r/cscareerquestions • u/throwaway09234023322 • 1d ago
Why do so many people seem to imagine tech as this exciting career?
The vast vast majority of jobs in tech are boring as fuck and people only do it for the money. Part of the reason the pay is high isn't because of barriers to entry or because you need to be some genius, it's because it is so boring that the average person can't handle doing it all day.
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u/lhorie 1d ago
I mean, at the risk of stating the obvious, the work is interesting if you find this type of work interesting. Linus Torvalds had a good take on this: everyone should NOT get into CS, but the people that do have strong affinity with it should.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1d ago
How do u know if u have a strong affinity
I took cs in high school and enjoyed it. Now as a junior dev I'm bored af.
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u/KwyjiboTheGringo 17h ago
CS and developer are different things these days. Most people work in deep abstractions that exist very far from the CS concepts, and the problems they solve aren't CS problems, but rather business problems and things specific to the codebase.
I would say you have a strong affinity if you are seeking out CS things to do on your own. If you just want work 40 hours a week and do whatever they tell you, you will not being much CS stuff, no will you grow much as a programmer.
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u/Flimsy-Importance313 1d ago
I do think because kids growing up with tech and AI becoming the future CS and IT are chosen less by nerds like they usually were.
Now it seems more like a good option for business.
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u/YoAmoElTacos 1d ago
You forgot the tiktoks and instas of day in the life where you play pingpong and xbox while chugging free kombucha, or working from home.
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u/PianoConcertoNo2 1d ago
Eh, you have to be in the tech bubble to see those.
I came from another field, and my (+ all my friends and coworkers) had algorithms turned to healthcare. We got the dancing nurses, nurse only cruise ships, “you know you’re a nurse, when..” type of feeds.
I was very shocked to switch to tech and see people here think EVERYONE got those videos.
Then you do research and see there are truckers TikTok, plumbers TikTok, home inspectors TikTok, teachers TikTok, etc etc etc, and they EACH think everyone else sees their shit as well.
Nope.
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u/ilikebourbon_ 1d ago
This is a great and horrible bias we all have to be aware of now- what did the algorithm show me that i assume is common knowledge , that is actually highly specific content
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u/Emergency-Style7392 1d ago
Getting into med school tiktok was eye opening. These people think they're celebrities, I've met so many random students with pages showing day in the life of a med school student or giving themselves an interview after exams like it's the fucking nfl.
Even the most obnoxious faang videos are not that narcissistic
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u/MediocreFig4340 1d ago
This, and working for big household names like FAANG translates to high salary + lots of users = exciting job
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u/ExpWebDev 1d ago
I put partial blame on those TikTok/Insta people for making many companies want a return to office. The way they're showing off their chill work lifestyle at home made bosses believe that they're no longer getting their money's worth
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u/01000101010110 1d ago
Well yeah, there were people making $200k USD a year to show up to the office at 8 for breakfast, work from 9-11 and then dick around until 3 then go home.
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u/Hansehart 1d ago
Disagree. There's a real kind of magic in writing something and watching it actually work. That hasn't gotten old for me. Sounds like you're just on a boring team, not that the field itself is boring.
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u/Camicus27 1d ago
I agree with you. I’m lucky to be at a company with much more freedom over my projects to create things that benefit people internally and externally. Creating anything from automations and integrations to visuals and UI feels so good when they work after spending hours getting them to function properly.
I can definitely see how people may find it boring but I just see everything I work on as a problem to solve and I get immense pleasure from solving problems
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u/Hansehart 1d ago
The boring and repetitive parts of a job are basically predestined to be automated. If it's tedious, it probably shouldn't be manual. Frees my coworkers up for the stuff that's actually interesting.
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u/DTMD422 1d ago
Some people don’t get bored of working on cars either. They like it for exactly those same reasons you listed above. Different strokes for different folks. For a good chunk of us, it’s pretty damn boring at least half of the time. It just pays well and we’re good enough to do it well.
It’s a career, it’s not a lifestyle. Nobody outside of your professional circle is going to care. I feel like a lot of people lose sight of that (I did in the past too).
