How to Become an iOS Engineer: Joann's Path from Accounting to Instagram
A Career Playbook Case Study
The Role
Joann Lynn is a Staff iOS Software Engineer at Meta, where she works on the Instagram iPhone app. She's built some of Instagram's most beloved features—including the ability to add music to your photos.
So what does an iOS engineer actually do? In Joann's words: "Being a software engineer means that you are building features or writing code for the software, the programs that you interface with in your technology. And being an iOS engineer specifically means that you're doing that for iPhones—building your iPhone apps."
Currently, Joann's team focuses on making Instagram's core surfaces faster. When you open the app, they work to make it load as quickly as possible. This means finding and removing anything unnecessary that slows down startup—like creating views you won't see until you click way further into the app.
Why does Instagram care about milliseconds? "Having your app feel really fast and responsive is important to creating a good user experience. As more and more code gets added to the app, it can slow things down if we're not careful."
The Path
Education: USC, started as Accounting major, switched to Computer Science
Career progression:
- High school: Took one CS class, enjoyed it
- Freshman year (USC): Accounting major, picked up CS minor "just for fun"
- Sophomore year: Pivoted from accounting to software engineering
- First experience: Tiny startup (3 people) — helped build their iOS app
- Junior year: Meta internship
- Post-graduation: Converted to full-time at Instagram
Joann didn't start with a clear path to tech. "In high school, I didn't really have a strong sense of what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I would do something in business because my mom did. My dad suggested accounting—it seemed like a career that required good problem solving skills and used math."
The pivot happened freshman year when she added a CS minor: "I found that it uses a similar problem solving skill, similar math, but it had something that accounting didn't—the ability to build something new and be a bit more creative in what you want to build."
By sophomore year, it was "too late" to find a traditional internship, so she found a tiny startup where she helped three guys build their iOS app. That project landed her the Meta internship the following year.
Compensation
Software engineering is one of the highest-paying careers out of college, especially in tech hubs.
| Level | Base Salary | Total Comp | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Grad | ~$150K | $180K-$220K | Plus bonus and equity |
| Mid-Career (5 years) | ~$250K | $400K-$550K | Senior level, "terminal" |
| Staff+ | $280K+ | $700K-$1M+ | "If you choose to grow" |
Joann's take: "If you go to San Francisco, Seattle, or New York where a lot of these tech companies are, I would expect probably like $150K base plus some bonus and equity. Maybe 5 years into your career, you can expect closer to $250K base, $250K equity. At that point, you reach this senior level—it can be considered terminal where you can stay there for the rest of your career. But if you choose to grow, there's plenty of opportunity to reach levels where you can be making close to a million dollars a year or over consistently."
What Makes Someone Good at This
Joann identified two key traits:
1. Enjoying logic and problem solving "If you enjoy puzzles or algebra, I think that lends itself really well because software engineering is still mathematically based. Having a good sense of logic and reasoning helps a lot."
2. Actually enjoying coding "You can end up spending a lot of time in front of the computer trying to debug tough problems. Being able to enjoy that process—being able to sit there and actually debug something on the computer for hours—is something that not everyone really enjoys. Enjoying the process, enjoying being able to build, enjoying the debugging and spending time in front of the computer is pretty important."
Job Stability and AI
The honest take on AI's impact:
"I would say software engineering is going to stick around. We're always going to need people to build software and interfaces for the technology we use every day. But the landscape might change. Right now, tech companies need lots of engineers to build features. But with AI, maybe fewer engineers are needed and each engineer is expected to be able to produce more. The career will stick around, but the ease of opportunities may change."
How to Start Today
Joann's advice for complete beginners:
"Take advantage of all the online resources. There are so many free tutorials and courses that will show you how to get started, do some fundamentals. Some will even walk you through building your first app. Just starting to build, I think, is the best first step to take."
You can also take structured courses if you prefer that approach, but the key is to start building. One by one, you'll develop your understanding of programming.
The Meaningful Moment
When asked about her proudest project:
"The coolest project that I've gotten to work on was being able to add music to your photos. It's a feature that I see a lot of my friends and people I admire using on Instagram. So it's cool that I was able to build something that other people are using."
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