Advice for New Software Developers
Don't forget the human element
Nick, a high school student in Germany asked me a few questions for a school project about interviewing someone in a profession you want to join. Here are his questions:
1. What exactly is the difference between a software engineer and a software architect?
2. What are your daily, everyday tasks as a software architect/ engineer
3. How did aspects of your job influence your lifestyle? (Was there ever anything you wanted to do in your free time but were unable to, due to your job)
4. What are parts of your job that were especially hard or easy for you?
5. What were things you saw other people struggle with?
6. Is it easy to advance your career in IT in the long term or is it slow with lots of personal sacrifices?
7. What are major differences between studying for a degree in software engineering and the actual reality of working in said field?
And yes, I smoke and drink during my video so he can’t show it in class. You gotta do the work, bub.
I dunno if Nick reads this, but he should ask someone from Germany too.
Hire and fire culture isn't the same in Germany as in the US, it's harder to get laid off.
So he might not get laid off his whole life. Still, it's good to be prepared to get another job, if only for the fact that if you complain like hell, you can actually switch, and find out if the previous company was actually bad or if you should learn that no company is perfect, and you just have to deal with some things.
As for a Masters and advancing the managerial track, in big companies, this is most certainly the case.
In small to mid companies, you will have managers who started out just with vocational training, never visited a University, and just advanced within. The whole vocational training system is somethign Germany has, and there is no real analogue in the US. If you want to go more on the practical side, it can be more suitable to you compared to going to Uni, where you learn a lot of theory and stuff. Of course, you still can do your masters later part time, I know a few people who do this/did this.
As for doing coding in your free time, I find it more beneficial to read books on theory and concepts. Archtiecture, design patterns, clean code, testing, etc...
There will be certain phrases that people test during interviews, and if you never heard of SOLID or clean code, that will close some doors for you.
You shit the bed with your unprofessional analysis about the pallets of electric chainsaws sent to the suffering and abandoned people in Appalachia. it's time to own it and take it back.