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What is it like to be a software engineer

A day in the life description could be good #software #programming

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Toshiro K.’s Answer

Dear Courtney,


The below answer was posted on this site by myself by someone asking a similar question. I have edited it a bit and posted it here. I will say that what one does in a particular day very much depends on the company you work for and what you are working on and what is going on at the company at the time. I can tell you about my experiences, but your mileage may vary.


When I was working as a software engineer for a pharmaceutical start-up, my job was to develop software to analyze biological data as well as set up a large computing server and maintain the company database. I was analyzing the biological data too. What I was doing on any given day changes day by day. The smaller the company is, often the more diverse your role is. I will say it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot and my role in growing the company was tangible.


At Google, I work on improving an aspect of the search experience. That means understanding the current code base, analyzing a lot of data, changing the code, and running experiments to see if my proposed changes are worthwhile. Once things are moving along, I write documentation on what I am doing. Generally, I work on 2 to 4 projects at a time, where each project is some targeted improvement in how we do things. Some software engineers at Google work on keeping the systems up and running. Other engineers at Google work on projects like improving Android. I would say my current job is really exciting; it is not often one gets a chance to work on software used by millions. It is a fabulous place to work with great software, great people, and great benefits.


I was also a software engineer at a major hospital. I worked on implementing specialized research software for specific biological experiments, such as determining if a patient has a genetic-based disease. I developed a new software framework for analyzing biological experiments and then built specific applications on top of it. The development of the framework happened over several months. It was straightforward. The hard part is understanding what researchers wanted and then sometimes figuring out what more they could have in addition that they haven't thought of. I worked with a lot of research investigators on a wide variety of biological problems. It was fun to learn a lot and I was on a number of pretty good research papers.


I hope some of my experiences helped answer your question. Best wishes!
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Christopher’s Answer

I find that my days tend to consist of a few components. First and foremost, I write some code every day. Some days it consists of bug fixes or automated tests, and some days it's really interesting algorithms. Usually it's a little of each. That involves me primarily sitting at my desk, working in an IDE or Vim. Most days also include some sort of design discussion or review. That involves mostly talking and whiteboarding, and is probably the most interesting part of the job. I find the brainstorming, and challenging each other's ideas (constructively) to be very exciting. The other key technical part is code reviews. Taking a look at your team members codes to understand their approach, and providing suggestions to help improve the overall quality and readability of the code. Readable code is often much more important than clever code. Interspersed with this are about 1-2 hours a day on average of other meetings to talk about personal development, broader team concerns, team goals and progress, and for other logistics, like interviewing new candidates. Beyond that, I find that there is generally time for socialization and fun as well, which I don't tend to hear as much about from my friends in other careers.
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Ken’s Answer

Hi Courtney!


You asked a very important question. Here are some answers that might help.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkXzlkOWLE0
http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Software-Engineer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra0V1sea41Q
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Wael’s Answer

Check the link below.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt79JcPfZQA&ab_channel=ConnectEd
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