[HN Gopher] Why I Became a Software Engineer
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Why I Became a Software Engineer
Author : creatorgr
Score : 27 points
Date : 2021-03-24 07:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nicotsou.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nicotsou.com)
| cornhole wrote:
| i was originally studying computer engineering, then i failed
| diff eqs and didn't feel like retaking it, so i switched to
| computer science
| dusted wrote:
| I become a software engineer because I'm lazy, like water, I flow
| along the easiest path in life.
|
| That I found it "easy" was probably because I live and breathe
| computers, so when something was hard, it was not hard, it was
| just interesting. I was always fascinated by computers, by what
| was behind, how stuff showed up on screen and how someone could
| do such magic, so I had to find out.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| When I went for my first job (high end RnD) I had the option of
| working in Pipeline Transport or the Mathematical Modelling
| Section.
|
| And I knew that crawling inside the test track to unstick things
| sound like hard work and computers seemed to be a field with more
| opportunities.
| xyzal wrote:
| I have been a happy electrical engineer. One day, I needed to
| solve a 'problem'. I learned some basic coding, solved the
| 'problem' with code, but the bug already bit me. My world was
| never the same since.
| adflux wrote:
| I have always found computers interesting. However maths was my
| worst subject so decided to study something more business-y...
| Hated it, saw the social network and was just enthralled by the
| idea of being able to make something that people like and use,
| without anything but time and a computer (and a 10 dollar Linux
| vm). Switched majors and never looked back since. At the end of
| the workday, I sometimes want to continue cracking on a problem.
| Love the feeling of finding neat and simple solutions to
| difficult problems.
| humbleMouse wrote:
| The Beauty of the algorithms? Barf. Most of this work is boring
| as hell and my wrist barely even works anymore.
| creatorgr wrote:
| No, seriously now, why did you become a software engineer? Was it
| the beauty of the algorithms? The intelligence of the design
| patterns? The happiness to see other people react to your
| creations? The agile manifest? The money they promised you? Was
| it your mom?
| metalforever wrote:
| Ee doesn't pay
| dmoy wrote:
| Haha that's exactly why I'm in software. Have EE degree as
| well as CS, and I was arguably much better at the EE stuff.
| But it was way easier to find a job in CS, and the jobs pay
| significantly better. So here I am.
|
| I still get recurring nightmares about op amps though.
| cashewchoo wrote:
| I became a software engineer because CS was the only class in
| school that has ever, ever genuinely interested me at a deep,
| fundamental curiosity level. It's definitely something about the
| fact that the work is about the closest you can get to getting
| paid to be a logician. My second favorite class in school was of
| course the Symbolic Logic class I took in college, which was
| extremely amusing to me since I was the only CS major in the
| class, yet by the end of it I think all the other students had a
| better grasp of programming than like 50% of CS majors.
|
| (This was a philosophy credit that was completely elective -
| people only really had 1-2 slots for these "Elective: Any" kinds
| of classes since most of your electives were like "Elective:
| Chemistry" or something like that. So people in these kinds of
| classes purely self-selected. Most people just took one of the
| well-known blow-off classes, which honestly I don't fault them
| for, this wasn't an easy school).
| apazzolini wrote:
| When I was at UT Austin for a CS degree, PHL 313k (symbolic
| logic) was a requirement. It was a very difficult class, but
| very rewarding.
| marktangotango wrote:
| I became a software engineer because I enjoyed programming as a
| hobby and I was good at it. That was twenty years ago. Now I'm
| still doing it because of the pay and not much else.
| yetihehe wrote:
| The same, but I'm still enjoing it. I'm working in day job in
| erlang, c, python and sometimes in what's required at the
| moment. Probably the most important thing is to find a job,
| where what you are doing is challenging.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Rather than challenging, I look for work that helps people. I
| don't mean necessarily charity work that feeds the homeless
| or something, though that obviously fits. But even if I'm
| just working on an Outlook plugin that helps you schedule
| your meetings, that's useful work for people, it hopefully
| reduces your hassle. That's the kind of thing I find
| rewarding, making your day suck slightly less.
|
| This isn't me saying your way is wrong and my way is right,
| just offering a different approach to job search.
| lhorie wrote:
| Personally, I took to heart at an early age the idea of not
| looking for something you love, but instead finding
| something you can tolerate. Work - almost by definition -
| "sucks" in some very subjective way, otherwise it wouldn't
| be called work. But at the same time, one person's pain is
| another's gain.
|
| Thinking about work in terms of objective drudgery that one
| doesn't mind doing (or even better, that one _enjoys_
| doing) is one way to avoid the mental dichotomy of
| drudgery-vs-reward since then the work itself is either its
| own reward, or it just doesn 't tip the scales negatively,
| philosophically speaking. In a way, it's a form of taking
| pleasure in small things, like feeling accomplished after
| cleaning the kitchen even though cleaning a kitchen is
| almost universally considered drudgery.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I'm very aligned with this. That's why I didn't focus too
| much on whether I enjoy the task, because every "job"
| will be drudgery after a point.
|
| A woodworker has a new cabinet or something at the end of
| the day. It's a real thing that is useful in the world
| and even if you stopped enjoying woodworking you at least
| see real tangible results from your work. This is much
| harder to get from IT/software dev. That's why I try to
| focus on whether my work makes someone else's drudgery
| less awful. It gives me the feeling that I did a real
| thing that accomplished something (however small) in the
| world.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Oh boy... finally some /r/programmingcirclejerk/ material
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is interesting to what extent people really have principled,
| intentional plans leading them into this field.
|
| My own path was convoluted as hell. I was an Army officer
| commanding tanks and wanted to become an ORSA and began studying
| Applied Math to that end. When I moved onto grad school, Computer
| Science ended up being easier to do because my Colonel told me
| about Georgia Tech beginning to offer a fully online program
| identical to their in-residence program. The Army will send you
| to school, but you owe them two days more in active duty
| obligation for every day they send you. If you do it remotely, no
| obligation. So I did it remotely.
|
| With a background in Applied Math, I specialized in Machine
| Learning in grad school, and after that, initially ended up in a
| hedge fund doing algorithm research. Catastrophic spine injuries
| sent me into a period of surgeries, pain, downtime, wanting to
| kill myself, and all in all definitely not working. When I
| finally came around, my first two offers were with L3 for a pure
| data analysis role developing some Air Force program doing human
| movement pattern detection, and with Raytheon in a software
| engineering role working on ground processing algorithms for
| satellite imaging.
|
| Well, I still couldn't drive thanks to the spine problems, and
| Raytheon's campus was right next to a train station, so I chose
| that.
|
| So here I am, years later, a software engineer (no longer with
| Raytheon). I doubt this exact story is prevalent, but a bunch of
| people I worked with had originally been physicists and
| electrical engineers. We all got sucked in because software is
| eating the world and the roles are much more prevalent than other
| roles. I could have stuck with machine learning but that limits
| you to a tiny number of huge players that are making any
| meaningful headway and impact in that space. Sticking with
| software more generally allows you to work anywhere doing nearly
| anything.
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