3 ms·

That's the type of job I enjoy doing! After 17 years in this career, I dislike calling myself a "software engineer" because it's a meaningless term that now is

by sph 3y ago

That's the type of job I enjoy doing! After 17 years in this career, I dislike calling myself a "software engineer" because it's a meaningless term that now is used to describe anyone that knows how to build a web page. "Full-stack engineer" has also been stolen from us by recruiter to refer to frontend devs. WTF. As a teenager I started doing software interfacing with hardware, reversing on Windows then I wrote my own mini OS, got a job and did web dev, sysadmin, backend, infrastructure, and CTO, alongside dozens of consulting contracts. I get hired to fix a problem, and soon enough I'm diving into the technicalities of the network stack, or tracking down a bottleneck with spit and strace, or scaling an infrastructure horizontally and making it fault tolerant. At this point most of the value I provide is not in the volume of code I deliver, but designing, operating and maintaining systems as a whole. A systems engineer, if you like, but as the article mentions, that's a real qualification that's got nothing to do with this. The issues is that in the job market I have to compete with everyone called a software engineer, slap a senior to it, which these days refers to anyone that has 5 years of experience, and feel it's very hard to convey to a recruiter the depth of my experience. A programmer operates on code, a "systems engineer" looks at systems holistically, horizontally (i.e. architecture) and vertically (i.e. diving down the stack)

kabouseng 3y ago
Funny (I am not too serious about this point :D ), but I feel systems engineer is actually an engineer that has a multi-disciplinary skill set (mechanical, electronic, software etc) that guides a multi-disciplinary team to develop a complex product. Now it is repurposed for full-stack software engineers.
- sph 3y ago
  Is there anyone that can extend their knowledge to mechanical and electronic engineering, as well as software? I feel that my breadth in software knowledge is reaching the limits of my mental capacity and I have to shed useless weight now (i.e. I haven't kept up with frontend for 3 years now) My father was an electronic engineer, and I would love to get into it eventually as I grew up organising his components drawer, burning LEDs and licking solder wire (yeah.. I regret it now), but that's going to be something I'll have time for when I retire.
  - steve76 3y ago
    [dead]
  - SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
    Embedded software tends to need at least some EE knowledge, though how much will depend on the job. A tiny bit of ME knowledge also helps (consider thermal management, consider vibrations during shipping, consider vibration in use, etc). For robotics and mechatronics, ME knowledge becomes far more important.
  - acomjean 3y ago
    You have a limited time to learn things. I learn for projects, that keeps my scope limited. I think I can an extend a little into the non software realm, though my undergrad degree/ first jobs were in civil engineering. I migrated to computers and ended up going back to school for that. I work writing software for biologists now, though my understanding of the underlying biology in that is shallow (Compared to my biologist coworkers)
- hef19898 3y ago
  I work close enough to systems engineering to have some insight: The good systems engineers are strong generalists, have one core competency with deep knowledge and expertice, good enough knowledge in related fields to understand and work with experts, and are generally good at engineering. Complex job, but a fun one! And crucially important for any product more complex than a dish washer. But please, don't steal the name for some software "engineering" role...
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    I think parent is refering to the fact that in a formal context (think large Aerospace systems), a Systems Engineer is the role that oversizes all interfaces mech/electric/software and makes sure there are no requirements misalignment. In that sense the naming has been misappropriated in the SV tech circle to mean a "backend engineer that actually understands what is going on under the hood" sort of role.
fest 3y ago
> At this point most of the value I provide is not in the volume of code I deliver, My personal record is two characters of code per two weeks of work. Embedded device kept crashing when initializing GUI rendering library (a precompiled one, STemWin IIRC). Two weeks of disassembly, instruction-level tracing of the MCU core narrowed it down to the contents of external RAM not being correct (that is- what was being read did not match what was being written). Some more poking with oscilloscope, reading the datasheets and low level memory initialization revealed an incorrectly set RAM configuration register that was related to burst writes. RAM test during bringup used word-by-word writes, but when DMA was used only the first word in transaction was written correctly.
- Woodi 3y ago
  > work ... embedded ... disassembly ... correct ... reading ... transaction ... It's sad but I'm pretty sure "types" like you all will be labeled "enemy of the state" soon... Oscilloscope ? Registers ?? ;) That is, if things will keep going the way things are currently going - corporations, banning periodic tables from schools, elected stallers and clan mentality on all levels.
  - fest 3y ago
    Looking at the number of high school graduates passing physics exam each year in my country (around 250 out of ~12 thousand total high school graduates), I'm pretty sure corporations won't even have to break a sweat.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kps 3y ago
  > My personal record is two characters of code per two weeks of work. Mine is approximately minus one instruction per week, and it was the best money the company ever spent. Hard real-time is hard. (It was a strange processor with, among other things, delay slots everywhere, so you could never make just one change without ripple effects.)
- 3y ago
rjzzleep 3y ago
> "Full-stack engineer" has also been stolen from us by recruiter to refer to frontend devs. WTF. Pretty much yeah. I can relate to everything you write there. I always thought most of this is related to when I learned reverse engineering in high school. That's basically when I started understanding memory and why it mattered. Unfortunately recruiters also don't understand the kind of profile, they just lump us in the group of "generalists" and say you need to specialize if you want to progress and yet in a lot of projects I often ended up understanding more about the details than the so called specialists. I once had a client that I saved dozens of millions a year due to a fix that they had accepted as "just part of the system" only for the manager to fire me with a severance, because by fixing it I undermined his decision to scrap the project.
- travisgriggs 3y ago
  Amen to this. When I explain to full stack web devs that I do bare metal C, Python + Linux on edge nodes, server side processing, and native mobile apps they either say “you should AWS, we really like AWS” or “wow, so you’re like the real kind of full stack”. Self deprecation and lauding aside, I’m curious what new titles others would propose? When I migrated into the field many moons ago, the two titles I saw mostly were “analysts” and “programmer”. The first had underpaid connotations, the second was rife with social awkwardness cues that Hollywood had run with for a while.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    I've used the term "Deep Generalist" before. Broad knowledge, deep capabilities. You know enough to know what you need to learn and execute on demand. Historically known as or referred to as a "Renaissance Man" [1] or polymath [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Man [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath
    - travisgriggs 3y ago
      Hmmm... Maybe I'll marinate in something like PolyWareIst for a while :D
escape-big-tech 3y ago
I find that the software industry is one of those industries where all role names are made up and change meaning all the time. As you said, just a few years ago (ok maybe a decade) a "Software Engineer" was a person who built Software, now it's a frontend developer that has a basic understanding of the backend. Despite the terminological thefts and oversimplifications, I'm still proud to be a part of this industry. We're like the James Bonds of the digital world; we go by different names, but the substance of our work and our contributions are what truly define us. So, let them call us whatever they want... They may not always understand what we do, but they sure as hell need us to do it!
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  > just a few years ago (ok maybe a decade) a "Software Engineer" was a person who built Software, now it's a frontend developer that has a basic understanding of the backend. I'll cut a bit of slack to the frontend as it's also gotten significantly more complex over the last decade or so. I've seen places where frontend means "our iPhone app". Microsoft Office now has a version that runs in the browser.
- jdwithit 3y ago
  This is absolutely true, there is zero consistency in titles, levels, or their meaning across companies. I've been doing more or less the same stuff (if you zoom out enough) for more than 15 years. In that time I've been a System Administrator, Systems Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Cloud Engineer, Software Engineer. I haven't gotten SRE on the bingo card yet but it's one of the main titles I search for these days. Doesn't really bother me, although it does make evaluating what you might actually DO in a particular role challenging. In this "SRE" position am I writing Kubernetes operators in Go, or am I a Jenkins pipeline janitor, or am I working the graveyard shift in a data center swapping dead hard drives? WHO KNOWS!

