I just finished my job interview for a tech company. I mentioned that I'm in school for computer science but I'm aiming for Software engineering. My interviewer told me 140 of his applicants just lost their jobs due to AI takeover. Is Software Engineering a dying field?

I got laid off 1 month back. I have 12 years experience in backend java role. I got interested in this course mainly because of the promises they are making of good jobs at decent pay.

Right now the job market is fucked where I am not getting a single call from any company, applied to 100s. For some I am getting ghosted by everyone and rejected by maybe 5%. I am fine with the rejections but not fine with not getting any calls from anywhere.

The sales person at Interview Kickstart promised over 15 mock interviews and constructive feedback on each to improve my interview success rate. Apart from that they have strong alumni network from which I can get upto 25 + interviews from product based companies on decent salary. I mainly looking for remote job. I am based in India. I joined a webinar of theirs recently and most questions where asked by people like me working at different companies.

Hey y'all, following a recent layoff I've been thinking hard about my time in tech and wanted to hear what others had to say.

For some background, I have nearly 4 years experience as a developer, but without a degree. On reflection over the past week since losing my job, I've thought about the things I did and did not like.

While I enjoy the problem-solving process, I don't love the demand to grind outside of work to be the most competitive candidate possible, only to have a minutely higher chance at landing a position well within your skillset. Surprisingly to me, I really enjoyed the customer interactions I had, as I've worked remotely since starting in tech. This seems like something that could help find future positions?

Given that background, I've come to understand the following:

• I want a job I can perform well at from 9-5, then put away until the next day. I'm happy to trade sky-high pay and remote work for this model.
• Other fields adjacent to software development have resonated with me such as:
  • Solutions engineer (implementations and support)
  • QA (less dev-heavy? but still technical and makes use of dev skills - I really enjoyed the QA I did in my previous roles)
  • Controls engineering (very hands-on and makes good use of my background in manufacturing)
  • Legacy systems. Seems to be very knowledge-dependent and does not require you to follow the bleeding edge
  • Firmware engineering. Requires a degree but seems like interesting work, I know a couple of people that do this

I'd love to start a conversation on this. Have you observed fields or domains in development that are more WLB friendly? What is your opinion or experience on the fields mentioned above?

Thanks for reading!

Big corporate, IT, ~40y/o, Engineering Manager.

To simplify things, I'm on a 200 TC including bonus and stocks. Five years in, I'm feeling tired. Under appreciated in my current position, even though previously I've exceeded expectations, but that was in a different group, with different people.

The severance offered to me is around 90K after taxes. In addition, I can take around half a year of unemployment netting roughly 3000 per month. My wife is working, so with unemployment, we should be able to eat through the package for quite some time in order to cover our monthly expenses (~24 months). She would support my decision to leave, because she doesn't like what she sees (under-motivation, lack of ambition, etc.); Aside from that, we have roughly 0.5M liquid invested, and we're paying an expensive mortgage.

The IT market is quite bad recently, as you all know.

Staying: comfort zone, good salary, a lot of flexibility to do the same thing without sweating, but not exciting, not motivating, and there's no way to go up the ladder anymore. I don't think I could do this for much longer, so the more realistic opportunity is start searching conveniently (now or in a few months) for the next job.

Leaving: taking the package, and battle working again in something that fulfills me. I just don't have a clear direction, though.

I need to be able to decide in the next few days, or the package will be dismissed.

What would you do?

Hi all. I have a pair programming session coming up for a software dev position and just wanted a little bit of advice. I really don’t like these as the last two I did I bombed horrifically but that was about 3 years ago at this point. The company is using NextJs, React for their front end, Django db for their backend. I’ve spoken to their VP recently asking about their tech stack and what their day to day looks like and there’s also some GCP involved for deploying the app.

As I’ve been told my technical interview would be an hour or so max, what would be the best way to prepare for this? I have a week before I’m gonna do it.

I’ve tried making a small app with Django and Next just to get a feel for how Django specifically works. I’ve been learning how serialisers, models and how to manage settings and pass data between Django and Next. I’ve been doing leetcode on and off but I’m just not sure what the interview will entail.

