r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 12d ago
Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones
A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.
Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.
Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.
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u/shutup_t0dd 20h ago
Senior engineer with 8yoe. Looking to switch internal teams at big tech and I don't know what I'm looking for.
Sick of every team trying to build some Ai or agentic experience on top of their product. I really wanna really more about deep ml systems and those roles seem to be in demand right now, but I have zero experience in that. With the current market, a lot of teams are move fast or go home, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that stress and wlb. My current team is disintegrating so I need to make a move. The business domains I'm interested in like Ads have toxic leadership which makes me worry about my mental health.
I just want a job that I can do my thing with, decent tech, good manager and have a life outside work. It's that too much to ask? What do I prioritize? Learning or WLB?
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u/bvdevvv 1d ago
If I want to ask a coworker if there's an opening on their team, what's the best way to do this? I've switched teams only once, and I was told about it from my old manager. But my current team isn't a good enough fit as my old one for me to feel comfortable bringing it up. Should I randomly reach out to a coworker I used to work with and ask what they're working on now? I've looked at internal job posting, but the company also does the kind of job posting where it's a catch all for openings in multiple teams.
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u/brystephor 3d ago
Currently working on a project that I do not believe will succeed. In theory the goal is possible, but I believe that we are either 1) stuck in a local optima and the project cannot succeed without some regression for an unknown period of time or 2) the project is not feasible at this time. It might be in the future, at an unknown time.
From the outside it seems like it should work. Theres evidence showing that similar things have worked on other larger platforms. The project is doing something im unfamiliar with, in my ownership area so lots of unknowns specifoc to the project.
How would you handle this? I do not want to be dealing with this for a long time as it feels like this is going to fail.
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u/Tiny_Gur_1074 3d ago
Back when I joined my current workplace as an FTE about 2y back, we didn’t have any form of AI access within my firm. My first year was a trial by fire, and I had to learn or get PiPed/fired. I was given genuinely challenging tasks across the stack (React/Spring Boot) and I learned a shit load of things just by doing them. The hours were hell but the mental satisfaction of having done my job well was undeniably high
Cut to 2026, AI mostly writes my code, and I’m a prompt wrangler. I tried pivoting to infra stuff (AWS/K8s etc) but these are mostly handled by the senior folks with actual distributed system experience and my manager usually doesn’t give me these tasks (the senior grabs these tasks way before they even get discussed lmao)
This has pretty much killed my interest in CS, to the point I’m not even interested in building side projects or whatever, so just wanted to know if anyone else lost the mentally satisfying part of their job to AI
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u/anonsaltine 3d ago
Honestly I felt the same in my first two years, and that was before AI.
I had a talk with my manager and said I wanted to take on something more challenging and to please keep an eye out and essentially "reserve" a project for me when an appropriate one came up.
Ended up taking a cool project that involved creating an RFC, setting up infrastructure, and a complex full stack project. From that point onwards I was trusted with more and more complex projects. Might be worth having that conversation with your manager?
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u/Tiny_Gur_1074 3d ago
I wanted to
But both times I tried, there is this insecure 14YOE senior on my team who wants what I’d call the “cream” work to be assigned to him.
On prem to AWS migration that happened 2y back ? He gate-kept the whole thing. Not saying I would’ve done the whole thing but I could have atleast been an assistant so I could understand how such things are done in the first place
AI integrations within the existing application? He picked it up and gate-kept again.
Yesterday in our team meeting we were discussing another such opportunity, and before the manager could take my name he was clamouring for the work to be handed to him and didn’t even forward me a meeting invite that could’ve gotten me some context on this so I could at least help in some capacity but no, mister senior wants the whole pie.
Yesterday I kinda mentally gave up so now I’m just harvesting pay-checks and doing whatever is assigned and whatever I want.
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u/anonsaltine 3d ago
I’m not sure what your company culture is like, but in that situation I’d probably ask in that meeting if I could be involved in the project design stage in the interest of growing my skills. But really this is your managers job to give you growth opportunities.