by sph 3y ago

kabouseng 3y ago

Funny (I am not too serious about this point :D ), but I feel systems engineer is actually an engineer that has a multi-disciplinary skill set (mechanical, electronic, software etc) that guides a multi-disciplinary team to develop a complex product. Now it is repurposed for full-stack software engineers.

sph 3y ago
Is there anyone that can extend their knowledge to mechanical and electronic engineering, as well as software? I feel that my breadth in software knowledge is reaching the limits of my mental capacity and I have to shed useless weight now (i.e. I haven't kept up with frontend for 3 years now) My father was an electronic engineer, and I would love to get into it eventually as I grew up organising his components drawer, burning LEDs and licking solder wire (yeah.. I regret it now), but that's going to be something I'll have time for when I retire.
- steve76 3y ago
  [dead]
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  Embedded software tends to need at least some EE knowledge, though how much will depend on the job. A tiny bit of ME knowledge also helps (consider thermal management, consider vibrations during shipping, consider vibration in use, etc). For robotics and mechatronics, ME knowledge becomes far more important.
- acomjean 3y ago
  You have a limited time to learn things. I learn for projects, that keeps my scope limited. I think I can an extend a little into the non software realm, though my undergrad degree/ first jobs were in civil engineering. I migrated to computers and ended up going back to school for that. I work writing software for biologists now, though my understanding of the underlying biology in that is shallow (Compared to my biologist coworkers)
hef19898 3y ago
I work close enough to systems engineering to have some insight: The good systems engineers are strong generalists, have one core competency with deep knowledge and expertice, good enough knowledge in related fields to understand and work with experts, and are generally good at engineering. Complex job, but a fun one! And crucially important for any product more complex than a dish washer. But please, don't steal the name for some software "engineering" role...
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  I think parent is refering to the fact that in a formal context (think large Aerospace systems), a Systems Engineer is the role that oversizes all interfaces mech/electric/software and makes sure there are no requirements misalignment. In that sense the naming has been misappropriated in the SV tech circle to mean a "backend engineer that actually understands what is going on under the hood" sort of role.