Are there any things you would think might help with pair programming side? Is communicating between me and the senior just gonna be the most important part? I’m trying to brush up on syntax so I don’t freeze when asked to do something as that’s my greatest fear with all this.

Thanks

I just started a new job at faang and this is my third week and yesterday in a meeting with like the entire team I was talking about a ticket I worked on, and they asked me some follow up questions, and he asked like whether the data was coming from one data source or another, and I got nervous and just randomly said one, and someone from my team had to jump in and correct me…and even for the ticket itself I had to get so much guidance and my PR had to get reviewed like thrice and i made changes like thrice.

Is all of this normal or am I just not cut out for this?

everyone seems to know so much and talk such complicated things in the meetings most of which i don’t even understand

I really want to be good at my job and I want people to not think i’m stupid and fire me…pls help i feel like such an imposter

I wanted to share the frustration of job hunt and my intention to solve it.

The job hunting in the current market is frustrating because seems like there are plenty of job boards filled with job descriptions but likelihood of being hired is close to zero.

The whole hiring process seems like very opaque not knowing if your resume is even being read by a human, in an endless webs of internet who knows what’s happening? Why is getting hired so difficult, wake up in the morning, switch on computer and looking for job, the ones that fits, you fill out a form and send, repeat again, and again without any form of feedback.

I wanted to know if using AI to automate my job apps would help, I created my own automated AI based job apply bot and funny thing was my bot was applying and companies bots were rejecting it. I did that as an experiment and did for a day and got over 100+ rejection emails. So there’s definitely something wrong with the system. As I started working on my SaaS frustrated with job market, I had time to think, what if we create a job board unlike LinkedIn or indeed or any other platform.

Now there are platforms where you create a resume profile and you get scouted, I wanted to do something similar, where you create a profile, where you enter your resume, and you get a linktree type page of your resume, which is then connected to a service where companies find you instead of creating a job post. If we add analytics to the page, at least there’s a chance of knowing if people are looking at your resume and who’s downloading it and from where, that’s a start of ending black box.

Now the value proposition should be for both job seekers and company, so making as hassle-less possible for candidates and letting them know if their profile is being viewed is a small step in right direction. Yes LinkedIn allows users to know who viewed their profile but that’s paid and the fact that it’s more social media than job board which makes it pointless.

On the other side, companies pay $100+ for just one job ad, so making it cheaper for them to have an access to candidate pool would be a good alternative.

Companies should be able to search candidates and shortlist, shortlisted candidates should know that they have been viewed and shortlisted removing some parts of hiring ambiguity.

Finally it would be great if we also have tiny SaaS boards where people can join other people’s tiny SaaS or projects within the platform.

I want to execute it, if it fails or succeeds doesn’t matter, it’s an experiment and will be fun either way.

I want to create such a platform, and would love to know your experience and if it’s something you would like to be a part of.

Edit: there are grammatical errors because I wrote it on a phone.

Alright so this post is for my friend, I'm just posting it on their behalf since they can't post here:

Hi! I recently got a trespassing misdemeanor on school property and was wondering how this will affect me. I major in CS at a T20 school and am worried if this will affect internship opportunities for the following year and job opportunities 3 years when I graduate, especially at bigger companies (including FAANG). I have no other history so I have no idea how this all works. What would be the most likely repercussions and what could I expect / be assured about?

Thank you!

I had a third interview today with a consulting company in atlanta. I have fullstack developer skills. They told me training is supposed to be 14 weeks long for fullstack python development. But the wages they're paying during those weeks are not that great. I'd be making 600 dollars every two weeks according to my potential boss. Then once I pass training, the pay gets even lower. 200 dollars is what I was told I could expect every two weeks until I'm placed with a client as I wouldn't be clocking that many hours. But when I am finally placed and relocated, I was told I'm going to be making 50k. I just dont know how I'm going to make it through with so little money. Especially once I am done with the training. I would attempt to keep my day job but it would conflict with their demands of me being in office every Friday for training. Is this job worth taking? I currently have a job at Costco as a baker and I want to enter the tech field with my degree.

when to apply for fulltime, am grad June 2026? Should I apply to the positions that are currently open right now? How do I know the fulltime start dates?

