I really think people who leave software engineering altogether mostly failed to find a company that respects engineers/pays well. If you are good at the algorithms interviews, you can make ~400k with 5 to 8 years of experience. Do that for a decade, and with some saving and basic investing, you are basically done working.
On the other hand, fail to pass the algorithms interview, you are essentially stuck at 140-170k, not growing, not seeing a path forward. Every job feels the same, pays the same, and really doesnt need you, you are a cog.
And willingness to relocate, possibly across the world.
And feasibility of getting an US visa.
Or facing much, much stiffer odds if you want to be paid that well as a remote worker, since the number of remote spots with that kind of pay is incredibly small compared to the amount of people fighting over them.
Sometimes good opportunities are at times when you're not ready for them. We all get some sort of a "shot" but it's very difficult to see sometimes, or to make the risky move of accepting it.
Swiss total compensation at companies which pay 400-500k in the US is much lower than that. Unless you are super fortunate to join at the start of a boom cycle when shares are about to double in value or something.
You basically need to be in the US, and in the US in the Silicon Valley, Seattle or NYC, I think, to somewhat reasonably hit 400-500k with just an algorithms interview :-)
Indeed... I'm beginning to believe that I exist in an alternate universe (colloquially known as "Europe") where insane software engineering salaries aren't normalised.
Wages in US have higher ceiling. Averages aren't that much different.
This contributes to brain drain - if you are pretty good developer, you aren't really incentived to move to US. If you are one of the best, in US you can earn many times more.
I've worked with (and still work with) many Americans, let me give you an idea.
I get paid 174,000 USD per year
I take 6 weeks off (vacation) per year to sail in the Mediterranean and to SKI in the French and Swiss alps. This is fully paid and it would be highly abnormal if I did not take this time off.
My wife was paid her full salary for 6 months to have a baby. The government would have mandated a minimum payment term if that did not happen.
I never have to worry about healthcare, it's just there and it's available all the time regardless of employment
I never worry about being fired without strong cause, I am protected by strong laws
None of my children have ever participated in an 'active shooter drill'
I went to a top tier University and only paid 3000 GBP per year. The government gave me thousands of pounds without expecting repayment. The government gave me thousands of pounds and said they will write it off if I can't pay it back before 25 years and they won't ask for a single penny if I earn below a certain amount. When they did start taking repayments, it was a small amount extra on top of my income tax. The interest rate is also very low to the point of it not really mattering.
If you live in the UK and have been in your job for less than two years, you don't have the protection from being fired you think you do. Our laws protect you from being fired for discriminatory reasons but not much else
Methinks you watch too much news about the US. Those problems you're alluding to don't affect the vast majority of Americans making $174k+/year, and that's kind of one of the problems we're having right now.
Take my salary down to 50k and everything remains true on that list except my holidays will be at cheap family resorts on the Mediterranean rather than in 5* hotels.
That cannot be said for the average American:
that may struggle with massive medical bills,
lack of strong worker protection,
kids doing active shooter drills, (three people from my clients have had their kids do this in the past few weeks)
maybe 1 week of vacation per year,
Crazy student loans where some people end up paying back thousands but still owing more than when they started - you could argue this is their own fault but the ability to dig yourself into that sort of hole doesn't even exist here.
no law to mandate maternity pay etc etc...
Can you elaborate on some of the news I've watched? I don't understand that reference and I don't often read news out of the US unless its global headline grabbing.
Yep, totally fair about making less money being a problem in the US, and it's a big problem right now in the US where the upper class has a totally different experience than the middle/lower class, but taking your salary down isn't what we were talking about. The point is that, at this income level, the quality of life in the US shoots up substantially, to the point where it matches what you describe, but also isn't on an island in the Atlantic with terrible weather and a lot less geographic diversity. :)
And no, I don't believe for one second that you don't understand "that reference" w/r/t watching too much US news! How else would you know what's going on in the US and misapply it to the upper class?
No, you know exactly what you were referencing, you just didn't know how stratified the social structure is here in the US, so you thought you could apply issues you know affect the middle class to the upper class, when that wasn't actually the case.
It's fine! This is a learning moment, all good. The US has a complex society, partially because we're so big (both geographically and population -- it's a lot easier to run a country when everyone is nearby and there are a lot fewer of you), and now is a good time for you to learn that our problems aren't shared across social levels.
