Are software engineers really enjoying their work ?

Context: I am a software engineer with 4 years of experience. Everytime I work with a bunch of engineers (Especially Indian Startups). Most of them are workaholics. They are just working for some company full-time. They are interested in learning more about technology, making jokes about technology, following technology news, etc. That is it. No social life. (Especially after Covid). No skills in any other part of life. Their comfort zone is so small that they have developed a lifestyle of working, sleeping & watching something on laptops and that's it. They make an excellent salary but don't do anything else. Every time I meet a 35-40-year-old software engineer, it is just a physically unfit guy with an arranged marriage who is boring as a brick.

Relatively new to tech - only 2 years of experience here so far. Yet find it extremely cyclical. Face the same challenges over and over again. Perhaps the setting changes occasionally but that’s really it. I understand this is not unique to tech and happens everywhere. But at least in product management, it seems like it’s research - design - dev with stakeholder management over and over and over again. Feel like I’m on autopilot mode and not truly *enjoying* working. I used to be so full of energy and enthusiasm in college and school, eager to learn. But the cyclical nature of work has wrung it out of me, and I’ve sort of become a cynic lol. Who enjoys their work?

Ask me anything except my company name, or things that can reveal my identity. I may respectfully choose not to respond to your question based on my own judgement. Here’s a brief intro about me: I’ve worked as both software engineering manager & software technical architect over the last 18+ years on various tech stacks managing backend, frontend and a little bit of cloud. I have seen ups and downs in the software industry. Currently I’m working as a senior architect in one of the product based companies in India.

Hey Grapeviners, I need some serious help. Bit about myself - just graduated this month and working as an APM at a seed stage startup. I have 1.5 years of product experience and 3 years of overall experience. Lately, not sure why but I am loving what engineers do. Closely working with them, and I guess it's nostalgic for myself. Because I did coding for 6 months and moved on for some reason. So, I understand how tech actually works. Have got good feedback regarding this. At the same time, I am not really finding the true value of what I am doing everyday. Feels a void inside. Also, I am not able to discuss all these things in person with someone, because I fear that they will judge me after doing internships for 3 years, I still haven't figured out my career. Such a loser I am. I have been thinking about starting coding again and maybe switching to a coding job in the next 6 months maybe. But again it would be tough for me as I only got weekends for me to learn all this stuff. What do you all experienced folks suggest? What should I do? Please comment if you can help🙏

Hey Grapeviners, I need some serious help. Bit about myself - just graduated this month and working as an APM at a seed stage startup. I have 1.5 years of product experience and 3 years of overall experience as an intern. Lately, not sure why but I am loving what engineers do. Closely working with them, and I guess it's nostalgic for myself. Because I did coding for 6 months and moved on for some reason. So, I understand how tech actually works. Have got good feedback regarding this. At the same time, I am not really finding the true value of what I am doing everyday. Feels a void inside. Also, I am not able to discuss all these things in person with someone, because I fear that they will judge me after doing internships for 3 years, I still haven't figured out my career. Such a loser I am. I have been thinking about starting coding again and maybe switching to a coding job in the next 6 months maybe. But again it would be tough for me as I only got weekends for me to learn all this stuff. What do you all experienced folks suggest? What should I do? Please comment if you can help 🙏

Are you folks enjoying your work? Seems like I am bored with CSS changes I get the whole day. No logic work only making dumb react components.

1. You are building a software that otherwise could be built by a 12 year old kid, if given proper training. 2. You cannot code if I cut off google, stackoverflow & related websites. 3. You are just concerned about producing the output quickly because a. your work is time bound, b. you want to stand out from others. 4. You attend countless meetings that carry no value, thanks to Agile. 5. 10 people write code for the same software which otherwise could have been written by 1 person. 6. You write pages of documents just because you are expected to write for the team, compliance & stuff. 7. You don’t care about non-functional requirements as nobody asked for it. 8. You are spending hours together in coding a simple thing & you are branded a hard-worker. 9. Or you don’t spend much time in coding because you impress people with tech jargons that you learnt recently. You are branded a smart-worker. 10. The code you write will be completely rewritten in next 3-4 years just to catch up with the industry trends. 11. Your only goal is to earn loads of money which otherwise could not be earned in other engineering fields. That’s one of the reasons why you are on grapevine. Prove me wrong if you can, by commenting your opinion.

Hi, just reaching out to people working in core technology and engineering (Not IT, Consulting, PM, UI/UX People) for general discussion on the state of R&D in India, your pay, comparisons to IT folks by your family friends etc. You may be working in R&D as an engineer or building some deep tech product as an entrepreneur Non exclusive list Mechanical/Chemical/Material engineers People working on Drones/Robots/Transportation/Defense Tech I am missing a lot of fields here, but I believe there are lot of communities out there of software engineers, design folks, MBAs, not much of the hands on engineers in India