The bliss and struggles in a software engineer's life.
Tags: devlife, struggles, bliss
Published: 2020-07-17 14:43:40

---
title: The bliss and struggles in a software engineer's life.
published: true
description: 
tags: devlife,struggles,bliss
cover_image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8NCcTtd0W7a1fE0-AU8J2_0GGZRt02sQV2aLTTkMyCw8iV7Q&s
---
The title of a software engineer has attached to it blessings, curses and things in-between. Whether or not you've had but few years of experience in the industry, you might testify you've experienced moments of glee, glam and grim. These experiences cut across wide ranges of good and bad all subjectively left to the one experiencing them to define which is which.
All I'll be highlighting in this article are solely my experiences as a software engineer who's been either freelancing or engaged with a firm.


## __The Bliss__

We've got to admit, it's fun being a programmer especially if you're a badass one that's admired by say a few. Your friends are awed by your dexterity and how it yields magical results even though you're typing just a command on the prompt. Well we all love to have our egos massaged. 
I've had friends look up to me, I've had people bring challenges to me and I solved them and I have sometimes in moments of less convenience debugged a partner's code. Let me not forget I've had folks message me on social media asking me of prerequisites to become software engineers themselves. The bliss in all these is the gratification that comes with being relevant in the scope of your field. 
A number of other things yield positive feelings and moods that signal gratification:
###### Successfully deploying a long term project.
Having this project that has a large percentage of your time and finally deploying it without breaks is ethereal. It soothes you knowing your hard work paid off and your might get your pay anytime soon.

###### Passing code challenges.

Whether it is Hackerrank or some other code challenge, nothing helps your esteem more than acing them and getting scored and placed in a position with contemporaries that are themselves lords in the field.

###### Being ranked well by profiling tools.

How gratifying it was being ranked as a top Java and Typescript developer in my city by CodersRank. It imbued my morale to code more and keep breaching bounds to excellence. I saw it as a step in my almost successful journey. 

## __The Struggles__

Burnouts, persistent errors/bugs, devices not performing optimally, clients putting too much pressure on you and as it sometimes is for me, power outages that last for days.
Usually expectations are placed on you and you aren't exactly in convenience to deliver. This could take a toll on your esteem and make you develop the imposter's syndrome. You begin to feel unworthy to lace the boots of your contemporaries. 
Burnouts come when you're pressured to your chagrin. Usually these tasks come in quick succession denying you a chance to inhale and exhale and live life blissfully. Productivity is key to the happiness of your boss or client but sometimes working with huge efforts to hit the productive target yields stress and burnouts. Let's not forget bugs creeping into your code like the creeping creepers we know. Some of these creepers are effortlessly detected and rectified, others are figurative Goliaths that only the Davids of the industry tackle easily. Now imagine you're Saul 🌚 who might need extreme effort and persistence to surmount the "uncircumcised" giant that speaks ill of the hosts of God *clears throat (this is not a Bible talk, IK IK). Bugs occur at diverse times, some even in a production environment. These things are morale killers if debugging takes time.
Devices not performing optimally or having issues is another thing. Mine for example has a manageable board problem which makes it impossible to leave my PC plugged in while working. The laptop randomly turns off when plugged in and I'm only ever lucky if it doesn't turn off while it is plugged for long. Coupled with this issue is the problem of a weak power backup that makes it necessary I keep my PC plugged in. How I surmount this problem is by putting my laptop to sleep and charging it till it's full and unplugging it to continue work. I repeat the step once the power indicator signals a battery drain. While it suffices in surmounting the problem, it decreases how well or fast I can deliver tasks. Putting my PC to sleep at intervals so I can charge it without it going off is bad for delivery speed. 
Also clients may put pressure on you to deliver in time and you might have to resort to code stealing so you can deliver on time. If you prefer to do things your own way, giving excuses might buy you some time.
Electricity is also necessary, a constant supply of it precisely. I live in a country I can't hope on electricity to be supplied without interruption which sometimes spans days. This problem has been solved where I stay but I still have that distrust the power distribution company wouldn't interrupt electricity supply. The only way I could get around this was with a generator.

## __The Things In-between__

These are not entirely good or bad things. Most weird expectations from people (peers or otherwise) fall into this category. I recall once interning with an insurance company but was placed in a totally different department (that isn't the problem). Now the problem was most people in my department knew I studied Computer Science and I write code but expected me to know things I don't give a peach about. Someone once called me to rectify a problem with a network cable and I was like, "what the crust?" (I actually said this in my mind. 🙄), I don't do hardware. At other times, people called me to come solve spreadsheet problems or help them with Microsoft word. Now these are gratifying in that they show how revered or recognized you are but are bad in that when you don't meet up to expectations, their views about you change. I so wanted to let them know I only code softwares not help with them but what could I do?
I also have friends who think being a computer science student by definition should mean you can operate all devices without even a manual (shallow and myopic thinking I know but I live in a part of the world with people who have distorted views about certain aspects). These kinds of expectations bolster your esteem because they mean you're known for a particular thing or belong to a particular class of people who others consider geniuses but they're bad as they're subtly traps to kill your esteem if you don't meet up to them.