03 Web Developer
What is it Like Being a Software Engineer
On this episode of the Unboxing Careers Podcast, we unbox the career of a software engineer.
Guest: Caroline Smith is a software engineer and web developer. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Auburn University. Smith also founded The Introverted Misfit, which helps socially awkward and anxious people create fulfilling personal and work relationships.
Follow Caroline on Linkedin
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music
What We Discuss:
Caroline's Career Path in Software Engineering
Advice for High School and College Students
Dispelling Misconceptions about Software Engineering
The Importance of Communication Skills
Building a Portfolio and Using Online Resources
The Dominant Personality in the Software Engineering Field
Key Web Developer/Software Engineer Career Takeaways:
Software engineers can have different roles, such as full stack developers and front end developers.
Front end development can be easier than back end development and involves working with designers and marketers.
Building a portfolio with class projects is important for standing out in the job market.
Getting involved in organizations related to your field can provide networking opportunities and access to resources.
Developers don't need to memorize everything and can rely on online resources for help.
Software engineers can have diverse interests outside of their careers, such as gardening.
Full Interview:
Greg
Welcome everyone to the Unboxing Careers Podcast where we shed light on what different careers are really like so that you can choose a career you'll really love. Today we are unboxing the career of a software engineer.
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All right, I'd like to welcome the show, Caroline Smith, software engineer. Caroline, welcome to the Unboxing Career podcast. Thanks for being here.
Caroline Smith
Hi, thanks for having me.
Greg
Love to have you. All right, I'm gonna start with this. So software engineer can mean a lot of different things here. So can you explain to the audience just quickly about what your specific role within software engineering is?
Caroline Smith
Sure, it's kind of interesting in my case, because at this point in my career, I kind of have two different roles. The first role is the full stack software engineer developer, which is what I originally started this company as, which just means that I do both front end and back end development on our software product, as opposed to just being a front end or a back end developer. And so that basically entails me
maintaining and improving upon the software product that my company offers. And then the other aspect is about, I'd say two years ago, our front end developer for not the product application itself, but the pre -sales website. So like the website that's, you know, for SEO and finding clients and things like that, the front end developer left that position. And so they were looking for a developer who on staff who was willing to
you know, maybe take on a few extra tasks on that front. And I said I would be willing to. So, yeah, I also do front end development, which is, I mean, it is a subset of full stack development. So maybe it is kind of the same job to some extent. But yeah, those are my two main roles. And the front end development is whereas when I'm in the full stack development, I'm more working with other developers.
I'm the only front end developer that we have currently. So I actually get to work with designers and marketers as well, which is pretty interesting also.
Greg
Do you have a preference for which one you like better? Like, do you like working with the engineers more than you like? Okay.
Caroline Smith
I definitely prefer front-end.
Yeah, I prefer front-end development, not just because of like the, that I don't like the developers or like the people, but in all honesty, it's a little easier or a lot easier than back end development. You know, we can get into some of the specifics of that if you want, but yeah, I'd say I like front end development much more.
Greg
You know, you're not 50, you haven't been in the workforce for 20 some years, right? I think you have a lot of perspective you could share with our audience about being relatively new in the field. I say relatively just because I know I'm older than you are. But relatively new in the field where you've recently gone through some of the things like finding your first job and interviewing and trying to stand out among other people with less experience as well. So we're going to get into this little bit, but that's one of the reasons I love to have you on today. And I'm excited for that conversation.
Before we get there though, I want to talk a little bit about your career path. So I'm assuming, and this is probably a bad assumption because engineering, coding, any sort of technical skills like that you can learn online now without collegiate degrees, but computer science degrees is where, especially in my area in North Carolina, where we get tons of people coming through. So can you talk us very quickly about your career path? Did you go to school? Was it self -taught? Kind of walk us through how you...got into engineering.
Caroline Smith
Sure. So I had no coding experience in high school, which is different than a lot of people who were in computer science in college. I started off as chemical engineering and then switched. But yeah, I do have a bachelor of science in computer science and software engineering from Auburn University. So I did get a collegiate degree for what I'm doing now. Yeah. War Eagle. Are you from Auburn?
Greg
No, one of my good friends is an Auburn alum, so I'm always worried.
Caroline Smith
okay. Okay, okay. So, yeah, so I would say for the full stack engineer aspect of my job, the collegiate level was definitely, I would say useful for me, but you are kind of right in that you can learn a lot of things online because the front end part of my job, so, you know, basically front end languages like JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
I didn't even learn those at all in college. I learned those in the first two weeks at my new job. They put all of the new developers through a Code Academy course for all three of them. And that's how we learned front end development. So yeah, it's definitely possible to learn a lot of these skills online nowadays, which is something I wish I knew before I went to college.
