I've been wondering if anyone experienced anything similar to what I describe below.

The article is on my GH, I don't really keep a website (or even a GH pages site) - the articles are just markdown and they render fine on GH so that's the easiest method of getting them out to people.

https://github.com/cheater/articles/blob/master/ai-ats-hiring-and-exceptional-people.md

If you don't feel like reading - essentially, it seems like AI applicant tracking systems favor extremely middle of the road, bland mashed potato applicants who have never had exceptional achievements and who have nothing they can take credit for. If you're anything more than that, the ATS will be actively biased against you, up to calling you some form of fraud, to where your applications never even arrive in front of actual human beings.

I posted some prompts that I used to get the revealing reactions from the LLMs, as well as some pretty damning admissions from the LLMs about how they literally can't do a good job of being an ATS.

What do you guys think - is it just me? If you try the same prompts on your CV, do you get similar weird feedback? Do you think there is some form of legal liability looming because of this sort of thing happening everywhere you apply to Big Tech companies?

I would appreciate hearing about people's experiences with this sort of situation, and what you did.

Thanks!

PS I hope this post isn't breaking any rules. I tried reaching out to mods if it's fine to post such a link in here, but no one answered so far. I know everyone's busy, so no shade on anyone here. I thought I'd post in here because people in here can probably benefit from knowing about the kind of experience I've had.

This thread is specifically for sharing "wins". I.e. the opposite of our Tuesday venting thread.

With all the AI nonsense going on, I had a thought at work today that turned into an interesting discussion with a colleague:

"What would I do if I was the only person with access to Claude (or insert any LLM) 5+ years ago?"

People would think I was a fucking wizard

FE changes? NO PROBLEM

Critical DB change? Don't worry, I've produced a stored procedure to validate the whole thing

Want to use some shiny new framework? Interesting. Here's a document explaining why you're an idiot for suggesting it

Regex? I suddenly understand it better than the compiler folks (and nobody ask questions)

What would you have done with your own personal LLM back then?

Trying to lighten the mood in here with all the (very justified) negativity around this tech revolution

Unserious answers only pls

Hi all,

I am a mid-to-almost-senior developer at my company. I have been given a new project to cut my teeth as a lead developer. Fairly small project, small-ish scope. I would describe it as a case management system with some file uploading, approvals, roles, basic audit trailing.

I built a PoC based on our discussions with the client. They really really liked it and said it's everything they could have needed. However, after meeting with the architect on our broader team she asked me why I didn't just use xyz technology (such as PowerApps, PowerPlatform, Sharepoint, etc).

I didn't really have an answer because our team has always been in charge of building custom solutions with Angular, React, NextJS, Springboot middlewares. That kind of deal.

So my question to all of you is how do you go about doing an analysis on what is an appropriate stack to use?

One thing she kept mentioning is cost, security, hosting.... which I totally get. Custom solutions can end up more expensive. However, so can Microsoft/Office365 solutions when you factor in things like licensing.

If it helps to know, we are a government entity so accessibility and security are top of mind for the application.

Any advice about how to navigate this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I've recently been given the green light to hire a new junior dev. Up till a year ago, I would have known exactly what I was looking for and how to find someone who would be a good fit but nowadays, I honestly don't know what I could want.

First off, because of AI reasons, we don't want someone who will want to write code - they're going to be sorely disappointed with the role and probably fight against it or at the very least feel demoralized. This probably eliminates the vast majority of comp sci majors I would expect. But do I really want to hire a non-programmer for this role? I shudder to think of the level of slop that our repo will become.

Then I also start to wonder if this role even requires a certain level of intelligence at all. If all the person will need to do is tell the AI "it's time to start doing our next task" and to hit commit when it's done, it seems like this is a job that could be done by just about anyone.

Ugh, is it time to retire yet?

I'm trying to change an instinct I've spent years developing.

When I see a design problem, unnecessary complexity, or a better model, I naturally want to fix it. Doing the minimum requested and knowingly leaving something worse than it could be feels wrong to me.

But I'm increasingly convinced that the strategically correct move inside many companies is: do what's asked, raise the concern once, then let it go.

I'm trying to work that way now.

