Software Engineering

Being a Software Engineer isn't all glitz and glamour. I really wanted to write this post as I see this like trend where people only really talk about the positive aspects of the tech industry and being a software engineer I myself definitely am guilty of that. I only really talk about the positive aspects of being a software engineer which can kind of make the industry and the job itself seem a bit unrealistic. Aspiring software engineers should have a deeper understanding of what the reality is like for software developers opposed to just these expectations of a six-figure salary and free coffee and snacks at work. For one, as someone who desired all of those things I realized that those are major perks but there are some not-so-healthy things that come along with landing that dream job or really high-paying salary. So what are some of those negative things that come along with being in the tech industry as a software engineer working for a competitive company? The first thing that I can think of is burnout so what causes burnout. Developers are always working harder to become more efficient as you climb the ladder. Your expectations obviously grow larger. You have more meetings but also have the same amount of programming which can get overwhelming quickly. Your backlog seems like it's a never-ending growing list of bugs and refinement and ui ux work and technical debt that your developer team never gets to because most teams are typically under a man like there's usually like a need for more developers which is another issue in tech. Also, success gets pretty addicting especially with all these talking about how people are making hundreds of thousands. College people are making these huge payouts in their 20s. It makes you want to make that amount of money as fast as you can. So you jump from company to company and you're working on your skill sets at work obviously and then outside of work you're programming and coding all the time not building healthy sleep habits.

So that's one example of how programming or just the tech industry, in general, can cause stress and overload which leads to burnout. That's an example of burnout while you're working in a job as a software engineer. Let's see the burnout that people experience before they even start their first day at work while preparing for technical interviews. Software Engineers often seldom had time for really anything else which really created this poor quality of life.

Then there are Junior developers who often think that knocking out as many pull requests as possible seems like to be considered a successful developer but you need to not only open and close a bunch of prs in a sprint but also need to code outside of work and be up to speed with all the latest technology and see that's probably one of the more frustrating things when it comes to the tech industry especially if you're someone like myself who has other interests outside of coding.

What other industry do people expect you to do the same kind of work that you do at work and then at home for like fun like the only industry I could think of is athletics right you have practice in your games but then you're also expected to work out and do other things to get better and technically programming is like that because it is a skill set and it does seem like a lot of your value is based on how well of a developer you are despite the fact that the company told you that they didn't hire you because you weren't a culture fit and that's the irony.

Yes, programming is a very competitive field especially landing a really good job but there are a lot of in-demand jobs and there are way more jobs than there are programmers but there's that feeling that you get where you feel like you're in jeopardy of potentially losing your job or looked down upon. If you feel like you're not the best developer on your team. I think there's a lot of imposter syndrome that goes on within the tech community, especially amongst developers, and a lot of comparing which is really unhealthy because the reality is if you have programming skill sets and you're working for a company as a developer you are very valuable.

I know that some people eat sleep code and they're fine with that

but some of us enjoy technology and we like programming we need to rethink how many hours we should be programming especially for like our mental health because programmers are interacting with computers all the time all day and we need that human interaction so I definitely think we need to reevaluate that 40 hours a week whole thing for everybody but definitely for developers.

Anyways that's my rant on why you maybe should not become a developer or really the harsh realities of being a software engineer and my motivation behind this post isn't to discourage you but i recently saw how difficult it's for peers throughout their coding journey and I can only imagine how excited they were, in the beginning, I'm about to become the software engineer and make all this money which is definitely a reality. But going through their Software Engineering journey people realize that hey this really isn't for me and I think I just was thinking about all the opportunities and the money and not thinking about the stress of critical thinking all the time. Not that concludes the whole post.

#softwareengineer #programming #coding #developer #work