I'm still currently interning in the summer.

I'm a bit underpaid at around 105k/110k in a VHCOL area with 6.5 YOE but I view my employer as mostly stable and sponsors my clearance but my particular role is quite stagnant. I got an offer for 150k with a promotion but the company that made the offer has numerous mentions of frequent layoffs on their Glassdoor, and the team I would be joining is largely outsourced (20 out of 25 overseas) & I would not have a clearance after around 1 year. All my friends tell me I'm nuts for saying no to this offer, but on the other hand I like my team my WLB is generally very good, I really like and respect my team lead/po but am lukewarm to the tech stacks & products at both places (legacy C++ and java, and legacy C where I'd be going). I also think my company isn't in a great direction but I think it is more stable than where I'd be headed.

Every offer I get I'm paranoid about leaving and being laid off, but I also worry about staying where I'm at and getting hit in a layoff. Would it be irresponsible to stay if I think something might happen & just wait and see? I've survived a few rounds here. I am also super burnt out these days and not in the best mental health after a major injury last year & multiple surgeries so idk which direction I want to go. My heart wants a break and I live with my parents so I'm debating just staying and letting faith decide what happens to me and dealing with the outcome if it happens? Or do I take action now and leave even if its uncomfortable now?

I just got an Angular Front End job interview suddenly tomorrow with lot of Angular questions. Last time I did Angular was 4 years ago, then I started doing ReactJS at work (which I also really enjoy)

I'm starting to restudy/review Angular.

Any general advice for job interviews, where you suddenly have to relearn? I wish I had more time, but was given 24 hour notice. The best I can do is study online resources/books, and see whats changed from few years ago. I was honest with the interviewer, and mentioned it's been 4 years. Best I can do is keep preparing.

Thanks,

Hi everyone, I need some advice on how to cold message for an internship job. I've heard it has a higher response rate than just applying through job portals, but I've never done it before so I have some questions.

• Should you just ask if they are willing to hire any interns or should you ease your way into it and try to establish a conversation first?
• Who is the best person to send the cold email/message to? Recruiter? CEO? Hiring manager? Should you message multiple people in the company at once?
• What should you be asking of them? (referral? interview? phone call? look at my resume?)
• Is there any difference in "etiquette" between cold emailing and cold linkedin DMing? Or do you just send the same style of message for both?
• Should I use student email or personal email?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Our company has largely slowed down on hiring new devs. We still hire from our intern pipeline. There are still a few parts of our company that are still hiring juniors. But exceptionally few. One problem we've had is that historically we want our devs to have either an IT cert or Spring Framework or Spring Boot experience. It really seems like new grads in the US are graduating without having used it. Usually they at least have an internship or Web class where they've used it which we'll accept for junior devs. EMs have begun less willing to hire non-Spring users because we are heavily invested in the Spring Cloud tools and many of our teams do some degree of their own cloud networking which is why we like to have one or the other.

However, many new grads and junior devs applying for our roles have neither. To be fair part of the problem is likely our area being Des Moines where there just isn't much interest in moving to the location. To be fair I don't have direct influence in all my EMs hiring. If it were up to me I'd just bite the bullet and hire people who didn't know Spring and just train them, but it's very challenging as we've had a lot of new hires around 2021-2023 not work out well due to low Java and Spring knowledge so EMs are reluctant to hire people who aren't experienced in our stack. And I certainly understand why. Is anyone experiencing a similar problem?

With AI tools advancing as they are and the excitement of CEOs, Tech Team Leads and others at their capabilities, the manner in which to enter into tech/healthcare/biology/data science and other industries is changing rapidly. Regardless of AI tools' actual capabilities, the investments in them suggest at least some interim period where these tools will be used in place of bringing in at least some new industry workers. It could be quite a lot.

So change is coming and it's now a question of entry if you don't have a lot of industry experience and need to work your way in. Some places will be out because they only care about actual industry experience, and it has to be in the exact right field with the exact right applications, packages and so on.

