i’ve learned @ 18; anyone who makes a day in my life as a software engineer doesn’t like their job. they instead want their youtube career to take off so they quit their job.
@@VishalBolarum-q3v Sounds like a form of survivorship bias, you're only hearing from the people that are "motivated" (read: upset) enough to start a youtube channel. And the successful ones also curate their content to be either mindless fun or to piss off their viewers for engagement (mostly the latter for software). There's no impetus to provide quality information if it gets in the way of views. So yeah, probably not a good idea to form broad opinions based only on social media.
@@symptl running a successful RUclips channel & a being a top software engineer don’t come hand in hand. They’re both extremely difficult to do well and you can’t balance both. If you have time every week to plan a video, buy a camera, spend hours editing, (and do this for 2+ years before it’s profitable), it’s clear you want to leave software engineering.
@@VishalBolarum-q3v that's exactly what I'm saying? You're only going to hear from the people that don't want to stay in or are trying to sell you courses, not the people that want to do SWE and build a career while being happy to do so
I quite like programming in general (building stuffs) but programming JOBS with their soul sucking scrum methodologies with daily meetings and constant pressure is hell ! I litterally feel I'm never finished with my work, the evening I always apprehend the next morning... Add to this I work in Belgium where SWE don't make much more than a bus driver and you can understand my despair...
I also live in europe and the salary as software dev just sucks here in europe, atleast if you compare it to US where all people talk about there 6 figure salaries 😐😐😐
Every job is the same… eventually they all suck. Just chose the one that sucks the least to you and you can scrape some money from… jobs aren’t supposed to give you purpose and fulfillment. They are there to give you the resources you need to keep going. Yeah swe sucks for most but it doesn’t for a little of us.
@@dmobsherman2108 working for small companies that make boutique software is very fun though. The drawback to working in a small team is just that you have a LOT of responsibility
The losing social skills part is too real - there was a point where I was so deep into the work that I genuinely started shaking and sweating when trying to speak
I see so many people, even in college, be saying nothing. Like they're super quiet. Like I am sort of out of it, yet I speak. I try to keep the speaking 100: I make YT videos, I greet everyone and actually converse. I do work a lot, but I try to say a few words to keep the speaking up 100.
The problem with SE jobs really lies with corporate America, FAANG in particular. Technology jobs don’t have to be like that! Software development should be joyful teamwork, building things that make you feel proud that you can talk about nostalgically for decades afterwards.
That is a really naive and unrealistic expectation. It's a job, not an expedition with your best friends on a sailing ship around the world! Yes software development should provide you with some level of job satisfaction (why do it otherwise) but you will never be happy as a dev if you honestly expect "joyful teamwork" and to be able to "talk about nostalgically for decades" . Hopefully there are a few things you are proud of and look back on with nostalgia, but that will be amongst a sea of dull, difficult and not at all joyful aspects.
@@Ash_18037I’ve known people who’ve worked on early versions of Windows, OS/2, MS-DOS, Unix (actually, the original Bell Labs one), some major games, and a few others, all of whom are very satisfied about their work and speak about those days nostalgically. This kind of experience used to be the norm in technology.
It’s not like that at all. It’s Product throwing a fit because they want features shipped ASAP and then throwing a fit because there are bugs (lol)….plus no one at the company except the engineers giving two shits about tech debt/security/anything remotely technical. That’s why I left SE.
I bailed out of software engineering. Shit sucks man. No way am I going to spend years of my life LeetCoding/learning algorithms/learning frameworks/etc etc to then constantly get thrown under the bus by Product MBAs who don’t even know what a database is. Became clear to me that the Dev team is merely an expensive annoyance to the rest of the company who thinks they can run the show themselves, and can’t even let the teams run their own sprints for fear of “losing control”. Let em crash and burn, I say. Life is short.
@@nile7999 it’s not quite so simple. You’re making a lot of assumptions in terms of “an even more stressful job” and that a standard engineering salary even pays enough to retire at 35. Not to mention after 5 years out of the job market your resume is trash/unhirable That’s fun at 40 when you get sick of sitting at the beach while everyone you know is still working. Not that it makes any difference anyway since anything you learn as a SWE is basically useless after a few years anyway, putting you on a level playing field with 22 y/o new grads who will stay up until 2am shipping features.
Definitely one of the worst mistakes I made in my life. 1- the pay sucks unless you work at a big company in the US or Europe 2- People who truly love programming treat it as their entire personality, making it seem like you should feel and behave the same way.
i believe most of them trick themselves into believing that they absolutely love programming, and act like thats the one thing they wanted to do since they were a kid, dont jump my ass tho, just saying.
@@milkybrowny7331Im still a student but I think there's a lot of software engineers to be who did it despite not liking it. The amount of complaining about ANYTHING that I hear in class is insane
I love programming but I definitely hate software engineering Programming is just one way to create something, everybody should be creating something instead of consuming things all the time. That creation could be drawings/paintings, music, new food, software/games, books etc etc
It was not always this way. I was a web developer back in late 1990's, when they called us Webmaster with tech stack Perl, HTML, JavaScript and it was great by then. Frequently, I would take a lunch twice as long as allowed, or sometimes leave early without telling my manager. I was not the only one, a 17yo coder would sometimes not come to work, just because, so the manager would have a guy or 2 go pick him out and bring him to work. Yes, he did not have a driving license. Anyways, I sold most of my stocks before the 2000 Dot Com crash and been living off that ever since.
@@moteq6598invest and be smart with your money regardless of age. I’m 18 and have over 20k and I literally only work one shift a per week.. spend sparingly and practice frugality and anti consumerism.
African parents are the same 😅 my last layoff yeeted me into starting my own luxury travel agency. I’ve always loved traveling and I get to plan other people’s travels too
This video resonated with me. I am a first-gen latino that comes from a low-income background who pursued CS with the goal of uplifting myself and my fam. I got laid off from my first dev job about 9 months ago and haven't been able to find another since. The constant grind of updating resume, putting it through chatGPT, applying to jobs that have been posted less than 5 days ago, trying to pay attention to udemy courses on in-demand frameworks, leetcode, etc etc just to end up with 500+ rejections has me left burnt out. I have been questioning whether SWE is actually something that I genuinely like or just a ticket out of poverty. Currently working an interim office job to get some bills money coming in, wondering if there is anywhere I can pivot to or if I am just giving up. I don't know, its a strange time right now and this was ramble of my current state of mind but this video made me feel seen so I appreciate that a lot.
Ive felt so much pressure from the old saying "if you love your job you'll never work a day in your life", when in reality theres literally no job that comes with that, it is an unrealistic expectation. the only way to be happy with your job is to have a good work life balance, disconnect your job self with your real self, and having a life outside of work you enjoy. thanks for letting me realise this, brown man. sincerely, another brown man
I have only ever done things I found interesting. But I still saw it as work when I got a job in those things. It just seems to me that it is what I was working on that I liked not what I was working with. I like to build software for very specific reason, to learn a new technology, implement something that is lacking etc. I realized the best places to work would be R&D departments and by that I mean R&D for actual innovative companies.
@@JustWazza These are also the best SWE's. Some people will disagree, but like everything in life, passion isn't everything, but you can't deny how much it helps. A musician who plays because they enjoy it will have a much easier (NOT easy) path to mastery. I started at eight years old, and I will always love it. Here's the thing, my passion has pros and cons, just like everything else. Even though I love to build cool stuff (like I'm sure many of us "passion" folks are), that's not corporate. Unfortunately, corporate sucks that passion dry and exploits it (think about game dev, for example). The grass is greener mentality hits SWEs hard because you can make anywhere from 100k to 500k+ in salary with virtually the same background and skillset. (People and connections are more valuable than skills, and as someone with skills ranked in the top one percent, I will die on this hill.) I do NOT want social BS in the workplace, but do not mistake this for being "anti-social". I will never go out of my way to be a jerk. I'll always be nice and helpful, admit my mistakes, and mentor new juniors. There's a big difference between SWE and Sales. I didn't get into Software to be a bubbly people person. I'd liken this to introversion to extroversion. All of this is to say that the fundamental disconnect is what college teaches versus what the job requires.
"It's a fuckin' job!" Damn right it is. I used to be a developer and occasionally have this urge to get back in it, but I'm realizing that I might be wanting to go back for the wrong reasons. I appreciate your short-form content on IG, but I also enjoy vids like this!
@@the_varunrana the smartest people I know say that the USD and Social Security will collapse within the next 100 years so why bother beyond what’s necessary?
@@Mike-lu1pt that's not going to happen. It's more likely that social security will decrease, but it's not going to disappear. There's so much wrong with that thinking all I can say is get smarter friends cause what the heck.
