Did I Pick The Wrong Career As A Software Engineer?! [360 Video]

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all right folks I'm headed to the office we're going to go to Reddit for a question this is from CS career questions sorry I'm not even buckled in yet let's get that figured out the insta 360 is going I don't know if it's charged we'll see what happens um where's this Reddit question come on phone holy crap okay experience de that were once uncertain about their career choice did you get over it and how um they say I'm a senior in college have great job offers lined up awesome it's great news there are roles I never thought I would have offers for but I still feel mildly dissatisfied if money was not a factor I would have done something in health care and therapy or in education obviously there are horror stories in both careers uh that are considered uh as well as the lower

pay regardless my career choice has given me some anxiety as I'm unsure if I've chosen the right field anyone felt like this or is this a non-issue that then giving too much importance overdue importance over speaking is hard for me um so I thought that would be maybe interesting to talk about I didn't have any questions lined up cuz I think I got through three of them yesterday but um good reminder for folks if you want questions answered that's what my entire channel is about I am happy to try and answer the questions that you submit so you can leave them in the comments below or if you want to be kept Anonymous look for Dev leader on social media send me a message and I will try my best to get your stuff answered um so this is an interesting one um I figured

I would start by talking a little bit about my my own career maybe at different points where I felt uncertain and then kind of talk about I don't know like where I see people talking about uncertainty right now maybe some career switch kind of conversations um and go from there so this might be a repeat for some people that have watched other videos of mine but I put out a lot of videos put like 10 videos a week so on this channel alone so there's got to be some stuff that's uh repeated so I apologize but there's always new faces coming around and uh as much as I want to assume that all of you just watch binge watch all of my videos I realize that's not the case but we can change that right um but yeah for me like I started off by

going to the University of waterl uh for computer engineering and I remember thinking like as someone that was in high school I was like I like programming I feel like I'm pretty good at it and I remember talking to my father who uh who was in the tech industry he ran his own company um that I I guess like whatever side Side Story on that whole thing but uh I guess when I was really little I was like oh I'll probably get this company that my father has when I grow up um but that's not really not really how that panned out it's not really something that uh if if he handed me today I would not take because it's kind of just like it's not something that he continued to scale up so anyway um his perspective was always hey like if you want

to be successful you got to go the hardware Direction everyone does software but you really got to focus on hardware and I remember thinking like I don't know like I'm just a kid right and I think this is probably a common thing for for most people that are kids like you're trying to make a decision about your future and you're like I literally don't know anything um and that's that's okay uh because spoiler alert uh no one has any idea what they're doing at all ever and most of being an adult is just a bit of a facade for look at me I know what's going on but no one actually knows so uh no pressure I decided okay if my father knows what he's talking about I should at least make sure that I'm going to school and having some Hardware components in my

education and the other reason I went to the University of watero was because I wanted to in Canada so I'm originally from Canada to have a professional engineering designation you need to go to an accredited University program you need to go take an ethics test you need to have work experience under an engineer there's a lot of requirements so I said if that's what I got to do like I at least have to go to an accredited school sorry accredit program and um and start with that right so given that they had internships like a co-op program um that was a huge sort of a plus side for me so um I I very quickly learned though that by going to school for computer engineering I absolutely hated school um I loved the internships I thought the internships were amazing but my internships were developing

software so the first time for me on on my career Journey where I was like man like did I pick the right thing was school and for a little bit more context the way that my school was set up like my education was four months of school and then we would have a four-month internship and I did that for 5 years and there was only one point where you do like two School semesters back to back but otherwise it's uh school work school work the entire five years no breaks and um you know I would have my school semester and I would be like man like what am I doing like this is I've definitely picked the wrong thing like this is so dumb why am I wasting my time with this it's so hard it's not interesting and then I would go do my

internship that would be you know programming almost exclusively right software development and I would do that and I would be like man like this is this is what it's all about like I'm so excited to be able to graduate and do this and then I would go back to school and kind of keep having this experience where I'm like oh I hate everything about this um I just realized too I have to get gas H okay well we'll do that doesn't matter for you because I end up editing it out so just means I have to edit it out but I guess I have a 360 video going too so I have to edit that as well um but yeah that was the first kind of point in my uh my career Journey where I was like I actually don't know if I've picked the

right thing and I felt conflicted because um you know I was told like hey you got to you got to do the hardware stuff right Hardware is where the money's at um and I'm like okay well man if I got to succeed in my career I have to like Hardware but I absolutely hated it anything that was like and it's weird in high school I was like and this isn't I'm not trying to like boast about this but like physics math all this kind of stuff was very like trivial for me I didn't have to work hard at it it just kind of happened and then I got to University and I was like I can't stand any of this I'm terrible at it I want nothing to do with it uh I never want to solve a circuit like get me as far away

from this as possible like there there was no way that I was going to be doing that as a career not a chance um so going through school and having this kind of like situation where I'm like am I doing the right thing the nice thing was that as I was progressing through school having the more internships I was like I kind of realized by the end of the five years I'm like yeah I'm not going to be going and doing hardware and I picked a program at least it's in you know engineering background I'm getting there's still software development in computer engineering and I was like I didn't totally screw this up I've got the internships they are all software development I think we're doing okay so uh getting out of school was kind of like this moment where I'm like okay at least

