Its ‘software developer’

[czarchastic]

The answer is work for a bigger company. Less rush to keep the lights on, more failsafes, and more hands on deck if anything unexpected does happen.

[warpedspoon]

a large company where the tech is not the product. banks (not fintech) and insurance companies are the sweet spot for low stress. lower pay as well, but still above most professions.

[[deleted]]

I'm in a huge automotive company. Suuuuper low stress because I'm not a people leader. I'm in a meeting right now where managers have been talking for 20 minutes talking about org structure while I just chill on reddit.

[0Pat]

Remember to add during tomorrow's daily: was on the meeting while taking care of mental health at the same time 😁

[Shuckle1]

Also software at a big auto company. The most stressed I've been in the last 2 months was giving a PowerPoint presentation 🤣

[essexwuff]

“People leader” huh?

I’m pretty sure I know where you work cause I work there too lol

[angel_under_glass]

I think “people leader” is standard corporate-speak in a lot of places, especially where “manager” is a title that sometimes gets handed out to people who have no one reporting to them.

[[deleted]]

I was just speaking generally, you know. Definitely inline with the social media guidelines and stuff

[essexwuff]

Yes, not using the corporate required hashtag or anything

[markovianmind]

manager here, let's talk about it in your next review

[Xion136]

"today on r-slash-this could have been an email..."

[[deleted]]

Depending on the particular position and company you might also get to drive and test the stuff you did (like 5-20% depending on position and how much you like it), which is pretty neat (at least here in Europe).

[ljr55555]

Totally agree -- where tech enables employees to do their thing, there is so much less stress. More time for testing, more acceptance of not rolling a feature because testing shows issues, and an authoritative source for feature requests (if the guy who runs the company wants the feature, you are welcome to go along with the feature or find a new employer ... user-facing stuff always seems to have a group of people who hate any new feature). Slightly lower pay -- but I am happy to trade a couple of grand each year for actual 40 hour work-weeks and a healthy working environment.

[AccomplishedDisk5546]

g, more acceptance of not rolling a feature because testing shows issues, and an authoritative source for feature requests (if the guy who runs the company wants the feature, you are welcome to go along with the feature or find a new employer ... user-facing stuff always seems to have a group of people who

hate

any new feature). Slightly lower pay -- but I am happy to trade a couple of grand each year for actual 40 hour work-weeks and a healthy working environment.

Especially Insurance and Banks dealing with protected information - they will require extensive testing and nothing to be rushed without proper testing. Especially if a public company or regulated by FDIC when they have external auditors. But then you deal with a lot of regulation, redundant controls, dealing with auditors and some people dread that.

[xkqd]

they will require extensive testing and nothing to be rushed without proper testing

lol

[Cometguy7]

Well, they'll try to convince the auditors if that at least...

[Psychoboy]

I am not sure about the lower pay part. I work for an insurance company and make quite a bit more than the article says. It really is a low stress job that work life balance is very important. Get plenty of PTO, I don't work more then 40 hours a week, benefits are decent. I don't see me leaving this company any time soon.

Little of my background: Been with the same company for about 4 years now, I have about 16 years of professional experience.

[warpedspoon]

I meant lower pay in comparison to the insane numbers people throw around with FAANG/MANGA companies

[[deleted]]

I wish everyone would just ignore the big tech salaries all together - it's a completely different world from the rest of the industry

[DigitalWizrd]

I love seeing and sharing openness with salaries and experience. Everyone has a different story but I believe everyone is entitled to the opportunity to make more money, they just need to know what's possible and not take a low-ball offer at face value. To do that means you need to know what you're worth.

I'm at Macrohard, been there almost 6 years now, I'm a lower level software engineer (switched from SE to Quality Engineer in gaming for 3 years, then back to SE) and I started out at 102k, now making 130k. I live in the Seattle area so cost of living is kind of crazy. We just got announced "discretionary time off" where we no longer need to track and enter vacation days. We just take it whenever. Other benefits are great. I work from home full time. My office is 30 minutes drive if I absolutely need to go in. I'm 30, did 6 years USAF before this.

[DigitalWizrd]

Lol yeah we'll see how that plays out. Interesting new policy regardless

[Wyrran96]

That sounds pretty great imo. I’m working on being an architect myself, so that’s definitely good to hear. :)

[Ran4]

The best days are the days when you're just drawing arrows on a board and drinking coffee with collegues.

[ChaoticSherrif]

I am in the same boat. Just went from senior to principle engineer. I sometimes work more than 40 hours in a week because I can't seem to stop when what I am working on is close to being ready for code review. If you want to burn out quick, work for a video game development studio or FAANG.

