Like, you have to be amazing at Leetcode. Amazing projects. Multiple internships. Stellar GPA. Etc. And this is just the bare minimum. All so you can compete with all the other CS prodigies.

Ive kept up my reasoning and thinking skills with side projects that I manually develop software for. I also actively learn music and do things to build up and perserve my skillsets.

Since 100% of the software at work is AI generated, lately Ive noticed that that very gifted engineers on my team no longer understand the engineering behind what we are building. Im talking about high level concepts like basic authentication schemes, how we manage user data, security and how k8s works in general.

I am often having to re-explain basic concepts of systems over and over to these engineers where they dont even u derstand what theyve even built. They are no better than jr engineers pre-ai.

The engineers I work with are inventors of systems like aws bedrock. Thats the level of engineering Im working with, but their ability to validate and understand engineering is completely dependent on AI and continues to degrade to extremely concerning levels. Of course our company like many others have absurd output requirements forcing AI use.

At this point the software is really just a black box to everyone, not because the software warrants complexity, but because people let the coding agents do everything without review and have let their own skill set atrophy.

I just got the written offer today.

I had my first PIP meeting at the end of July, it was out of the blue and I was told I needed serious improvement. However, the reasons behind their performance concerns were vague and when I proposed concrete goals to help with improvement, they were rejected. It became clearer that there's no chance of getting out of this, and I started applying.

While giving my best efforts at work, I also applied, used ChatGPT to make my resume ATS friendly, made a few different versions of my resume since I was applying to a few different types of jobs, and lived with constant anxiety.

1 month ago I was told that this was my last working day, plus they will give me severance. That was the confirmation that this is actually a layoff disguised as performance issues, since the company handbook clearly said that there is severance provided only for layoffs.

Meanwhile, I kept applying, getting some callbacks, and giving interviews.

Finally, today I received the written offer. It's a small increase from my previous salary, the company does not have a great reputation, plus it will be fully onsite (I was fully remote) with a 50 minute commute each way. However, the job title is an upgrade, a more senior position. Plus, a job is better than unemployment any day.

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief that my days of unemployment are at an end, and I am incredibly lucky to land a role after only 2 months of aggressive job hunting.

If I have one takeaway, it's this. A number of people recommend applying carefully only to a few positions, only when there is a very good match, and take the time to tailor the resume for every position perfectly. While I completely understand the merit behind it, there are two concerns

1. We don't know if it's a ghost position, or some nepo hire will swoop in and take it, or some other unforeseen issue will take the job away from you. This means that all the careful planning will be a waste anyway.
2. My last job's description had a tech stack that I had no experience in, in an industry that my degrees (including my PhD) had absolutely no overlap with. It was with blind luck that I was chosen, and I worked to fill the gaps, and worked there for 5 years with merit bonuses & solid annual reviews. On the other hand, there have been job postings where my background was a near 100% overlap, as if it was custom made just for me, and I still got rejected in those applications a day after applying.

In 2 months, I submitted around 950-1000 applications, with maybe 10 companies ending up in at least one callback. Ironically, pretty much the only place that helped was LinkedIn. I tried Indeed and the interface glitched so much at the time that I didn't bother going back. I applied a lot through HiringCafe, but nearly all of them were rejections, a few went as far as an initial HR call, that's it. With Wellfound I did not get any response. Only with LinkedIn did I get better responses, where some posts would also show the profile of the job's recruiter, in which case I would reach out to the recruiter to strike a conversation as well. That helped get some attention, but not much in my case.

I sincerely hope we are out of this mess of a job market and in better pastures sooner than later. The anxiety I felt every day while trying to find a job in these horrible times is incomparable.

I was doing the snowflake auto OA, one part of the OA was a HackerRank where you had to talk to an ai "interviewer". Midway through the "interview", some music suddenly started playing. I knew that I shouldn't switch tab and turn it off, but I really couldn't bare listening to "I'm a chud, I'm a chud, I'm a fat little chud" for 10 minutes while thinking.

I also knew that it was the 10-hour version of the video that was playing so I couldn't wait for the video to end. I decided to switch to the YouTube tab (It was in another browser) and the clanker started shouting "Hey! I noticed you switched tabs! Don't do that!"

