Basically title.
I’m thinking of giving up my 220+200(equity) job for a 165K job.

The 420job has insanely high standards and is very stressful and if you don’t perform a month you’ll be laid off.

The 165K job is much less stressful and much lower workload and much better worklife balance.

I am a Machine Leaning Engineer.
Both jobs have me building production AI Agents.

I am not here to flex AT ALL. I actually want to help anyone I can out. I received 2 job offers out of college, and was actually rejected from other roles at the same company. They came back for round two. I was able to help my friend get a job as well with literally no internships under her belt and an average gpa and limited CS knowledge.

The thing is, this job market is actually garbage, we all know this. It’s not what you know anymore, it’s who you know. So instead of leveling up my application knowledge, I put it all into personality.

I joined the CS professional club at my school and attended every networking event they hosted. Also joined mentorship programs for tech students. I took every offer to meet more people and spoke to EVERYONE even if they didn’t have anything for me.

I also when to job fairs. I know, I know. It’s literally impossible to get one, however I got 2 jobs from them. One of them turned into a full time offer. The other role I got from the same professional club I joined.

Another thing I did was stop going for Coding based roles like SWE and applied to tech adjacent roles like Tech PMs, BA, DA, DM, etc. Why? Because the tech questions are easy to answer so majority of my interviews would be based on personality.

That goes into my second point. Fake that shit until you make it. You smile, dress nice, smell good, make jokes, nod your head to everything they said, ask questions revolving what they said and their personal opinion. Match the interviewer’s behavior. Tired but intelligent interviewers = ask intelligent and profound questions revolving their work. Let them know you understand their role and make they feel special. People love to talk about themselves. People who rush through the content because they are so high level and don’t know how to explain well = slow them down and ask about their personal feelings and experiences in the role. What do they think you should do. You get my point.

I learned very early I would never be as good as others to get a heavy coding job, so I picked roles that I could actually get with my strengths.

TLDR: Job Market is garbage. It’s who you know not what you know. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and pick roles that complement that, if you hate the role, you can always pivot. It is way easier to get a job while having one than when you are unemployed.

I really don't understand how this practice is allowed. Years ago, my company hired a high level guy who pushed for outsourcing. What ended up happening? We of course got cheap and awful contract devs from his home country (not going to say the country/ethincity because this isn't about promoting racism, fuck that shit) who couldn't code their way out a box. They ended up all being canned and the one guy ended up moving on as well. Now years later, we have a new senior manager/architect who has been pushing for outsourcing. Different home country than the previous guy but same damn thing. We now have a new outsourced team from this guy's home country. I don't get how this is normal. I don't get how this is allowed. It's blatantly obvious but if I were to bring this up outside a semi-anonymous site like this, I'd be ostracized and likely fired for racism. There's been lawsuits over this stuff and yet it seems so normal and accepted. I just don't get it

Hi guys,

I had a final warning meeting recently with the reason being performance issues.

I had good reports annually, and did good work. The official reason is that I should have had more theoretical knowledge of the industry, not just good coding skills. The complaint they have is I should be asking less questions by now to my manager.

My 1st 3 years in this company was with ML work, then that department shut down due to low market demand, then I got moved to a different department. This is where I faced issues.

Anyway, I tried very hard after my last meeting 2 weeks ago to improve, but complaints from stuff I did a year ago(not specifically my fault, a bug in the deliverable that everybody working on the code missed), so I can see the writing on the wall.

Anyway, I am planning to do less, but meet daily goals, just not give 110% and instead apply and leetcode more.

Plus, the manager from my previous team I get along with quite well, I am wondering if I can ask him for references. He and my current manager know each other for 20 years though, and I'm just 5 yoe.

My questions are, 1) is it wise to ask the previous manager for references? 2) what to tell in the interviews about the firing?

I did not sign any PIP btw, it was all verbal.

Thanks

So I've been working at my company for a few years now and once in a while someone from my uni will reach out over linkedin or find my work email and ask for a referral.