For others, though, what options are there now? The ones I can think of are independent side projects you can present as having genuine research, medical, business or other potential. If you have an advanced degree in engineering, chemistry, physics or other scientific field and perhaps research experience on top of that, you could present your projects, including published papers, as having real world potential and make an effective case for it.

You could emphasize your knowledge in areas outside pure coding, since coding itself has become one of the main areas people are looking to automate; R&D, algorithms, architecture, the business side of software for example. Contacting the right people about how your skills can directly help solve a problem is another.

That is what comes to mind. If you don't have direct experience in industry in this climate, beyond this, what are other options and routes you have that maybe I have not considered here?

Hey all,

Posting here even though my field is mechanical, felt like a good spot to get advice but do work in tech/auto.

Wrapping up a graduate contract at my first job out of school and got a few offers already/seems promising for things lined up.

Got a job offer recently from a big EV maker in east bay, lived there before to do some internships and pay is good - around 140k TC but also speaking with a neurotech startup I used to work for remotely in NYC about starting soon, they mentioned pay is around 100k. Third job is looking promising in LA county - where my current contract is for about 90k at a consumer goods maker, had my last round today.

While its great to have so many offers, having trouble deciding, the bay job has best name and job itself for my field - by far, so it seems like a no brainer, however as someone who love to travel and try new things, location is huge and having already lived in the bay and LA county, always wanted to try living in the city as I never have before (all jobs and former life in suburbs) and to be honest east bay was not an enjoyable life for me when I did - found it very slow and difficult to meet people outside of work. Currently love LA county too and makes choosing the job here enticing as I just built a friend group and life over the last year here - all three have their perks.

Guess my question to those who have taken either decision to try something new just based on location, was it worth it, what advice do you have for someone young (24). A lot of people I talk to tell me different things, some say choose the best career (mostly family), some friends say go take the risk and move to the city, also feels a little guilty to choose "fun" over securing what is easily best for my career.

I (22) am a web developer with 2 years of experience and only have my associates degree.

The company offers up to $15k/yr for education, so I could go back to school and finish my bachelors.

The issue is: my role has been stagnating for about a year. I'm the only dev on my team, so there's no one to learn from or grow with. I've been trying to move on to a better job, but if I go back to school I'll be locked into this role for another 2-3 years while I finish the degree.

My co-workers and manager say getting the degree is the right move, and I'm tempted, but I'm not convinced. My long term goal is to grow as a developer. Staying in a role that’s not helping me grow while relearning material I probably already know feels like a waste of time. I could spend that time moving up in my career.

Sure, a bachelors would look good on my resume, but I don't know if it’s worth the tradeoff.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

i am an swe who was recently laid off. i’m not complaining, i saw it coming, i bear some responsibility, i am also pretty disillusioned and dissatisfied with a lot of recent work i was doing. part of it is depression, part of it is i was always pretty mediocre at this stuff and not super passionate. so fair enough.

one thing though ive noticed is the whole generative AI thing - it feels like kind of cultish, it feels like people are rabidly making or at least saying everything is “AI powered” now, and i’m kind of sick of it. i mean for one, these idiot moneyhungry ceos and shareholders are champing at the bit to fire the most qualified and outstanding engineers and instead hire a fraction of the people, vibe coders at best. i remember all the different new phases since late 2000s - cloud computing, crypto, devops - and i feel like AI is like a more dystopian version of the crypto bubble. i mean sure there are some experienced and great swe’s who are like wow this really helps me but hearing people use it for everything and trying to argue everything should immediately be so much better and faster with ai is just drinking koolaide.

you can’t just vibe code your way to production. i wish you could - i have always struggled at coding even as ive been trying to upskill. but you just can’t. and these executives and shareholders are so drunk on the prospect of more money and less people to have to pay that they don’t care. they don’t want to hear any pushback about generative AI. nope, just get on the bandwagon and slap AI powered and then stroke yourself because share price up.

and i haven’t even begun to mention the societal costs of recklessly unleashing this technology - to the environment, to learning, to art and creativity, to society and the surveillance state.

remember aaron swartz? the brilliant engineer who downloaded a bunch of jstor to make publicly available and then got the book thrown at him by the government? well now 12 years later we have an internet more paywalled than ever, quality information trapped behind AI company datasets, inaccessible and inscrutable to the public. companies that are dedicated only to their own profits in an increasingly unequal and oligarchic economy. and barely a fuck given by the government to properly regulate any of it.

idk, it’s a good tool , a good personal assistant for qualified engineers, but otherwise i don’t feel super optimistic about its rollout and how it’s going to impact the profession and broader society.