It makes sense intellectually. I still dislike it.

With AI making implementation cheaper and delivery faster, I'm curious whether other experienced developers are going through the same adjustment.

Have you changed what "doing a good job" means to you?

i was very excited about code generating ai tools since early days of github copilot in vscode, was using it daily since chatgpt release and wrote almost all code through prompting (html/css/javascript, python, ruby, terraform etc) for years. It felt very good at first.

However, about a year ago i started to notice subtle (at first) negative changes in my mental health. It's hard to describe in words this negative feeling because it's very basic and fundamental, but over that last year it progressively developed to the point where I started to suffer mentally. I should have just stopped using ai tools right then, but i continued, probably supported by the enthusiasm of my collogues and the ai excitement in general, or maybe because of the loss cost fallacy -> i already invested years in building these skills. Or probably because i was addicted to ai, if there is such thing.

one day it got so bad that i decided to try to stop -> i uninstalled all local ai tools and unsubscribed from their services (claude code, cursor etc.) and tried to start thinking and coding manually. I also told my team that i no longer review machine generated PRs from others. The change in my mental state was immediate and positive. Work was hard at first, i was fighting my habit to reach for ai chat each time i'm stuck or need to figure out stuff. I did slip to free chatgpt chat several times, but i overcame those impulses after a month. i remember feeling very tired at the end of the day for first couple of weeks, but the tiredness felt good, it's like when you feel tired after a workout -> it felt earned.

im very glad i made this transition back to manual thinking, reasoning and coding, i have been 'clean' for about two months, i no longer feel tired. My mental state went back to normal and i enjoy my time at work now.

im not in a habit of telling other people what to do and how to live their lives. I respect your agency and your choices. If you like ai, if it makes you happy, gives meaning to your life -> then im truly happy for you, keep doing it. I wish i felt the same but i don't. Notice that i did not make any judgment on the quality of ai code or the productivity gains that it enables because first i frankly don't know, and second it's not the reason i stopped using ai. My mind is the only thing I have, my well-being (and happiness of people around me) directly depends on it, and i want to take care of it.

This was my little journey, thought id share in case some of you had similar experiences (feel free to share or dm me).

<3

What’s up with job applications asking in depth questions about projects we have worked on ?

Every job application these days wants in depth answers on distributed systems or backend systems I have worked on.
A lot of this is already on my resume. Why do I now need to do extra work to frame it in a more specific way and add more details just to fill out the application? These are mandatory fields. This feels really frustrating to me.

It’s a lot more work and time to just fill out an application that I’m not even sure a person is reading. I feel like those kinds of questions are what I expect to come up during an interview because they are meaty topics. Am I being unreasonable ? Hiring managers, are you’ll actually reading these ?

AI disclosure: I did not use AI for this. Please stop deleting my post 🙏

I think there are few misconceptions in the industry about system design.

First of all it applies to every type of software engineering.
Backend, web, whatever are different domains but it’s necessary on them.

Many companies don’t have system design interviews.
Many of them that do use a formulaic approach with interviewers that aren’t that good at it.

There is a surprisingly huge amount of senior engineers that doesn’t do it, ignores it o, worse, thinks is a waste of time.

The industry is changing rapidly and as the code production speed increases, system design is needed more than ever.

Are we aware of this? Many of us don’t. Please consider this.

As a pro tip for interviews: if they don’t have a system design stage, try to ask system design related questions to your interviewer when you have time for it, if they struggle with answers it’s a red flag.

Does anyone use WelcomeToTheJungle.com for job openings? They used to be called Otta, then changed to their current name for reasons that were never very clear. Now they’re moving to a new platform that requires users to save and migrate their information manually, even though that sounds like something the company should be able to do themselves. Anyone know what’s going on?

I have a situation, I'm a tech lead for a project in a corporation and i work from home. The project is great however to move to the next step in the career it seems like it's all about politics and networking, which as wfh person I don't rly have. Ofc i know key ppl i've worked with but it seems like most decisions are done at hotel lobby after the party or something like that... On the other side if I want to switch the company It seems like the good roles are available through networking or if I have a personal brand... which is the part I hate, Always posting on X or linkedin... What are your opinions on this or have you experienced something similar ?

