r/cscareerquestions • u/cs-grad-person-man • 1d ago
Reminder: Software engineering is still one of the happiest careers in 2024/2025, based on data.
This subreddit has a huge FAANG obsession, and it completely distorts the perception of software engineering. Every other post seems to be about insane comp packages, grueling interviews, layoffs, or burnout stories. But if you look at the actual data, the reality for most developers is completely different.
Resume.io (2025) found that 87 percent of software developers reported being “very happy” in their jobs, the highest of any profession surveyed.
Career.io (2024) analyzed nearly 756,000 job ratings and found software developers among the most satisfied six figure earners, with a median salary around 130K.
Market.biz (2025) reported that 74 percent of tech professionals worldwide are satisfied with their jobs.
So why does this subreddit feel so negative compared to those numbers? Because the voices dominating here are FAANG engineers or startup employees, and their experiences are extreme. Life inside FAANG is often miserable. Long hours, constant pressure to ship, endless internal politics, and the looming threat of layoffs make it feel like a treadmill you can never step off. Software is the company’s entire product, so everything you do is under constant scrutiny and pressure. Burnout is common, and that is exactly what this sub amplifies.
Meanwhile, the average developer lives a completely different life, and that is what drives the high happiness statistics. Most are not in San Francisco or New York. They live in mid sized cities or suburbs where their salary goes much further. They are not chasing the next billion dollar app. They work at hospitals, insurance companies, banks, logistics firms, or government agencies. The work is steady, respected, and meaningful, even if it never makes headlines.
They make 100K to 130K, comfortably above the national median. Their hours are closer to forty a week. They get PTO. Their managers are competent but not tyrannical. And because software is a support function rather than the company’s core product, the pressure to grind nonstop is low. That is why surveys consistently show high satisfaction.
The quiet majority of developers who live this life rarely post here. Nobody makes a thread to say “My job is stable, I like my team, I worked normal hours, and I had a great weekend hiking.” The loud minority who post are often FAANG engineers or startup refugees talking about their misery. That is why this subreddit can make software engineering seem miserable, even though for most people it is not.
The truth is that chasing FAANG is often what ruins people’s perception of software engineering. It is the exception, not the rule. The average developer is happy, balanced, and living a peaceful, stable, and well-compensated life. Even in 2024 and 2025, software engineering remains one of the happiest and most rewarding professions you can choose, as long as you understand that most developers do not live the FAANG nightmare that dominates this subreddit.
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u/snmnky9490 1d ago
Few people are complaining that software engineering jobs are bad. Most of them are complaining that they can't get any software engineering job
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u/Successful_Leg_707 1d ago
I wake up at 8:30. Put on some gym shorts, make breakfast, attend standup at 9am. Take an hour long lunch and end my day at 4pm. I make $160k year working with cool people in a prosocial industry and that’s good enough for me. Not sure what other careers would allow for that money and work life balance without some extensive schooling.
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u/CTProper 1d ago
That’s pretty good.
I wake up at 6, go for a jog, shower, breakfast and work from 7-4.
Then sometimes a bug comes in when I’m on call and i end up not getting off until 8 or 9. I make $90k a year salaried.
I live in the Mountain West so it’s cheaper than California but like 50% more expensive than the Midwest.
Pretty much every day I get mad at myself. I have a degree in Biology but really liked an entry level dev role I had years ago. My plan was med school but I just stuck with tech now I’m 30, looking at a bleak market, with skills in an extremely niche tech stack.
What have I done
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u/rnicoll 1d ago
I wanted to give an example also that tech is not uniform and there's different trade-offs.
I wake at 7am and my first meeting is 7:30am with a team in another timezone. I take time to shower, have breakfast and commute while the first team goes to bed and the US team comes online. My day ends typically around 6:30pm-7pm.
I make more money than I can get my head around, though (even if I'm technically below market).
I'm heading back to the UK in a few months and will then be on a more conventional day, and while my pay goes down, work/life balance should swing towards life.
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u/Vinnitheg 1d ago
you work 30 hours a week?
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u/Successful_Leg_707 1d ago
Pretty much, it’s a brownfield application. Mostly bug fixing and some new features but it’s been in production for years.