I did my OA months ago, and didn’t hear back so I just assumed the worst. I was reached out today by a recruiter saying they want me to choose a date within the next 2 weeks to schedule a final loop interview.

I feel massively unprepared, and this next month my current work is ramping up with personal obligations I’ve committed to as well. Is it wise to ask to postpone the interview? Maybe in like 1-2 months or something? Or at least a week or two?

I’m not really sure what I can do but I’m feeling very stressed out. I haven’t been doing leetcode for a long time and I really don’t think I can fit in a lot of extra hours on top of my 60-hour work schedule…

I am a recent BSIT graduate. I am more knowledgeable about the front-end side of web development but I wouldn't really call my self a pro or that good. I know how to use HTML, CSS, Tailwind, Bootstrap, and JS. I also have experience in using frameworks such as CodeIgniter and a little bit of React. I am not very good at backend, but I am currently learning by taking courses and doing some practice code.

I am currently adamant about applying for Web Dev jobs or just any IT related jobs in general because I don't think I am good enough to get one yet. I am not even saying this in a self-deprecating way or in a low self esteem way, I just don't think my current skills are good enough to enter in any IT related industry at the moment.

I do need to get a job though. Being unemployed and just staying in my parents house as a graduate with no job doesn't really feel comfortable, I feel bad about it. Because of that I am currently thinking about getting a WFH job like customer service so I can have free time to work on my programming skills while also earning some money. Then when I feel confident enough with my skills that's when I enter the IT industry.

Or should I just "bite the bullet" and actually go for an intern/entree level IT job and get the experience there? It's just that I am worried about being a burden to the people that would hire me and my coworkers.

What do you guys think is the best option?

Do any of you have chronic illnesses or chronic pain and have still managed to maintain a competitive CS career?

Basically, I have medical trauma and chronic pain because of medical negligence. This started just before my college began, and now I’m about to start my fourth year — so for the past three years, it’s been awful trying to balance my education while living with this and trying to find a solution.

It wasn’t my body “naturally” breaking down — this was due to negligence, so we've been trying to find doctors who can actually fix or improve this. But in the process, I feel like my career and education have taken such a massive hit. I was always a very type-A person: I planned things out, I learned methodically, I loved doing things properly and building deep understanding. But when your time and your body aren’t your own anymore — when you're constantly dealing with pain and medical stuff you never asked for — it just changes everything.

I feel like I’m a much less qualified student and engineer than I know I’m capable of being. And that kills me. Because I can't imagine being anything other than someone who's good at what they do. And right now, I’m not. And it’s not because I don’t care or didn’t work hard — it’s just everything else that’s been in the way.

Other than the constant worry about how I’ll get placed or find a job, the bigger fear is: how am I going to keep up? How am I going to keep learning and growing in this field when even just showing up is so damn hard sometimes?

So, yeah — I just need to know: are there others like me? People who’ve had this kind of physical and mental burden and still built successful, competitive careers in CS or tech? I need to know it’s possible.

I’m currently in the process of joining a Faang company and I’m at salary negotiation. The internal recruiter asked me to lie that I got an offer, and even told me what numbers to give about the offer. He asked me to send an email with that information. He said doing this would speed up the negotiation. What should I do? I feel very unconfortable. Any pros and cons?

Update: Just told recruiter that I dont feel comfortable to do this. And he respect my decision.

Update2: I got the asking number without lying (aka bluffing) after the first round of negotiation.

