This industry is horrible. You would be much better served with any of the other white collar professional degrees. I don’t understand the people who switch into SWE and think “oh, this is so great!” Are they somehow landing a fabled gig where the WLB is good? I’m currently at a FAANG, and I work 40-50 hours a week. But those are really working hours. With every other role I see, there is a huge amount of down time. With SWE, it’s “Go, go, go! Get the next project done! Make sure you have enough impact! Make sure you’re juggling all the bullcrap customer demands and on call with your impactful projects or you’ll be fired.” With other roles, they get a soft ball performance review and have nebulous expectations they can easily game. I’ve seen it with all of my friends in adjacent roles: PM, TPM, HR, operations, etc. it’s like the engineers are the mule the company whips while everyone else rides in the back cart. To boot, the other roles don’t get paid that much lower. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the interviews. Why are we expected to do the coding Olympics for every company that wants to interview you? No other profession is like this. Everyone else is getting asked “Tell me about a time when” questions that are easy as pie if you spend an hour preparing. With leetcode-style questions, you need to spend hundreds of hours preparing. That is the norm. I think SWEs live in some bubble where they aren’t aware of how easy the other roles are. As an example, my brother is a compete dullard who majored in accounting. He was recently offered 130k to basically check client financials twice a month and give a bullshit presentation. I would trade my FAANG salary for that role in a heartbeat. /end rant
It pays well. It’s definitely not for everyone. You also forgot ageism.
Boo hoo ? You are highly paid, complaining about a 40 hour week is ridiculous. No ones stopping you from quitting and pivoting into HR.
It's def horrible if you are just in it for the money
It pays really well and no other industry do I know of where a mid 20s person can work remote and earn >200k. It would take you several years into your career as anything else to get there. Once you get to that midpoint as an SWE you’re in the 400k range. Obviously this isn’t all jobs and is a small percentage but the opportunity is there
FAANG is just Amazon, which treats SWEs like warehouse workers. A lot of tech companies treat people much better.
My first job was scrapping rebar with an angle grinder in 100 degree heat This shit aint so bad
It sucks to be a SWE. I was thinking to pivot to PM but I think product management is dying as a category
You work for the worst company in the industry OP. Maybe try working for literally anyone else.
I'm in it because I like problem solving and thought programming was interesting. I couldn't imagine doing this if I didn't have that interest already.
It’s a scam of a career. Our TCs are not high. Most people I meet in this industry live like dogs
One answer: H1B. Remove h1b and you will be same as any other profession in the US.
My god . It’s the same in other countries without h1b. Do you blame h1b for earthquakes too?