Greg
So that's cool. I want to ask you quickly, I'm going to forget the second half, I know I will, but I'm going to ask you quickly, you said you went for chemical engineering. Why did you make the switch from chemical engineering to software?
Caroline Smith
Yeah, well, my first chemistry class, I actually failed. And that's, you know, what really made me sit down and think, okay, maybe chemistry is not my strong suit. You know, I don't understand. Everyone else in class seems to understand everything, you know, relatively quickly. And I just, for whatever reason, my brain is just not wired for that kind of, you know, science -y stuff. So.
I was just looking for anything else that maybe I found interesting. I am an introvert, so I don't really enjoy communicating with lots of people all the time, which is what computer engineering is. Basically, you are working with people, but a lot of my job is just solo work in a group of other developers, of course. So yeah, I just decided to try out computer.
science and software engineering and it stuck.
Greg
Did you have any sort of interest when you were in high school with computers as far as like the engineering side goes outside of just using it or is this something that like, it's always there but maybe in the back of your mind but as you were making that transition out of chemical engineering, you're like, you know what, kind of always liked that. What was your draw to the computer side of things?
Caroline Smith
I did not have any interest at all in high school in computers. I don't even really know what, I don't know what my, I don't even know what I wanted to be in high school. Honestly, I just know that I got into college and, took a intro course, you know, for coding and software engineering. And of course, after I dropped out of chemical engineering and, I just, I knew that I understood the concepts enough.
to know that this is something that I would be interested in. And so that's what I pursued. But no, I had no interest in computers at all in high school, basically. Not even in the back of my mind, honestly.
Greg
That's really interesting. And you mentioned, so this is going to be company specific, but I think it's important for this conversation. You mentioned that you did some code academy class the first two weeks when you were hired by your company. Based on the description before, it sounds like it's a relatively smaller company. Is that a good perception on my part?
Caroline Smith
It is small in terms of our size. So we only have about 50 to 75 employees at one time. But that's including developers and frontline members. But in terms of the clientele that we serve, it's certainly not small. We have about 950,000 users of our product software currently. So yeah, it's a...
Greg Okay.
Caroline Smith
It's small in terms of the size of the company, yes.
Greg
Okay. Yeah. And the reason I'm asking is, is a lot of technology companies anywhere that doing software, right? There's always professional development budgets. You want to learn, you know, XYZ, Python, JSON, whatever it is, you want to learn it. Usually those employees will have the ability to do so. It was interesting that you said, Hey, they put a few of us through bootcamp the first two weeks and they taught us, right? So they kind of filled, maybe they knew those skill sets would be really important. It's just a little bit, to me, it was a little bit surprising. They would do it right away and get everyone kind of leveled up. But I think it's really cool that they did that, but it was interesting.
Caroline Smith
Well, yeah, also probably they did that because in all of my college years, I never took a front end development coding course. It was all focused on like back end development languages like Java or C++. So maybe they just knew that the university, which is Auburn University, it's literally right up the street from the company I worked for. Maybe they just knew that...That's not a common skill that we learned, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. We pretty much only learned back -end coding languages and syntax and things like that. So that could also be it.
Greg
Yeah, yeah, really interesting. All right, you mentioned a little bit ago about kind of your, you're not day to day, but you're like, hey, I work by myself a lot of times, but I do want to talk about your day to day a little bit. So it's okay if you're just kind of plugging away in front of a screen, but let's give the audience a little bit of a typical either day to day or like week to week for you. So how much of your time is working independently? How much is meeting with either other team members, departments, planning, research, really whatever it might be. Could you walk us through a little bit about what
It's a week. Looks like.
Caroline Smith
Sure. Typical week, I'd say about 70 % of what I do is solo. And then the other 30 % is slacking other more senior developers, because we do have senior software engineers, two, or no, three, that we are always asking questions to, because they know everything. They've been here for like a decade or more.
So, but yeah, most of it is just working on fixing bugs or adding new features to the software. And then also part of that 30 % is meeting with the marketing team and our boss and CEO and vice president to show them, you know, what we've been working on for that week. And also I will say that a really important aspect of this job is to know how to communicate.
not just with other developers, but communicate with people who don't know anything about developing, like anything about software engineering, because you're going to be working with a team of marketers, salespeople who are going to be looking at your new features. And it's important that in your meetings, you're able to focus on explaining more like concepts of what your solution offers or what it does.
in terms that they can understand versus like using all the techie computer talk. So yeah.
