Software Engineers Ranked Best Job in America

fistfullast33l writes "CNNMoney and Salary.com have ranked the title of Software Engineer the best job in America. Computer IT Analyst also ranks 7th on the list, placing both technology positions in the top 10. From the article: "Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you've got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.""

We Still Aren't Trusted to Telecommute

[eldavojohn (898314)]

Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.

I disagree.

Especially with larger companies, I see it more and more that telecommuting is a frowned upon idea. In fact, most of the articles on telecommuting today are instructions on how to argue with your boss [quintcareers.com] because your boss is going to be the last person that wants you telecommuting.

And that's just for jobs in general. With software engineering jobs, the need to work together on a team is obviously a mandatory requirement. Very few solid and marketable software applications are written by one person. Telecommuting just raises another possible barrier and could compound dynamics and differences among team members. There are also security issues regarding the connection between work and home as well as the problem of productivity being a hard thing to measure when developing software.

Then of course there are home distractions that all managers would worry about.

This is old news to the Slashdot crowd [slashdot.org].

In the Fortune 500 company I work for, I don't know anyone who telecommutes. We are encouraged to work with different teams accross the country but they are at company facilities in sub-teams that get together everyday.

If by "widespread" they mean one person does it in New York and one person does it in California then I would agree. If they mean "widespread" by increased frequency and occurance then I would not only disagree with them but adamently argue that it's not accepted as a viable method for getting the job done in the software engineering world.

Software Engineers Ranked Best Job in America

Now that, I can see. I've only been working in the field for a couple years but I can already see that the room for growth in software development is unparalelled. What I mean is that people who start out as grunt developers often have a chance to become a team manager--it depends on how well they can estimate mentally and breakdown a project into tasks (something programmers are required to do in code anyways). More and more I see the manager world developing into two different kinds of managers--engineering managers and business managers. In fact, I have two managers (Office Space is more accurate than you think) with those two titles. One I can talk tech with and the other doesn't know jack about what I'm doing.

Re:We Still Aren't Trusted to Telecommute

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.

I disagree.

I beg to differ. I've been doing my job from India for quite a while now. : p

Re:We Still Aren't Trusted to Telecommute

[Atzanteol (99067)]

I've been doing my job from India for quite a while now

Hah! I've got one better. Somebody else has been doing my job from India! Oh. Wait...

Re:We Still Aren't Trusted to Telecommute

[hackrobat (467625)]

On a more serious note: I'm a software developer based in Bangalore, India. We do telecommute quite often. The reasoning: if we can work remotely with our colleagues halfway across the globe in a different timezone, why can't we work remotely with our colleagues a few kms. away from home? Most American companies in Bangalore (like Oracle, Adobe, etc.) have flexible timings, and usually no one notices when you're around and not. As long as you're checking in code, answering email, closing bugs and putting out specs in time, you're doing fine.

I often travel to the US and work from there (mostly San Francisco), and I can say that India is going to be defining work trends in the coming years. Americans are very "old school".

Re:We Still Aren't Trusted to Telecommute

[rossifer (581396)]

I often travel to the US and work from there (mostly San Francisco), and I can say that India is going to be defining work trends in the coming years. Americans are very "old school".

Be careful that you don't get the selection of US companies you work with confused with all US companies. I have contracted for companies that have extensive offshore dev/qa/analysis efforts and for companies that don't think it makes much strategic sense. The work environment at companies which consider more than just dollars are (predictably) much more interesting, motivating, trusting, etc...

I agree that India is way ahead of the Fortune 500 on how to do software work. So are lots of companies right here in the US. (in my experience, they're usually the ones with very few MBA's on staff)

Regards,
Ross

Why would you want to telecommute?

[PIPBoy3000 (619296)]

Telecommuting is overrated in a number of cases. I enjoy the ease of contact with my coworkers. Part of the draw of my current profession is that I work with funny, intelligent people.

Working at home would likely be filled with endless distractions, mostly in the form of a two and seven-year-old who want to play Princess or Legos, respectively. Rarely does my coworker dress up in pink and demand they be called Princess Dave.

Re:Why would you want to telecommute?

[frank_adrian314159 (469671)]

Rarely does my coworker dress up in pink and demand they be called Princess Dave.

Yeah. Those casual Fridays are a bitch, aren't they?

Re:Why would you want to telecommute?

