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Software Engineers Ranked Best Job in America
fistfullast33l writes "CNNMoney and Salary.com have ranked the title of Software Engineer the best job in America. Computer IT Analyst also ranks 7th on the list, placing both technology positions in the top 10. From the article: "Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you've got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.""
Especially with larger companies, I see it more and more that telecommuting is a frowned upon idea. In fact, most of the articles on telecommuting today are instructions on how to argue with your boss because your boss is going to be the last person that wants you telecommuting.
And that's just for jobs in general. With software engineering jobs, the need to work together on a team is obviously a mandatory requirement. Very few solid and marketable software applications are written by one person. Telecommuting just raises another possible barrier and could compound dynamics and differences among team members. There are also security issues regarding the connection between work and home as well as the problem of productivity being a hard thing to measure when developing software.
Then of course there are home distractions that all managers would worry about.
This is old news to the Slashdot crowd.
In the Fortune 500 company I work for, I don't know anyone who telecommutes. We are encouraged to work with different teams accross the country but they are at company facilities in sub-teams that get together everyday.
If by "widespread" they mean one person does it in New York and one person does it in California then I would agree. If they mean "widespread" by increased frequency and occurance then I would not only disagree with them but adamently argue that it's not accepted as a viable method for getting the job done in the software engineering world.
Now that, I can see. I've only been working in the field for a couple years but I can already see that the room for growth in software development is unparalelled. What I mean is that people who start out as grunt developers often have a chance to become a team manager--it depends on how well they can estimate mentally and breakdown a project into tasks (something programmers are required to do in code anyways). More and more I see the manager world developing into two different kinds of managers--engineering managers and business managers. In fact, I have two managers (Office Space is more accurate than you think) with those two titles. One I can talk tech with and the other doesn't know jack about what I'm doing.
My work here is dung.
Wouldn't it be a better job to own a company like Google or Microsoft? http://www.servicerules.com.ar/
I have a degree in math and CS and I hardly ever use anything I learned in math for software development. Maybe simple sums and if things are getting really advanced I'll divide by the number of elements for an average. For that matter, I rarely use anything I learned in CS either, past the sophomore year anyway.
The vast majority of software, at least that I've come across, is just moving data around. Certainly, more complex software development exists, such as in the financial services sector. And we rarely have to get into the details of how complex data structures work because we always rely on libraries. Again, I'm sure there are exceptions, but from what I've seen of the work I've come across and that has been done by other developers I know, little is used of school knowledge.
That said, development isn't easy either. You have to be able to pick up new and weird APIs fairly quickly and find creative ways around asinine constraints. I'm just not seeing much in the way of school knowledge used though.
being a sysadmin is a good job, as long as they give you the leeway to do things the way you want them. because once you get done cleaning up the mess the last guy got fired for, and after you get done setting things up the way you want them to be... its a pretty slack job (after everything gets running smoothly), leaving you with plenty of time to experiment with new technologies and stuff. As a programmer, you generally have things you're supposed to be working on every minute of every day. /former sysadmin, current programmer //thinking of switching back
Most computer software requires nothing more than simple arithmetic.
There are exceptions such as in finance and 3d graphics, but come on.
This mentality is really annoying. The math office in my high school wouldn't let me take the C++ class because I had not taken the requisite Calculus class first. Even though I was writing C++ code in my part time job! (Out of spite, I'll mention that I took the state C++ AP test and went on to score the highest in New York. Take THAT Mrs. Lechner!)
Pfft.
2 bit coder. Writing code isn't strictly neccesary forbeing a software engineer any more than welding bridges together is an essential part of structural engineering. It's just that software engineers tend to do their own construction.
I don't really see this amazing need for math skillz. I don't think I've used any calculus at my job, and I'm not even writing just business apps but also some basic software drivers and industrial automation stuff. College algebra is all I've had to use so far. But I appreciate the talk up of how amazing my job is :) I'm not even sure Linus Torvalds has ever had to use calculus in Linux.
Now we DO have to work with funky algorithms and I guess studying math helps with that somehow...
Even being a "Software Engineer" varies from the "coding monkey" who gets it from the man, or the "unemployed contractor" who can't find a job, to the "game company project manager" or "I run my own successful software business" types.
;-)
All in all, it's a great job, agreed. But there's always a better title in the field, with better perks and better pay, and better everything.
So keep coding your butts off.
> Does that make me a Software Engineer? Or just a two-bit coder?
Consider an analogy between a civil engineer and a construction worker, and let that answer your question.
Kinda makes you think how immature our profession is, too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It seems like the proper use of the title of "software engineer" has been argued in the letters section of Dr. Dobbs for only about 20 years, but here's how I got the title.
