In my rather short career as a software engineer I have met many new colleagues who have taken the brave and successful step to switch to software engineering. Although, each and every one of them learn in their own way and speed, they share some common challenges.
In this article I try to express my understanding of the matter (and give practical tips in later posts) with the aim to welcome and help our new colleagues in the amazing field of software engineering. So here we go.
Software growth
Along with other things in life, software has become one of those essential things we can hardly live without. Software is literally everywhere. Wifi, smart phones, millions of apps, cars, traffic management systems, banking & financial systems, education & medical systems, webshops and what not is made of software. Software continues to grow and fill other aspects of our lives. In fact, some software is “so old” that many software systems must be replaced or re-written because they are not of this time anymore.
The demand and the opportunity
As software grows, thus grows the demand for engineers to create and maintain them. In the current jobs market, software engineers are scarce and companies are desperately looking for them.
The challenge
I have studied Technical Informatics and Software engineering. So, I cannot write the first hand experiences. However, I do have and had the pleasure of working with many who have switched to software engineering. Besides, I know many successful software engineers who initially had a different background. I have also given software engineering lessons in the retraining programs. Here, I sum up my, of course opinionated, observations as follows:
- Lack of in-depth understanding. Unless studied (by any means), new comers will have to catch up with a lot of theory which explains the hows, whens and specially the whys in software engineering. This lack of understanding can bring frustration and miscommunication.
- Focus on being billable and valuable for the company. Landing in a project where everybody wants to bring value to the project or do as much work as possible gets the focus. Even when being in-between might steal the focus to become billable. It is hard put continuous attention on the the new comer’s career instead of the project.
- Lack of guidance. The capable and experienced engineers are mostly busy with projects and other goals. They do not have or get enough time to provide full support for the new comers. Also, the new comers themselves do not actively seek a guide for a long run.
Although, the challenges mentioned above can hold for any software engineer, it is extra hard for those who switch to software engineering.
In my next post, I have provided advice and tips on how I think each of these challenges can be tackled.