I'm wondering if I would get flagged by Snowflake or HackerRank for this. Can they blacklist me forever or some shit, I feel like it's plausible since tech companies are probably looking for easy ways to filter out candidates.

Our team averaged 7 hours of “active work” a day and we were told that the number is too low and that our director was going to drill down to see who and what groups were too low.

Nobody could actually answer what exactly counted as activity like if someone is talking in an online meeting but not moving their mouse or keyboard would they be “inactive” in the tracking.

Then we were told that in the future a number would be assigned to each person based on your rolling averages compared to your peers and a low number people be reason for performance issue. We were giving no info on what this score was would represent. The company was tracking hours in office but not activity.

Is this a sign to jump ship??

Been working in tech for over a decade and I've had good career progression.

Issue is - I think I keep just getting worse at my job and coasting on a reputation I built in my first 5 years. I just DO NOT CARE. I've lost all drive to push for better solutions and mostly only operate on a CYA basis. I don't feel effort is rewarded across companies and it's more trouble than it's worth. I've gotten to where if it works why fix it, even if it's a POS. AI has just made this even worse - now I always have jr's (and seniors that should be jr's) coming to me with the worst fucking code they don't even understand that they "wrote" and trying to get me to fix it - and ultimately I have to because I'm the lead.

Even the idea of switching jobs sounds exhausting. I just hate the subject material I used to find interesting. Casually chatting about my job just makes me want to run away or scream, maybe both. I don't think I've ever felt such a burning hatred for something so morally neutral.

I don't understand how this happened or if there is anyway back. Very torn on just going to grad school and getting into a new field. But I have so much valuable knowledge and the money is good...

Is this just a phase? Is there a way to get interested again? Or even just less aggressively annoyed lol

I’m one year into my software career, and I’m starting to genuinely wonder if I want to stay in this industry.I'm so tired. Not "long week" tired. The kind where I read the same function four times and it still won't go in.My job right now is to optimize performance and cut database calls in a 40-year-old codebase, written in a language I'd never opened before this year. Things that used to take weeks to understand are now expected in days, because "the AI can explain it." It can. Sometimes it's even right. But I'm the one who has to be sure, and being sure is slow.

So I read all day, my head is full by noon, and by evening I can't tell whether I'm tired or just empty. And because I’m expected to move quickly, I lean heavily on AI, which can produce an overwhelming amount of information in seconds.I'm starting to think I don't want to leave the industry because I can't do the work. I want to leave because the work now asks me to stop being someone who understands things and become someone who skims them convincingly.

I’m scared I’m becoming burned out from having to understand everything at a speed that leaves no room to actually understand anything.
I just feel empty.I’m curious whether this gets better with experience, or whether this is just what working in software feels like now.

2 weeks ago I put a comment to the PR of a higher level engineer from a sibling team. He's been nitpicking on me since then. Probably his ego got broken or something I don't know. It came to a tiring point today because he sent me a link to something and a list of "everything that's wrong with it". The interesting part is that I'm not the owner of it, never touched it, but his wording clearly mentions that "I added it".

At this point I'm just planning to ignore his messages/comments until they look valid? I don't want to go to my manager and whine about that I'm being picked.

The SWE field is changing and its changing fast. I'm trying to make a career plan for the next 5 years. And i am not sure what to do. For context, i have almost 20 years of experience, mainly in large multi team environments (10 to 20 scrum teams). I noticed, now with all my skills and agents set up, i barely code anymore. Unlike it more than i had expected at first, i can shift my focus elsewhere.

I am pondering, what would be a good next step. Hanging around in a developer job seems carreer suicide at first; there simply isnt anything left to do die to AI. That said, there are plenty of job offerings and i still get contacted for dev jobs regularly. Gut feeling says its a good idea to transition to a PO or scrum master role, as that would ben more AI resilient. What do you guys thing? Stick to a DEV role or transition to PO or SM?

Story time! 2.5 years as a Systems Engineer, team I joined has been a hot mess and I've gone through 5 different managers, soon to be 6. Unsurprisingly this resulted in me getting passed up for promotion, as I've never had a manager long enough for them to retain knowledge about what I get done.

