I went to college for Interactive design with a minor in computer science. I wanted to work in website and or app development/design. When I graduated, ai and the job market got worse. After all this, im not sure if I want this type of job anymore anyways. So, I was thinking of making this a hobby. But is it really worth it as a hobby? I don't know if I want to keep it as a hobby either.

Hi everyone,

I hold a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master's in Mechatronics Engineering. I graduated a year ago and have been working in my field, but my plan has always been to eventually transition into IT I've been learning the basics of programming since high school.

However, given current market trends and the rise of AI, junior-level development roles seem to be tougher to land, with fewer entry-level positions available and companies primarily hiring CS graduates.

Do you think I still have a realistic chance of finding a developer role, or another IT position, through self-study with my engineering background? Which areas would be worth targeting?

I have been using cmd+4 as the keyboard shortcut to jump to line end in vscode because I had used vim in school for years and I'm kinda used to it (no mode switching in vscode so cmd instead of shift).

It has become part of my muscle memory and EVERYTIME I want to jump to line end in the browser on hackerrank there is a great chance I WILL use the keybind with my reflex, so I have to make sure I have only at most 3 tabs open when I start an OA.

This time I forgot to open a new window for the OA, ended up switching out like 5 times, although only for a split second each time, but everytime I come back immediately hackrrank tells me the activity has been recorded or something. Am I cooked?

Hey Devs,

I'm a fullstack (generalist) developer who has spent about 2 years in the tech industry.

I'm not just looking for a job change but I'm also looking for a potential change in geography. I was wondering what the tech industry looks like in various nations... and was hoping if you yourself could shed some light on how it is to work as a software developer in your country... the working hours, the pay/growth , the potential savings one can expect, the overall satisfaction you feel from your career... or another other opinion you might wanna share.

Just expecting to get a brief idea about how its like in whichever nation you are.

Thanks in advance guys, would really be helpful...

I’m planning on prioritizing my path and was wondering if an MS is a soft requirement for some of these Research Engineer, Applied Scientist, Post-Training roles. I only have a BS but I work full time as a Data Scientist and was wondering how I should go about this career transition. I had research experience in Applied ML at my university and I’m currently working on ML models/statistical methods at my current company. Here are the breakdowns for jobs I’m looking at:

Cohere MTS Post-Training - https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4259504707/

PhD - 22%
Masters - 48%
BS/other - 30%

Research Engineers, Post-Training - https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4458055063/

PhD - 26%
Masters - 52%
BS/other - 22%

Garner Health Associate Applied Scientist - https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4465195772/

Masters - 56%
BS/other - 44%

My question is, will a BS ever get hired here? Or do they need some other exceptional qualifications to make up for it (conference paper, workshop paper, or other publications). Do projects matter at all anymore?

10YOE ML experience with 4 YOE in AI post training, evaluation and agentic AI.

Like for example, hiring rates? Unemployment + Underemployment for recent CS grads? And preferably statistics that make year by year comparisons starting at 2023 and end at 2026.

There's also a website that detects indeed job postings slowly increasing over time, however it may be meaningless if the job postings are ghost jobs https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

I know it depends on the company and role for difficulty, but I'm confused if some have practice questions or if you're recorded the whole time.

I'd like to know what to expect. Thank you!

Looking for honest advice on making a switch from support-side engineering to actual development.

Background

-B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from a top Indian engineering school, then switched into software.

-About 1.5 years as an SDE at an IT services company, but the work was really support R&D on a mature enterprise data product (test data management / data masking): diagnosing customer tickets with SQL (Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL), fixing defects in an existing C++ codebase, and scripting ops work in Bash/Python

-Finishing an MS in Data Science in the US in December 2026

Job Applications experience

- I have been applying rigorously for the past one month, and all i have been getting back are rejection mails mostly within a couple of days. Now I understand that its mostly the sponsorship filter and for some its the experience filter (2+ yrs). But even for new grad/early career roles, I dont think I have a reasonable shot at moving forward with atleast a screening or OA. Although I Built a few good projects, Im not sure that they are better than the generic ones. Anyway here's a set of them-