I just left my job like 3 months ago... because even if I love software, I mean making, building, and doing something creative... corporate jobs sucks my life Also I hate the current recruitment processes are really stupid and doesn't make any sense
My issue with on call is that I stay up til 2am to fix your crappy code base then have to wake up at 6am to drive to the office thats enforced with a shitty attendance policy; JUST to sit in zoom calls and drink piss flavored coffee After sending half our team to the PIP grinder, there are 4 of us left in our team, with 5 managers 😭 At least the pay is good
Corporate SWE (like every other corporate job) is driven by short term profits, not code or product quality despite most companies paying heavy lip service to these ideals. You often end up dealing with, working around, or fixing accreted technical debt more than anything else, duct taping things together to make them work in the current system. And the debt just keeps accreting as new features are constantly piled on top for short term gains until you end up with a huge mess that nobody wants to dig too deeply into out of fear of breaking something. Open source and personal projects are where the fun of development really lives.
I've been realizing this too lately... it really is extremely valuable to build your own game engine from scratch if your a game programmer for example, and not just once, but several times throughout your life. Because that initial underlying codebase is so fundamental to getting things to work and be maintainable that if you get stuck trying to solve the same problems over again, you might be stuck there forever since the real issue is the underlying codebase is bad. The more you build from scratch the better you get at identifying bad structures and methods that need to be replaced outright instead of continuing to work with spaghetti code that takes 10X as long to get anywhere.
Endless studying, preparing for job interviews, and being glued to the screen all day every day is not worth it; it's a over-glamorized virtual manual labor job which will take a toll not only on your psyche but also on your physical health.
I hate most "software dev youtubers" because most of them make all the same sh** like "how I landed my first 120k job after I learned to code in 4 months (self taught)" .... how I learned to code in 2 months while working 60hours a week and having chldren and now I earn 150k 😅😅😅 so much bs is out there.
As an swe, I agree 100%. Totally sucks, whether it sucks less than most other jobs is the real question. It's the job I've liked the most out of all the jobs I've had, which have been hell.
same for me 😂 it still sucks but compared to other jobs which also suck even more its better and the perks like home office and flexible time makes it a bit easier to endure, but its not fun thats for sure.
Just happy it's not a job I gotta get up at 5 am in 17F weather out of a dirt hole, make sure my big dirt "sand table" is set up properly, and give a platoon brief tbh 😅
Those dark circles in the eyes is evident how much coding sucks. It actually sucks. Im a Software engineer and i totally agree and thanks to u brother for saying the truth.
I totally agree with the video blogger. Technology inspires me that is why I was a software engineer. I love reading logs, fixing bugs. In fact I have Linux on my laptop just for fun. However, the thing that make SE job suck is the people’s attitude towards it. People do not understand tech. They can tell you that you cannot hire a single civil engineer and expect him to make you a skyscraper in 1.5 months, you cannot force a taxi driver to reach at destination on time when the traffic is blocked, all because you are experiencing a physical phenomena and can understand that a civil engineer cannot build a skyscraper in 1.5 months because you can discern the sheer size of a skyscraper and realise this is not something one engineer can build in 1.5 months, or this taxi is stuck in traffic and you can well understand that it is not helicopter to take off and bypass all city traffic. But with SE, no one understands the same problems because people cannot realise how gigantic a Software system is. It is kind of a skyscraper built in virtual world. SE tasks, like civil engineering or taxi driving tasks take time and a Software Engineer can be stuck in a problem for days. People think that this man will sit and press some keys and everything will be done. Thats it. I usually ask business stakeholders that how on earth you estimated that this task can be done in 1 hour? I started hating SE job due to the people’s attitude towards it.
Some of my coworkers have been genuinely happy with their jobs in environments where I silently suffered as pure rage flowed through me from Monday morning until Friday afternoon. I'm in a much better place now, and this video was therapeutic as it brought back some shit I had blocked out--kind of a refresher for spotting the warning signs and a moment to be thankful for where I'm at now. I do have a couple things to add: Standups (while sitting of course), and fucking Jira tickets. I felt like I was having an allergic reaction that made me extremely uncomfortable in my own skin before, during, and after standups. As a developer I was forced into what can only be described as Jira Driven Development. Every I did has to make sense in the form of a Jira ticket update before proceeding. I would get stuck in an internal battle with myself about how vague or how detailed an update should be, which intensified the further into a task I had gotten. There were times I spent multiple hours rage typing my entire task related thought process in Jira (or TFS, or Zoho, or whatever-the-fuck-other project tracker bullshit) because I felt so micromanaged that I would imagine clear-as-day my boss questioning each and every decision I made. Sometimes I would delete the whole thing in favor of a one liner like "Continued progress." It didn't matter, because whatever I did was going to be wrong in the eyes of the people micromanaging me. Fuuuuuuck them, and fuck that.
Some of the worst jobs I've had in the past were exactly this. I remember at one stage I was having 3 standups a day (1.5 hours gone daily, with many simply going over time) then a myriad of other 'engineering' meetings plus sprint planning and retro on top of that. I'd say at least half of my effective week was locked down in meetings listening to people not able to stay on topic or provide a simple update. Nothing worse than being micromanaged on something that is already incredibly convoluted and difficult to begin with. On the contrary, the best job I ever had was one where there were no meetings of any kind and everything was done informally (Hell, I learnt Linux administration off a dude simply by sitting next to him everyday in the office before the times of hot-desking). The commentary in the video perfectly surmises how I feel and I agree it's good advice to simply try and pursue something you genuinely enjoy, or at the very least, don't end up in something you hate.
Sucks you had to go through that, sounds like such a stressful experience. Curious, do you think your perception of the situation played any part in how intense things felt? Have you ever looked into personality tests like the one that measures neuroticism? Sometimes they can offer some interesting insights.
@@soycrates I have. The majority of my negativity is directly related to Agile, Scrum, Jira and all the nonsense that goes with it. I kept a journal for awhile back then and I occasionally look through my lengthly list of grievances and I still stand by them today as reasonable objections. I went from a fairly lax yet technical military enlistment to building web apps at a start up. My boss and seniors never mentioned Agile, we didn’t follow any of rituals, and I grew as a developer for five years in a state of blissful ignorance. Then I was asked to help build out a Microsoft Sharepoint system aligning with MS Project, integrating TFS and writing little bits of code to send out notifications and approval requests. My boss quit, seniors were let go because they were too expensive, and I was left to architect a platform. This was the very beginning of Microsoft Teams, that was supposed to seamlessly integrate with anything, but worked with nothing. It was changing everyday at that point. I ended up being recruited by my old boss to work alongside him, and that’s when I got blindsided with full-on in-your-face Agile. The world as I knew it had changed forever.
especially now with salaries going down. full stack is lucky to get 80k right now starting. everyone who says otherwise are one of two chumps. either FAANG chumps who dont understand the normal industry outside of FAANG. or the "still hasnt broken into the industry chump" who has false expectations. Also, product and marketing tend to think we are useless, C suite cuts IT first when needing to cut costs as well /shrug
It's not that they "think" you're useless, if anything the opposite is true, they know they themselves are useless, so they project their own insecurities onto the Software Engineering department as a way to convince management they are the one's who shouldn't be fired. Really, would you expecting anything else from people who studied "marketing?"
Here I am at 30 and just went back to school for CS, good news! I’m looking for exactly what you explained the job is like. I’m looking forward to just being handed problems. So I’m happy I’m going into this career with realistic expectations
I'm in QA at a tech company , and I assign bug tickets to our software engineers on top of their existing work when I find bugs. The software engineer hates us, lol. Most of the tickets that I assigned them can be release blockers, and that's where shit hits the fan for them because they're completely stressed out due to deadlines and it delays deployment into production. I wanted to be a software engineer, but then I realized how stressful their job is .
I work as a QA for 6 years now, Im seeing a psychotherapist for 8 years, she helped me with panic attacks, depression, self confidence, loss etc. But for the last year all I talk about is how much I hate this job, soulless people with no social skills, stupid meetings, reporting monitoring and stuff. And I do want to change my profession, but after a days work all I want to do is to stare at the wall, but during the weekends I feel like a different person who loves my life and then Monday comes. SE f sucks
I'm not a software engineer, but contemplating becoming 1, but admit reasons are for remote work, work/life balance, and money, and reasons that have almost nothing to do with actual coding. I do admit I really love socializing and working with people though.
If you dont love it, you cant learn it, i always loved it and still love it, especially if you compare to other jobs, the important thing is that you do the bare fucking minimum for companies
@@Quynn-Oneal loud people with strong opinions get popular on social media, more at 6. his follower base who worship him like tech lebron r more cringe tho
@@Quynn-Oneal Man at this point in my life, you could tell me Jesus was Charlatan and I would probably believe you. Still gonna watch him because he's entertaining and makes talking about coding topics fun.
The field is saturated with so many beginners, what they teach you in college for CS majors is outdated, focus too much on theory. The field is hard to get into, you can't get interviews anymore let alone the job. This is coming from CS graduate who is unemployed
Dude I really appreciate how straightforward you are and calling out the youtubers exaggerating how great this job is. I feel like its a never ending rat race and harder than any job my other engineering friends got out of school
I haven't yet seen a video of how much it sucks to clean the office floors, I guess it's a more fulfilling job. But joking aside, it's not an easy job, even though it's well paid.
