“Hello everyone, good morning. Welcome to my YouTube channel. Today is my first day in the Bengaluru office and I’m thrilled to show you my workplace!”
Sounds familiar? This is a common find on YouTube – software engineers capturing their busy workday and sharing it with the world.
But how exactly do they manage to record all this “content” amidst coding and meeting requirements?
Nikhil Soni, a Bengaluru-based software engineer with 12.8k subscribers on YouTube, gives us a peek into his daily routine from waking up to hitting the gym, enjoying a wholesome breakfast, a productive stint at work, and winding down at home—a day that seems straight out of a dream for many.
Scroll a bit further, and you’ll find Google employees vlogging about their office perks across Pune, Gurugram, and Bengaluru. Which office offers the best food and who has the comfiest furniture? These seem to be important considerations for the techies today.
Some of these influencers portray working long hours as not entirely negative, as they complain of boredom during the weekends.
In a post on X, Venkatesh Gupta, a techie, shared encountering a senior engineer from Microsoft in Bengaluru who drove an auto-rickshaw over the weekends to combat loneliness.
Long hours would leave him too tired to seek additional activities on weekends. And who knows he might even apply for the Wakefit sleep internship programme next if he’s ‘tired’ from over-working after turning to ‘Namma Yatri’ to beat ‘loneliness’.
So, perhaps the proposal by Karnataka IT firms suggesting a 14-hour workday isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
Need for a Backup Job
As per the data by the All India IT & ITeS Employees’ Union (AIITEU), India’s IT sector laid off around 20,000 techies during the year 2023.
And in 2024 alone, around 2,000-3,000 professionals from India’s top IT companies lost their jobs according to the IT employee union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES).
In moments like these, social media and influence come in handy.
A Bengaluru-based software engineer, Jishnu Mohan, was laid off in February, after sharing his views on layoffs trends and other details about the IT industry.
Mohan, who worked for Forma (formerly Twic) for four years, wrote on X: “The whole recession situation in tech is making me uneasy. Maybe at the lowest confidence level in my career.”
Following this unexpected firing, Mohan appealed for job opportunities on the social media platforms. Fortunately, he got quick responses, with several users offering leads to open positions and expressing willingness to assist with forwarding his resume.
YouTube Pays Well
According to Influencer Market Hub, YouTubers make an average of $0.018 per ad view. However, the amount also depends on factors such as the number of followers, views, clicks on ads, ad quality, ad blockers, and video length.
Source: Social Orange
Here’s an interesting story: Vanessa Chen, a 23-year-old content creator in Boston, shared that she was a computer science undergraduate with plans to become a software engineer. But she became a full-time content creator with more than 4 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok and earns a mid-six-figure income.
So, creating a YouTube channel can be a great part-time job, especially if you can produce engaging content even when busy at work!