It’s not sexy work at all and can sometimes be boring but my team is awesome
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u/Crime-going-crazy 1d ago
Enjoy before your company realizes they can just hire Indians
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u/Psycho_Syntax 1d ago
Why are redditors acting like offshoring is some new thing lol. Been going on for decades.
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u/Frustr8ion9922 1d ago
And that is the problem. It's still happening, more companies will do it. so he's making a valid point that companies can off shore at any time.
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u/Psycho_Syntax 1d ago
Sure, but that’s been true for like the last 15+ years.
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u/Frustr8ion9922 1d ago
It still goes up and down the amount of off shoring. It has definitely been getting worse recently. Companies go through cycles of on and off shoring. And the point still stands, he's saying dont get too comfortable because it can happen any day.
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u/Western_Objective209 1d ago
If it's a regulated industry, they generally already hire as many Indians as they can
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u/Successful_Leg_707 1d ago
Funny enough they have a global capacity center in India. Luckily the team I work on is insulated from all that.
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u/Acoustic-Regard-69 1d ago
Based on your previous posts and comments, you don’t seem like a very intelligent person.
Sorry. Please consider if your intelligence is up to par with the discussion you are reading before you decide to comment in the future. Thanks.
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u/Crime-going-crazy 1d ago
Saar, you come from a country with an average IQ of 70
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u/guycls1 1d ago
Nah man, I think you should take a test yourself.
https://i.imgur.com/IrAX1PN.png
https://i.imgur.com/Wo6O64Q.png
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
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u/endurbro420 1d ago
My employer has had an office in India for longer than I have been employed there yet we still have US based teams. They don’t even have dev teams out of India as they tried that before and it failed, only support is out of India. Some companies can learn from past mistakes and not repeat them.
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u/likwitsnake 1d ago
I wake up at 7am. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an ice pack while doing my stomach crunches. I can do a thousand now. After I remove the ice pack, I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower, I use a water activated gel cleanser. Then a honey almond body scrub. And on the face, an exfoliating gel scrub. Then apply an herb mint facial mask, which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion. There is an idea of a software engineer, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our life styles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.
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u/SouredRamen Senior Software Engineer 1d ago
Here's a fun fact: The vast majority of people in this indusry are operating this way.
This subreddit is very much focused on the grind, focused on landing at Big-N, focused on working ungodly hours even when the pay is bad, etc.
In reality, the people not on this subreddit, are working normal jobs, for normal pay, with a normal WLB. Just like you. This is what people should be striving for. Not those insane $400k TC positions in fintech, not the jobs that grind you to the bone. But a normal job. It's almost like we need a different CS careers subreddit for people that want to be normal.
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u/No-External3221 1d ago
Well, yeah. The type of person who goes to a subreddit about CS careers is going to be more career focused than the one who doesn't.
Nobody is going to spend time on a subreddit dedicated to getting $70k dev jobs at Nokia in small-town Wisconsin. They'll just get the job and focus on other things in life.
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u/SouredRamen Senior Software Engineer 1d ago
I do... That's basically all I bring to this subreddit. I tout work life balance, I tout healthy work culture, I tout not job hopping every 2 years to get that fat salary bump, I tout not freaking out about a 0-5% raise.
The one thing I bring to this subreddit is the average Joe's perspective. That's really the only reason I keep posting here, because there's very few people that post that perspective, and sometimes it gets me downvoted into oblivion. And yet, this is the advice that all the new people to this industry need. They need the "normal" advice, not the "I've sacrificed everything in my life to make myself a millionaire" advice.
My first job out of college was for less than $70k, in Nebraska.
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u/No-External3221 1d ago
That's fine, but it's not going to be the norm. Subreddits attract people deeply interested in a thing, not kinda sorta interested in a thing. It shouldn't be surprising that people in the CS careeers subreddit are interested in maximizing their career outcomes.
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u/SouredRamen Senior Software Engineer 1d ago
Oh, I didn't say it's surprising. I understand the demographic of an advice subreddit. I'm just saying it's a bad thing. Ironically, the demographic of advice subreddits make them extremely toxic places to actually ask for advice.
