Honestly, having a combination of competency and indifference is perfect for a wage labor job.

If you’re competent, software engineering is the best wage labor in terms of dollars per amount of effort (though I’m very biased).

Most folks come in with a ton of passion, then burn out in a few years because they overwork themselves.

Something I’ve noticed is that it takes a bit of time to get your feet under you at a new job, but if you’re able to make a good impression and develop trust, you’ll generally be given a lot of liberty in your day to day.

Ideally, you’ll find an aspect of the work that you enjoy, and can devote your time to it. e.g. I’m a big fan of good data and monitoring, but needed to try a bunch of stuff to learn that.

Also hard agree with woodenghost’s reply - I think the market is starting to shift for SWEs to one where unions will be beneficial, and if you’re able to engage with that I’d recommend it.

And from experience… there’s a lot to be said for not making your passion into your job. All jobs will be tedious and frustrating at times, and they can suck the enjoyment out of something you enjoy.

This essay has stuck in my head regarding types of folks at a company (and looking at it now it maps pretty well onto Marxist class theory). If you’re working at any job at any company, you should have an idea of which camp you want to be in, and then play that role.

I think instead of asking: “how can I best position myself in the labor market individually” we should ask: “how can I best position myself to contribute to collective labor power”. Actualize your individuality by joining the collective struggle of the 99% instead of generating profits for the 1%.

It’s great, that you have an interest in social sciences and you could certainly try to turn that into a job. The fact, that you’re willing to let go of the privilege, that comes with the software field honors you. It means you’re not just after the money.

But what if, instead of comodifying your passion to turn it into tiny cog in a profit machine for some capitalist, you find a way to use it to help some worthy cause? Maybe write articles about social issues to agitate fellow workers or use your interest in social science to figure out how an effort to unionize workers in your field could be successful. Or join an org, that could use your talents in some way.

And there might be a worthy cause soon: As a software developer, you’re in a field with unusually high wages despite almost no unionization. That’s because it’s organic composition of capital leans towards variable capital. The tools of the trade are cheap. Like a skilled artesian, a software developer can just take their laptop and walk, if their wage is too low. An engineer in a car factory might be just as skilled, but can’t take the robots and assembly lines and walk out, their field has much more fixed capital. So labor in your field has high individual bargaining power, even without collective bargaining.

But like almost every technical innovation ever, AI will shift the organic composition of capital towards fixed capital. This could lower the bargaining power of workers. That’s why they push it. For example, if huge server farms to drive closed source, centralized AI models become the norm, software engineers won’t be able to just take those with them and walk out as easily as before. On the other hand, small, cheap, specialized, easy to train, open source models (like China develops) might actually benefit labor power. It will be necessary to fight for democratic control over AI to decide whether it’s a blessing or a curse.

So if you’re asking about how to position yourself in the labor market, I’d say, wether in the software field or in the humanities, try to find a place where collective labor power is strong and try to find the way you can best contribute to that power in your own unique way.

Link to the comic

Give me the job.

You have two, or three, options: (1) keep the areas separate, work your 8 hours, then go home and read and do humanities stuff. (2) find a job that combines CS and Humanities. Go find a research group that is doing semantic analysis, linguistics, or other deep research. (3) maybe make an app that combines your ability and your interest?

If you are not just interested in humanities but you are also good at them, use those skills become the main communicator of your work’s projects, tasks, and tools. Learn to communicate the material in a way your customers appreciate and can understand.

consider that many fields, including the humanities, have a need for people with your skills. and you could find out more about those specialized needs by furthering your formal education in the humanities and how they interact with digital archives/preservation, or some other point of convergence.

I, too, started in “computers” but after a few years I figured out that it’s more of a skillset and knowledge base than a mature discipline, so it’s kinda boring unless you’re doing something interdisciplinary and novel with it. and most shit just isn’t. it’s monetizing fart apps.

so I went back to school for something I was really interested in (and completely unrelated), having “computers” in my back pocket. it helped me immensely in school/grad school and then again later in getting to work on novel projects with organizations I wanted to be a part of, because usually people aren’t combining “computers” and another discipline in a single head.

anyway, all that to say, you’re allowed to keep learning. as it turns out, solving the problems of tomorrow will require interdisciplinarity.

silos are for the academy. specialization is for insects. chase the knowledge you want and your mind will connect the dots later.

people will think you’re a warlock when you do.

If you’re able to do the work, go home, and just completely forget about it and do something else, that’s a very cushy job. The people who get completely invested in CS projects get chewed up and discarded by the industry.