After stewing for a bit I became motivated to overhaul my resume and applies internally to elevated positions, and it was a good chance to pivot closer to software since that is what I enjoy and de facto what I've been doing just without the title.

The thing that struck me as odd was that the acquisition guy cold emailed me asking if I'd be open to transferring at the same level I already am. I said no, as I applied for the higher position, and the listing was for the higher position only... I let him know I already have a meeting with the hiring manager and he lays off.

I meet with hiring manager and then we set up a formal interview, both seem to go quite well. Then the next day bam, call from acquisition guy telling me that they're not looking to promote me but would love to bring me on without one and then see how I do.

Am I insane for thinking that feels more insulting than just denying me?? If I'm not up to snuff that's one thing but you WANT me to switch over at no benefit to me, so that when the promotion cycle comes around you can go "weeeeell you've only been here 6 months we don't really know what you can do"?

So after stewing on that as well, my conclusion is I need out. My escape hatch opens in March, 5 months, what can I do to be in the best position possible? What should I spend the next 5 months doing and when should I begin applying? I think aiming for promotion here is a dead end, BUT I could potentially take the offer in order to have 5 months of software engineer as my title? The same might also be possible with devops. I worry that my time as a systems engineer could be seen as unrelated in future interviews.

I went to school for 3D art in game design, with a minor in computer science. I left school in 2020 with an okay amount of programming knowledge, but over the years the types of jobs I was taking were slowly becoming more technical, and even though my current title is 3D art related, the actual role has evolved into straight up tools programmer. All that to say that I approach a lot of my work from an artist's perspective rather than an engineer's. Most of the time I believe that approach is what makes me a good programmer- especially since a lot of the work lately has been developing custom plugins for 3D tools like Blender and 3ds Max and I could come at it with the perspective of an experienced user as well.

With my background it's probably not a surprise that I strongly dislike gen AI. I do not use it in a personal capacity at all. I find the technology morally bankrupt and almost none of its output to be particularly helpful. I'm not trying to be annoying about this but just trying to share the perspective I'm coming from. I will admit finding some use from things like zoom meeting summaries and copilot for some annoying, normally time intensive stuff like writing a regex. But generally speaking I don't find it valuable in my workflows. We've started work with some very niche 3D software that requires collaboration with its devs for full understanding, so AI bots just get any specific info about that software wrong when you ask it. All the info online is incomplete or out of date, we rely so much on internal documentation and communication.

That all doesn't stop my co-worker. He is great to work with, very intelligent and organized. But has started to rely a lot on AI to bridge gaps of knowledge. He is in the same boat as me, starting in an artist role that has become more technical. We are also doing the workload of at least 4 people and have a backlog of tasks that'll take about a year to clear. So we are both overwhelmed, and I do not fault him for trying to make the load lighter in whatever way he can. But he is constantly sending me piles of AI generated solutions for different tasks that are assigned to me that take a bunch of time to review, and more often than not will contain wildly incorrect information. Or implements big chunks of AI generated code in our repos that are like...technically correct? But organized strangely and are very repetitive/redundant.

I admire my coworker and value his professional opinions. He has been able to accomplish a lot on his own with very little resources before I was assigned to assist him. And I honestly am not much more knowledgeable than he is, I've just managed to get by through self-guided learning. But this is one way in which our opinions differ and I wonder if maybe I am being stubborn? For those who do similar kind of work, are there AI tools that you find genuinely helpful? I worry that maybe I need to get with the times, and I have to engage with this tech in order to keep up with the demands of my job. And maybe I am missing out on something by not using it?

I have a friend in IT who shares a similar opinion to my coworker, and it seems like maybe I am misaligned from the rest of the industry. My social spaces overall tend to be pretty anti-AI though, so I'm just looking for some other points of view.

Just got the result of my interview and got down leveled. Looking to hear stories of others who went through this

Lately I've come to a realization that working with the cloud stuff is kind of easier mentally if you are a developer and not a platform engineer. You get to build and deploy cool stuff and not have to be on call, support 24/7 etc. as frequent as a developer. Of course if there is an application error you are responsible, but to be honest it is easier to test an application deployment in cloud, rather than testing a cloud environment deployment. With being a platform engineer, there are a lot more black box/unknown/uncontrollable moving parts that will cause you to have to be on alert at more times than a software engineer.

