Software Engineering Is TOXIC: What's With Years Of Experience?!

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

hey folks we're going to the comments for a question and this is from Icy prototype cool name um so hey could you give your opinion on something I've been thinking about recently please I've been a full stack dead for close to 3 years in the UK so cool to be able to have like these types of conversations and stuff with people across the world so um I moved companies three times and I've noticed a trend in software engineering the tech industry I feel as if software engineering work culture is quite toxic in a sense that the value of the software engineer is based off of what companies theyve worked for and how many years they've been working I've come across a few Engineers that look good on the surface but in in reality their knowledge on building applications and topics outside of coding is quite

poor thank you for the gems you've been putting out well thank you um I appreciate that and I appreciate getting questions that I can try and answer so um of course these are just my perspectives and opinions on things so I assume that's why people are asking me I hope you know I don't mean to come across like everything I'm saying is absolute truth or fact just my experiences so if you have questions you want to answered leave them in the comments below or look for Dev leader on social media that's also my main YouTube channel if you send me a message to Dev leader you'll be kept Anonymous and you can write as much as you want so um I've had people write I've had people that end up sending me emails and they're just like novels which is cool I'm not complaining it's

awesome to have more context okay so let's kind of start dissecting this a little bit um I feel as if software engineering work culture is quite toxic um they specifically call out what aspect of that so in their case they're talking about what companies people have worked for and the number of years they've been working so that's their framing on the toxicity part now I think in general you're going to find companies unfortunately where there's like toxic work culture I've been pretty fortunate like like I think almost my entire career I've not been stuck in places with toxic work culture I've U like it certainly not the whole company or something um and organizations as a whole no but I have worked in like either briefly in teams or what I would say is like adjacent to teams where I can see like toxic culture

kind of creeping in and it's like uh especially as a manager it's like okay like what do like what do I got to do right um and to briefly share I've had an experience where I saw toxicity creeping in and tried to make a stand for it and uh had basically been told like like hey like let's just try to like it doesn't really matter like you kind of you kind of making a bigger deal out of it like it's it's it's okay and I remember being like yeah no like no it's not and like when I realized I wasn't being supported that I needed change so um uh kind of my mindset in general is like uh for for toxic places and stuff if I really care and I want to really care that's kind of my I feel like if I'm at a

place and I don't really care then it's like a good gut check to be like hey why are you here um but if I'm at a place and I really care which is how I normally operate I find that if I try to make change or suggest change or you know hey we should move in this direction um if it's met with like no one cares or like that's just the way it is and like I don't have support then I realize okay like I will be basically I will be stuck here if I don't do something it's not going to change because I don't have support to make it change um so for me that's a signal to get out now that's been my experience and like some examples of like some toxicity stuff like I don't know if you call that toxicity I

think I didn't explain what the toxic part was because it's not really relevant but the point is that I try to drive a change and if I'm not supported I'm out um so in their case though they're saying specifically they feel that what what makes software engineering work culture toxic is that what companies you've worked for like determine your value and how long you've been working so I think this is interesting um I think the I don't think think that the the where you work part is like necessarily specific to software engineering um I we see this kind of thing come up all the time right this could be for any type of I feel like if you had let's pick a let's pick different examples right um so I think probably what this person is saying is like hey if you have big Tech

on your resume or something like that that makes it look really good and therefore you have like an an upper Edge like people care about that um but I could imagine that you would have this type of thing even outside of software engineering and work all together what about the colleges and universities right I went to Harvard oo I went to Princeton ooh right like you end up having this type of thing because there's a Prestige or there's an image associated with it now I'm not to be totally clear I have sometimes I feel like I have to add like a million disclaimers into my videos because on the internet and social media in general people like can't seem to pick these things apart I'm saying this happens I'm not saying that I like condone it or that I think it's awesome I'm just telling

you like this happens and sometimes people are like oh you're an and I'm like okay man like yeah you can just pretend it doesn't happen then if you want go ahead um so I think yeah we see this kind of thing with big tech companies we see this outside of work with College University uh I could imagine that you would see this like I don't know with like professional sports and stuff like you know I don't know I don't even know enough about professional sports I'm the biggest computer nerd there is and I don't even understand Sports so I could imagine that happens though you got to play for some team that has some Prestige and people are like oh like you got to play on that team okay um I could imagine this happens in in tons of other Industries I'm assuming in finance

