The Greatest Pitfalls Of Working As A Software Engineer

This article is mainly targeted towards those of you who are in high schools or colleges at the moment. Most of you must be contemplating about your career at this point and many of you may have already made up your minds. In this Information Technology driven world, I would not be surprised at all if quite a few youngsters end up choosing the career of a software engineer. Usually, the main driving force behind this decision is peoples’ love for computers. But being a software engineer myself, I would like to share some of the potential pitfalls of the I.T. industry.

1) First of all, the things we do on the PC while we are just entertaining ourselves are completely different from the things you will have to do as a software engineer. After you join a company, you will be trained on different technologies and for the most part of your career you will be working on those technologies only. Sometimes there will be opportunities to switch your specialties but these chances present themselves pretty rarely. So unless you can handle working on the same thing day in and day out for years, the IT industry is not for you.

2. Unlike the jobs in the manufacturing or retail domains, I.T. jobs most of the times do not have fixed in and out times for every day. No matter how early you finish your work, something can and will come up just before you leave for the day. If you are developing a code or creating a tool for the client, it is your responsibility to keep it running perfectly. So, if your tool goes down near the end of the day and if the downtime hampers client’s business, you must fix the issue before leaving even if it takes the whole night. This is the primary reason behind the saying that software engineers cannot enjoy good family lives.

3. When it comes to increments and promotions, I.T. industry is among the worst. In companies of other domains, there is often a proper organizational structure which tells you the posts you can acquire as you gain experience and also which people in your department are in competition with you as far as promotions are concerned. But in I.T., you will barely have any idea about when you will get promoted, how much increment you will get or which designation you will be promoted to. At times you may not be promoted even after having all the necessary credentials and at times you might witness other people surpassing you even though you work harder than them. I do agree that these things happen in every industry but in I.T. these practices are more prevalent.

4. The software industry is a client oriented one. Every step you take will be to satisfy the customer and ensure inflow of future business from them. You will mostly have to work with overseas clients. In order to have meetings with them over phone, you must stay in the office during their work time. Even if that means being on call at 11 PM in the night, you will have to. There is no way you can do things according to your wish. Sometimes you might have to do things the hard way just because the client said so even though if there might be easier ways to accomplish the task.

5. Sometimes your increments and perquisites will depend on the performance of the whole business unit instead of your own. Software companies usually segregate their clients into separate business units to manage them better. There can be business units or verticals like Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, and Retail etc. So if you are working for a Retail company and performing extremely well, your growth can still get impacted if the Retail vertical as a whole did not perform well in the last quarter.

These details are no way intended to terrorize you or keep you away from being a software engineer. These are just some pointers that you need to know beforehand so that you get to know what you will be getting yourself into. Many people join the I.T. industry each year and enjoy a fulfilling career. So if you think you have what it takes to be a software engineer, by all means go for it.