[hal2814 (725639)]

Do you bring your kids to the office with you? Then why are you expecting to watch them at home while you are working? Telecommuting is about working from home, not doing a few work-related tasks while you enjoy the rest of your day. It's about saving time and money on the commute and on office space. If you're getting distracted at home, then your home office is not set up properly or you're not working in that home office.

Talk to the hand

[suso (153703)]

Tell that to unemployed software enginner Steve (who comes from a rough area) and is making more money selling Vibe than he ever did at Intertoad.

O rly?

[Valar (167606)]

Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.

Yeah, telecommuting from India.

Math?

[etymxris (121288)]

I have a degree in math and CS and I hardly ever use anything I learned in math for software development. Maybe simple sums and if things are getting really advanced I'll divide by the number of elements for an average. For that matter, I rarely use anything I learned in CS either, past the sophomore year anyway.

The vast majority of software, at least that I've come across, is just moving data around. Certainly, more complex software development exists, such as in the financial services sector. And we rarely have to get into the details of how complex data structures work because we always rely on libraries. Again, I'm sure there are exceptions, but from what I've seen of the work I've come across and that has been done by other developers I know, little is used of school knowledge.

That said, development isn't easy either. You have to be able to pick up new and weird APIs fairly quickly and find creative ways around asinine constraints. I'm just not seeing much in the way of school knowledge used though.

Re:Math?

[woodsrunner (746751)]

The math skills you need develop your mind to be able to pick up wierd API's and find creative ways around problems. It's sort of like when basketball players take ballet, they generally don't throw a pirouette into their layup routine, but the discipline pays off in transferable skills such as grace and injury avoidance.

You might not think the math skills aren't necessary because they are so ingrained into your way of thinking you no longer see the benefits anymore. But try and do basic gui programming with some one without an understanding of geometry... it's pretty scarry.

Math is the cross training of choice for coding.

What advanced math?

[defile (1059)]

Most computer software requires nothing more than simple arithmetic.

There are exceptions such as in finance and 3d graphics, but come on.

This mentality is really annoying. The math office in my high school wouldn't let me take the C++ class because I had not taken the requisite Calculus class first. Even though I was writing C++ code in my part time job! (Out of spite, I'll mention that I took the state C++ AP test and went on to score the highest in New York. Take THAT Mrs. Lechner!)

Pfft.

Re:What advanced math?

[DoofusOfDeath (636671)]

I think it depends on whether you want to be a software engineer, or a computer scientist.

I've done programming for manufacturing, IT services, .com product/service providers, and military employers. I have a bachelor's in math+cs, master's in cs, and I'm working toward a PhD in cs. Here's what I've found...

For software engineering, I had nearly no need for math. I mean, you might do a little back-of-envelope multiplication to estimate disk storage needs or batch job durations, but that was it. The hard work for those jobs was making good software / database designs, avoiding concurrency / threading issues, etc.

For the military work, that's when I went from being mostly a developer to being mostly a computer scientist. THAT'S where the heavy math came in to play. Heavy statistics (for making sense of sensors), diff. eq. / vector calculus (for dealing with physics models), optimization theory (for planning future actions), etc.

I still haven't figured out why high school programming teachers stress so heavily the connection between math and programming. For most software engineering jobs, you could have stopped at high-school Pre-Calculus. Just not if you want to be a computer scientist.

They really screwed this one up...

[by Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Male Porn Star anywhere on the list...

puter nerd

[stacybro (757940)]

My 4 year old daughter walks up to me one day and say "Dad, Mom says you are a puter nerd, but it's OK cause you make lots of money..."

software engineer vs. college professor

[xPsi (851544)]

Obviously this isn't exactly a scientific ranking and is somewhat arbitrary. Nevertheless, it probably has some qualitative merit.

But it seems odd: If you compare software engineer to college professor, it is clear, based on their data, that the 10-year growth parameter is fairly heavily weighted in their ranking since professor is equal or higher in all other areas.

Software Engineer:
average salary: $80.5k
10-year growth: 46%
Average annual job openings: 44.8k
Stress: B
Flexibility: B
Creativity: A
Ease of Entry: C

College Professor:
average salary: $81.5k
10-year growth: 31%
Average annual job openings: 95.3k
Stress: B
Flexibility: A
Creativity: A
Ease of Entry: C

It seems like *if you had the job*, the quality of that job *right now* would be somewhat independent of the 10-year growth parameter. In that same spirit, if they folded in some "job security" parameter, it seems the tenture (or tenture-track) options of a professor would trump all others.

