 Computer science has basically become a meme on this channel because it ranks so high as a major in many different categories. But what about careers that you might go into with this degree, like software engineering or software development? And is this a valuable skill that you can learn that might lead you to start a company, for instance? In this video, we're going to go over what software engineering is and what a software engineer does on a daily basis. And then we're going to talk about some of the most important factors you should consider when it comes to choosing this career. We're going to go over things like job satisfaction, job growth, salary, and other X factors that are really important. And I'm going to rank them from 1 to 10, and then I'm going to give you a final score on the career. Alright, so first of all, we're very briefly going to go over what is software engineering. So according to Google, software engineering is an engineering approach on a software development of systematic application. And a software engineer is a person that applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. And there are many different subspecialties of software engineering, and this could have anything to do from creating, designing, deploying, and supporting software. And the coding that goes into the software itself is basically a set of instructions that tells a computer what to do. Now you can break it down even further than this when it comes to different subspecialties. There is system software, programming software, and application software, for instance. And when you listen to personal accounts of what being a software engineer is like, a lot of the job actually does not include coding. And many will say that a good amount of the coding is just you simply searching Google or Stack Overflow in order to find an answer to a problem that you have. Now, another thing I want to go over is the differences between a software engineer and a software developer. And actually, there's more terms than even this, right? You've got coders, you've got computer scientists, you've got software engineers, you've got software developers. What are the differences here? The truth is, at some companies, there are differences, and at other companies, they're basically the same thing. It's just a title at the end of the day, but generally speaking, the most prestigious one is going to be software engineer. And in the companies where there is a difference between them, I like to use the analogy of building a house. So when you build a house, you're going to have an architect that designs the house, and that's kind of what the software engineer does when it comes to coding software. Then you're going to have a contractor that goes about building the house, and that's kind of what a software developer does. They make decisions on how to solve problems in the process of building the house. And then as a programmer, you're the one who does the actual manual labor of building the house itself. So you'd be laying down the foundation, putting the walls in, and in the case of the programmer, you would be actually typing the code. Now, realistically, almost any job you'd be doing would be a mix of these. Now, when it comes to the titles, it is a little bit of a controversial subject. Some people are very opinionated on it, but this seems to be the consensus. The next part is how to become a software engineer, and this is another controversial subject. Now, technically speaking, when you look at data from the United States government, careeronestop.org, 86% of software engineers have at least a bachelor's degree. 31% of them have a master's degree and 4% of them have a doctorate. Now, just because they have a bachelor's degree doesn't necessarily mean they have a bachelor's degree in computer science. Many of these people are career switchers, so they might have gotten an English degree or something like that, and then decided to switch into programming. But with that being said, the vast majority of people do have a college degree. However, you will see many people, especially influencers and YouTubers, tell you that you can either teach yourself or you can take a boot camp or get some sort of certification in order to break into this career. And I totally agree. That is possible. So there are generally two different paths to get to your goal, to get to where you want to be. One of them is going to be a well-established path. It's usually going to be nicely paved. There's going to be stops along the way where you can go to the restroom or you can get some burgers or whatever you want. Now, this path takes longer and it might also cost you more. This is like getting a bachelor's in computer science, getting an entry-level job and working your way up. This is the route where you get a formal education. The second path is the road less traveled. Instead of taking the well-paved road to get around to your destination, which takes longer, but it's also less bumpy. You decide to take a shortcut through the dangerous jungle. Now, this jungle is dense, thick. It's hard to even walk through it. There's also dangerous animals like snakes and tigers. But if you're up for the challenge and you're willing to take on the risk, this can get you to your destination a lot faster than taking the well-paved road. And it can also be a lot less expensive. Now, the second path would be something like teaching yourself, getting a certification or attending a boot camp. And depending on your personality, one of these paths is going to be better than the other one. Now, for the average person, I would argue that the college degree route is probably going to be the best, statistically speaking. