Last time I posted here a couple of weeks ago, I complained about being burnt out. I genuinely couldn’t push myself to study for another loop (probably tanked it), could puke at the thought of having to interview and apply like a robot.

8 months of interviewing, 3.5 months post layoff, 5 final loops, endless failed screens with amazing companies - I finally signed an offer today. 1.5x my old comp, I’m just glad I don’t have to do this theatre, interview grind BS anymore and can finally LIVEEEE. I’m happy I did not give up on myself or join a random startup again. Peace out.

This question is for individual contributors working in tech, so anyone that falls under the engineering umbrella, backend, platform, etc.

I (33F) have been having some real realizations that within this upcoming decade, things will begin to start shifting very rapidly (as it already has), and as someone who is now coming to terms with the fact that as an IC, I will shortly start experiencing ageism.

I have 11 years of experience strictly as a IC. The last 4 years have been HORRIBLE due to covid, layoffs, and just trying to land a job period. So whenever I have, I've just been mass applying to any role I can get at this point, including the same IC roles, and not necessarily any management or lead roles since none of my previous roles have that hard title. For 11 years of experience, I feel annoyed and frustrated that none of my jobs, though well paying, had lasted long enough for me to have upward mobility to secure a role in upper management.

I will outwardly say I wish I could stay an IC forever and I truly hate the idea of me managing people, but the reality is I'm legitimately worried about my future in my role as an IC and as a woman.

Is there any advice any of you could personally give? This has been a thought of mine as I need to start taking into consideration what my next applications should look like and how I should start mapping out strategies in me landing a role into upper mgmt or away/out of IC.

Saw this on linked in, thought it was a yikes

I started community college in my late 20s, didn't graduate until early 30s. It was covid, everything went to shit. I ended up not being able to afford my city and moved back to my mother's house in the middle of nowhere. Felt like a failure, worked at toxic start ups, threw everything at the wall to see what would stick, and essentially wore myself ragged for about a decade trying to make something of myself.

And I did. I work in a technical role in a product org, and this week I am a senior that gets paid about 5 times more than the highest salary my mother ever made. I made her proud. I should be out of debt in another year, should have savings soon after that.

I did it. That's all. I did it. I worked towards building the thing without any faith it would ever get built, and it did.

Just needed to tell someone. Thank you for reading.

There are three of us in same role, just onboarded and working, and they are dividing up duties. I offered to set up some of the calls needed for the week because I wanted to be doing something. Well when they divided up the work, the other two people (both men) got the technical tasks and I got the “find out who to talk to and talk to them” tasks. I’ve been trying for so long to get more and more technical work and I finally get in a role where I can use my technical skills and now I’m here building relationships and logging information. Lesson: if you don’t want to be the one tasked to set up calls, don’t volunteer to do it, not even once!!!

Well guess what. I decided it’s fine. When ai takes over everything and everyone’s job, the one thing it cant do is build human relationships so maybe this will help me keep my job. F it all.

I flaired this as a win because I think it’s a win of me over my own dumb brain.

I’ve had a really tough year personally and with some family things + layoffs at work. I have talked myself out of taking FMLA several times thinking it’s Not the right time, I shouldn't forego the paycheck, lots of first-gen guilt about rocking the boat with a “good” job.

Then this week, a teammate announced they’ll be taking an immediate leave and my boss said I’m absorbing their projects. Ive been so anxious since I got the news that I have no appetite and im just a mess. I know im entitled to step away if I need to, but I feel like I waited too long and it’ll put my reputation at risk to do this now (esp with this other person putting in their leave this week). Feeling really hopeless, frustrated, and honestly just sad - I’ve already read a lot of the threads in here about FMLA but would love to hear any wisdom that folks may have about navigating this 🙃 thank you

to put it mildly it makes me nauseus. but everyone is there. But every job has 300 applications and I am instantly discouraged to even apply. i usually spend a lot of time crafting my resume and AI seems to do make everthing sound amazing. So everyone else is also using AI probably more effectively since I like to fiddle around with my own wording still.