I still don't get the reference. Why don't you just be clear and unambiguous?
I know that access to healthcare isn't a necessarily a given in the US. I know that kids prepare for shooters to enter their schools. I know my friends husband doesn't have the correct level of healthcare(don't know the terminology) for his bowel cancer so now the family is broke, I know what I know because I have worked with Americans for years.
The average American in the midwest can still live a pretty decent life on the 50k. An American making 50k in a major city such as San Francisco or New York City is forced to endure long commutes, but can still make it work, somewhat similar to people who commute to London.
Most of my comments stem from personal experience; the assumption is that you are comparing someone who makes a similar amount of money here.
> I take 6 weeks off (vacation) per year to sail in the Mediterranean and to SKI in the French and Swiss alps. This is fully paid and it would be highly abnormal if I did not take this time off.
Americans differ from you in this aspect, but it's a cultural difference. It is very common for people to take 2-week vacations, and somewhat common for people to take two such vacations per year.
> My wife was paid her full salary for 6 months to have a baby. The government would have mandated a minimum payment term if that did not happen.
Again, America has a cultural aversion to paying such generous benefits. I've seen people take 3 months off after having children. I have also seen new mothers come back to work part-time while transitioning to working full-time over the course of an additional couple months. Overall, it's comparable.
> I never have to worry about healthcare, it's just there and it's available all the time regardless of employment
If you are employed and making 174k in the USA, you are in the same boat: you do not have to worry about healthcare costs as you are covered.
> None of my children have ever participated in an 'active shooter drill'
Elected representatives who are meeting constituents do not get stabbed to death here. Stabbings in general are somewhat uncommon compared to shootings. America is more violent, but it doesn't generally affect people in the wage bracket that we're talking about here. A lot of violence is perpetrated by poor people on other poor people, usually in connection with narcotics.
> I went to a top tier University and only paid 3000 GBP per year. The government gave me thousands of pounds without expecting repayment. The government gave me thousands of pounds and said they will write it off if I can't pay it back before 25 years and they won't ask for a single penny if I earn below a certain amount. When they did start taking repayments, it was a small amount extra on top of my income tax. The interest rate is also very low to the point of it not really mattering.
America has fallen behind the other rich countries in this regard. But America also offers a much larger menu of choices in what kind of school you attend, and what type of experience you have. All that choice comes at a cost, and the high wages for computer science grads makes the increased college costs moot: you can earn it all back without superhuman effort, and student loan burdens rarely cripple the lives of people who get lucrative employment.
The amount of choice available to the American consumer beats anything the UK can offer, hands-down. This is true irrespective of how much you make: this type of variety and plentifulness for everyone is unprecedented outside of the US.
> Elected representatives who are meeting constituents do not get stabbed to death here.
Except Gabby Giffords who got shot in the head. The would be assassin then shot 19 other people at a constituency meeting...... our MP getting killed didn't affect the average person, your MP getting shot lead to 19 other people being shot.
"Giffords was shot in the head during the 2011 Tucson shooting, which occurred at a constituency meeting held in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Arizona."
"A man ran up to the crowd and began firing a 9mm pistol with a 33-round magazine,[36][37] hitting 19 people,[38] and killing six"
You're making a lot of excuses for your country by taking a very narrow view of everything I said. I was always told Americans sing the national anthem in the morning at school to brainwash the kids, this clearly worked on you.
> You're making a lot of excuses for your country by taking a very narrow view of everything I said. I was always told Americans sing the national anthem in the morning at school to brainwash the kids, this clearly worked on you.
Way to go ad-hominem here. You have shown that you are not here for any sort of reasonable discussion. Citing shooter drills, national anthems at school and silly comments about me being brainwashed are further proof of your inability to have a reasonable discussion.
Don't feel bad. In the alternate, alternate universe (colloquially known as "the USA outside of Silicon Valley, Seattle & NYC") they aren't normalized either.
Eh, this is not always and everywhere true. I have friends at Google here in London and some of the salary figures I've heard are shockingly low. As in, sub-or-around-100k low. Though admittedly these are people who I'd guess are below, say, L5.
That 'low' salary may put them in the top few percent of the whole country for their age bracket which means they can live quite nice lives. Everything is relative.