What I’ve built since

• Agentic RAG system: async FastAPI + Postgres backend, Next.js frontend, OpenTelemetry/Prometheus/Grafana, Helm on Kubernetes, CI, and a hand-reviewed eval set with two LLM judges cross-checked by hand. Only deployed locally so far.
• Vector search library: HNSW in C++17 with Python bindings, benchmarked against FAISS/hnswlib/ScaNN on 1M embeddings, sharded gRPC service, CUDA kernels for exact search
• Job-board poller: runs unattended every 15 minutes against about 600 company job boards, with retries, rate-limit handling and state diffing

My gaps, as I see them

• I’ve never built and shipped features on a team: no design reviews, no code review culture, no owning something end to end
• My projects haven’t faced real users or real load
• Frontend is thin

Questions

1. How do hiring managers read “support R&D” experience? Should I present it as dev experience, or lead with projects and present myself as a new grad?
2. What would most credibly close the “never shipped on a team” gap: open-source contributions to a real project (vector DB or RAG framework), deploying a project publicly with real users, or something else?
3. For backend roles with AI/ML integration, which titles should I be searching? Backend SWE, ML engineer, AI engineer, ML platform? Is new grad the right level, or can I reasonably apply to “1–3 YOE” roles?
4. If you’ve made the support to dev switch, what actually worked for you?

Thanks in advance. Happy to take blunt feedback.

Let me explain. My org heavily pressured us to get PR counts up. So, engineers did that by splitting up work into smaller items. It's actually more work --more context switching-- to review 2 smaller items than one item that is effectively the same thing.

We all know lines of code, PR counts, tickets closed are all proxies for actual productivity that moves businesses forward, and our work is too abstract to try and measure the real desired outcome (ostensibly: higher profits, more sales, etc) so they use this very rigid quantifiers.

Hey everyone, I wanted to vent a little and get some outside perspectives on my current work situation.

TL;DR:
Dev with 5yoe, got moved to a new project just over a week ago with almost no onboarding. My manager thinks I'm underperforming and lacking autonomy, expecting me to find bugs, implement improvements, build dashboards, and deliver constantly. It's making me question my abilities and feel burned out.
Is this normal for a mid-level dev? How do you guys handle unfamiliar codebases? Should I try to improve my situation or start looking for another job?

Wall of text here:

I have around 5 years of experience as a developer and work at a fairly big company in my country. A little over a week ago, I was moved to a different team and project due to an internal reorganization.

My onboarding basically consisted of: "Clone this repo. It's yours now. Find bugs, fix them, and implement improvements." Since then, I've been analyzing the codebase using Codex, trying to understand how everything works.

Recently, my manager criticized my performance, saying I'm taking too long, lack autonomy, and that my performance is closer to a junior developer's than a mid-level's. He expects me to already be generating bug reports, fixing issues, building dashboards, and proactively identifying improvements.

I explained that I'm still getting familiar with the system and that parallelizing all these tasks after barely a week on the project is challenging.

We're also heavily encouraged to use AI for practically everything, which has been burning me out. I feel like there's more emphasis on producing output quickly than actually understanding what we're building.

What bothers me most is that I've never had my abilities questioned like this before. In previous jobs, I've built features end to end, deployed to production, worked with stakeholders, discussed about technical solutions with peers/leaders and handled tasks independently. I don't think I lack autonomy, I mean that I've never felt like I needed someone constantly holding my hand to get things done besides asking some questions to my manager/ seniors. I usually come with a solution and asks if its okay, i dont like going without anything and expect to get everything solved. but I do need some time to understand a project before I can confidently suggest improvements.

Now I feel like nothing I do is enough, and it's honestly making me question my abilities as a developer.

I'm also curious about how you approach unfamiliar codebases

my usual workflow is to explain the task and context to AI, propose an approach, and iterate on its suggestions until I fully understand and agree with the solution. Sometimes I wonder if I'm spending too much time trying to understand things instead of just implementing them.

So, a few questions:

Are these reasonable expectations for a mid level developer after just one week?

How do you approach understanding an unfamiliar codebase with AI? Am I being inefficient?

Would you try to turn this situation around or start looking for another job?

For context, I have 5 years of experience, mainly with React, Node.js, TypeScript, and .NET. I'm considering looking elsewhere, but I'm unsure how difficult finding another job would be in the current market.

