21–30 of 237 posts
Agree 100%. Similar situation; been doing this for 20 years; in my 40s now. My exit will be into rental properties and flipping houses. Not ready quite yet; might have another couple years in me, but we're planning on it.
I think as an industry we need to look at tests, particularly unit tests, and Test Driven Development (TDD) through critical lens. Writing unit tests is seen as a virtue while in reality how much value an individual unit test adds given the cost of writing, running and maintaining unit tests.
What baffles me the most is TDD. I have seen front end teams of startups doing very simple apps following TDD. I have delivered complex data pipeline project without writing a single unit test. I wrote functional tests and lot of monitoring tools for the pipeline. But not a single unit test. It worked perfectly fine in production. For technically simple projects I just don't see any value in following TDD. And the value of unit tests for simple projects should be very carefully thought through.
To be fair, while I do think the tech industry has some problems (which I've expounded on elsewhere), a lot of my misery was self-inflicted. I might have been able to put up with a lot if I were the kind of person who uses influence to cherry-pick the most enjoyable tasks, but I'm the kind of person who takes the most important unclaimed tasks - which are often unclaimed because they're unpleasant. I'm proud of that, but it's not conducive to happiness. Failure to find that balance is mostly my own fault.
So my advice to anyone reading the OP (or my own first paragraph) and thinking along the same lines is: spend some time figuring out what kind of role or specialty within tech would actually make you happy and work toward it ... or toward a comfortable exit if that's your conclusion. Chasing dollars (especially FAANG/VC dollars) might work out almost by accident, or you might end up damaging yourself. Just drifting along, doing what everyone else does or says you should do, will not cut it.
I went into tech sales as my exit. It feels like a highly paid vacation compared to SWE.
What exactly does that involve? How did you make that transition?
The interview was mostly about making sure I mixed well with other people. There was a coding challenge, but not leetcode style. I had to write a program that solved a real world sort of problem. A surprising number of people do fail this, even though naive O(n2) solutions can still pass.
The transition was a bit of a shock. They just threw me in the water. Like many of you, I have impostor syndrome. Being put forth as a expert on a system I knew little about was very awkward. It took about 6 months for me to be comfortable with what I am doing.
I do not spend all day on Zoom like others in the comment section. Instead, I deal with a smaller number of high value deals. That distinction in probably key to whether the job is better or worse than SWE.
It's interesting that the OP on reddit is describing normal company politics. It exists at every company I've ever worked at, and will exist anywhere there is money, power, and status at stake in the decision making process. My suggestion is to find a company where you can accept and work within that company's dysfunction, and stay put as long as you have a positive career path there. Every company is dysfunctional i…
I went into tech sales as my exit. It feels like a highly paid vacation compared to SWE.
If you don't mind saying, what is "highly paid" in this context? I have no concept of what sales people make compared to SWEs. How much (if any) pay cut would I be looking at if I took this route?
In the middle of the rant on burnout, he says: > I'm sick of everyone being on Adderall. Is that really a thing? ie What proportion of software folks are using it?
i’ve seen a lot of people i know, from preschool teachers to principal scientists, get an ADD or ADHD diagnosis in their later years. the acknowledgment of a disability is much easier now.
all of that said, the use of adderal, vyvanse, and concerta has skyrocketed in the last few years in high school and college and most people just carry the habit forward at this point. my experience with interns and software engineers who define themselves by their job has been a high use of methyl salts to enhance productivity. i’ve mostly worked in the bay area though, and before moving there did not see that pattern as much in non valley workplaces.
In the middle of the rant on burnout, he says: > I'm sick of everyone being on Adderall. Is that really a thing? ie What proportion of software folks are using it?