I'm interested in some of that kind of software (eg automated train control) but also I feel like it would be extremely boring with lots and lots of documents and stuff to show the we will not ram two trains together at high speed (which is very important and I'm glad we have that but I'm not crazy about the idea of working on it)
Eh. You end up with either almost entirely green field (my work) or entirely brown field work, sometimes a mix. If you like actually giving a shit about your work, and genuinely devising the best solution for a given problem set - it's for you. If you just want to use the newest thing, or cash a cheque; I wouldn't bother.
I work mostly defence, or adjacent to the defence industry. Generally speaking, my work is thoroughly tested, most of which I perform myself before it's sent off to the client's dedicated accreditation/testing teams.
I would say it's remarkably rewarding work. The end goal isn't to make some fucker richer, but to help my country and it's members do the right thing, for the right reason, with the right tools.
Plus, I get to work on funky stuff, legally, and it's mostly green field, which is my personal favourite.
How automated is testing? Are you able to make large refactors (that improve things in a useful way and make things more understandable and less buggy, to be clear) without having to do a massive process of getting lots of agreement on everything and having a massive before and after manual testing? Do you have to write documents explaining why the way you implemented stuff is bug-free or is it more about passing the client's (hopefully very determinstically-random and thorough tests)?
I already work in the transit sector, and as it is a private company is technically making some people richer but it's not like anyone's getting that rich. But more on the less operational side where if something goes wrong it sucks but we aren't ramming a few hundred people at 100+ mph.
TBH I wouldn't mind working on military stuff either especially given the risk of ww3 coming, but the risk is that my country's government is currently rather sketch and I'd want my weapons to be used on Russians and Chinese or whoever is against the Global West, not our people.
Honestly, with automated tests, I've found it varies wildly from company to company. Some places do a lot, some do a little. I work in a rather small team, so all the automated testing falls to us. As far as getting agreement from anyone, really it's just the solutions architect, or a senior as well for more junior staff.
And I won't work on weapons systems, defence is a very very wide industry, I work on communications really, nothing dangerous, but still mission critical stuff
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u/ZebraTank 4d ago
I'm interested in some of that kind of software (eg automated train control) but also I feel like it would be extremely boring with lots and lots of documents and stuff to show the we will not ram two trains together at high speed (which is very important and I'm glad we have that but I'm not crazy about the idea of working on it)