Is Being a Software Dev Actually Shit?

All the time on tech forums I see people bitching about their jobs in software development/programming. Common complaints are: lack of respect, no job satisfaction, shitty co-workers, shitty customers, endless tedium, pajeets taking all the jobs, ageism in the industry, skills becoming obsolete, etc. People often say to "code for fun, not for employment."

This is an important topic for me right now because I've reached a point in my education where I have to choose between a degree in Computer Science or Mechanical Engineering. I'm currently majoring in both, but I need to drop one and just graduate. Both degrees require the same amount of credits to complete.

I've been flip-flopping between the two for several months at this point, and I'm still undecided.

So tell me Sup Forums: what's your opinion on software development?

What profession are you hoping to find where people don't incessantly bitch?

you are asking to a bunch of unemployed people. that would easily answer you.

>comfy office
>getting paid $60k to do something I'd probably do for fun if I didn't have to work anyway
>actually only takes me about four hours out of my day to get my work done and the rest is just fiddling around or getting ahead
>get to mess with the females by lowering the temperature in the office to 68˚
>flirt with them when they bitch about it, I don't think they know it's me
>I'm the only non-autistic guy in the department so it generally goes well
job is cake and the only people who complain are losers

I get that people complain about their jobs, but I've seen people actually advise others not to seek employment in the industry. That's more than just bitching.

There are negative things about every job and those that you list vary pretty drastically across industries and work environments. It's better than ever to be a dev right now. If you live in the right area and can put together a few sentences you won't end up a NEET shitposter on /r9k/.

>If you live in the right area and can put together a few sentences you won't end up a NEET shitposter on /r9k/.
what did you mean by this? honestly curious
I'd love to quit my current /r9k/ shitposting job and advance to a job that pays me currency in exchange for code

Are there a good amount of software dev jobs in low-level programming (e.g. RTOS, drivers, etc) that you could get with a BSCS?

I'm going to graduate soon and have done a couple internships, but I don't want to be a java monkey for the rest of my life

meaning you have at least basic social skills, i.e. not an autistic shut-in sperg.

w-what if i can only code fizzbuzz and fruit / orange / apple inheritance examples

...

It is pretty shit if you don't work for a large, premier company.

If you work for a small shop, you're at the whims of bitchy users who won't own what they say at development meetings, who will throw the whole test out because an interfaced isn't pretty, and will run interference on other user's desires. Then the management treats documentation as the enemy because "the competition might steal it;" forcing you to wipe the asses of the users for basic things.

In bigger companies, you have arbitrary requirements, arbitrary technology, arbitrary deadlines. Your quality life depends on the skill of your department manager's business political skills. There is always some asshole in upper management beating the outsourcing drum; on the rare moments they pull the trigger it backfires and the company scrambles to rebuild the department (have friends that were hired this way) and said manager always evades punishment.

Being a dev today is pretty shit. It is relatively easy for your skill set to go from hot to not within a few years. Companies refuse to train and expect you to be an expert at everything the moment you're hired.

Realistically, a good deal of being a dev is putting up with people's shit. Despite the holywood stereotype of the basement wunderkind, actual business coding is a very social endeavor.

Getting hired is a massive pain in the ass. Companies want to soak up massive amounts of your time on technical interviews and refuse to give feedback. Your employer will get very antsy if they realize that you're trying to leave the company; this happens even if they don't like you (no fukken idea why).

Apologies for blogging.

Everything you list is not the issue with the job it's an issue with a company.

Or just being a sperg.

Jobs are everywhere and you can make excellent pay for getting to build engaging products. It all comes down to how nice a company you can find, which is true for most jobs.

Holy shit are you me? I'm starting school this falll and I'm 80% leaning towards Mechanical Engineering and the 20% towards Computer Science. I'm afraid the work as a Engineer will be shitty or I won't like the work culture, kinda why I was leaning a little towards CS.

>thinking company issues doing boil over into the job as a software developer
Somebody is in for a wild ride when they finally get their CompSci degree.

Everything he lists is an issue of the place and culture not of the job.

For example I love my job and my coworkers, and I am never bored because we roll over new projects every 3 months.

If my company was dog shit that would be different.

>get to mess with the females by lowering the temperature in the office to 68˚
>flirt with them when they bitch about it, I don't think they know it's me
>I'm the only non-autistic guy in the department so it generally goes well

sorry dude, that is clearly autism

>doesn't work in an office with an accessible thermostat
confirmed

>Everything he lists is an issue of the place and culture not of the job.
Explain how you can do a job irrespective of a company's place and culture. That fact that the company works a certain way means your job will function a certain way as well.

The degree alone doesn't get you hired. What are you more interested in and stronger at? Interest complements strength and vice versa. These are the things that will motivate you to do the projects and other stuff outside of classes that actually get you hired.

Holy shit dude, the point is none of the shit he lists is a problem with picking CS, EE, or any other specialization.

It's all about the work environment, not the subject matter.

I work remotely

jealous

well, almost all software ever made is shit so...

The truth is all jobs are shit. This is because as more and more jobs are being automated away, it creates more and more pressure for STEM. This is why SJWs are fighting to carve up STEM and pozz up STEM jobs with diversity.

Things are only going to get worse.

TL;DR - It's not the jobs, it's the entire civilization in decline.

software development will become basic skill like cooking once we invent language highlevel enough so normies can write programs in pure english

I'm good at putting up with people's shit; it's one of my talents. I hate when people interfere with my projects though. I take pride in my work and the details matter a lot for me, which other people often don't care about.

I don't know about work culture (obviously), but I can tell you that ME coursework is twice as hard as CS, although programming assignments can take longer to complete. I've never been too worried about work culture in Engineering though; most places I've seen just have a couple Engineers that are very well-treated.

