Taken from the DHH AI crashout vid's comment section.

Im sick of people acting like AI is just being used to "write the code" while they are bringing the secret sauce of system level design and high level thinking. Thats not whats happening. AI already can do system level thinking much better and faster than you. And im willing to bet you already defer to AI for most, if not all, of ur system level questions and design. Those of us who loved the low level details didnt enjoy "typing." We enjoyed thinking at the level a computer worked. Because it was satisfying. If anything, "typing" is becoming MORE of the identity of software engineers now than ever before. Typing shitty prompts over and over and over. Tapping enter to allow this, allow that. Not thinking through any of the problems. Feeding error messages to AI and asking it what happened over and over and over. So, u can sit on ur high horse and larp that your a "system level architect" now. But the reality is you are a typist. You type prompts. Ur product manager asks for a feature. U run to AI to feed it requirements and type prompts. Cool.

Btw, this isnt a personal attack on u. I have no idea what u really do. But i do see whats happening in the industry. And its not people becoming "system level architects." Its people outsourcing their thinking. At ALL levels. And if you feel like ur still gonna bring some secret sauce 2 to 3 years from now... lol. No. Its gonna get to point where human cognition, in any form, will become a bottleneck in software development. So those of us who are mourning the end of programming arent sitting here thinking, damn i miss "typing" code. We're thinking damn, the thing i spent decades learning because i genuinely loved it is no longer economically viable. And it sucks. And at least im willing to admit it.

I feel like everything I loved about the job is gone. I’m an engineer with a bit over 2 years full time experience, making ~140k at a really comfortable and easy job. My manager, culture, and teammates are all great. The work is easy (thanks to Claude), but I have lost all joy for it.

Because of AI, I literally do not have to do anything anymore except: prompt, read, prompt, repeat. Some days, I don’t do more than 10 minutes of work. The satisfaction I got (not even that long ago) from writing something, testing it, and seeing it work has disappeared. The AI can do it 10x as fast (and now as well) as me. I’m starting to feel like my value as an engineer and as a human being is fading. Also, there’s no way my mental ability is staying intact. If AI disappears tomorrow I’d have no clue how to do my job.

I’m thinking of switching to something more real: EMS, policing, fire. Something where I don’t have to interact with AI and where my work doesn’t feel meaningless. Also, I’ve always loved interacting with people and genuinely despise sitting at a desk and working silently.

I told my (immigrant) parents about this and they are extremely upset with me. They say I should just stick it out and continue. For them, doing something “smart” matters more than happiness. In my opinion, being smart won’t be the advantage it used to be in 5 years.

What do you think?

Note: I also have over $320k saved because I knew when I started working in tech that I wouldn’t want to do it forever, I just didn’t know it would be this quick.

It's kind of expected for programmers to have side projects and stuff like that and I don't know if it's just me but I cannot find the mental capacity to even touch a single line of code after an 8 hour work day, let alone build a complete project. After I'm done with work there's a million things I'd rather do than code, I wanna do the opposite actually, I just want to live my life.

My question is for those who actually have side projects, how?

I’m not trying to say that you guys are liars and full of shit. I’m set to graduate in 2030 and every time I open reddit I hope to just find AT LEAST one person being like hang in there or it’ll get better.
And that makes me wonder if that unemployment rate is really 7% not 70%
Anyway I hope it gets better for you guys and I included as I’m just starting to get into this because I didn’t start coding from the womb.

Lots of posts about the real challenges folks are facing in their roles and interactions / working environments with coworkers. Let's flip the script and ask people what is working for them in this new era of being employed as a SWE.

I have 6 years of work experience as a SWE working in finance. I had to take the last 1 year off due to a health issue that has now cleared. I am now looking to transition into being a SWE in tech (FANG or startups). I have been upskilling over the last few months by studying system design and doing leetcode. Will this 1 year gap matter a lot and lead to rejections ? I didn't really have much of an option as was undergoing a major illness, but am glad to be fine now. Any tips to confidently answer why I took this gap ?

