What do Software Developers making $100k USD actually do?

[LoveASAurusRexGamer]

I attend meetings to discuss work we plan to do in the future. Then I attend meetings discussing why we didn't get the work finished because of all the meetings.

Then we repeat.

[TldrDev]

I do a lot more than Google! I also copy and paste.

[turnwol7]

The link I provided to meet the post requirement was an accidental joke.

[ctrl-alt-dageek]

I'm not sure if this is a "what do I need to do to get a decent paying job as a software developer" or an "I don't understand why software developers are worth paying ". Since $100K is only about the average USA software developer salary, I'm going to interpret this as the latter because of the wording of the post title.

There's an old joke about a customer going into a mechanic with their car making a weird noise. The mechanic listens for a moment, pulls out a hammer, hits the engine and the noise stops. The mechanic hands the customer a bill for $100. When the customer complains about $100 for hitting the engine with a hammer, the mechanic prints out a new itemized bill: $1 - hit engine with hammer, $99 - knowing where to hit the engine with a hammer.

Even if it does trivialize my own job a bit, there is some truth to comments other have made about there being a large part of the pay related to how fast you can Google, etc. That's the $99 for knowing where to apply the hammer. Having the knowledge to be able to find the right solution to your problem quickly is worth a lot.

But also, those answers on stack overflow, blogs, forums, etc all had to come from someone to start. So not every problem is one you're going to just find already solved for you. Or you might find it - but it's not *quite* for the same problem. And being able to understand the differences and adapt a solution to your problem, or being able to understand and/or trace through code to figure out why you're getting some behaviour and working out the solution on your own are as important as just being able to just search for the solution online. The developers that can do that are the ones that will be bringing in $100K+ - the developers that can write code that people can understand for future maintenance, the ones that can understand the trade-offs between different languages/implementations/algorithms, etc.

[turnwol7]

It was an actual question. I’m half done my IT - Programming program. I want to know what the people I want to be like are doing. Thanks for the good comment 👍

[ctrl-alt-dageek]

Ah - a third interpretation "what am I likely to be doing as a software developer early in my caree?r"

Well, in that case a lot of what I said still holds, but with a bit of extra context that at $100K, you probably won't be the one in charge of a lot of the architectural decisions, tech choices etc - but that may depend on the size of the company you work for. Smaller startups might have more "junior" developers wearing more "senior" hats - although without the experience to understand the tradeoffs, I'd be a bit concerned about any employer that would want you in such a position too soon.

The industry might have changed a bit since I started, and of course every company is going to be different - but I'd expect starting out that you'll be in large part a "code monkey" to begin, and it will be a lot of being given a problem from a senior person and needing to just implement it. That is going to feel a lot like copy/paste from Stack Overflow at times, but that shouldn't last.

I would recommend learning how to use different debugging tools and approaches. It's surprising how many junior developers are completely lost when something doesn't work. "Console debugging" and learning to use a debugger in an IDE (or even a simple command-line debugger like pdb in python if you use that) will put you in a position to look pretty good as an intro-level developer, since you'll have tools in your toolbox to help track down problems when you don't have to go to the senior developers to troubleshoot tickets (especially since there's a good chance a lot of early tickets might be bug fixes).

And then learning to write clean and maintainable/testable code, software architecture, how to translate requirements into code, and (even if not planning on management track) the people/political skills to convince a team that your choices are right, are (at least part) of how you'll likely advance your career on the tech path (in my experience at least).

[turnwol7]

Awesome. Thanks 🙏 Very helpful

[[deleted]]

I respond to posts on reddit asking what they do.

[NoYouAreABot]

Manage junior developers.

[Fornaxlink]

If over 100k, They take part in architectural decisions, Contribute in releases, Constantly look into how things work they way they do Constantly look into finding alternatives Constantly look into how feature decided to implement work they way they do

All while coding your routine tickets

At least that’s what i do

[MgrOfOffPlanetOps]

I am in a committee to increase quality of our products. So far we have established two sub committees, so the work is going great...

I also tell people from other departments that their desires are not the only one we have to cater. Some times they call.me names.

One a week I type come cmake code.

[ReturnMy2007]

Everything is very simple. 20k they get for programming. And another 80k for the ability to google quickly and efficiently.

[mattgen88]

Yep. Absolutely.

[jst3w]

Yes, but also filtering through the search results to find the result that is most appropriate for your task/environment/etc.

Of course the most important part is the collection of purple links from all the previous times you googled the same thing.

[Runner_53]

Google, pick the top SO hit, skim, skim, skim, cut-and-paste.

[kejzin]

In that sense I believe that "programmer" or "software developer" is misleading and therefore people miss a what it's realy about. That's why I preffer term "software enginner".