if you work for big Banks and stuff like that big investing uh firms like that could be perceived as like ooh like you got to do that so upper Edge even if no one has any idea of what you actually did you automatically get some some bonus points for it so I'm just I'm saying that because I am what I'm trying to say to this person is like I don't think that's unique to software engineering I acknowledge that I do think it happens I don't agree that it's like a good metric or like the best way to gauge things but like I think it happens in software engineering and I think it happens in tons of other places so then okay like I understand that now okay I'm making a statement about it and so someone's like so what are we going to do about

it right okay let me try and get there um but I want to see if the next part of this is something I should address first so uh the work experience too um let me talk about the the places first um and I'll I'll give you my my my guess as to why I think this type of thing happens in general and I I it's my perspective I think on on even outside of like software engineering so the reason I think that people end up doing this thing where they associate some type of prestige or higher bar with a name is because they assume that because there is um what's the word I want the this is the hardest part when you don't edit videos and you're like oh like there's this word on the tip of my tongue and I can't remember it by

the way that happens to me like all the time so uh exclusivity I think is maybe the word I want um where there's some exclusivity to a a company or to a um you know to a school or something like that like to get into Harvard is like not easy right I understand what we're talking about schools and stuff you could say yeah people are paying like you know backdoor cash and getting into places is making deals I'm not we're not talking about that I'm just saying there's this aspect of exclusivity right um not everyone gets to do it so I think we end up associating this exclusivity with like there must be a higher bar I'm not saying it's true disclaimer I'm not saying it's true but I'm saying I think that we often make that Association and as a result okay if these

places had a high bar and this person was able to do that therefore they passed the higher bar test whatever that happens to be right so I don't think it's a good metric um so you might say okay let's take the Harvard thing and I don't know enough about schools like like Harvard and Princeton and all this to I know people have there's probably like documentaries and stuff on this kind of thing so I don't know anything about it but um you could have situations where it's like hey Harvard your marks have to be incredible it's prestigious like it's very exclusive but if you were top of the top academic you could get into Harvard but then someone's like yeah or like there's this back door deal where you pay like millions of dollars to get in because your family's rich and therefore you got

into Harvard so like you know that person wasn't even intelligent and they got to go to Harvard so yeah then our proxy that we're trying to look at this measurement right like hey they got into this prestigious thing that's exclusive so the bar was really high that's a proxy for being very high quality like all of a sudden is like just completely circumvented so I don't think it's a good measure but I think that's why it happens like we end up making this association with the higher bar being set so that's part one um and then on the how many years they been working again I think that this is another thing where we make a it's a proxy for uh I don't know for Quality it's a I think we use it as a proxy for Quality experience and that obviously isn't true right

like you could you could be 10 years into your career and doing the absolute minimum like worst I don't know I shouldn't say the worse but like absolute minimum low quality code but just enough to get by you happen to keep getting like um I don't know put on this might be like touchy for people I'm just trying to give an example sorry keep getting put on Pips and you keep you know switching companies and stuff but you've been in your career for 10 years now and you as a software developer maybe are not a good software developer but you're 10 years in so someone's like hey this person's worked for 10 years that tenure ten years tenure okay uh let me pick something different that um that time in career that's less confusing the time in career is a good proxy for Quality experience

but like it's not it just isn't right but I think that it's uh could I make the argument I try to always think about different angles to these things even if I don't agree with it like could we make an argument that it's a that there is a correlation not a causation but is there a general correlation that if you've been in the industry for a long time that odds are you've encountered more things built up actual real work experience that's valuable work work through difficult situations challenging Tech migrations like Liv site issues um you've just had more of these like real experiences built up could we make an argument that there is a correlation between having a higher likelihood of encountering more of those things and I think the answer is probably yes like again I don't have stats on this stuff and I

