Software engineering job is highly overrated. Prove me wrong if you can.

Tell me you are offended by truth bombs & have no points to counter argue without actually telling me that.

This post is like a person shouting nonsense, wanting people to stop and entertain his delusions.

When being told your premise is false and biased getting countered with "no you are".

Wrong. Better luck next time. But that’s not how you counter my post, do you?

There's a reason why nobody bothered to counter you on this thread buddy

Of course. And imagine the same doctor using google search in the middle of a surgery to restore some lost brain cells. Yes, even doctors can justify the use of google as a tool. Why limit it to a software engineer alone? 🤔

Doctors study from books and for experience they work in hospitals/clinics, The nature of the job is different, and someone's life depends on it.

Whereas SWEs can ask google/chatgpt or their seniors in case of doubt.

That’s not how you prove this post wrong.

I like your approach to put forth points to counter me unlike some others that resort to name calling.

Well, one fact that I would like to add to my point is the reason lay-offs are so prevalent in software engineering jobs is companies know they can survive without the number of software engineers.

Quantity matters only when the industry is doing well, but when the industry is not doing well, it’s the quality of people that matters.

Software demands can be met with right quality and not the quantity as adopted by large scale companies.

@Coolgoose That's not true at all. More people are needed to build things then to maintain it, companies become less experimental during recession and build less stuff rather they focus more on survivability(maintenance of their pre existing tech). Plus the number of layoff in big techs are really insignificant (5-10%).

So your view is still wrong since youre implying that 1 person can do job of 10, but from the data itself it shows 95 people are needed to do job of 100..

I’m not living in denial. I do acknowledge the fact there are good and genuinely smart software engineers. I’m myself one of them, if I can boast shamelessly 😄. And there are many more around.

My concern is more toward companies(esp. large scaled) indulging in building a herd of software engineers making every single software engineer think they deserve no less than an elite stature.

Your frustration is more on the side of how software as a commodity is sold. For a big organisation selling a software to huge number of clients will naturally require good amount of engineers in support and maintenance role. That’s just the customer requirement at this point. Big organisation solve this problem by hiring herd of engineers as you mentioned. All the points that you have mentioned has less to do with core software engineering but more to do with how these big organisation are dealing with big software engineering teams.

There are also companies like Instagram, Zerodha, who work at similar scale but with extremely small engineering teams.
Again this has to do with how software is sold by these companies.

All this has nothing to do with software engineering job being overrated/underrated but more to with how business is conducted by these org and how do you meet client’s expectations.

It’s people like you and me that built this app which is why there is a conversation happening between you and me.

Also you do not know me, so don’t come to conclusion that I’ve not built any software to be made available to the world. Peace ✌️.

Yeah bro, I have read about you. You are the secret developer/hacker who is shown in movies who can build apps in a matter of minutes right?

Everybody has a goal of earning loads of money, including me. But if that’s the “only” goal you have then read my post again and answer it to yourself.

Truly though what else should be the goal? I only care about making money so that I can use it for myself or for my loved ones in any way that makes all of us happy

Excellent points these. Perhaps this is one of the comments that elucidates every aspect of software engineering job. Add to your list: CI / CD, security testing, Automation tools, & so on. I know it doesn’t seem as simple as I have opined here. But trust me, given necessary support and motivation, you can up-skill the dumbest of people to make them productive. It does take some time, though.

Kids as young as 14-15 year old build frontend apps for fun & they share some great insights too on #techtwitter. Imagine the benefits of mounding them to do all these work. You just need a mentor that can make them productive.

@Coolgoose , thanks for the points for the list! I won't disagree when you say with enough support and motivation you can upskill dumbest of people. But do you really want that in your job to upskill dumbest people? Wouldn't that make your life more difficult if you do hand holding though?

And yes, kids do build great front-end apps. But those kids are an exception to this. Normally, people do engineering/boot camp and get into this field. But, shouldn't there be a difference between boot camp developer and CS Engineer? There is! There's a reason people learn subjects like OS, DB, Computer Architecture, DSA, Networking. It makes them better engineers.

Because as we all know, every problem breaks down to fundamentals!
Just an example - If you want to know why a instance went down, you need to be able to monitor it, see what has spiked, let's say memory, figure out what in memory has spiked(say page faults), then you need to know when you find major page faults, then find what are page faults, then figure out why it happened. All these things comes from knowledge, experience. These things not always can be answered on Google, chatgpt or stackoverflow!
Knowing what to do when crisis comes is an important aspect of working individual as I am sure you would agree

Honest confession 👍. Keep them coming. It takes humility to write facts about your own work that are not so pleasant. 🤌