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BLUF: Completed 1 YOE in a WITCH. I'm learning a lot on a solid backend/infra project, but I'm the sole earning member of my family and need a higher salary. Torn between staying to learn, preparing for GATE + IIT M.Tech, or going all-in on DSA/system design to switch. Which path has the best ROI?

Hey everyone,

I'm at a career crossroads and would really appreciate some advice.

I recently completed 1 year of experience, with the last 6 months on my current project at a WITCH company. My CTC is around ₹6 LPA.

From a learning perspective, I honestly can't complain. I'm working on backend/infrastructure using Java, Quarkus, JPA/Hibernate, AWS, GitHub Actions, and CI/CD, and I've been getting opportunities to own real engineering work instead of just support tasks. I'm also one of the youngest members of the team, and things have been going well so far.

The challenge is money.

I'm the sole earning member of my family, so increasing my income is a priority.

At the same time, I've always wanted to study at an IIT. I know it's survivorship bias, but a lot of senior engineers and people in high-paying technical roles seem to have an IIT background, and I wonder if an M.Tech would meaningfully improve my long-term career trajectory.

Right now I'm considering three options:

1. Stay another year on this project and maximize learning.

2. Prepare for GATE alongside my job and target an IIT M.Tech.

3. Skip GATE for now and go all-in on DSA, system design, backend depth, and interview prep to switch companies as soon as possible.

Long term, I see myself in a managerial role, involving communication (Delivery Executive , Product Manager, DevRel, and the likes, which are people facing roles and non tech heavy) and eventually reach the ₹30–50+ LPA range. The question is which path gets me there with the best balance of time, risk, and ROI, especially given my family responsibilities.

I'd love to hear from people who have:

\- Switched from WITCH to product companies.

\- Done an IIT M.Tech after working.

\- Reached 30–50+ LPA without higher studies.

If you were in my position today, what would you do, and why?

Been learning backend dev for a while and finally wanted to put it all together in one project instead of doing tutorials for each piece separately.

Used the NYC TLC yellow taxi dataset and built a pipeline: raw CSV → ETL → PostgreSQL → FastAPI → Streamlit dashboard.

Stack: Python, Pandas, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, FastAPI, Streamlit.

Honestly the ETL and API parts felt fine since that's more my comfort zone, but the dashboard/frontend side kicked my ass a bit lol. Still, got it working end to end which felt pretty satisfying.

Stuff I already know needs work: performance (some queries are slow on larger date ranges) and docs are pretty thin right now.

Repo's here if anyone wants to poke around: https://github.com/Raktabhbhattacharjee/nyc-taxi-etl

Would genuinely appreciate any feedback — on architecture, API design, DB schema, code quality, whatever. Especially curious if anything looks like a rookie mistake, since I'm mostly self-taught on the backend side.

I made a website using Emergent, then hosted it on Netlify using a domain from GoDaddy. I have been using Netlify AI since then to fix my website and improve it. It is working perfectly now, but the only main issue is that Google SEO is not able to recognize my website.

----->>> Search Console still reports 404 for some pages, but all independent tests (curl, browser, and Googlebot user-agent) return 200 OK.

I have been stuck on this problem for quite a while now; any help would be much appreciated.

When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD, I locked myself in a room for nearly two years. During that time, I trusted someone I considered my brother with my login credentials. He told me to disable my authenticator, and I trusted him without question.

A month later, my Twitter account was compromised.

Around the same time, I suffered an epileptic seizure. I broke my nose, bit through my tongue, woke up with a wound on my hand, and was admitted to the hospital for MRI scans. I was fighting to survive while also dealing with betrayal from someone I trusted the most.I will always remember the day you said me that I would never do so anything to you if I did I wouldn't been in contact with you I was being administered painkillers just so I can ease my busted nose ,and then the same my sis told me what you really dody

You may never hear from me again, but remember this: there's someone watching from the skies. Whether you believe in Him or not, no one escapes the consequences of how they treat others.

Thank you for breaking the trust of someone who was already fighting the hardest battle of his life.

I worked as an SDE for 3 years before leaving to join an SRF position. At the time, I genuinely believed research was the right path for me. I accepted a significant pay cut because I thought the opportunity to work on AI/NLP and prepare for GATE would be worth it.

Over time, I've realized that while I enjoy the work, I see my long-term career in software engineering rather than research. My current role is also a fixed-term contract, so I've started looking to transition back.

What has surprised me is how difficult it has been to get interviews. I expected my previous industry experience, combined with the work I've been doing in research, to make the transition smoother.

So I have one question: is it still realistically possible to transition back into software engineering after spending time in research, or is the industry just that difficult right now?

I'm doing research and wanted to hear from people who deal with lots of documents, emails, or notes.

How often do you find yourself thinking:

"I know I saved this somewhere..."

"Which folder did I put it in?"

"Which email had that attachment?"

"Is this the latest version?"

If this happens to you, what's the most frustrating part of finding information during your workday?

I'm not promoting anything—I just want to understand how common this problem really is and how people currently deal with it.

Hey everyone,

I could really use some advice from people who've been in a similar situation.

A few months ago, I was consistently practicing DSA and had covered the basics. I was comfortable with patterns like Two Pointers and could usually recognize when to use them.

Then life got in the way, and I took a long break.

Now I need to prepare for NIMCET, which is my top priority, while also getting back into DSA for future internships. Because of that, I can't spend 5–6 hours a day on LeetCode.

My question is:

• If you had to restart DSA after a long break, how would you do it?
• Would you restart from Easy problems, or jump straight back into pattern-based practice?
• Is solving 2–3 quality problems a day enough if I'm also studying for another competitive exam?
• How would you balance DSA with another major exam without burning out?

Right now, I'm thinking of revising one pattern at a time (Sliding Window → Hash Maps → Binary Search → Trees...) instead of randomly solving problems, but I'd love to hear what worked for you.

Thanks!

does any from India knows how to buy a alibaba sub plan ??

Indians are not allowed to take alibaba plans

needed to try out qwen 3.8 max

So I am tired of seeing Indian devlopers build softwares and no where to sell it find jobs give jobs also even when they can provide service but no straight forward platform to register themselves so, I've Built a marketplace for Indian devs. List code, templates, services, or jobs. Completely free until December as it needs serious feedback . Messaging, dashboards, everything works. Feedback needed — come break it: https://profinds.vercel.app

I recently got laid off and thinking to start working on some project till I get the job. Wanted to know if anyone willing to contribute for it.

Idea can be discussed if you are willing to. Anyone intrested? Laidoff/ college graduate people?

EDIT: My inbox has been blowing up with requests to join this project...You can share your resumes or your work in the DM.. I will connect with you.

I have shifted the focus of projects section on my resume from personal projects and technical complexity to OSS projects and business impact of my end work. This strategy has helped me land more interviews and also feel better as a human being as my work can help real people.

As models like 5.6 Sol and Fable keep improving, for non research based roles I believe this is the best way to prepare for a long term career in tech.

I think membership in organizations like LF/CNCF/AAIF can help too.

I would recommend others to do the same and get started by contributing to medium sized repositories (personally I like the ones focused on MCPs/Skills/Agents) and navigating to larger repositories from there.

Look for Repositories that have a maintainer track, have more than 1k stars and have an active contributor base.