I'm not saying causation for the people that are ready to start freaking out in the comments I'm not saying just because you work longer that's what happens I'm just saying that I think one could make an argument that it's statistically more likely that you would have such experiences so I do think that that's what happens now I think what this person's saying is like they're observing that we seem to be over indexing on those things and I don't disagree with that I think that's probably uh anecdotally like I feel like that's true and like why does that happen I think especially right now like there's so much saturation uh with uh with people applying to jobs right um I don't have data in front of me to say how many open jobs and what types of open jobs by the way um because I think

that matters to uh I don't have stats on this but I have this feeling that based on what I see from social media and stuff online I have a feeling there are a ton of people that are entering software development that uh don't actually have many years of experience and I'm not saying like work experience I mean like before their Landing jobs they've done boot camps that are four to six months they've uh built a few projects on the side and the technology they're using is similar to other people kind of going through the same thing and I feel like there is an overwhelming number of people that are following this pattern because it is I think I don't know if it's and I don't want to say media I don't know the right word but like I think our industry in terms of people

that are capitalizing on this are doing an injustice to people they're saying like hey look take this boot camp this is the quick path to success you can be a software engineer in like six months you know we we figured out the formula for it and then there's tons of people funneling through this and it's like man it's just like that's not it's not reality at all it's very far from it not to say boot camps can't work not to say that people can't be successful doing them I have to be careful about how I say this stuff because people uh take it the wrong way it's not what I'm saying what I am saying is that I think that there is a lot of people doing this and I think that they are sort of I don't want to say being tricked but I

think that they're being like it's been misrepresented to them like how successful they can be just from doing that but there ends up being a ton of people in a very similar situation going well I'm having a hard time getting a job so this sort of pool of people is applying to all these same types of jobs so even people you know so you have this experience where it's like oh entry-level job but you need three years of experience yeah they like companies can get away with doing that it's ridiculous again not saying hey look I totally agree with them I could understand why they would do it right they're saying well there's so many people applying they just keep raising the bar um and then I think that you have someone like icy prototype asking like hey like that seems like it's a kind

of a toxic way to do it right like we shouldn't our industry shouldn't promote that kind of stuff we should be if it's entry level it should be entry level and I I do agree but I think that there is an overwhelming like volume of applications coming in so the bar gets raised I've talked about this in other videos but in my opinion when you're building team you just to give you an example if we if we had a team of five people I've given a similar example in other vide so sorry if this sounds like a repeat but if we had a team of five people and you had like a principal engineer you had two seniors you had uh two mid-levels so that's five right um if you know okay we want to hire one more person and they it's like an entry-level

position we want to have someone Junior on the team if you had a ton of applicants like what I literally would not want to do is keep setting the bar so high that it's like now I have someone who's like truly operating at a principal level coming in to be given like a junior position just because like they happen to be the most qualified and the reason it might sound silly is like you would say like hey Nick like why wouldn't you want just why wouldn't you want a whole team of principal engineers and it's because the type of work that needs to get done and continuity on a team like does not make sense for everyone to be the same level like it might seem like I don't know if it were a video game right and you could build a a team of

like your team of Pokemon I always use Pokemon examples in my live streams um if you got have a team of Pokemon like wouldn't you want them to all be like you know Mewtwo like that you could have used missing no and duplicate it and use all the rare candies they're all level 100 and just had a team of mewt like no but we're not doing that right we yeah sorry if that's a ridiculous example and people don't understand what I'm saying but you don't want a team of just like everyone is like a like a copy paste of the highest level engineer it might seem good on paper but in practice it doesn't really work that well and that's because there's going to be types of work that come up that do not like they need it needs to get done but it does

not lend itself well for that person's level they're not going to be engage doing it but like so then we just don't do it no so we end up having like sort of multiple levels spread across in a team I think that's very healthy to do and then that means that over time like I I would fully expect if I had a team of Engineers like this over time it likely means that people will outgrow the team or we keep growing the team and we split it off into into multiple teams and then those you know the people that are at that really high level if they're interested maybe they end up wanting to do management maybe they want to become an architect maybe they maybe they become like the tech lead of that team like there are growth paths and splitting things up I