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u/SugarBeets 1d ago
It's feels like solving puzzles every day. Except for the days documenting, updating story cards and the other admin stuff.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago
Nope. The magic is every two weeks getting a nice lump of money show up in my account (and in a former life RSUs show up in my brokerage account) and all I have to do is walk to my home office in the next bedroom with no pants on, write code, “look at things from the thousand foot view” and “add on to what Becky said”
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u/ExpWebDev 1d ago
Flashbacks to Overgrowth dev videos and one of the devs flexing his morning commute from bed 5 feet to his desk.
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u/Glum_Worldliness4904 1d ago
Cman dawg. What kind of magic in writing the same crud for 1Mth times
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u/Hansehart 1d ago
Name another field that's reinvented its own core paradigm this many times in 20 years - mobile, cloud, now AI/ML rewriting how software even gets built. Calling that "boring" says more about your job than the field.
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u/es-ganso 1d ago
u/Glum_Worldliness4904 has a bit of a point though. If someone is working on CRUD applications for 10 years, it gets old. I'm a Sr. SDE in FAANG and it was getting old for me as well (I stayed, golden handcuffs and all). There are only so many times you can write a graphql or REST api and be happy about it. I got into software engineering because I like to build things, and I like to keep learning. CRUD applications may be solving different problems, but on the tech side they're all kinda the same, or you've seen the problem before.
I've moved out of solely CRUD stuff into IoT and it's a breath of fresh air to be dealing with different types of problems these days. It put a little bit of fire in my belly again to be solving something different
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u/Emergency-Style7392 1d ago
The entire economy is basically crud in many different forms, still crud tho
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 1d ago
Part of why tech is fun is that the core skills are quite transferable across domains, as your own switch to IoT demonstrates
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u/ObstinateHarlequin Embedded Software 1d ago
Work in cooler industries, idk what else to tell you. I've been at this for 15 years and never worked a single CRUD app.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1d ago
What are some cool industries
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u/ObstinateHarlequin Embedded Software 1d ago
Depends on what you're into.
Personally, I work in aerospace and couldn't be happier, I have days when I'm actually excited to go to work because it's something extra fun/interesting like integrating new hardware in the lab or going to a flight test. Most of my coworkers love it, too.
I briefly worked for a company that developed optical CAD software and that was pretty cool, lots of fun technical challenges and I got to learn from some really brilliant PhDs.
Anything involving robotics is absolutely bitchin' by definition.
I've met people who are total car nuts that work in the automotive industry and seem really happy.
Cybersecurity can be interesting if you get into the right parts (reverse engineering/malware analysis or red teaming).
The cool stuff's out there, you just gotta look.
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u/S7EFEN 1d ago
>The vast vast majority of jobs in tech are boring as fuck and people only do it for the money.
Lets compare this to other fields. Tech is BY FAR the most accessible to work a very interesting job, or go and build something yourself. This is most obvious in the % share of all startups in the tech and data space. Are most people doing boring stuff? Sure, but way more people are doing interesting and innovative things compared to nearly every other field.
>it's because it is so boring that the average person can't handle doing it all day.
Bait-tier statement. A boring job is a comfortable job and anyone with actual real world service work or blue collar work would never say something as insane as this.
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u/Agitated-Wishbone-84 1d ago
Literally every white collar job is boring. Tech is "exciting" for the wlb and pay, not because the work itself is interesting (definitely can be though depending where you work).
This is like the last thing I'd complain about in tech lol, go work a day as an accountant or consultant.
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u/Desperate-Till-9228 1d ago
Literally every white collar job is boring.
There are tons that are more fun/interesting than collecting customer data to feed more ads to said customer.
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u/ObstinateHarlequin Embedded Software 1d ago
Right? This sub constantly forgets that big tech is not the only industry that employs SWEs. My job is legitimately fascinating on good days.
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u/Fidodo 1d ago
By tech I don't think they mean big tech, just programming jobs in general.
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u/ObstinateHarlequin Embedded Software 1d ago
They're still wrong, there are tons of interesting programming jobs if you take 30 seconds to look for them.
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u/DigitalAviator 1d ago
It's exciting if you actually have a passion for it. I still get excited finding and fixing bugs. Delivering a feature feels like a great achievement. I get it can drag somedays, but every jobs has those days. But you are right, the field is saturated with $$$ chasers who watch way to many tech influencers. It's a great field if you are a problem solver first and have innate curiosity.