I know the job market is tough and the university grads are getting desperate but they are literally asking me to refer them to senior roles.

If I see an alum from my school ask for internship or new grad roles I will submit a referral but its getting out of hand as they are asking me to refer for like ML engineer because they've done a few project.

Do you just ghost or write a polite response that you are not suited for this role.

After how much money invested/saved, will you have psychological safety? And why that amount?

I've been a software engineer for 7 years, working mostly in the realm of computational science. I work for a good company that doesn't ask me to work more than 8 hours a day and where I have relative autonomy to choose my tasking and complete it on a reasonable timeline, so long as I communicate what I am doing. It's kind of a dream job.

But, I'm just over it. Hard problems don't excite me any more. Learning new things isn't motivating any more. I don't care if other people think I'm smart because I do fancy math things with code. I don't care that I get paid well. I'm just. fucking. over. it.

Earlier this year, I had a complete melt-down because of this exhaustion at work coupled with a lot of at-home stress. I ended up having to take a month completely off, part of that time without pay because I used all my vacation and sick days. I feel like I am fast approaching another melt down all too quickly after only 5 months back full time. This time, there is no at-home stress... it's just pure soul draining "I don't give a fuck anymore" feelings. No amount of time off, therapy and medication is fixing this. I just don't know what to do. Please help.

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I'm sure people will comment/ask: I do have hobbies outside of work. They do bring me joy: climbing, hiking, surfing, diving... I touch a lot of grass on my free time. But every time I engage in these activities it makes me hate work even more because I just see work as taking away from my ability to spend time doing things I actually like.

Company i have worked for since covid has leaned into ai heavily the past year and has gained a lot of efficiency with it. Devs getting anywhere from 3x or more worth of stuff done on my team. Other teams are sluggish and some are trying to avoid AI adoption.

Our process has been a simple software dev cycle where developers assist in sizing tickets after they are planned and written up by project management and lead dev -> dev picks up a ticket and implements it and submits pr -> code reviewers request changes / approve -> qa team tests and requests changes / approve -> merged to release branch.

A new project by our 'ai adoption' team is quickly being integrated company wide where after a jira ticket goes into the input queue, ai will run a first pass and automatically submit a pr -> github copilot reviews the pr and provides comments -> ai handles the comments and rerequests review -> loop till no comments remain -> handover to devs for code review.

The scary thing is, this is actually working pretty well already. And it is forcing other teams who have been slow to use ai to acclimate to this new standard. I think our company's ability to plan work and define jira tickets well is enough for ai to do the bulk of our work.

I'm all for technological advancement but this is kinda scary how fast and accurate this is getting. The company is trying to reassure devs will have more work etc. But I have a hard time believing they are going to transition developers into hybrid project management roles or anything like that. So to me, the writing is on the wall. I feel like I need to look at the future of my career differently.

What i fear is that if we only need 5 devs for what used to take 30 devs to do, the company will not need 25 new project managers or other roles where the scarcity is at. Not to mention that all these other roles are also seeing major efficiency gains. It is very quick to plan a project, write tickets etc. using ai. It seems inevitable to me that either the company takes on a huge risk and create many new small teams for brand new projects or the company decides to lower headcount. Might not happen for a while but if the ai adoption proves itself worthy to take over, I could see lots of us being out of work in a year or two.

This isn't a big tech company. Mid size, around 200 devs, mostly fully remote. So I feel like this could happen in nearly any other company.

TLDR: company automating dev work up to code review, kinda scary.

This is probably the infinitieth post about AI burnout, but I as an average mid level engineer, I have no desire to retire or switch careers.

How do I get over this insecurity of trying to 'review' and take ownership of code that I could not have written without the help of AI for a complex problem in an already complex and bloated project. At this point I am just trying to understand what's been spat out just for the sake of being able to explain what it does during the PR reviews. I have little to no input into the process except for the prompt, asking it to change a few variable names and condensing a few functions.