Recently I’ve done an interview which went exceptionally well, except I didn’t get a perfect solution to the problem in the 30min. Hard problem. Still passed.

Next interview. Again, stellar interview, relevant work, all that. Again, slipped up in the coding and didn’t get a perfect answer. I committed to the wrong algo approach under time pressure. Everything else was decent. This was easier problem than the other one.

What has peoples experience been with passing rounds without getting perfect solution? Or even committing to a slightly wrong approach?

Has anyone managed to get an offer despite this?

Hello everyone!

-I am on track to graduate with a computer science degree in two semesters along with a collateral minor in math and physics (and one semester faster than normal)! I have a 3.7 GPA and somewhat plan on pursuing a masters, but im not sure exactly in what.
-I do not have any internships or big projects for my resume. but I really want to spend the next year working on this and to make my resume look amazing. I just dont know what field to start building this experience in.

-I do not like programming (CRAZY, I KNOW!), but I do enjoy both math/physics and im cautious of any careers heavily influenced by AI. I am determined to put in the work needed to have a successful career and eventually make 150k+ salary.

-My three biggest options are Cybersecurity, Sysadmin or some other IT roles, but I would love to hear some other potential options that I could start building my resume and experience towards!

Any options, personal opinions or advice are greatly appreciated!!!

I’m so lost and sick of rethinking my future everyday

I’m 25 and going to school for the first time. I have always wanted to study computer science since I was 17, but never got a chance to. So now that I’m finally doing it, I keep reevaluating n decision because I can see it’s not worth it in the long term, esp if I wanna build a sustainable stable career.

This is why:

\- I know there’s a lot of ageism in the industry, and by the time I graduate I’ll already be 30-31 with only internship experience and no professional experience, and I feel that I’ll be unhirable after 40-41

\- With AI, and the large number of ppl I’ve talked to who are going back for a second degree, in sth more employable and hands on and untouched by AI like Mech Engineering/elec engineering etc, or the jobs being completely wiped out by it, or the sheer number of ppl that are unemployed who graduated 2-3 yrs ago, or the sr employees that are stuck in dead end jobs or also unable to find employment.

\- I genuinely don’t fin anything else interesting. I’ve spoken to and considered the careers that are untouched by AI like ultrasound tech, civil engineering, social work, mental health counsellor, but I have ZERO interest in these fields

\- all other fields that are wfh, good balanced lifestyle, corporate such as Project mgmt, Business Analyst, investment banking etc those fields are also heavily affected by AI and have the same outcome as any computer job that can be done remotely

so what do I do? Age is my biggest worry bc I won’t graduate as a worry free 22 yr old, I’ll graduate at 30-31 and since I wanna get married and possibly buy a house and start a family, how on earth do I go about doing that?

(I’m in Canada, which is probably experiencing the worst economic downturn the country or my province has ever seen), but I’d move to US right away if I could, even with all it’s cons rn

I’ve literally tried even teaching English to kids in China, and now even that is dead. Law and medicine are too long, expensive and mentally taxing. Trades are cannot be done wfh, and having various health issues I cannot do trades or the military.

IM SO LOST PLEASE HELP

I recently started a junior SWE role at a small company in my city. Like many, my goal is to break into a bigger company in the next few years. (not necessarily FAANG but maybe FAANG adjacent)

My question is what do I need to be doing day-to-day apart from trying to do the best I can at my current role? Do I need to be grinding leetcode and system design after work and on weekends? Building more projects?

Thanks!

I love node and I love building applications in it. I've been doing it for the past 5 years and have a very strong grip of the ecosystem. It's easy to write and it scales well. Although, I keep having this urge to learn GO.

I've been on and off with going through the documentation of GO. I followed along one of the tutorials and built a simple server. I explored around the ecosystem and read about server architecture and different frameworks like gin and chi. Both of which seem like nice ways to build an API.

I want to continue but in the current AI environment , I keep hearing opinions on what matters and what doesn't.

Some say you can use what ever you want and just let AI handle the coding aspect so long as you know the architecture of what you want and other say it's worth while to still learn and take your time for the sake of staying sharp.

I want to continue learning GO. I feel myself wanting to find better ways to make servers and perhaps go cloud development .

What do you guys think of learning GO in the current environment ? Will it help change the way one would think about writing performant servers ?