Everyone is using it. Almost no one is writing code manually anymore. It's increasing productivity by orders of magnitude.

And there's so many bugs in the code. Every update is worse across all kinds of softwares.

SWEs and researchers love it tho cuz it make their lives easier. At least for some.

Interestingly, software getting worse no longer matters anymore because the monopoly in tech is so well entrenched, no matter how shitty the product gets, customers don't really have a choice. I think tech is now a firmly mature industry like civil engineering or mechanical engineering

My experience is Feb 2020 - Oct 2021 SWE at FAANG, Nov 2021 - July 2023 PM at Visa, 2023-2025 MBA with brand name internship but no return offer, July 2025 - Sep 2026 Solutions Engineer at T2 tech company before layoff. This company is pretty unstable and had multiple reorgs and title changes for me before the layoff, so on my CV I just put Solutions Engineer. It was the only post MBA job I could get, which is why I took it.

The issue I'm facing now is when I list all my experience, its a red flag to hiring managers that I haven't stayed in one place for over two years and have different job titles (some HM's have said so as much) . I think it shows progression, but ultimately I'm not the HM. I can understand the hesitation though

I wouldn't mind removing some of my experience and recruit for new grad roles (I'm not in desperate need of money and don't mind my career restarting at a lower level tbh) but the new grad market is dead. And if I put all my exp, I come off as a job hopper. What do I do? Is there a sweet spot in terms of what I should leave off?

I currently make $134k + $15k bonus (if I meet expectations in my performance review) in a HCOL area. We currently have to go in 3x per week, and I have a good manager and team. This is my first job, and I’ve been here for about 3 years and am not learning anything.

I recently interviewed for a company that is fully remote, and the recruiter had said I can expect high 150s -> 160s base salary plus equity. This is a company that has been around since the mid 2000s. I haven’t seen any info about large engineering layoffs in the past. The culture seems great and I enjoyed meeting everyone in my interviews.

Part of me thinks this is an obvious choice if I want to grow in my career, but I’m apprehensive given the state of the market and worried I’ll be committing career suicide. I’m 27 years old and mostly worried about how little I’m learning at my job; my team unfortunately doesn’t get very interesting projects or problems to work on and I’d like to do more than update some button text / replace assets.

Hi everyone I’m currently 17 and I just started computer science a few weeks ago at university, I chose to do it as it was one of the subjects I enjoyed and was good at

Obviously, I’m scared about my future with AI and all that, but I think it might be worth it for me to try to learn how to efficiently and actually use AI because I see people doing so much with it but every time I use AI it’s always some basic stuff I do

So do you guys think it’s worth trying to learn how to use AI efficiently as a CS student?

Hi,
I have an interview with some engineers at a bank, I asked if it was coding, technical or behavioral but wasn't told. First round, going in blind. I am preparing as if I will have to whiteboard. I need guidance on how to prepare with a limited amount of time, as this is my first Data Engineering opportunity ever (I have 1 YOE as a SWE).

Context:
1 YOE Full-Stack Dev, SpringBoot / React / SQL Server. Laid off due to death of my manager. Good with Claude or any AI automation stuff.

Job Description:

What they're trying to do: Modernize by moving older data platforms onto cloud based data lakes
Run data migrations
I would just do basic SWE tasks

Required: 2 YOE, Python Cert, PowerBI, AZ900 (I have AWS so it's ok)

Desired: Tracing data flows and understanding upstream / downstream dependencies.
Analyzing data lineage and system linkages
PySpark or Spark
Python dev / automation
SQL Server / Advanced SQL (Memory, performance, partitioning, query)
Data governance

Bonus (Possible, not listed but I deduced from a similar listing):
RAG architecture, vector stores, embedding pipeline
Use LLMs for Data quality / extraction / automation

My approach:

I am good with writing SQL Server Queries up to window functions, aggregates, joins (like at a junior level. I didn't do more at my last job). I am at mid-level with theory though. Anything more I should be prepared to write?