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that route is the best for you. So this is where you have to evaluate your current situation, see what your strengths and your weaknesses are, and figure out which one is best for you. Now, again, sometimes there is a difference between software engineering and software development. But I am going to focus on software engineering in this video. And the first thing we're going to evaluate is the job growth. Now, BLS lumps together software developers and software engineers. And they say that it's growing at about 22%, which is much faster than average. And there is 1.8 million jobs available in the US as of now. On top of that, you see that technology related occupations are expected to grow at 13% in the next 10 years. And that is much faster than average. The average is something like 4%. If you compare that to business careers, they're growing at about 8%. And business careers are still pretty good. On top of this, many new sub-careers are emerging. So for instance, 10 years ago, blockchain development was not a career. But now that cryptocurrency is exploded and it's gone mainstream, there is a growing need for blockchain developers. And as technology gets better and better, it takes over the market, which in inevitably will in my opinion, there's just going to be more and more jobs available. So for this one, I'm going to give it a nine out of 10 when it comes to job growth. Next on the list is going to be job satisfaction. Now, career explorer.com has computer programmers reporting about a 3.2 out of five star rating when it comes to job satisfaction, which is the top 49% of careers. So it's about average. Glassdoor.com has software engineer as the ninth best overall job with a job satisfaction rating of 3.8 out of five stars. You do see much higher job satisfaction ratings when you work for a Fortune 500 company like Google, for instance, they have a 4.5 out of five job satisfaction rating. But Google is known for spoiling their employees to an absolutely ridiculous degree. I mean, it's so ridiculous that they even made a movie about it. Now, Google would be one of the absolute best companies you could work for as a software engineer. They are what's known as a thing company and that stands for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. I guess it's main now since Facebook rebranded to meta. So it's a main company. But what about other Fortune 500 companies that are outside of thing? A lot of them do still treat their employees pretty well, although it's not to the ridiculous extent of Google. So for instance, Comcast is about a 4.1 out of five star rating. That's pretty good. And generally speaking, the technology industry just has a ton of opportunity. Whether you're working in a technology related job or not, a lot of the time it is a good idea for you to get a job in the tech industry. There's just way more opportunity and that just makes every single aspect of the job better, whether it comes to salary, your job satisfaction or any other number of things. Now when it comes to job satisfaction and meaning, PayScale has software engineers with a meaning score of 29%, which is not great, and a satisfaction score of 57%, which is above average. Now they define meaning as how much you think your job positively impacts the world. So there are many software engineers that don't really think their job helps the world that much. So they don't really think that their job positively impacts the world, although they do have good job satisfaction. So they probably get good benefits and they get paid well, and they tend to have a decent amount of fun at their job. Now almost opposite of this is healthcare related jobs, just to give you a comparison. A lot of the time when you look at healthcare related jobs, the job satisfaction sometimes can be a little bit lower. However, the meaning is oftentimes very high. So a lot of healthcare professionals are not super happy with their job, especially during the pandemic. They're kind of overworked, overstressed, etc. However, they do think that their job positively impacts the world. So they do find it to be meaningful. So overall, we're seeing it kind of all over the board here, but before you ever go into a job, make sure you research it, make sure you try it out, make sure you actually enjoy what you're doing. Don't ever go into something just for the money. That is a recipe for disaster. Money is important. That is one thing you should think about, but it's not the most important thing. So I'm going to give this one an 8.5 out of 10 when it comes to job satisfaction. Next, we're going to be talking about salary and software engineering is a very well paid career. So according to BLS, they make about $110,000 a year and technology related occupations in general make about $91,000 a year, which is much higher than the median annual wage for all occupations, which is 41,000. So you can see how ridiculously well paid information technology related careers are. Glassdoor has software engineers making $108,000 a year on average. And just as a comparison with different job titles, they have computer scientists making $106,000 a year and software developers making $97,000 a year. And then they have programmers making $85,000, right? So at a lot of companies, it doesn't matter, but at some companies, it does and you do see a discrepancy and pay there. Now there's also a huge discrepancy in how much software engineers get paid depending on their specialty. So for instance, principal software engineers on average get paid about $156,000 on Glassdoor and software engineers that work at Metta, which used to be Facebook, get paid around $160,000 a year. And you can get even more specific than that because there are huge variances in anything from your title, rank, specialty, years of experience and location as well. And you can check on levels.fyi to see what you can expect to be paid at some of the bigger companies. So for instance, just one example I had here is, you know, at Google, if you're an L four, you have three years of experience and you've been with the company for three years and you live in Seattle, Washington, you can expect to make around 234,000 in total compensation. If you're at Google living in San Francisco, you're an L five, you've been with the company for two years and you have 20 years of total experience, you can expect to make like 639,000. So overall, the pay is just ridiculously good here. You have to give this one a 10 out of 10. All right. So next we're going to be talking about X factors. And this is basically things that don't fit under any other category, but I still think are important. So first of all, I like to talk about how likely it is that your job might be automated. And according to