If you aren’t becoming a SWE you are probably waisting your time | Hacker News Reader

If you aren’t becoming a SWE you are probably waisting your time

4 pointsTerntUpAcademy8 comments

It has been discussed on here before but if you aren’t making every attempt possible to become a software engineer, the amount of money and work/life balance you are forfeiting is going to far outweigh any other opportunity you’re pursuing.

If you’re in college, there is a good chance you should switch majors or at least figure out how to increase your chances of landing a dev job. (Maybe something like BIT?)

As someone who attempted to become a SWE for a few years now and failed miserably I have to say it is gut wrenching to see most people around me making absurds amount of money while I’m still stuck in the learning phase. But I hope that will chance soon.

If you can live knowing you have the opportunity to easily make well over 6 figures and work from anywhere but decide to do something else, power to you. I genuinely hope that in 10 years you have that same mentality but there’s a good chance you won’t.

TLDR: investing the majority of your time and money into becoming a software engineer provides the greatest return on money and work/life balance by an almost unfathomable margin.

Don’t give up if it’s what you want to do. It took me about 10 years to make the switch from IT/network guy and another 12 being a dev to become a director of eng.

Btw, I’m hiring Python inclined people with strong Linux and distributed system experience to work on rockets. If this interests folks please get in touch.

I would guess that it is not so easy to become one (since you failed at it till now), and, even after you succeed at that, the "easily make well over 6 figures" seems to me like being a tad bit optimistic.

Side question: Is correct English spelling required to become a SWE?

I don’t agree with this. Once it starts to click a bit, if you enjoy it, it’s not hard to make progress. Build things that excite you and keep at it. Don’t just study for the sake of studying - create things you want to use. Take the leap before you think you’re ready (waiting was my mistake) and apply for things that might be challenging or you feel you’re under qualified for.

(Ps. I’m a native English speaker and a terrible speller)

Sure, but there are three steps:

1) join the SWE "club"

2) make progress

3) get 6 figures pay

I don't think that they can be "easily" reached, particularly the third one will likely be difficult/stressful/etc.

Makes sense.

A friend of mine just confirmed the company he is working for is hiring someone with 3-5 years of experience and no collage degree for a senior dev role for 150k+

Haha most likely. I can’t believe I missed that in the title.

TLDR: Keep telling yourself that.

If you can program a computer, you can get a job. If you can't program a computer, you're probably not very interested in programming computers, because if you were interested you couldn't have avoided learning it.

I can only imagine the excruciating misery it would be to program computers for a living and not enjoy it, it'd be absolute torture. The worst combination in that case, of difficult and boring.

- A SWE

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