My dad and his family made my siblings feel like shit cuz they didn't want to study Comp Sci like I did. His sister kept expressing her "disappointment" over my sister choosing arts over Comp Sci. My dad verbally reacted to my brother picking arts as well, acting like it was the ultimate betrayal. It's annoying, and irritating when they act like that. Sad af. Nice video man. I'm at my first internship out of college and I feel the drain already lol.
Computer Science is NOT software engineering and definitely not programming. The original computer programmers had degrees in mathematics or philosophy if they had a degree at all. The FANNG emphasis and pursuit of money drew the wrong people into the field of work.
@@Gregory-o6v Yeah, I know and agree. Pretty hard to find a Comp Sci student who isn't just a Software Engineer nowadays lol. Trying to learn more about Comp Sci and fit my degree more.
I hate to be that guy, but there's a difference between choosing a non-CS degree and choosing Arts, I would be pretty disappointed if my kids did Arts too, most end up wasting 4 years since you can't do much with an Arts degree. Basically a degree for kids with rich parents who have money to spare, or someone that just isn't thinking about the future at all
have a brother in-law who makes 20K more than me with no education in manual labor job. have a brother with no education who makes almost same income as senior IT operations just 2 years into job fully remote. The world is upside down when someone with 4 year degree is making less than folks with no degree at all. not only that, their job interviews are nowhere near as stressful as an SE job interview.
I feel modern programmers should probably take up welding as a backup plan... welding is pretty enjoyable, pays well, and other mechanics respect you since you have a skill they generally don't have.
@@JohnnyThund3r dude it is different from country to country. In US, welding might pay 90k$ that doesn't mean all over the world.. In many countries welders earn less than 8k.
A “4 year degree” means absolutely nothing. College has become such a game now. Most students straight up cheat on their work and go just for the “college experience” while studying something that provides little economic value.
@@JohnnyThund3rthat’s what I’m getting into just recently signed up for a 36 week welding certification. I’m still going to continue my education through online classes and at least get my AA just because I enjoy the classes and the workload is light enough it’s a no brainer. However I’ve realized I don’t need a piece of paper to become successful with a white collar job that makes my depression exponentially worse.
Problem is many are trying to be an AI developer without learning any programming fundamentals or data science. Code has to not just work but also be efficient.
I was applying for SE jobs, and then I had one particular coding test, where I realized "f**k this". I don't want to do this. Now I'm enrolled in a trade school LOL
As a CS major entering her 4th year who just recently got a taste of real software engineering work, this was so validating and refreshing to watch. I’m glad you aren’t wasting your hilarious comedic sense and visible social skills behind a screen! I also recently found out about sales engineering and am curious about it (honestly any role that will allow me to socialize with real human beings on a day to day basis will do at this point) I’m new to your channel so I’m not sure if you’ve already done this, but I’d love to learn more about the field and how to make the shift.
The minute you said on-call I got anxiety and I am not even Dev, I am support but know how to code and honestly some issues take so many hours to fix. I can't even imagine lol
Gosh, you struck one point that has been my constant nightmare over the recent years - my social skills are so degraded from this job, that I fail at simple day to day interactions with other people. Being in a dark room for the most part of the day and attempting to fix crappy code, makes me wish I worked at other field. I thought of changing the field, but I realise this is the one thing I am decent at and there's no way I am getting this salary at other job, assuming how poor my social skills are.
Worked as an Infrastructure Engineer and a lot of this resonates. I wish I would have gotten stock options at the jobs I worked. Before I switched out of that role I joked about becoming a farm. Also your therapy comment is so so on point and more people need to hear it
I've always enjoyed doing the technology implementation. Spending my day in the "logs, code editors, and code docs" sounds like fun to me. Probably just my personality type and what interests me. Also, my parents didn't push me into this career. It's something that I just got into on my own. However, I do feel like it's a lot of time behind a computer screen. I get concerned about my posture, lack of social skills development, and it not moving my body around enough. Health wise, it doesn't feel like it's that good for.
I have 7 months left before collecting social security. I am so looking forward to getting out of this job. It is just a paycheck. Yes, I had to do this job because of no social skills since I was a small child. If you are a person with no social skills. Figure it out. Tutor kids, get a sales job where you interact with people (not cashier or warehouse or delivery). ANYTHING where you are required to do a lot of talking and listening. It will only take a month or two to get good at it and it will be the best investment of 2 months in your life. You got to do it. Books, therapy, time alone not the answer.
This RUclips channel is going to go far. You should think about products you’re going to come out with later on. Right now. Great image Very funny Very natural and very likable on the camera. It’s easy to feel like we know you.
What's the alternative? I feel you dont know enough about other jobs I studied mechanical engineering and switched to tech. Can confirm nearly all mechanical and traditional engineering are just as bad but happen to pay less in worse locations and less compatible coworkers. Ive come across hundreds of jobs roles where i could get a decent gauge of how much fun it was. Nearly all were worse for me. I view it like voting. Picking the least bad option. Fyi i still like software development wayy more than those jobs and even kinda like the work. Most important thing is time pressure and stress. In a place that has reasonable timelines it becomes really low stress and pleasant.
When I was in university we had so many people going into Finance or Law areas because their parents wanted them to go. Most of them weren't able to like their job and a lot of them now do other stuff, but they lost 5-6+ years already. So it's not only in Tech. But I would agree that if you don't like SWE (or any other job) - change it, quit and find something else.
@@emilyau8023 I believe it's not too late to change it! I have a relative who use to be a military person, then were selling cloths. At the age of 40 he study Law by himself and became a very good lawyer in area of crimes
I'm passionate about building software, but i guess i hate the industry (or at least i'm fed up with the company i'm currently working). Before joining this company, i used to be a freelancer, and it was the point in my life that i was the most satisfied career wise, but i didn't made as much money i'm doing now. At the beginning in this company i was really enjoying it, despite the pressure and how bad parts of the system are. But now it just feels stale, meeting after meeting, bug fix after bug fix, meaningless feature implementation. I still write software as hobby and i remember why i love this so much. So i decided to build my own products (wish me luck), since i'm not solving the problems i want to solve and i massively disagree with company processes
Been a software engineer for 25 years now. Most of my experience has been in investment banking. Went to an elite university (one of the best in the world). I have desi parents too. And you know what, Varun? I FUCKING HATE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING! And yes the software engineers are the ultimate bitches of any corporation which employs software engineers! I so hope my plan to escape comes to fruition in 2025 because I would literally do anything else than write code anymore. Love your videos and especially this one. Hope you make it as a RUclipsr/TikToker. Best of luck!
@@talwaar007do you think I can make it even into one of the worst low income jobs in unknown company, willing to work for 5 dollars per hour or even for free and experience
Now to the big question: Which careers would you recommend to a young person now? I am considering becoming a doctor or dentist. Those are the only careers with great pay, job security and the real possibility of becoming financially independent early in life. They are also easy to combine with entrepreneurship (there are plenty of options to only work a couple of days a week and still make enough). And you never have to worry about CV-gaps, career progression, networking, linkedin etc. And you will be surrounded by social people and lots of beautiful women that will keep you happy.
Lets develop more fancy skills whether its fitness, blogging, cooking, personal care items you name it, its good to have 1 unique skill but nowadays we require ourselves to expand to more diffrent things so we can be successful and happy!
I have kinda been wanting to get into a software engineer job but after watching this video and understanding how I would be treated, I don't think it would be worth it.
i love your sense of humor man. i graduate in a year in cs (im a year late). but yeah i always hear about the endless rejections and desire to just give up from my friends. its sometimes a overrepresented and over emphasized job while being at top of the toughest job market. out here in nyc especially my man.
Didn't expect to watch the whole video when I clicked but glad I did. Hilarious and you raise great points about being aware and finding that exit ramp or on ramp to something more fulfilling. You can go super deep in a domain, like cloud, AWS, DevOps, and absolutely hate that shit as well.
Hi Varun, for me and many others swe may be a way out of bad life circumstances. I am curious, do you feel secure about your finances? I mean if you were to have a health bill or anything like that you wouldn't stress over it right? Also thanks a lot for your insight, you're really down to earth and personable ESPECIALLY for an ex software engineer lmfaoo
I wish I could find something else to do that would pay my bills. It's so hard right now making a switch with everything being so expensive. I feel like I'm locked in at this point.
I completely agree with everything said. It's fascinating to see how different people are though. The weeks when I dont speak to another person are by far my favorite weeks. 😆 Also i dont mind moving buttons around. Sometimes for fun i calculate how much money a button cost the company and laugh all day about it with dog. I just funnel money into the things i actually love. Good times had by all.
I hate how I am not given time to write good, high performance software. Zero focus on tests. Guys at the top want things quickly without any regards to quality.
