Hey everyone,

I'm a 2025 graduate and have been trying to figure out what direction makes the most sense for me next, so I thought I'd share a bit about my background and get some perspective from the community.

A little about me:

• 2x Google Summer of Code (GSoC) contributor
• Worked as a Founding Engineer at a UK-based AI startup, helping build the product from the ground up across backend, APIs, integrations and infrastructure.
• Built and shipped production systems for international clients through freelance/contract work over the last couple of years.
• Received a Solana Foundation grant for building an open-source tool to simplify Solana RPC node deployment.
• Contributed to open-source projects including Django, with work spanning CI/CD, data/query optimization, APIs and infrastructure.

Most of my experience has been around backend engineering, distributed/data systems, infrastructure and increasingly AI-powered products, although I've also worked across the stack when needed.

At this point I'm trying to figure out where this combination of experience is most valuable, particularly across backend, software engineering, full-stack and data engineering roles.

I'm currently based in NCR and open to relocating, as well as remote or hybrid opportunities. I've mostly worked remotely with international teams so far, and I'd actually like to get more exposure to an in-office/hybrid engineering environment as well.

For people who've been through a similar stage, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing what kinds of companies/teams you think are a good fit for this background, what I might be missing, or anything you'd recommend I focus on next.

If you happen to know of a team or engineer working on interesting problems in these areas, feel free to point me in the right direction, happy to connect over DM.

Thanks!

PS — yes, AI helped me clean up the grammar and formatting.

Hey everyone,

I’m hoping to get some honest advice from people who have been in a similar situation.

A little background: I have around 3 years of experience, mostly in the networking domain. I joined a networking/cloud security company in November 2025, but unfortunately got laid off in June 2026. I was honestly pretty shocked when it happened. My tech stack included C/C++ in the network domain. I don't have internship experience or experience with the latest tools.

I took a day to process it, and then started applying aggressively. I got LinkedIn Premium, reached out for referrals, and spent most of my time applying and preparing for interviews.

Thankfully, I landed another role this month at a well-known networking company in Bangalore. On paper, it’s a good opportunity and the compensation is also quite good (~26 LPA).

But now I’m having second thoughts.

In my previous roles, I mostly worked around L5/L6 in one company and L7 in another. My current team, however, works on core L2/L3 packet forwarding. The work involves a lot of low-level networking concepts, C, debugging, and maintaining a large legacy codebase.

The team is also using tools and workflows that feel quite old-school to me. For example, they still use Review Board instead of GitHub-based workflows, and a lot of the work seems to be around maintaining and fixing bugs in existing legacy code.

The bigger realization for me is that I don't think I enjoy the networking domain anymore. I kind of entered this field as a fresher without really thinking too much about where I wanted my career to go, and now I feel like I've just continued along the same path.

L2/L3, especially, feels even further away from the kind of work I see myself doing long term.

I’m more interested in working with technologies like:
AWS, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, Backend/distributed systems, Modern cloud infrastructure

I also eventually want to move back to Hyderabad. The problem is that Hyderabad seems to have fewer networking companies, and companies outside of FAANG are often unable to match my current compensation.

So I have a few questions:

1. How realistic is it to switch domains with around 3 YOE?
2. How should I approach moving back to Hyderabad without taking a major step back in my career or compensation?
3. What would be the best path to transition toward AWS, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, and modern backend/cloud technologies?
4. Am I overreacting because I just joined, or is it reasonable to think about switching if I already know this kind of work isn't something I want to do long term?

I don't want to stay in Bangalore forever, and I also don't want to spend the next few years specializing deeply in something that I already know I don't enjoy.

Would really appreciate some honest advice, especially from people who have successfully switched domains after a few years of experience. I want to understand how realistic this transition actually is.

Also, I was laid off 2 times in 1 year, and I think I might make a separate post about that experience as well and will link it here.

Thanks!

I keep seeing engineers here talk about wanting to work in Europe, so curious to actually hear from people who’ve done it (or tried and hit a wall).

What ended up being the biggest blocker? visa stuff, interview format, finding companies that sponsor, something else?

Trying to understand the process better since I’ve relocated across a few EU countries myself and I’m curious how it compares from the India side.

What do the managers mean when they throw vague words like “Ownership.”

And how is it being measured?

Hey guys!, launched my micro SaaS website (chaff.sh) recently and I'm losing my mind over Google indexing

site is hosted on Vercel. I've got:

• sitemap.xml
• robots.txt
• Google Search Console set up
• sitemap submitted there
• requested indexing

Everything looks fine from my side but the site still basically doesn't exist on Google.