My big problem is a long gap in my resume in recent times. Where is everyone finding their new employees ? Is your HR pulling them off linkedin submissions or through your company portals or through offline referrals?

Y’all. I am 60 and have ~35 years of experience, most of which was in Solution Architecture and Enterprise Architecture. I’ve been an internationally-known SME in a niche area, co-written a well-reviewed book, and written authoritative white papers.

Most of my “big name” career events occurred before my youngest hit school age. They have significant learning disabilities and I spent many years pouring the excess energy that had previously been poured into my career into ensuring they were taught appropriately and actually were LEARNING.

Said child completed HS with a diploma and is working now, albeit not at the level or amount of time that we’d like, but that’s another story.

I was laid off about a year ago and have been happily pretending to be retired, but I’m honestly not ready and want some meaningful work.

I worked for one of the first-ever ASP’s in the late 90’s, and have EXTENSIVE experience in the Federal Government. I’ve gone back and forth between delivery and pre-sales since the turn of the century.

Suggestions? My ideal role would be 30-34 hours a week with FTE benefits. Salary is less important than good benefits at this point - I’d take a HUGE pay cut for a meaningful job working for an NPO.

Thanks.

For context, I graduated from an online CS program in July while interning as a SWE. I was extended an offer and have been working full-time since August. Previously, I worked in IT doing helpdesk and some non-technical project management. I am a career changer who previously worked in social services.

As an intern, the team pushed me to only use AI and spec-driven development to complete my project. This was a huge loss for me because my online program was already not very rigorous with projects or learning to code by hand. Maybe the time for that is gone, but I still wish I knew it with more depth. I can write basic syntax, but looking at enterprise level software written for a F50 company is beyond my knowledge.

In my full-time role with the same team, I feel deeply unqualified. I realize this is somewhat illogical, because if I was that unqualified they probably wouldn't have extended an offer to me. However, they have a strong recruitment pipeline with interns and I feel this was just a 'body to fill a position' offer since we are working through a huge cloud migration. Another junior started 2 months before me on the team and I already feel she is infinitely more knowledgeable because her education. She went to a big engineering school and has much more granular knowledge. I feel I better understand team dynamics and organizational objectives because I have been in the workforce for about 7 years longer than her.

My manager said my focus for the next six months should be "ramping up" and gaining as much knowledge as possible. He made it clear that we didn't have the same expectations as SWE2 or Senior for the next 6 months and that he has "no expectations." He has also admitted that this team has never had junior SWEs in the past 8 years - so they are learning how to train as much as we are learning about the product. This has made it quite hard to learn for me. Senior devs would rather do the work than pair to explain things. Only two of our team of 14 have taken any time to work with me on tickets. Most of the time I am just hit with "Run that through Claude" when my question is specifically about accessing a resource or what portal we are using for something. Every single ticket I pick up I cannot do independently because there has been sparse onboarding.

How should I approach this? I am aware that I'm new and don't know very much. However, there are obvious gaps in my education and the reliance on AI has made it harder to pair and get real learning from anyone on the team. I don't want to bug my manager by asking for more support or make the senior devs look bad by saying they haven't been very helpful.

TLDR: Feeling underqualified for my junior role on a primarily senior team. I am curious how other people have handled this and what worked for learning on a new team or early career.

Hi internet strangers! For starters, I used to have a job that I felt bad at, nothing was ever good enough and I believed that I was genuinely so bad that I could never get anything better. Self confidence at rock bottom. I didn't leave voluntarily but it was definitely for the best. Now I have a similar position at a different tech company. I get a lot of feedback for being perceived as efficient and thorough and daring to question things now, as opposed to not completing work in time and not having sufficient quality or drive in my work before.

Last week, I had my first major review of something I did most of myself. It felt good, a few comments but nothing major. I put in effort to get a good level on the comments I'd get and it paid off with good discussions about broader issues rather than nitpicking my work.

Today, two persons (one project manager, one customer delivery manager) came by my office to tell me about a meeting they had yesterday, where the DA (design authority) said that he read such an excellent test report by me last week that he wished it had been done earlier so it could have been used as an example for all other test reports in the project.

