For most of us, we aren't any god level, 10X, 1000X, 1QaX, or whatever you want to say, programmers. We are just simple-minded humans... sorry I mean humanoids, who can just write code and can't act normal without mentioning react vs angular... wait that's the definition of a front-end engineer.
Now the main reason for this is because of the knowledge gap, you see, nowadays we new developers are mostly self-thought and haven't gone to a university... no wait we have but not a good one(YouTube University), so those who did and those who didn't have a large gap, here's a painting to explain it:
From this, it's clear that because of so many self-thought developers, the amount of problem-solving developers is just less in number than those who are skill-specific, of course being good at the job is important, but so is also being able to understand the underlying technology. Now I'm not saying self-thought developers are bad, because I'm also self-thought, I'm just saying that most self-thought developers are good for the job, but if you ask them how it works and how can you just improve it, they would have a hard time figuring it out, now again, I'm not saying they won't be able to I'm just saying they would be able to but will take more time then those who went to university, because there you aren't thought to code, but rather how to think like a programmer and how the really important skill.
Now let's get back to the main topic... what was it again? Yeah, the reality of being a developer.
The myth of learn to code
Now many of us, believe me, this includes me to, learned to code because everyone else said it was the hot new thing, yes it was, and yes it is, except the fact that most companies don't even hire you without pre-requirements, and most job listings that I have seen, they all mostly have a pre-requirement of having a bachelors degree, now I don't know if that's a skill issue or it's just true that you need to have a degree to get into big tech, but if it is, then best of luck getting a job fellow self-thought developers.
Now that's one thing, but what's even worse is the so-called myth, that many of us wanted a job for the money! Google pays its developers up to $150K/year(approximation) Could you imagine! No right? Well, that's because most of us haven't seen such money
Now you see since the COVID-19 pandemic many companies, for some reason, started hiring a lot of people, in fact so many that after the end of the pandemic, many companies weren't able to pay their employees, and that's how the word layoff was made.
Tech layoffs are so common nowadays, that many developers are turning into the new devs, which I created, called the YouTube devs, these are the type of people who are off and turn to YouTube to make a living, cause why not? YouTube is a good place to earn a lot of money right?
To put it into perspective, a Google Developer in India earns $3,272/month which would be $39,264/year. Now take an average KFC employee earning $135/month which would be $1,620/year, BTW, that's 19% below the average earning of an Indian middle-class employee. Now take into account that your company has laid off more than 34,000 employees.
Humm, not bad right? OH! I forgot to mention that's how many they laid off at the beginning of this year! That means in just 1 week more than 34,000 developers lost their jobs, now of course this data might not be accurate, but as long as it's on the internet... who cares right? The internet doesn't lie, right?
Now put that into perspective, a KFC employee doesn't get laid off that quickly, but on the other hand, out of randomly choice 34,000 developers, who have a degree, are smarter than those KFC accountants, earn more than those guys, and are a lot of nerdy get laid off, could you imagine?
Imagine you having the option of taking a job having less pay or a job having high pay, but a larger chance of getting laid off, what would you choose?
Now in case any of you working in Google haven't been laid off... well done, you must be doing a great job, so Google showed merci on you.
Now there's another one, that's my most hated one too in fact. And it's called the 1-year plan.
For some funny reason what's so ever, I have come across many reports that state that most developers working in big tech companies don't stay for long, like did you know in Amazon alone an average developer stays for only around 1 - 3ish months, now I'm not sure if it's true, because I don't work in amazon, but I do know someone who works at... well had worked at amazon, and he also didn't stay there for more then a month! 1 month and he was out!
Now there are many reasons for it, some as per the gods(internet of course) being tight deadlines, relentless debugging, the need to stay updated with ever-evolving technologies, inferior self-perception, low confidence, under-skilled for the job
Now I'm not sure about the low confidence one... which one of you is responsible for this huh? But as you can almost make out of it, it's a ruff-tuff job to be a software engineer.
Thus the Myth of learn to code, because it's the hot new thing, is busted for good!
And now we all can live peacefully.