Why I love software engineering
Okay I got tired of all the leaving tech posts so here's my "why I love what I do and why I'm staying".
I'll caveat this to say I do of course believe all the women who have struggled with shitty coworkers, managers, teams and companies. Highly paid male dominated industries are hard on us. But I also believe that almost all highly paid jobs are male dominated and similar, so it's not like there's some magical other job where I'll make the same money with the same flexibility and somehow not have to contend with the glass ceiling and boy's club bullshit.
Caveat aside. I love software engineering. I've been an engineer professionally for 25 ish years. I've done firmware, backend, frontend, big corps, startups, gov tech, all sorts of things. Nothing gives me dopamine like building something, having it work and having users enjoy it. I have friends in patent law who've asked me to join them and make big money but I can't imagine just reading and writing all day. Coding is just so fun in comparison! You make something! Out of nothing!
I always say that this is one of the few _creative_ jobs where you can really make decent money. Not to mention, we're more likely to find remote, work from home jobs. Tech companies have typically had great benefits compared to non-tech companies. Believe me, I've had a federal govt job and the regular benefits (days off, healthcare) were worse than tech. (Other than the eventual pension of course).
About male dominated workplaces, guess what it's worse in finance, law, medicine. Lots of shitty situations to deal with there too. So it's the reality of the world. I'm not about to give up the thing I love because of it. Instead I just pick my workplaces very carefully, I look for kind, humble people in the interviews, who seem genuinely happy and excited about their jobs. Who light up a bit when talking about work. Know that good teams exist, and to keep looking for the right place. Find the balance between money and the environment. More money in a terrible environment is never worth it. Get out before it damages your sense of self and esteem.
As for the men, I make friends at every workplace, and it has worked out fine. Great, even. I've been to their weddings and baby showers and them to mine. Men who are your friends at work can be your mentor and ally without them ever having read a thing about how to be a mentor and ally. Be careful and don't cross lines, but it is possible to do this well.
And yes, now AI is a challenge but it's a tool, we need to learn to use it. Most engineers don't remember a time before "cloud" was a thing. But yeah there was a time where "cloud" was the answer to everything and the way to get contracts, jobs, and VC money. We joked about adding cloud to everything and upper management not really knowing what cloud meant other than that they _needed it_. Was cloud stupid and pointless, no. Was there a lot of nonsense surrounding it, yes. Was it ultimately useful and changed how we do things? Yes.
Not to downplay the risk to our jobs. I mean, as excited as I am about being able to build things so fast, I am open eyed that this is an existential risk to my job. But I don't think that pretending it isn't happening saves my job either. So for the love of god and your future career, go learn how to use it and get very good at using it. I've been doing this a long time and my gut says very few of us are going to be writing lines of code in 5 years.
About layoffs, I've been through some and they suck. They really do. That may be the only thing I think tech is genuinely worse about than other industries. Oh, that and interviewing. I have a mental shitlist of which companies have bad policies around layoffs, that hire too fast and layoff too easily. When I interview I ask about the most recent layoff. And interviewing sucks but fingers crossed the fact that we won't be writing code in 5 years means the death of leetcode!
Well that's my ted talk. I love being a software engineer, if you do too, hang in there. Some of us have had long and happy careers so far and want you to stay and succeed!