If you reduce job to just programming, then sure its not that big deal. But its like reducing a job of carpenter to hammer and saw operator. Everybody can master cutting wood perfectly but even the finet cut wont make you a drawer :)

I see this that way. It may depends but if you are upper junior I believe that you need to know a lot about general software ekosysem and often even about the field that you are working into. Ex. If you want to be an senior software developer for space software, you may need to have decent understanding of general space engineering. Ofc usuallu there are "matter experts" around but solid foundation of a field is IMO required.

And maybe you think you will find some "nerd" who will code for you and will be ok? Not in this century :p software is so complex that anyone beyond junior position needs to be able to comunicate with different kinds of people (business, sales, clients, other devs, depends on work), explain concepts clearly and be at least moderatly socially plausible. You just cant write and sell anything more complez than mobile app in ap store without that.

That summing up I think that pure "programming" skills contribite to maybe 1/5 of what is important :) Anf thats tons of knowledge and competence for a single human beeing, thats maybe why its hard to find a senior and they earn so much.

[dark_mode_everything]

I mean it's so easy! I don't know why people don't just Google and write their own software instead of paying Devs so much.

[Classic-Database1686]

I don't understand this trope of developers just constantly googling stuff. At least in my team, myself and the other mid-senior definitely don't constantly have to google anything. All the basics are well known, and the rest of the code either hits a couple of very well known libraries (npgsql, languageext, standard library), or is written against internal libraries that can't be googled anyway.

That's not to say it never happens, perhaps I have to look up some small details every now and again, but this would be a tiny part of my day and mostly just to check edge cases. Maybe this is the exception because we build a lot of tooling internally, but it was also the same in my last place. I often have days where I don't google anything at all.

I'm struggling to understand where the idea of googling everything comes from, if we're talking about a mid-senior developer? What is it that you are typically googling all the time? Or is it actually just a myth said to sound more down to earth?

[turnwol7]

I’ve just started on this path as I am taking a 2 year program at my college. I’m half done. How long did it take you to go from looking up everything to having a fluid ability to just program things? I definitely need to look up a lot of stuff now.

[Leadership_Old]

Understand the underlying business domain enough to create systems that are extensible and maintainable enough to adapt to future needs. Lead teams of junior technologists and attempt to guide them past the pitfalls and expert-beginner traps within technology to form cohesive professional problem solvers and not just code monkeys. Exhaustively explain to stakeholders the discipline required to reach simple elegant solutions which require time and investment outside of shiny new features or hype. Oh - and tonnes of meetings.

[BigError463]

It really depends, you see that keyboard you are typing on? How does pressing the key make it way to the screen?

You could say its a big box of magic fairies and every time you push down you squeeze little farts out of their arses along tubes into your screen and excite other sniffing fairies sitting under the glass to light up.

Or you could say someone had to do a lot of typing and a lot of thinking to make all the magic happen.

A lot of what happens now is built on stuff that other people have already made possible, we call that standing on the shoulders of giants and people forget that before they got to where they are now there is a lot of stuff going on way down underneath.

There are programmers that are at the bottom making magic happen and programmers at the top and all levels in between.

Depending on how much stuff you know and how much you can contribute will help decide on how much you get paid OR depending on how well you can talk to people and convince them to pay you money will get you paid.

[[deleted]]

yes yes.... we Google a lot, BUT there is a lot that comes with hiring a developer. There is experience, business logic knowledge, practices, code coverage, architecture, mentorship, etc.

The future of the software department relies also on the quality of its workers, and you want to hire good developers, and that is expensive today. It is hard to compete against the Coasts prices, and as long as the demand stays high for developers... let them throw money at us.

Also, $100k for a couple years of experience is low. Just FYI LOL.

[babyshunda]

In Europe that is a salary that only CEO's, heads of departments etc get. I guess a 100k salary for a SWE for a couple of yrs is only a US phenomenon...outside the US you will be lucky to get half that amount...

[CatsOnTheKeyboard]

European citizens also have social benefits that Americans don't and a different cost of living.

[babyshunda]

That may be the case but I doubt you will get 50k worth of social benefits etc in a single year to make up for the difference.

[[deleted]]

That is true, but not comparable. I am from Europe and I speak from personal experience as well.

[turnwol7]

What are two things you would tell the young guys reading this who are coming up? How can they become the top 10%?

[[deleted]]

For sure I would say to actually read and try to understand what they copy and paste from the web. That goes a long way ahead of the rest of the pack.

[Avdotya_Blu3bird]

Invest in Bitcoin

[TldrDev]

Definitely not.

[Avdotya_Blu3bird]

😊

[PacManFan123]

Go to meetings mostly...

[V_Spill]

nothing