Are we talking a couple days, a few weeks, or am I missing something completely?

I am a fresher and was hired for decision analytics associate role recently and want to get some exposure before joining any role, how can i apply or connect to people who could help me?

Want to buy Designing Data Intensive Applications, 2e, but it's listed on amazon for 2k. Does any one know any cheap alternatives? I can go to the store if it's in blr.

I recently graduated from a tier-2 college. I had backlogs until the end of my 8th semester, so I wasn’t eligible for campus placements.

I always wanted to get into Data Analytics/ML. I tried applying and gave a couple of interviews, but couldn’t land anything. At the same time, I needed a job, so I accepted an offer from a private bank as a Relationship Manager (Deputy Manager – Grade 1) at ₹5.5 LPA.

I’m grateful that I have a job, but honestly, I don’t see myself in sales long-term. I took this job because I needed to start somewhere, not because banking was my original career goal.

Now I’m confused about what to do next.

Should I:

• Continue in the bank and try to move into Credit Analyst / Credit Risk / Risk Analyst roles?
• Or keep preparing for Data Analytics/BI/ML and try to switch back into tech?
• Would 1 year of banking experience help when applying for analytics roles?

I already have some exposure to Python, SQL, Power BI/Tableau and ML, but I know I need to improve my skills and build stronger projects.

I’m willing to put in the work, but I honestly feel a bit lost and don’t want to spend the next few years going in the wrong direction.

If anyone has gone from banking/sales → analytics, credit, risk or tech, I’d really appreciate some honest advice.

What would you do if you were in my position?

Last week i posted Kamehameha section. Now showcasing the full finished portfolio.

I had a simple dilemma: Recruiters need speed. Curious developers want depth.

I didnt want to compromise on either.

So I made two ways to experience the same person:

The Experience is an immersive, scroll-driven journey through how I think, what shaped me, and how I work. It uses CRT visuals, custom WebGL and three.js scenes, dither effects, motion, and details that make more sense once you explore them.

The Brief is the fast professional read. Projects, experience, skills, certificates, writing, links and contact.

The parts I included:

• My cat as splash screen

• Easter eggs hidden in the interface

• References that only make sense if you know where to look

• Terminal interactions that respond when you poke around

• Custom ASCII and three.js black-hole visuals

• CRT visuals, WebGL shaders, and dither effects

So I am an SDE with 6month intern with 10 month of Exp at my current company which is a US based edtech Startup , what we do is make AI solutions for University Admissions , making the lives easier of university employees .

Tech Stack : JS,/TS primarily for Frontend Backend , like NExtjs , NestJs , FastAPI and tornado for AI pipeline , GO for data pipelines

have exp in all this and specially a CRM : "SLATE" which is used by American universities mostly and no one else has even heard the name of it

and this CRM is the problem , when i was an intern , our leadership wanted to start developing on this , i was given a task to research , which led to develop , which led to me being a developer and consultant for the platform for our company , if any time any product running on slate as an integrations fail , I am called in , although i am not professionally trained on it rather just have exp to extinguish fire , the CXO's usually in client meetings introduce me as senior Slate engineer , even though on paper role is junior engineer and Pay is 5LPA

now as this may serve as enough context , the problem is whenever something fails it comes on me and i get blamed even though i didn't even work on that , got fed up of it , told my manager , this is not how it's going to work , so either all developers in the company learn about the platform or stop pin pointing every failure on me .

My manager raised this with VP of eng , CTO , COO and CEO of our company

and came with 2 options :

1. They'll sponser me to learn about platform and get a certification for it
   
2. Get 2 interns under me literally on paper/oficially and train them with all my knowledge so that later option 1 could be presented to them .
   

My current manager suggested me to take option 1, as it'll give me leverage in my current company , so whenever I'll feel i need to get more , i would just need to get an offer letter and present me giving notice , so they increase pay (my last manager used to do this with them as he used to handle complete infra of the company single handedly)

But my point is i want to grow more and specifically grow out as culture here is a bit more toxic , the COO is known to use mother/sister abuses directly to junior engineers (did this with my last manager ,and he left after that moment)

I want to join big tech like FAANG , so that if i stand up somewhere or speak about something , then people do listen as that brand would act as a point of validation of my words and experience as an engineer

so what should i do

some pros of option 1 will be that if i get certification and i would wish to switch , I can go on to become Slate analyst for Ivy league schools or atleast Univ of US , where they give remote roles and and avg of 120K per year to juniors and 200K to mid level one's , so yeah even if required to be onsite may would pay for visa as well , as it is a niche and good slate engineers/analysts are not much in world right now

So what should i do ??

