viscid nexus
That aspect you're complaining about is _way_ more common in school than the rea...
That's good to hear. I'll admit that I haven't been as interested in school projects. Sure, it's fulfilling when I solve problems and puzzles that were difficult and required a lot of effort, but at the end of the day, it didn't feel good to only ever fix or code things that didn't have a purpose or vision behind them that I saw as meaningful I guess.
I took a network and systems programming class last semester and we had to exclusive code in C for the class. While I learned a lot, it was hard to motivate myself to get an A on a project that took a lot of effort but hardly had much interaction with users in a way I'd hope for.
lethal blaze
I personally felt extremely this way. Once I started working it was difficult to finish my schooling because the work was much more interesting to me (plus I got paid for it!)
Structurally, there are reasons school projects are like this, so it's not easy to change
viscid nexus
I'll be a junior in college in the Fall and I've been reconsidering my path in this field. I initially wanted to be a therapist but realized that I didn't like the idea of excessive schooling for mediocre pay in a field that I wasn't confident in actually enjoying.
This lead me to computer science since I programmed in middle school and high school a little bit on ROBLOX and learned python on my own. However, after 2 years of university, I've learned a lot about myself. I've realized that I'm not as technically skilled as many others within the field and don't really have a passion for the purely technical aspects of things.
I initially found joy in creating things that improved the quality of life for others. I'm very empathetic and really enjoy helping others and working with others so this is kind of where my core passions come from. However, most of my CS classes have felt so cold and detached to the point where I just don't know if I'd fit well here.
Any advice?
idle oracle
product managers can do really well in the sort of niche you describe. the role is ~ at the intersection of engineering and design, a lot of the duties involve understanding customer needs and translating those needs into features. can mean doing things like customer interviews, running feedback panels, writing summary documents, working with designers to devise mockups, and doing usability tests on those mockups
more technical experience is good for that role too, because it helps you understand what's possible and what's hard/expensive
viscid nexus
product managers can do really well in the sort of niche you describe. the role ...
Interesting. I will have to look more into this. Do people usually enter into product management after they've worked as a developer?
idle oracle
no, totally separate career path but it's beneficial to have some programming experience IMO. or at least, i've deeply appreciated it when PMs i worked with did 😂
viscid nexus
Lol, interesting. I'm like halfway done with my CS degree but I guess I could look at grad school options perhaps.
Do product managers have a lot of influence on the vision of a product? Do they get to influence how a product will be used by the public?
idle oracle
yeah in a big way
def do not need a grad degree to do product management, though i'm not really sure how one gets their first job in it. if it's something you'd like to do, a great way to get some practice could be to find some student groups that are trying to build something, and figure out what their engineers and designers are failing to communicate
it's one of those jobs that's most common at startups, and it tends to value skills and experience much more than education
fossil elbow
i'd look into developer relations as well, there's a focus on developer experience which I'd imagine would require plenty of empathy
idle oracle
yeah devrel is super hot right now, a lot of the time the job is acting as a communicator. writing blog posts and documentation, doing podcasts and live events, and speaking at conferences
lethal blaze
Software engineering is actually very involved with people, especially as you get more into leadership roles (staff and above, management). But you also need to have the sharp technicals.
If you read https://noidea.dog/glue and think the story there sounds like what you want to be doing, that's feasible (but as the article mentions, usually a bit later)
Also worth digging into what exactly you're not liking. If the issue is that you don't like technical problems for the sake of technical problems, that's very common and you'll usually do better at a small company - where everything is directly in service of the users. If it's actually doing any technical work, that's a different thing.
viscid nexus
Also worth digging into what exactly you're not liking. If the issue is that you...
I don't dislike technical work per se. I like programming in and of itself and I find it really fun to work on projects that actually improve the quality of life for people, especially if it's a project that I started myself and is being driven by me. Sure, working on projects requires technical skills, but at the end of the day, when it's my project, I am allowed to focus on what I want to.
What I don't like is having to excessively on things that don't really grab my interest too much. For example, while I get that efficiency is important, I just don't get too much joy out of trying to write the most efficient programs on the planet. I'm also not super interested in understanding what's mathematically the most efficient algorithm to use. I really care more about the practical side of the project and how users interact with it I guess.
lethal blaze
Oh yeah, you're perfectly fine working as a software engineer then.
But in a more product-oriented role
That aspect you're complaining about is way more common in school than the real world. Many people enjoy that part and end up unhappy that Google wants to hire them to just pipe together a couple APIs