How do you know if software engineering is the right career for you?

Software engineering is such a broad field that the answer to "Is SWE the right career for me?" is a resounding yes! I'm quite sure of that.

The question is how you find the right combination of people, company, and technology so you enjoy it more?

I don't think you have to have a deep passion for software to be a successful engineer. Some completely valid reasons to be a software engineer:

• You like the paycheck
• You like the flexibility of many software jobs
• You like the people you work with
• You like the power of creating value by typing on your keyboard

There are some roles and companies where they want people who live and breath software. But you can still have a great career if that doesn't sound like you (most people are not). My suggestion is to focus on getting good enough that you can provide tons of value to your company (get to the senior level).

Then you get your core work done fairly quickly and find other things, either within work or outside work, that you enjoy more.

Kuan and Alex had a great perspective on whether or not to pivot out of SWE here: Considering other career paths after software engineering - Should I pivot?

You sound like a multi-faceted, interesting person, with doubts about whether you will find your calling in a field that you perhaps entered on whim.

That sounds just like most of us out there, at your age!

I would say that it's definitely worth trying out other careers and see what else you might be more interested in, but don't be surprised if you came back to software either (as others have said, it's a deep field). Definitely go out there and pursue your interests, whatever they may be. There's plenty of part-time gigs and volunteer work that you could do in your free time to explore how to provide value to the world while doing the things you already love.

Ultimately, you will need more than just "interest" or "passion" to be truly great at any profession. Specifically, you are going to need personal dedication. And you probably want to be great, not only because it gives us "status", but also because it deeply satisfies our human needs to be provide meaningful value to the world.

This is my story. When I was ~3 years out of college, I was contemplating getting into policy making and non-profit as I was kind of getting sick of the "tech bubble" and how insulated it felt to be surrounded by people who worked in the industry. I thought I was very "woke" at the time and just might have the keys to fix everything that was wrong w/ our society (or at least, with tech).

So I went and I tried some stuff out along these lines. I volunteered w/ a city board and joined a cross-sector immersion program. And through it, I realized that while I did care about these things, (1) I just didn't have a ton to give to the people there skillsets wise (2) I didn't actually care enough about the problems they were going through to dedicate so much of my personal time into it. I...would rather play games at home. So after several months of this, I knew, deep down, that it wasn't my calling.

I came back to tech and software and gave it one more shot. I did change my team away from Ads because I hated ads. I re-learned clean code and programming paradigms about ~5 years into my career, and I found the material finally making sense as I had experienced enough pain in my own life (it all sounded like a boatload of BS before). Coupled with an amazing manager that cared about me, coding actually felt fun.

I also knew that I had a strange tendency to react very strongly to bad management and bad teams. At almost every stop in my career (and really, in college too) I was always raising hell whenever things were going poorly, but I typically also never really saw my complaints through to actually fix the problem. So when I ended up on a disaster of team after another reorg, I realized I actually wanted to see if, this time, I could be the person that can turn this disaster around. And I did. This in turn helped me to realize that I loved building great teams more than building great software. Which has been key part of what's led me to Engineer Management.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, there's a personal timing to everything in your life. Maybe software just ain't it for you. Maybe it just ain't it for you, right now. You won't know, and that's ok. Go try some of the other possibilities, and take some time to look inwards to discover your own reasons for pursuing a career.

Good luck!

This is a great question, but also a really hard question. In order to love your job, you need most (if not all) of these stars to align (ordered by priority):

1. A great team - This is the big one. The definition of a great team is one that's both nice and pushes you to get better.
2. Passion for what you're building - This is a combination of tech stack and product domain.
3. Healthy personal life - If your personal life is in shambles, your work life will be too.
4. Respectable compensation - This one is obvious.

I've seen so many engineers lack one of these (usually #1 as most engineering teams suck) and then think that all of software engineering isn't for them.

That being said, you seem to really like your team, so it's possible tech just isn't for you. Here's 2 options you can try:

1. Take a career break - I'm talking minimum 3 months, maybe 6+. You seem to have a good resume, so I'm sure you can come back into the market if you put in the work (and Taro will be there to help). Sometimes you don't realize you actually love something until you've spent some time apart from it.
2. Build side projects - I'm a huge fan of this one, and it can be done in tandem with the career break. Side projects let you exercise pure exploration and creativity to find what you're truly passionate about (or realize it doesn't exist and that you should leave tech). Building side projects constantly led to me regularly reminding myself why I love Android and building consumers apps as a whole. Here's a good playlist to help there: [Taro Top 10] Building Impressive Side Projects

The tricky thing is that the tech industry just sort of... sucks right right now. Layoffs are still coming left and right. Stack rank percentages and PIP quotas are being cranked up into the stratosphere. Seemingly every company is building useless AI products, most of which are just wrappers around the ChatGPT API. It's so easy to get jaded in this economy.

Anyways, best of luck and whatever option(s) you do decide to explore, the Taro community will be there with you!

I enjoy problem solving but I don't have a much interest in software as a craft (a trait that I see from top engineers on my team), nor do I really care about tech products.

The good news is that enjoying problem solving is probably the most important trait compared to the other two traits you mentioned.

When you mention "software as a craft", I imagine you are talking about people who use their extracurricular time to work on engineering side projects or people who immerse themselves in the latest technologies. I do think that's a smaller minority of software engineers. Especially as people grow older and have families, their priorities shift, but they can still manage being excellent software engineers.

Are you still interested in the kinds of problems you are solving? If the answer is yes, it does make sense to continue down the path as a software engineer. You can also explore different roles like being a PM or EM.

I'll say this at least. Outside of work I love to read widely (fiction, non-fiction, on any topic that interests me). I love to learn how knowledge is connected. I'm also developing creative hobbies (music, crochet, drawing/painting), and have a very active social life.