Growth software engineer

Management, however, is not the only path for career growth, nor is every strong engineer well-suited to becoming a manager. As long as you can find other leverage points to amplify your impact, your career will continue to grow. Most large companies where technology plays a strong role, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.

Climbing that ladder to become a staff or principal engineer, however, is where many engineers struggle. The less conventional paths outside of management require more creativity, and there are fewer available narratives of successful engineers outside of management for us to model ourselves after. Your ability to decide where to spend your efforts to maximize your impact — what code to write, what software to build, and which business problems to tackle — is unbounded.

So how do you grow your impact as a software engineer without becoming a manager? You identify and solve problems that are core to the business, or you enable those around you to more effectively solve those core business problems. When the hours you put in directly translate into meaningful and measurable results, when your efforts directly move growth and revenue metrics, your employer is incentivized to give you more resources and flexibility so that you can achieve bigger results faster.

Here are some examples of how you might amplify your impact without going into management and without co-founding a startup, which typically leads to management , based on software engineers I know:.

These are just a few examples of how you can increase your impact, but the possible paths are limitless. Notice that in none of these paths, is building software an end goal — rather, it is a means of helping the team and the business succeed.

This summarizes and presents everything I used to tell my team. Listen to podcast interviews with top software engineers and watch master-level videos of techniques previously taught only in workshops and seminars.

I teach engineers and technical leaders the tools they need to effectively create meaningful impact. One of my favorite interview questions that I ask engineering candidates is to tell me about one thing they liked and one thing they disliked about the engin This blog post is based on a recent answer I wrote on Quora.

A young engineer recently reached out and asked for advice on a few job offers he was considering. Computing Research Association. Software developers, applications. Software quality assurance analysts and testers. Software Developers. Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. Last Modified Date: Wednesday, September 8, The What They Do tab describes the typical duties and responsibilities of workers in the occupation, including what tools and equipment they use and how closely they are supervised.

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The wage at which half of the workers in the occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. Additional training needed postemployment to attain competency in the skills needed in this occupation. Work experience that is commonly considered necessary by employers, or is a commonly accepted substitute for more formal types of training or education. The employment, or size, of this occupation in , which is the base year of the employment projections.

The projected percent change in employment from to The average growth rate for all occupations is 8 percent. Menu Search button Search:. Summary Please enable javascript to play this video. Work Environment About this section Developers may oversee a team of people during the software development process. Pay About this section Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers Median annual wages, May Software developers and software quality assurance analysts and testers.

Job Outlook About this section Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers Percent change in employment, projected Software developers and software quality assurance analysts and testers.

Software developers and software quality assurance analysts and testers Projections Central Occupational employment projections are developed for all states by Labor Market Information LMI or individual state Employment Projections offices.

CareerOneStop CareerOneStop includes hundreds of occupational profiles with data available by state and metro area. Similar Occupations About this section This table shows a list of occupations with job duties that are similar to those of software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers.

Suggested citation: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. What They Do The What They Do tab describes the typical duties and responsibilities of workers in the occupation, including what tools and equipment they use and how closely they are supervised.

Work Environment The Work Environment tab includes the number of jobs held in the occupation and describes the workplace, the level of physical activity expected, and typical hours worked. Pay The Pay tab describes typical earnings and how workers in the occupation are compensated—annual salaries, hourly wages, commissions, tips, or bonuses. Job Outlook The Job Outlook tab describes the factors that affect employment growth or decline in the occupation, and in some instances, describes the relationship between the number of job seekers and the number of job openings.

Similar Occupations The Similar Occupations tab describes occupations that share similar duties, skills, interests, education, or training with the occupation covered in the profile.

Contacts for More Information The More Information tab provides the Internet addresses of associations, government agencies, unions, and other organizations that can provide additional information on the occupation.

On-the-job Training Additional training needed postemployment to attain competency in the skills needed in this occupation. Entry-level Education Typical level of education that most workers need to enter this occupation. Work experience in a related occupation Work experience that is commonly considered necessary by employers, or is a commonly accepted substitute for more formal types of training or education. Number of Jobs, The employment, or size, of this occupation in , which is the base year of the employment projections.

Job Outlook, The projected percent change in employment from to Employment Change, The projected numeric change in employment from to Employment Change, projected The projected numeric change in employment from to Growth Rate Projected The percent change of employment for each occupation from to Projected Number of New Jobs The projected numeric change in employment from to Part of this spreading out is due to the fact that tech startups are now able to crop up wherever their founders settle down, which subverts the old Silicon Valley model.

In addition, as companies not directly related to technology develop more sophisticated websites, they have more and more need to hire their own software engineers to maintain proprietary programs.

In the case of Sioux City, Iowa, the MidAmerican Energy Company in particular requires the expertise of software engineers in order to support its power grid. So does 50 percent job growth over 10 years mean that a saturation of software engineers is approaching, and that growth will plateau? While the job increases have certainly slowed, the fact remains that this field is doing much better than the overall average in terms of job creation.

While the projected average job growth for the entire country is 11 percent over the next decade, in the field of software engineering it is predicted to be 22 percent. Compare this to a projected 13 percent for accountants, 10 percent for lawyers, 18 percent for physicians, and 6 percent for high school teachers. This means that among these positions, there will be the absolute most new job opportunities for software engineers by a healthy margin. Only doctors beat out software engineers on the list in terms of both salary and job security, but in order to practice medicine, one needs an MD, which, as previously noted, involves many more years of schooling beyond an undergraduate education; meanwhile, software engineers can begin making a healthy salary as soon as they have their Bachelor of Science.

Todd Rhoad, managing director of Atlanta-based career consultancy BT Consulting , maintains that the expansion of the internet in rural areas of multiple countries will buoy the job prospects of software engineers worldwide for years to come. As long as computers and computing continue to evolve, there will also be lots of need for well-trained software engineers. The systems will grow more complicated but our human ability will remain the same, which infers the need to change our engineering and mathematical approaches.

As the level of complexity grows, so does the future for software engineering. Software engineers will easily continue their rollercoaster demand for the next 50 years. This type of self-sustaining ecosystem shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.