I feel like I've so far not mess this up completely but time for some gas okay so the next kind of phase after this thing is the absolute most annoying beeping sound I've ever heard after school um I started work at a uh startup company and it was in digital forensics and I think the next moment and it was fortunately very brief but the next moment where I had like a did I make the right decision kind of thing going on was I started at this company uh I remember talking with the the founder who was the CTO and being like wow this is like this seems really cool um you know good Mission it was a startup they were already profitable so like it everything about it seemed like hey man like this seems like a really interesting opportunity that I came uh like

stumbled upon like okay but I remember it was like I don't know if it was like the first day or the first week or something uh it's digital forensics right how much how much education do you think I had around digital forensics uh if you guessed approximately 0 seconds of Education that's correct sorry SUV behind me not giving me enough space we don't like that um yeah I didn't have any education in digital forensics and I can remember like the first and look they're going to come pass me now um talking with my manager and he sat a couple of us down he was like okay like uh do you guys know about these file system types and it was like absolutely not I have no idea what this guy is talking about and I just remember thinking like I just make a really big

mistake like I just got hired at this startup and I have no idea what this guy is talking about and um kind of this oh crap moment right this is also um when people think about like impostor syndrome this is the probably one of the first not the first time in my life but probably one of the first times in my actual career uh where because it was very early in my career where I was like hm this feels not good and uh I would say it wasn't even impostor syndrome like I would have been an actual impostor at that point because I didn't actually have any experience in digital forensics right um and I didn't have knowledge about how file systems and different things like that worked so um yeah kind of this o crap moment but I think along the way um you

know I I did realize quite quickly that I really loved the type of work I was doing um so you know to this person's question about like you know did you did you realize this or are you still on the fence kind of thing um yeah I I knew pretty early on after working full-time I was like absolutely like being a software developer is is 100% for me um you know and not I guess I'm very fortunate so I don't I don't like talking about this stuff as in like everyone will have this experience and I also not trying to like brag about it either I try to highlight this because sometimes when I read stuff on the internet people are very much like oh no like you're basically going to start working and hate your life the entire time and I'm like I don't

know man like sorry if that's been your experience but sorry here's my experience and I did not hate my life the entire time um uh yes there have been hard periods of being a software developer especially at a you know rapidly growing startup there a lot of work but I love doing what I was doing um then probably the next time in my career where I had like this I don't know kind of thing is really and I've talked about this before transitioning uh more from like a IC to manager so as at that startup they basically made me a manager very early so I've been managing engineering teams now for almost 13 years and um which is almost my entire professional career outside of like uh internships and there was a point like the first eight years of that were what was like a

technical manager role so I was coding alongside uh managing engineering team and um yeah having to kind of I guess I didn't have to make a decision I didn't have to pick between the two but getting to this point where I was picking like do I structure my career more around leadership and management versus uh being a programmer and like that's a kind of a scary step I don't know why we're going so slow in the fast lane and you kind of have these doubts like you know I think one thing for me especially like going from a startup where I was doing that to Microsoft where um you know completely different because now I have like remote teams I don't code at all anymore I'm uh not part of I don't know like I'm not actively working in the code base or anything whereas

before like I had created a lot of the code base uh from the early days so just a completely different Dynamic and then just being like purely like people management people leadership and not writing code and just kind of feeling like did I like is this the right move right like it it's a big departure so and that's over the last 5 years now you know at this point in time like and I'll wrap up my story kind of go back to some general thoughts on this is like at this point in time in my career I I think before I die CU I I probably will work my whole life cuz I actually I like making software it's just enjoyable for me but at some point before I die and that's there's probably a period of like I would call it retirement where I'm

still building stuff but at some point I I don't think I'll be Satisfied until I'm doing my own thing so having my own company building what I want to build and when I say my own company maybe that's just me right maybe that's uh ideally it's not CU I have a few people in mind that I'd like to be building software with but like I don't think that I'll feel fulfilled until I have something of my own now is that tomorrow is that 10 years from now I don't know the answer to that but I do have this feeling like that's that's on my list of things to do in terms of actual career growth gr at you know in software companies right now um the trajectory that I've been feeling is that like I want to um you know going from an IC to