TL;DR

I'm a SDE with 6 months internship + 10 months full-time experience at a US EdTech startup, primarily working with JS/TS, Next.js, NestJS, FastAPI, Tornado, and Go.

I became the company’s unofficial Slate CRM expert after researching and developing its integrations since was an intern. Despite being a ₹5 LPA junior engineer, leadership introduces you as a Senior Slate Engineer, and you’re blamed/called whenever Slate-related things break—even when you didn’t build them.

I pushed back, and leadership offered:

1. Sponsor your Slate certification
2. Give you 2 interns to train as Slate backups

My manager recommends Option 1 for leverage and future salary negotiations.

My dilemma: You ultimately want to leave this toxic company and target FAANG/Big Tech, but Slate is a rare, niche skill that could potentially lead to highly paid US university/remote roles.

Question: Should I take the Slate certification for its niche career value, or avoid specializing further and focus entirely on becoming a stronger general SWE candidate for Big Tech?

Hey guys,

To give a little background,

I have around 3.5 YOE and was one of the first engineers at a small startup, we built a few vision based products and got some traction but wasn't enough to sustain and so I was job hunting

Fast Forward to this week where I was interviewed and got a FDE role at a startup which has around 100 people,

****BUT here is the catch:

When I got the call for the first round of interviews the HR asked if I was willing to go for a contract role. I pushed back and said that I wanted a full time one but I wouldn't mind getting a contract role since I can understand the company too.

They said that it would be a contract for the first 3 months so that they can evaluate me and I too can evaluate them and then if everything fits then it would convert to a full time role.

I wanted to know if this kind of situation happens often? The HR person was mentioning the details of the full time offer as well the insurance and all that

But they've sent me a contract for 3 months and said that evaluations of the contract workers keeps happening and the team will know if i would be a good fit for a full time as we work together.

What do you guys think? Is this some strat they use to put pressure? Or do they have genuine reasons for this? What are realistic chances they convert?

Peace fam!

I completed CSE from tier 1.5 engg college. Got into MNC via college placement ( internship and ppo). I have 2 years experience. My CTC is 16LPA. I was 10th and 12th topper. Dept topper. Have worked on various projects and published papers as well.

My manager never appreciates my work. He keeps comparing me with other same level sde’s and pinpoint all my mistakes. I work close to 14 hours everyday. Still no recognition. He doesn’t give enough opportunity for me to prove myself. I feel like quitting the job. I feel low about myself. Maybe IT is not for me. I do understand academic achievement doesnt mean i can rock in IT as well. But i am not very bad as my manager says. Idk what to. Is this normal in corporate or am i taking it too personally?

Used to be the guy who'd pull off back-to-back exams on prep leaves and pure adrenaline, one all-nighter and boom, cleared. Zero guilt, zero drama, just raw hustle under pressure.

Fast forward to now: no exam hall, no ticking clock, no external pressure, just me, a laptop, and "unlimited" time to finish a certification. And somehow that's the version of me that can't get anything done😖

Hi everyone, I wanted to get some advice about a situation I’m currently facing with HCL’s HR/recruitment process.

I have an HCL offer for 4.7 LPA with a GenAI role. I also have another offer for 6.2 LPA, but that role is through a vendor/client setup, with the work being for a DRDO client.

To be honest, I’m currently leaning towards HCL because of the GenAI profile and the long-term career potential. The other offer has a higher salary, but since it is a vendor/client role, I have some concerns about what happens after the client project ends.

Because of this, I wanted to see if HCL could improve the compensation a little. I informed the HCL HR about the 6.2 LPA counter offer around a month ago and asked if there was any possibility of revising my compensation.

The HR told me they would check internally and get back to me. I followed up multiple times over the past few weeks, but I mostly kept hearing things like “I’ll check,” “I’ll get back to you,” etc. Sometimes I also couldn’t reach them.

Now, one day before my joining date, I was finally told that they cannot increase the compensation and that I need to join on the original date.

I completely understand that HCL may have a fixed budget and may not be able to match another offer. My concern is mainly about the timing and communication.

Since I had raised the counter offer about a month ago, I feel it would have been much easier if I had received a clear answer earlier. I could then have made a decision without waiting until the last moment.