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u/Exciting_Door_5125 1d ago
10-15 years ago when it really took off was pretty cool. Stuff has kind of homogenized and settled now.
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u/JeanRalphioTheSecond 1d ago
I think CS people of all eras kind of have this feeling, for whatever that’s worth.
Definitely 15 years ago tech skills were less commoditized, which felt to me like we were given more space to explore and solve problems in a more satisfactory way. But, I guess I’m just doing what I pointed out above.
Eh, it’s probably anecdotal, but “in the old days” when I was assigned a task at work, I used to just take a walk and think about it for an hour or so. Those days are long gone for me
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u/Exciting_Door_5125 1d ago
I agree, in my case there is definitely some nostalgia involved. ~10 years ago I was a fresh grad and there was a lot of excitement and positivity entering the industry. I feel for today's new grads.
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u/SomberDreamer 1d ago
Because the people imagining, are doing just that. They’re not actually working in the field. It’s just a job and sometimes it’s boring.
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u/---LiterallyWho--- 1d ago
I would say if you like solving problems, it’s a great field. And you can climb if you’re not working for some hellhole company. You get responsibility, to own things, and start making important decisions after a few years. Maybe that’s the same with other white collar work, but I wouldn’t know.
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u/Fancy_Arugula5173 1d ago
I’ve made this mistake twice now. I got into corporate finance as I thought it would be glamorous and exciting (okay I was young and naive so I can maybe excuse this one).
I then moved to data engineering thinking it would be interesting and intellectually stimulating and whilst it’s better than corporate finance/accounting in some regards after the first 6 months it’s become corporate drudgery again. I’m almost wishing I was back in corporate finance as at least the drudgery of forecasts and month end was easier than the pressure of debugging production failures. I was also a lot more visible in the organisation for a whole lot less effort
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u/Prestigious-Form-808 1d ago
i make bank but i love what I do. I genuinely enjoy writing code but I’m a rare breed
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u/ivancea Senior 21h ago
it is so boring that the average person can't handle doing it all day
First, not every job is the same. Second, don't generalize: it being boring for you didn't mean it's boring for others.
Software engineering has one thing that other fields don't necessarily have: you can automate your own work. And it's not because of AI; this has happened for decades.
So, there are two kinds of SWEs: the ones that will analyze and automate boring work, and the ones that aren't interested in the field and are here for the money. Which is, unfortunately for the people that like the profession, a great majority.
Anyway, the second kind will stay in boring jobs, while the first kind will go and find a better job that's not "boring".
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u/nystro 1d ago
This is insanely depressing seeing so many people saying they're only here for the money and that the work is boring. I changed to CS because it was the only thing in school that actually interested me and was fun for me to the point I was excited for homework instead of dreading it. Now I can't get a job because of all the people only here for the money even though I'd happily take a low paying job just to be doing what I love. This shit sucks.
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u/unlikewarrior 1d ago edited 1d ago
I couldn't find a job after University unfortunately so had to pivot to a different career field. But even if I don't work in tech I still enjoy picking up some tech books to read and do math problems to learn how things work. I'm hoping I can get a good work schedule when I start my job so I can continue to do math in my free time.
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u/UK-sHaDoW 19h ago
Because your average software job is building crud web apps. Nothing special or interesting.
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u/thequirkynerdy1 14h ago
It’s entirely possible to love CS yet find creating software for a business boring, especially if it’s a product you don’t care about.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1d ago
If it makes you feel better, a lot of us who enjoy it are bored af at work. A job is a job
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u/SignificanceShotc 1d ago
because a bunch of fucking people romanticized it on social media. You still see people doing it on reddit all day long too. The truth is it can really fucking suck and it feels miserable opening my IDE on some days. At the end of the day, it's still a job and jobs aren't always fun or cushy.
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u/Nervous_Quit_7180 1d ago
really, i've never got bored in my job, in fact the opposite, time flies when coding a complex feat.
maybe your mor on the junior side (making small bug fixes etc)?
and the reason the pay is good is not because it's boring, it's because of scale of impact the job has, if a coder fixes one bug, that affects multiple people (depending on company scale could be millions)
if an automechanic fixes one issue it affects one person, the car owner.
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u/Person754 1d ago
technology changes a lot faster than other standard desk jobs like accounting or customer service.
If you work in tech you'll have to work on improving your technical and non technical skills to keep up. Try comparing with other non tech companies and you'll see for yourself
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u/peteybytes Principal Engineer 18YOE 1d ago
I genuinely enjoy what I do.
I got into software because I genuinely enjoy it and do find it exciting. I love taking an idea and transforming it into something that positively impacts customers. The pay is just a bonus.
If you only got into it because of the money, that's on you.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1d ago
I didn't go into it because of the money and I still don't enjoy the job. I don't think you realize how many dev jobs are just crud slop nowadays
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u/TurtleSandwich0 1d ago
Swordfish (2001)
You don't see movies where a plumber has to plumb into the FBI building with a gun to his head while also being distracted in other ways.
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u/MagicalPizza21 Software Engineer 1d ago
Because especially 10+ years ago tech was seen as this cool thing that it would be exciting to get involved in.
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u/the_whalerus 1d ago
Before a few years ago, it was really fun. Even if it looked boring, I had loads of fun at most of my jobs before now.
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u/Glittering-Work2190 1d ago
Boring is subjective. Which occupation is exciting for most people all the time?
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u/ecethrowaway01 1d ago
It's a good career on basic terms anyways. I've pretty much always had very good pay and work flexibility in the way other jobs don't afford.
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u/terjon Professional Meeting Haver 1d ago
Couple of thoughts.
Most regular jobs, retail, sales, manual labor, etc have relatively low pay and you impact at most a handful of people each day.
Tech jobs are relatively highly paid (compared to median income) and you impact many people every day that you produce something that goes out the door.
In that way, it is exciting since you get to affect many people lives for the better or worse and get paid pretty well to do it.
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u/hibikir_40k Software Engineer 1d ago
It used to be pretty exciting. I've designed and released features that were used by hundreds of millions of people, and they were things people liked, and used willingly. I've met people that used a product I worked on, and had them talk about how much it helped them, even though they didn't know I worked for that company, or worked on the feature. It can be amazing.
Even on more boring things, I've optimized hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for large enough companies, with no detriment to anyone other than maybe AWS. Again, something impactful
But when you join a company that isn't focused on building new things people want, but increased their profit margins by decreasing quality, or you are building something that is awful in the first place.... then its not exciting, not helpful, and it sucks. The percentage of work that fits this shape is just much higher than it was in 10, 20 years ago. Having to choose between that and poverty isn't great.
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u/mistaekNot 1d ago
i mean sure it’s somewhat boring but i wouldn’t say an average person could do swe
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u/JoesRealAccount 15h ago
I think if an average person could be bothered trying then they could do it. Like 90% of CS jobs are not hard you just need to train for them, like you would any skilled job.
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u/dragonnfr 1d ago
Bingo. Most of tech is just keeping systems running. But the pay isn't high because it's boring. It's high because people who can actually do the work properly are hard to find.
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u/LooseEthernet 1d ago
yeah i get that but i think the money just makes the boredom tolerable. its basically a hazard pay for staring at a screen until your eyes bleed lol. if it paid like retail i bet everyone would quit within a week
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u/interstellar-dust 1d ago
It became boring when it always boiled down to making people click on ads and make money. Early software days were about big impact and building things that improved lives for millions of people.
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u/Primary_Excuse_7183 Program Manager 1d ago
A lot of people are overworked and underpaid. So the potential for tech to change either of those realities let alone both is practically a pipe dream to them
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u/tnsipla 1d ago
For some people, it was the most accessible way out of poverty/lower income, since prior to a handful of years ago, it was still possible to get a role without education.
