I'm a "Software Engineer"
I've been working as a "Software Engineer" since 2014. Before that I studied a Master's Degree in Computer Science. Where I learned about C, C++, and how computers worked. This was all in preparation for a wonderous career in the software industry.
Well fast forward to 2026 and I am taking time away from said industry in order to get to grips with Sheep farming. A surprise, but welcome, venture after my Wife inherited her Dad's farm. I now get up at 7 every morning, pull on overalls and go out to feed, lamb, inject, and solve various Sheep related problems. Sheep, as it turns out, are highly skilled at finding new and elaborate ways of getting themselves into trouble.
This work is very physical. I often have to wrestle with unruly animals, which weigh about 70kg each so they are quite strong. While I use my body, my mind is on somewhat of a vacation. I spend very little time in front of a screen now. I have no office, and as we live up a hill, no phone signal. Perhaps you could call it a detox. A welcome side effect of this detox is that I am no longer stressed, fitter than ever, and happy. I also work harder than ever, and deal with actual life and death issues, if you are a sheep that is, and often this takes place in dangerous environments, mostly in confined spaces with large excitably animals. Despite this I am not anxious or worried, I simply deal with the task at hand.
As lambing season comes to an end, I have been reflecting on my past work as a Software Engineer, the people I have worked with, their attitudes to life, and the industry in general. Mostly I think about what a truly ignorant bunch of people make up the tech industry. Detached from the real world and nature. For example, I woke up this morning and the first thing I had to do was chase and catch a sheep whose dead lamb was hanging out of her and needed to be removed. The unfortunate fellow had come out backwards and his mother was unable to complete the job. It was not a pleasant task, Sheep have a higher internal body temperature than humans which means their insides feel very hot. They also stink. The stink hit's you hard when the lamb flops out and the placenta follows. But alas I got the job done, and tied the Sheep to a nearby tree so I could run home and get an injection of anti-inflammatories and anti-biotics to stave off the pain and possible infection that might ensue. As I sit in front of my laptop writing this, I think of how clueless I was in the height of my tech career. I would go to work and stress about having to pull a ticket from one kanban column to the next. Complain about the endless and pointless meetings I'd have to attend. All the while fighting mini wars of attrition with my colleagues.
In reflection I wonder what that was all about. In theory it was to deliver a product, one that had value for a customer. In practice very little was ever delivered and the value to the customer was very much secondary. Before you think that this is just the experience I had, I will caveat it by saying I worked for multiple highly respected companies, in multiple industries. But the tech side of the job was always the same. The typical scenario would be that I was placed on a small delivery team that looked after a certain product. That team would be made up of a product owner (manager), scrum master (manager), business analyst (manager), QA (programmer who cant program), front end dev (junior programmer), 2 backend devs (made up of one senior programmer and one programmer who can speak very little English). So roughly fifty percent managers fifty percent technical. It would be the task of the managers to ensure that every feature was delivered as slowly as possible. You may have a small feature request to add a feed of data to a web page. This should take a software engineer a day to do without limitations. It's the manager's job to ensure that it takes 6 months. To do this they will employ a number of sophisticated techniques. One of the most popular is the religion of Agile. Agile has been the hot new managerial technique in the industry for about 20 years. No one person can truly understand it, as your Agile may be different from my Agile. It's somewhat akin to the many forms of Christianity present in the United States. They are all essentially the same, but every one else's version is wrong.
A manager's main concern is metrics. When I say metrics here I mean numbers, preferably numbers that have no meaning themselves. The more void of logic these numbers are, the better. Keeping a manager's numbers on point is the goal to success in the industry. Newbies take note, if a manager wants high numbers then give them high numbers, if they want low numbers employ decimal places. 3.9% looks great on a slide deck, want to improve it? 0.7%. You just got promoted. Managers are simple things, they just want good numbers. Usually they have absolutely no idea about the product or the industry they work in. They are just there to manage, and managing means numbers.
If the managers are simple things then the Software Engineers are complex. A software engineer can be anything from a qa to a college graduate to someone that knows how to spell HTML. They may know how to program. The vast majority will not know how to program. You see, only 3.9% of Software Engineers actually program. The rest are just grifters. They turn up to meetings, occasionally give opinions, and sometimes add to manager's numbers. Usually they just play games or indulge in social media while they are at work. Likely they will be working on a side project that is very difficult to explain and has no tangible value to them or anyone else. Often the side project will use a hot new tech, or obscure programming language that can only be understood if the user has struggled through all 173 (I googled it) episodes of Deep Space Nine. If you feel strongly about linting or formatting code, then you are likely one of these.
Then comes the enigmas, the 0.7% that do all the work. You'll likely never meet one of these people. They are not on social media, they don't blog (that's me out), and they don't know what Javascript is. The software you don't notice is written by these people. It works. So you don't have too. Very little is known about them, but they do exist. One day I hope to meet one of them. I'll simply say "Hello, World", as they pass me by... They won't get the reference.
When people ask me now what I do for work I still say I'm a Software Engineer. But really I've never been a Software Engineer, I'm just a grifter like everyone else. And don't start on imposter syndrome, that is just trying to justify feeling bad about doing a bullshit job. In the 6 months I've been farming I have done more good for the world than in the 12 years I've been a Software Engineer. I don't feel any particular way about that. My career ensured that I could buy a house for my family and that if we don't live to excess will likely never experience poverty. Whereas if I had started off farming Sheep, I'd be dirt poor. I guess the moral of the story is that bullshit pays the bills.
If you are a Software Engineer similar to what I described then please, don't take your job too seriously. Pay the bills, look after your family and enjoy life. There is no God in the church of Agile.