Not too long ago, I went on a Japan trip with two complete strangers. They were both SWEs. They both wanted to quit their job.
"We have tens of thousands of people lining up for your job. Why?"
They cited impact. They wanted more hands-on work. They wanted to quit their jobs to work in mental health, care for animals as a vet, etc.
I have heard the same story from my SWE friends in other companies as well. Their “backend” job is managing config files. Their “frontend” job is centering a div. I have also met coworkers who live inside Terraform files.
But that is the reality of corporate.
There will be makers and maintainers. Most people will only get to be maintainers—especially when the main line of revenue has long been established.
Don't get me wrong. Everybody is capable of creating. It's not about skills.
But oftentimes, these opportunities are awarded to top engineers who have already proven themselves, or people who take initiatives and chase their own opportunities.
The tech world is huge. But it is easy to get pigeonholed. Most college students only know about SWEs, DS, PMs, MLEs.
Because these roles sound sexy.
But not all tech jobs are sexy, especially at established companies. Not many people know about the non-glamorous side of tech: SREs, DevOps, SecOps, release engineers, network engineers.
Hell, I hate DevOps too, but these roles are irreplaceable.
So for my college friends out there. Take every opportunity to learn. Every opportunity to make. And every opportunity to maintain.
You just never know what you will end up liking.