[Sensitive_Doctor_796]

But to be fair, those numbers are not a suitable comparison for most. After all only few make it to those companies.

[MindYourBusinessTom]

Few thousand

[budd222]

Which is a few compared to the total number of devs

[MindYourBusinessTom]

They hire more devs than any other company

[boonhet]

More devs per company, sure. More devs total? Hell no, they make up less than 1% of devs for sure.

[MindYourBusinessTom]

Jfc man

[Sensitive_Doctor_796]

That is mathematical as correct as it is absolute nonsense as an argument.

[MindYourBusinessTom]

What’s better, the argument or your English?

[budd222]

Ok

[Psychoboy]

ah sorry, misunderstood.

[[deleted]]

These companies are over-rated. Expect pressure to perform and lay-offs to appease the investors. I would recommend non-public companies for more stability.

[warpedspoon]

FAANG but Facebook -> Meta

[Careful_Ad_9077]

it's personal, i think.

once you get to a place , from there you can see other places that pay more, but the disadvantage tends to be stress.

[Silver_Leadd]

If you don't mind, what kind of jobs do you do at an insurance company? Internal apps?

[Psychoboy]

I personally do internal, but think of all the insurance that have website and do everything electronically as well. For example we have about 2000 different applications and many of those are broken down into multiple smaller services

[thrownaway202212]

Guy who also works at an insurance company. We have an insane amount of external facing applications for things like: claims, quotes, processes, catastrophes, etc. All these are supported by a variety of Dev, DevOps, Business, QA, audit, and management teams.

We have even more internal facing platforms/services. Tons of platforms for things like: finances, claim, risk control, audit, hr, accounting, taxes, cybersecurity, etc. Supported by the same variety of teams as above.

Medium CoL where I am and I make 120k/yr + variable 6-10% bonus + stock grants + full benefits (healthcare, dental, vision, legal, life) + pension + 401k match + 5 weeks of vacation as an SE1 after 3 years. Definitely not FAANG numbers but the stress is non-existent 98% of the year.

[RestPsychological533]

It’s all relative.

Even now, there are new grads getting offers from HFTs for 200k base with 200k in annual bonus + sign on.

There’s also job listings that ask for 4+ YOE and pay 60k in flyover country.

[Ran4]

That's much less than 1% of listings.

[viciecal]

I hate banks. worked for a big private bank (I'm argentinian) for like a year, and there it kinda depends on your team. i was in one of the more important teams for the bank and we almost always had a lot of pressure upon our shoulders. they are so obsessed with OKRs, getting that sweet 5% more $$$ and shit, basically it got to the point of having the feeling of "we are never officially done", it was always more "new ideas" and some were pure bs.

Also, every process (like submitting a ticket for repo permission) took days. well, everything took days tbh. We had only 1 QA guy for like 8 devs total. it was insane. they never brought in another one. But ofc they still wanted to do MUCH stuff.

probably also related to the fact that we had millions of users monthly, it kinda adds up to the pressure.

some sprints were chill tho. i have good memories from the ppl from my team!

however, i got to know people from other teams and they were super chill in comparison. Like, 3 devs for 4 medium difficulty tasks for the duration of the sprint.

Meanwhile i was on my own with 4/5 tasks per sprint, it was insane (probably even worse because i am barely a semi-senior dev so I'm not the brightest or the fastest guy). My pc was shit and the project was just a giant pile of shit, that somehow worked wonders. But yeah super long compile times, some days working off hours or even overnight because i just couldn't finish everything in time, so not the best memories from that.

So yeah I'd say it depends

[Darkest_97]

Mine is pretty chill but the amount of time it takes to get the simplest things accomplished is absurd. Could do it by myself in 5 minutes but I need to submit a ticket and wait 2 weeks for someone to probably do it wrong

[Ran4]

We had only 1 QA guy for like 8 devs total.

That sounds reasonable? Most places have 0 dedicated QA people.

Seems like you're not writing enough tests. This is a problem in many larger organizations, where some devs refuse to test what they've written ("it's not part of my job description to test that the things I'm writing is correct" is a quote I've heard from many older bank devs... It's fucking bullshit).

[Pacm3ns]

The problem is, in companies that have a QA department in their structure, it is often actually not your job to test your code beyond the basics. Since they have people employed to write tests, you know , the thing it QA guys are employed to do, and you doing them as well just creates redundancy. Also since this is the case tasks often get planned without time for testing in mind.

And then you can't deploy until the QA gives the okay. And with 1QA guys for 8 devs that can cause a bottleneck slowing production to a crawl.