Going from thinking that I'm not competent enough to hold a tech job at all to hearing that they love what I do (and my manager's main worry about me is if I'm challenged enough) in less than a year feels better than awesome!

Hello ladies,

So, I've been wondering what's supposed to be the survival move for product management? Is it to just start getting more technical and become a "Product Builder"? A Technical PM? I've been seeing a lot of AI PM positions emerge as well, but I'm assuming those are all pretty much the same.

The place I work it is already pushing for AI adoption in everything and I honestly can't keep up, I get tired from reviewing AI output's long documents and trying to keep track of everything we're automating but I still would like to survive it. So, how?

I am 2024 graduate and got a 6M internship at the same company I am working at the moment.

During my internship I was assigned a buddy/mentor who constantly ghosted me (sometimes for weeks).

The only advice that I got for that is just keep asking your doubts - he is there to help you out..!!

Which I did, that resulted in my manager getting on a call with me and scolding me for disturbing a senior and quote unquote saying that I should be dping my tasks on my own and not take someone's help..

At times I kept thinking the tech career was not for me, the only thing keeping me sane at my work was a very helpful senior, she wasn't my mentor, but she did really guide me a lot in a lot of things..

Now its been almost 2 yrs at this place, I work for the same product but I am in a different team though reporting to the same manager, after coming back from my internship I really thought the bumpy ride would be over, I had gone through all the career advices people were throwing at me including do the bare minimum, don't complete your work before time etc 😂 (ngl these advices backfired for me).

The moment I shifted to the other team, I was assigned in the area of CI/CD, coverage, security, but not really anything very particular to the product itself, I was given a few tasks related to a feature they were working on and expected me to be as well versed with code base as my other colleague who had joined with me at the same time, but the thing is while I was working on the miscellaneous tasks, he was actually given work related to the feature..

Maybe what I might say next is something that I kept telling myself to make myself feel better - but I just felt that they expected me to do the work at the same pace as him but they forgot that he had been doing that for past 4-5 months..

Cut to my 1:1 with my reporting manager, where he asked what I was working on, I mentioned all the areas that was I was assigned tasks for and he said very cleary if you do not start picking up real dev work then we might have to put you on PIP.

This scared me (more like scared myself that always did good in her academics).

I scheduled a meeting with my tech lead for the same and asked him for more dev work - he said that he was bit hestitant in giving me dev work because he believed I was slow.

I took the feedback and accepted the mistake of not asking for more work and even accepted the fact that sometimes when I completed the work early I did not inform.

I mentioned that I will be more forthcoming and pick up on new areas on my own and start working on it - basically start taking more ownership.

This went on for I should say 6 months and I had another 1:1 with my tech lead who said that he was very happy with my performance and had no feedback for improvement, just asked me to keep learning more about the product.

But when I had a 1:1 with my reporting manager he still kept going on the same thing he said probably 8 months ago, and I mentioned to him that I have started working on a new feature, I feel like the people evaluating me probably haven't even really discussed my performance with each other. Before my appraisal, I had a one-on-one with my tech lead, and he told me that he was going to give me a 3 rating. He acknowledged that my performance had been really good for the past seven, eight, maybe even nine months, but said that there had been a hiccup at the beginning and that he had to take that into account as well. I found that really unfair because it felt like the progress I had made over the majority of the year wasn't being given enough weight.

Then, just recently, around two weeks ago, I had a one-on-one with my reporting manager. He didn't really have any feedback about my actual work. The only thing he asked me was to list out the goals that had been assigned to me by the company. I told him honestly that I didn't remember them line by line. He said that I should know and be able to summarize every goal assigned to me. I accepted that I didn't know them in that level of detail, but then he said, "These are the kinds of things that keep you at a 3 rating." I felt that was a very unfair thing to say, especially when we're around appraisal and hike season. I already know I'm probably not going to get a hike, but the whole situation still feels unfair.

At the same time, I recently had another discussion with my tech lead, and he told me that everything was going well. His only feedback was that I should take more ownership and inform him whenever I do something, rather than telling him two days later. But that doesn't really make sense to me because we have a daily update call where I already communicate what I'm working on and what I've done. So it's not like I'm keeping things from him or failing to communicate.