Boss: What do you want on your business card?
Me (with 2 years of experience): Senior Software Engineer.
Boss: Ok.
Looking back with a few more years of experience under my belt it seems a bit humorous; especially if I ever go back to look at the code I was writing at that time.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
You had me at "complex neural-net based adaptive administration controls" - LOL... You must be very special indeed to be controlling tens of thousands of servers without a team or any backup and nobody above you in the chain of command. Or you're a pretentious wannabe software engineer, another one of which we can do without. You should go work for one of the big consultancy firms - they love guys like you.
But it seems odd: If you compare software engineer to college professor, it is clear, based on their data, that the 10-year growth parameter is fairly heavily weighted in their ranking since professor is equal or higher in all other areas.
Software Engineer:
average salary: $80.5k
10-year growth: 46%
Average annual job openings: 44.8k
Stress: B
Flexibility: B
Creativity: A
Ease of Entry: C
College Professor:
average salary: $81.5k
10-year growth: 31%
Average annual job openings: 95.3k
Stress: B
Flexibility: A
Creativity: A
Ease of Entry: C
It seems like *if you had the job*, the quality of that job *right now* would be somewhat independent of the 10-year growth parameter. In that same spirit, if they folded in some "job security" parameter, it seems the tenture (or tenture-track) options of a professor would trump all others.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
But they have it ranked as C, which I assume is average entry difficulty. According to their numbers, there are about 95,000 professor positions open every year. But that's not the whole picture: only a small fraction of that 95,000 are positions open to a particular person. In order to be a professor, you need to have a relatively narrow expertise. There will be few professor positions open in the country that want your particular expertise.
I also think they underestimate the stress level of getting tenure. Getting tenure is a cutthroat process.
For the record, I am a Computer Science graduate student.
Do you bring your kids to the office with you? Then why are you expecting to watch them at home while you are working? Telecommuting is about working from home, not doing a few work-related tasks while you enjoy the rest of your day. It's about saving time and money on the commute and on office space. If you're getting distracted at home, then your home office is not set up properly or you're not working in that home office.
Don't think of it as "cleaning up the mess the last guy got fired for". Think of it as "making a mess, that is compatible with your prejudices, for your successor to clean-up."
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Like the fact that unless you're a big name male porn start or do your own net porn site starring yourself...your pay will be absolute shit. The real money goes to the women.
Then add on the fact that you have to have to be attractive and well-endowed, which cancels out most of the population (although I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of Slashdot claimed to be both). Plus there's the high risk of STDs, despite testing...and the final point is that when it comes down to it...when you're in a porn shoot, after a while its JUST a job. And as with any job it can be tedious and unenjoyable, especially when you have little to no say in your partner. Yeah...its getting paid to have sex, but there is almost no emotion in it...a lot of it is stop and go so they can get the shot just right, and its in a lot of weird positions that happen to work well for the camera.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I don't see Male Porn Star anywhere on the list...
Oh sure, it looks glamorous when everything is slightly blurry. Wait until the first high definition porn titles become available and you can see all of the pimply, warty details. Suddenly being a "sanitation worker" isn't so bad.
No kidding. The "I married a good provider" thing annoys me.
I've seen too many couples where that sentiment became more like "I married a guy who makes lots of money and is never home, so I can have both the cash and bed the people I *really* want to without his knowing" after a little while.
I've seen too many friends get hurt because of things like that, and they never even realized that it was happening until it was too late. It's sad and depressing, and probably yet another reason I tend to be cynical.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
You don't get it. Romantic love is a myth, she will never be into you "for you", just as you're unlikely to be "into her" for reasons that don't have something to do with tits, ass and a willingness to not embarass you in front of your friends.
We're all driven by the biological imperitive -- reproduction. The priority list for women when it comes to reproduction unfortunately doesn't include your witty opinions, good taste in art or your skill at cunnilingus.
What it does include is your ability to provide for the material well-being of her offspring. If you can cover that one, you're golden. She'll tolerate your ignorant opinions, bad hygiene and clumsy sexual technnique; do it well enough, and she will make you believe that you have the logic of Aristotle, the body of Adonis and the skills of Rocco Siffredi.
Of course if you *can* provide for her offspring and you both know it, the trick of course is to make her sing for her supper.
Yeah, I can't work from home, because my wife refuses to understand that.
I'm not too surprised at your post, I've seen plenty of small minded people who've never met (or actually refuse to acknowledge) people outside their stereotypes, but the fact it was rated insightful is staggering.
I'm just trying to guess what backward place you could be from where someone wouldn't tell you to "fuck off" if you thought about "making them sing," and people don't trade and value each other's conscious attributes.