Do some people just not have the talent for Software Engineering?

Dear Friend,

I read your note yesterday morning, coffee still brewing, and the frustration in your words felt familiar (I’ve been on the verge of chucking my laptop out the window more than once). You’re wondering whether the problem is the job or you. I’ve asked myself the same question a few times over the past fifteen-plus years, so I’ll share what I know — with the caveat that my sample size is one career, not a longitudinal study.

First off, admitting “maybe this isn’t for me” takes guts. Most people blame the project, the company, the framework du jour — anything except their own fit. That said, the industry doesn’t exactly make self-assessment easy. Fast-growing teams often expect junior hires to produce senior-level output by week six; when that inevitably falls flat, we stamp the person “not talented enough” and move on. (I’m guilty of this rush-to-judgment myself — still working on it.)

🏄 Coding looks cooler on TikTok than it feels at 2 a.m. when the deployment script refuses to cooperate.

The day-to-day can be mind-numbing: hours of staring at a diff, nudging a variable, rerunning tests, repeat. Yet I’ve walked through Google’s Zurich office and met engineers who thrive on barely four focused hours a day because the environment shields them from pointless churn. Same keyboard, wildly different vibe. Point being, “talent” often gets conflated with “working conditions.”

What actually matters, in my experience, is stamina for failure. You try something, it breaks, you try again — a hundred tiny defeats before lunch. If you secretly enjoy that puzzle loop, great. If you don’t, every bug feels personal. I could be wrong, but I’ve never seen raw mathematical brilliance compensate for a low tolerance of tedium.

Back in 2019, when our agency had more engineers than before, the ones who blossomed found some sliver of joy that had nothing to do with their payslip: tracking down an elusive race condition, tweaking CI pipelines until they sang, or just riffing with teammates on architecture whiteboards (actual whiteboards, not Miro). The others burned out even with above-market salaries.

Now, about money. I used to preach “passion over paycheck” until a colleague on hefty student loans reminded me rent doesn’t accept passion. High compensation can offset ugly on-call rotations or legacy code — as long as you set boundaries so the job doesn’t bulldoze the rest of your life. I’m not entirely sure this scales forever, but I’ve seen it keep people motivated for years.

If feature development drains you, adjacent tracks might fit better. DevOps scratches a different itch — shorter feedback loops, more systems thinking, fewer wireframes. Tech sales, product management, QA automation, developer advocacy… all borrow from the same toolbox without demanding you love writing CRUD endpoints all day.

Whatever path you sample next, keep an eye on boundaries. A healthy schedule can turn a supposed mismatch into a sustainable gig; the reverse is also true. I got this wrong for the first couple of years as a CTO, mistaking heroic overtime for commitment. Turns out it was just bad planning.

So, yes — some people won’t click with software engineering, just as I’d make a terrible pilot (I grip the armrest during take-off). But the label “not made for it” is blurry. Sometimes the real issue is environment, expectations, or timing. Try a few angles, measure how you feel, and remember the decision doesn’t have to be final — careers are surprisingly patch-able.

Ping me anytime if you want to compare war stories. Until then, I hope you find a spot that fits a little better than average.