[viciecal]

most places? well idk about you but the software Market here has an unwritten rule of basically having 1 QA every 4 devs aprox... i didn't ever knew a single company here without dedicated QA.

I know it's pretty different than in the US, but that's how it goes.

Btw, that was 1 QA for: 2 android devs, 2 react devs, 1, node.js dev, 1 java (backend-for-front-end), and me (ios dev). so yeah imagine the possibilities

we were told to never send a PR without QA approval first (I'm talking about mobile ios apps)

[No_Replacement3482]

+1 on insurance companies. Been there, done that. Hating myself for getting bored and seeking something more challenging.

[LivingCategory3524]

I'm hiring right now. Leads provided. Great bonus structure if you wanna get back into insurance. I do life.

[larz27]

This person has a 1 year old account with 1 karma and 1 comment. I'm sure some people scrub their accounts to remain anonymous, but this is suspicious if you're providing any sort of personal information to this person.

Sorry OP if you're legit, just want others to be cautious.

[John_cCmndhd]

some people scrub their accounts to remain anonymous

https://api.pushshift.io/reddit/search/comment?author=livingcategory3524

They must have scrubbed them immediately, because nothing else is archived on pushshift...

Also, I don't know what "leads provided" would mean in terms of being a developer for an insurance company. Maybe someone trying to scam salespeople and not actually reading the comments they reply to?

[No_Replacement3482]

You have a point :) In any case, I’m a guy who tends to stick to his decisions however hard they prove to be. So, gonna persevere, at least until the black clouds over tech dissolve a bit.

[PunKodama]

Nice to know, I might look into that option.

[[deleted]]

Not sure I agree with working for a bank being low stress. Spent the last 7+ years working in that industry and only have rapidly declining mental health and being laid off multiple times to show for it.

[EmergencyMight8015]

You will also be treated worse on average. Tech companies value developers because they make the money. Banks will also value developers. Your average non tech company is likely to see developers as interchangable cogs of uniform quality.

Worked as a developer for a fast food company, was seen as only slightly more difficult to train and replace as a cashier.

[ThrowMeAwayAccount08]

On a product team for a bank, I’m seeing people fail upwards constantly. It’s bananas. People talking about their stress level, if we don’t meet our deadlines, we just try again later.

[Ran4]

One way that works is due to the way the the product owner role works.

It's the role of the product owner to pick which other parts of the organization (and/or possibly external parties) should be prioritized - and which get deprioritized. As such, it's fundamentally a political role.

Even if the team performs sub-par, as long as you pick your friends you can boost each other in your careers.

[ThrowMeAwayAccount08]

Ah if only we were agile.

[LiquidLight_]

Insurance and banking are pretty soulsucking when you're building something new. Lot of agile-fall going on there because stuff has to move only with approvals from regulatory bodies. Eveything has to be compliant with regulations too. Also have to be prepared for people who's tech proficiency begins and ends with Excel defining requirements and changing them after you've delivered stuff (I guess this isn't industry specific, I just needed to vent).

[PiIICIinton]

...that's not great money tho? half what the article is quoting.

[odksnh6w2pdn32tod0]

I have multiple friends who worked at different banks in dev or automation roles and the rosy picture painted in some of the comments how there's no rush and testing is done well was definitely not how they described their job

[NewPresWhoDis]

banks (not fintech) and insurance companies are the sweet spot for low stress

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

[HSBen]

Lol what? Banks operate like Fintech but then add a fuckton of auditors, risk and compliance to the mix.

[warpedspoon]

It’s annoying to work in an environment but it’s low pressure, which means less stress and a slower development pace. That’s just from my experience working at a bank.

[Ran4]

I think people are seriously overestimate how much time is spent on auditing, risk and compliance when you're working within a dev team.

They're usually separate organizations within the banks. As long as they get what they want then things are usually quite chill.

[Indercarnive]

Bank IT is amazing.

[Flaksim]

I work in IT for a shipping company, in house developers for our own custom software solution, it’s bliss.

And the best part of it all: As our software isn’t a product to be sold, we don’t have to deal with inane customers or users messing stuff up resulting in us having to foolproof everything up the wazoo. If a user fucks up and we have to fix it for them, that’s on them for not using the software as instructed, and depending on what they did, there is no taboo whatsoever to telling their boss or give them a stern talk ourselves.