That's why I try to chime in with reminding people what normal people experience in this industry.
But "maximizing their career outcomes" is pretty generous..... there's a few, but most of the posts here aren't "I'm doing really well, how do I do better?".
The posts here are mostly "I've done 10000000 applications with 0 interviews, what am I doing wrong?", or "Do I really need a degree?", or "Are we all cooked?".
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u/No-External3221 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well yeah, it's big part of the reason I don't spend much time here anymore. This subreddit's hivemind is centered around the people who expected to waltz into a 200k Google job with a bachelor's degree/ bootcamp, and are realizing that isn't possible for most people.
I still find there are enough experienced/ successful people to give balanced takes on a lot of things, but if you just read the top posts, it's 99% doomerism.
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u/ConcernExpensive919 22h ago
meanwhile ive applied to hundreds of places ranging from small to large, tech focused and nontech focused all across the country and still no response
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u/LaundryOnMyAbs 1d ago
I work 8am to 8pm. My coworkers are all Chinese and it’s very difficult to communicate. Deadlines are super tight and when you can finally see a path to shipping on time, you get a sev, 2 oncall tasks and 2 more projects due in a month. I make $400k a year and am miserable
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u/Lightinger07 1d ago
Bro, with that kind of compensation, you can retire decades earlier than 90% of people. At least your hard work is paying off massively, which cannot be said for most people.
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u/r3alz 1d ago
A lot of people would be willing to be miserable for 400k a year just so you know
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u/LaundryOnMyAbs 1d ago
lol it’s not just being miserable but also maintaining a high degree of stress for extended periods of time. Prolonged stress has all kinds of effects on your life in various ways. For those of us that have experience with the cushy 20 hour week $180k jobs in lcol, 400k in hcol is just not worth it.
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u/srona22 1d ago
on contrary, I could said about lowballed employee as follow
- wake up half asleep at 8:30(due to unpaid overtime last night)
- attended grilling "stand up", more like clown show of nepo kid or rich boomer turned C-level
- rush to breakfast/shower
- either solve pilling tickets or figure things out which are out of pay grade
- meanwhile 15 min check in micro manager(s)
oh, weekly hours would be min 60. No wonder your countries like so much of "outsourcing".
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u/CTProper 1d ago
This sounds like my job. Plus I’m the only American so let’s see how long I can keep hold of it haha
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u/Aazadan Software Engineer 1d ago
I wake up at 8, order breakfast to go on an app, have a 10 minute drive to work, show up at 9, do some morning meetings, eat breakfast, take an hour for lunch, leave at 5, home by 5:30 and get $130 in a city that is low-medium low for COL, and have coworkers I get along with.
It's not the best, not the worst, but tolerable and something that's sustainable without any real misery. So not as good as you, but still more than satisfactory.
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u/commonllama87 1d ago
Do these positions actually exist? Feel like I only hear people say stuff like this on Reddit. All my jobs have just been 10-12hr a day grind fests
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u/bobthemundane 1d ago
I have worse pay and hours, but not by much. Work for a state. Union job. Strict 40 hours per week. That does work both ways. Not 39, but also not 41. Once hours are done, computer goes off. Work from home. Full 1 hour lunch. A little less pay, but I am also not maxed out on my steps, so I will get set pay raises each year for a while.
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u/MCPtz Senior Staff Software Engineer 19h ago
Vast majority of people in software engineering / similar, in the US, spend 30~40 hours a week working.
I would guess that most of them work in the office, though, so they probably wake up earlier and drive in.
I would also guess most of them don't post here.
It's not a grind fest, but it is work, and they do put in their time every week, with an acceptable work/life balance.
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u/SerLarrold 1d ago
Pretty similar life for me. I honestly have nothing to complain about beyond just hoping to avoid any mass layoffs. People have a weird fixation on big tech when being a regular old software engineer is great
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u/AnimeAltimate 1d ago
6? Man they're lucky if they get me for 2
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u/Comfortable-Insect-7 1d ago
And then you guys wonder why all these layoffs happen lmao. Hopefully they continue and you have to find a real job.
