Mirror Mirror on the Wall...
Who's the fairest of them all (Not a Snow White reference)
👋 Hey, this is Chibs! Welcome to Regular Dev.
I’m trying to strip software engineering of all the wrong things social media has made it out to be, based on my own career, experiences, and journey. It’s sort of like telling the truth about software engineering; everything I write here is objectively aimed at that.
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I recently read an interesting post from a random dude with a title that sounded like “Why I quit tech?” He quit his ML job and reapplied for a local license to practice his degree - Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering and he seemed quite happy and fulfilled to have found the courage to make the switch.
It was one very insightful piece and it got me thinking that maybe, just maybe it is correct to say tech is not for everyone and the everyday advice we see commonly thrown around in-person and online, “learn a tech skill” is probably harsh and inconsiderate.
While I was pondering upon this in a royal orderly manner like the gentleman below, another interesting thing happened.
A random person got in touch to say our APIs were not working for him, this was a product I worked on as one of the engineers in a team (no context will be given), and he sent in his integration (code) in C#. He blamed the APIs but when we investigated we discovered he didn’t close one of his curly braces, he also made no attempt to debug and his code was very unclean and ‘unbeautiful’ but let’s overlook that, the problem has been solved and everyone is happy yeah?
Well, wrong, the very next day he’s back with another request and it sounds like, “Hey Bro, your APIs don’t work. I called it in an async function and it threw me the error ‘cannot call async task and await with your API methods, so yeah provide a solution to this!”
This immediately revealed a few things to me; Not everyone should write code. Also, to be a software engineer it’s not first of all about learning to write code, it’s about learning to think logically about a problem to find a solution, and lastly, not blaming other people for your ignorance about something, it really hurts 😭😭
It made me reflect on everything about deciding to do tech and the things that could influence that decision whether right or wrong and that was what spurred this post. Instead of gatekeeping, I will try to provide a roadmap to this decision that should help just about anyone.
What we are going to cover in this episode:
🤖 The Tech Bubble 2.0 - Anything for the money
👍🏾 A Commonsense Guide - To Tech
🏹 Why it Matters - Atoms and Molecules
🤡 Why it Does not Matter - Anti-Matter
NB: Konichiwa, I think I have to get used to the fact that I may not be able to write as regularly as I want to. Also, I realised Regular Dev appeals to more than just developers and most won’t relate to very technical stuff. I want to write technical stuff too, so, this is what I resolved to do: I will have a sub-newsletter called Regular Engineering and there I can have the freedom to write things that specifically are for technical folks.
I look forward to doing so, I hope you’ll support that too. Arigatou!
🤖 The Tech Bubble 2.0
If you’re doing tech fully for the money, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. You can’t help you either. I know it is a job at the end of the day and like all jobs, they’re done for a paycheck but it is not like the majority of other fields.
One of the reasons why doing this just for the money is bad for anyone in tech is that you will never like what you do and it will be a hassle to get through every day and show up still. Moreover, the tech bubble 2.0 that started a little more than a decade ago and hit its zenith during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown is starting to burst, slowly but surely and what that means is that companies are laying off to stay alive and startups are shutting down. The big guns (FAANG) aren’t spared too, Microsoft cut about 1900 jobs in its Activision Blizzard and Xbox divisions, Amazon did too, and so did Unity. What’s more intriguing is that all these happened in just the first month of the year, the implication is that the tech job market has become so saturated and the competition is folks who were laid off from big tech. You will ultimately become frustrated because the high earnings that come with tech will be eventually deflated. It then means that for you to have a thriving career in tech, something other than just money should motivate you.
The high earnings that come with tech will eventually be deflated.
👍🏾 A Commonsense Guide
I will focus on three very popular fields, Product (design, mobile, UI and frontend engineering), Backend Engineering, and Operations (DevOps, SRE, DevSecOps, etc), this is a narrow line considering other fields like the quite undefined product and project management and QA but I believe this will help all and sundry, especially those who have not discovered what they want to do.
The Aesthetic Mind
I have done design in the past, both creative graphics and UI/UX and I have done frontend (I’m stale now) and I can tell you that it’s easy to tell someone who will make a great designer, they think in patterns, arrangement and aesthetics. They see colours and will itch and struggle to remain still around poor alignment and elements hierarchy. They think like painters or storytellers. It can be learnt or developed and sharpened through courses and books but the flair is always there. They have an eye for beautiful design. This trait translates into frontend and mobile engineering. Engineers like this want to achieve a pixel-perfect UI, the general feel and outlook of their work show the attention they put to detail. It is easier to love any of these tech fields when you have a mind that works like this.
The Logical Mind
In this category, we find folks who think in decisions, algorithms, abstractions and systems. Backend and DevOps engineers fall mostly into this group. They appreciate the engines that run the systems and want to create the structures that do the heavy lifting behind the scenes. They’d have difficulty running around designs as it’d be boring and unengaging to them. CSS might be their worst nightmare. Of course, this is a generalization and some people do not fit 100% into these moulds, an example would be full-stack developers, however, it is common knowledge that they’re usually heavily biased towards one side of the spectrum.
Sometimes the logical mind could be fully channeled towards something like security and that’s perfectly normal too. One could be intrigued with what makes systems tick and how to break into these systems and make them safer.
🏹 Why it Matters?
I’ve discovered that what makes me very curious about systems and what runs beneath them is that I have a natural interest in them, I fit into both minds but I prefer to think about problems rationally and in steps. This is why I want to learn new things and see how problems are approached and solved. It’s why I do not need to be prodded by anyone to skill up or try out other exciting ways to do something. Ultimately, this is what will make you grow You can have a job in tech but it doesn’t mean you’re making any advancement in your career. When you find folks with these things in place, you’re sure they will put in the effort to understand the problem, learn fast and unlearn faster and grow into roles. It’s because the ‘flair’ is there.
🤡 Why it Does not Matter
None of these matters if you’re not wired this way, you could force yourself into it, grind Leetcode and binge-watch tutorial videos but you may not find the happiness you want from a job and career. You may find the extra time required to get things done in tech a scene right out of a horror movie.
Maybe you just need to step back and reevaluate your choices and motivation. is it worth it? Not everyone should do tech, ignore motivational speakers, please. You could do better as a doctor or a lawyer, no pressure. Do what you have an interest in not what everyone says is the future. There is a new ‘this is the future’ hype every other day (looking at web3 👀).
Final Thoughts:
Breathe! You don’t have to do tech unless it’s something you want to do.
Reading this a second time. I think I know what decision to make now. Thank you!
One thing I’m always grateful for is that I figured out early enough that tech wasn’t for me, despite having studied Computer engineering. It’s not because of lack of intelligence or a weak logical frame. It just never clicked and I never forced it even though I most definitely could have.
Money is good motivation but it wouldn’t be the only one. A time will even come that money won’t be enough motivation at all.
All this to say, this piece is rare truth. Nice one!