Should I become a software engineer and chase higher TC? Or should I continue down the cloud engineer path? All the certifications and what not get tiring. See poll. TC: 120 #engineering #software #swe #cloud
Are cloud engineers not SWE? I thought that was effectively backend dev
There’s some overlap but no, not really. They’ll do infrastructure as code, but that’s not software engineering. They don’t build CRUD apps and don’t focus on what a solid backend engineer does.
Do DevOps/SRE transitioning to SDE will not only be next to impossible they’re better jobs imo. Also your cloud exp will be useful and not thrown away Also pay is the same if not more
Just saw this. Are you saying SDE is better or DevOps/SRE? Im guessing my Cloud experience will come in handy. Currently not sure how it can be leveraged when looking for SWE. My Cloud experience is all Security focused. I rarely see such high TC for non SWE people and I definitely do not want to be a cybersecurity engineer anymore/again. They can make good money, but I’m sort of over it.
DevOps is the best job in tech imo the pay scale is the same as SWE (it is a branch of software engineering) But if your dream is actually developing products then swe is probably the move. It’s just an uphill battle. Gl!
Do you write infrastructure as code? If so, learn to write automated tests for your infrastructure as code. Then learn to write e2e tests for the system with a scripty language like Python or Typescript. Congrats, you’ve learnt to code in a way that makes you better at your job. Then learn about the applications running on your infra. Do they use an API Gateway? What do the services behind that gateway do? Read the code, starting from the bit you understand… now find a bug ticket. You probably know where to find the logs/metrics that will tell you what went wrong and where. Go fix it. Now ban any manual changes, you don’t click buttons, everything is code. You’ve done it. Welcome SWE caterpillar.
I get what you’re saying and it makes sense. I just don’t think I would ever want to be SWE at Caterpillar. Every SWE I talk to at Cat feels like it’s end of the line career and coast. Work is generally boring. Pay is low compared to average the area. The Silicon Valley bros who left are still living their peak days talking about how smart they are and telling others they wouldn’t make it in the valley, yet we’re at the same company lol. The recommendations you made some pretty solid. I’ll do some more research. Thank you.
Wtf does a cloud engineer do? Are you sure you can be a dev and pull it off and not hate it too?
A Cloud Engineer basically works with a Cloud/Solutions Architect and builds out cloud infrastructure. VPCs, Security groups, WAF and so on. They also tend to maintain the infrastructure and make it so that it’s cost efficient, redundant and highly available. Sometimes they will incorporate automation but that starts to dabble in the DevOps space. There’s is a lot, and I mean a lot, of overlap between DevOps, site reliability, cloud engineers. Sometimes the differences are so minute it just doesn’t make sense. For your question… idk. I’ve never been a software dev and I can’t really offer an opinion if I can do it long term and not hate it. I just don’t know what it’s like.
I just heard a bunch of gibberish. So again, what do you do?