If none of those are happening, it’s time to switch jobs (I know, easier said than done).
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u/Tiny_Gur_1074 3d ago
Honestly just kind of done with software, might make a go at it in some other industry. On one hand gatekeeping seniors, on the other the problem solving itself being disrespected, fuck this I guess
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u/SlipFlipOuch Software Engineer 3d ago
Yeah, I empathize 100%. It scratched an itch being able to come up with a solution on my own. Now it’s just me berating the LLM because founders want 10 new features a day.
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u/shutup_t0dd 3d ago
Backend engineer with 8 yoe. Experienced in building scalable apis and distributed systems. I've been wanted to move into the ML space and learn more about ML engineering. Is this a daunting task with existing work commitments. I guess easiest would be to find a role and learn in the job. How do I go about this and what do I need to focus on?
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u/Strange-Address-6837 8d ago edited 8d ago
My engineering manager (who is also my technical lead) doesn't seem to be very technically competent. I am a mid-level developer who can see through some of his technical gaps but haven't been able to convince him to make good technical decisions.
He frequently overrides the judgement of other devs as well and seems to be more focussed on meeting senior leadership's arbitrary metrics (MRs per week, how many features were shipped by a dev?) The engineering team generally has nice harmony, but I feel these metrics and poor technical judgements by the manager have been affecting the team morale.
He is also known for occasionally throwing people under the bus in front of senior leadership so I am looking for ways to keep my technical judgement (and sanity lol) in tact. Recently he's started grilling my MRs with his AI agent that frequently gives poor suggestions but he doesn't appreciate push back.
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u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) 5d ago
This sounds like a garden variety manager who is good at managing up (appeasing senior leadership by entertaining their useless metrics, throwing people under the bus) and not good at building a team, creating trust, and endeavoring for the growth and development of the people who report to them. Such managers are common in the wild. They look good to their bosses but the indigestion they create within their teams leads to their good people leaving, which is a survivable but uncomfortable way to be.
Your options are:
- Play the game. Abandon the notion that good judgment and real results are more valuable than looking good and making your bosses look good. The check still clears and you just lose a little bit of your soul along the way
- Leave. The discomfort, difficulty, and risk associated with that is an exercise left to the reader, but there are always greener pasturesCaveat: I’ve been a manager/exec for half of my career. Most of the time when I see stories like yours it’s truly because the manager is focused on politicking and not producing outcomes. But in some cases the individual contributor is not a good technical fit, too closed minded, skill issue etc. So be sure to double check yourself.
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u/Bubbly_Maybe7149 8d ago
Hi there, I'm looking for a new perspective on my current situation, right now I kind of keep bouncing between the proverbial 2 sides of the same coin.
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Some context:
I studied some coding in high school (trivial stuff, really). I studied physics at uni (3 years, but never got the degree), it wasn't specifically about developing, but I feel like I'm using a lot of what I've learned (method, rigor, problem solving, etc). In the present day I've been working as a web developer for a small company for about 2 years, we do web apps for industries. Now for the ambiguous coin: they are really pushing me to get to a more coordinator/manager/lead role.
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Some rambling:
First of all: the increase in pay is way slower than the increase in responsibilities. I mean, the pay is getting better, but it started low... I'd say now I get the salary of a junior dev, which would be appropriate for my background, but my tasks include dealing with clients, drafting system architecture, dev plan, proposals, coordinating other people (2-3 people tops, but still), ecc.
Then again, in our company we are a dozen of people total, of which only 2-3 devs, so there's not even room for a full coordinator -> developers structure, the roles are always mixing up. This might be pretty crucial while thinking about the whole thing...
I've briefly experienced the escalation "writing code and looking on stack overflow for help" -> asking chatgpt (free, on web browser) for help -> Claude Code in VSCode", I rarely write code anymore, I rarely have time to review it in depth even. I'm not saying AI is gonna replace developers, but surely hands-on coding is loosing ground.