I like the problem solving aspect

i think this is already pretty good, there’s a portion of your job you actually enjoy. anyway, any job you get will involve large amounts of what we call woodcutting. just boring shit that has to be done. if it were fun, they wouldnt have to pay someone to do it.

you can do as my parents said “well you can become an engineer and continue humanities on the side”

joking aside i know it’s a recipe for burnout but stick to your software engineering career. junior positions absolutely suck and maybe if you ride it out you’ll start to like it better, or develop strategies to at least deal with it in a healthy way.

unfortunately there is no comparable pay in humanities and although job security is meaningless these days, your position will be extra precarious in humanities as half of your time will be spent justifying your existence to some shithead and you have to absolutely suck off people to keep your job whereas in SWE it’s at least desirable for the company to keep you around if they are not doing layoffs.

and what if you risk it and as it turns out you don’t like a job in humanities after all? or that the field is interesting but all the things surrounding it is a total shit show? this happens a lot and academia is full of passionate people chewed out and checked out by the suffocating admin surrounding it.

all im saying that it’s a huge gamble and personally i wouldn’t (and didn’t) take the risk. sometimes life is not about what’s rational but about what you are feeling so ultimately it’s your call.

How long have you been at this job?

It may turn out that after switching to a different field, you encounter the same problem again where the work is not engaging or fulfilling (ubiquitous ADHD struggle), plus it pays less.

So instead of jumping the gun, hang around to get a glimpse what all the career path might extend to. If you’re going to switch careers, it’s better to do this after several years and lots of accumulated savings than to preemptively call yourself burned out and close the CS career after less than 2 years.

There are lots of people who long to be in the position that you’re in. If I were to estimate it, I would say that maybe 5% of jobs across the entire economy are personally gratifying jobs; the rest are all bullshit jobs or shitty jobs. It convincingly seems that the only good jobs are the ones that we carve out for ourselves.

careers are in those fields that would be comparable in terms of pay/growth to software engineering

Yeah there are none. Especially if you compare entry level jobs. Maybe look into software engineering in places that are more socially aligned? Lots of NGOs and stuff like that always need IT people

I’m much in the same boat, friend. I’m due to complete my master’s degree in CS in a bit over a month, and after 5 years of studying the subject I no longer have any real interest in it. I’m going to give working with it a solid try at least, but if I hate it I intend to become a firefighter instead.

Do you like teaching and/or social work? If no, I would say stay at your current job. There are other jobs in the humanities but they tend to be very competitive and require a masters or PhD.

I would stick it out for 2 years and then start trying to find something else so that you have a good resume and some money saved up

Im cynical after spending years in shitty manufacturing jobs, so keep that in mind, but just take the money in your good career field. Most people have to work a job they give no fucks about or even hate for not a lot of money.

You say your company is somewhat socially aligned with your beliefs. Being in a company where you believe in their mission at least a little while making good money puts you far in the upper percentile of job quality

I don’t have much advice but can offer some solidarity as an ADHD comrade with a similar struggle. I was a few years into grad school for a Ph.D. in chemistry when I realized I don’t like it, and although I was good in classes for it in undergrad the grad school experience just required a different type of thinking and quick recall of vast amounts of information that I wasn’t even very good at. And I was never great in the lab anyway. I also realized I didn’t really fuck with most of the job opportunities that would be available. Pharma is a fucking shit industry to work in and the pay isn’t even that good for how much education is required. So I was losing motivation on account of my disdain for the field and for grad school in general, and when I got diagnosed with ADHD the meds sure helped but still, they couldn’t make me desire to stay in the lab for 12 hrs a day and they didn’t make it easy to write papers either.

Then I failed my dissertation defense (fucking asshole old head committee members), I still have edits to add to my thesis so it is acceptable to them and no desire to do it. I’ve been stuck in this limbo over a year now.

Finally though, I found a field of work that I should be able to get a job in very soon. Its wastewater management, which is chemistry adjacent and I am loving learning about it. The work itself and math is fairly basic to do - titrations and basic algebra. The employer for this job is a municipal water district, so its even got a pension. And the pay is lower than i could make in pharma, and the top end pay is lower than I would make if I stuck it out in pharma to be a department head, and there arent the potential stock options I could get with a career in pharma, but IDC, I despise that whole industry. They exploit bachelor educated scientists to work overtime and earn less than median salary, while those who stick it out get stock options, which are still just a fraction of the value the CEOs are making. All to manufacture a novel medication that normal people won’t be able to afford anyway.

So I guess my advice would be to open your mind to things that are adjacent even if your education doesn’t perfectly apply. And also, don’t worry about not having the same passion as others. If you can go to work, get it done, aren’t working unpaid overtime and can collect a decent check then you are doing better than most. Try to find passions in your free time and use your free time to do some organizing and/or mutual aid. This will help your normal work feel more “worth it” even if the work itself is drudgery