Any Software Engineers?

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If you are one, or were previously one, can you please tell me what is it like? What to expect, the type of work, is it aspie friendly, etc. I want to run my own startup someday and if that backfires, I want to work as a software engineer(obviously because of the compensation benefits).

This sums it up nicely...

What kinds of benefits are specific to software engineering?

I'm a machine learning engineer, does that sound close enough? As for if the work is aspie friendly, I'd say the core responsibilities of the job are like coding, researching, etc. but the other parts that you'll need to deal with in pretty much any job aren't like paperwork, office politics, meetings, etc. One thing that really sucks is that machine learning requires a lot of data but a lot of times, getting that data requires "playing politics" at least at my organization.

Most(obviously not all) have a starting salary of 80,000 dollars and usually get promoted to 100,000-250,000 after 5 or 6 years. I checked the salaries of companies hiring software engineers in my area and most of them pay this amount. The only ones that don't are the ones that don't have their salaries posted.

As for any other benefits like 401k, health insurance, etc, I'm not sure. I haven't checked yet.

Depends on what employer, what colleagues and exactly what you are going to do.

I studied software engineering as well as software testing and interaction design and I have been working for 12 years as test lead. Last 1.5 year as UX and designOps. Test lead fits me better since it's more analytic. I suppose working as a developer would be the same. What I cannot handle is all the never-ending and chatty meetings about nonsense. Esp in larger workplaces. My best workplace was a startup where time = money. Meetings were max 60 mins long and only required people had to join. Currently, I am working at a large work place and there everyone is sitting off meetings. I have raised the issue with all these chatty and confusing meetings but I have been met with scepticism. Even HR told me that I am "not a fit" for the company. But my current manager sees my strengths. But I am struggling.

So it can be heaven and it can be less of fun depending on where you end up.

I don't recommend working as a software engineer unless you really enjoy programming.

Programming and software engineering can be very stressful jobs, with a lot of unpredictability due to bugs and other unforeseen problems. The point of software engineering is to keep bugs to a minimum and to ensure than any bugs are as easy as possible to detect and fix, but there are no silver bullets.

There are other STEM-field jobs that are more predictable, such as accounting.

Also, programmers and software engineers are generally expected to work long hours. This is okay if you are working from home, not so good if you are expected to work in a corporate office and have to commute every day. Hopefully most software companies will continue to allow work from home after the COVID crisis is over with, but this remains to be seen.

Worst of all, if most software companies decide NOT to continue to allow work from home, is the "open office" floor plan fad, which is absolute hell for those of us with sensory issues or who otherwise are easily distracted by being surrounded by other people.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing more about your startup, if/when you manage to get it off the ground. Hopefully you'll create an autistic-friendly workplace? (See the separate thread on Autistic-friendly workplaces.)

I am not one, haven't been one, never will be one.. however: My best friend owns a tech company and I can tell you for a fact that he described searching for The BEST programmers In The World in his particular field as "Like trying to find an autistic unicorn."

People like him who have the $ and decision making power to hire software engineers & developers are specifically looking for the ultra rare uniquely talented, young, energetic, hyperfocused-on-a-special-interest minds of people like you.

Some of his people work in house. Others from home during covid. Others remotely - some of those are in house developers, others are contractors fulfilling a niche. His particular specialty is programming ECU's for certain cars.. gogast "TFATF," stuff. Some of his people don't do that stuff, they develop & improve his internal database & web application systems. All of it is super cool stuff.

We're in Canada so salaries aren't Silicon Valley high, but people still earn good money and these guys do have SV level talent should they decide to skip town.


As for physical work environments: You might be surprised how accommodating some big tech companies are. I was physically involved in building Facebook's two floors of offices at Waterfront in downtown Vancouver a couple years ago. They spent thousands of dollars extra on each independent office in order to make them as soundproof as they could - insulation, double layer hard ceilings all taped, drop ceilings below with acoustic tiles to limit sound, carpet on the floors, and $1800/panel 4'x6' acoustic sound deadening material glued to some of the interior walls = I joked that they knew they were going to hire high functioning autistics with hypersensitivity to sound and THAT's why they went above and beyond. It may actually be the reason... if they know particular rare nerds, the "autistic unicorns," almost all require ultra soundproof work spaces, they will simply build them that way in advance so they can work undisturbed.

Oh, that won't be for another few years. I plan on getting my bachelors in computer science before I start a company.

Assuming one day I do run a successful startup; yes I will have some sort of program for people on the autism spectrum. Lord knows there aren't enough.