I've been at it for almost 2 decades and I've only actually enjoyed it once while working on one project where I was actually building something and coming up with new ideas and concepts. It was a pretty quick 2 year period and then I found my self back in the churn of just trying to keep things from falling over... and staring at logs. It feels so meaningless and pointless. At one point I worked at one place for 10 years... then some stuff happened and I decided to make a change. You know... meet new people, learn new things, solve different problems, maybe actually build something for a change... yea not so much. I found exactly the same "problems" only with different variable names. Most of what we do is read data from DB, show data to user, capture user input, write data to DB. I can throw a rock out the window and hit 3 other software companies doing exactly the same things... Currently my biggest frustration with the industry is the fixations with developer experience and "how fast I can build something today". On the one hand I think it's great, but neither of those 2 things is what made my job terrible... it's always been what happens to a code base over 5, 10, or 15+ years. About 7 years ago I started work on how we could build software differently with the goal of good long term maintainability. Best 2 years of my career and I like to think that I've made some real progress, but it was all just... ignored... no one cared... If it wasn't for the people who depend on me I would have told this industry to take it's BS and shove it years ago already.
I don't normally comment but I just want to say, thank you for keeping this SO real man. I think I did the worst of the "I suddenly wanna be a Software Engineer" thing. I joined a bootcamp (I know..starting to regret and paid off) and I'm slowly starting to realize this career path isn't for me. Of course I start thinking this at the very end of the program. Already peaking into other career paths. Anyways subbed!
Thanks for keeping it real bro. Can confirm. This job is a great fit for natural computer nerds who in another era would've been into engineering or philosophy. Sounds unrelated but isn't really... same kind of bookish stereotype. Issues really occur because the hype draws in people who absolutely don't fit this mold.
damn, this is the most relatable video I've ever watched in 2024. I was so annoyed, numb, bored, and stressed out, even while earning the highest paycheck I've ever had in my life this summer as an swe intern. Thank you for speaking out the feelings from the button of my heart.
This is so real about engineering in general omg if I knew about more career paths when I was in high school I would have unquestionably chosen something completely different
Gosh this literally happened to me. I ended up going into a different field and am so much happier. Thank you for making this video and you are hilarious!
1. losing social skills - this is too real. There's a point that I've experienced multiple times when you're plugged in for several days when everyone else starts looking like absolute idiots, just for existing. 2. on-call - well you joined amazon mate. out of all places, the worst place for work-life balance even for software engineers. It comes down to how the org is structured. 3. real world problems - bam! welcome to real world :D almost 90% of the code you write is to enable someone somewhere buy something useless. You rarely get to work on a project that has real impact and then it's guaranteed that the leaders in charge are fucking idiots, so it gets mismanaged anyways. 4. you being the bitch - 100%. this job is only prestigious to your family and friends (immigrant so my child is going to go through some tough OKR meetings). At work, you're the sub with 100 different masters but for real, sw engineering is really for people who enjoy it. if you don't enjoy digging through to an obscure cause of a problem that has impacted 0.001% of your userbase you're going to suffer in varying degrees. It's the same for almost every job that needs skill. They have their ups and downs but you need to have the passion to enjoy the wider picture. If you don't, then this job is not for you. Good on you to find your passion, and I have a friend who's just like you (switched to doing more sales work than swe). Context though, SWE is still a very lucky place to be out of all the jobs considered, at least for me. (Also most software developers fail to grasp the engineering discipline and then you get losers who think why Java exists when JavaScript can do everything. They fail to see beyond their own feet. Main reason I moved on to Cloud and architecture)
My social skills and ability to talk to people has definitely improved being a software engineer. Communication is a highly important skill at my company. Could just be a cultural thing from company to company
I've been coding a lot lately, trying to build a video game, I love it, but that's because I'm programing what I wanna program! Sure I could sit there and program some backend framework for some fang company (And I may end up doing that someday) but that would be a Job I would be doing strictly for the money, defiantly not because I love it. Game programing I actually love because I'm accomplishing what I wanna accomplish with my life with ever bug I crush, and it just feels so rewarding to get this stuff to work and see my creations come to life!
The caché this field once had faded a long time ago. The current job market and AI are the epitaph for whatever prestige it once held. And it's all for the best.
This video made me laugh out loud!! Love it!! Although I made the switch from sciences to software engineering and I'd say it was so worth it! I barely made money as a science major but switching to do programming full time was the best decision for me. I love looking at logs.
I switched from biomedical science to IT because of the rising cost of dental school. I hated the biomed classes and now I'm second-guessing IT because of the job market in tech right now. I know I don't want to be a software engineer, so I think CS is out of the equation. IT and Cyber are weird fields because anyone can get a bootcamp and start working in it but the degree is so much harder than other majors like business. I feel like people were too hard on business majors in high school.... what are your thoughts Varun?
I got into software engineering because I loved computer science. At a certain point I realized what I really enjoyed is working with people so I transitioned into more management / team leadership roles. You have to figure out what really motivates you at an atomic level personally.
My software systems engineer friends who worked as outside contractors made bank and detested every minute. They planned to cash out asap and become real estate developers in resort locations flipping rentals and it has worked out very well
![Kodak Black - Versatile 4 [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VcP_1Ua__vY/mqdefault.jpg)
i’ve learned @ 18; anyone who makes a day in my life as a software engineer doesn’t like their job. they instead want their youtube career to take off so they quit their job.
Spot on
@@VishalBolarum-q3v Sounds like a form of survivorship bias, you're only hearing from the people that are "motivated" (read: upset) enough to start a youtube channel. And the successful ones also curate their content to be either mindless fun or to piss off their viewers for engagement (mostly the latter for software). There's no impetus to provide quality information if it gets in the way of views.
So yeah, probably not a good idea to form broad opinions based only on social media.
@@symptl running a successful RUclips channel & a being a top software engineer don’t come hand in hand. They’re both extremely difficult to do well and you can’t balance both. If you have time every week to plan a video, buy a camera, spend hours editing, (and do this for 2+ years before it’s profitable), it’s clear you want to leave software engineering.
@@VishalBolarum-q3v that's exactly what I'm saying? You're only going to hear from the people that don't want to stay in or are trying to sell you courses, not the people that want to do SWE and build a career while being happy to do so
we got Indian Jake Gyllenhaal ranting about SWE Jobs before GTA6
lmfao
i really dont see it
More of an Indian Ryan Gosling?
Indian Jake Gyllenhaal, so spot on! :-D
I also don't see it. Could someone clarify what traces of Gyllenhaal can be noticed here?
I quite like programming in general (building stuffs) but programming JOBS with their soul sucking scrum methodologies with daily meetings and constant pressure is hell ! I litterally feel I'm never finished with my work, the evening I always apprehend the next morning... Add to this I work in Belgium where SWE don't make much more than a bus driver and you can understand my despair...
What u do now
Have you already thought about... driving a bus?
I also live in europe and the salary as software dev just sucks here in europe, atleast if you compare it to US where all people talk about there 6 figure salaries 😐😐😐
@@maxmuller6730 I do 150k in eu but taxes suck, gonna move to Eastern Europe
Imagine driving a bus, you have to interact with hundreds of people..
TL;DR - don’t become a software engineer unless you’re a fucking nerd who genuinely enjoys fixing stuff
Ngl I am definitely that nerd, but I also haven't hit SWE level of that yet so we'll see how much soul I lose when I get there
@@newageretronerd for people not so down in the trenches maybe normal engineering is good?
Every job is the same… eventually they all suck. Just chose the one that sucks the least to you and you can scrape some money from… jobs aren’t supposed to give you purpose and fulfillment. They are there to give you the resources you need to keep going. Yeah swe sucks for most but it doesn’t for a little of us.
@@dmobsherman2108 Capitalism, baby.
@@dmobsherman2108 working for small companies that make boutique software is very fun though. The drawback to working in a small team is just that you have a LOT of responsibility
This is a severely underrated video. Thanks Varun.
8 story points.
The losing social skills part is too real - there was a point where I was so deep into the work that I genuinely started shaking and sweating when trying to speak
The social anxiety that comes with it is crazy.
Same I lost my public speaking skills 😕😪
It's 100% real, in 10 years, I want from a very social person to a weirdo with social anxiety, beware
I see so many people, even in college, be saying nothing. Like they're super quiet. Like I am sort of out of it, yet I speak. I try to keep the speaking 100: I make YT videos, I greet everyone and actually converse. I do work a lot, but I try to say a few words to keep the speaking up 100.
Is that why my social skills are dying these days?
The problem with SE jobs really lies with corporate America, FAANG in particular. Technology jobs don’t have to be like that! Software development should be joyful teamwork, building things that make you feel proud that you can talk about nostalgically for decades afterwards.
