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What is the best part about being a Software Engineer?

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Re: What is the best part about being a Software Engineer?

#24

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #17
askyourmother wrote: post #16

For me, the best part is interviewing for new jobs. You have not lived till you are asked to reverse sort a binary tree, whilst skipping on one leg, having to show you are passionate about the job! The disappointment was that the actual job did not entail data structures, Algorithms or even skipping! Just CRUD web apps.

This is the worst thing about this sort of "IQ dick-waving contest" culture, to me. I'd be fine with doing ridiculous CS Theory stuff in interviews, if the job was about doing that. I love that stuff, when my mind is geared into the right mode, and a job that required a lot of it would give me the ability to leave my mind geared into that mode. Instead, my mind has downshifted into the CRUD-dev gear from years of dis…

[deleted]

Re: What is the best part about being a Software Engineer?

#25

Post by erikb »

I love being tech lead or team lead or project manager or whatever you want to call the mid level just above software dev. I feel I can have more impact in that area, meetings aren't bothering me too much yet (after a little over 3 years), and most of the problems can be circumvented by being smart, just as in software dev.

Think about the scope problem. You never have enough resources to achieve all the goals the customer/boss/group of people who only go from meeting to meeting wants. Yet by asking smart questions you can actually figure out what is most important to them (even if they don't know) and then decide based on what you want, what they want and what your team wants the best path to go on.

And then some of your devs try to be smart and also reprioritize based on what they think. But for some reason that's making it more fun not less. A reasonably smart dev is a much better stubborn goat than a compiler who doesn't want to understand your code, because he gets stubborn on much more reasonable ground and sometimes surprises you by being a lot smarter than you are.

Re: What is the best part about being a Software Engineer?

#27

Post by kevindeasis »

askyourmother wrote: post #16

For me, the best part is interviewing for new jobs. You have not lived till you are asked to reverse sort a binary tree, whilst skipping on one leg, having to show you are passionate about the job! The disappointment was that the actual job did not entail data structures, Algorithms or even skipping! Just CRUD web apps.

Reverse sort a binary tree? Is that like doing a reverse level order traversal then sorting it with like let's say a merge sort?

Re: What is the best part about being a Software Engineer?

#28

Post by crdoconnor »

askyourmother wrote: post #16

For me, the best part is interviewing for new jobs. You have not lived till you are asked to reverse sort a binary tree, whilst skipping on one leg, having to show you are passionate about the job! The disappointment was that the actual job did not entail data structures, Algorithms or even skipping! Just CRUD web apps.

CRUD web apps actually need decent knowledge of database theory but nobody asks about normalization in interviews.

The algorithms thing is pure cargo cult behavior (Google asks about them in interviews).

Re: What is the best part about being a Software Engineer?

#29

Post by Flashuk100 »

jon-wood wrote: post #18
thiago_fm wrote: post #13

Perhaps this is true if you 'can relocate to SF' + is american/won the h1b lottery, end up working in a company with 6 hours/day policies, 20% time and plenty of money to burn. All other mortals are in a way or another struggling. Pulling all nighters(because it's expected), having long periods of stress + burnout. The advantages I see are that the money is good and that people(me included) love programming. Having a…

I feel like people overstate just how massive the divide between SF unicorns and everywhere else is. While I admit I'm not on the 100k+ salaries of the big five, I'm definitely not struggling and pulling all nighters - I work 8 hours a day, 90% of the time from home, with the odd evening of working on something if I'm particularly into it. For that I get paid a decent salary for my area, get to do a job I find intere…

As a comp sci student up north, are the salaries in London worth the hassle of living in London? Don't get me wrong I like visiting London, but I wouldn't want to live there unless the incentive is too good to pass up.
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