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u/LaundryOnMyAbs 1d ago
Lmao don’t mock me! I’ve had both jobs and I’m just emphasizing that I’d take geico with a hot wife any day of the week. Not 400k and a pending divorce
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u/No-External3221 1d ago
Have a longer-term mindset. If you're capable of making 400k+, doing that for awhile will let you retire early and do whatever you want.
I'd rather grind for a decade+, make a shit-ton of money and work with smart people and eventually have the option to never work again, vs being a wage slave until I'm 65 for <insert low-paying F500 company here>.
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u/newebay 1d ago
It's not even close to few years, try decades. Plug it into a calculator and you'll see the massive discrepancies.
Compounding is on your side the earlier you have money. We're talking about mid 30s or 40s retirement in these scenarios
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u/KhonMan 1d ago
In the US median tenure for all (not just tech) workers aged 25-34 in is 2.7 years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I don't see any definitive sources on Big Tech, but usually people do say 1.5 - 2 years. Do you have a source that says those numbers are excluding new hires? Or was that just something you are guessing?
In any case - it's not ridiculously different. And just because you leave one Big Tech company, it doesn't mean you don't join another one. Almost all of my friends who started in Big Tech at the same time as me a decade ago are still in it, just not necessarily with the same team or company. Today I am seeing people stay a lot longer in one spot because the market is bad.
But to your broader point, I would echo the other commenter. It makes a lot of sense to focus on saving earlier. Not everyone making 400k is a depressed, soulless husk. You can save a lot and still have fun in your 20s when you make a lot of money. And it does lead to retiring easily a decade earlier, or if you want to Coast FIRE you can have the flexibility to switch to a lower paying job pretty much whenever you want.
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u/newebay 1d ago
If it didn't work out, you "wasted" 1-2 years. All my coworkers came from other big tech companies (typically with matching unvested rsu), if you're driven enough to get accepted into one good odd you can get accepted in another, and that comes with big pay bump
I'm on path to retire before even 45, and the only reason it isn't 35 is because I completely wasted my 20s
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u/LaundryOnMyAbs 1d ago
That sounds great when you’re young and single. Not when you have a hot wife and a one year old and they both never get to see you because you’re stressed and developing mental disorders from work
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u/No-External3221 1d ago
Sure, if your goal is to be the standard middle class American with 2 cars, a white picket fence and 2.5 kids. Go for it. Work until you're 65 and live the American dream.
I'm in this field because I enjoy it. I like the challenge. I like working with smart people. I like doing difficult things that force me to grow. And I get paid a lot to do that.
I make enough that the moment that I decide that I don't want to do it anymore, I can stop working forever and continue doing whatever I want. I can walk away at any moment, and that mental freedom is valuable. The guy making $90k at AllState doesn't have the same freedom.
Why would I trade that to make less money in an easier job with less capable people, and be locked into that job until I'm close to dead?
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u/LaundryOnMyAbs 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yep. Comes down to how you want to live your life. I have a wife, kids, active friend groups, and have realized that work is only part of my life and I’d rather spend my life with them doing sports leagues, ski trips, beach vacations, weeknight kareoke, etc. Not knocking your mentality, but I believe my career can have me for 40 hours a week but other interest should dominate my life.
But I also think there’s a middle ground. My first fanng experience was boring work but 996 and fear driven. I’m sure Other big tech jobs aren’t all that level of hell.
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u/No-External3221 1d ago
Yeah, that's fine if that's what you want. I think many people want that.
Personally, I don't feel the need to have a job for the sake of having one. And I don't want to feel tethered to a job (need one to survive). I want to get paid extremely well to do challenging things. If that's not happening, I'll just not work and do my own thing.
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u/bobthemundane 1d ago
Or I can say that I worked for a nice pay rate, was able to take my kids to school and pick them up. Never missed a game, concert, meet, student teacher conference for work. Got yearly vacations with family where I left work at home and never checked email. And still retired early and with a good retirement making much more than the average person.
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u/lewlkewl 1d ago
Geico asks leetcode questions now. source: interviewed there a few months ago (was mostly mediums)
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u/SurelyNotLikeThis SDE @ Big Tech 1d ago
Do people actually spend hundreds of hours on interview prep? I've literally never spent more than a few hrs a week during job hunts, my leetcode account I've used since first year uni is still only 60 questions lifetime solved.
