A disillusioned software engineer
I have a rather unusual question. I am a software engineer and have a grad degree in CS. During school, i enjoyed the courses immensely. I liked diving deep into the mathematical foundations that make all the tech possible today. I liked the mathematical essence behind all the areas of CS right from OS to ML to Graphics and more. In industry however, i see that i do extremely menial work that doesnt tap into any of the rather deep scientific work i am capable of. Most of the days, i am tweaking environment variables etc to achieve the desired results. Its rather depressing because thats not what i trained for. Even senior engineers (principals etc) do largely these type of work primarliy, on any given day. Is that all a tech career as an engineer at a large company comprise of? Is there ever gonna be any use of the real CS that we learnt? Disclaimer: i am down down beers. :p But the questuon is real. The amount of brain work that’s needed in industry has turned out to be very low, and thus the disillusion and the question. Yoe: 5 TC: ~ 190k
You could get some more theoretical data science roles. But so far in my experience I’ve felt like most of the work is mundane so far. Did a lot more at startups.. for a third of the pay
There are 7 math problems with 1million reward on each, one solved so far, other 6 are just waiting for you.
You have to prove yourself worthy to given a critical work. When billions of dollars gonna ride on your shoulders all theories will vanish from your brain and u will piss ur pants ... Then experience will come for your rescue. .. untill u gain that kind of experience obey the chain of command be useful to your employer ... If u can't do that open your own start up and do all the science and stuff with your own money ... Workday has hired you to do what a CRM needs. ..
Well, I kinda agree but again that depends on what person you are. If traditional conformance is the flavor of your life, your comment makes sense. If not, what you wrote sounds very stupid.
Are u chained to the desks ???
Also as a follow-up to that has anyone implemented any graph traversal algorithms in production code, if yes what was the usecase?
If else arraylist ... There wasn't the need but to get the kick I have used a map ...
Lol
I know Amazon would hire you tomorrow for 1M TC if they know that Prime Air software system is so easy and menial for you. DM me so that I can get the referral bonus. I’m nervous though worrying if we’d be able beat your competing offers from GoogleX, Uber ATG, and Apple 😟😟
Keeping aside the sarcasm, you know what, I had an offer from Amazon Prime. I didn’t opt for that due to many reasons, scientific challenge not being one.
If your day job is paying the bills but is not giving you intellectual fulfillment, you always have the option of working on side-projects to bridge that gap. Regarding your views about engineers in general, I do detect some mild level of contempt for the work that they do. The engineers that built the platform and service from zero to one at your company solved a lot of hard problems to pave the foundation for the system that you work with today. They may not have had the liberty to work on theories looking for a problem but they nonetheless built something that created business impact and formed the foundation to generate revenue streams and jobs for many people. Many of these engineers were in the frontlines and were the first to venture into the unknown to clear the forest so that all your have to do today is to tweak some environment variables to get the desired results. As such, it would be a mistake to trivialize the road these people have paved for you as an engineer.
Hey, I am extending no disrespect to the founding and initial engineers who architected the system from grounds up. My question had no contempt but rather a dismay at the situation that I find myself at, doing rather maintenance work over innovative work, that I feel I am capable of. It’s a personal situation and not indicative of all engineers and what they do. I guess if I start up I will get to do all that I desire. But yeah, my question more or less pointed to the mismatch between the capabilities that we develop as CS grads and the ultimate work that we end up doing. :)
You sound very bright and passionate about your field of study. I highly encourage you to either start your own project or network with folks from teams that are working in your areas of interest. Good luck!
Do you mean day jobs at Workday work like above?
Google, IBM, Microsoft are working on quantum computing. Plenty of hard problems to solve. Try also database engines, they are pretty hard and CS heavy.
Hey thanks, that’s a real and helpful response.
I think you might have too much beer. Others have mentioned Google, Microsoft, IBM etc. There’s plenty of interesting work even at Uber. Doesn’t mapping jump out to you? Go to those companies if your current one doesn’t have interesting challenges to solve. Environmental variables should be set and left there btw. I don’t think it’s common that you have to manually tweak it to get what you want. That’s a devops issue you have, and not that the industry doesn’t utilize enough brain power. Good luck finding better companies or projects!
Yes. You sir need to do a PhD and be a scientist.
Touché