Yo! I've this assignment for my Computer Information Systems where I essentially have to find out from a person who works in my desired field what it's like to work in said field. I figured I find out from some of you guys! Some questions I'd like to ask, just in general: What do you do, your responsibilities, tasks, ect. What's a typical day at work like for you? What kind of technology do you use? Any special sort of hardware, software, or programming language like html, python, or Java? Is there something that you personally would like to be better at to improve the way you work? Any sort of response would be most appreciated! Thank you all in advance!
Dude! Persona 5 avatar. With that out of the way, I can try to give you an idea of what it is like, but it may be a bit muddled. I'm a Software Engineer, on a large project that is hard for people not to know about. The codebase is in the realm of "huge". A typical day is really hard to explain though. This week, I don't think I wrote a single line of code, and instead spent it analyzing the state of our product, making a plan based on the state of our product, and pitching it to the product managers. Although a lot of times, my day can also be as simple as: come in, look at the tasks still assigned to me for the current sprint (we use 4-week sprints), take the one I was working on or is the highest priority, work to clear out the task, and when I find a good stopping point for the day, head home. It is hard to say the job is boring because it isn't anything you can say "I do X every day". X changes with the whims of the market, time of the year, and all that stuff. About the only constant is the product I work on, and the processes we use to manage the work to do. Beyond that, I could be doing analysis, coding, planning, meetings, what have you. All the work I've done lately is in C/C++, with some python for small tools to support the rest of the work. My previous role was primarily C# with some C/C++. Although the only special tooling we have is stuff we write ourselves. Otherwise it is off-the-shelf tools like Visual Studio, Xcode, and so on. I miss the engineering system I had at my previous role (also a large code base for a product you've likely heard of). Granted, I worked on it, but it was a huge boon to productivity by taking our big complicated project, and not make the overhead of running all the tests the responsibility of individual engineers. Automation is a huge tool with these larger codebases, and increasingly important the bigger the codebase.
What do you do, your responsibilities, tasks, ect. What's a typical day at work like for you? I am a programmer for a revenue agency. We maintain the flow of information into the system (design tax forms, etc), manage how those are processed by the operational employees (auditors and collectors), and report on trends to improve on processes internally and to increase compliance. I think that's about the most specific I can disclose. What kind of technology do you use? Any special sort of hardware, software, or programming language like html, python, or Java? We use entirely Visual Basic .NET and SQL (I won't disclose what DBMS or software framework we use.) When I am dissatisfied with the tools at my disposal, I write my own tools in C#, which I am the goddess of. Is there something that you personally would like to be better at to improve the way you work? Other than the social aspects of professionalism, I think I could be more effective at my job if I had better initial ideas for research directions. Sometimes I spend too much time looking down a complicated dead-end when the answer is simple. These situations only appear obvious in retrospect.
