Choosing the right specialization in software engineering

You are reading Compiler, a software engineering newsletter by Triplebyte editor Daniel Bean that delivers regular reportings and rantings on the industry's top news, trends and interesting players. 

Welcome back to the newsletter. This week, I want to talk about specialization in software engineering. Whether it’s front-end, back-end, DevOps, or any offshoot of the bunch, choosing a corner to learn all the ins and out of can be really helpful for getting yourself into that next level of engineering roles. But that process of selecting which path to go down isn’t always a no-brainer.

For insight into deciding how to specialize in software engineering, I spoke this week with Mixpanel’s director of engineering, Aniruddha Laud. The former product engineer said his time working in front-end helped him learn that he actually has more passion for back-end/infrastructure work. He thinks the “try it out” method he took on early in his career can ultimately be the best way to figure out what you want to do.

I think knowing what to specialize in is not something that you would get from academia. When I got out of school, I had no idea what I wanted to specialize in. I think it’s something that you only understand by getting that breadth in the field. I would recommend people who are starting out to look at generalist roles, like an infrastructure generalist or product generalist instead of like something very specific. If you get into, say, a front-end role, you are only going to do JavaScript and other very specific things in the front-end. You want to try to optimize for getting a good sense of how everything works, end to end. And then you will actually figure out what excites you.

To hear more about Laud’s story and get his advice on choosing a specialization in software engineering, read my entire conversation with him over at Triplebyte: To What ‘-End’?: Choosing Your Software Engineering Path.

Do you have questions, tips, or other experiences to share on this topic? Email me at [email protected] or leave a comment on this newsletter post.

Promoting Black Voices

It’s been the kind of week that ought to spark reflection in all of us. In the realm of tech, one of the most powerful industries in the world, the prompt should be about bringing more black voices to the table. I recently linked to data in this newsletter that showed underrepresented minorities in the U.S. only made up 18% of graduating computer science students in 2018. It’s a number that has to go up.

Below are some resources and stories from this week and beyond about highlighting black engineers, software professionals, and organizations that further the cause of diversity in tech.

• Here’s a list of 15 organizations that support black coders in tech.
• An Apple App Store feature writer tweeted a list of black devs who are doing great things.
• Startup founder Web Smith started the “hire or wire” call for tech execs to hire black techies and for VCs to fund them.
• “Black Tech for Black Lives” has gathered pledges from Bay Area tech leaders to hire more black talent and push for social change in the country’s tech epicenter.
• Here’s my dispatch from last year’s AfroTech conference, where I interviewed two black software engineers about how they’re working to diversify tech.
• LinkedIn software engineer Avik Das’s Hiring for Tech newsletter hit the topic of what everyone at a company can do (not just hiring managers) to get more black talent hired.

Quick Hits

• AI, AR, and the (somewhat) speculative future of a tech-fueled FBI. Wired
• Apple released a new open source “Password Manager Resources” project for devs. 9to5Mac
• The challenges of making video games for cats. The New Stack
• How to detect unwanted bias in machine learning models. The Next Web
• How Google is using emerging AI techniques to improve language translation quality. VentureBeat

From Triplebyte

Don’t think you’re smart enough to get algorithms? Think again. In a new Triplebyte blog, software engineer Joseph Pacheco details his own struggles with learning them. He argues that his eventual breakthrough in figuring the stuff out is proof that almost anyone can do it.

I went to an engineering-focused high school. The fact that I got in is a complete mystery to me. I didn’t even know what engineering was. Not kidding. ... I spent my high school years feeling like a complete dunce by comparison. It was only much later in college that I realized my intelligence wasn’t the problem. I noticed that I was attempting to do math in the most inexplicably ridiculous way: auditorily. That is, I was trying to process the information by hearing it in my head. Since math is fundamentally visual, I was obliterating nuance every time I translated the visual content into audio content. After noticing this, I made a conscious decision to think visually, and viola: math success.

Read his whole blog here.

The “Just in Time” Externship Program is live! In response to the COVID crisis forcing many companies to cancel their internship programs this summer, Triplebyte has developed a program to match promising software engineering students with alternative mentorship and hands-on work opportunities at tech companies. As part of its kickoff, Triplebyte’s VP of People, Alison Baritot, recently hosted a webinar with Tido Carriero, Chief Product Development Officer at Segment and coordinating partner for “Just in Time,” to discuss the value of internships, but also how students can make the most of their time between semesters without one. You can watch or read highlights from the webinar here.

Some companies hiring engineers on Triplebyte right now:

• Lead Full-Stack Developer at Awbury in Greenwich, CT
• Full-Stack Software Engineer at Blueberry Medical in Silicon Valle
• Senior Software Engineer at Akoya in Boston, MA
• Software Engineer at Juni Learning in San Francisco

Check out Triplebyte’s Actively Hiring page to find more companies that are looking for software engineering talent right now!

Tech Update of the Week

Atlassian makes Jira <> Git work easier: A dozen new DevOps tools and features were released this week for the Atlassian suite of developer tools. Perhaps the most impactful is the new auto syncing across Jira tickets and code base platforms like GitHub and Atlassian’s own BitBucket. TechRepublic explains.

Jira Software Cloud now has DevOps automation triggers that allow users to create rules that keep work in sync across activities, update Jira issues, as well as create ‘more complex rules like reassigning Jira issues for QA or code review, or even sending a message to your team's Slack channel about new PRs,’ Atlassian said. Automation rules added in this update also work with BitBucket Cloud, GitHub, GitLab, and other code repositories that integrate with Jira Software Cloud.

Triplebyte helps engineers assess and showcase their technical skills and connects them with great opportunities. You can get started here.