[offTopic]

What do you do?
Current title is some type of senior engineer. I'm doing a consulting gig right now, so it doesn't really matter.

Do you like it?
Not particularly...it's a project with a big scope, and there are too many different project managers, and too much email flying around. For example, there were a bunch of people in a meeting yesterday evening, and this morning, I got three different updates of the same meeting, two of which weren't even in the meeting (they got reports from others). I was thinking, "This is like Rashomon."

What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work?
+: It's semiconductor, and I have a lot of experience with these types of software systems. I'm a pretty good problem-solver in general, and having worked in development in the past, I can usually identify specific application bugs from the end user side.

-: I always have to rein in my inherent cynicism because nobody really wants to know that I think there's no way some group or group of groups won't make a deadline, or some module is a piece of [censored] or whatever. I'm not cartoon birds and sunshine, either, but I sometimes have to temper what I say because being extraordinarily negative doesn't usually help anyone.

What kind of people do best in your work?
Being detail-oriented definitely helps. Being able to think beyond what is written in documentation helps (especially when the documentation is incomplete, or even worse, misleading.)

What qualifications are necessary for people considering work in the same field as you?
Some type of experience in production and software is helpful, but probably not necessary as long as you can think about things clearly, and have an understanding about how various software systems work.

What is a typical day like?
I typically roll in around 9 +/-20 mins, get coffee, catch up on email, take care of any immediate problems, and read some random crap on the internet. Pretty busy right now, with a new client deployment with testing through the day, and a couple of late-afternoon-early-evening conference calls with Asia. Most days I can leave by 6:00, but the last couple of days, I've stayed after 7, and will again tonight.

What kind of problems do you encounter?
In this role, I'm the customer, so I don't really have to deal with customers, so that's OK. Project delays, clueless PMs, bizarre software behavior...pretty standard stuff.

What are the biggest (most common) sources of frustration and elation?
Without providing too much detail, I found out today, quite by accident, that the reason we couldn't get a client to work was because I had added an environment variable that was spelled correctly. When I misspelled it, it worked. That was big, but certainly not common. Stuff that's undocumented, though, that happens all the time.

How much do you make?
Meh. 85K. I suck at negotiating salary.

How much can one expect to make in your position?
I started in a more junior position with a different company 10 years ago for $48K. I'd imagine that's much higher now. I'm sure plain ol' software engineers can make north of $125K-150K, but you have to get a different title (tech lead, architect, etc) to make more than that, I think. One of these captains of industry will correct me if I'm wrong. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]