Why software engineer is officially America's best job

Updated happygeek 1 Tallied Votes 438 Views Share

Although you may not realise it, dear coder, you apparently have the best job in America. At least that's what the newly published reckons. The CareerCast research shows that for the second year running the best job in the US is a software engineer. Not surprisingly the demand for programmers is expected to rise by as much as 30% over the next eight years according to the report authors, a rate of increase much steeper than the average for any other occupation.

bestjobs The report took into account various factors such as income, stress, physical demands and career outlook in order to compile the listings. Report publisher Tony Lee explains that the top-rated jobs all have "few physical demands, minimal stress, a good working environment and a strong hiring outlook".

Unlike those which make the America's worst jobs list which are often physically demanding and low paid, as is the case of lumberjacks and dairy farmers. Which doesn't explain why newspaper reporter and broadcaster also appear in that worst list, says a man who has done both these things and not found them to be particularly physically stressful or badly paid.

“Many jobs in the media are characterized by high stress, short deadlines, long hours and a poor hiring outlook” Tony Lee explained, adding that "despite these poor working conditions, competition is steep for what jobs remain after massive consolidation and layoffs in the media industry.”

Ironically, I would imagine many software engineers would also argue that they suffer from high stress in the workplace compounded by short deadlines and long hours. What say you, DaniWeb members?

Best Jobs in 2012

  1. Software Engineer
  2. Actuary
  3. Human Resources Manager
  4. Dental Hygienist
  5. Financial Planner
  6. Audiologist
  7. Occupational Therapist
  8. Online Advertising Manager
  9. Computer Systems Analyst
  10. Mathematician

Worst Jobs in 2012

  1. Lumberjack
  2. Dairy Farmer
  3. Enlisted Military Personnel
  4. Oil Rig Worker
  5. Newspaper Reporter
  6. Waiter/Waitress
  7. Meter Reader
  8. Dishwasher
  9. Butcher
  10. Broadcaster

Dani AI

Generated

The ranking is easy to nod at and still feel wrong. As observed, a headline that calls software engineering "America's best job" sits oddly next to frequent stories of crunch, firefighting, and sleepless on-call shifts. Rankings tend to reflect broad, structural advantages (market demand, compensation, low physical risk) rather than what a particular team or codebase feels like on a Tuesday night.

What usually creates the mismatch between a "good" profession and a stressful job day-to-day:

  • Reactive workflows and constant context switching (meetings, interrupts, urgent bugs).
  • Heavy technical debt and risky, manual deployments.
  • Unclear or constantly changing scope from product/management.
  • Insufficient staffing or uneven skill distribution on the team.
  • On-call rotations without the tooling or runbooks to back them up.

Concrete, low-friction steps teams and individuals can apply right away:

  1. Log work for two weeks (tasks, interruptions, meeting time) and use the data when discussing scope or hiring.
  2. Push for a few small engineering wins: automated CI, a basic staging environment, and a rollback plan. Small automation reduces firefighting more than big rewrites.
  3. Adopt WIP limits or blocked-day rules for deep work; protect at least a few hours per engineer per weekday.
  4. Trade features for quality in sprint planning — present the tradeoffs with concrete outcomes (less rework, fewer outages).
  5. If burnout is present, escalate with evidence and suggest short-term help (contractor, intern, refactor sprint).

For longer-term moves, consider roles that trade immediate delivery pressure for influence over processes: platform/DevOps, developer experience, test automation, or engineering management. Those paths let you shape the systems that create day-to-day stress. As said, it's good news for coders in the big picture — but making the day-to-day match that headline usually takes deliberate process and technical work.

wllmsbrk04 0 Newbie Poster

good news :)

happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

Not for lumberjacks P-)

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.