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u/Sensational-X 1d ago
Yeah, granted strong data structure fundamentals and you can probably brute force most questions. But for some start ups and big tech companies the questions we’ll really standard is getting harder and harder as candidates can just study and memorize solutions or out right use ai now to crank out “perfect” solutions in minimal time.
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u/natty-papi 1d ago
I think the prep time is inflated from the accounts from our Indian bros.
Poor guys/gals, their interview process sounds grueling.
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u/ladycatherinehoward 1d ago
I think the people who didn't study computer science and algorithms (aka bootcamp grads or people who switched into this field) do... Because they're literally learning a whole damn field from scratch.
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u/rnicoll 1d ago
Technically yes, and I've absolutely done it (switching from startups to big tech late-career). That said if I was interviewing again, now, as someone in big tech, I'd much more expect to be rounding out my skills to address a few gaps I don't work on day to day, rather than doing a full refresh on things I last did a decade prior.
It helps it also do the interviewer side quite frequently now, so I get to see how other people answer questions (and look through a massive question bank).
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/icefrogs1 1d ago
In other fields you would be making 70-80k tops, low performers don't get paid a lot in other industries.
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u/1234511231351 1d ago
It depends a lot on location. $70-80k in MCoL is pretty ok and in places that tend to have a lot of tech jobs (Boston, Seattle, SF) it would be miserable paycheck to paycheck living with roommates.
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u/icefrogs1 1d ago
It's relevant because people have to work for a living???
And everyone in this thread is making it seem like every other field is super low stress and high pay when it's not.2
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u/Always_Scheming 1d ago
I think the major complaints here are about the current job market situation specifically for the tons of new grads and laid off people.
Your data sources haven’t taken these people’s perspectives i to account and they are not in a good spot at the moment.
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u/Data-Fox 1d ago
You mean the software world isn’t collapsing and everyone doesn’t need to pivot into nursing? 😮
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u/Crime-going-crazy 1d ago
A lot people do need to pivot to nursing. Not enough jobs for all these new grads
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u/Dolphinpop 1d ago
Just get your hands dirty, soft hands! Pivot into the trades, learn to weld idiot! Tech is dying AI is taking over, plumbers will be the new tech unicorns!
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u/BigShotBosh 1d ago
I mean you still need to be hired and offshoring/AI ain’t stopping anytime soon lol
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u/stoichiometristsdn 22h ago edited 22h ago
Most people on this sub wouldn’t last a half a shift in nursing.
Nursing is already saturated in some metro areas. They are getting laid off due to the Medicaid cuts part of the BBB.
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u/Illustrious-Pound266 1d ago
Lol you believe the data on those sites? The websites look dubious af. Just because it makes you feel good about your own career choice, doesn't mean you should automatically take it at face value.
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u/FiredAndBuried 1d ago
If you think moving to nursing is going to give you less stress, then you need to get checked in the head
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u/Mediocre-Ebb9862 1d ago edited 1d ago
The truth is that chasing FAANG is often what ruins people’s perception of software engineering
The truth is that many people were sold a lie. A lie that they can have it all: pay, prestige and stability of a neurosurgeon, undergrad education from unremarkable school without insane competition, chill job and making it home for dinner.
And when those people realize hard truths (that being a good software engineer is hard and no, many people can't become one; that high pay and career requires grind and sacrifice; that handling stress in the demanding jobs is what you're paid for; that great job security only exists in the super-gated fields with toughest barriers to entry) they get upset and angry.
One of the funniest turns in the comments on that is when people contemplate that they should have "gone to medicine" without bothering to ask someone who passed e.g. surgical residency.
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u/SwaeTech 1d ago
Software Engineering is great when the goings good and an anxious mindfuck when the market’s bad and the company is in free fall. Especially for a certain personality type. It’s not for everyone, and there is huge amount of burnout.
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u/Eastern-Zucchini6291 1d ago
This sub is full of new college grads who got rejected from Google
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1d ago
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u/cooljacob204sfw Senior Software Engineer 1d ago
So why does this subreddit feel so negative compared to those numbers? Because the voices dominating here are FAANG engineers or startup employees, and their experiences are extreme.