Greg
So it's interesting because I've done a lot of public speaking in my life. And one of the things I used to love listening to people talk were always engineers at conferences because they had a really good way of breaking complex problems, complex or complex situations down to a very understandable level. And that skill, it's a hard skill in my opinion to do, but I find engineers are really good at that if they're extroverted and they like public speaking on stages in front of people.
There's also the opposite where it's not their strong suit, right? But I used to love listening to engineers talk for that reason. It was always fascinating to me. So we'll get into that skill set a little bit, maybe for how to develop that either in high school or college. But if you're, what does your work -life balance look like?
All right, so Caroline, tell me a little bit about what your work -life balance is like. Is it pretty good? Challenging? How would you define your work -life?
Caroline Smith
Well, it's probably not the best, only because I work from home as of a year ago. So because my computer is always there and accessible, I do often find myself like working on things that I know need to be done by tomorrow's meeting and stuff like that. And also there's the part that I...You know, I have my own business outside of the company that I work for, that I'm always doing work for. So yeah, if I'm being honest, it's not great.
Greg
Very good, and let's give that business a plug real quick. So can you give us the name of that?
Caroline Smith
Yeah, so it's called the Introverted Misfit. And I started it about nine months ago. The idea is to help people who are struggling with social anxiety, social awkwardness, and generally communication skills deficits, helping them to cultivate better relationships by improving their social and communication skills. And that's because I pretty much from the ages of middle school all the way up until
my early adulthood, I was pretty severely socially anxious because of my social skills deficits. And so, yeah, that's really what inspired me to start that business, help people improve their personal and professional lives.
Greg Very cool.
I love it, it's great. It's exactly what you want, right? People need to develop skills, especially, you know, I have friends who have tough anxiety, so it's, these are things that learning how to cope with it, and you know, before it manifests itself when you're older, I think is really cool. So congratulations for that. Let's shift to high school real quick. So if we are advising people who are currently in high school, who think they either may want a career in this field,
Maybe they know they absolutely want a career in this field or just dabbling with it, right? Maybe there's something they're interested in, but they're like, eh, you know, maybe it's there. What advice would you offer them? And this could be in terms of a skillset to either learn or sharpen. It could be whether it's too early or not to reach out to people or just something else altogether, like maybe a class that you wouldn't think appeals or would it help them later in life that they offer in high school. You look back and you're like, man, it would have been cool if I would have done that advice would you offer to those high school students right now?
Caroline Smith
Sure. Well, I mentioned earlier in this video that I didn't have any sort of computer experience at all in high school, even though my high school did offer a course in a beginner's course in coding. So I probably would recommend that, you know, if your school does offer that, take that as a course.
Or as we also mentioned earlier in this video, coding courses are pretty much everywhere online now. So maybe invest in one of those just to get yourself acclimated to the world of coding. And I would also say a really important skill that I don't think you have to do, or you don't have to do specifically coding in high school to develop this skill. It could be other things that can teach you this, but really learning how to think like a developer, which is to say learning how to think about implementing long -term solutions to things rather than short -term solutions. So what I found in my three, almost four years of being a professional software engineer is that there's a lot of shortcuts that you can take as a developer. And a lot of times people do take them because, you know, me and other developers on staff will see how something, why something is broken in the code and wonder, why in the world did they do it this way? They could, they should have done it this way so that we didn't have to deal with this problem.
You know, so really thinking about thinking about solutions that will help in the longterm rather than short -term solutions that may seem like a good idea now, but will not be in two or five or 10 years down the road when another developer has to basically undo all of this work that could have been prevented in the beginning.
Greg
Is there, are there any things that you did specifically that you can think of to try to learn that long -term thinking skill? Because I think for some things it's natural, right? You're like, well, you know, this extreme example, but like, Hey, if I break my arm really bad, I might have long -term problems with like pain and stuff like that. But you're not really thinking about that, right? It's an obvious thing. It might be, you know,
if you change a line of code here to fix a color or something over here, right? Is that just one random line of code, string of code that like you said, five, 10 years down the road, they're redoing something. They're like, why is this not working? Like it's just this random string sitting there. So how, are there really things you can do or maybe something you did specifically where it helps your brain kind of think that long -term in more of an abstract way versus something concrete like, you know, if my arm's broken, I'm going to have long -term problems there. Does that make sense the way I framed it?
