| Hmm, few notes & questions: - Being cut out for software engineering activities; vs software engineering career/success, may be different skills and concepts. You could be good at development, system administration database administration; without necessarily being good at succeeding in any particular type of company culture or organization, applying those skills. Which one is your question: can a person be "not cut out for software engineering", or can a person be "not cut out for success at particular type of company as a software engineer"?
[I would give the answer for both a "probably, in principle, but less often than assumed]. - You mention some of your perceived history of effort, success, and lack of success. What about more personal stuff - do you ENJOY the work? Are you attracted to software engineering (however you see it - development, sysadmin, etc)? Would you dabble with it even if you got a job in an unrelated field? - Do you have a specific filter you might or might not be aware of? Are you seeking specific types of jobs in specific types of companies under specific constraints? - Do you have friends you trust in similar professions, or with similar interests? What do they say? - How about colleagues, classmates, profs? - Number of failures at obtaining jobs is a metric but not a predictive one without context. Skill at interviews is not the same as skill at software engineering is not the same as skill at organizational success. - Similarly, you may have _perceived_ to be working harder at college; you may have _actually_ been working harder, due to your higher standards; you may have been working harder but _not_ receiving the same results as others - without full understanding I would not automatically put full weight in your perception of relative work. - Top Companies and Top Projects may not have one-to-one ration. Why do you think you want/need to work for those particular companies? Are you interested in prestige of the name? If not, what is your true interest - type of work? Team culture? Accomplishment? Paycheque? Write a list of your actual priorities, be brutally honest with yourself, and see how they match with those "top-tier companies". - How would you perceive your skillset at large? Your communication skills, people skills, friendliness, dependability and reliability, loyalty? Personally, I look for a reliable willing learner on my teams more than somebody who can solve puzzles but will cause havoc - different companies have different fashions however. Either way, best of luck :) |
1.) I do enjoy software engineering to a certain degree, and even if I weren't in the field, I'd almost certainly still write code from time to time.
2.) This is a bit of an involved question, but I'll try to answer concisely. The past few years have given me a pretty decent idea of what I like/dislike about software engineering. At this point, I believe that the team and process are EXTREMELY important factors in determining a (software engineering) project's likelihood of success. I want to work in an organization where engineers are really excited about their product and/or technology of choice. In my experience, I've found that these people tend to congregate at what most consider to be leading/high-quality tech companies (e.g. facebook, google, airbnb, uber, twitter, etc.).
3. & 4.) A good number of my friends and ex-colleagues work at the aforementioned companies (as well as a few other "top-tier" firms). Their opinions on their companies is overwhelmingly positive and directly aligns with my values.
5.) I understand this, but it is a bit of a blocker if I can't even get in the door, right?
6.) This sentiment is reasonable, and it certainly is difficult to quantify "working harder." For what it's worth, I will say that it usually took me longer to complete assignments than it did many of my cohorts.
7.) Here's the brutally-honest list, in no particular order: - Atmosphere: I find that I thrive when I'm around people who constantly challenge themselves ot be better at what they do - Interesting work: I want to be engaged in my work; at the moment, that means full-stack webdev (JS + react/redux) or super-large scale infrastructure engineering (devops) with containerization - Prestige: having a top-tier name on the resume opens doors, and I'd like to maximize my opportunities in future endeavors - Compensation: The financial aspect is important; I work hard and want to be paid accordingly - Culture: Again, I want to be around people who are generally REALLY excited about what they're working on. Having led a startup in the past, I know what it's like to be a part of the atmosphere where everyone is passionate about their work. Now, I do know that this aspect isn't necessary a given for employees at top-tier firms (especially the large ones).
8.) Skillset: For simplicty'sake, I'll use a 1 - 10 scale where 1 is weak and 10 and strong: - Communication: 9/10 - I focus on this skill as much as possible because I've found that none of my work occurs in a bubble - People Skills / Friendliness: 7/10 - I like people and I like interacting with people. That said, I'm always learning how to better interact with people. - Dependability / Reliability: 9/10 - One of my nightmares is being perceived as unreliable. - Loyalty: 8/10 - It's a virtue and a weakness, but I tend towards loyalty to those who have done me right in the past, be it a person or company. - Pure Coding Skill: 6/10 - I get the job done, but I still have a lot to learn - Algorithms: lol/10 - Still working on it - Ability to learn: 9/10 - This is another trait I focus on. Tech is always changing, and I fully believe that one of the core skills of a good software engineer is to be able to continually learn new things.