That is a really naive and unrealistic expectation. It's a job, not an expedition with your best friends on a sailing ship around the world! Yes software development should provide you with some level of job satisfaction (why do it otherwise) but you will never be happy as a dev if you honestly expect "joyful teamwork" and to be able to "talk about nostalgically for decades" . Hopefully there are a few things you are proud of and look back on with nostalgia, but that will be amongst a sea of dull, difficult and not at all joyful aspects.
Say that to my product managers, 5h per day in useless meets
@@Ash_18037I’ve known people who’ve worked on early versions of Windows, OS/2, MS-DOS, Unix (actually, the original Bell Labs one), some major games, and a few others, all of whom are very satisfied about their work and speak about those days nostalgically. This kind of experience used to be the norm in technology.
It’s not like that at all. It’s Product throwing a fit because they want features shipped ASAP and then throwing a fit because there are bugs (lol)….plus no one at the company except the engineers giving two shits about tech debt/security/anything remotely technical. That’s why I left SE.
Unfortunatly, there is this parasitic class of middle managers who need to justify their existence...
Software engineering is for those who never had social skills to lose. 👋🏻
I don't need social skills if I can maintain it by daydreaming in my head 😂
I'm qualified for this
Truly well said
I’m a software engineer from India and I wish I could be doing anything else with my visa
that’s why most software engineers are 5,6 brown hairy guys from Mumbai
They never had any social life to befin with
I bailed out of software engineering. Shit sucks man. No way am I going to spend years of my life LeetCoding/learning algorithms/learning frameworks/etc etc to then constantly get thrown under the bus by Product MBAs who don’t even know what a database is. Became clear to me that the Dev team is merely an expensive annoyance to the rest of the company who thinks they can run the show themselves, and can’t even let the teams run their own sprints for fear of “losing control”. Let em crash and burn, I say. Life is short.
What u do now
Life is short, work an even more stressful job for the rest of your life instead of grinding swe for a couple of years and retire at 35.
@@nile7999 it’s not quite so simple. You’re making a lot of assumptions in terms of “an even more stressful job” and that a standard engineering salary even pays enough to retire at 35. Not to mention after 5 years out of the job market your resume is trash/unhirable That’s fun at 40 when you get sick of sitting at the beach while everyone you know is still working.
Not that it makes any difference anyway since anything you learn as a SWE is basically useless after a few years anyway, putting you on a level playing field with 22 y/o new grads who will stay up until 2am shipping features.
@@joeyf9826 There are other things to do besides sit at the beach, lol
@@joeyf9826 yeah
Definitely one of the worst mistakes I made in my life.
1- the pay sucks unless you work at a big company in the US or Europe
2- People who truly love programming treat it as their entire personality, making it seem like you should feel and behave the same way.
i believe most of them trick themselves into believing that they absolutely love programming, and act like thats the one thing they wanted to do since they were a kid, dont jump my ass tho, just saying.
@@milkybrowny7331Im still a student but I think there's a lot of software engineers to be who did it despite not liking it. The amount of complaining about ANYTHING that I hear in class is insane
@@chrono4998 haha I'm the same , I just keep crying and keep trying , life is massive cope.
I love programming but I definitely hate software engineering
Programming is just one way to create something, everybody should be creating something instead of consuming things all the time. That creation could be drawings/paintings, music, new food, software/games, books etc etc
It was not always this way. I was a web developer back in late 1990's, when they called us Webmaster with tech stack Perl, HTML, JavaScript and it was great by then. Frequently, I would take a lunch twice as long as allowed, or sometimes leave early without telling my manager. I was not the only one, a 17yo coder would sometimes not come to work, just because, so the manager would have a guy or 2 go pick him out and bring him to work. Yes, he did not have a driving license.
Anyways, I sold most of my stocks before the 2000 Dot Com crash and been living off that ever since.
you retired early? at what age???
@@moteq6598 I got real lucky with stocks so was fortunate to retire in my 30's....
@@AaronBlox-h2t What an era that was. I was there too. Memories.
Back when employees actually meant something for companies, rather than being just a disposable asset. Wish that era could come back again.
@@moteq6598invest and be smart with your money regardless of age. I’m 18 and have over 20k and I literally only work one shift a per week.. spend sparingly and practice frugality and anti consumerism.
African parents are the same 😅 my last layoff yeeted me into starting my own luxury travel agency. I’ve always loved traveling and I get to plan other people’s travels too
@@vidalobati5761 let’s fkin go
@@the_varunrana W
Lol all ethnic parents are the same, that's why I'm dong what it takes to be different xD
People travel, right, business people.
like for real becauase i used to see adds for those and they were total scams lol
It’s always interesting to stumble upon a video with a couple hundred views that feels like it should have a couple hundred thousand
@@NATtelevision hahaha I appreciate that!! I posted it earlier today and I’m brand new to RUclips
This video resonated with me. I am a first-gen latino that comes from a low-income background who pursued CS with the goal of uplifting myself and my fam. I got laid off from my first dev job about 9 months ago and haven't been able to find another since. The constant grind of updating resume, putting it through chatGPT, applying to jobs that have been posted less than 5 days ago, trying to pay attention to udemy courses on in-demand frameworks, leetcode, etc etc just to end up with 500+ rejections has me left burnt out. I have been questioning whether SWE is actually something that I genuinely like or just a ticket out of poverty. Currently working an interim office job to get some bills money coming in, wondering if there is anywhere I can pivot to or if I am just giving up. I don't know, its a strange time right now and this was ramble of my current state of mind but this video made me feel seen so I appreciate that a lot.
You're not good enough
Switch to cybersecurity
And then there are the tech bros that tell people who left that they just weren't real SWEs...ugh
@@looksmatteronly it's not him, this market is cooked, I know people with 4 years of experience that cant find a job
@@boredguy5805 you can be bad and have 4 yrs experience
Ive felt so much pressure from the old saying "if you love your job you'll never work a day in your life", when in reality theres literally no job that comes with that, it is an unrealistic expectation. the only way to be happy with your job is to have a good work life balance, disconnect your job self with your real self, and having a life outside of work you enjoy. thanks for letting me realise this, brown man. sincerely, another brown man
I have only ever done things I found interesting. But I still saw it as work when I got a job in those things. It just seems to me that it is what I was working on that I liked not what I was working with. I like to build software for very specific reason, to learn a new technology, implement something that is lacking etc. I realized the best places to work would be R&D departments and by that I mean R&D for actual innovative companies.
Disagree, I love what I do and apart from deadlines it doesn’t feel like work. Not a swe tho
or just be rich and not have to have a job at all
@@Gwarzonicus interesting, maybe I will look into that area as well
not true, I love my job, what now?
The"I was peer pressured into tech" perspective is super foreign to me as a nerd of the 90s
Early tech nerds are "lucky" in that respect, if u were doing it then, it was for sure because you enjoyed it.
@@JustWazza These are also the best SWE's. Some people will disagree, but like everything in life, passion isn't everything, but you can't deny how much it helps. A musician who plays because they enjoy it will have a much easier (NOT easy) path to mastery. I started at eight years old, and I will always love it. Here's the thing, my passion has pros and cons, just like everything else. Even though I love to build cool stuff (like I'm sure many of us "passion" folks are), that's not corporate. Unfortunately, corporate sucks that passion dry and exploits it (think about game dev, for example).
The grass is greener mentality hits SWEs hard because you can make anywhere from 100k to 500k+ in salary with virtually the same background and skillset. (People and connections are more valuable than skills, and as someone with skills ranked in the top one percent, I will die on this hill.)
I do NOT want social BS in the workplace, but do not mistake this for being "anti-social". I will never go out of my way to be a jerk. I'll always be nice and helpful, admit my mistakes, and mentor new juniors. There's a big difference between SWE and Sales. I didn't get into Software to be a bubbly people person.
I'd liken this to introversion to extroversion.
All of this is to say that the fundamental disconnect is what college teaches versus what the job requires.
"It's a fuckin' job!"
Damn right it is. I used to be a developer and occasionally have this urge to get back in it, but I'm realizing that I might be wanting to go back for the wrong reasons. I appreciate your short-form content on IG, but I also enjoy vids like this!
The money good tho
@@the_varunrana the smartest people I know say that the USD and Social Security will collapse within the next 100 years so why bother beyond what’s necessary?
@@Mike-lu1pt that's not going to happen. It's more likely that social security will decrease, but it's not going to disappear. There's so much wrong with that thinking all I can say is get smarter friends cause what the heck.
@@emilyau8023 Sounds like you're in denial. All fiat currency goes to zero after a long enough timeframe. Educate yourself.
What do you do now?
I just left my job like 3 months ago... because even if I love software, I mean making, building, and doing something creative... corporate jobs sucks my life
Also I hate the current recruitment processes are really stupid and doesn't make any sense
My issue with on call is that I stay up til 2am to fix your crappy code base then have to wake up at 6am to drive to the office thats enforced with a shitty attendance policy; JUST to sit in zoom calls and drink piss flavored coffee
After sending half our team to the PIP grinder, there are 4 of us left in our team, with 5 managers 😭
At least the pay is good
The pay is not good when you actually realize how many hours you spend actually logged in working. Especially in your 2am example.
