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I am getting out of software development after 10 years of coding
- Mikeb85 5y agoWhat 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).
- fxtentacle 5y agoHe was in the wrong kind of company and felt like a useless cog. In my opinion, that's a pretty thin foundation for a drastic job change.
- SirZimzim 5y agoIncome will bring him back
- throwawayswede 5y agoDon't use the crappy filth that is Medium: https://scribe.rip/@jamesrainbows/why-i-am-getting-out-of-software-development-after-10-years-of-coding-839d5196de1c https://scribe.rip/@jamesrainbows/why-i-am-getting-out-of-so...
- ricardobeat 5y agoWould love to read this if it wasn’t published behind a paywall. EDIT: https://archive.md/m8T5i https://archive.md/m8T5i “we are creating extra barriers to communication”…
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y agoI 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. It all comes down to a test.
- oblio 5y ago> It all comes down to a test. 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.
- throwawayswede 5y agoAnd timing. 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.
- phreeza 5y ago> > It all comes down to a test. > And feasibility of getting an US visa. Or Switzerland, which is relatively easy for most Europeans, and easier than US for virtually everyone, I think.
- oblio 5y agoSwiss 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 :-)
- mysterydip 5y agoI'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.
- leet_thow 5y agoNeo-marxist pablum
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- dcow 5y agoAuthor 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.
- MattGaiser 5y agoIt seems like he would be far happier at an early stage start up. Not granular. Not chopped up. Better not be detached from users.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoGood luck to the author. For me, I didn't have any choice in the matter, but that's water under the bridge. I'm actually glad it happened. > This time it will just not be on a payroll anymore, but on my own time, on my own terms, and for fun! I'm having a blast. The only really annoying thing, is that lots of folks seem to equate "having fun coding," with "writing bad software." Nothing could be farther from the truth (at least, in my case).
- hellisothers 5y ago“ 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?
- betaby 5y agoWhat 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.
- varjag 5y agoQ: What's the difference between a Web developer and a large pizza? A: A large pizza can feed a family of four. First heard that joke around 2001.
- dghlsakjg 5y agoI 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
- Pet_Ant 5y agoGranular? I'm tired of having to learn about AWS and Kube and Gradle and all the things that are outside the IDE.
- mjirv 5y agoI 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.
- Humdeee 5y agoAlthough 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.
- mg 5y agoThe 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.
- pixelgeek 5y ago> 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
- MattGaiser 5y agoIf you can consider quitting dev to be a kitchen helper, economics are clearly not a barrier.
- TameAntelope 5y agoAnd put food on the table how...
- johncessna 5y agoI 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.
- pixelgeek 5y ago> 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.
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- vesuvianvenus 5y agoI agree. Given the author's interest in language and technical projects, I think they should add Sales Engineer & Solutions Engineer to the list. Both are client facing sales / application setup roles... and Tech Evangelist roles as well. Unless the author just wants to get away from IT in general, which is understandable.
- spease 5y agoHey, 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.
- bigtech 5y agoI 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.
- handrous 5y ago> As a side note, I question the author's appeal to Marx as an authority. Natural reference to make if you're writing about alienation from the product of one's labor.
- pixelgeek 5y agoIt 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.
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- wly_cdgr 5y agoWorking 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
- pixelgeek 5y ago> Working as a software dev for a company is horrible in many ways I think working for any large company is a horrible thing regardless of your role.
- beepbooptheory 5y agoCan I have their job?
- wly_cdgr 5y agoI don't blame the guy, most software dev (most web dev, anyway) is just white collar plumbing. Fixing broken shit pipes gets old
- acwan93 5y agoMuch like plumbers where clients don't understand the issue and yell at you for "excessive billing" or asking for discounts.
- dcow 5y agoPeople 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!…”.
- dqpb 5y agoIt depends on the scale though right? Plumbing a city has different problems than plumbing a bathroom.
- Jensson 5y agoSoftware 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.
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- icedchai 5y agoI'm surprised I didn't see any direct mention of "agile", "scrum", and related bullshit (10 meetings a week, anyone?)
- fishtoaster 5y agoDisconnection 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.
- kangnkodos 5y agoOr any small company. Most of what he's describing happens at large companies.
- rmk 5y agoThe 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.
- deviance 5y agoI 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!
- ibmoreira 5y agoI 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.