Caroline Smith
Yeah, I think so. I'm trying to think of an education related thing. Does it have to be? Can it be like a personal issue that maybe taught me? Okay. Well.
Greg
No, absolutely not. No, no, absolutely not.
Caroline Smith
I would say in high school, I struggled pretty severely with weight issues. And it was because of my poor eating habits as a high schooler. Basically like snacking all day, eating a lot of stuff after I got home from school, even before my mom had time to cook dinner and stuff like that. And yeah, it was already starting to cause some pretty...
severe health consequences early on in my life. And so I had to learn over a period of about one or two years that the short -term solution of eating Oreos or this whole bag of chips or something, you know, right now it might make you feel good, but what is that gonna do for your body and your mind and your overall health years down the line? And you're not even...
You're not even really a full adult yet, you know? And you're already starting off on this path of thinking that just always take the short term rather than thinking long term. That's one personal aspect I can think of. I can't really think of anything education related specifically.
Greg
I think it's a great way to frame it because again, it doesn't have to be just education side of things. That is something where, to me, it's about connecting dots in life. I try to tell this to my kids all the time. I try to instill this, think long -term, think more holistically about stuff. It's hard to convey that to younger people because they know everything, especially my kids. They know everything. But I think it's a really good example because you can see the effects of it, at least to some, right? Weight gain, you know, so those are effects you can see, but you also have the knowledge of over general health, right?
Looking down the road. So I think that's a really good example of just ways to frame different things there. So I think it's a perfect example. I don't think we need any more. So we've got classes available, you know, some high schools based on kind of demographics and. you know, accessibility and things like that. Might have computer classes in high school. Others may not have access to that. They might not have access to really computers at all. We have these online courses you mentioned before. If we shift into college, so, hey, maybe I don't have a lot of experience, or someone like you, you never touched it before you went to college and then you got into it. For those people who are maybe new to it in college, can you look back and say, you know, is the advice you would offer to...
someone who's currently at the collegiate level different from what you would offer to the people in high school, or is it pretty much the same thing?
Caroline Smith
Hmm.
Greg
And that advice, it might be as simple as, hey, yeah. I was gonna say organizations or clubs maybe on campus that most high schools don't maybe have, but they have them in college. But I don't know, if it's mostly the same, that's perfect as well.
Caroline Smith
I think I would say it's the same.
Caroline Smith
I actually what, now that you say that, I do remember that I was a part of an out of class organization, specifically for engineering people. So that included software engineers, civil engineers, any kind of engineering degree. They could be a part of this program and they offered specialized study rooms where you could study with other people in your major for upcoming tests and stuff like that. And they also had
senior people who are or maybe graduate level people who were willing to come in and tutor for your specific you know major or class that you're taking. So yeah I would probably say once you're in college definitely take advantage of at least one of those organizations that are major specific where you can network with other people and you know get help from people who
may know more than you, you know? You don't know everything and nothing in life is meant to be done completely alone. You know, you're always gonna need advice or help from someone. So that's probably the advice I would give to collegiate level people is to get involved.
Greg
Awesome. All right, let's shift to the new workforce. So it's the age -old dilemma, any career, whatever you talk about, how do you get a job, right? They always want people with experience, mostly tough to get experience unless you have experience. I think there's some jobs that are easier than others, right? You could do freelance stuff as a coding, graphic design. There's certain things where you can do freelance in high school, college, things like that to get.
little bit of a portfolio, but you're still competing with other people maybe in the same boat. 50 resumes go out, go in front of someone. What advice, having been in the workforce for a couple years, would you give to brand new college graduates to say this is how you stand out amongst your peers? Where for the most part, things are gonna be mostly equal.
Caroline Smith
I would say definitely use the projects that you'll be doing in your class, like for your class assignments, use those as portfolio or projects that you can put on your portfolio and do a good job at them. In fact, when I interviewed for the job that I had now, that's pretty much all the experience that I had, but it just turned out that they were
you know, detailed enough projects that I could explain those types of coding concepts to them and also have them something to point towards that they can look at and say, hey, she knows what she's talking about. I remember one question in the interview for the job that I currently have. One of the people interviewing asked me, what all coding languages do you know? And at that point I kind of froze because I only knew one.