@@jonasbaine3538 I mean on call is only every few weeks
@@Shaojeemy RIP the mental health of your team 🪦
@@jonasbaine3538 it's more important how much you earn per day of life, rather than per hour.
Seems like everyone just talking about Amazon lol
Corporate SWE (like every other corporate job) is driven by short term profits, not code or product quality despite most companies paying heavy lip service to these ideals. You often end up dealing with, working around, or fixing accreted technical debt more than anything else, duct taping things together to make them work in the current system. And the debt just keeps accreting as new features are constantly piled on top for short term gains until you end up with a huge mess that nobody wants to dig too deeply into out of fear of breaking something. Open source and personal projects are where the fun of development really lives.
I've been realizing this too lately... it really is extremely valuable to build your own game engine from scratch if your a game programmer for example, and not just once, but several times throughout your life. Because that initial underlying codebase is so fundamental to getting things to work and be maintainable that if you get stuck trying to solve the same problems over again, you might be stuck there forever since the real issue is the underlying codebase is bad. The more you build from scratch the better you get at identifying bad structures and methods that need to be replaced outright instead of continuing to work with spaghetti code that takes 10X as long to get anywhere.
@@jonathanpritchard6464 Yep. 💯
well said, this is a comment with some strong really world experience,
I work in tech at non Saas companies and this is really what it is lol
Endless studying, preparing for job interviews, and being glued to the screen all day every day is not worth it; it's a over-glamorized virtual manual labor job which will take a toll not only on your psyche but also on your physical health.
I hate most "software dev youtubers" because most of them make all the same sh** like "how I landed my first 120k job after I learned to code in 4 months (self taught)" .... how I learned to code in 2 months while working 60hours a week and having chldren and now I earn 150k 😅😅😅 so much bs is out there.
As an swe, I agree 100%. Totally sucks, whether it sucks less than most other jobs is the real question. It's the job I've liked the most out of all the jobs I've had, which have been hell.
same for me 😂 it still sucks but compared to other jobs which also suck even more its better and the perks like home office and flexible time makes it a bit easier to endure, but its not fun thats for sure.
I'll never forget the days (and 1am closing nights) I had to endure in hospitality. Keeps me going at my worst
Just happy it's not a job I gotta get up at 5 am in 17F weather out of a dirt hole, make sure my big dirt "sand table" is set up properly, and give a platoon brief tbh 😅
Yeah sucks but I don’t know any better
Those dark circles in the eyes is evident how much coding sucks.
It actually sucks.
Im a Software engineer and i totally agree and thanks to u brother for saying the truth.
@@abectv ok so don't review.🤣
I totally agree with the video blogger. Technology inspires me that is why I was a software engineer. I love reading logs, fixing bugs. In fact I have Linux on my laptop just for fun. However, the thing that make SE job suck is the people’s attitude towards it. People do not understand tech. They can tell you that you cannot hire a single civil engineer and expect him to make you a skyscraper in 1.5 months, you cannot force a taxi driver to reach at destination on time when the traffic is blocked, all because you are experiencing a physical phenomena and can understand that a civil engineer cannot build a skyscraper in 1.5 months because you can discern the sheer size of a skyscraper and realise this is not something one engineer can build in 1.5 months, or this taxi is stuck in traffic and you can well understand that it is not helicopter to take off and bypass all city traffic. But with SE, no one understands the same problems because people cannot realise how gigantic a Software system is. It is kind of a skyscraper built in virtual world. SE tasks, like civil engineering or taxi driving tasks take time and a Software Engineer can be stuck in a problem for days. People think that this man will sit and press some keys and everything will be done. Thats it. I usually ask business stakeholders that how on earth you estimated that this task can be done in 1 hour? I started hating SE job due to the people’s attitude towards it.
Some of my coworkers have been genuinely happy with their jobs in environments where I silently suffered as pure rage flowed through me from Monday morning until Friday afternoon. I'm in a much better place now, and this video was therapeutic as it brought back some shit I had blocked out--kind of a refresher for spotting the warning signs and a moment to be thankful for where I'm at now.
I do have a couple things to add: Standups (while sitting of course), and fucking Jira tickets. I felt like I was having an allergic reaction that made me extremely uncomfortable in my own skin before, during, and after standups. As a developer I was forced into what can only be described as Jira Driven Development. Every I did has to make sense in the form of a Jira ticket update before proceeding. I would get stuck in an internal battle with myself about how vague or how detailed an update should be, which intensified the further into a task I had gotten. There were times I spent multiple hours rage typing my entire task related thought process in Jira (or TFS, or Zoho, or whatever-the-fuck-other project tracker bullshit) because I felt so micromanaged that I would imagine clear-as-day my boss questioning each and every decision I made. Sometimes I would delete the whole thing in favor of a one liner like "Continued progress." It didn't matter, because whatever I did was going to be wrong in the eyes of the people micromanaging me. Fuuuuuuck them, and fuck that.
Some of the worst jobs I've had in the past were exactly this. I remember at one stage I was having 3 standups a day (1.5 hours gone daily, with many simply going over time) then a myriad of other 'engineering' meetings plus sprint planning and retro on top of that. I'd say at least half of my effective week was locked down in meetings listening to people not able to stay on topic or provide a simple update. Nothing worse than being micromanaged on something that is already incredibly convoluted and difficult to begin with. On the contrary, the best job I ever had was one where there were no meetings of any kind and everything was done informally (Hell, I learnt Linux administration off a dude simply by sitting next to him everyday in the office before the times of hot-desking).
The commentary in the video perfectly surmises how I feel and I agree it's good advice to simply try and pursue something you genuinely enjoy, or at the very least, don't end up in something you hate.
Sucks you had to go through that, sounds like such a stressful experience. Curious, do you think your perception of the situation played any part in how intense things felt? Have you ever looked into personality tests like the one that measures neuroticism? Sometimes they can offer some interesting insights.
@@soycrates I have. The majority of my negativity is directly related to Agile, Scrum, Jira and all the nonsense that goes with it. I kept a journal for awhile back then and I occasionally look through my lengthly list of grievances and I still stand by them today as reasonable objections. I went from a fairly lax yet technical military enlistment to building web apps at a start up. My boss and seniors never mentioned Agile, we didn’t follow any of rituals, and I grew as a developer for five years in a state of blissful ignorance. Then I was asked to help build out a Microsoft Sharepoint system aligning with MS Project, integrating TFS and writing little bits of code to send out notifications and approval requests. My boss quit, seniors were let go because they were too expensive, and I was left to architect a platform. This was the very beginning of Microsoft Teams, that was supposed to seamlessly integrate with anything, but worked with nothing. It was changing everyday at that point. I ended up being recruited by my old boss to work alongside him, and that’s when I got blindsided with full-on in-your-face Agile. The world as I knew it had changed forever.
Omg yes everything you said yes. I wish I can articulate myself better like this
I feel this so hard right now. Ugh
especially now with salaries going down. full stack is lucky to get 80k right now starting. everyone who says otherwise are one of two chumps. either FAANG chumps who dont understand the normal industry outside of FAANG. or the "still hasnt broken into the industry chump" who has false expectations.
Also, product and marketing tend to think we are useless, C suite cuts IT first when needing to cut costs as well /shrug
It's not that they "think" you're useless, if anything the opposite is true, they know they themselves are useless, so they project their own insecurities onto the Software Engineering department as a way to convince management they are the one's who shouldn't be fired. Really, would you expecting anything else from people who studied "marketing?"
Here I am at 30 and just went back to school for CS, good news! I’m looking for exactly what you explained the job is like. I’m looking forward to just being handed problems. So I’m happy I’m going into this career with realistic expectations
@@thomasandersen6025 as long as ur happy bro
I'm in QA at a tech company , and I assign bug tickets to our software engineers on top of their existing work when I find bugs. The software engineer hates us, lol. Most of the tickets that I assigned them can be release blockers, and that's where shit hits the fan for them because they're completely stressed out due to deadlines and it delays deployment into production. I wanted to be a software engineer, but then I realized how stressful their job is .
@user-vz3vo7ek1t how do I get into QA?
If you're in the US good luck competing with 1,000 developers with 5 years of experience for every junior job. Have you seen the state of the market?
@@Michael-mr3ig At least SWE market is not as bad as other STEM fields in USA.I mean it's trending now in there..
I work as a QA for 6 years now, Im seeing a psychotherapist for 8 years, she helped me with panic attacks, depression, self confidence, loss etc. But for the last year all I talk about is how much I hate this job, soulless people with no social skills, stupid meetings, reporting monitoring and stuff. And I do want to change my profession, but after a days work all I want to do is to stare at the wall, but during the weekends I feel like a different person who loves my life and then Monday comes. SE f sucks
I'm not a software engineer, but contemplating becoming 1, but admit reasons are for remote work, work/life balance, and money, and reasons that have almost nothing to do with actual coding. I do admit I really love socializing and working with people though.