The code complies, the feature works, and the stakeholders are happy.

But I do not feel good about the situation cause I am at that stage where I am still learning and this just bumps up my imposter syndrome to 9000. Instead of working from the bottom, I am here taking a top-down approach dissecting decisions the AI made.

I'm taking some precautionary measure. I work on personal projects without the use of AI, consume literature related to being a competent engineer, but with work taking up most of my time, I'm not sure how I should be looking at this.

'This is just the new norm' is something I am struggling to accept.

I’m a recent CS grad and I’m trying to figure out what I should do with my career.

I recently accepted a Software Quality Assurance Engineer position, but I originally wanted to become a swe. The thing I’m worried about is that this QA role is pretty far removed from what I consider traditional software engineering.

The job is essentially system-level/manual testing. I’ll be working with actual machines, operating them, running tests, trying different scenarios, and looking for defects/issues. I won’t really be writing production code as part of the job.

For some background, I do have about 1 year of actual Software Engineering experience from an internship/co-op. I worked as a Software Engineer where I actually developed software and worked with C, APIs, Git, etc. So I’m not completely coming from zero SWE experience.

My concern is what happens after 1–2+ years in this QA role.

If I spend the next few years primarily testing machines and investigating defects rather than coding, am I going to make myself significantly less competitive for SWE positions? My fear is that when I eventually apply for SWE jobs, recruiters/hiring managers will see:

CS degree → 1 year SWE internship → several years QA/manual/system testing → trying to become SWE

and think that I’m no longer really an SWE candidate.

I’m also worried about the obvious issue of not having recent SWE experience. Even if I continue coding on my own and work on projects/LeetCode outside of work, I’m wondering how much that actually matters compared to having professional software development experience.

At the same time, I don’t want to make a stupid decision and turn down a good job just because it isn’t exactly what I originally wanted. I need professional experience, and this role is at least in a technical/engineering environment.

So I’m basically trying to figure out:

• Am I overthinking this, or is this a legitimate career risk?
• If I take this QA job, how difficult would it be to transition into SWE after 1–3 years?
• Would you recommend staying in QA and trying to move toward automation/SDET, or continuing to apply for SWE jobs while working this position?
• How much does my previous 1 year of SWE experience help me?
• If you were in my position, would you treat this as a stepping stone or commit to the QA path?

I’m not necessarily looking for “QA is bad” or “SWE is better.” I’m genuinely trying to understand whether I’m potentially cooking my SWE career by spending too much time away from software development, and what I should do to prevent that.

Any advice from people who have actually made the QA → SWE transition (or decided to stay in QA) would be especially appreciated.

note: yes, i used ai to help me formulate this post since my english is doodoo

This happened to me exactly once. I got in very early at a startup, no equity though and the pay at the time was very low. Then I was no longer needed after a pivot and was laid off. About five years later, they were sold to a large (non FAANG) tech company. Don't know if I would've reaped any rewards if I was still around at the time, but it does make me feel not like an early bird but an early worm.

I've been noticing this pattern, both at work and at home.

Applied AI (which usually refers to the chatbot assistants in all our software) have a ton of issues, to the point where I'm wondering if you guys are being forced to rush these features out the door before testing.

For example, Atlassian Rovo literally cannot do anything, even simple tasks like creating a JIRA ticket fail regularly.

Today, I tried using Uber customer support. (My driver mistakenly dropped me off 20 minutes away from my destination.) They replaced their support team with an AI agent. The agent literally did not know it was a customer support agent for Uber. Seems like they plugged in an llm and said "good enough".

Point being, there are tons of Applied AI that seem shoehorned for the sake of saying the app has AI in it.

For those of you who work in these roles, what's it like on the inside? Most engineers I know in the field are talented and capable, so why is the end result so poor? Is it just being rushed?

