Contrary to what those outside the tech industry usually think, computer science is a wide and varied field with a variety of options open to new entrants. In this piece we’ll take a look at the two jobs that rank the highest and lowest job for satisfaction in the tech industry and what put them there.
The Happiest
The tech job with the highest rate of satisfaction is software engineering. If you go to this list of the top 10 most in demand tech jobs and click on software engineer at the top you’ll see something on the order of 1200 job listings for software engineers. As a result software engineers get…
- High Wages – software engineer salaries vary quite a bit, but they average around 70k per year and go as high as 140k. They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but it probably doesn’t hurt.
- Vacation Time and Benefits – software engineers are in pretty high demand, as we saw a minute ago, which means that businesses need to offer competitive benefits to snag quality candidates.
- Work From Home – Many Software Engineers do some or all of their work from home instead of driving down to the office every day.
Besides the autonomy and power that software developers get from the high demand that they are in, they also benefit from having a job that’s inherently rewarding. Building programs from scratch can be tedious and very difficult, but it also means that at the end of every project the developer gets to see a tangible result of their work, and the sense of accomplishment that accompanies that which leaves them feeling successful and appreciated.
The Unhappiest
The least popular job in the tech industry is IT systems analyst. The pay varies wildly, and the demand for qualified applicants is a tiny fraction of that of software engineering. Despite this it’s not all bad…
- Possible High Wages – some analysts make as much as 120k per year, but others make less than the average landscaper, which is partially due to the vast difference between what’s required of a systems analyst depending on the size and complexity of a company’s IT systems.
- Benefits and Vacation – Despite not being in as high a demand as software engineers, systems analysts are essential to any large business with a complex IT system, which means you’ll still be taken care of in terms of benefits and vacation time.
What drives down morale for systems analysts seems to be primarily the job itself. Systems analysts are expected to maintain and continually improve a company’s IT processes to maintain, update, and continually improve them in the constant cycle outlined by ITIL best practices. While that’s highly effective for the business it also robs the analyst of all sense of accomplishment, because the greater the improvement that they can make today, the more difficult their job will be tomorrow attempting to top yesterday’s work. This puts a lot of stress on them, and can result in either demoralized apathy or anxiety and other stress related health problems.