careers
Software engineering is still a very new profession.
We often forget how incredibly new software engineering is, and that we would benefit greatly from learning from other fields.
I recently met an aspiring junior dev who had been in the US Army for 10 years. You better believe they'll be bringing very smart, transferable ideas to our industry. We're lucky they're interested in software engineering.
This is one of the reasons why I'm excited about coding bootcamps and career-switching junior devs.
Lawyers have more than 2,000 years on us. Soldiers, architects, doctors, accountants and teachers even more so. It would be wise to consider that we barely know what we're doing. Maybe we should take a page out of other professionals' books.
Can we learn from other professions how to:
- explain what we do better?
- protect our interests?
- train our students?
- express our value?
- self-regulate?
| Trade/Profession | How old |
|---|---|
| Soldiers | Prehistoric |
| Architects | Prehistoric |
| Doctors | Prehistoric |
| Accountants | Prehistoric |
| Teachers | Prehistoric |
| Lawyers | 2,200 years |
| Print Publishers | 800 years |
| Electrical Engineers | 200 years |
| Automotive Engineers | 160 years |
| Aerospace Engineers | 120 years |
| 🚨  Software Engineers | 70 years  🚨 |
| Developer Relations | 40 years |
| Data Scientists | 20 years |
| Coding Bootcamp Instructors | 10 years |