willrobotstakemyjob.com, there's about a 4% chance of automation, which is very, very low. And this totally makes sense. You're the one who would be doing the automation, you wouldn't be automated. And if we ever get to the point where robots can do the job of a software engineer, then either the robots are just going to totally take us over or nobody is going to have to work because we just have robots doing everything for us. So is it easily automated? Absolutely not. Now, the second thing I like to talk about is, is it easily outsourced? This is where it gets a little bit interesting because there are very talented programmers who live in other parts of the world. And up until very recently, they would say there's no way that a programmer from Poland, for instance, would be able to do virtual work like across the world and replace someone from the US. They would have to be in-house. They would have to move to the United States in order to do that. Well, things have changed a little bit since the pandemic. They sent everybody on. And now we found out that you can do like 90, 95% of your job from the comfort of your home. And this means that somebody from Poland or India might be able to do your job as well. Now there's still a lot of arguments on this, right? Because there is a lot to be said about really understanding the language, understanding the nuances of the culture. And it is really difficult to work with somebody over Zoom rather than just having them in your office. So it is still kind of clunky, but I do think there are a lot of jobs out there that still can be outsourced. So that's definitely something to keep in mind. In my opinion, I believe that technology is a deflationary force. I think it's a force that adds a lot of value to society. And I do think even though there are lots of other talented programmers coming from other countries, I think there's still going to be a lot of demand here in the US and in other parts of the world. I mean, let's be realistic, businesses in the rest of the world are probably going to catch up with the US at some point. Now when it comes to skills, how valuable are the actual skills that you're learning on the open market? The zip recruiter skills index literally has software engineering as the number one most valuable skill, right? So it is ranked 88. And to put that in perspective, industrial sewing is ranked eight. And you can see the top of the list is pretty much littered by technology related skills. And this makes sense to me because coding development technology is one of the few ways where you can have basically infinite leverage. A single person can create a website or an app or a piece of software that millions of people can use. There are very few skills out there like this. And that's why it's so easy to scale technology related companies. And this is one of those skills that's very flexible as well. So let's say you're somebody who wants a relatively chill desk job, you can find that, or maybe you want a remote job where you can travel the world while you're still getting paid, you can find that as well, or maybe you are very ambitious and you want to work your way up in a company, you can find that as well, or maybe you're extremely ambitious and you want to start your own business and change the world. Software engineering is probably one of the best skills you can learn to do that as well. So this is one of those skills that has amazing flexibility on top of that technology is disrupting every industry out there. So you can get hired as a software engineer and just about any industry that exists. So for instance, let's say you are really passionate about video games, you can get hired as a software engineer in the gaming industry or you really like cameras, you can get hired as a software engineer for GoPro or Sony. So there's many different types of software engineering specialties, many different types of companies that need software engineers. So if for whatever reason you don't like your job, it should be relatively easy for you to switch. Now one of the huge downsides in the technology industry is the problem of ageism. This is where at a certain age companies start to basically get rid of people who are older. And the reason they do that is because they think young people are better at rapidly adapting to a changing environment. Now to combat this, software engineers usually do one of these three things. One, they specialize in something and they become world class at it. So for instance, years ago, I met this guy who was like a world renowned database architect. He was super, super good at his job and not only did he have a normal job, but he also consulted on the side. Another thing they do is they move into a leadership role. So instead of doing the coding yourself, you can move into more of a management role where you oversee people who are doing the programming. And then the third thing is they make their money young and then they get the heck out. So I'm a huge fan of the fire movement, which is financial independence retire early. And I've been following this subreddit for years. And one thing I can say is the majority of people that are in this subreddit work in technology. So when it comes to X factors, this one is definitely going to be a 10 out of 10. All right. So final score, add them all up, divide by four and you get 9.375 super, super good career overall. Do not go into this career just because it pays well, or because I say it's good. Make sure you always without fail, do your own research, make sure it's something that you're actually passionate about. Now some of the pros and cons here, just to kind of summarize things, amazing pay, lots of opportunity, very flexible. Those are the pros, cons here, ageism, rapidly changing environment. I guess that could be a pro or a con, but basically that means you have to learn and adapt really fast. And then it can be very demanding because you have a very sought after skill set. So they're going to make you do a decent amount of work. But with that being said, if you enjoyed this video, you'll probably also love this video right here. And go ahead, gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, et cetera, that you have on the video. And I will see you next time.