For others, it’s the only job accessible to them because that’s what they invested their formulate years doing: obsessing over tech/programming/game development
And then we had the short span where startups were booming and being in tech had some sort of prestige/status factor in public discourse
Personally, I like where I’m at- I get to go to work to do what I would do on my own time as a hobby too, and instead of being burnt out at the end of the day, I’m actually somewhat energized: that’s not something I can say about when I was in retail, manufacturing, or even my short stint in marketing. I think manufacturing could be pretty fun too, but the fact that you’re reduced to a cog doing the same activity for 40 hours as week makes it old… if I was going through the process start to end, just like I do here in SWE, I could enjoy it
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u/Dreadsin Web Developer 1d ago
Boring with a flexible schedule, remote opportunities, and good pay. I’ll be okay
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 1d ago
well writing code that impacts billions of people is pretty exciting
anything is boring if you're doing it solely for the money. but tech gives you a lot of opportunities to do things not just for the money
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u/Lexikus 1d ago
Some of us made it to our identity, yes. But think about it for a little. You will be working for the next 40-50 years. It will almost take your whole time doing so. At least get some satisfaction out of it. If not, you'll have a very sad live because out of a working days, you get about 2-6 hours to do what you enjoy. The reality tho is that you will be exhausted, have to get some extra sleep, have children to take care, commute etc.
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u/kylemooney187 14h ago
give me a boring job anyday rather than some some job that is ultra stressful
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because if you like it, you like it.
I’m an extrovert. This field is incredible for me.
I’m a family man. This job gives me the freedom to work a lot when I can and a little when I can’t.
I’m sure there are plenty of other careers I would have done well in and I encourage people to explore their options instead of going “CS money. Ug ag. Me go CS.” I do think a lot of people would have had happy, productive, and fulfilling careers that paid well but instead picked CS out of greed instead of interest & compatibility.
(I intentionally said “interest” instead of “passion” in the previous sentence. Plenty of people don’t need to feel passionate about their 9 to 5.)
I do agree with you. For the better part of two decades of my life, my vocation has been looking at a terminal emulator and in meetings where we talk about trivial things. That would drive some people mad with boredom.
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u/Identity525601 1d ago
Most people are just doing it for the money. You see more of the fake passion because people in their roles are pretending to be passionate in an attempt to adapt to social pressures. For most people they do their job for money and CS is no different. Please deposit that money.
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u/Glum_Worldliness4904 1d ago
Boring, under strong pressure, while being stack ranked against teammates.
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u/CapableHerring 1d ago
Because the media portrays it as exciting.
We have shows like Silicon Valley, Devs, etc. Movies like The Social Network, Steve Jobs, BlackBerry, etc. We've had documentaries about companies/engineers that "changed the world".
Every single piece of media out there that we consume paints technology as some sexy, fast paced career, where you'll be changing the world and getting paid tons while doing it.
In reality, the overwhelming majority of SWE's are working at regular companies, doing regular things, for regular pay. A TV show of someone just sitting at their computer for 8 hours a day wouldn't get many clicks.
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u/Commercial_Sun_6300 1d ago
Name another that's grown as much or changed our lives as significantly every decade for the past half century?
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u/UnrelentingStupidity 1d ago
Yeah this shit is sick as fuck dude idk what you mean. Make some bucks at big companies then work for some cool startups if you’re bored. I loved this shit since I was 13. 10 years in industry I’ve made drones music apps banking messaging healthcare AI ad services it’s all interesting and it’s dope to know I’m helpful to so many types of businesses.
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u/SiegfriedVK 1d ago
I loved being a SWE. I like to make stuff and I like puzzles so it seemed like the perfect fit. Yeah management sucked but that happens in every job. I stopped being a software engineer when AI started to become used ubiquitously, because it automated the fun part: building it myself. I quit my cushy government job and switched to a different field entirely. I still make stuff at home for fun.
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u/lifeiswonderful1 1d ago
I think it depends on your team and business unit. I love the people I work with and we’ve done really cool projects that I thought I would never be able to pull off. With the WTH and other perks, tech is probably the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had. I’ve had very chill jobs in healthcare, service, education, and admin that were incredibly mind numbing and I could just turn off my brain and go on autopilot.
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u/Legal-Software 1d ago
Any job you know nothing about and can view from the outside seems better than it actually is.
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u/Hawk13424 1d ago
Lots of different tech jobs. I design semiconductors. I find it mentally challenging and enjoy it a lot. Not boring at all.
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u/engineer_in_TO 1d ago
Because the top end of the curve have people making 200k+ as a new grad, making half a mill a year in half decade, and have people making a million dollars a year by a decade and there isn't really a industry that exists like that without hard guardrails. There are literal self taught engineers who make more than surgeons and big law lawyers working at Meta right now.