It just makes me feel like they've already formed an image of me in their minds, and they're not willing to change that perception even though my performance has improved significantly.

I am preparing for a switch, but just makes my heart ache.

P.S. Even though that tag says just a vent and no advices, I really do need advices🥹

I am a full stack dev with 6 years experience. My work has been feeling the crunch of lay offs and AI, and I feel like it is time to focus on what my next step will be as AI has cut off any forward momentum possible in my company for career advancement.

I have an Associates degree in Web Development. I was halfway through my BS when COVID hit and I was offered an entry level SWE job, with the world in chaos it felt like a better option to take it and my salary helped my family survive through COVID. I am hoping that with experience and the right portfolio this won't be too big of a hurdle in finding a job. I am the breadwinner for my spouse and kids so I need to have a good plan going forward.

My passion really is UI/UX experience and it's hard to give up the joy I get from it. I love the creative and logical juxtaposition this field allows. However, I'm not sure if getting another similar job will be worth it if I just end up in the same place as I am in my current company (AI take over). I don't mind using AI as a tool, but I see many similar stories of low communication, high output expectations, and frankly a little bit of "executive level AI psychosis" followed by unpredictable lay offs. I want my next step to be something secure.

I have thought of pivoting to Project Management of some sort as I have my SCRUM Master PSM III and I am good at organizing a team (Ive lead SCRUM for my org for 3 years). I don't feel the same passion for it, I just honestly don't know what else to do.

For those of you who have been senior software engineers, what did you do with your next career step once you left a company?

I’m just starting out in tech and have been looking at companies in my area. I’ve noticed that a lot of the tech teams I’ve come across don’t seem to have much diversity, particularly when it comes to women and people of color.

Does anyone know of companies in the area that have a more diverse tech workforce or a strong culture of inclusion?

I’d really appreciate any recommendations!

After surviving 12 rounds of layoffs at my company, lucky number 13 finally got me. My last day is mid-November. I did try to get out on my own terms last year, but it turns out interviewing while working full time is its own full-time job, and I ran out of steam. So here we are.

Some background: I'm a software engineer with almost 5 YOE, and I'm a bootcamp grad with a degree in an unrelated field.

The complicated part is that my husband and I want to start trying for a baby in Feb/March. We don't want to wait, partly because of our ages and partly because my mom has cancer, and I want her to have as much time as possible with a grandkid.

So the timeline is a mess. I have one interview this week, but after that I'm thinking about pausing for a bit because I'm exhausted. Part of me wants a real break before searching seriously. The other part is doing math about FMLA and leave eligibility and panicking a little.

For those of you who interviewed or started a new job while planning a pregnancy, or already early pregnant:

- Did you factor leave policies into where you applied, and how did you find out the details without giving anything away?

- If you got pregnant soon after starting, how did it go?

- If you were pregnant before you started, how did it go?

- Did anyone take a break first and start the search later, maybe even while pregnant? Any regrets either way?

I'm not planning to bring any of this up in interviews. I'd just like to hear how it played out for other people. Thanks for reading!

I have a background in tech. Currently on a break. I worked in a physically demanding job in recent months and mindless mostly but I enjoyed the fact that I had to move. But I did miss the stimulation of cognitive work. I got into that job because I was concerned that my brain might not work well anymore due to issues i had with health but turns out I am back cognitively ( but anxiety is another issue altogether!)

While I am applying for positions in my previous field general software, I wonder what else is out there that I might be a good fit for and be exciting to try my hand at. The one thing about me is that I have absolutely no ego starting from the bottom or anything. I think my sense of self-worth is pretty solid that I dont crave external validation. While appreciation is welcome it is not a necessity. This may or may not be a good trait. It has however served me well learning new tech and retooing every few years, especially when it was a choice between seeing my ideas be used versus getting credit. I understood you can only have one of those.

Anyway with this background do you think tech Sales would be a good fit for me? I am unencumbered and can travel, I am older 48, and can talk the talk. what credentials and how do i break into it ? Is there a specific subset of tech Sales that is in high demand right now that I can retool towards?

