5 ms·

how? SAP/ERP consulting?

lsaferite 6y ago
I cannot tell if this is a joke or not. If it is not, there are entire industries out that that depend on software development that are NOT web related.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Embedded programming i.e. automotive, industrial, aerospace. The problem is they pay poorly in comparison to web dev but are a lot more stable long term.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  I have done almost 0 web development at 3 of the FAANGs and am quite satisfied with the pay. I don’t think web would have paid better. I’ve done OS type work (system daemons, libraries etc), embedded, mobile, etc. Then there are people who work on compilers, image recognition, AI, browsers, server work of all kinds, etc etc. the variety, depth, and scale of work is much larger than web and can pay better as it can require a deeper level of expertise. I’m sure there exist web developers who make more than people who work in these spaces just as the converse is true. I don’t think it’s possible to say which pays more. Web dev may be an easier avenue to break into things with a low amount of experience though.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    That's cool but the thing is FAANGs are absent in most countries outside of the 2 US coasts and a few major tech hubs in Europe. Everywhere else, most of the SW industry is just CRUD/build-an-API-for-this-shitty-JSON type of work. Compiler/AI work and the rest exists where I live as well but it's strictly in academia, not in private companies and has a high barrier of entry as it's mostly PhDs or post-docs and is also paid poorly. Web dev work you can find in pretty much any major city in the world. For example, in a city nearby to me there's a major VR/AR headset company which I'm pretty sure solves really interesting problems. The issue is, what happens when you want to change jobs but want to stay in the same city as that city has no VR/AR hub so there's no other demand for specialists in this specific niche.
    - burntoutfire 6y ago
      Don't know why this was downvoted. As someone living in Europe, this comment is exactly why I stay in my cushy, very well paying and super boring and frustrating backend job. In the backend world, there are dozens of employees who would be happy for me to come work for them, while market for interesting work with similar is very shallow here (a very limited selection of FAANGs, what else?). I don't want to move to the US (mostly because the US visas seem designed mainly for people in much worse situations that I currently am) and the European market is just too shallow to build any more advanced coding career - unless you're ok with low salaries, little savings and coding until you're 60+ years old. I don't love coding that much.
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        Where do you live in Europe if I may ask that pays well enough for backend dev as not to work until you're 60? Genuinely curious as I'm open to a move.
        burntoutfire 6y ago
        I'm from Poland. Of course, everything depends on the conditions of the retirement that you're comfortable with. For me, it's 5000 PLN ($1300) a month till I'm 85 years old + paid-off house. The 5k PLN should be very comfortable assuming no children, which I don't want. Assuming ultra-safe investing to only protect the principal (i.e. no return above inflation) and wanting to retire at 40, you'd need around 2,500,000 PLN ($650,000) to achieve that + buy the house to retire in. Let's call in 3,000,000 PLN ($780k) in total. If you look around a bit, as an in-demand (meaning - chasing the latest tech fads, maybe some tech lead experience as well) senior backend developer, you can get take home 250,000 PLN per year on a long-term (meaning usually multiple years) contract basis. Assuming 60,000 PLN of that goes to living expenses, it takes less than 16 years to save up the required 3m PLN to retire. And, if you're really hot in terms of CV, you can take home much more than 250k per year. Also, there are options to contract in Western Europe or get six figure remote US job (this one's harder than the other options) for more pay.
- non-entity 6y ago
  And how many of those are going to let you in without at least a decade of experience in the specific domain, and real world experience with whatever guidelines or practices they use (i.e. MISRA for X).
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Maybe all of them? I worked in Automotive right out of university and they trained you for everything you need to know including C programming tricks and MISRA and they hired pretty much anyone with generic programming knowledge as long as you were willing to learn.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  It's a nice area However some places are 10, sometimes 20 years behind into best practices, be that in coding, tools, PM practices, innovation, etc. There's a reason a lot of mobile phone companies closed down (as an example). As much as I like the area I don't miss staring at a hodge-podge of C/C++ code done in weird style that might or might not have been auto generated and will as many memory bugs as possible.
archi42 6y ago
I'd imagine embedded being relatively far away from that kind of work (that's until you've got to add WiFi and/or IoT-cloud web interface - and happen to be one of the only few software people in the company).
sercankd 6y ago
You also do web stuff when necessary with SAP though
- collyw 6y ago
  That sounds like the worst of both worlds.
  - varlength 6y ago
    It absolutely is. Just look at SAP UI5 (their JS framework)
TheCraiggers 6y ago
Ugh. I hate web programming, but I'd rather churn out yet another javascript library than write a single line of ABAP.
bachmeier 6y ago
Pre-1985 could have been scientific/high performance computing, Cobol-type business application programming, or something defense-related.
fsloth 6y ago
Not OP but I've focused on C++ , computational geometry and graphics programming for over a decade. That field is still quite thriving. You just need to work actively to find the right employers - and they are not as common as 'more regular type' of programming gigs. Not sure if I would make more doing webdev, but am not in US so it would be normal middle-class income anyway.
detaro 6y ago
Games, embedded, desktop apps, "infrastructure" software (OSes, networking, orchestration, developer tooling), mobile apps (depending on how picky you are about using APIs being "web"), ...
amyjess 6y ago
I can't speak for GP, but I do behind-the-scenes networking stuff for an enterprise ISP. My team's responsibilities include configuration management, fault management, and certain KPI monitoring. We don't need to write webapps for that (though we do integrate with them) :)
jnwatson 6y ago
Embedded, then systems, then offensive, then systems.

