Do You Work in a Real Software Company?
This is my third week in my new job as .NET Software Engineer. Finally I feel that I’m in a real software company.
Er … hold on, what do I mean by “real”?
I’ll start by defining not real.
- A dotcom startup is not a real software company because its primary purpose is to make as much money as possible in the shortest time. So it’s not about software per se; rather, software is just a means to an end (break even/repay loans). If the company finds that selling toilet bowls is a faster way to make money, it would.
- A business unit that makes internal software for its parent company is not a real software company because its culture will inevitably end up being molded by its parent (whose business is not software). Software development is distinctly different from banking or trading, with different motivational forces and values.
Which means a real software company is concerned solely about software, and its culture revolves around the production of software.
A real software company also has specializations. Naturally, I’m in Product Engineering. There’s also QA, DBA, DB Engineering, Integration Engineering and Release Engineering.
This is the first time that I’ve come across DB Engineering, actually. The DB Engineers ensure that DB and table structures are optimized for performance and that queries are well-designed. The DBAs ensure that the DB boxes stay alive and safe, I guess.
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