to beginner programmers because it gives a immediate sense of satisfaction and accomplishment vs. backend programming where you see lines of output spit back to you in a terminal.
That's interesting, as I feel the opposite. I am a front end dev for a large eComm company, but do a lot of back end programming and scripting in my free time. The reason I love programming is problem solving. I have the most fun doing coding challenges, and get the most immediate sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when I write an algorithm that solves a test case. Although my day job is primarily "application level" JS, I am least happy when I have to do the visual things, like adding new templates with HTML/CSS. To me, design tends to be too subjective (if I'm going to do it, I'd much rather have someone provide me with a design PSD), and it tends to feel monotonous/tedious. I guess that's why I'm considering moving more into back-end development.
I know code camps are usually web focused, but I'm really surprised about the lack of any lower level, desktop, or non web back end options for "which roll are you most interested in". Coming from a CS background I was also surprised that more people were interested in front end web development than back end web development, because most of the people I interact with hate front end web development with a passion.
As someone who comes from a CS background, spent many years as a backend web developer, and is now focusing mostly on frontend ... ... I go where the complexity goes[1]. In the age where most [web] backends are just glorified DB wrappers with an API, and the main app is on the frontend - I'm gonna stick to frontend, thanks. Although it's starting to look more and more like I should rekindle my interest in non-researc…
I sometimes wish I could just go where the market goes, but I can't. I've never learned how to aim the analytical engine in my head, only to figure out where it is pointing, so I can try to put myself into a job where someone will pay me to think about whatever it is that I am apparently going to be spending my time thinking about next.
Nothing about the web inspires me or engages my attention, which has left me wondering lately whether I'm still in the right industry. Not sure what else I could reasonably do for a living, though, since I doubt my brain is going to stop working on software problems whether I'm still getting paid to work on them or not.
I know code camps are usually web focused, but I'm really surprised about the lack of any lower level, desktop, or non web back end options for "which roll are you most interested in". Coming from a CS background I was also surprised that more people were interested in front end web development than back end web development, because most of the people I interact with hate front end web development with a passion.
Front-end programming is very visual. You can immediately see/sense/feel what you have developed/program, so there is a expedited positive feedback loop. This can appeal to beginner programmers because it gives a immediate sense of satisfaction and accomplishment vs. backend programming where you see lines of output spit back to you in a terminal.
I have the feeling there is a bigger need of front-end devs. After you got your API set up, you need shiny stuff and creating this is time consuming.
Also non-technical people seem to value front-end development more, because they have the feeling these devs do more "user specific" stuff (-> "they understand what I want")
I marketing myself as a front-end developer, but I would consider the jobs I get offered full-stack (2/3 front-end, 1/3 back-end)