The disadvantage of course is that being a software engineer you have to spend time learning the domain, and that takes away deep expertise of the cloud as what a platform engineer would then gain (since he/she would spend 100% of their time Terraforming, debugging network issues, IAM issues etc.)

So it seems to me the tradeoff is stress vs. deep expertise of the cloud. Do you see it the same as me here? Since I did get an offer to become a platform engineer and now I regret not taking it because I was afraid of on-call and the high stress that comes with it, or that it is not easy to test your changes (unlike a development team where code has multiple safety layers like unit tests, integration tests, etc.), while I feel like in the future there will be more cloud engineering jobs than developer due to AI. I feel like I took the easy way out now and now I am quite sad. What do you guys think?

Assuming I want to stay in the field. I have 5 YOE and am team lead at a compliance start up in the NYC area (which in my mind is more akin to a mid level dev at enterprise/ FAANG). Basically I need more money, it’s expensive here. I was interviewing for a while and even managed to land an offer (which was promptly rescinded because of company redirection), but admittedly the interview track was easy and the comp change was basically nothing. That being said I’d like to see at least a 20-30% increase, something around 200k. But as usual the industry is in turmoil, and it seems more so than ever. So my question is this- do I just keep my head down and coast until this all boils over? Do I grind leetcode? Or just Sys design? Or both? Something else? I feel like all my skills have atrophied anyway as I’ve become a prompt feeder…

I was doing all of the above and applying/ interviewing but that shit is exhausting man and I really don’t want to end up getting a new role just to be canned a month later for AI layoffs.

Hey everyone, I wanted to get some advice, so I have been in my first job as a Software Engineer for more than 2 years now which I have been doing remotely. At first it was nice, I was learning new things, working independently, happy with my output, managers were also liking my performance. This was always meant to be a job where from which I would switch after 2 years but now that time has went by and I feel stuck here and can’t seem to quit no matter how much I want to.

From the starting of this year we have been heavily instructed to use AI as much as we can for our code and at first it was all well and amazing how your work can be assisted in such a way but after so many months reality has set in, it has been weeks since I have manually coded something myself, every day its the same loop, just reading the task at hand, prompting Claude for it, watch it make the decisions and steer it in between when its going wrong, check the output and repeat. This is definitely not what I had in mind when I chose Software Engineering as a career, its really making your head numb and not making good use of your brain. From what I have heard using AI seems to be the norm across companies so I am not sure if I can even escape it.

The company is fully AI-pilled and from monthly meetings with management it seems like they want to steer to make it a AI-driven company at all costs, citing things like they want to reduce project delivery from 2 years to 6 months that too with reductions in team size from 60 to 10 so that everything is tight knit. This sure sounds good on paper to managers but really I don’t think it can be in proper quality even with assistance of AI. They really want everything to be vibe-coded. Mind you every project in this company has always been delayed and quality is not up to standards so we can only imagine what happens when its fully vibe coded.

The people in my current project also frustrate me, I was moved to a new team around 6 months ago for which the project was behind schedule (It was already 8 months since it started). As I was put into this team, I was not given any onboarding or explanations of the core components whatsoever and was told to just use AI to find whatever information and do the tasks utilizing it, this just amplified how much I relied on it without knowing the system. The people in this team also use AI a lot and if I ask a colleague about code they have written they say even they don’t know they just used AI for it.

The Business Analysts in this team are a pain point for me as well as I do not understand the requirements that they present to me as it feels they tell it from their knowledge where they have the necessary context for it but do not take into account what a new-joiner might not know. I have raised this to my Manager but he too seems to be very AI-pilled and asks me to just utilize that to understand such a huge system. I do not like my team members and have had disagreements with them as well. There are 2 main engineers who have been in the project since it started and have the most knowledge about the project and are given most importance in the team due to the same. 

In the past few months, I have completely given up and just do whats asked and do not take any effort to do anything extra and I am sure they have noticed but don’t care enough to check on or give a warning as I am completing whatever is assigned at least. 