I see a lot of flak for this comment but I will say first hand it is true that you can study to pass FAANG interviews and double your salary (in the US). I spent 7 months studying during covid and finally made the leap. Obviously not everyone has the time to commit to studying (I almost burned out doing just 10 hours a week on top of my 9-5) but it is in the realm of possibility.
And the big tech cos have been constantly hiring and are mostly accepting full remote. Even during covid I readily had interviews lined up with FB/Google/Amazon.
I think you have it backwards. If you can nail the CS interview, you can be one of Google's 80,000 cogs making 400K/year. Or if you can settle for 150K, you can work for a 20 person startup where you actually have input and are valued as more than just another ad enabler.
That's not entirely true. I work for big corporations, and the reality is that they're paying big money not for the ability to code, but for the ability to manage projects (even when there is a separate PM). If you're good at making several people work towards a goal and make management happy with your projects, you'll make the money you mention. If you're just interested in coding, they will show you the door sooner rather than later.
That kind of thinking is what drives experienced people out of software. So 400k salaries (not equity) was available in the bay area before everything went full time remote, which is great if you are forever childless and 20 years old sharing an apartment with 6 other people. Then reality sets in. I have seen people do it though, contractors living in Afghanistan for a decade earing more than $300k with no living expenses.
> It all comes down to a test.
Well, that's more informed than a lottery ticket, but it still sounds like a gamble compared to nearly every other professional industry.
> Every job feels the same, pays the same, and really doesnt need you, you are a cog.
I find this provides me with a certain freedom. If I’m tired, I can just not do something. I am freed from pressure and high expectations as the worst possible outcome is I get fired and end up in the exact same type of place.
RCG with 5 years as an intern. Now that I'm out of college, most of my projects have been minor features that take more time fighting an ancient windows GUI library than actually improving my programming skills. Any suggestions for finding work that will actually improve applications of the various algorithms(outside of grinding leetcode)
I'd argue that you can make 140-170k and _be happy at a good workplace_. All I'm saying, the money plays a role only up to a certain point.
I'm very hapoy with my job and it would be a nightmare for me to work at a FAANG
Is this based on experience? This post reads a bit like a student studying algorithms for the coding interview thinking that is the pathway to success.
I've worked in the valley for ~9 years, have ~20 YOE if you include self-taught web dev and game dev work with a commercial game engine in online teams during high school, and this has absolutely been my experience.
The first thing I tell anybody starting out who asks me for advice is to study algorithms. Not because I think it will be inherently useful to programming, but because I think it will do more to help them interview for high-paying jobs than actual coding skills.
There are a lot of ways that this comes off sounding like bullshit advice a la "make $300k a week with this one simple trick after taking my course" style advertisements. There are a million things that could go wrong over a ten year period with your perfect plan. I think there's a heavy survivorship bias among those who've managed to execute this kind of exit from work life.
I think he's setting up some false choices here. Also, when I look at the interests list, 'Tech evangelism' was the first thing I thought of, not kitchen helper.
I'll also argue that after 10 years as a software engineer, if you're still just putting buttons on a page or waiting for next feature to show up on your queue, you're doing it wrong. Software engineering contains a large range of disciplines. You don't need to pick tech stacks, write code all day, or specialize in radar wheels.
> I'll also argue that after 10 years as a software engineer, if you're still just putting buttons on a page or waiting for next feature to show up on your queue, you're doing it wrong.
Sometimes the job market doesn't provide people with fulfilling jobs and roles. They might not have any choice in doing it 'right' and just have 'wrong' as an option.
Hey, some of us enjoy putting buttons on a page (UI/UX) ;).
However, I have to agree somewhat with the assertion that software is getting more specialized. When I started out, the advice I repeatedly got was not to worry about what programming language you knew, because every job you would work with would expect you to learn whatever their tech stack was.
“ For instance, I could be fulfilling any of these roles: …kitchen helper…”
Has developing software really gotten worse in the last 10 years, have expectations gotten higher, or what? I’ve been around 20 years and (anecdotally) for me it’s better than it ever has been. I’m a mobile developer and not a web dev though, how much does language matter in job satisfaction?
In the olden days, being a web developer might have meant pushing your PHP files to your server using rsync or SFTP and you were done.