fest 3y ago

> At this point most of the value I provide is not in the volume of code I deliver, My personal record is two characters of code per two weeks of work. Embedded device kept crashing when initializing GUI rendering library (a precompiled one, STemWin IIRC). Two weeks of disassembly, instruction-level tracing of the MCU core narrowed it down to the contents of external RAM not being correct (that is- what was being read did not match what was being written). Some more poking with oscilloscope, reading the datasheets and low level memory initialization revealed an incorrectly set RAM configuration register that was related to burst writes. RAM test during bringup used word-by-word writes, but when DMA was used only the first word in transaction was written correctly.

Woodi 3y ago
> work ... embedded ... disassembly ... correct ... reading ... transaction ... It's sad but I'm pretty sure "types" like you all will be labeled "enemy of the state" soon... Oscilloscope ? Registers ?? ;) That is, if things will keep going the way things are currently going - corporations, banning periodic tables from schools, elected stallers and clan mentality on all levels.
- fest 3y ago
  Looking at the number of high school graduates passing physics exam each year in my country (around 250 out of ~12 thousand total high school graduates), I'm pretty sure corporations won't even have to break a sweat.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kps 3y ago
> My personal record is two characters of code per two weeks of work. Mine is approximately minus one instruction per week, and it was the best money the company ever spent. Hard real-time is hard. (It was a strange processor with, among other things, delay slots everywhere, so you could never make just one change without ripple effects.)
3y ago

rjzzleep 3y ago

> "Full-stack engineer" has also been stolen from us by recruiter to refer to frontend devs. WTF. Pretty much yeah. I can relate to everything you write there. I always thought most of this is related to when I learned reverse engineering in high school. That's basically when I started understanding memory and why it mattered. Unfortunately recruiters also don't understand the kind of profile, they just lump us in the group of "generalists" and say you need to specialize if you want to progress and yet in a lot of projects I often ended up understanding more about the details than the so called specialists. I once had a client that I saved dozens of millions a year due to a fix that they had accepted as "just part of the system" only for the manager to fire me with a severance, because by fixing it I undermined his decision to scrap the project.

travisgriggs 3y ago
Amen to this. When I explain to full stack web devs that I do bare metal C, Python + Linux on edge nodes, server side processing, and native mobile apps they either say “you should AWS, we really like AWS” or “wow, so you’re like the real kind of full stack”. Self deprecation and lauding aside, I’m curious what new titles others would propose? When I migrated into the field many moons ago, the two titles I saw mostly were “analysts” and “programmer”. The first had underpaid connotations, the second was rife with social awkwardness cues that Hollywood had run with for a while.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  I've used the term "Deep Generalist" before. Broad knowledge, deep capabilities. You know enough to know what you need to learn and execute on demand. Historically known as or referred to as a "Renaissance Man" [1] or polymath [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Man [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath
  - travisgriggs 3y ago
    Hmmm... Maybe I'll marinate in something like PolyWareIst for a while :D

escape-big-tech 3y ago

I find that the software industry is one of those industries where all role names are made up and change meaning all the time. As you said, just a few years ago (ok maybe a decade) a "Software Engineer" was a person who built Software, now it's a frontend developer that has a basic understanding of the backend. Despite the terminological thefts and oversimplifications, I'm still proud to be a part of this industry. We're like the James Bonds of the digital world; we go by different names, but the substance of our work and our contributions are what truly define us. So, let them call us whatever they want... They may not always understand what we do, but they sure as hell need us to do it!

908B64B197 3y ago
> just a few years ago (ok maybe a decade) a "Software Engineer" was a person who built Software, now it's a frontend developer that has a basic understanding of the backend. I'll cut a bit of slack to the frontend as it's also gotten significantly more complex over the last decade or so. I've seen places where frontend means "our iPhone app". Microsoft Office now has a version that runs in the browser.
jdwithit 3y ago
This is absolutely true, there is zero consistency in titles, levels, or their meaning across companies. I've been doing more or less the same stuff (if you zoom out enough) for more than 15 years. In that time I've been a System Administrator, Systems Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Cloud Engineer, Software Engineer. I haven't gotten SRE on the bingo card yet but it's one of the main titles I search for these days. Doesn't really bother me, although it does make evaluating what you might actually DO in a particular role challenging. In this "SRE" position am I writing Kubernetes operators in Go, or am I a Jenkins pipeline janitor, or am I working the graveyard shift in a data center swapping dead hard drives? WHO KNOWS!