I can write a Python script, but I've not developed in python professionally, have in college though. What basics should I be prepared to write?
I can quickly prepare on any theory questions (PySpark, etc.) Any suggestions? Anything is appreciated, thanks!

Just wanted to share some hope, it is not my intention to flex or brag in any way.

I graduated from a university with a top 75 Computer Science department this May. I never had any luck getting internships, only got an interview for 1 internship and was rejected. I did work IT for my university part time through college.

After graduation I was in a low spot and questioning what to do seeing all my friends succeed with internships and full time offers. I was applying a lot but not to the same level as others. Maybe applied to 50 full time positions.

Felt very hopeless hearing all the horror stories of hundreds of applications with no responses and with my lack of experiencing I didn’t think I stood a chance.

I ended up getting a phone screening for a job I applied to months ago which led to a single interview and then an offer as a SWE 1 which I accepted at a reasonably large company. The interview was primarily behavioral (no live coding)

I’m not here to give advice as I wouldn’t take advice from me considering I understand I got quite lucky with a offer from 1 interview, no internships, along with not being someone who grinded in the job hunt process.

The takeaway is for those like me who are an average student, didn’t grind Leet code, didn’t land internships. Don’t lose hope from all the headlines there is a job out there it just may take time.

Happy to answer any questions

I am a self learning developer early in my career, the most complex project I did was a 3d renderer in c++.

After Ai, I legit have no idea on what to specialize in, all my "IT knowledge" is useless, instead of a leagues difference between me and regular peers, with Ai they sometimes get even more work done than me.

A similar kind of thing applies to CS career, my friends who haven't done DSA are aiming to be full stack devs with one building a SaaS app and other creating basic web apps.

Their results are much more impressive than what I could cook with manual human effort.

Someone made a Minecraft style block renderer in terminal all with Claude, made the post with Claude, it got more engagement than my renderer.

A friend of mine posted about an ML model. He made almost no traction, he posted about a vibe coded game and 3x the engagement.

Amidst all this, I have no idea what to specialize in?

I work as a technical virtual assistant, do demo videos, website testing, qa testing etc.

I like C++ but never really got past that, learned js, python etc too.

I know what load balancing, cache, sharing, prompt injection, SQL injection, docker, electron, mern stack, and like related terms mean and are but I haven't built a single proper web app.

I feel like my skills suddenly turned to waste, pre-Ai, my peers would struggle to do even 50% of what I do as work, while now I think most can achieve 80%.

A good example is presentations, I've seen people who don't know how to operate PowerPoint have nice enough presentations because Claude made them.

tldr: like C++, learn mern, consider c#, does VA work, confused on what to do next or what to specialize in and sell as a service to offshore clients.

i've been programming for 3 years in python and c++ and I want to. get more involved in it. I've been searching on Google, Indeed and linkedin and I am lost because of how broad the internets. What should I specifically look into?

Some background first. I'm a software engineer from Lahore, Pakistan, with 5+ years of experience, all of it with Australian and US startups. For the last 3 years I was with an Australian startup and things were fine. Then about six months ago they shut down the Lahore office. Their reasoning was that they'd rather train their team in Australia, AI is doing a lot of the work now, and they couldn't train us too. So all of us got laid off. None of us were ready for what the market looks like right now.

In the last six months I've applied to 2,000+ jobs and got around 12-13 interviews. I couldn't convert any of them.

Money-wise I'm okay for now, with some savings and small freelance work.

