"Software engineer" is not written on my heart

I applied for a job last month, an internal posting for the "senior" version of my current role, which is "software engineer". I didn't get the job, which is fine because I still have a job that I mostly enjoy, but I was confused by the feedback I received from the hiring panel: They said I demonstrated excellent communication, leadership, critical thinking skills, and a strong ability to act as a well-rounded full-stack engineer (meaning both "back end" code that you don't directly experience as a user and "front end" code which you do). They said, point of fact, that I would be good at the job. But I didn't get it because I lacked specific, deep knowledge of a product that I have never once had reason to use.

This struck me as unfair at the time, not only because the job spec didn't mention that product (and in fact appeared to be looking for generalists like myself), but the feedback of "gain specialized knowledge" carries the implied meta-commentary of "gain the correct specialized knowledge". Deepening one's knowledge of their work is never a bad thing, but in a field so broad as software engineering, it's sort of a crap-shoot as to whether your specialism will be the secret password into a new role unless it's explicitly advertised as such. They did not, for example, care about spreadsheets or database management for this particular role. There's also something to be said for skills refused with reason, like my "inexperience" with generative AI, which is very much on purpose.

I conveyed all this to my manager in a debrief chat after I'd heard the bad news, not to cast blame on anyone because all in all I think the hiring process was very well organized, but to try and parse why I seem to struggle so much with finding recognition in this field. After a bit of venting he said to me, "Are you a software engineer in your heart? Because I don't think you are."

I was about ready to fight him on this, initially hearing it as a different way of saying "you aren't ready for the role", which always gets my hackles up. But saying it this way made me pause: am I a software engineer in my heart? Was I "born for this"? Am I, to be crude for a second, horny for it?

And... no, I don't think I am. Or, at least not in the way the hiring panel was secretly looking for. Because when someone's real horny for this kind of work, real sopping wet for it you see, having a deep specialized knowledge in everything is just a way of life for them, as easy as breathing. The people who got the role didn't need to think about the overly specific questions that got sprung in the interview, because they (in some cases literally) were doing that work in their sleep, spending their free time reading AWS press releases and examining the differences between AI agents. The kind of software engineer that was in demand here, and maybe in demand everywhere (in which case I'm cooked), is absolutely horny for it. And that's... just not me.

While it's difficult to be told that you aren't "cut out" for your current career despite literal years of hard work and being actually quite good at it in practice, I'm kind of relieved to have found this flaw in myself while still relatively early on. There's this Oscar Wilde quote that I've returned to a lot over the years that goes, "If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward." If I wanted to be a software engineer, I have no doubt that I would become one, but in truth I have no idea what I want to be. I hope that means I'm living "the artistic life", but I think that will be up to those who outlive me to decide.

Lord willing, and if the creek don't rise, I will continue to be gainfully employed in the role of "software engineer" for the foreseeable. I will get to keep engaging in the bits of it that tickle my brain, like reproducing strange bugs and planning for traffic spikes and fixing issues to make my colleagues' days easier. But "software engineer" is not what is written in my heart, and I hope that it is not a term that will appear in any eulogies of me when my time comes. To me, it's a job to have for now, and I'm happy to let others claim it as their life's calling. I would like to find my own one day, and hope that I can leave behind something good even if I don't.