Life as a Software Developer

About this talk

A guest talk for students at Tecnocampus Mataró (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) mapping out the full landscape of roles in the software industry — from frontend and backend engineering to cloud, DevOps, SRE, QA, security, data science, AI engineering, product management, architecture, and gaming. The session offered honest, experience-based advice on the types of companies that tend to be the best launchpads for early careers, touched on why observability matters for engineers at every level, and closed with an open Q&A where students drove the conversation.

Key takeaways

• A practical map of the major software engineering disciplines and what day-to-day work actually looks like in each
• How frontend, backend, cloud, DevOps, SRE, QA, security, data science, AI engineering, and gaming differ — and where they overlap
• Experience-based advice on the best types of companies to join at the start of a software career
• Why observability is a skill every engineer benefits from, regardless of specialism