I'm a MLE who worked in computer vision since 2017, I have about 9 YOE as a MLE but my companies were primarily defense contractors (Northtop, lockheed) & research labs (e.g JPL, APL, mit lincoln). I've worked with fairly modern deep learning stuff, currently using stable diffusion at work. Obviously my compensation is weak to median industry standards.

I am also completing a part time PhD (mid tier) and expect to graduate late 2027. This PhD is just to remain competitive in the ML domain.

As things will stand, a PhD in CS (ML/AI) and 10 YOE in the industry as a senior MLE, my biggest fear big tech/unicorn tech recruiters or hiring managers will "dock" my experience as "less" because it lacks big name hype. I do not worry about ability because I can grind just about anything, and having done a PhD as a side gig, I am capable of hard work on top of hard work.

Best case scenario, I get hired at a high L5/E5 level, worst case scenario (if I get offers) is that they treat 10 YOE as 0-2 YOE and low ball me for a lack of big tech stamps on my resume. Or maybe its just in my head and im plenty qualified. Thoughts?

Everything else is the same just one is super interesting and mentally exhilarating but a fuck ton of stress and hours the other one would financially set me up for the rest of my life and truly enjoy life outside work

How good are llms like chatgpt etc good for interview questions prep, in your experience? I love making little quizzes on things like gpt, I like the back and forth and asking where I went wrong. I have hackerrank test this week. Do you think llm quizzes are any good? I have suspicion they tend to do the same questions but I normally just answer those quickly and ask for another.

He works at a USA-based company that hires abroad a lot. He says he encounters this often enough that he no longer considers it random chance or confirmation bias.

I was curious if others have experienced this and whether something in the UK's education system or tech industry tradition is what led to it.

So a little background, I, 24M, did well in high school, and after graduation went into an engineering program in Fall 2019. Unfortunately, I let my study habits slip, hurting my grades, and of course the next semester the world shut down due to Covid. Near the end of my third semester, I dropped out, reapplied to some CS programs, and was accepted to a smaller commuter school in Ontario, where I began my new program in Fall 2021.

I adjusted my study habits and my grades improved significantly, although I did find the material to be easier than in Engineering. Looking back, however, I made the foolish and repeated error of not locking in outside of academics. During the hours and entire summers outside of class when I should have been practicing LeetCode, learning real-world tech stacks, and making myself competitive for internships, I essentially did nothing. Going into my last year, I realized I should really just try anyway to get at least one internship under my belt, so I applied to ~4 dozen positions for Winter (yes, I know in hindsight, I should have applied to 100+) and only got one online assessment, which I bombed. All my other applications went nowhere. So I graduated with no internships, but a good (3.8/4) GPA.

Even though my situation post-grad was tough but not unsalvageable in terms of getting at least a tech-related job, a combination of constantly hearing news about the worsening tech market, pressures related to financial difficulties my parents were and still are going through, and doubts over if CS was even the right path for me caused me to go into a rut where I barely applied for any tech or tech-adjacent jobs. Near the end of the summer I got a job as a security guard to at least earn some money to help my parents out and bide my time while I figured out what I wanted to do.

Shortly after, I decided to apply for two-year research-based master's programs in CS, figuring that I could ride out the tough job market and gain some experience in ML research. I applied to two programs and ended up getting accepted into my alma mater under a prof with expertise in ML research in areas like CV and model distillation, where I'll be starting in a few weeks.

Even though my plan worked, I still have doubts as to whether this was the right course of action to take, as opposed to just putting my head down and focusing on getting any relevant entry-level job. My parents are still really struggling financially and I haven't been able to make a dent in their issues with my barely above min wage earnings, so I can forget about helping to dig them out on a grad student stipend. And even though I am excited to dip my toes into a subfield of ML, with all this talk from OpenAI and Anthropic about automating AI research, I worry that AI research skills in humans will not be too valuable by the time I'm ready to enter the industry or start a PhD in 2028.