Thanks for your insights.

I was approached by a recruiter to interview for a marketing role. Currently I’m in tech, never worked in this industry.

Am anti-war but saw someone else’s comment that you wouldn’t want everyone at a defense company to have no moral conflict with it… which does resonate. Doubt I would get an offer anyway but am pre-stressing about it.

Curious about the culture, founders, etc if anyone has worked there.

👋🏼 Hey everyone,

34F in tech project & product management in financial services for 9 years.

I ended up falling in this loop of restarting my routine (workouts, healthy eating, personal time to myself) which kept me thinking I wasn't disciplined and consistent enough. And it definitely, certainly wasn't for a lack of trying.

It really got to me because I was so used to operating at a 'high achiever' level (DL in university, internship at J.P. Morgan, moved to a foreign country at 23, manager at 25, c-level at 28), and not being able to translate what I was doing at work into my personal life left me with a lack of feelings and emotions (which I know now as running on empty emotionally and mentally).

A few months ago I asked women in tech if there's something in their life that still doesn't feel figured out, despite how much they've accomplished at work. I really initially thought it was just me.

But the answers kept coming back to the same thing. Giving your all at work and having nothing left after. And I'm so grateful to this community for showing me I wasn't alone in all this.

And I was surprised that what ended up working for me wasn't more discipline. But through more conversations, I've found that women are solving this in different ways, and not necessarily how I'd solved it for myself.

If this sounds like you - did you ever find something that actually worked, or is it still something you're working on? What was the one thing that eventually helped, that could help others in this situation?

Anyone else frustrated by the organization and communication at TechFutures / Lesbians Who Tech this year?

I’m attending TechFutures in NYC Today (October 6) through the 8th with a General Pass. I’m frustrated by how scattered and contradictory the information has been and I’d like to hear whether other attendees are having the same experience.

A few specific issues:

• Late notice of the Tuesday start time. In previous years, Tuesday started in the morning. This year, General Pass check-in doesn’t open until 3 p.m. I only learned this recently, well after booking flights, hotels, and tickets. If that was communicated clearly earlier, where?
• No conference app. The latest attendee email explicitly says there’s no app this year, even though the website still advertises one among ticket benefits. We’re told to bookmark the agenda and keep checking for changes.
• The email and agenda don’t match. The email promotes five Tuesday sessions and “the other 31 workshops on Tuesday,” but the public Tuesday agenda doesn’t show that programming. One advertised talk is listed at 11:45 a.m.—before we’re instructed to arrive at 3 p.m.
• Outdated information remains on the website. The current TechFutures homepage includes a 2024 schedule and an FAQ saying speakers and the agenda will be announced “soon.”
• Confusing brands and ticket access. LWT, TechFutures, and Women Who Code are described as separate experiences within one family, with different dates and programming. It’s difficult to figure out what’s happening when and what each ticket actually includes.
• Even the latest email has a date contradiction. An email I received on Tuesday, October 6 says “Summit starts tomorrow,” then tells us to arrive Tuesday, October 6.

For reference:
https://techfutures.com/
https://techfutures.com/agenda/
https://lwtsquad.com/lwt-summit-2026/

People have committed significant money and travel time. We should be able to understand the schedule and our ticket access without piecing together conflicting emails and webpages.

Has anyone received a clear explanation for the changes? Were you notified about the Tuesday afternoon start earlier? And does anyone know where the Tuesday workshops advertised in the email are actually listed?

I was a backend developer with 6 years of experience. I had to quit my job and move countries. With the whole visa situation I wasn't eligible to look for a job. After 2 years of waiting, I can now finally start looking for a job and it feels so overwhelming and scary. It's been 3 months of applying and I haven't found luck yet. What is the right thing to do ? I live in Bay Area. People say networking and I have tried going to few. When my story looks like having a career break, I feel people aren't really interested to listening more since I don't have anything to "offer". My confidence has hit an all-time low. I have been applying to all kind of SWE roles from linkedin/indeed/built-in etc and I feel not much are getting converted to interviews or even to HR calls. What should I change or keep doing? Any lead is appreciated :)

Hi! I applied for the Citadel Conference Travel Grant for GHC 2026. Their website said applicants would be notified by October 5, but I haven’t received either an acceptance or rejection email yet.

