I'm happy that I switched from electrical engineering to software engineering. I feel like the prospects are better and still feel that way even though things are rough right now.

I regret being scared during my first 5 years as a software engineer. I've stayed in jobs too long. Going forward, once I get that feeling that I've outgrown a role I know its time to start looking for the next thing. No more lingering for that extra year. I'm in my mid 30s and so am feeling the age pressure to make my next couple big moves soon before I'm looked at as too old to be an "IC with a bright future" haha.

This is an interesting and unexpected take on the near future market. Nice to hear somebody thinks it may start warming up again that soon.

What is your current career? I was an Electrical Engineer until 2017 and was also considering a CS degree. I opted for a Web Dev boot camp instead as a lower timeframe/cost test of my ability to pivot.

I was able to land a job 8ish months after graduating and am now a Sr. Software Engineer. I think my previous engineering experience did help me get my foot in the door but one of my bootcamp grad buddies also broke into a web dev job without any bachelor's degree.

The CS guys here may scoff at me but the boot camp route made sense for me and it may for you as well.

It's definitely not a shoo-in. You have to like to code and have a passion for it. I liked it in high-school so it wasn't liked I just pulled the "lets try a coding career" out of thin air.

Context:

I'm a dev that consumes company wide libraries, not an author of such libraries. So the following comes from that perspective.

A couple questions:

1. Is development and consumption of your library happening in parallel? It sounds like you use the users to vet new features or major changes... is that correct? (They are iterating with you and reporting back on issues or desired changes)
2. Is your library made up of a group of isolated components? Or is it a library that does one or two major things and so a breaking change literally changes the whole of what the library does?
3. How are the consumers of your library when it comes to adopting changes? Do they readily do it? Is there a good bit of inertia?

My thoughts:

First off, SemVer is definitely going to be important. Also, it sounds like you're working toward API stabilization which is going help iterating in the future.

My idea 1:

If your library is made up of several isolated components, what about doing major releases (ex 2.x.x -> 3.x.x) more frequently? Only include a small subset of breaking changes for one or two components rather than jamming a whole bunch in there just because it's a "major version release". The result is you could move quickly and iterate while also minimizing the impact on ALL of your users every release. Some of your users may be able to upgrade to the latest without having to touch much or any of their code.

My idea 2:

Do frequent major release (ex 2.x.x - 3.x.x) but always start with an "alpha" release that early adopters could implement and provide feedback on. This would shield the majority of your consumer's code from having to iterate frequently but would also require you to enlist a group of committed early adopters that are diligent about iterating their code as often as you release.

Feedback on the original option 1 and 2

Option 1

This could work if your users are excited about your releases. But, it could result in people NEVER upgrading because it's too much work to do so. (I've seen this happen. No one upgrades until they absolutely have to.)

Option 2

Depending on the size of your company, this will be a lot of work for you and will slow you down. If you're using your users to vet out new features, then everyone is going to have to iterate frequently (like you said) if experimental changes don't work out.

Is that still the case? I thought those days were over.

Nice, congratulations! Sounds like all good things!

Have you witnessed/experienced this in action?

Side note: as a 20 year vet, can you comment on my theory that I'm going to age out of software engineering? How did you make it 20 years? (Real question)

Some great comments here. Tangentially, I occasionally day dream of running or working for a company that flips typical corporate "intention" on its head -- Specifically by placing employees at the highest place of priority and let profits, progress, customers, share price etc. be what they'll be. I think that would be a very interesting experiment.

As far as how that relates to pay, part of the experiment would be to pay each employee more than they are "worth" to market. Just to see how it changes things for them and the company.

At the same time, "freeloaders" and folks that just can't cut it would need to be identified and separated from, to protect those that recognize and appreciate that the company is truly looking out for them and are reciprocating with true hard work and value creation.

8-10 hours with few breaks. (I used to skip breakfast and sometimes lunch too...coffee diet) It started as a necessity and then became a habit. I have to retrain myself to take breaks and walk away and give my brain some breathing room and fresh air. This doesn't include the time I spent thinking about problems while driving or in the shower.... I've made progress breaking those habits though.

3.5 years. But that's because I haven't found "the place" yet like it sounds like you have.

Thanks for the in-depth reply!

Thanks for the detailed write up! Send the "whole rant" my way. I'd read it.

I'm going to be honest. I like this thread. Not only is the article long and "thorough" (whether you agree with this form of thoroughness or not) but the responses are too.

I can appreciate what the author is trying to express. I also related to how he's trying to express it because it's very similar to how I try to explain my opinions, shower thoughts, meanderings....which typically earns me eyes glazing over from my conversation partners haha.

I have many many thoughts on everything being discussed here, but rather than contribute, I'm going to sip on my coffee and keep reading.

P.s. I'm liking PD better than Reddit. Actual conversation happening.

Hm. In that case, smaller more frequent breaking changes may also not be ideal. It sounds like no matter how small the breaking change, everyone who uses the library is going to have to update their code... and if it's happening frequently, that could get annoying.

This may be completely off-base, but just going off of what you said about data traversal, would it be completely out of scope for your library to provide a consistent interface for getting/traversing the data it is responsible for? Or do the consumers all use/traverse the returned data in very unique ways such that you couldn't really develop a "general" API of sorts.

Honestly, that's kinda how it happened for me. When I remembered I liked coding I started tinkering with Python for a couple of weeks. I enjoyed it enough that I started to wonder if I could do it as a job instead of Electrical engineering. That's what lead me to look at education options.

If you're looking into web dev specifically... you could try writing some very basic websites for a week or two with HTML, CSS and maybe some Javascript. If you find your curiosity and your excitement when you get something to work outweighs the frustration of hitting learning roadblocks...then it's probably safe to say you'll like it and will thrive!

If you completely lose momentum and have no desire to try again or keep learning....then switching to it as a career will probably be a painful grind.

And to be perfectly honest, I didn't even really know what web development was when I joined the boot camp....I just knew I liked tinkering with the Python stuff that I did.

Oh hang in there! What stage of your career you in?

That sounds tough. What's your job search criteria? And... What kind of work are you trying to do?

Ya this article was great. I wish I could convince my coworkers to take a deep dive into Git. I do it probably once a year and it's helped me be the "hero" with confidence several times.

Git is exciting/interesting to me....it is not normal.

I just did a really silly loop (I'm on my phone) and it seemed to work.

@for $t from 1 through 2 {
  .a-#{$t} {
    color: red;
   }
}