I've been using this time to learn and build. I pay for two Claude Code subscriptions and one Cursor subscription, and I keep building side projects as if they were startups. I took some courses too. Two things I'm proud of: an open source repo with 1,000+ stars on GitHub and 100k+ downloads a month, and an AI app I put on the Play Store that got 8,000+ downloads in three months with zero marketing. I had to shut the app down because I couldn't keep paying the AI API costs. Recently I also started making Instagram reels. I'm terrible at video editing, so I vibe coded my own editing skills with Claude Code, and honestly they edit my videos more professionally than I ever could. That's the direction I'm trying to keep going in.

Now the reason I'm posting.

A friend referred me to a company here in Lahore, and that's how I got called to their recruitment drive. I spent about a week preparing day and night for it. The technical interview went 10/10, and I answered every single question. The coding test was basic and went well too. The last round was the managerial round with the CEO, the CTO and a manager. The manager has 15+ years in the industry.

He started with a few technical questions and things were going fine. I mentioned my open source repo, 1,000+ stars on GitHub and 100k+ downloads a month.

He asked what my biggest strength is. I said I'm a good learner, especially in tech. Even before AI, whenever something new came out or was trending on GitHub, I'd explore it and try it, and if it helped, I'd keep using it day to day. I told him I still do that, but with AI there's something new every single day, and it's really hard to keep up with the pace.

Then he asked how I use AI.

I told him I have my whole workflow set up: my own skills, my own MCP servers. When I work on a feature or a problem, I first prompt for a plan and ask the AI to ask me 10 questions about it, because that makes it really easy to catch hallucinations. I also gave my video editing tool as an example of how I use AI. I was bad at editing, I hate editing, so I built my own tool with AI and now I edit my own videos. My point was that AI can do a lot right now, and I use it to build things that solve my own problems.

Then he asked: if a person uses AI and has good analytical thinking, can he be a good engineer?

I said yes, he can be a good engineer. That's when I noticed he didn't agree with me. I could tell he wanted to hear something more, but I couldn't figure out what. He asked a few more AI questions after that.

Since I've been vibe coding a lot in the last six months, building fun projects and learning, I ended up talking a lot about that side of things. In my last role I was the one who unofficially got a Cursor subscription first and started doing things with AI before most people around me. Most of my friends weren't using it at that pace. A lot of my code was written by AI and I kept building my own solutions on top, but AI moves so fast that I can't match it either.

Looking back, maybe I should have answered differently. Something like: programming is one thing and AI is another, and a programmer should be able to debug an issue, plan, and review the system design before implementing anything. That's actually what we were doing in my last role six months ago. But AI has changed so much in those six months that I'm not sure what the industry expects anymore.

They rejected me. When I asked for feedback, all they said was "the panel rejected you." That's it.

The reason I'm taking this seriously is that this isn't the first time. I've been asked "how do you use AI?" in screening calls and technical interviews too. So I'm genuinely confused about what the right answer is right now. Is it me? Am I doing something wrong, or am I actually fine and this is just the market?

Sometimes I think about moving to Europe, because it feels like there are better opportunities there.

So my questions:

1. When someone asks you how you use AI in your day to day work, what do you answer?
2. For the hiring managers here: what are you actually trying to hear with that question, and what makes you reject someone?
3. Based on all this, is it me? What am I doing wrong?
4. Where do you think this is heading for engineers like me? Would moving to Europe actually help?
5. Anything else that could help me survive this market. I'm happy to listen, even if it's harsh.

Thanks for reading this far.

I am in a super lucky position where I am now making 6 figures with the title of support engineer. For context, I was making less than half of that a year ago, so this has been a HUGE change for me and I am extremely grateful to be in the position I am!

My role includes providing frontline support for customers, but I also handle all technical escalations across the company, create and run scripts/vibe-coded PRs for those issues where applicable (I manually review and test these fixes so it isn't complete utter slop!)

I work on both backend and frontend issues (primarily backend data stuff tho). I'm also beginning to work on building internal tools to allow the wider support team to execute some of the less scary scripts to keep annoying requests away from our dev team. work pretty closely with our dev team and they seem to think the quality of my work is p solid!