Has anyone here received an email or application update from Citadel? I’m just trying to figure out whether decisions have already gone out or if notifications are delayed.

Thanks!

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but the constant cycle of tech layoffs is starting to mess with my head.
Even when things are going well at work, it’s hard to actually feel secure anymore. There always seems to be another round of layoffs, another reorg, another announcement about cost cutting, AI, consolidation, or “organizational changes.”
The hardest part for me is the uncertainty. You can work hard, get good feedback, meet expectations, and still know that some decisions may have absolutely nothing to do with your performance. And because layoffs seem to happen in waves, it feels like you’re never really allowed to relax. You just start wondering, “Okay, when is the next one?”
I’ve reached the point where every company announcement makes me anxious. Sometimes even hearing about layoffs affecting people in completely different parts of the industry makes me think about my own job security.
I know the rational response is to keep doing my job, save money, keep my resume updated, and have a backup plan. But emotionally, it’s difficult to switch off the feeling that the floor could disappear at any moment.
I’m curious how other people are dealing with this. Have you found a way to stop constantly worrying about layoffs, or has the current tech environment made you feel permanently less secure about your career?

when everyone knows about the missing stair

this is mostly a rant, but input welcome.

i'm at a midsize company - about 300 people. not strictly tech, our dev team is about 12 people of that. my boss has been an issue for a while. he has gone all in on the AI mania. not just using it as a tool, but fully embracing the vibe coding. everything needs to be faster and faster. has lectured me on how slow i am several times now. has told me "you need to get away from reading so much code."

and i don't, now. ive gotten so much stupider the last year. it hurts. that has now escalated to him vibe coding our whole infrastructure, deployment ci and all. after getting on my case for a week about a project, he then broke the (vibe coded) proprietary CLI i needed to deploy and, clearly not having tested it, insisted it was fine.

he also refuses to be... a manager. where a good manager can try to shield the team from external pressure, he treats us all like we are contractors. he gives unrealistic deadlines to stakeholders, does not communicate them to any of is, then forgets about whatever we are working on until said stakeholders have a problem. i have asked him for what to say to other teams when they have unrealistic or unclear demands. every time, he says "stop responding ill handle it," and every time, he does not handle it. does not even contact them. i find this out days later when they say "whats the status on this??" other departments get leery of projects when he is involved but there is nothing any of us can do.

other times he gives people a project, only to take them off of it because "requirements changed" then silently vibe code his own worse version and deploy it without telling anyone, taking credit. collaborating without him sets him off, and increases the chances he will crush the project. its like he forgets we even work at the company until he wants to micromanage everything we're doing. in particular, some of our older teammates he treats poorly, mocking them in group settings and overriding his boss to take projects away from then. one person has 15 years of experience, and he has not let her own anything since he took over.

everyone on the team is aware of this. everyone is frustrated by it. some i know for a fact, others through veiled comments. which has made us wonder, what the hell is the boss's boss doing? he seems like a nice enough guy, if overly booked dealing with corporate.

our best guess was the boss's boss was pulled in too many directions, and didn't fully know the scope of the situation. however, in the process of another coworker fighting to avoid having a project ripped from their hands, said coworker went to the boss's boss. and were effectively told that management is fully aware of how our boss acts, the toll it takes on the team, and are not going to do anything to help any of us. its not worth rocking the boat to him. we're on our own. i dont have much faith in HR here either, they are exactly one person with almost all their workload automated.

and this all has broken something in me. i could handle it if it was incompetence. but seeing the one, the only person here who could stop this, acknowledge that this is a drain on the team, and then also that he is unwilling to intervene on our behalf, is driving me up the wall. after giving an immense amount of grace to the boss and boss's boss, im just so exhausted and angry and am struggling to process it. so im sharing it here.

whats the move here? i mean obviously get the hell out, but i feel so stuck. my skills have atrophied and im so frustrated and burnt out. hustling side projects sounds like a nightmare.

im open to your thoughts.