Software vs Network Engineer (Salary, Difficulty, Learning, Happiness)

Question

What are your thoughts on being a Software Engineer vs a Network Engineer?

I've been on the software field for almost 10 years now and although I still have a great deal of fun (and challenges), I am starting to think it could be better on the "other" side.

Not to degrade network engineers (i know there are many great ones out there), it seems (in general) their job is easier, the learning curve from average to good is not as steep, job is less stressful and pay is better on average.

I think as software developer I could make the switch to networking and still enjoy working with computers and feel productive.

I spend an enormous amount of time learning about software, practices, new technologies, new patters, etc...I think I could spend a much smaller amount of time learning about networking and be just as "good".

What are your thoughts?

EDIT:

This is not about making easy money. Networking and Software are closely related, I love computers and programming, but if I can work with both, make more money and have less stress in my life and can spend more time with my family, then I am willing to consider a change and hence I am looking for advice that Do or Don't support this view.

Answer 1

I used to work (as an programmer) for an ISP and thus got to see the everyday life of network administrators up close.

Well, the grass is not greener on the other side :)

• We have to put up with libraries that lack documentation and/or are buggy. They have to put up with devices that lack documentation and/or are buggy.
• Sometimes we have to put in a long evening (the kind that lasts until the next morning) in order to fix some critical bug. They have the same, people call them in the middle of night when something goes wrong (well, at least more often than us developers).

... and so on, and so forth.

About learning curve: Technologies on the networking scene change as fast as different programming languages and approaches do. If you don't want to be a entry-level technician that does all the menial labor, then you have to put in about the same amount of time as us developers just to keep up.

However, if you really find that the spark is gone, then by all means you should consider switching. The worst case scenario is that you'll end up as a developer who has a lot of knowledge about networking, and that isn't a bad thing.

Answer 2

I think that if you are just looking for a job that is easier and pays more, you could certainly do better than network engineer. For instance, it takes very little technical knowledge to be a drug dealer. All you have to do is find a good supplier (not as hard as one might think) and you can easily make tens of thousands of dollars a week. I've even known kids in high school that did this. If you're really enterprising and do your market research, you can even make that amount in a weekend (by, for instance, buying some meth in California and selling it in Illinois at 400% cost). Or, better yet, you can be a spammer and probably make even more money without the risk of going to jail or being robbed at gunpoint.

My point is, there are a lot of easy ways to make money. Heck, even USPS drivers make $100k/year. But there are probably better ways of selecting a career than searching for the least challenging occupation with the highest pay. I mean, that's why there was a flood of CS students and IT professionals in the mid-90s because of the dot-com and IT boom. Everyone thought that CS/IT meant easy money. But if you're not actually interested in your field of work and don't enjoy what you do, then it will be hard for you to compete in that field. So after the dot-com bubble burst those people who only went into CS/IT for the money began blaming outsourcing for not being able to find work, when in reality there is still great demand for highly skilled CS professionals.

Rather than trying to find a career which requires the least amount of learning, maybe it would be wiser to find a career in which you actually enjoy learning the skills and acquiring the knowledge you need to perform your job. Or perhaps you don't even need that drastic of a career change. Maybe you just need to find a different work environment to revive your passion for your work. For instance, being a software engineer in the financial industry is not going to be quite the same experience as being a software engineer at a young web start-up.

It's kinda funny actually. I'm considering changing jobs myself at the moment, but for the exact opposite reason--I don't find my work challenging at all (I do graphic design and web development at an independent record label). I just don't feel like I'm achieving much personal growth where I am, and there aren't many opportunities for advancement at my current place of employment. I think if I found more challenging work, I wouldn't be as bored with work as I currently am. But that's just me.

Answer 3

It's all about "having fun", you should choose and go with the one you enjoy potentially not with the one that you think it's easier, or pays slightly more. You don't wanna spend your life in a job you don't enjoy because you can 5K extra every year.

Secondly network engineering is quite stressful job, they are the first people who is going to be told off when something is wrong (generally at least once per month).

Answer 4

Networking is far more stressful than software development. You are on the front line of the production systems and when something goes wrong you can't leave until it is fixed. You will be paged frequently at 3 am and expected to go to the office and not only fix what is wrong, but stay the whole normal work day after (on two hours or less sleep). If something breaks on Friday 10 minutes before quitting time and you have plans that evening, forget the plans, you are staying until the something wrong is fixed, often through the whole night.

Answer 5

Network engineering isn't necessarily more stressful...it all depends on the company. Sure, if you're one of a few network engineers responsible for maintaining the production environment and an incident gets escalated from NOC to your team, then you may find yourself working late into the morning. But if all you do is help design and implement the network landscape and aren't part of a team that handles outages, then it's not too stressful.

Answer 6

can u tell me who gets payed more?

Answer 7

Having worked on both sides of that line, the first thing that comes to my mind is that I've never once been asked to be on-call as a programmer, but I've never known an admin who wasn't on call at least one week in six. A good friend was one of the three top net admins for a major national (US) grocery chain and frequently got paged with things like "Yes, we know the area around our Florida data center has just been evacuated because of the approaching hurricane. You will connect remotely from halfway across the country and keep those servers on-line while the storm goes by, even if the data center is hit directly." I still wonder how they expected him to deal with any hardware failures with no hands on the scene; fortunately, there weren't any that time.

My general impression is that programmers tend to get paid better, though I can't say I really looked at that aspect.

One of the things I loved most about the admin side is that, on a typical day, I'd be doing ten different and largely unrelated things and I'd get to work in the morning not knowing what half of them would be, whereas, on the programming side, it would be the same project from the time I walked in the door until the time I went home, for weeks or months at a time. (My main reason for going to admin was boredom with the lack of variety in my programming work.)

As you may have gathered from the last point, my experience has been that programming involves deep, but narrowly-focused knowledge of a specific topic and set of technologies, while admin tends to turn into shallow knowledge of just about everything.

Answer 8

So there's two different types of network engineers one is a administrator and the other is a programmer? How much do each make if they were average workers and say they been with a company for 5-7 years? Is most of the stuff you need to know learned on the job or is most of it something you have to learn in school?