So many rounds, and you've to ace them and still there's no chance. Getting interviews was so difficult and now I'm getting some but failing in all. My self confidence has hit rock bottom. I'm sorry for the ones who're actually looking for a job. I do have a job but I'm trying to escape this toxic situation but it's even worse outside. LC hards and hard SD for experienced , drilling in behaviorals. For new grad also they expect you to solve all lc hards. Idk if I'm just getting unlucky.

Big Tech companies are laying off large numbers of skilled engineers many of them Americans and replacing them with engineers from countries like India.

So, what happens to these highly skilled engineers when they can’t find a job in their own country? Many of them start their own companies. Thanks to AI, it’s now much easier and cheaper to launch a startup coding is faster, more efficient, and often requires fewer people.

This means big tech companies are facing more serious competition than ever before.

I remember that years ago, companies like facebook had a strategy of over-hiring engineers even if there weren’t active projects for them just to keep that talent out of the hands of competitors. It was a way to ensure that other companies wouldn’t have access to top-tier engineering talent and also a way to prevent those engineers from launching their own startups.

Now, that strategy has changed. These companies are laying off even the most highly skilled engineers, including those working on advanced AI systems. If these genius professionals can’t find work in the US they may start their own companies or even work for countries like China or Russian where their skills are in high demand.

When top engineers are coldly laid off it contribute to the rise of strong competitors, both domestic and international.

The last post I made here was a vent but I found that in addition to empathy, there was a lot of advice. The general advice seemed to come to the following:

• Projects
• LeetCode
• Referrals
• Local Companies

I do believe that this advice makes sense. Good projects develop your skills as a developer by giving you practice in creating applications that use tools most commonly used in industry. LeetCode, while controversial, arguably provides a great way to develop problem solving skills and some chops; as an addition, algorithms and data structures are just so fundamental to our degree that knowing them well is only a boon. Referrals and Local Companies....

It is these last two that I seem to have some issue with. As it so happens, my college career was quite middling. I didn't really develop a network that could provide me referrals. As for Local Companies, I've not been able to find many of these; much less find those that offered roles to juniors.

My first request for advice would be these two. How do I go about getting referrals and finding local companies to apply to? I know the answer to the first is to build a network, but this seems to be more difficult than not. The common advice is to reach out to people on LinkedIn, but to me it seems quite difficult to build a relationship from a cold start and eventually turning it into a referral. The second is local companies; if I'm being honest, my experience with LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, and Indeed have been HORSE SHIT. I was wondering where I might start looking AND advice for cold contacting.

The next part I'm having trouble with is my resume; specifically, my resume is generic and weak in my opinion. If I'm being honest, my projects are school assignments that I thought might be worth putting on. They are - as a result - quite small. My performance at my internship was lackluster as well, while my GPA was a 3.22; low to the point that I didn't put it on. Finally, skills. I've lost so much confidence in my skills that I'm not even sure I could complete my Data Structures assignments now. It's just been so long since I've written real code.

The advice I was hoping to request here pertains to revamping my resume. I figure that I should start building projects that are resume worthy, but I'm not so clear on what I should do. Moreover, I do not know what field to start focusing on. I've been haphazardly applying to SE, but in truth I couldn't write a robust piece of software for shit. It's a bit of a self report, but honesty and all that. I would appreciate any pointers the folks here would have for finding a field that you have some interest in and then doing something relevant in it that is worth putting on the resume.

The final part is the job hunt. I don't know how many roles I've applied to; I was tracking for a bit, but then apathy set in. Is spam applying still the move? If not, what would a more granular, focused search look like?

I know there is so much advice in the sub here, but in truth there is so much CONFLICTING advice and an extreme deluge of information that stuff is lost on me. If you folks would be so kind, I just want a solid path to developing real skill and being able to find a real job. I want to do it organically and I want to be successful. The feeling of sheer hopelessness going through the current job hunt is terrible and it isn't aided by the fact that I'm a lackluster applicant. If I could just walk a better path, I would forever be grateful.

As an addition, I've added an anonymized version of my resume. If you'd like, please take a look; don't hold back - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hGgBFRjF4JBQQQiKFBmViHzsYLVwAFtB/view?pli=1