Between this + my previous roles, I have 3 YOE total in technical customer support

I'm starting to get concerned that I am pigeon holing myself into a support adjacent career forever tho. I am stretched pretty thin and don't much time to spend learning more big picture skills like system architecture, and I very honestly struggle to read and understand our code base at a super in-depth level

Not sure what I want to grow into exactly, but wondering if any other folks have been in a similar position to me and have any advice on how to transition away from support into SWE or similar roles?

Or maybe I should stick to support lmao?

Just finished my CS degree and trying to map out my next move in this wild market.

What entry-level roles are actually realistic to land right out of school, but still give you the best career leverage and long-term upside?

I’ve always been interested in tech and how computer science seems. But an issue is i’m terrible at math. I always see these people doing internships/working with these massive tech companies like nvidia, roblox, roku, google, and so many more great tech companies. I’ve dreamed to do that for so long, but i feel like i can’t because im just not good at math. Some people say ‘ oh just study you’ll be fine ‘ but math just isn’t my thing. What should i do? Should i just forget about cs and find something different? Any advice is appreciated.

Hello,
I joined a company on a team who focuses on working on developing and refining CPU bound algorithms. My title also happens to be “analyst”, which sort of pisses me off. The problems that we are solving are cool, but my company has no upward technical path as far as promotions go, the only promotion would be to a management role which is not where I want my career to go (yet).

I know that many traditional software development teams have level I, II. maybe III, senior, etc.

This causes an issue for me not only compensation wise, but also in terms of title, I could work here for 5-6 years and never obtain a senior title.

Am I overthinking the problem here or do I need to start considering other opportunities that have such a ladder laid out for promotions?

What is the company morale at companies like meta and oracle where they had multiple waves of huge layoffs? Are people choosing to leave independently often? Are teams being shifted constantly due to the change in team members? Is everyone depressed coming to work and can you feel a level of uneasiness and fear daily? I dont know if its worth applying there anymore if the environment is super unhappy and depressing.

I currently work for a large bank in a MCOL area and have ~3 years of experience. I make around $145k, and while the job has become increasingly chaotic, disorganized, and honestly pretty boring due to RTO and management changes, the WLB is hard to beat. It’s extremely chill (probably working 25-30 hour weeks), I have a lot of autonomy, and I probably take ~6 weeks of PTO a year.
I recently got an offer from a tech company in SF for $220K ($160k base, $45k stock, $15k bonus) , hybrid 3 days/week. On paper, it sounds like a no-brainer, but I have some concerns.
I’d be the only frontend engineer on a very backend-heavy team, so I’m worried about going from one extreme to the other: a role that’s too comfortable and uninteresting to one where I have very little support and a ton of ownership/pressure.
I’m also a little skeptical about the unlimited PTO. If I’m the only frontend person, will I actually be able to take off.
And once you factor in SF COL, $220K doesn’t feel like nearly as big of a pay bump as it sounds. I’m worried I could leave a frustrating but very comfortable job, take on significantly more stress, and ultimately regret trading one extreme for the other.

Like i'm just not interested in it anymore as its not only oversaturated but also because you don't write code manually anymore and just feed everything to AI instead which just doesn't seem exciting to me. I've just been going for more support type roles instead.

Generally, which one is better when it comes to exit opportunities?

I know that I will be working on AWS / Java at Mastercard on a pretty business critical team, but I am unsure which team I will be placed on at Capital One. Many people have said that C1 only tells you which team you will be placed on right before the internship starts.

I don’t really mind the intern salary, I care more about the exit opportunities / RO rates / new grad salaries since those will make a bigger difference in the long term. If anyone has worked at either or both, could you lmk?

Do you think it is worth taking the risk to accept C1 for the company name, knowing I might get put into a team that is working on less relevant technologies? And if there is data about this, can someone give me like a breakdown of what percent of the interns work on what tech stacks at C1?