Now a days, being a web developer means you run a Jenkins job to webpack your 1,000 JS libraries and deploy your React Docker container to multiple clouds.
Edit: Not to mention the legal team has to sign off on your cookie compliance strategy
I totally see the article's point about being alienated from your labor.
My IDE would do the publish step for me but I see your point about the 'olden days'.
I would really hate to be getting into the web dev job market right now because the amount of things that it is assumed you should be able to do is incredible.
What country/city? In Montreal I would say expectation got way higher. Positions with 85K CAD ask for 4 coding rounds and then just ghost you. On other hand one can land a 'municipal park manager' job with 125K CAD pay (of course if have access to such jobs). Also now it seems never ending scrums/ micromanagement are everywhere, exacerbated by covid-19 work from home.
I live over on the West Coast, and I truly don't understand how Canada's tech ecosystem works.
I just started with a US company at $130k CAD + stock (they are saving a bundle vs if I was in the states, and I'm making $10k cad more than any Canadian company was offering, plus stock), two rounds of easy interviews, etc. People that want to make a ton of money get poached into the states all the time, because Canadian companies just aren't willing to play the game...
My last Vancouver position was $80k cad for mid level dev, no raise after 18 months, shitty equipment, etc... My first junior dev job ever was $75k USD in a low COL city in the states plus stock, bonuses, etc.
Being an American that has worked in tech on both sides of the border, there is definitely a culture difference. I haven't figured out exactly what it is, but it feels like Canadian tech culture is a little too conservative, cautious. I can't quite figure it out, there is capital, talent, access to markets
> how much does language matter in job satisfaction?
I think it depends. I hate JavaScript and Python. My coworkers don't care about language. They are working on the product, the goal is a fully functional service with a huge DAU. I can't complete product-specific tasks. I had been writing low-level software for networks, Linux kernel patches, eBPF helpers/tracers and now I'm working on hardware virtualization. In my free time, I'm prototyping devices on my FPGAs. It's really interesting. I can't imagine that I will drop my current job and will start cooking or guiding.
Author should seek work as a founding engineer where the task is anything but granular and they’re in full control over the stack and don’t have to glue a bunch of fads together.
People always look at me weird when I call software dev digital plumbing. Then they come back the next day and say, “actually I was thinking about it and you’re totally right!…”.
Software engineer can be similar to plumbing, an maybe for most jobs it is. But it can be so many other things as well. Writing a game isn't much like that at all for example.
Depends on what part of the game you’re working on, I imagine. Building a game (or any software product) is probably more like building a house. You need architects and designers and painters and carpenters and masons and electricians and plumbers. If you do frontend stuff you’re more like a mason or carpenter. Backend more like electrician and plumbing. Systems design -> architect. Interaction/UX design -> designer.
I'm not sure I follow the reasoning. A software team can be large or small (or solo!). The team can decide how granular to make each role based on the goals at hand and target platform.
Disconnection from the end product, specialization, bureaucracy... it sounds like this guy really just needs to work at a startup.
I mean, there are a ton of good reasons not to work at an early-stage company (not the least of which is pay), but:
- You want to be connected to the end product? At a 5-10 person company, you'll be seeing customers (and customer complains) pretty frequently.
- You want to own more of the stack? The "ops team" will be your left arm. Everyone will wear a ton of hats and you can be as full-stack as you want, up to and including non-coding roles like Product or Project Manager if you want to.
- You want to avoid bureaucracy? Hard to have much of that when there's only 1 or 2 other engineers.
I agree with other commenters here - it sounds like the real fix is to just work for a company that fits his preferences better. And given the recent surge in remote work, that's never been easier.
The headline caught my eye because I love software development. And I thought "Yay, let's see what better thing they found". Then I stumbled at the given reasons:
splitting up frontend and backend development,
loading a dependency for every problem at hand,
microservices and the explosion of frontend frameworks
It is not as if you have to do that.
I write a lot of software and I do the full stack, have zero dependencies, don't use microservices or frameworks.
I enjoy doing it and getting happy emails from users every day.
My suggestion if you love coding: Create your own world which is exactly as you like it.
> My suggestion if you love coding: Create your own world which is exactly as you like it.