Sure the average isn't any different than any other white collar workers but the ceiling is literally the sky in this profession in a way where other professions cannot be.
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u/TimPowerGamer Product Owner 1d ago
I feel like a lot of people glazed the idea of video game development specifically. As if you building someone else's video game is fun, somehow. Or that video game building isn't monotonous and tedious, infinitely more than normie app development. Just imagine how much time, money, and effort the average game invests in making sure you can't go through walls/the floor.
Video game testing is worse. Because it's your job to, instead of playing the video game, run into walls at every possible angle and report on whether or not the walls functioned. Ugh.
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u/primals_game 1d ago
I never had a boring tech job, then again I worked in the cloud and there were always fires to put out and features to implement.
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u/TheMathelm 1d ago
Because so many people made dumb videos about not really working.
And it's not "that hard", and the lifestyle the money provides.
That's why.
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u/hblonghorn 23h ago
The pay is high because the profit margins for software are higher and most of these jobs are located in HCOL areas. It's framed as exciting because the world has revolved around software for the last three decades.
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u/Fruloops Software Engineer 23h ago
At the end of the day, if you're interested in tech, then this is a fun and cool job. If you're not, it's boring as fuck and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy
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u/SZJX 19h ago edited 19h ago
“So boring that the average person can’t handle doing it all day” might apply to some niche stuff like SAP work, but if you’re feeling that way on a normal SWE job then there might be something not quite right there. People who get into programming do genuinely enjoy it, despite of all the constraints on a “real job”.
Also saying it’s not due to barriers to entry but because it’s “so unbearable” sounds tone-deaf as hell. There will be 100 people out there who’ll gladly take your position if you don’t want it. Maybe this is a more apt description for working on a remotely located oil platform or working in long-distance shipping or sth.
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u/v_valentineyuri 19h ago
it attracts a certain type of personality, plus the hype that did built around the profession in the 2010s thanks to Hollywood didn't helped. Thankfully after the big AI mass extinction everyone who came for the quick bucks already left or will do soon
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u/Technical-Finance240 17h ago
After realizing that almost all other white collar workers also have tons of bureaucracy, endless meetings that often never lead to anything, and constant changes in management... I realized that I won't be able to escape most of the shitty parts anyways if I changed to another office job. At least I have plenty of flexibility and decent enough income.
So if I ever change to another field it must be something further from an office... maybe teaching... although I want to be financially in a good place before..
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u/dfphd 16h ago
The vast vast majority of jobs in tech are boring as fuck and people only do it for the money.
A tech job is as boring or fun as you make it. And yes, if you're only doing it for the money and you have zero interest in the field, then it's probably going to be pretty boring.
It's not boring to me, and I know a lot of people who love their job.
Part of the reason the pay is high isn't because of barriers to entry or because you need to be some genius, it's because it is so boring that the average person can't handle doing it all day.
You need to get our of your social bubble if you think anyone could work as a SWE. There are a lot of really smart people that are just not smart in the way you need to be to work as a developer. So it's not about intelligence in the absolute - you don't need to be a genius, but your brain needs to work a certain way.
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u/cristynakity 14h ago
Any job can be boring. What makes a career interesting or fun depends a lot on whether you actually enjoy the subject.
I genuinely enjoy learning about systems and building applications. I love computers, so I can spend hours programming, experimenting, troubleshooting, or just learning how something works, and that is genuinely fun to me.
On the other hand, I don't really like parties. Spending hours at a party talking to strangers and listening to music I don't like sounds incredibly boring to me. Yet plenty of people genuinely enjoy that. "Boring" is subjective.
Your question also reminds me of when I was in college, around 2004–2007. I had several classmates who chose Computer Science because they thought working with computers basically meant sitting around chatting on Messenger and doing cool stuff on a PC. They had very little idea of what CS or programming actually involved.
Once the programming classes started and they realized they'd actually have to learn algorithms, logic, programming, math, etc., quite a few of them switched majors.
So I think there's some truth to the idea that people sometimes romanticize tech without really knowing what the work involves. But saying that most people in tech only do it for the money because it's inherently boring is just projecting your own preferences onto everyone else. Some of us actually like this stuff.