If anyone has moved from node to go, how much did you feel like you gained or lost

Had some bad luck, and made 2 very dumb mistakes that were work related and got fired in 2025.

Per my HR termination letter, I am eligible to be rehired. Regardless, can this cause me to fail a companies background check?

I have been tracking anonymous posters (people with hidden history) on this sub and many others for about a month now. You can see the data here: https://anon-tracker.com/

This sub has the highest percentage of anonymous posters by far. The current running average is about 65%. On October 8th, that percentage went from 62.1% down to 45.1% on October 9th, the lowest it's ever been. This is much closer to the average percentage of all tracked subreddits, 44%.

I don't think this is a coincidence.

So recently for the past two years we've been doing some major refactoring. Our company essentially has a few absolutely massive monorepos.

For years one architect has been complaining about it and how they want to break them into smaller manageable microservices but the cto never agreed except until the start of 2025 where the finally approved it.

Our company hired a few senior levels and put them and a few existing principle devs into a new team to restructure everything.

Its included upgrading all our project to .net 8/10, writing well written docs with business logic as well, etc.

Our codebase are now signficantly easier to navigate, everything is more self contained, its been great.

But my manager gave me a heads up discreetly letting me know what their actual plan is. Because everything is significantly more contained, and with the recent updates to claude, he told me the main reason the cto finally approved was to reduce token costs as much as possible so that they eventually just need a few really good devs instead of a fleet especially with opus 5.5.

So yeah, this is probably a similar direction most companies are going and unless youre an exceptional dev, whats going to happen to me might happen to you.

Apologies if this is redundant, as I'm sure there's a significant number of posts, articles, and other things near exactly like portions of this, but none seem to be an all-encompassing "walkthrough" of sorts about this as of yet, so I was curious to run it by everyone and gather opinions. Additional apologies for what I can only assume with result in being an essay-long post as I write this lol. After writing this all, I figure I'll attempt to break it into sections for those who don't want to read everything (although now it, ironically given the topic, borderline look AI generated... oh well)

Essentially, as the title implies, I'm curious to try to sort of simultaneously summate opinions, gather advice towards future steps (either specialization or pivoting away from the field), verify info I've gathered, and additionally vent a little bit/voice my experience in the software field thus far. While some of these topics sort of brush against slightly political or charged topics, I hoping not to devolve the discussion into just those topics or to spark anything heated

My Background/Partial Vent

Mostly for context, but also to lead into the next portions, my background is about 6 years of software engineering at this point, with an additional partly completed masters degree. It's been a very rocky journey though (although I very much know this is not unique to me). Covid delayed me getting my first career job by almost a full year, and I had to accept the first one I was offered, which required moving to a very expensive location with very, very low pay. The company was great, despite this, but I eventually had to leave due to costs rising beyond what I could afford in that location. On top of applying to other jobs throughout the duration of the aforementioned one, it required almost a full additional year outside of it to land my next job. This required probably 4000+ applications in total due to a lack of experience at the time, most jobs shifting away from the experience I had gained, and the simultaneous extreme push to outsource employees at the time. This next job I landed at is, just like the first, an amazing company, but it offers no benefits, the pay is (in my opinion) a little low relative to the amount of experience I have. The pay, while objectively not bad, is also a lower number than I was hoping to make by this point in time when I started my career, and that was prior to the sharp inflation we've experienced since. There's also no real way to move up the company, and raises do not match the standard 3% increase schedule (made worse by individual health insurance costs skyrocketing on top of inflation)

My experience started primarily with web development, but then shifted at first partly and then fully into desktop apps across two companies. By sheer chance, my "specialty" ended up becoming adapting very legacy code into either completely new project rebuilds or significant overhauls to allow for new software packages. Somehow, these also have always been in live environments, so changes matter, and testing is very limited. The code is so legacy that no documentation exists at all for the old software packages, which seems to render AI completely unable to make the necessary revisions even close to correctly (I'm assuming due to lack of training data?), and the live environment's requirements for precision make widespread changes by something like AI tricky. This has, ironically, completely removed me from the more "traditional" development spaces that seem to be seeing all the changes due to AI, especially as I have always somehow been put in charge of heading these rebuilds solely by myself. Even my current employer, as a company, has fully embraced AI as a tool, but I have managed to never use it to any significant degree, and thus I'm not personally sure about how it's impacting things beyond what I read