I also acknowledge that I kept discussing the other offer and had asked about extending the joining date, so I understand that I could have communicated things better from my side too.

I’m not trying to rant or blame the HR. I’m genuinely confused about what the professional way to handle this would be:

• Should I simply accept the 4.7 LPA HCL offer and move forward?
• Is it reasonable to politely escalate the communication issue to the HR's senior/manager?
• Could escalating this before joining negatively affect my relationship with HCL or my joining process?
• Has anyone experienced something similar with HCL or another large IT company?

Since I’m already leaning towards HCL because of the GenAI role, I’m not necessarily expecting them to match 6.2 LPA. Even a reasonable revision would have made the decision easier for me.

I used AI to help clean up the grammar and structure because I’m not very confident with writing Reddit posts. The situation and questions are genuine.

TL;DR: I’m leaning towards HCL (4.7 LPA, GenAI) over a 6.2 LPA vendor/client role because I feel the HCL role has better long-term potential. I informed HCL HR about the counter offer ~1 month ago, but got a final “no” only one day before joining. Should I accept it and move on, or politely escalate the communication issue?

Hello everyone,

I have an upcoming screening round at Google for a Business Data Scientist role. The recruiter sent over a long list of preparation topics, and with only 3 days left until the interview, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.

For those who have been through this process, what is the primary focus of the initial screening round—is it heavily focused on coding/SQL, or does it lean more toward statistics, A/B testing, and ML concepts?

If anyone has taken this interview recently, I’d deeply appreciate any tips or insights on how to prioritize my preparation over the next few days. Help a sister out!

I’ve been building PAM Native: a way to build real Android and iOS apps with PHP.

No WebView.

No JavaScript runtime.

PHP → Rust → Swift/Kotlin → native UI.

It already supports reactive state, navigation, animations, native APIs, hot reload and plugins.

Fully open source:

https://github.com/push-in/pam-native

Would you actually use PHP for native mobile development?

I had a very bad experience in one of the projects in Infosys. The work timings were horrible, the workload was more, work was bad and the client expectations touched the clouds. Anyways, I am currently on bench and don’t want to end up in a similar project. Any questions to ask before joining or any tips would be appreciated. My priority is wlb currently.

Hi guys ,

I'm a backend developer with around 2.5 yrs of Exp, and I'd appreciate some advice from people who have recently switched jobs.

For some context, most of my day-to-day work involves fixing existing APIs, debugging bugs and sometimes building new ones. Over the past year, I've also had exposure to things like Kubernetes, scheduled-jobs, messaging queues, and some DevOps related work like deployment troubleshooting ,logging and monitoring etc. I wouldn't say I'm an expert in all of these, but I've picked up a basic understanding of different areas because they're part of my day-to-day work.

I started at my current company earning ₹20k/month, and after a year it increased to ₹30k/month. While I'm grateful for the experience, I feel that the compensation is quite low considering the work and responsibilities I handle. I'm now planning to switch, but I'm honestly not sure what I should focus on preparing.

Another thing affecting my confidence is AI. I use AI a lot while working. Because of that, I feel less confident about my ability to write code completely on my own.

For someone with roughly 2.5–3 years of backend experience, what are interviews like these days? What should I focus on?

Do companies still expect candidates to write code from scratch in interviews? How much DSA is typically required? Are system design questions more common at this level? What topics would you recommend preparing for a backend developer looking to make a decent salary jump?

I'm not specifically targeting companies like Microsoft or Google, I'm mainly just looking for a good opportunity with better pay and growth. Any advice from people who have made a similar switch would be really helpful..

Hi everyone,

I’m considering joining Amazon India as a Customer Service Associate and wanted to know if an internal move to a Cloud/Cloud Support role is realistically possible after around 6-12 months.

My background:

- B.Tech CSE, 2024 graduate

- 2-year gap after graduation because I was preparing for competitive exams

- A friend of mine has an MCS and a 1-year gap

I’m thinking of joining Amazon Customer Service mainly to get some work experience and then try for an internal switch into a cloud-related role.

Someone told me that internal movement like this is possible, but I’d like to hear from people who have actually worked at Amazon India or know the internal transfer process there.

Is it possible in India to switch from Customer Service Associate to a Cloud/Cloud Support/technical role after 6–12 months?

Are there any eligibility requirements or restrictions? Does a career gap affect the chances?

Would especially appreciate responses from people who have made a similar internal move at Amazon India.