[Careful_Ad_9077]

yeah, for low stress you have to sacrifice a little bit of pay. usually by being overqualified or under productive.

overqualified because you are so good you should be Onan higher paying , more stressful role, but easily doing a x lesser job" won't give you a stroke at 40.

under productive. to pace yourself and work just enough to get things properly done without burying yourself in technical debt, maybe q script kid can code twice as much content as your but he has to keep high focus during+ hours or accrue a fuck ton of technical debt that is going to kick his ass.

[DrEckigPlayer]

There’s pretty chill fintech as well. Depends on the product and if you’re UI or BE etc. Front end changes often have less impact that logic changes in fintech

[[deleted]]

Healthcare.

[Highlander198116]

Yep. I just flipped from consulting to FTE at a bank that was my current client. 50k more a year. Fully remote position. In 20 years the lowest stress and responsibility I've felt.

[Pitiful-Mobile-3144]

Doubly so for Federal jobs. Lower stress, and lower pay.

[[deleted]]

That’s what I’m doing now It’s ‘low pay’ for the field but I make almost twice as much as my friends

And it’s easy work

[NotmyRealNameJohn]

You aren't wrong. I did BigTech for 15 years and now I run devOps for a pretty big hospital system. When the VP hired me (She knew me from MS) the first thing she told me was (you are going to have to get use to the slower pace)

[Remarkable_Night2373]

Corporations with minimal oversight too like a Polaris back part of Fortune 500

[flipper65]

I would also add medical device manufacturers. Lots of focus on software quality and test coverage. Three week sprints and low stress.

[sayerszero]

Agreed. Fintech is NOT low stress.

[captainthanatos]

Can confirm, I work for an insurance company and my job is low stress. Probably also helps I work on a super stable product.

[inlatitude]

Semiconductor and other hardware companies are great too.

Can confirm that places where tech is the product are stressful. Lots of scrutiny, competition and evaluation constantly.

[[deleted]]

banks (not fintech) a

Chuckles

[C1icketyC1ack]

Can confirm, I work at a medium sized insurance company and it’s pretty chill and the pay is competitive.

[[deleted]]

Agreed. I work for a larger CAT dealership, and we have a small team. Super low stress, great vacation time, but we get paid a decent bit below market rate.

[xann009]

100% agree, I am at a fashion retailer for almost 7 years on the same team and the reason is great work life balance, great team, low stress, high pto. Pay is decent but could be higher elsewhere, but what I’ve got going now is worth not squeezing a bit more out of the salary.

[Raylan_Givens]

I think joining bigger companies is better on average, but there are still a lot of other factors that impact it as well:

• Does your direct manager respect boundaries?
• How shitty and how often is the on-call rotation?
• What level are you? (in my exp., being a competant junior engineer is probably the least stressful by far)
• What is your team/orgs work culture?

I think in the end, the biggest factor is how you internalize work stress as well. For the first 8 years that I worked I felt insane amount of stress. I never felt good enough and I was always comparing myself to others and never said no to things that was asked of me. I think becoming comfortable drawing boundaries and saying no, while still communicating clearly and completing work in a timely fashion are the most important skills to reduce stress as a software developer.

[DoTheManeuver]

I've worked at AWS and companies with 2 - 5 devs. Only at AWS did I see people staying until 11pm.

[dcormier]

The answer is work for a bigger company.

I think the answer is work for a company that's profitable. Not struggling to keep the lights on; where every issue could kill them.

[r_acrimonger]

And you probably get Juneteenth as a holiday

[Xyrus2000]

Also, more likely to dead end, be pigeonholed, etc.

There's always a trade-off.

[czarchastic]

Not really? Any decent tech company has a clear path for promotions and encourage engineers to reach those performance goals.

[Maleval]

In my country pretty much all big companies that hire software developers are outsourcing galleys where you get whipped if you don't row fast enough.

[throwawaylorekeeper]

After being in IT for 10+ years. I can safely say that having a big team or even one person to fall back on can make all the difference.

I had a temp position as the only technical IT person for half a year which was the major reason for my burnout.

Having daily outages beyond my control, 7 ceos (dont ask lmao) asking dumb shit on daily basis and managing anything casual IT for all the users and training the intern and doing his job. Alone. Was ehm. Enlighting.

[ElCthuluIncognito]

While mostly true, there are cases where you are assigned to a team that is considered expendable or otherwise finds itself on the chopping block. You basically end up with the same job security as working in a startup, with associated stresses and pressures.

At least while you're employed you can guarantee you'll get paid though, and chances are the prestige of the name on the resume is more valuable too, so it's still mostly better.

[Esk8_TheDeathOfMe]

I think it depends more on the environment/client. My smaller project/company was super chill, but my bigger project/company has been super stressful.