a manager role one of the things for me was like I could feel that my impact was more Broad and I think that I have that same feeling where like I've been a I've been a middle manager for just under 13 years now and that means that I don't I have ic's reporting to me but like because I've been a middle manager I think I've been a manager for longer than my manager has been a manager just to put that into perspective um not saying I'm better or anything uh he's definitely been in the software industry longer than I have but I think I've been managing engineering teams longer than he has like that's a pretty that's my entire career has been has been as a as a manager so um I am at the point where I'm like it is a very logical progression

for me to to want to be leading other managers so the the role at least at Microsoft that's called a group engineering manager now the reality is that's tied to um also like level advancements I actually don't know when that starts like I'm at the principal level you can be a principal group engineering manager but I think that's at least the next level above me at least so I would minimally have to be promoted I don't know if I have to be promoted twice um but like my my manager is a group engineering manager but also at the partner level so he's multiple levels ahead um so I don't exactly know where group starts but this is just at Microsoft right and different companies are called different things like I think at Amazon it's just a senior engineering manager is I think and I haven't

worked there so I don't know I think that's the first sort of tier where you can be a manager of managers but that's kind of the progression I see in the direction I would like to be heading um and I would say in terms of like am I on the right path am I second guessing career choices um no but I think the longer that I stay a middle manager the more I question am I in the right spot that's probably how I would put that because if I'm still a middle manager and not progressing further despite having all of this experience as a middle manager I'm like when when does the next step come right like uh so that's kind of on my mind okay I think one of the major things I wanted to call out and this is a hard one for

me because like my brain doesn't work this way but I've also mentioned before on these videos I like to call out different perspectives right so I truly believe what I'm about to say but like I would have a hard time convincing myself and as a result it might be hard to convince the audience but um I a I am a believer that you know switching careers is totally okay totally you know I want to say it's totally a normal thing for people to consider uh I have seen a lot of it go the other way right I've interviewed people on my main Channel Dev leader there's a I'm not super actively doing it just because I've been so overwhelmed with other stuff but uh there's a podcast there where I interview other Engineers other managers and uh one of the things that I always get

people to discuss is like their career journey and there are many people I've interviewed on that podcast that are career switchers right which means if it's not obvious what it means is people picked a path and they said I'm doing this when I grow up and then they start doing it and either they don't like it right away or they like it for a bit and they're looking like something comes up and then they're like I want to switch to be a software developer so that is not like it's not like that doesn't happen what's going on with my GPS here sorry my GPS is like very wrong I don't know how else to say it but um anyway hopefully it fixes itself now you could make the same argument the other way right and even if it seems extreme to be like Oh I'm

going to go into a whole different profession it's not super rare even to stay in the soft realm but to go into adjacent roles like I know a lot of people see manager as like a as a promotion from like a software engineering role it's just a it's a different role and the same thing with a product manager or a project manager those are adjacent roles it's not necessar I mean it could be a promotion if your level's going up alongside it but it's just a different role and if you think about it you could be a project manager at a software company but if you were a really good project manager and you're like I don't want to work in the software industry anymore like you could go work in a different industry as a project manager same as a product manager technically the

same as an engineering manager right there's a lot of domain knowledge in software that's obviously very helpful in software roles or software adjacent roles but you could go take you know that experience and bring it to a different industry for sure so I just I wanted to kind of make sure that I includeed in this video that if at any point you're like oh man did I totally screw up and like I shouldn't be in software like I mean that would kind of suck I don't want anyone to feel that way but you know it's not like you I don't know like you ruined your save game and you have to like restart and you're like I can't restart this is life it's just like I think at the end of the day and I try to mentioned this in other videos too right like

I think at the end of the day it's your career and I know that you know having an income putting food on the table having a you know roof over your head is is important to be able to support your family but I think if you're not enjoying what you're doing at least for the bulk of your time that you're going to be working I think that that's probably a recipe for I don't want to say failure but a recipe for unhappy life so I do try to encourage people like give a consideration it's not you didn't fail if you're like I think that I want to do something else now right it's like that's that's okay come on let me in here um yeah I just want to like say that I feel like people need to hear it more um and the reason