Just gave Amazon my 2 weeks notice. I feel your frustration bro! Keep speaking the truth (especially about the logs).
What are you going for now?
This video is insanely good you should have way more subs!
I appreciate that!
If you dont love it, you cant learn it, i always loved it and still love it, especially if you compare to other jobs, the important thing is that you do the bare fucking minimum for companies
@ThePrimeagen 1 hour reaction vedio loading soon......
That guy is a full stack charlatan
@@Quynn-Oneal loud people with strong opinions get popular on social media, more at 6. his follower base who worship him like tech lebron r more cringe tho
@@Quynn-Oneal Man at this point in my life, you could tell me Jesus was Charlatan and I would probably believe you. Still gonna watch him because he's entertaining and makes talking about coding topics fun.
The field is saturated with so many beginners, what they teach you in college for CS majors is outdated, focus too much on theory. The field is hard to get into, you can't get interviews anymore let alone the job. This is coming from CS graduate who is unemployed
Dude I really appreciate how straightforward you are and calling out the youtubers exaggerating how great this job is. I feel like its a never ending rat race and harder than any job my other engineering friends got out of school
I haven't yet seen a video of how much it sucks to clean the office floors, I guess it's a more fulfilling job. But joking aside, it's not an easy job, even though it's well paid.
Placing buttons sounds like my dream job tbh
My dad and his family made my siblings feel like shit cuz they didn't want to study Comp Sci like I did. His sister kept expressing her "disappointment" over my sister choosing arts over Comp Sci. My dad verbally reacted to my brother picking arts as well, acting like it was the ultimate betrayal.
It's annoying, and irritating when they act like that. Sad af.
Nice video man. I'm at my first internship out of college and I feel the drain already lol.
Computer Science is NOT software engineering and definitely not programming. The original computer programmers had degrees in mathematics or philosophy if they had a degree at all.
The FANNG emphasis and pursuit of money drew the wrong people into the field of work.
@@Gregory-o6v Yeah, I know and agree. Pretty hard to find a Comp Sci student who isn't just a Software Engineer nowadays lol.
Trying to learn more about Comp Sci and fit my degree more.
I hate to be that guy, but there's a difference between choosing a non-CS degree and choosing Arts, I would be pretty disappointed if my kids did Arts too, most end up wasting 4 years since you can't do much with an Arts degree. Basically a degree for kids with rich parents who have money to spare, or someone that just isn't thinking about the future at all
have a brother in-law who makes 20K more than me with no education in manual labor job. have a brother with no education who makes almost same income as senior IT operations just 2 years into job fully remote. The world is upside down when someone with 4 year degree is making less than folks with no degree at all. not only that, their job interviews are nowhere near as stressful as an SE job interview.
I feel modern programmers should probably take up welding as a backup plan... welding is pretty enjoyable, pays well, and other mechanics respect you since you have a skill they generally don't have.
@@JohnnyThund3r dude it is different from country to country. In US, welding might pay 90k$ that doesn't mean all over the world.. In many countries welders earn less than 8k.
A “4 year degree” means absolutely nothing. College has become such a game now. Most students straight up cheat on their work and go just for the “college experience” while studying something that provides little economic value.
@@JohnnyThund3rthat’s what I’m getting into just recently signed up for a 36 week welding certification. I’m still going to continue my education through online classes and at least get my AA just because I enjoy the classes and the workload is light enough it’s a no brainer. However I’ve realized I don’t need a piece of paper to become successful with a white collar job that makes my depression exponentially worse.
Problem is many are trying to be an AI developer without learning any programming fundamentals or data science. Code has to not just work but also be efficient.
Been doing this for 15yrs and stumbled on this video, not only is it funny as shit, but god damn is this real.
I was applying for SE jobs, and then I had one particular coding test, where I realized "f**k this". I don't want to do this. Now I'm enrolled in a trade school LOL
Coding test: Reverse engineer NSA's EternalBlue in 20 minutes.
This is the best video I have seen the whole year! Dude, you are my hero! :D
As a CS major entering her 4th year who just recently got a taste of real software engineering work, this was so validating and refreshing to watch. I’m glad you aren’t wasting your hilarious comedic sense and visible social skills behind a screen!
I also recently found out about sales engineering and am curious about it (honestly any role that will allow me to socialize with real human beings on a day to day basis will do at this point) I’m new to your channel so I’m not sure if you’ve already done this, but I’d love to learn more about the field and how to make the shift.
I'm also entering in to CS 1st yr. R u enjoying 4th yr CS courses?
How many languages have u learned?
The minute you said on-call I got anxiety and I am not even Dev, I am support but know how to code and honestly some issues take so many hours to fix. I can't even imagine lol
Gosh, you struck one point that has been my constant nightmare over the recent years - my social skills are so degraded from this job, that I fail at simple day to day interactions with other people. Being in a dark room for the most part of the day and attempting to fix crappy code, makes me wish I worked at other field. I thought of changing the field, but I realise this is the one thing I am decent at and there's no way I am getting this salary at other job, assuming how poor my social skills are.
In BC Canada they are teaching coding in high school now. That pretty much signals the end of that career path.
Why the end??
Love your take on things, very funny, keep on creating
Bro you have no idea how much this video has helped me
Worked as an Infrastructure Engineer and a lot of this resonates. I wish I would have gotten stock options at the jobs I worked. Before I switched out of that role I joked about becoming a farm. Also your therapy comment is so so on point and more people need to hear it
I've always enjoyed doing the technology implementation. Spending my day in the "logs, code editors, and code docs" sounds like fun to me. Probably just my personality type and what interests me.
Also, my parents didn't push me into this career. It's something that I just got into on my own.
However, I do feel like it's a lot of time behind a computer screen. I get concerned about my posture, lack of social skills development, and it not moving my body around enough. Health wise, it doesn't feel like it's that good for.
Get ergonomics fixed to the max, it’s a thing number one that will impact huge part of wellbeing.
I have 7 months left before collecting social security. I am so looking forward to getting out of this job. It is just a paycheck. Yes, I had to do this job because of no social skills since I was a small child. If you are a person with no social skills. Figure it out. Tutor kids, get a sales job where you interact with people (not cashier or warehouse or delivery). ANYTHING where you are required to do a lot of talking and listening. It will only take a month or two to get good at it and it will be the best investment of 2 months in your life. You got to do it. Books, therapy, time alone not the answer.
5:39 is the best definition of software engineering I've ever heard
This RUclips channel is going to go far. You should think about products you’re going to come out with later on. Right now.
Great image
Very funny
Very natural and very likable on the camera.
It’s easy to feel like we know you.
@@babyzfpv1234 heck yeah brother I’ve got the roadmap with all that! Thanks for believing in me! I’m actually dropping some merch very soon
What's the alternative? I feel you dont know enough about other jobs
I studied mechanical engineering and switched to tech. Can confirm nearly all mechanical and traditional engineering are just as bad but happen to pay less in worse locations and less compatible coworkers.
Ive come across hundreds of jobs roles where i could get a decent gauge of how much fun it was. Nearly all were worse for me.
I view it like voting. Picking the least bad option. Fyi i still like software development wayy more than those jobs and even kinda like the work.
Most important thing is time pressure and stress. In a place that has reasonable timelines it becomes really low stress and pleasant.
How many years have u spent in tech?
How did u switch to CS??
Joined MS-CS or self taught??
Honestly, thanks for keeping it real. Most of these things are why I didn't want to go in this direction. The hype was so annoying.
When I was in university we had so many people going into Finance or Law areas because their parents wanted them to go. Most of them weren't able to like their job and a lot of them now do other stuff, but they lost 5-6+ years already. So it's not only in Tech. But I would agree that if you don't like SWE (or any other job) - change it, quit and find something else.
I went into tech and wish I did finance.
@@emilyau8023 I believe it's not too late to change it! I have a relative who use to be a military person, then were selling cloths. At the age of 40 he study Law by himself and became a very good lawyer in area of crimes
Love this video. So demotivating it heals my soul. So real
I guess Its one of those harsh truths that helps you in perspective
I needed to hear this today
I'm passionate about building software, but i guess i hate the industry (or at least i'm fed up with the company i'm currently working). Before joining this company, i used to be a freelancer, and it was the point in my life that i was the most satisfied career wise, but i didn't made as much money i'm doing now. At the beginning in this company i was really enjoying it, despite the pressure and how bad parts of the system are. But now it just feels stale, meeting after meeting, bug fix after bug fix, meaningless feature implementation. I still write software as hobby and i remember why i love this so much. So i decided to build my own products (wish me luck), since i'm not solving the problems i want to solve and i massively disagree with company processes
Been a software engineer for 25 years now. Most of my experience has been in investment banking. Went to an elite university (one of the best in the world). I have desi parents too. And you know what, Varun? I FUCKING HATE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING! And yes the software engineers are the ultimate bitches of any corporation which employs software engineers! I so hope my plan to escape comes to fruition in 2025 because I would literally do anything else than write code anymore. Love your videos and especially this one. Hope you make it as a RUclipsr/TikToker. Best of luck!