think is an option but at the end of the day um sorry my computer's doing exporting a 360 video for you guys and it put up an error after like an hour and a half um but at the end of the day I want to make sure that I can have continuity and growth paths for people in my team so no to me it doesn't make sense to artificially just keep jacking up the the entry level requirements but I think it happens because they're trying to reduce the volume of like uh of applicants that come in that they have to look through so um yeah this person goes on to say I've come across a few Engineers that look good on the service but in reality their knowledge on building applications and topics outside of coding is quite poor so I think I've kind of

touched on the two earlier Parts I think their major Focus um so I just wanted to touch on this last part cuz uh they say topics outside of coding is quite poor and yeah like I think it's very interesting you know this person said uh full stack for like three years now probably at this point and I hope that most people realize it sooner but like guess what there's a lot more to saw for development than just writing code there's tons more and I think that if you are like an aspiring developer and you haven't landed your first job yet so you're you know trying to get into the industry and I understand it's challenging um I think a lot of people are thinking once I'm in I'm just WR in code like that's it head down baby let's get right in code and that's

it I can't wait to not have to talk to people because I'm just a programmer guess what you're going to be talking to people all the time um because you're working in a team you're building software together you have to talk to stakeholders right like it's a it's a team sport yay Sports um you have to be working with people so I think what this person's kind of acknowledging is like yeah some of these people are getting by in their longer careers and again their their experience their lengthen career happens to be going up and up over time but like are they actually just because they have a longer time in their career does that mean they're awesome no now I'll briefly share this just as an example but like one of the things that stuck out to me working at a a startup before

Microsoft so for those of you that don't know before Microsoft I worked at a startup that was like eight people when I joined seven or eight people um you know no external investment or anything and we by the time I left it was like 250 or so people um they ended up iping after I left terrible timing they got bought back to private for $2 billion terrible timing Nick um but so the idea is like in the beginning when we were scaling up and growing the and I'm not talking ill of them the founder and the uh the founder and the CEO two two people that will be like you know close in my heart for my entire life because I think that they're amazing people one of the things they really leaned into was like um we need to bring on people that have

like proven experience but I think this is really difficult to gaag so what would happen is they would hire in people like hey we need this type of role and they'd bring them in because that person has a lot of years of experience maybe we aren't amazing in interviewing because we're a startup you know Growing Pains but some will get brought in because it looks like on paper they're really good but in in practice they're not or they're not a good fit the way they operate isn't like isn't going to be good for for organization and I'm just sharing this because I think that was another example of seeing like hey on paper given all this experience given these companies they've worked at they must be good right no um and there were some some points of that time like uh those eight years that

were extremely painful because of what I would call like wrong hires for the right like the right intention and I'm not I should clarify I'm not saying those people were bad I'm not saying like hey we hired Bobby and Bobby was terrible he no one should ever hire Bob I'm just saying we hired Bobby based on what we thought would have been good on paper and Bobby was not a good fit for what we needed so like there's this discrepancy between like just looking at places people have been and length of time they've spent and actually being like a proper fit for what we need I'm talking about more of like a fit here I think the way this person is talking about is just like as a general software developer like seems like nuh-uh so um I have had kind of some experiences with

that in my career but at the end of the day I think ultimately I agree with what this person saying um I I guess I don't know I don't see that necessarily as like a like toxic isn't the word that would come to mind for me I'm not I'm not debating the word use it's just like I think about those things when I think about workplace toxicity it's more about like um I don't know um things like not having a safe place to fail so like no psychologic IAL safety not supporting each other that kind of stuff so I I kind of just look at toxicity a different way but I I do agree I think that there's a lot of emphasis put on where you've worked and I don't necessarily agree that that carries more weight or sorry or should carry more weight and

um I do agree that number of years does not mean uh as much as probably people give it uh credit for so that's my perspective hope that helps um I don't think it was necessarily like answering a question versus just offering perspective so that's how I think about things hope you thought that was helpful if you have questions you want to answered leave them in the comments or look for Dev leader on social media send me a message happy to try and answer I'll see you next time take care