Day in the life of a C++ engineer??

omen80

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right place for this. Just wondering what it's like to work as a software engineer, typically C++ or Java? I'm applying for some roles in this area as I have experience from college and other projects, but never actually worked in an office as a programmer.
Is it all meetings and brain-storming sessions? How much code would you be expected to write in a week?
Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks.......

OREGATO

omen80 wrote: »

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right place for this. Just wondering what it's like to work as a software engineer, typically C++ or Java? I'm applying for some roles in this area as I have experience from college and other projects, but never actually worked in an office as a programmer.
Is it all meetings and brain-storming sessions? How much code would you be expected to write in a week?
Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks.......

I think every company is going to be different. It depends on the size and complexity of the projects, how many team members/clients/end users are involved and working on the project(s)

From my days as working as a hard core developer, I would split it as follows. 3 days development, 1 day customer facing, .5 day documentation, .5 day misc.

Dependent on where you are in a development lifecycle and the size of the team, this will change as well. If you have a testing department, then you won't have to worry about that aspect, otherwise, close to a deadline, it will look more like 4 days testing and bug fixing, 1 day documentation.

When you say how much code would you need to write, it depends again on the project at hand, if it's going to involve user input through different stages, then you could come to dead ends or delays waiting for the clients to get back to you. If you're starting a project from scratch, be prepared to spend days not coding at all and just brain storming, designing screens and work flows, working on database structures and design etc.

It will really depend on the job I guess is what I'm saying and also the structure, some companies can be a free for all where priorities shift from a day to day basis, others are structured really well and have a lot of red tape and democracy (sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing)

One tip I would give you is, when in the interview, if you're being interviewed by a senior developer/IT manager, no harm in asking them what the break down or typical working week is like. This way, you'll be able to gauge if it's for you or not.

Good luck with the job search.

srsly78

I work as part of a distributed international team, mostly from home. Mostly doing c++ development, mixed with c# and using cli/c++ for wrappers. Spend about 1/3 of time on site with rest of team, which mostly consists of drinking.

Would spend most of my time developing, very little time is wasted (recent problems with skyrim tho). I also maintain development infrastructure tho, like our linux svn server, our Jenkins continuous integration suite and so on. It's a small company so everyone does everything pretty much. There is no "testing department" Working for a large company is a waste of time tbh, they spend all day faffing about, and end up farming the real work out to small shops like this one.

I usually have no idea how to solve the problem I'm facing with, so a lot of time is spent on "research" - ie google and rtfm.

Collumbo

srsly78 wrote: »

... so a lot of time is spent on "research" - ie google and rtfm.

Lots more to be said for this than people think too... looks like you're on the doss but it's time well spent IMO

AntiVirus

srsly78 wrote: »

I work as part of a distributed international team, mostly from home.

I get some of my best work done when working at home. Sometimes in the office I get brain freeze and would probably be lucky to get 10 lines of good code done. Then I'd be at home and suddenly I get an idea, login and write some amazing code.

I've also come in plastered and tried this but the results are not the same.. :pac: