With the flexibility of working remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a significant upsurge in developing programming skills has been observed in young individuals. Surprisingly, people are becoming more and more interested in getting trained and knowledgeable about code and programming, since the average salary of Software engineers in the United States is approximately near to %107,899. (Source: https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries)

Besides the high salaries that software engineers (SE) command, a trend has been seen in various online content that claims that a SE easily gets a developer job within 6 months, sometimes it takes less than that, even without requiring any college or university degree. 

But honestly, software development is not a piece of cake for everyone. It is not an easy skill to learn and practice. Moreover, there are large numbers of people who would not enjoy doing it after some time as per their personality. Thus, it becomes a hard job for them to keep going with. In this blog, I will tell you some reasons. If you fall into any one of them, I must say that you should not go into the software development field.

You are not consistent

Learning programming means facing constant failures. 

Each time you try to learn something new which is complex and technical, you might experience setbacks and constant failure. 

It is quite expected that several times your code would break making you feel frustrated. But, That’s completely OK. 

A professional software developer (SD) learns from their mistakes and constantly tries to improve in the next practice in the form of outcome. Each time SD observes the mistake in the previous code tries to analyze the result from a different perspective. 

The computer is sophisticated enough to not forgive even a single character mistake. If you are very familiar with your consistency level and get discouraged easily, I would recommend you not go for software development. It is not for you.

You do not get excited to learn something new constantly

The IT and software industry is a tech-based industry by nature, that is considered to be constantly changing, bringing new and innovative techniques every 6 months or so. The tools that you will use today for programming might get obsolete in the next few months or years. 

There is a large number of people who simply learn some specific things for once and try to perform their tasks based on what they have learned previously. They build only the necessary skills to get a job or get a promotion. It is not wrong, though. But, this approach is not useful for the ones who want to pursue their career in software development. Because in this way, you may not fulfill your boss’s expectations and perform well in doing your tasks. 

If you want to learn to program and make it easier for you, you need to develop a will of adapting to new things with each passing day and learn from your mistakes. If you want to move on in your career with what you have already learned, then do not choose the software development field. 

You don’t love doing it

Some people do not take their job as routine work, they enjoy what they do. They try to become better at it and love to share their experiences with others. It is like one wanting doctors to treat and care about their patients, software developers care about the applications, websites as well as desktop applications that they build using their programming skills. Several people do the job that they do not even like and hate every moment, and just go with the motions. On the contrary, some individuals get excited to discuss their projects. If you are among the latter, then you are in the right domain. In the software development domain, programming builds a lot of pressure on a person. Sometimes you sleep while writing the program or code, thus, end up writing gibberish, which you have to decipher the next day. If this sounds like you are not capable of handling it, then you probably should not opt to become a software developer. 

You are here just to earn a lot of money

Money has always been taken as a fantastic motivator and plays a significant role in one’s career ambitions. It is said that; “the development of technology is one of the main drivers of economic progress”. SD are the vital elements to facilitate economic growth, hence, reap the reward of suitable reimbursement. However, money should not be the key motivator to learning coding skills. You may feel the burnout after some time. If you don’t have a passion to learn coding skills, it will create a tough environment for you to achieve the skill level that one needs to be one of the top earners in the SD domain. 

Nevertheless, there are several other easier and more flexible ways to earn money living a content life. 

It is of no use to dedicate a huge time as well as effort to learn and work on something that one does not even enjoy. 

You do not want to spend ¾ part of your day in front of a computer screen

In this entire world, different types of jobs exist. Some of them demand tiresome physical labor, others require continuous interaction with customers and clients, and some need standing for a longer time. 

In the same way, software developers have to spend almost all of their day in front of computer screens. You might have your standing desk or an ergonomic chair, and even then you might not be able to work for such a long duration in front of laptop and computer screens. Especially, when you are trying to search for the bugs and troubleshoot your code, it becomes more difficult for SD to focus on screens. He has to skip several things, such as lunch to meet the deadlines, or have to work till late at night. Sometimes, one might have to spend more than 15 hours on screens. However, it becomes an intricate task for the ones who show unwillingness to spend such a long time in front of screens. They are recommended not to choose the domain of software development.

Conclusion

Software development is the best field for the ones who love to do coding and programming and learn new skills with each passing day. Furthermore, this field has brought various technological innovations and also brought new ones in the future, however, it is concluded for so many reasons that this field is not for the ones who are inconsistent, and run away to handle problematic situations, and also who want to earn easy money in less time. These people will, of course, be good enough for various other domains, but software development is not their domain. 

About Author

Neeraj Agarwal

Founder, Algoscale

Neeraj Agarwal is a founder of Algoscale, a data consulting company covering data engineering, applied AI, data science, and product engineering. He has over 9 years of experience in the field and has helped a wide range of organizations from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies ingest and store enormous amounts of raw data in order to translate it into actionable insights for better decision-making and faster business value.

Website: https://algoscale.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/algoscale