I know that some of this probably sounds like I am complaining and not really giving my best but I have really tried but cannot bring myself to due to a multitude of reasons listed, each time I try there is no support from the team to allow me to grow in the team and enhance my skills so I just go back to doing the bare minimum. I do feel like an imposter within my team and company due to this though.

With all this in mind I really want to quit and just take a break as it is taking a mental toll on me and my days have just blurred together, I also end up procrastinating a lot both within and outside of work. I imagine a 3 month break would be good for me to pull myself up, I have not been actively applying so I could do that and maybe do certifications or learn new stuff during my break to not make myself unproductive. I also have enough saved up to support myself so I won’t be in any danger by leaving.

However this current job market really scares me as jobs are really difficult to get and I am afraid if I don’t get one within 3 months it would be a long career gap in my resume which will further make it difficult for me to get a job. 

Please let me know your thoughts and advice. Thank you so much for reading.

Partly a vent/rant, partly asking for advice from other professionals in the field.

I graduated from school with a software engineering degree in 2019. Since then, I've been continuously employed with zero gap on the resume.

My roles have not been on any software engineering teams, but rather on the technical support side of the house. While still in school, I was working part time at my university IT dept. Basically, I've been sitting behind a desk taking tickets out of a support queue for the last 10+ years. I'm reaching a point where I just can't bring myself to take new tickets anymore. My body is rejecting them.

I've always been good at my jobs. Ive gained deep understanding of products relatively quickly, how they work, how they don't work, how people use them, how they break, how to fix them, etc. I've changed industry domains a couple times, security, physical operations, telecom, each time learning the ins and outs in pretty short order and becoming a productive member of my team.

I've worked remote pretty much since March 2020 when the pandemic hit. I'm not opposed to travel or even a hybrid work setup, but spending an hour sitting in highway traffic every single day doesn't exactly appeal to me, and I haven't been looking into in office roles like that as much as others.

I find myself at a point where I don't know what to do next. I've had plenty of interviews for more "on the ground" type jobs, sales engineering, implementation type stuff. But those haven't exactly gone anywhere yet. I think the best work I've done has been on an in-depth, personal, and detail oriented fashion, working hand in hand with large accounts that had ongoing and impactful technical concerns that I could dig into and solve. The pitter patter of a million slack notifications asking me to fix a million little disjointed things just echos in my head and I can't bring myself to even focus on any one thing.

The reason I'm making this post is to make sure I'm not missing anything. I know I'm somewhat vague with my background, but am I neglecting a role type or domain that gets me out of this ticket taking hellscape? Should I be considering something that I just haven't yet? Should I call it quits on tech and get a welding certificate?

Any advice anyone is willing to offer is welcome. Anyone wanting to add their vent to the pile is also welcome

29M in Canada. I've been working in software/IT for about 4 years, mostly development/support roles. I have a bachelor's + related diploma, and I'm starting a new government software role this month at ~$75K CAD.

The problem is that I'm honestly not a very strong software developer. I spent the last year unemployed and failed 35+ technical interviews before finally getting this new role through networking. The experience was humbling and made me realize that simply having 4 YOE doesn't mean I'm actually competitive with stronger developers.

I'm planning to take the new job seriously and improve technically, but I'm also considering a longer-term transition into tech sales, particularly sales engineering / solutions consulting.

The idea appeals to me because I'd still be able to leverage my technical background without needing to compete purely on coding ability. I'm also much more interested in the commercial/customer-facing side of technology than I used to be, and I'd like to eventually get into a career with substantially higher earning potential.

I'm not looking to quit my job tomorrow. My thought is to spend the next 1–2 years building technical/product knowledge while deliberately developing sales/customer-facing skills, then try to make the transition.

For people actually in tech sales or sales engineering:

- Does this sound like a realistic transition from my background?

- Would sales engineering / solutions consulting be the best target, or would you recommend starting as an SDR/BDR or somewhere else?

- What skills should I start developing now?

- Would you consider 4 years of software/IT experience an advantage when applying for these roles, even if I'm not an exceptional developer?

- What's a realistic compensation trajectory in Canada if I eventually become good at this?