The Current State of Software

As mentioned previously, I'm a little more divorced from the overall current state of things than the average software developer, both due to the specific work I've been doing and the small companies I've exclusively worked with thus far. This makes it very, very hard for me to get a proper read on the trajectory of things, especially when it comes to this whole AI advancement thing that's been happening. One day I wake up and there's some new thing that ChatGPT is being famed for doing, only for it to turn out to be far less impressive than advertised the day after. The next day an AI coding agent destroys a company by screwing up its code. The day after, another new thing happened. Etc. I've seen mixes of posts on here saying that, while AI hasn't replaced their jobs, their jobs have devolved solely into writing prompts, hitting the submit button, and praying that the slot machine pays out properly this time around, as they aren't even allowed to manually modify the code anymore. Others say that their company has rejected AI entirely beyond basic revisions. Then I switch over to this sub and see studies pointing out that AI implementations, surprisingly, don't increase the overall throughput of companies due to many factors. Then in the replies of that and in other posts, people say that their companies have essentially swapped to being run fully by AI, and they're just sort of... there (which unfortunately seems to be the direction my company is heading). Then you have the Bureau of Labor Statistics still projecting an increase in job growth for software despite everything (although idk how accurate these projections have been, historically)

Ramblings aside, I guess I'm just overall curious if there's a pulse on how future proof software development as a whole is, regardless of the form it takes. That is, while I'm not certain how long the big AI companies will stick around due to a significant number of factors, I have a striking feeling that, at minimum, local AI usage will remain as a consistent tool used in writing software pretty much indefinitely. Is this something that you all feel will remain a rather consistent gig, but now you just are expected to use AI tools, no different than moving from a low-level to high-level language as took place many years ago? Do you feel like this is something that, given time and ironing out of the issues, could potentially significantly threaten the career field? Do you think it'll just die out entirely for any reason, and it's just the temporary "new, current thing"?

I guess my overall hesitancy is that, as I've seen many others voice, it seems like the current state of software engineering is no longer... engineering. I'm not at all opposed to learning new tools, but it seems like it's become, literally, just software development. As in, you no longer solve problems, engineer solutions, or try to optimize code (which I find myself doing any time I have AI output code; it's often horrendously optimized). You just sort of output it, which is not what I enjoy in the field. You almost act more as a manager of someone else creating the code, as a head software developer would manage an intern, but without writing the code yourself. Is this accurate as a whole?

Moving into the Future

In addition to the above, I guess I was also just curious what the future plans of everyone are. Are a significant number of you planning to jump ship, or do you plan to double down and see this through? Quite frankly, I've become significantly burned out on the insane back-and-forths of the career area since I've joined, where it seems like every company's #1 priority is the complete replacement of their software engineers for some reason, so I'm heavily debating what to do next. When I first started studying for this back in high school, this was supposed to be a very steady field, but the reality since has been very different, and the compensation, in my experience, has lagged significantly even without the constant threat of replacement and difficulty finding the jobs being a factor. That being said, I do believe I can have a steady future at my current company. That is, with them being a small company, they prefer to work with their employees and train them up rather than replace them. However, as mentioned prior, inflation is essentially guaranteed to outpace the pay over time (which I know doesn't make me unique in this instance, as everyone's suffering the same, but mine will be faster lol)

An additional concern is that, if I were to swap career areas, I would be starting from scratch in a very unforgiving time frame. If I recall correctly, the average salary in every state in the US is below the average cost of living, and I'd be well below the average just starting out again. Even living in a cheap state and a small town, where expenses are lesser, I don't think any jobs I could get in the surrounding 30 mile radius could match the cost of even my basic expenses. That being said, are there any related career areas that might be more future proof that could be considerable to pivot to? That is, ones where you wouldn't necessarily be starting out from scratch, and while the pay might take a dip, it wouldn't plummet to starting-over-levels? Is it worth it to pursue education in something like cybersecurity or network infrastructure, which might outlast software? Would it be best that I just stay in my position, which again is by no means bad, and just accept that that's how it is and switching would just make things worse/more unstable?