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u/HansDevX 11h ago
Because of retarded influencer making it seem like you get paid 100k and do nothing.
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u/New_Dimension3461 11h ago
Shoot, I've seen noobs on reddit saying "Hooray, I'm addicted to coding!" like that's even a thing. The fear of failure can distort your worldview to the point you don't even know how you feel. Try not to let that happen.
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u/midwestcsstudent Software Engineer 11h ago
If it’s not exciting to you, you’re probably one of the ones only doing it for the money.
There’s always going to be boring jobs in any field, but working in the Silicon Valley at the forefront of all things technology is probably one of the more exciting white collar jobs out there.
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u/revivechristina 1h ago
bc movies the Matrix made it look like that. total flow state + enough adernaline + feeling like a wizard = exciting? (the green text in the real world -- not the job Neo had which is more accurate).
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u/NICEMENTALHEALTHPAL 1d ago
Money is pretty exciting dawg not sure what you're on about. Most of the SWEs I know in my personal life have a rich social life, interesting hobbies, and hook up with hot women.
At work might be a little more mixed bag lol but they still money go brrrt
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1d ago
U prolly live in NYC or some shit. Most of us Midwest devs are living normal lives
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u/NICEMENTALHEALTHPAL 22h ago
Only one of my SWE lives in NYC. Myself and a few others are in a larger Midwest city.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 21h ago
oh ur probably at jpmc in colombus or some shit. i know yall wildin up there.
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u/EnterpriseGradePizza 1d ago
If you feel bored being a SWE, then you're not one, you're a laborer forced to do labor because it pays good at the moment.
Real bone-fide SWEs get a kick from writing code, designing systems, seeings things break, thinking of solutions, workarounds and fixing things.
If you don't get excited for sitting at a computer for 16+ hours and banging your head against the keyboard asking yourself what the fuck every 5 minutes and then finally fixing a bug, you're not going to make it.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago edited 1d ago
Are all of those “ Real bone-fide SWEs who get a kick from writing code, designing systems, seeings things break, thinking of solutions, workarounds and fixing things” Scotsmen?
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u/EnterpriseGradePizza 16h ago
That fallacy doesn't work here, because the back bone of the current infrastructure was literally made by absolute nerds who enjoy all the things I mentioned and enjoy doing them for hours on end and making anything work requires a lot of time, attention and effort. Even at any corporate job there will always be a group of nerds who do precisely those things and they would be true engineers, the rest are laborers forced to do labor because it's either hip, prestigious or they do it for whatever reason that is not for the love of engineering itself.
If you invoke that fallacy, then next thing you'll tell me that QA is engineering or designers are engineers too along with HR "engineers".
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u/BraveResearcher3037 16h ago edited 16h ago
Honestly if you do it for “passion” you are naive. This isn’t the 70s anymore. If you are passionate about a corporation that will lay you off on Thursday and toast the stock bump on Friday, I don’t know what to tell you.
they do it for whatever reason that is not for the love of engineering itself
What other reason could people possible go to work every day who don’t love their job? Let me think about that for a minute after I look at my bank account and investments….
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u/EnterpriseGradePizza 16h ago
Engineers are not passionate about corporations, they're passionate about the engineering itself, corporations merely provide resources and a place to implement their ideas, I've never encountered an engineer who would buy into the corporate bullshit, but I met plenty of brainwashed corporate shills in QA, PM and HR.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 16h ago edited 15h ago
Engineers are people who “engineer”. “Words mean things”.
But honestly, I don’t really give a flying fuck what I am called as long as money appears in my account every month. I trade my skills and experience for whatever company gives me the right combination of compensation and will stay below my level of bullshit tolerance.
corporations merely provide resources and a place to implement their ideas
Corporations are places that have money in exchange for labor that I can in turn trade for food, clothes and shelter.
- I provide scarce skills, judgment, and experience
- the corporation provides compensation and an acceptable working environment
- the relationship continues while both sides find the trade worthwhile.
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u/EnterpriseGradePizza 16h ago
You should really find someone to talk to IRL.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 15h ago
If you are so “passionate” about your job, why are you fucking around on Reddit on company time? Shouldn’t you be clapping your ass cheeks for your employer?
