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Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

vadimkravcenko.com

21–30 of 285 posts

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#22

There is nothing wrong with this article in trying to paint a realistic picture of what is expected of a software engineering nowadays but man am I getting tired of this one sided culture of professional responsibility. I just don't vibe with this advice anymore, like all the same with me but I'm gonna call myself something else then, you can have it.

Whoever wrote this hit the enterprise koolaid a bit too much, you're meant to sip not swallow. Calling SWE "working in IT" is where it lost me.

Honestly curious why you consider SWE not “working in IT”

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#23
post #9

I had never seen that cartoon about the "dream job" before, but it's something I've thought about so many times as I've listened to people talk about their dream job or dream employer. It always struck me as strange to dream of labor / dream of being an employee - must be a cultural thing.

Programming is a "dream job" for me. I'm getting paid to do (approximately) the same stuff I would be (and am) doing on my own time, and I have entire departments whose job it is to handle the boring drudge work, like accounting, taxes, billing, client meetings, etc. etc. Sure, there are trade-offs. I have to use a language that I'm not entirely happy with, infrastructure choices I don't fully agree with, pre-existing code, and meetings that I find irrelevant, but, overall, I'm happy with the tradeoff.

And besides, it's not as if you're free of those things as a freelancer.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#24
Once I wrote a green-field application in Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS, did all the field editing and screen handling, help, communications, and even cooperative multi-tasking. It was amazing knowing how everything worked.

I'll never experience that again. 8(

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#26
"Estimations will be asked even when you don't want to give them"

I think usually it's not a matter of not "wanting" to give them. It's a matter of not wanting to take a wild guess - which is talked down if it seems too high - and then be asked to finish the work in that time frame.

Time or scope, at least one of these things needs to be flexible, and stay flexible until the work is done.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#27

    Rare work-life balance. In other professions, your work day ends at 18:00,
    and you forget about the job. Not here. You will most likely always be
    online and checking the code, even in the evening.
If that's the case, quit immediately. I've been in this industry for over a decade (oh god, has it been that long already?) and I have never had a job where I was "always online and checking the code, even in the evening". Not even when I worked at Amazon. Yes, I've been on-call. And yes, I've been paged, but never at anything like the frequency that would imply that I'm "always online".

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#28
>> Managers like numbers, estimates, and asking for estimates with an idea written on a napkin. It's just how the real world works — a business has some monetary goal, but before committing to it, it needs to understand how much it will cost.

I think everyone squirms when asked to make a prediction with too little information. If you want to see a developer squirm. ask for an estimate for how long it will take to build a given product or feature. If you want to see a PO squirm, ask for an estimate (in $) of the expected cumulative revenues for the same product or feature.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#29

There is nothing wrong with this article in trying to paint a realistic picture of what is expected of a software engineering nowadays but man am I getting tired of this one sided culture of professional responsibility. I just don't vibe with this advice anymore, like all the same with me but I'm gonna call myself something else then, you can have it.

Whoever wrote this hit the enterprise koolaid a bit too much, you're meant to sip not swallow. Calling SWE "working in IT" is where it lost me.

The dictionary definition of information technology (IT) almost exactly describes software engineering. So what is wrong with calling it "working in IT"?

For reference, Merriam-Webster defines IT as follows:

> the technology involving the development, maintenance, and use of computer systems, software, and networks for the processing and distribution of data

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#30

There is nothing wrong with this article in trying to paint a realistic picture of what is expected of a software engineering nowadays but man am I getting tired of this one sided culture of professional responsibility. I just don't vibe with this advice anymore, like all the same with me but I'm gonna call myself something else then, you can have it.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “one sided culture of professional responsibility”?

> Highly unlikely that you will make a meaningful difference in the world

This is an example of negative self talk, stop this, the reason you are broken is because you are trying to fix something, this just leads to more anxiety.

Most self-improvement content by developers for developers tends to be very negative like I can't explain it really well but to compare it to this sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85HT4Om6JT4

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