In Engineering I feel stronger than my peers because I'm good at math and conceptual understanding. In CS it's hard to tell because I don't see other students' code very often. I'm not good at memorization, which I feel is an important skill in CS. It's one of the points in favor of ME for me. I'm more interested in CS though, and it's much easier to do programming projects on my own time.

The work environment is one of my chief concerns. If a great many workplaces experience these issues then that's a negative point towards Software Development as a whole. I don't want to have to switch until I find something that doesn't suck.

I feel like this problem is overblown. People complain a lot about SJWs, but in the end it's mostly just publicity right? How does this affect the workplace?

Apologies for my own blogposting; I appreciate the responses.

All jobs are shit but that's not because of competition or SJWs or anything. Wagecucking is just inherently, innately shit. There are things that can make it worse but nothing that can make it not be shit.

If you think any job where you sit in a chair in an air conditioned office all day is shit, then you've never had a real job. Try doing something where you can literally drink a gallon of water in 8 hours and not urinate.

SJWs are usually in universities, maybe you'll see few at work spaces but it's not that common as in universities.
And most likely they won't be in the engineering culture but rather some art or social stuff but slowly coming to STEM

yes, see

Here's some of my experience as Software Dev.

Job 1. This was work with a friend in a startup we made in Mexico (saying the country so you don't think this happened in California or the US at all).
Work was pretty cool and we were funded by the govt. We did hours as we pleased, technologies as we pleased and everything as we wanted. But at the end of the day you have to deliver. Projects were cool but then there was the selling part, which our sales guy let us down pretty badly and all the hard work meant nearly nothing.

Job 2. Worked with a university in the UK in a joint project with a one of those big/small companies in the UK. Big in the sense that they had clients all over the northern hemisphere but small in the sense that in reality there were less than 40 employees with only 4 working as devs, the rest was support and sales. I swear to god that by the end of it I wanted to kill everyone in the office. All of the following became truth to me in the following order (this is important

>ageism in the industry
>shitty co-workers
>endless tedium
>lack of respect
>no job satisfaction

Because all the devs were old and apparently the 90's and 00's didn't happened, their software dev techniques were painfully dated, to the point of no version control software. All the older devs looked down on me, and my boss was just an ignorant ass that got the post because daddy inherit him the company. I started raising in the Uni but my boss didn't let me take hours from office, even when I was ahead of my parts of the project, because you have to do 8 retarded butt-hours.

So yes, I would say that working can be pretty but if you work on your own/for yourself, then it can be pretty sweet. I would strongly advise you ask yourself if you want to do a normal 9-5 job with little pressure or not. Mech engineer sounds better for a 9-5 because something I haven't seen mention so far are the infamous crunches. Once you go into a few times is not fun anymore

sorry for blogposting

It's a low status job for low status males

t. low status male

>5.71k
I'm not even joking.

It's like any other job. Depends on who you work for. Ideally, you work for yourself, set your own hours, and bill out enough that you can live comfortably working a few days a week. Worst case scenario you end up like me in my first and second jobs: working 80+ hours a week on legacy Java with a team of barely literate Indians waiting for the day the lead fires you to hire another one of his cousins on a visa.

>Java
>Coded by barely literate Indians
>Running in a gillion devices and your cpu blob

Seek defense and aerospace.

Essentially this. I did construction and demolition in my teens and twenties. Software by comparison is a cushy cake-walk. Shit managers can make it uncomfortable at times, but that's nothing like having a foreman breathing up your ass while you're sweating buckets in the summer heat with a sledgehammer, covered in asbestos.

Yep and what I learned at those jobs taught me one thing: do all your banking on paper and in person.

I do too. Can one do mech.eng from home?

And yet master chefs make good money.

>I don't want to be a java monkey for the rest of my life

Why not? It's easy and you get paid fairly well. Java isn't going anywhere so there's job security as well.

I haven't read the whole thread, but you don't need a CS degree to be a developer. However, you do actually need that engineering degree to be an engineer. Get the engineering degree, get a programming job doing engineering work.

This is the dream. If you are an actual licensed engineer then you'll get paid three times as much to write safety-critical software.

i seriously think my college courses put too much emphasis on this fruit orange shit

it's something everyone understands the second they hear

this is actually a pretty good point. CS != software developer.

And there is more to both software development and CS than just programming.

...

I'll relate to your points with my experience as a dev 2 years out of school.

>lack of respect

This is very true. I went from being respected by my professors and classmates in school to being made to dance as a codemonkey for a project manager with a liberal arts degree.

>no job satisfaction

True for me, I'm currently trying to get into a lab in academia so that my work might actually mean something. Everything I've worked on post-graduation has been because a customer complained or some manager had a "great idea" which turned out to be a feature than no one used.

>shitty co-workers

Some might be cool. You're almost guaranteed to work with a maladjusted autist or some stupid uppity bitch, both will ruin your life.

>shitty customers

This is a given.

>endless tedium

This comes about because companies like to take really smart and talented engineers and give them no creative input whatsoever. All application features get decided by a project manager and a designer, and all technology decisions get made by managers. As a dev you are just a code robot.

>pajeets taking all the jobs

Might be true. I interviewed at Amazon a month ago and I was the only white American there, every single other interviewee was Indian and on visa.

>ageism in the industry

This always worried me when thinking about my future. I don't really know what the market is like for older devs though.

>skills becoming obsolete

What's even worse than this is skills you learn in your free time are disregarded when interviewing. I have to lie and say I used Python at my last job when I really used Java because I don't have the "right" experience to work as a Python dev professionally. This is despite being more proficient and more interested in Python than Java.

if you're ok managing a bunch of indians with "masters" degrees that can't into inheritance or interface design

all my friends that were worth a shit in java end up managing indians.