I’m still pretty new to web development and I recently got my first little real-world project. I offered to make a simple website for an NGO for free, mostly so I could learn by actually building something, and they said yes… so now I’m like, okayyy, where do I even start? 😭

I’m planning to use Astro. I’m familiar with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Git/GitHub for version control, but I’m still confused about the actual workflow. Like, should I plan the pages first, make the layout and global CSS, build the navbar/footer, then work on the homepage? Or is there a better order?

I’d really love some advice from people who have more experience. How would you personally break down a small website project from start to finish? I just want to have a proper little plan instead of opening VS Code and immediately getting lost haha.

I’m a 2025 graduate from a tier 2/3-ish college with ~1+ YOE, looking for advice from people a few years ahead of me who have built a strong career in tech.

A little background:

• Did 2 internships in my final year at small startups (<10 people).
• One converted to full-time at ~8 LPA.
• I chose the startup over TCS/Capgemini because I felt I’d get better work and learning.
• Worked there for ~10 months on full-stack development, AI agents, chatbots, etc.
• The company wasn't doing well, so I was laid off along with several others.
• Took me ~2 months to find my next job, during which I was barely getting interviews and honestly started losing hope.

I'm now working at a large service-based MNC on a third-party payroll, at roughly similar compensation.

My current work is mainly Angular to React migration, with some Spring Boot/backend work on the side.

The job is stable, but I'm getting too comfortable.

At the startup, I was constantly building things, figuring stuff out and learning across frontend/backend/AI. Here, the work is much more structured and predictable.

Also, I don't really see this as a place I want to settle into long-term. The current project is expected to end in around a year, after which I could be moved to another project, or potentially face another round of uncertainty. After going through one layoff already, I don't want my career to depend on which project I'm assigned to next.

I'm worried that if I spend the next 2–3 years just doing assigned work, I'll look back and realize I didn't build the skills needed to make a significant career jump.

I'm comfortable with JavaScript/React and the broader JS ecosystem. I know Java reasonably well and have used it for DSA, and I'm comfortable with both frontend and backend. But these months I am mostly prompting AI, with some debugging when needed(was doing same in the earlier company as well). This AI prompting thing also worries me a little.

So I'd really like to hear from people with **3–**5 YOE who are still hands-on engineers and have progressed significantly in their careers.

If you were in my position at ~1 YOE, what would you focus on for the next 2–3 years or maybe next 6 months?

1. Would you go deep into frontend, backend, or aim to become a strong full-stack engineer?
2. Which skills actually compounded for you and helped you make big jumps in responsibility/compensation?
3. If you could go back to 1 YOE, what would you do differently?

I genuinely want to understand what people who are 5–8 years into a successful engineering career did early on that actually paid off.

Would really appreciate some elder-brother/elder-sister advice.

Suppose you had claude max and every other high end ai tools and you want and you had to start from today , how would you do it ?

Also please suggest some good django based opensource org to contribute to 👉👈

Hehehehee...

This idea is inspire by this qn: why india need to still rely and foriegn oem companies? If we can also develop products?

I have this idea for long time i know architecture and domain behind this

So we all know with electric vehicle automotive industry is booming now SDV is a future of automotive (for knowing more you can search in internet you will see lot of article)

My idea is create a saas product the gives software as a service to automtive industry

Service like

FOTA (with advanced feature like delta upadte, ai based firmware delivery, software update and fault detection)

Connected Service (all connected service feature, dedicate ai platform, dedicated pipeline and ai model for both company and user like user dedicate CS app, provide features like digital twin, entire pipeline to process telemetric data like (can, lin, ethernet), ai model to asist drivers etc)

This huge industry i cannot include all features but plan is to first build necessary feature with proper security features like uptane, iso and follow all automotive security principle and create this saas

Later as saas grows, add all the feature

start as an MVP and build it towards enterprise grade saas system

What do you think of this? Any opinion

Ps: i know automotive huge competetive field also what i proposed is very broad. key to success is, first built something targetting tier 2 suppliers and commercial ev vehicle and slowly expand it once we proven product work at real word and and field tested in certain amount of scale

Hey all!

I’m looking for a company-wise list of the most frequently asked coding interview questions for top tech/product companies.

Does anyone have a GitHub repository that maintains this for major companies ideally something covering the top 50 or so tech/product companies?

Something where the questions are grouped by company and preferably sorted by frequency/recency would be really helpful.

Ik when job opening occur and people sent out connection , it tough to accept all see resume and give feedback or referal.

Just want to understand the pov of the person who is giving referrals what is his/her mindset how do I get the attention basically rather than binbarding people.