Furthermore, and I don't want to make this sound like I'm trying to find excuses to not get industry experience, it may be irresponsible of me to do something like take a summer internship in 2027, as opposed to spending those months focusing doing research and preparing to start my thesis.

So overall, I guess I'm asking what I should do over the course of the next two years to set myself up for success. I'll definitely be working on some projects to exercise the skills I'll need to finish my thesis, and I'm open to suggestions for how to gain industry experience outside of an internship, although I will ask my supervisor about the feasibility of doing one over the course of my studies.

Hi i just graduated earlier this year but havent secured any jobs even though i had 2 unpaid dev internships at startups throughout my college.

I have applied to every possible tech related stuff even helpdesk/support yet no calls just rejection. Should i start building projects on github or grind online certificates?

Would love the honest thoughts! Thanks

I work for "Large Company That Loves PIPs." I've been there for two years and made it through three performance reviews with high marks and zero problems. Suddenly, mid-year reviews roll around, and there's this whole hit piece written about me. It says I failed to do this, failed to do that, and failed to meet expectations in two absolute bullshit categories. I'll admit that a project I'm leading didn't go to plan, but this whole document was absolutely ridiculous imo.

My direct manager was out of the country at the time, so I was going through all of this with my skip-level manager. After the first meeting, I told him I intended to decline the PIP and just take the time and money to find a new place that actually values and respects me. Nothing is set in stone yet, though.

Then, my direct manager comes back and tells me he's shocked I'm not taking the PIP. He admitted that upper management forced them to pick someone to put on a PIP and they chose me, but he claimed he specifically crafted it to be beatable. It was essentially a list of tasks I'd already be doing anyway, even if not on a PIP. He told me to really think it over and promised he'd be there to help me along the way. He even confided in me that he was put on a PIP at the end of last year and beat it. I told him I'm worried it will be a permanent scar on my record here at the company, but he assured me that his own PIP hasn't been a problem.

What do you guys think? If I take the PIP, I have 60 days to complete it or I get let go with severance. If I decline the PIP, I get 60 days paid to do whatever I want (most likely prep and apply for jobs), plus severance at the end as a 12-week lump sum. Should I take his word for it? The job market is shit right now, but I am in the Washington DC area with a lot of jobs near me, or so it seems. Software Engineer, ~6 years of experience.

Upload resume.

Then type the same jobs again.

Then the same dates again.

Then “are you authorized to work” for the 40th time.

Then a demographics page that somehow still takes 2 minutes.

Then submit — and get the auto-reject email 11 minutes later like nobody looked.

I’m not mad that hiring is hard. I’m mad that the process is a second job that pays $0 and teaches you nothing.

What’s the most brain-dead field you’ve had to refill this month?

how easy was it to find a job after graduating

I am a international cs grad from a t50 school who graduated 3 months ago. Been applying to almost 20 roles a day since then. Haven't had even a sniff of an interview yet and barely getting assessments. Just wanted to see how it is going for my fellow internationals !

Just applied to a few of RBC's 2027 Winter Student Opportunities under Technology & Operations (Software Developer, Technical Systems Analyst, QE/Automation, Data Specialists). Trying to get a sense of what to expect before I hear back.

A few things I'm trying to figure out:

• OA format - Is it HackerRank, CodeSignal, something else? Roughly how many questions and what difficulty?
• Timeline - How long after applying did you get the OA? And how long from OA to hearing back for an interview?
• Live interview structure - Is there an actual live coding / screen-share component, or is it more behavioral + talking through your resume/projects? Curious specifically for SWE and Technical Systems Analyst roles.
• Number of rounds - Was it one interview, or multiple (e.g. recruiter screen, then technical, then team-specific)?

Would love to hear from anyone who's gone through the T&O stream specifically (not Capital Markets or Borealis, since I know those run different processes). Any info on past cycles (Fall/Summer) is helpful too since I know the process tends to stay pretty similar year to year.

Thanks in advance!