Lol no it's because it's mostly students who recently graduated who are struggling to get a job anywhere.
This post is pretty out of touch with the sub. No one here was saying this is a bad / unhappy career.
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u/Amerikaner 1d ago
I mean that’s not true either. Plenty of posts are people who don’t find the work fulfilling and want to switch careers.
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u/cooljacob204sfw Senior Software Engineer 20h ago
Yeah but that is a constant over the years and happens in any field. The reason the sub is so negative right now is what I said.
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u/Joram2 1d ago
Some people have great job situations; others don't. Statistical averages are overall good, but that doesn't help those that are in bad situations.
Obviously, people come here to gripe and vent about their job situation. People who are completely happy with their jobs don't usually come here to brag about it.
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u/FeralWookie 1d ago
Our company just got dramatic about testing requirements, and I actually enjoyed spending a few days revamping our unit test setup for the code base. If you enjoy software, the job is fun even when working on annoying or dull stuff.
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u/mofukkinbreadcrumbz Software Architect 1d ago
Can confirm. I work for a big name, but not FAANG. Software is not our main thing. I had one phone screen and one interview. I make $120k a year and am 100% remote. The only real stress in my week is that some bean counter is going to try to make me move half way across the country to work in an office.
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u/austinzheng Software Engineer 1d ago
I mean, I don't doubt that software engineers still have it great, but the methodology for the first two 'studies' leaves much to be desired and the third one doesn't even state where it gets most of its numbers from. And to be frank 99% of the negative sentiment on this board is coming from people having trouble finding jobs or people who are worried about AI/outsourcing, so I honestly don't know where you draw your conclusions about complaining FAANG engineers from.
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u/strategizeyourcareer 1d ago
Anyone who gets paid above average is likely happy above average.
Yes, there are bad jobs and stressful situations, but those are also in other jobs which don't provide a good salary
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u/Regular_Zombie 1d ago
Get out of here with your data! We want the circle jerk to continue unabated.
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u/fake-software-eng 1d ago
I WFH for a FANG. I am super happy because:
- I work around 6 hours a day. This gives me time to prioritize my health and family alongside work. Sure some weeks are more busy or I might work at night a bit when I am really into something, but you can easily get by on 6 hours a day if you are productive and prioritize properly
- I really enjoy my work. I have a lot of agency in what I work on and thoroughly enjoy what I build
- the people I work with are very talented and smart. I love being surrounded by similar minded people that are passionate and good at their job, almost like a high performing sports team
- From luck & hard work my job pays 7 figures enabling me to be financially secure and look at retiring before I am 40
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u/Amerikaner 1d ago
You have a million dollar plus salary working six hours a day? No fucking shit you are happy.
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u/robotisland 20h ago
Any advice on how to be more productive and prioritize? If you finish your work early, how do you prevent the extra time by being filled with more work?
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u/anisbaba 1d ago
I call BS. I am Senior and Every single guy I met in Software Engineering wasn’t happy in his job. Call it anecdotal, I call it real life experience.
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u/Aazadan Software Engineer 1d ago
Something this sub tends to forget is that the top companies only employ a couple percent of all US software engineers, and if you expand that to also include the entire bay area as that's most of the startups as well, it only comes to about 8% of all jobs.
The most common response to that, is people want those other jobs due to compensation though because it gives them a ton of financial freedom when taking another job later.
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u/Early-Surround7413 1d ago
UNPOSSIBLE!
I have been assured on this very sub, that everyone in tech is miserable if employed, or if unemployed can never find a job again because of AI, and is miserable because of that.
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u/No_Loquat_183 Software Engineer 1d ago
a lot of companies, outside of big tech, are outsourcing all their apps. I work for a non tech company. and we are going to do layoffs in the next year. I will most likely be part of it. atp, I rather get a huge ass check while the threat of layoffs always exist. the work life balance is great though and tc is competitive (180k)
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u/Toys272 1d ago
lol my two first job were consultant positions and i've never been this stressed. i was legimately going crazy. i was fired 2 weeks ago