I kind of prefaced what I was saying with what I did was like I know I would have a hard time convincing myself of that I get it right if I if I was like I'm going to go back and I'm going to be a software developer like I'm going to be an IC no more management part of me I'm sure part of me would be very conflicted over that being like did I waste all that time being a manager like what if I would have just kept my head down and kept writing code like wouldn't I have been so much further ahead in my career like what if what if and it's like that's not it's just not helpful right not with that kind of framing right if you're going to use a wh if situation to dwell on things I don't think that

that's healthy so I think if you want to use wh ifs to say what it could be and that's like motivating and exciting for you then sure but not to dwell on it cuz you're not going to change anything right that's not it's just not going to do anything beneficial for you okay so I don't know if there's another part to that question maybe I said there was something else I said earlier I was like oh we'll make sure we can talk about that I wanted to talk about career switchers wanted to talk about uncertainty that I've had um you guys are very patient with me thank you I think maybe something else to consider too is like probably the the really common one that I'm hearing over the past year is like is people like upand cominging software developers that are getting into you

know they're going through College University or whatever they're spending time and what's happening is they're looking in the media and seeing all of the oh like software developers are going to be the first people to be replaced by Ai and it's like now these people are like dude I just I'm in my fourth year of college University and you're telling me like my job's going to be Obsolete and then they see the job market and they're like and no one's getting hired it must be because AI like oh no the the prophecy has come true um like what am I going to do and I've seen people posting this on Reddit I've seen people in my video comments I've seen people on my live streams you know people are freaking out about this and like I don't blame them honestly I don't blame them because

you have you have media trying like news is absolutely awful it's so bad because the whole it's always just about getting attention that's the entire purpose of it right there's no you don't make news because you're just trying to like help inform people no news is a business trying to get money how do they get money they get money from ads how do they get people to look at ads well you got to click on the thing you're got to click on the thing if it scares the out of you people click on stuff like that so it works right this is same thing with like you YouTube thumbnails and stuff we've I know a few of us have joked on in the comments about you know uh on this channel at least I'm not doing much for thumbnails and titles and stuff right like

but on my main Channel you'll see me making dumb faces and stuff like that because people click it there's just data that proves that people click that stuff people will click clickbait titles that get them triggered and then they get pissed off they're like you tricked me into clicking this and it's like yes because it literally Works get mad at human psychology um so like I don't blame Junior developers and stuff for for getting into this mode where they're like am I did I just screw up like my education and like my entire career path is now thrown off because I just wasted four years doing this like I got behind the wrong van here man this is brutal um so yeah don't blame them for it but um you have the news that's doing that then you have these companies that are like we've

we've already replaced our Engineers with AI and it's like okay like definitely not buying whatever you're creating because uh good luck with that um it's just like people are too too much on the bandwagon and uh that one I can't can't see that backfiring at all um but the reality is like the stuff's advancing very fast but uh I've made videos on this I will keep saying like until something is so dramatic or I see a different Trend but I I do not foresee that AI is directly replacing software developers anytime soon right so it's a really difficult thing to try and communicate to these other people because that message is not a sexy message it's not scary it's not exciting right I have people that will join a stream or leave comments and they'll say I'm doomed I'm I'm cooked as the kids say

I'm cooked no cap for real on God or something um and then and then I'm like hey no here's my perspective on this I've been at this for a while and I think everything's going to be pretty all right until basically every single role in the world world is replaced by Ai and robots and I think we got some time and they're like no I don't I don't believe anything you have to say just whatever the news says cuz it's scary and I'm like okay I sure that's fine um I can only I can only do so much um so yeah I mean if people want to be afraid about it I guess that's their choice but I have been trying my best to remind people that there still I think a lot of runway for software developers I I know I've even heard a

couple people saying they think it's the opposite right where it's like the demand for software developers will go up I think that's an interesting take um I think I just think the landscape for software development is going to change but that doesn't mean that it goes away or that software developers aren't needed personally so uh for the people that if you're going through College University or you're you know finishing up a boot camp and you're going oh man did I totally screw up here uh I think answer is no I think if you like doing this kind of stuff then you're absolutely in a great spot keep on keep it on you know you found something you enjoy you're hopefully good at it it's a it's a good combo do it that would be my recommendation I'm not panicking right what happens if uh like

shouldn't I be panicking if all the software developers are replaced why do you need a manager who who am I going to manage right AI Bots don't need promotions and career progression they don't have uh interpersonal conflicts and stuff like that so what am I doing but I'm not panicking I'm not I'm not concerned that I'm just going to lay off my entire team and say sorry sorry chat gpts here I got co-pilot like it's just not it's just not happening so so that's my take if you don't want to believe it that's okay too I only got so much energy I'm not going to convince the internet I'm just here to to share my perspective but I am at the office I'm going to get parked here that was a fun talk kind of ranty wow it's very busy in here why is this

so busy really oh my God okay let's see oh this one is maybe nah I'm G to go back sorry that you have to see this there's spots but like they're all terrible they're all terrible and there's this Jeep that's beside me that's like huge and if I park inside the lines I don't I can't explain this but like the spots here are absolutely outrageous um like this person can't open their door to my right without digging me it's impossible and the only reason there's space between me and this Jeep is because they parked they're at the end and they they're smart and they parked over the line the way anyway thanks for being here I appreciate you and I'll see you next time take care