zlacker

As a software developer who goes to infosec conferences, i frequently feel "lesser" because everyone seems to be working on cooler stuff than me. Then I go to their meetups and they tell me how much they hate their jobs and I feel better. The truth is ultimately you do what you do because you can't get out of bed in the morning and do anything else -- if you don't feel that way, switch to what motivates you. If you do feel that way though, lean into it hard! I switched from a non-dev tech career to development and it has transformed my life in a very positive way.

That said though, the developer-oriented tech conferences definitely skew towards "rockstar" in terms of who is popular and I mean that word in the most negative sense possible. I have found this especially true of the "inclusive" ones. I feel sick around personality cults and avoid more and more of these.

As someone who develops for a non-technical industry, I've gotten a lot of sneers from other developers when I explain my company and role. At the end of the day though, I have 10x as much responsibility and appreciation at my job than they do in theirs. I'm leaving my job in ~2 weeks and I've had half a dozen exit interviews with people in different roles here and even a C-level (a real C-level, not a startup C-level) from another office across the country flying in just to have a meeting and say goodbye to me. How many "average developers" (because that's all I am) get to have that level of impact?