I am an engineer, what I enjoy is solving technically challenging problems. I don't really want to spend my time bothering with non-code solutions to your business problem, and I don't care how much money my code makes you. Just have a tech lead give me a challenging tech problem to solve or build for(WITH the necessary requirements) and I'll get it done. Simple.
Personally I'm saddened to see how chasing impact has taken over all good tech companies, and how you basically HAVE to create value and take ownership in other ways if you want to be SDE-3 or higher. I would rather be a more technically competent, deliverer SDE (think someone who's extremely good at being an SDE-1). Climbing the SDE ladder is boring.
Engineering is about solutions not tech. A problem can be solved using product, design, business or tech. Your job as a "coder" might be to just deal with technical problems but your job as an "engineer" is to figure out the quickest, cheapest and most impactful solutions which more often than not are not technical. Your job also includes saying NO to solutions proposed by others which might be very pleasing to tech, like a 6 month long project to build out the most robust async orchestrator but the impact of it might be minimal to none and hence are a waste no matter how hard it gets you.
I'm a software development engineer, not a product or business engineer. My role shouldn't have so much overlap with business and impact. IMO tech companies should have tech lead/other roles involved in these decisions and let SDEs just focus on writing software. Which is kind of what happens, but SDEs are increasingly expected to be business minded and chase impact, which I feel is out of scope.
@NoCodeNoLife You are thinking from a newbie perspective in tech world. Your job is to do everything to create a successful, impactful product. Also, many times, if you don’t understand the business and user requirement of the product, you will end up doing mistakes, or will end up creating something other than the expected product.
That is one reason why senior folks are paid more than the young ones- for the business and product understanding.
Man realizes that for-profit companies only care about profit. Pikachu face
More specifically, I'm complaining about the impact this has had on the roles and responsibilities of an SDE.
An SDE of a for-profit company still an employee of a for profit company just like any other employee of the company. If a marketing professional likes to make "good" marketing content (idk a martin Scorcese equivalent of ads/marketing campaigns) but it doesn't get the company eye balls it they don't care.
A company with 1000 customers doesn't care if your app can scale to 10,000 users per minute in case of high load.
You're an SDE, as an SDE it's your job to turn business requirements into actual technical implementation that supports business.
How do you envision career growth if one just implements ideas? At some point you need to take ownership and design solutions and that won't happen if you are unaware about the company's business. Alternatively, you can stay SDE and keep getting proportional salary.
It feels like you just started out. It's okay to feel what you're feeling. I think you should focus on tech right now as you mentioned. Your perspective will change in the future.
It should be a mix of both. But by reading your response in other comments you are sticking to the definition of sde. But the definition says you develop software, (A software engineer is a person who applies the engineering design process to design, develop, test, maintain, and evaluate computer software)
In the design part, you also have to include business logic without which there's no software it's just CRUD. And nowhere in the definition is it mentioned that you have to solve challenging problems.
Regarding impact, I don't see why that's an issue, if you are doing something that has no impact then it's probably a hobby.
I am actually the exact opposite, I get bored if What I'm developing will not have any users? There should be a question as to what value your work has, if it doesn't you're just doing whiteboard masturbation and nothing else.
I don't really care about how many users end up using my code, I merely care about the quality and complexity of the problem I'm solving (with software). It's more the intellectual exercise that I enjoy, rather than creating value for the business or helping anyone at all in the end. Business could definitely have a role that benefits from this responsibility as well.
Personal Enjoyment for complex problems of an SDE may not earn him the best money.
Tbf I feel somewhat similar but the reason might be different (?) I personally just like to build things without caring about if it creates any impact or not. Corporate isn't the place where this mentality would work, so just do your corporate job to earn the $$$ and create profit for your employer while you can solve "technically challenging problems" with your side projects, freelancing, opensource contributions, etc (it's what I do)
I don't see why corporate also cannot benefit from having strictly SD-focused roles. It's just that they think they will get more impact if they tie your career progression to impact created, so as one becomes senior, they are forced to chase impact and contribute out of pure coding.
And why are the corporates wrong?
Leetcode boi when they get a job vibes.
You should go into research OP. Pays very less , but you'll solve complex af problems.
I want a high pay for executing a list of pre-planned coding tasks. Complexity is second concern.
Sadly, chasing impact will always be there as companies grow big and management gets a bigger voice because it is all about money in the end for them. that is why good company culture and policies are necessary in these places. for ex. i think google has a 20% time where people can focus on their side projects during company time. More companies and team should focus on their core values while also driving profits.
Sadly.
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