If there are no other real options to pivot to, what are some other things you're considering switching entirely to? Is the current state of software such that considering all of this isn't even worth it at this time?

Thank you all for your time in reading this far, and for the advice!

I have about 3 years of experience at a tech company, mostly handling routine Java tickets. It's solid work, but nothing that stands out.

I'm planning to start studying again, but the job market is tough and I'm not sure where to focus. So far I've committed to LeetCode and system design, but I don't know what else to prioritize. I just don’t fundamentally know what to study which the markets changing so quick. Should I do SAA? Learn AI fundamentals? I don’t know and it’s confusing me. Of course I want to be able to pass the interview but I also want to be a good viable engineer that door open for.

For those at the mid or senior level, or those who hire for it:
- What skills or knowledge should someone at my level have to stand out?
- Is there anything beyond LeetCode and system design that made a real difference in your job search?

Thanks!!

Yeah, I know that international workers in the US are not the cause of bad market, but I am curious as to what you guys think. Will it get better for domestic cs grads or no? I personally doubt it because of the offshoring, and I think that until there is a tax/penalty for offshoring, it won’t get better. Please share your thoughts!!!

I’ve programmed casually in various languages for almost 10 years, but I’ve only had a formal programming job (data engineer) for about 3. I love this career. Even when I’m not writing every line myself, I love building apps and backends and optimizing data pipelines, and I want to stay relevant as long as I can.

The writing is on the wall, though. The most senior dev on my team has 20 years of experience and says AI now out-programs him 99% of the time. The whole team’s view is that we should be prompting and letting AI handle most of the building and reviewing.

My team has recently started building apps alongside our data engineering work, using React and Express with TypeScript. Here’s where I’m at:

• HTML/CSS/JS: 9/10
• Tailwind: 8/10
• React: 7/10
• Express: 4/10
• TypeScript: 0/10

I built websites in high school for local businesses pre-react. I’ve also worked through some long full-stack video courses on Udemy as well as built a few side projects at home. On those, I reviewed all the code but only wrote about 15% of it myself. AI wrote the rest.

My question: is it worth going back through long courses that re-teach the fundamentals? Or should I skip straight to the TypeScript sections and pick up the React/Express nuances as I go by asking AI?

I’m honestly a bit jaded and don’t know what’s worth my time anymore. I still believe I should understand and review the code I ship, but at work that step seems to be disappearing more and more. How are others handling this?

I recently interviewed for defense contractor position and it went well. I think I might get an offer and I’ll be working with a lang I like (C/C++). it’s in another state so I would need to relocate but they offer a relocation bonus so the move would be of little cost to me.

however, the job is located in an area with a large superfund site (the earth is contaminated with heavy metals and hazardous waste from a former manufacturing plant) that affects the water supply. plus, there was a recent lawsuit by the people of the area because of the elevated cancer rates.

ive been out of software work for while so i need a job asap. and I’m deeply afraid im not going another interview soon (im applying but companies take 3000 years to get back to you) let alone one that leads to a successful offer, isn’t 5+ rounds and a take home, and the people who I’m interviewing with don’t seem like a**holes.

but I also do not want to be knowingly living in an area where I could expose myself to some gnarly, incurable, all over my body cancer. sure, I’ll have money again but all of my money might go to chemo.

So I am a team lead and I may have recently made myself sort of redundant. I’ve trained my team to tackle most of their day to day tasks independently, interact with other teams the way that I would and lead reports that I would have led. Now all I do is check in once a day, give them advice on challenges they face and make the final decision of on major next steps while also attending some meetings/client calls that I may need to oversee my team on. This was four years in the making for me to achieve and I am very proud of my team. But now I have very little work myself. I work about 10 min to 2 hours a day and since I work from him, I spend most of my days at my farm. I’m probably more farmer than employee at this point. Only once every couple months do I need to do something technical with my own hands.

I try to maintain visibility by taking initiative in high level calls. If my manager is told by the CEO to work on something I’ll dm my manager and say my team can handle that. Then I’ll have an hour long meeting with my team to tell when what to do and it’ll get done. But if my bosses were to look at how active I am on my laptop (if they are indeed tracking those things) it’ll look like I do nothing. So far my appraisals have been good and I’m getting paid really well for my region. But am I in a good situation?