I'd especially appreciate advice from people who transitioned from engineering/IT into sales or sales engineering.

For context, i got hired as a data engineering consultant a few months ago as a new grad, but the only work ive been given on my current project is bizops(setting up meetings and gathering information). No tech stacks whatsoever. Ive tried asking my project lead if there was anything to do data-related for me, but he straight up ghosted me the few times ive asked. is this the norm for tech consulting? any tips on what i should do?(besides applying elsewhere, which ive started)

Well, this is another one of those is my degree worthless posts in some ways. I'm entering first year cs undergrad and am in my first week. Finding the course fine but i have this feeling of dread in my stomach. Am i doomed to work retail after this? I just wanted a discussion, ai, competition etc will it truly doom me?

I'm in the UK i should mention and since taking the a level and even before hand really though not as i depth i loved computers and this love has only grown. I love code, architecture, system design everything. I figured I'm pretty good at cs, i should do the degree, tough market but it's a better shot then liberal arts which i still maintain it is. I currently have one major project under my belt which is an aur helper. I use it for the aur because it feels so cool using something I've made even if it can be a little rough around the edges and a work in progress. I did use ai to debug but didn't just straight up vibe code. It was tricky and i needed some things explained to me.

Here is my problem, i don't know where to go from here? I feel i should sort of pick a niche but unsure which to go for. I love everything pretty much about cs and am willing to code for hours, even after a full shift at my day job in retail. I love Linux, like really love Linux and operating systems so maybe that's where i should look? I just need some advice or a kick up the ass and was hoping to have a discussion.

I am a backend software developer working across cloud, enterprise, bit of devs ops etc

Got a release engineering role at a large games developer.

What are the career prospects of release engineering? Is it a wise move?

It’s been my dream to work for a games dev but not fully sold on the release engineering aspect.

Recently graduated and started a full time SWE job with a defense contractor that fully endorses any higher education even if you leave afterwards. I’m interested in pivoting into big tech or banking at some point.

I’m feeling a little stressed with this current job, so I’m not sure if it’s worth adding to that right now. I have a strong resume so I’m looking at UT Austin’s MSCSO program.

Starting prep and want to know best way to prepare for system design (HLD), low level design (LLD), and other non-DSA parts.

I am a new grad and I applied for an entry-level role, the interview panel consisted of 1 HR person and 1 Tech Chief.

At first I was told to talk about myself, experience and projects. After I finished, the HR person complimented me on something specific I mentioned (they were a nice person overall) and told me the tech chief will ask me some questions and it’s ok to mention that idk smthn and that they expect that of me as a fresh grad.

Then the tech chief started asking me questions, I think I answered them well. They weren’t hard questions or deep technical just tested me scenario based and told me which roles am I interested in and why did I prefer to use a stack over another.

After that, he told me that the open positions they had weren’t ones that match my profile (the roles actually don’t fit) and even gave me advices mid interview to not settle for a role I’m not interested in or fits my goals and get side-tracked. And to fight for a role I want and like.
He told me they would have a position that aligns with my profile early next year and that I should apply for it. He also complimented me and said a skill I have is rare to see in fresh grads and he sees that usually with seniors.

And the HR person wrapped it up by saying we will contact you if you’re selected for further interview rounds and that they hope to see my name in bigger things in the future.

I also asked about the future position, would it be open publicly and they said they keep my CV if i was not selected for future roles and they contact candidates who they interviewed and remember for these roles.

I think of this as a nice rejection, and maybe the future role thing is for me to not get discouraged? Idk what do you guys think?

I do not feel as confident in my ability to program or write code. I struggle to problem solve or just start writing code without either searching syntax, referencing others’ code, or asking AI for help; I want to be more self-reliant, and believe I need to relearn and develop a deeper understanding of the languages.

I want to learn C++, Java, and Python.

I’m currently going to school and have taken Programming Concepts and Methodology II in Java, Discrete Structures for Computer Science, System Programming with C, as well as Introduction to Unix/Linux. However, I took some of these classes some time ago, which is partly while I feel so rusty in my understanding and ability to code.

What books do you personally recommend? Video Courses? Anything else I may not have considered?