25 years now wtf
@@MartinMalmyWtf x 1000
@@talwaar007do you think I can make it even into one of the worst low income jobs in unknown company, willing to work for 5 dollars per hour or even for free and experience
Now to the big question: Which careers would you recommend to a young person now?
I am considering becoming a doctor or dentist. Those are the only careers with great pay, job security and the real possibility of becoming financially independent early in life. They are also easy to combine with entrepreneurship (there are plenty of options to only work a couple of days a week and still make enough). And you never have to worry about CV-gaps, career progression, networking, linkedin etc.
And you will be surrounded by social people and lots of beautiful women that will keep you happy.
I became an aerospace engineer, hated it.
Then started working as a SWE, I'm hating it.
I think the next step is to just give up on life...
😂😂 let's die , i think u won't hate it.
Lets develop more fancy skills whether its fitness, blogging, cooking, personal care items you name it, its good to have 1 unique skill but nowadays we require ourselves to expand to more diffrent things so we can be successful and happy!
I have kinda been wanting to get into a software engineer job but after watching this video and understanding how I would be treated, I don't think it would be worth it.
Swe jobs are where your business major friend has a app idea and you lose your job if you don’t make it in exactly the way he wants
i love your sense of humor man. i graduate in a year in cs (im a year late). but yeah i always hear about the endless rejections and desire to just give up from my friends. its sometimes a overrepresented and over emphasized job while being at top of the toughest job market. out here in nyc especially my man.
You're funny man I hope your channel grows
I am literally just commenting for the algo to get you some exposure. You deserve it, man. Its a crisp, concise and true video.
expectation: changing the world with the next innovative app
reality: feeling like the narrator from Fight Club when hes at his corporate job
Didn't expect to watch the whole video when I clicked but glad I did. Hilarious and you raise great points about being aware and finding that exit ramp or on ramp to something more fulfilling. You can go super deep in a domain, like cloud, AWS, DevOps, and absolutely hate that shit as well.
Hi Varun, for me and many others swe may be a way out of bad life circumstances. I am curious, do you feel secure about your finances? I mean if you were to have a health bill or anything like that you wouldn't stress over it right? Also thanks a lot for your insight, you're really down to earth and personable ESPECIALLY for an ex software engineer lmfaoo
I wish I could find something else to do that would pay my bills. It's so hard right now making a switch with everything being so expensive. I feel like I'm locked in at this point.
Your words are helpful man. As a new grad with a B.S. in CS & Physics I am finding it impossible to land an entry-level SWE job.
What r U thinking now to do??
MS-CS?
I completely agree with everything said. It's fascinating to see how different people are though. The weeks when I dont speak to another person are by far my favorite weeks. 😆 Also i dont mind moving buttons around. Sometimes for fun i calculate how much money a button cost the company and laugh all day about it with dog. I just funnel money into the things i actually love. Good times had by all.
If you love headaches and 24/7 problems while a deadline approaches... yeah
I hate how I am not given time to write good, high performance software. Zero focus on tests. Guys at the top want things quickly without any regards to quality.
Nice to meet you, Varun.
I've been at it for almost 2 decades and I've only actually enjoyed it once while working on one project where I was actually building something and coming up with new ideas and concepts. It was a pretty quick 2 year period and then I found my self back in the churn of just trying to keep things from falling over... and staring at logs. It feels so meaningless and pointless.
At one point I worked at one place for 10 years... then some stuff happened and I decided to make a change. You know... meet new people, learn new things, solve different problems, maybe actually build something for a change... yea not so much. I found exactly the same "problems" only with different variable names.
Most of what we do is read data from DB, show data to user, capture user input, write data to DB. I can throw a rock out the window and hit 3 other software companies doing exactly the same things...
Currently my biggest frustration with the industry is the fixations with developer experience and "how fast I can build something today". On the one hand I think it's great, but neither of those 2 things is what made my job terrible... it's always been what happens to a code base over 5, 10, or 15+ years. About 7 years ago I started work on how we could build software differently with the goal of good long term maintainability. Best 2 years of my career and I like to think that I've made some real progress, but it was all just... ignored... no one cared...
If it wasn't for the people who depend on me I would have told this industry to take it's BS and shove it years ago already.
I don't normally comment but I just want to say, thank you for keeping this SO real man. I think I did the worst of the "I suddenly wanna be a Software Engineer" thing. I joined a bootcamp (I know..starting to regret and paid off) and I'm slowly starting to realize this career path isn't for me. Of course I start thinking this at the very end of the program. Already peaking into other career paths. Anyways subbed!
Hits so hard after doing this for 12 years and burning out several times.
So what job would you recommend for people to learn? Software developers are still one of the most in demand job roles
Man you are too funny and this was so enjoyable. Gladly subscribed. I want to be friends. Shout out from Michigan.
This guy is actually insane 😂
Thanks for keeping it real bro. Can confirm. This job is a great fit for natural computer nerds who in another era would've been into engineering or philosophy. Sounds unrelated but isn't really... same kind of bookish stereotype. Issues really occur because the hype draws in people who absolutely don't fit this mold.
damn, this is the most relatable video I've ever watched in 2024. I was so annoyed, numb, bored, and stressed out, even while earning the highest paycheck I've ever had in my life this summer as an swe intern. Thank you for speaking out the feelings from the button of my heart.
This is so real about engineering in general omg if I knew about more career paths when I was in high school I would have unquestionably chosen something completely different
Gosh this literally happened to me. I ended up going into a different field and am so much happier. Thank you for making this video and you are hilarious!
U Switch SWE to music?
1. losing social skills - this is too real. There's a point that I've experienced multiple times when you're plugged in for several days when everyone else starts looking like absolute idiots, just for existing.
2. on-call - well you joined amazon mate. out of all places, the worst place for work-life balance even for software engineers. It comes down to how the org is structured.
3. real world problems - bam! welcome to real world :D almost 90% of the code you write is to enable someone somewhere buy something useless. You rarely get to work on a project that has real impact and then it's guaranteed that the leaders in charge are fucking idiots, so it gets mismanaged anyways.
4. you being the bitch - 100%. this job is only prestigious to your family and friends (immigrant so my child is going to go through some tough OKR meetings). At work, you're the sub with 100 different masters
but for real, sw engineering is really for people who enjoy it. if you don't enjoy digging through to an obscure cause of a problem that has impacted 0.001% of your userbase you're going to suffer in varying degrees. It's the same for almost every job that needs skill. They have their ups and downs but you need to have the passion to enjoy the wider picture. If you don't, then this job is not for you. Good on you to find your passion, and I have a friend who's just like you (switched to doing more sales work than swe). Context though, SWE is still a very lucky place to be out of all the jobs considered, at least for me.
(Also most software developers fail to grasp the engineering discipline and then you get losers who think why Java exists when JavaScript can do everything. They fail to see beyond their own feet. Main reason I moved on to Cloud and architecture)
My social skills and ability to talk to people has definitely improved being a software engineer. Communication is a highly important skill at my company. Could just be a cultural thing from company to company
I've been coding a lot lately, trying to build a video game, I love it, but that's because I'm programing what I wanna program! Sure I could sit there and program some backend framework for some fang company (And I may end up doing that someday) but that would be a Job I would be doing strictly for the money, defiantly not because I love it. Game programing I actually love because I'm accomplishing what I wanna accomplish with my life with ever bug I crush, and it just feels so rewarding to get this stuff to work and see my creations come to life!
The caché this field once had faded a long time ago. The current job market and AI are the epitaph for whatever prestige it once held. And it's all for the best.
I like your video so much!! you told exactly how I felt for 7 years!
Legendary video
This video made me laugh out loud!! Love it!! Although I made the switch from sciences to software engineering and I'd say it was so worth it! I barely made money as a science major but switching to do programming full time was the best decision for me. I love looking at logs.
@@roosterfloss758 logs love when you look at them
What was your science major?
@@ruleaus7664 biochem
I switched from biomedical science to IT because of the rising cost of dental school. I hated the biomed classes and now I'm second-guessing IT because of the job market in tech right now. I know I don't want to be a software engineer, so I think CS is out of the equation. IT and Cyber are weird fields because anyone can get a bootcamp and start working in it but the degree is so much harder than other majors like business. I feel like people were too hard on business majors in high school.... what are your thoughts Varun?
I got into software engineering because I loved computer science. At a certain point I realized what I really enjoyed is working with people so I transitioned into more management / team leadership roles. You have to figure out what really motivates you at an atomic level personally.
Just stumbled across your channel yesterday with the Amazon video. Great channel man! Subscribing now
My software systems engineer friends who worked as outside contractors made bank and detested every minute. They planned to cash out asap and become real estate developers in resort locations flipping rentals and it has worked out very well