Becoming a professor is HARD

[Kupek (75469)]

But they have it ranked as C, which I assume is average entry difficulty. According to their numbers, there are about 95,000 professor positions open every year. But that's not the whole picture: only a small fraction of that 95,000 are positions open to a particular person. In order to be a professor, you need to have a relatively narrow expertise. There will be few professor positions open in the country that want your particular expertise.

I also think they underestimate the stress level of getting tenure. Getting tenure is a cutthroat process.

For the record, I am a Computer Science graduate student.

Re:Not the best in every country

[nmx (63250)]

This story said that IT managers have the U.K's third-worst job -- ranking just below phone sex operator (No. 1) and ferry cabin cleaner (No. 2).

IT manager and software engineer are completely different jobs. That's like saying that an orderly and a trauma doctor have the same job.

Re:Software Engineer

[Dr. Cody (554864)]

At my job, I have to write software (varying from simple quickie scripts to complex neural-net based adaptive administration controls) to handle the administration and maintenance of a few tens of thousands of servers. I have to be able to work with 5 different languages and be familiar with developing for four different architectures.

I'm rarely ever given the chance to plan anything in advance (that's just how this place works) and "testing" is often done hot - launch once operational, and quickly work out the bugs while it's in use. I usually work either entirely alone, or with our admins to give them tools to their specifications and needs. No team, little oversight, and full responsibility for failures.

Does that make me a Software Engineer? Or just a two-bit coder?

No, that just makes you some idiot waving his e-penis on SLASHDOT DOT ORG

Re:Software Engineer

[KnightStalker (1929)]

You remember the A-Team episodes where they weld steel plates on the outside of a car or whatever, drop a bus engine in it, stick some guns on and go ass-kickin?

If you call that mechanical engineering, you can probably call your job software engineering. I'd do either one of 'em though...

Re:Software Engineer

[Randolpho (628485)]

You remember the A-Team episodes where they weld steel plates on the outside of a car or whatever, drop a bus engine in it, stick some guns on and go ass-kickin?

You mean every A-Team episode, ever? :)

Re:Software engineer vs. system administrator

[eln (21727)]

I've been both a software engineer and a system administrator/engineer. They both have their perks.

Software engineering I think gives you more of a sense that you're working on something really big, and there's obviously a huge sense of accomplishment when something you spent a year writing is used by thousands of people. On the flip side, though, you have to work for a year or more pounding away at code, with no real sense of accomplishment other than passing milestones. Often times, even that gives you no real sense of a job well done, since time frames for milestones are often set unrealistically, so you end up feeling lousy about missing a milestone instead of good for hitting one.

Then, there's the problem of usage. I've been a part of failed projects, and it can be gut wrenching. I've worked on applications that took 2 and 3 years to write, and ended up failing for various reasons. It sucks pouring so many hours into something and making all the sacrifices necessary to work 80 hour weeks just to have the project fail.

Being an SA, on the other hand, has its own rewards and issues. First, most SAs (unless you're a junior grade) don't babysit servers all day long, they generally are working on various projects to build or improve systems. These projects tend to be of a shorter duration than software projects, so there is generally more of an immediate sense of accomplishment. Also, you tend to be closer to the user base, which means you can easily see people using something you built on a day to day basis and draw some sense of accomplishment from that.

On the other hand, SAs also tend to be overworked, and can easily get caught up just trying to put out fires to maintain the servers rather than working on new and better things. A good SA will be able to stabilize things, but depending on the issue at hand that could take days or weeks or even months of very long hours before things return to where they should be. While a good SA will automate virtually every day to day task they can, sometimes they are too busy putting out fires to do so. This sort of thing can cause rapid burnout.

I spent 5 year being an SA, then spent 5 years being a software engineer, and now I'm back to being an SA again. Chances are good I will eventually be a software engineer again at some point. Both jobs have their advantages, and depending on where you work, both jobs can generate basically the same salaries.

Re:Software engineer vs. system administrator

[indifferent children (842621)]

Don't think of it as "cleaning up the mess the last guy got fired for". Think of it as "making a mess, that is compatible with your prejudices, for your successor to clean-up."

Re:Math skillz

[saddino (183491)]

Most of the actual advanced math in programming is so intuitive, you probably don't realize you're using it: discrete structures, set theory, topology logic, etc. If you can design an efficient, optimized well abstracted OO framework then your using math "skillz" whether you know it or not.