I cannot tell if this is a joke or not. If it is not, there are entire industries out that that depend on software development that are NOT web related.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

Embedded programming i.e. automotive, industrial, aerospace. The problem is they pay poorly in comparison to web dev but are a lot more stable long term.

vlovich123 6y ago
I have done almost 0 web development at 3 of the FAANGs and am quite satisfied with the pay. I don’t think web would have paid better. I’ve done OS type work (system daemons, libraries etc), embedded, mobile, etc. Then there are people who work on compilers, image recognition, AI, browsers, server work of all kinds, etc etc. the variety, depth, and scale of work is much larger than web and can pay better as it can require a deeper level of expertise. I’m sure there exist web developers who make more than people who work in these spaces just as the converse is true. I don’t think it’s possible to say which pays more. Web dev may be an easier avenue to break into things with a low amount of experience though.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  That's cool but the thing is FAANGs are absent in most countries outside of the 2 US coasts and a few major tech hubs in Europe. Everywhere else, most of the SW industry is just CRUD/build-an-API-for-this-shitty-JSON type of work. Compiler/AI work and the rest exists where I live as well but it's strictly in academia, not in private companies and has a high barrier of entry as it's mostly PhDs or post-docs and is also paid poorly. Web dev work you can find in pretty much any major city in the world. For example, in a city nearby to me there's a major VR/AR headset company which I'm pretty sure solves really interesting problems. The issue is, what happens when you want to change jobs but want to stay in the same city as that city has no VR/AR hub so there's no other demand for specialists in this specific niche.
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    Don't know why this was downvoted. As someone living in Europe, this comment is exactly why I stay in my cushy, very well paying and super boring and frustrating backend job. In the backend world, there are dozens of employees who would be happy for me to come work for them, while market for interesting work with similar is very shallow here (a very limited selection of FAANGs, what else?). I don't want to move to the US (mostly because the US visas seem designed mainly for people in much worse situations that I currently am) and the European market is just too shallow to build any more advanced coding career - unless you're ok with low salaries, little savings and coding until you're 60+ years old. I don't love coding that much.
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      Where do you live in Europe if I may ask that pays well enough for backend dev as not to work until you're 60? Genuinely curious as I'm open to a move.
      - burntoutfire 6y ago
        I'm from Poland. Of course, everything depends on the conditions of the retirement that you're comfortable with. For me, it's 5000 PLN ($1300) a month till I'm 85 years old + paid-off house. The 5k PLN should be very comfortable assuming no children, which I don't want. Assuming ultra-safe investing to only protect the principal (i.e. no return above inflation) and wanting to retire at 40, you'd need around 2,500,000 PLN ($650,000) to achieve that + buy the house to retire in. Let's call in 3,000,000 PLN ($780k) in total. If you look around a bit, as an in-demand (meaning - chasing the latest tech fads, maybe some tech lead experience as well) senior backend developer, you can get take home 250,000 PLN per year on a long-term (meaning usually multiple years) contract basis. Assuming 60,000 PLN of that goes to living expenses, it takes less than 16 years to save up the required 3m PLN to retire. And, if you're really hot in terms of CV, you can take home much more than 250k per year. Also, there are options to contract in Western Europe or get six figure remote US job (this one's harder than the other options) for more pay.
non-entity 6y ago
And how many of those are going to let you in without at least a decade of experience in the specific domain, and real world experience with whatever guidelines or practices they use (i.e. MISRA for X).
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Maybe all of them? I worked in Automotive right out of university and they trained you for everything you need to know including C programming tricks and MISRA and they hired pretty much anyone with generic programming knowledge as long as you were willing to learn.
raverbashing 6y ago
It's a nice area However some places are 10, sometimes 20 years behind into best practices, be that in coding, tools, PM practices, innovation, etc. There's a reason a lot of mobile phone companies closed down (as an example). As much as I like the area I don't miss staring at a hodge-podge of C/C++ code done in weird style that might or might not have been auto generated and will as many memory bugs as possible.

archi42 6y ago

I'd imagine embedded being relatively far away from that kind of work (that's until you've got to add WiFi and/or IoT-cloud web interface - and happen to be one of the only few software people in the company).

sercankd 6y ago

You also do web stuff when necessary with SAP though

collyw 6y ago
That sounds like the worst of both worlds.
- varlength 6y ago
  It absolutely is. Just look at SAP UI5 (their JS framework)

TheCraiggers 6y ago

Ugh. I hate web programming, but I'd rather churn out yet another javascript library than write a single line of ABAP.

bachmeier 6y ago

Pre-1985 could have been scientific/high performance computing, Cobol-type business application programming, or something defense-related.

fsloth 6y ago

Not OP but I've focused on C++ , computational geometry and graphics programming for over a decade. That field is still quite thriving. You just need to work actively to find the right employers - and they are not as common as 'more regular type' of programming gigs. Not sure if I would make more doing webdev, but am not in US so it would be normal middle-class income anyway.

detaro 6y ago

Games, embedded, desktop apps, "infrastructure" software (OSes, networking, orchestration, developer tooling), mobile apps (depending on how picky you are about using APIs being "web"), ...

amyjess 6y ago

I can't speak for GP, but I do behind-the-scenes networking stuff for an enterprise ISP. My team's responsibilities include configuration management, fault management, and certain KPI monitoring. We don't need to write webapps for that (though we do integrate with them) :)

jnwatson 6y ago

Embedded, then systems, then offensive, then systems.