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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?

#31

Post by scotty79 »

Flashuk100 wrote: post #29
jon-wood wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are barely worth the hassle of relocating from Poland to London. High rent eats up almost all of the gain.

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

#33

Post by scotty79 »

andywood wrote: post #6

Those are some rose-colored glasses. I could easily make a list of the best things about being in the hospital, too. I'd estimate that my 18 years in software development have been about 25% good, 25% tolerable, and 50% team/boss-induced inhumane mental torture. The one thing I can't argue with is the money. Everything else has been highly volatile.

In my over 10 years as commercial programmer I never had bad boss or torturous team members (apart from one angry inept guy who asked way too many basic questions when he was expected to pull his own weight and didn't last long).

That might be atypical because I spent more than half of my time freelancing which gives you great freedom in steering clear of harmful people and confidence to leave any employment when it stops being benign.

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

#34

Post by blowski »

When I was at school we had to interview our headmaster, and somebody asked him if he thought his job was difficult. His answer has always stayed with me:

  "Compared to lying on a beach drinking cocktails, it's difficult. But compared to a coal miner, it's ridiculously easy."
Would I rather be a software developer - even one who is building boring CRUD apps - or a coal miner?

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

#36

Post by seanp2k2 »

kevindeasis wrote: post #27
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?

You just switch to big endian and it'll blow instead of suck

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

#37

Post by dagw »

andywood wrote: post #6

Those are some rose-colored glasses. I could easily make a list of the best things about being in the hospital, too. I'd estimate that my 18 years in software development have been about 25% good, 25% tolerable, and 50% team/boss-induced inhumane mental torture. The one thing I can't argue with is the money. Everything else has been highly volatile.

Every time I read things like that I wonder if I've just been lucky or if there is something 'special' about the US. I've spent 10+ years working at companies of all shapes and sizes in Norway and Sweden, and with the exception of one 12 month stretch (working for an American ironically enough) all my bosses have been fine-to-great, and I've never had a real clash with any co-workers. And even that terrible American boss I had wasn't "inhumane mental torture".

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

#38

Post by eva1984 »

Best part? You have to ask me is that, software is built on a beautiful and powerful abstraction, namely turing machine, if you understand the basics, a lot of knowledge are actually transferable, from seemingly very different positions. After all every operation you do is captured by the underlying mechanism, so nothing intimidating if you are willing to dig it up.

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

#40

Post by mooreds »

I think that software engineering, like accounting and lawyering, is useful in a wide variety of domains.

The most interesting/best part of software engineering for me is that you can work across problem spaces fairly easily. (Of course specialization helps in remuneration.)

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