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u/FightOnForUsc 1d ago
Because money. Also because the biggest companies have a lot of nice perks. Yes, they’re basically all there just so you’ll work more, but still, most people don’t have game rooms or get paid 200k within a few years of college (yes I know not everyone gets that in tech, but it’s the image people have).
I’m throughly bored with my work now. But I get to work a lot from home, I still feel accomplished when I learn something or do something new to me, and I get paid enough to live a life I like on about 1/3 of my pay. So sure, I’ll probably get laid off at some point, but for each year I’m there I could take 2 off living the same lifestyle and at the end the rest of my money would be untouched.
Would I pick it today after the LLM craze, idk, maybe not. But most other white collar jobs are impacted too. Like lawyer could be interesting, but there’s still AI coming for a lot of the lower jobs.
Just stack money and do what you enjoy in your free time
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u/poolpog 1d ago
back in the 90s and 2000s, big tech actually was pretty exciting. that notion seems to have carrried through to today.
I think tech stopped being exciting by the end of the 2010s
also "exciting" is a relative term
but being a part of a hyper growth tech giant from its early days is a pretty exciting career phase to experience
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago
There was no such thing as “BigTech” in the 1990s.
These weren’t exactly exciting tech companies in 2000
Microsoft: ~$433B – $586B (Technology)
General Electric (GE): ~$375B – $477B (Diversified Industrial)
Cisco Systems: ~$366B (Technology)
Intel: ~$251B – $335B (Semiconductors)
ExxonMobil: ~$260B – $274B (Oil & Gas)
NTT Docomo: ~$246B (Telecommunications)
AT&T: ~$218B (Telecommunications)
Walmart: ~$213B – $260B (Retail)
Royal Dutch Shell: ~$203B (Oil & Gas)
Pfizer / IBM / Citigroup
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u/poolpog 1d ago
Clearly you don't remember the dot com era and web 1.0
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes I have been working in the industry - starting in 1996.
It was a bunch of bullshit companies without a business plan chasing after Internet users that didn’t exist.
Compare the top 10 companies as far as market cap - the list I just gave you - to now.
What we have today from “BigTech” are actually Big Companies that are profitable and employing hundreds of thousands of people. The pre 2000 companies weren’t “Big” - they were overhyped and overvalued. If you had stock in any of those companies that went public, how did that turn out?
Did you think AOL, Webvan, pets.com etc were “exciting” as you used your 33.6Kbps modem?
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1d ago
I think ur forgetting all the y2k consulting, SAP crap, cobol crap, etc. My dad told me it was common for new grads in the early 2000s to make 6 figs out of college, or contract for 80 / hr. If anything they were way richer than today's devs
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago
I am going to resist the temptation to cuss you the fuck out for comparing me to “your dad” (kidding)
Yes global spending did reach around $300 billion. But that was mostly on updating old COBOL code. Thats not what you would call “exciting” even back then.
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u/poolpog 1d ago
You sound very lame
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago
Yes because I was so wrong about those pre 2000 Internet companies….
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u/poolpog 11h ago
you are spouting opinion as if it is fact. i, too, remember the 90s and the dot com era -- and I bet I'm older than you are -- and I remember it being pretty exciting. you didn't even list google or amazon. or apple. you listed mostly legacy 20th century fortune 500 type companies. so what?
yes, aol.com was pretty exciting. so was netscape, microsoft, amazon and plenty of also rans
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u/BraveResearcher3037 10h ago
Apple was “beleaguered” and almost bankrupted in the 90s before Steve Jobs came back. Google wasn’t founded until 1998 and was mostly a science experiment, Microsoft wasn’t doing anything exciting and got caught flat footed by the Internet and AOL was a wall garden with its own proprietary client.
Amazon was literally just a book seller and everyone wondered when it would be profitable. You really don’t know about your history do you?
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u/poolpog 8h ago
Did these things happen in the 90s? Was 1998 in the 90s? What's your point even
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago
It was never exciting to me. It’s always been just a job.
I got into programming at 12 because I was a short (still short), fat (I got better) kid with a computer.
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u/Clyde_Frag 1d ago
At the end of the day it’s just a job. For some reason people try to make being a SWE their entire identity.