Why do software engineers make so much

So paying programmers a lot of money is just one way to incentive against these types of things happening. With most trades or careers, you learn a set of skills that you use daily for the entirety of your career.

However, software engineering is slightly different. Learning how to code is just the first step on a lengthy journey, you never truly stop learning. Technology changes so often that the development landscape is always shifting. It means developers constantly need to improve and upskills to stay relevant. You also have to be highly adaptable. These traits and the willingness to continue learning come at a premium and are part of the reason programmers make so much money.

Of course, professional development and learning are required as you progress in any role. But with development, it is taken to a whole new level and is one of the reasons why people think there is an age limit to software engineering. The output to value ratio for software engineers is incredible. It is incredibly difficult to get those types of numbers in any other industry.

Technology scales so rapidly that a few good developers can create incredibly profitable platforms and apps. It makes them indispensable. Learning to code may not be that hard but becoming a skilled software developer is far more than the code you write. Good engineers:. The above are just a few examples of what successful software engineers do daily. Looking further into the future, software engineering skills are likely to become useful across an even wide range of industries as the economy shifts further into the information age.

As a senior software engineer you also learn project management, which is a highly useful transferable skill. You gain a flexible fall back option for making money as a freelancer or contractor, which you can do remotely and part time. This is useful for testing new projects and volunteering, as well as making money to increase your savings, investing in training or covering other unforeseen financial needs.

In terms of prestige and status, working in the tech industry is becoming increasingly common for elite graduates for example many more Harvard M. This also means that the network you gain access to working at tech-firms is increasingly made up of wealthy and influential people. Moreover, the tech industry has a high concentration of progressively-minded people who are interested in doing good — notable examples include Bill Gates , Dustin Moskovitz and Elon Musk.

If you are a software engineer in the Bay Area, you are also in a major hub of the effective altruism community. It is relatively quick and cheap to test out your fit for software engineering through online programming courses, bootcamps, and internships, and so it is a good option for exploration value. We will cover how to test it out next. However overall not much is known about general predictors of success for programming, so the best way to find out if you have a chance of succeeding is to try it out.

We recommend that you take the following steps to test how well it fits you. In less than 20 minutes and with no programming background at all, you can write a program which reminds you to take a break every two hours, by following the instructions in this post.

You can then take the Intro to Computer Science course on Udacity, which teaches you computer science basics and the Python programming language. This will give you an idea of how much you enjoy programming and the kinds of skills involved.

You may also want to check out this programmer competency matrix to get a sense of what programming involves at different levels. Next do a project with other people. Contributing to open source projects in particular lets you work with very large existing codebases.

To find out more about your fit for software engineering, we recommend talking to people in your network who are software engineers, ideally who are similar to you, and asking them:. Many software engineers we have spoken to say the work is engaging, often citing the puzzles and problems involved with programming, and being able to enter a state of flow. Read our five interviews with software engineers for more details. Work life balance is generally better than in jobs with higher or comparable pay.

According to one survey, software engineers work 8. As mentioned above, some tech companies work a 4 day, hour work week for example Treehouse does this all year round, Basecamp does it from May to October. In terms of general working conditions, tech companies are progressive, often having flexible hours, convenient perks, remote working and a results-driven culture.

The best companies in the industry, like Google, are leaders in evidence-based management and widely regarded as among the best places to work in the world. Remote working opens up location flexibility, which is excellent for improving your quality of life: you can move to climates and cities that you prefer, you can increase your disposable income by moving to places with a lower cost of living and you can be close to family and friends.

You also have the added peace of mind of being able to get work as a freelancer or a contractor as and when you may need to. Quantitative finance — there are many roles in quantitative trading and hedge funds that use programming skills, as well as machine learning and modeling skills. We suspect the earnings are higher, although the direct value of the work is likely to be lower, and the level of competition is higher.

In terms of keeping options open, if you are choosing between doing software engineering at a technology company and a role in quantitative finance, our impression is that it is probably easier to go from a finance role to a software engineering role than it is the other way.

For a comparison of working at large tech companies, startups and quant hedge funds, see this Quora thread. Founding a startup or joining as an early employee — has potential for greater earnings if you are successful, but is much more stressful, the hours are much longer and it is harder to leave than a software engineering job. Commonly given advice is that you should only start a startup if you are highly motivated to build a product that you are incredibly passionate about.

For more on choosing whether to start a startup, see this post by Dustin Moskovitz and this post by Matt Clifford. Attending a coding bootcamp. Coding bootcamps are focused on taking people with little knowledge of programming to as highly paid a job as possible within a couple of months.

Course Report is a great guide to choosing a bootcamp. Be careful to avoid low-quality bootcamps. To find out more about App Academy, read our interview with one of their instructors.

Studying computer science at university or another subject involving lots of programming. This will give you a better theoretical understanding of computing which can useful for getting the most highly paid and intellectually interesting jobs , a good network, some prestige, and a better understanding of lower-level languages like C. Larger companies have graduate schemes. Once you get to the interview, you may be given technical challenges to complete at home within a particular timeframe.

Some companies will ask you questions about algorithms. But that's why these positions offer such high salaries: Programming and engineering requires constant vigilance and adaptation, and the things you create have a major impact on people. Just look around you: That web browser you're using, this post you're reading, it was all made possible by programmers and engineers. And those high stakes feel that much higher Silicon Valley, where if your software isn't growing, it's dying.

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