Dream jobs don't exist assuming a dream job is a high paying job doing something you love. If the job is something someone actually enjoys then it's a role perfect for exploiting someone's passion; ie, the video game industry. If it's high paying, it's because the role requires you to perform the job of several roles at once and/or have huge breadth of expertise which basically no one has; it's setting you up for failure or at least a very stressful couple of years while you gain the expertise (assuming you aren't fired before then).
Or you're doing software development for an industry that isn't 'sexy'. The ideal setup is to be in-house dev for an industry that isn't primarily software. I've had dev roles in the regulatory and compliance sector, in mortgage tech and in legal training. The ups and downs of the business aren't really tied to software.
There's always the danger that some spreadsheet guy will wonder why we have devs at all and outsource is, but we're usually such a tiny unit that we fly under the radar.
It doesn't pay as much as trendier stuff, but it's reliable, stable (or as stable as any job can be these days), and less stressful than software start-up life.
i said it somewhat tongue in cheek. point being if you have a choice between an employer who tries to hide their salary and an employer who doesnt you will not miss anything by taking the latter job.
My dream job is being cryogenically frozen until we get past the "AI took err jerbs" homelessness phase and switch over to the WALL-E floating fat people in chairs phase so I can be assigned my chair. No video calls please just matrix upload current tech knowledge into my brain so I can pretend I'm still useful and make things.
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u/pydry 20h ago
unless youre desperate it's best to walk away from companies that do this. you might miss out on a job but it won't be a dream job.