KWBlog: What is a Software Engineer's Job?

I've been a software engineer for nearly 24 years. That’s almost a quarter of a century! It doesn't feel like a long time, but when I say it out loud, even I think, "That’s a long time." Yet, here I am, after all these years, pondering a rather fundamental question:

Neither feels quite right.  "To write code" is too narrow -- it can't be just any code, it needs to be the right code.  But even then, our job isn't just about code.  Plus, our users don't care about our code, so focusing solely on code is missing the boat.

What about "to solve problems"? Beyond being grandiose this is also too vague.  It doesn't even mention software! And I don't like the word "problems" either. But at least this does nudge us toward focusing on outcomes rather than output.

Yeah, I know, that's not earth shattering. But I think it's accurate and might be about as specific as we can get. One of the things about Software Engineering is that it is a field of people who are all clearly doing similar things, but doing those things in wildly different domains.  I've noticed that this makes it easy for us to talk past each other because what is important to someone building embedded systems in C is probably not at all important to someone building web applications in TypeScript. But both are doing Software Engineering, and I think this definition captures that.

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