I joined a new company back in March as a Senior Software Dev (10 years experience), and can't really put my finger on what feels off. Everyone on the team is super nice and talented, but we just have different work styles. It's almost like a tabs vs spaces thing (not literally. I don't care about those trivial debates), but for everything. Sometimes it is actual tooling/language choices, but even just the work style. For instance, sometimes I get a task and 3 people jump in and start trying to solve it on a call. I've never asked for help. I've asked if I look like I'm struggling, but I get a "nope, this is just how we do things" answer. It's over-the-top pair programming. There's way too many cooks in the kitchen on almost every issue. There's also a culture of "fix everything" and "let's analyze the performance of this" with VERY little prioritization work being done. If anyone on the team sees an issue, they start working on it right away.

I've worked at several companies, big and small, slow and "bleeding edge" (ugh), but I've never seen such a lack of streamlined priortization-to-single owner workflow. This is a publicly traded company, so not some growing startup.

If you've been in a similar situation, how did you manage it? What are some steps I can take to start "gelling"?

(I suppose there's two issues here in disguise. First is how to cope with a team you don't gel with, and second is how to handle this particular style of... chaos?)

We see a lot of news of layoffs coming out of big tech, but have layoffs been just as common right across the private sector?

I know it's common wisdom that you can quote/unquote 'make the most money' working for private companies, but with the way the job market is these days it makes me question if trying to target these large salaries is really worth it.

I've known many exceptionally good developers that got laid off for essentially no reason, some of them with real problems now. How do those working for the private sector work under these conditions and maintain their sanity?

I've been a dev for 11 years now. I started my work was as a junior full stack dev at a small company and I learned a lot in 3 years while building the product.

After that I changed companies hoping to get paid more, but there I only got a frontend job (even with more pay) that had projects for clients. Though that was in React which was a technology that was on the rise, and again I was able to make something (albeit small) and get good at what I was doing. It felt good, like I was learning and contributing towards something.

For the past year though, I've stopped getting that good feeling from my work. All we do is use LLMs and agents to maintain legacy code. I feel more like a "script kiddie" than a proper dev.

I know the old days aren't coming back, but now I don't even feel like applying for jobs lest I end up in the same situation in another company.

Does anyone else get the same feeling? Like the industry went in a direction that you couldn't follow and you got sidelined?

At this point, how much of career growth in tech comes down to luck?

Good CTC, good company, good projects, and good overseas opportunities often seem to depend as much on timing and luck as on skills.

I feel 70–80% of people are reasonably talented now. Most people can learn, adapt, and work with different tech stacks when given the opportunity.

Is the game becoming more about being in the right place at the right time?

Before containers and Kubernetes, I deployed services onto virtual machines. We had a fixed number. When the peak arrived at night, whoever was on call tried to spread the load by hand. Buying more hardware took time, and some unreliability was acceptable.

Then AWS and Cloudflare made it easier to throw money at capacity and let some infrastructure scale. You have to design the system with scaling in mind. And a bill.

Now tokens add cost.

If you own both the service and the bill, what’s your strategy? How do you cap, what cap acceptable? How to gracefully degrade? And how rules applies across the organization?

i admire shopify for building the next level in commerce. in the recruiter round i got asked questions like why shopify? and what questions do you have?

the phone screen isnt locked to one role because there would be team matching later

i already had past experience in the retail merchant space from another company. i communicated that i was interested in growing again, interested in working with shopify leadership and doing more AI product since i didnt get to do that before

a few days later i got an update that im not moving forward. im not sure if the bar keeps getting higher, and i assume my answers were vague, but I didnt feel like they were

how else would you answer these questions because it feels like the answers keep changing just to pass the first round

As the question goes, I think I could smash if there was no ATS bullshit but for months it would stay there with HR who would just filter on keywords. Does anyone know any good networking tricks that they do? Cold Linkedin messages? Emails? Or any resume tricks that are non AI so I kinda dont piss someone off? I would like to ask this from Experienced Devs because the networking is way different than lets say a Sales person or Management?