I love this concept but I think we all need to keep in mind that not everyone has the same options. I have been quite lucky in my life that I have had the option to do things my own way but I know a lot of people that don't
I agree with the author. I've also quit my job as a software dev. early this year, after about 10 years in the industry in various companies (so I can say it's not just a local issue) Having some savings, I'm looking to reorient into something else, also technical, but more hands on - literally. Also, as an added note I think that a large part of software written today makes the world a worse place to live in (I'm thinking social platforms and cloud computing - one taking away the realness and empathy in interacting with each others and the other taking away the ownership of anything). Also, don't get me started on ads system and the crap list of apps/games/software in general that gets pushed down people's throats due to big advetising budgets. If the people working in the industry as software devs doing the above would instead use their creativity and skills in other fields of work (ie. actual science and engineering) we would have a better world. I truly loathe the software development industry in all aspects, as it unfolds today. Not the software dev. activity itself, mind you. But the current goals, players (corporations) , environments, values and trends of the industry as a whole!
Working as a software dev for a company is horrible in many ways (the ways being different depending on the size of the company and the industry), but good luck to the guy finding something significantly less terrible and soul-crushing and alienating that pays even 1/2 of what coding does
Of course, if you've been smart and wise, you can afford not to care after 10 years of software development
I would recommend that SWEs who feel this way but still like coding try their hand at data science/data analytics/analytics engineering.
We're still early enough in the data world that it's easy to find that sense of ownership over the whole "data product." You probably won't get paid as well, although it's possible, but the pay won't be bad either.
Although somewhat bored of the whole SWE day-in/day-out of problem-solving, I have taken an internal lead role on a data science team for the past while. Controversial to your advice, it has been one of the most mundane, monotonous, and boring work experiences of my life. If feeling worn out or seeking a new creative spark with software, the data science space has been the absolute opposite.
I get the author's point of view. For people looking for a sense of purpose in their jobs, it should suck to feel like a useless cog.
It's funny because, in my current job (senior designer at a European unicorn) I check all the boxes the author is looking for in his new career:
- My routine covers talking to customers, designing the UI, doing alignment sessions with the C-Level, and many other things. I am as generalist as I could be;
- I also see the direct impact of my work on the product.
For me, being less a specialist and having a direct impact on the product sucks. It's a lot of responsibility and quite often very stressful.
As someone who does it only for the paycheck at the end of the month, I would be happy to earn the same amount of money I make today as a useless cog of a larger company.
It sounds like coding isn't the issue and its more a problem with the bureaucracy of large organizations and projects.
Those are indeed thorny issues that many people deal with and if he can find a way to still code outside of that environment then it seems like a good plan for them. I know I couldn't work in an environment like that.
There is one issue that they mention
> It comes down to a simple observation. Everything is chopped up into tiny parts making us into experts of radar wheels instead of a whole car.
I see this in a lot of environments like Vue, React etc. They all seem to me to be built by and for large organizations/groups and not a solution for single developers or small groups.
There are a lot of tools and libraries that I would love to try but they seem to be 'out of scope' for me.
What a non-article. Author is burned out by modern corporate software development so is taking some time off to code for fun. I'm going to go out on a limb and say he becomes a freelancer or does a small startup. Also, the fact he's able to get out and do nothing for a while is testament to just how well software developers are paid (also makes his reference to Marx somewhat ironic).
The alienation aspect of work in software is quite real, especially in companies that put many layers between developers and the end-users. Although Marx was prescient in this regard, the remedies he proposed are far from ideal...
The author's idea of completely abandoning software development seems a bit extreme. Software Development encompasses a huge variety of niches and disciplines, and ten years doing the same kind of work can get wearying. The remedy is to change it up and experience different paradigms. This of course will threaten the upward slope of compensation that one begins to expect (and frankly, needs, because of rising costs of one's commitments, such as raising children). The challenge is to make one's peace with the prospect of staying flat or going down in wages, really.
I see agile as the problem here. Before agile, I would essentially 'own' pieces of the code, so I was committed to making it maintainable. Now, it's all just pieces and parts, and I'm not responsible for nearly as much, which make me fungible, and in general is dispiriting.
As a side note, I question the author's appeal to Marx as an authority.
On the other hand, fail to pass the algorithms interview, you are essentially stuck at 140-170k, not growing, not seeing a path forward. Every job feels the same, pays the same, and really doesnt need you, you are a cog.
It all comes down to a test.