Like I was a sophomore interviewing for a co -op position at the company. And so I only knew one and I was honest about that. But I just said with confidence that, you know, I, I only know one, but I know the ins and outs of this language enough and the concepts of software engineering enough to know that if I had to learn one or two other languages, I know that I could apply.
those skill sets that I learned in those projects and those classes and in those that one coding language, I know I could apply those to another one and learning the syntax, that's just an extra part that I have to learn. But the main concepts are there. So yeah, that's what I would say is focus on building your portfolio of projects with the classes that you take, the projects that you do in those classes.
Greg
That's really good advice. And I think the one thing that keeps resonating here is, and this is especially true in college is, you know, don't just do the project to get the project done, right? You're doing the project and actually putting effort into it, time into it, and you're focused on a learning experience as well as the result, right? So you can communicate that later. So projects, super important. So really good piece of advice. Thank you, Caroline. Let's have a personalities here because we talked a little bit about.
personalities. I've worked in the tech field for the last 13 years. I've been exposed to a lot of them. So what do you find to be the most dominant personality for your particular industry and your roles here? So is it more reserved and polite, more aggressive, more introverted, extroverted? What do you think is the most dominant personality that you work with?
Caroline Smith
Dominant, I would have to say, you know, more introverted, like to work by themselves, but are willing to work with others because of course, you know, you're always going to be working with other developers and people like that. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's just something about the software engineering, computers, you know, field where we just seem to attract a lot of, I would say introverts, quiet people who like to work by themselves more than, you know, always be talking to somebody else.
Greg
Do you think an extrovert could be successful and happy in a career like that?
Caroline Smith
Hmm. I do think so. Actually, a matter of fact, I know a few anomalies, like, you know, one or two people in my, in my time at this current job who were extremely extroverted, like much different than the majority of us on staff. They were always walking around the office and asking you questions face to face rather than just opening up your Slack messages and typing it out. Those kinds of people.
I would say there's room for them. It's just, it really all depends on how you move in that world. You know, you can, you know, you can, you can walk into somebody's office and start a meaningful conversation about this project that you're working on and what this means for the sales team or what this could mean, you know, in another aspect of the job, you know, it's, it's all about how you. Decide that you want to maneuver in that world if that makes sense.
Greg
It does, it does. All right, Carolina, one more question for you. But it's actually gonna be two questions and I'll let you kind of choose whichever one comes to your mind first here and they're not necessarily related. So either what is the most common or most common misconceptions about your job or what about your industry or your specific role do you wish you knew sooner?
Caroline Smith
I think I want to do common misconceptions. So, a common misconception I would say is that developers are always just like frantically typing away out of the knowledge that's already in their head. but in reality, a lot of, a lot of my job, I mean, of course I know the core concepts of coding and best practices and stuff like that, that should be implemented in terms of maintainable software and scalable software, but a lot of my job is just, you know, Googling how have other developers figured this question out and how can I apply that to this problem that I'm facing? You don't have to memorize every single detail about coding. You know, you have the internet to help you. Although you do need the core knowledge there to have something to start with, like a foundation, you're not going to be a
You know, like the person who's on the show, Criminal Minds, the person who's like on the computer typing and they know everything, they don't have to look anything up. It's not really like that. You have help out there that's available to you online that you can use.
Greg
good to know. I lied, I do have another question now. So how are you, are you guys using a lot of AI for like code writing or to proof code that you write or not so much?
Caroline Smith
I would say not so much now, but I mean, AI is still relatively new, right? So who knows in the future, but no, we don't really do that now.
Greg
Yeah.
Okay, very good. All right, my final question has nothing to do with your career per se. So if I remove you from your current career, you can choose it and that includes your side business as well. And you had to choose a different career you would do. Which career would that be and why?
Caroline Smith
I would have to say some sort of career where I can like be outside and grow stuff because I'm actually a big gardener. I know maybe it's another common misconception about computer people is that we always like to be inside away from the sun and the elements. But I actually love being outside. My whole family is like country folk. They're from the middle of nowhere. They grow all of the stuff that they eat, you know.
And that's how I grew up in my childhood. If I could do something where I could be outside more, I would, I don't know what career that would be, but I would do that. Definitely.
Greg
So my wife's said gardener. So that seems right up the alley.
Caroline Smith
Yeah, Gardner. Right.
Greg
Yeah, there you go. Wonderful. Caroline, thank you for your time today. So Caroline Smith, everyone, software engineer, founder of the Introverted Misfit. To find out more about what Carolina, see I'm in Carolina and I can't get this right. To find out more about what Caroline is up to, please check out the description or the show notes, however you're considering the podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something.
(Interview transcription provided by Riverside.fm. May not be 100% accurate.)
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