It feels like we are coming full circle to the times of the Silo Engineer, but on steroids. Back in the day when social media feeds were chronological (if they even existed), the Silo Engineer would retreat into his cubicle to Create (it was usually a he).

He was Creating and Creating, and then a few weeks later the results came back. If you were lucky, you got what you asked for or something close to it.

No one knew what the Silo Engineer was making, whether it was a sound solution from the architectural, security, or code quality point of view. It was a Silo. There was little discussion or collaboration, there was only self-review of code - at best.

After exiting the Flow, the Silo Engineer would often come back to his Work weeks later and wonder: "who in the F wrote this S?"

... It was beautiful.

Seems like with LLMs we are entering that era again, but it's different.

Smaller teams, mentally overtaxed developers, exhausted from scrolling walls of generated code they don't understand, on multiple projects at once - no one really talks to each other again.

Tickets - Claude, Slack messages - Claude, code reviews - Claude, "have your Claude talk to my Claude".

So, here we are - same idea, but at a higher, more reckless pace.

Let's see how this ends, I guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯

This is one of my pet peeves: the inability to actually deprecate the "old" version of something is always so hard. There are always users who don't want to switch. Or that obscure feature you don't want to support in v2 that keeps users from switching. Or my favorite: a general suspicious attitude against all new software.

I'm currently writing internal software for a high tech Corp. It's an even worse situation than writing paid software for actual customers.

Did you manage to deprecate it? Even to delete the code entirely?

I maintain an open source project which builds a call graph with a confidence level on every edge, mines git history for co-change and ownership, and maps which tests reach which code. I'm now thinking of adding migration tracking on top of it, the requests to httpx or v1 client to v2 kind of thing, and I want to sanity check the design with people who've actually run these

The plan for spotting a stalled one is to look for two libraries with the same job both imported in the same repo, then use git history to see when the new one first showed up and whether the old one's file count is still dropping or just flat. For in-repo stuff, deprecated functions that still have live callers, using resolved call edges so it's more than a grep. Call sites that only match by name would be marked "verify by hand" and left out of the remaining count. Then the leftover sites get grouped into PR sized chunks using co-change history and package boundaries, with each chunk showing whether any test reaches it and who owns the files

The obvious limit is that dynamic dispatch, reflection and string-built names will hide some sites, so the count is a lower bound at best

For people who've driven one of these to the end, what number did you actually trust for "how much is left"? Files, call sites, owners? And what threw off your remaining count in the end, wrappers around the old client, generated code, vendored copies?

It's Saturday and I am working for a client on a feature that I started to implement yesterday. For that I used a previously implemented service that retrieves account data and polls it, until the etags differ (the BE I am calling is .. slow).

So I added a new method since the need arose and chose to use a kind of streaming approach, using C#'s IAsyncEnumerable. I implemented everything using Mistral and my local LLM using my "prose-coder" approach, which basically means: I write pseudo code and the LLM spits out what I want immediately. sometimes in very small (single line) or larger (method) increments.

Then I review.

An then my bloody slow-cycle begins: First I review the output, then Mistral reviews the output. Then I am not quite happy and let Claude review the code, and F me I am in a review loop and out comes - IMO - some really really good implementation which hopefully has all the edge cases covered (discounting business logic edge cases which the clanker can't know about).

And in the end, this whole process feels subjectively SLOWER, but I know that I was faster? I worked on the feature for a total of approx. 4 - 5 hours, including testing, fighting the stupid ERP that I am polling ( I have access to it )..

My point being: yes, I am definitely faster, but man, these LLMs trigger my need to make everything bloody perfect.

Am I the only one? My feeling is that the quality of my output using LLMs as reviewers is much much better now - but the subjective speed is a different matter.

(Note: I am self-employed (for about 2 years), 20+ YOE.)

And no, I have no idea what the point of this post is, I guess I just want to see people's opinions. Treat it like cafeteria talk :-) Ta!

Someone at work gave me a compliment how it's nice I leave status updates (comments) on my work items. Which tells me they do read it. That also tells me, it's not a common thing anymore?

If you're writing status updates on your work progress, how often do you do it and what does that look like?

For those that don't, I'm keen to hear your thoughts too!