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- Apr 16, 2019
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Hi,
I've just graduated recently and I'm considering a career as a 'software engineer'. I use speech marks because I understand there are many different types of software engineers. I have a maths degree not comp sci so I'm not too familiar at the moment with the field or industry in general.
My long term plan is that if I ever have a tech idea, I want to be able to build it myself.
Facebook, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, etc, are good examples. I want to be the kind of software engineer who can build apps like these. Of course these are big apps that probably have had teams of engineers build it slowly over a long period of time, but I would want to be able to build at least the MVP and the first few versions for apps like these myself.
So what kind of software engineering should I look into for this? And what tech stack should I learn?
The official term is called a fullstack engineer, but there are countless tech stacks for different purposes. No one engineer can do it all, hence why teams are necessary to bring together different skillsets towards solving different problems.
Try building something, anything, and you'll gain skills and learn new stacks. See how you can help people, and what solution will serve them. Sometimes it's a technical solution, sometimes it's something else.
Trying to learn everything under the sun in order to build the new Netflix is the wrong approach to success in this field. Instead, focus on solving one problem, and if you need more technical knowledge you can either learn it to do yourself or learn enough to understand how to outsource it.
Let your approach always be: how can I help people? What are people struggling with, and how can I help them? What stack, what technology, what tool, and the how will become evident afterwards.