"Going Live" is an original song about building software. Words by Dave, music made with Suno.
Who's talking

I build the software millions of people use to find their families.

Dave Saetrum. Software Development Manager at FamilySearch. Bachelor's and master's in computer science. Started as an intern.

I was one of the three original engineers on FamilySearch Memories: the place where families upload photos, letters, and recorded stories about the people in their tree. Three engineers, one idea, and a product that is still growing.

3

engineers on the original Memories teamToday Memories holds photos, documents, and voice recordings from millions of people around the world, and it has been talked about from the pulpit at General Conference.

Now I lead a team of engineers who build and run the websites and publishing tools behind RootsTech and the FamilySearch blog. Right now my team is building a new discovery experience for the Salt Lake Temple open house, so when you walk through the temple next year, you'll see some of our work. I spend more time in conversations than in code these days, and I still love both.

What the job actually looks like

Way less lonely than the movies make it.

A real engineer's week is maybe a third writing new code. The rest is figuring out what to build with designers and product people, reading teammates' code before it ships, and hunting down why something broke. One survey of a thousand developers found about 42% of the week goes to fixing and improving code that already exists. Detective work, in a team.

Rough shape of a week. The 42% is from the Stripe developer survey; the rest is what I see on my team.

What you'd make

Real numbers, because you asked.

Striped bars are what I've personally seen. Solid bars are U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from May 2025. Utah pays a little under the national number, and costs a little less to live in.

$0$130k$260k

For comparison, the median U.S. household earned about $84,000 in 2024. Software developer jobs are projected to grow 10% over the next decade, around 185,000 new positions.

How to get there

Four roads. I took the first one.

Computer science degree

Four years. This is my path, plus a master's after.

The most common route and the one most big employers still expect. Utah tuition, per year, before scholarships: UVU about $6,500, BYU about $7,000 for members, Utah State about $8,600, University of Utah about $9,600.

Start at a two-year school

Two years to an associate degree, then transfer or start working.

UVU and Salt Lake Community College both offer this. Same classes, lower price, and many people finish the bachelor's later while working.

Coding bootcamp

About 14 weeks, about $13,600 on average.

Fast and focused on job skills. Graduates in a 2025 survey averaged about $71,000 in their first job, with 79% employed within six months. Works best for people who already know they love this.

Self-taught with a portfolio

Free. No fixed timeline.

Build real things people can click on and put them on GitHub. Harder to get the first interview without a degree, and completely possible. Nearly half of professional developers don't hold a bachelor's degree.

Things you can do right now, at 11 or at 17, that actually matter

  1. Take the computer science class your school offers. In middle school that's often a coding elective or Scratch; in high school, AP Computer Science Principles counts.
  2. Build one thing you'd actually use: a game, a tracker for your team, a site for a family business. Finish it.
  3. Learn to use AI tools to build faster, and learn enough to know when they're wrong.
  4. In college, get an internship the summer after your first or second year. Mine led to my first job.

One I built for fun

Christmas MasterMind, made for our family party.

Engineers don't only build at work. This is a code-breaking game I wrote so my family could play it on their phones at our Christmas party. Same ingredients as this page: a web page, some code, a free GitHub link. Play it, then think about what your family would play.

Try it right now

Change the code. Watch it change.

Edit the words, the emoji, anything in the dark box. The card below it updates as you type. That's the whole loop: write, run, look, fix.

Then build something real with an AI helper

Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini on your phone and paste this. Change the part in brackets.

Build me a one-page web app that [tracks my personal records for track practice]. Put everything in a single HTML file I can open on my phone, make it look good, and explain what each part of the code does in plain English.

Free places to keep going

Think like an engineer

Find the bug.

Half the job is this. Each snippet has one mistake. Guess, then tap to check.

let total = 0;
for (let i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
  total + i;
}
console.log(total);   // prints 0. Why?
let age = 15;
if (age = 18) {
  console.log("You can vote!");
}                      // says you can vote. You can't.