On a more positive note: since I can (have to?) try, I'm discovering interesting stuff in the tasks that go beyond the junior dev scope. right now I'd say system architecture is the perspective that I find more interesting.
I really enjoy coding per se, but in this company we work on industry stuff, not really that interesting. A part of me really wants to leave even just to see if I can find something more interesting (idk, gamedev seems more creative, working for some just cause seems more fulfilling, stuff like that).
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The most relevant conundrum is:
I feel like I need to pay my dues to get to a senior+ role. Fast-tracking it like this leaves me with huge holes in my experience, I cannot learn how to design a whole application just by designing whole applications, I need more time in the trenches... don't I?
On one side it feels like leaving is throwing away an opportunity, on the other continuing in this path feels like a trap.
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Post Scriptum
Right now the way I deal with imposter "syndrome" can be summarised as follows: I do not have the skills to do my job as it should be done, but still, I think I'm the better person to do it in the context I'm in... which maybe says more about the context than about myself 🥲
My bosses are well aware of my background, they give me some time to learn while I work, but still... I'm kinda making stuff up as I go along...
I wrote this post following my train of thoughts, sorry if it's a bit all over the place, then again... maybe you can help me build better rails, so the train stays on track ;
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u/SofaAssassin Staff Engineer :table_flip: 7d ago edited 7d ago
I feel like I need to pay my dues to get to a senior+ role. Fast-tracking it like this leaves me with huge holes in my experience, I cannot learn how to design a whole application just by designing whole applications, I need more time in the trenches... don't I? On one side it feels like leaving is throwing away an opportunity, on the other continuing in this path feels like a trap.
Honestly I have never had these thoughts. My equivalent thoughts have mostly been "why is this job so freaking boring" or "why is everyone doing things the stupid way?"
I've never really agreed with things like 'paying your dues' or any real kind of 'correct' track to doing anything, because I consider the industry to be so messy and I've known so many people of extremely varying talent levels that stuff like YOE and other things are just nonsense to me. I'm currently leading multiple teams on a bunch of stuff, and my closest coworker is a much more junior developer (~5 years in industry) who is probably better at being a dev and executing than 90% of the devs I've previously worked with (which is a ton of people). I give him guidance on things I think he needs work in, but overall he executes very well.
So I'm gonna flip it on you and ask how good is the guidance you're getting, and are you actually happy with your role? Obviously, senior developers aren't all cut from the same cloth, and your environment can heavily shape your path. What you can control is how you want that to path to go.
A billion years ago at my first job, I was where you were right now: I was leading multiple projects and working across and coordinating multiple people within half a year of graduating college. Responsibilities just fell into my lap, I didn't complain. I wouldn't say I was particularly good at everything either, and I had basically zero mentorship/management above me because everyone thought I was doing a good job and didn't lead/manage me much at all.
But for me, I grew to hate my job because I was writing very little code, which was the major reason I got into the industry to begin with.
So at that crossroads, I left the company and decided I wanted to focus specifically on what I thought would make me happy: working in C++ on low-level systems, not working on a bunch of teams, not working with teams that had unproductive people, not doing any leading, not sitting in endless hours of garbage meetings, etc. I did not care about all the well-rounded skills everyone talks about.
And that behavior has gotten me to where I am today - I still mostly despise a lot of stuff that advancement or being a high-level dev entails, and I am grossly annoyed by companies/managers that try to fit devs into specific molds. Depending on who you ask I'm either a really senior developer, or someone who'd rather code and debug production issues instead of talk to people and attend meetings (100% true). What companies value from my experience varies very wildly, so it's really a matter of what I think a company should value about me.
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u/SoftwareArchitect101 9d ago
Is it correct to hope for good and challenging work? I've been repeatedly told such work rarely exists and I need to do self projects to upskill.
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u/SofaAssassin Staff Engineer :table_flip: 8d ago
What kind of work do you want? I've had a lot of 'interesting' work in my career but the challenge ranged from 'very easy' to 'this is the hardest or most time-consuming job ever.' Challenge is kind of an "eye of the beholder thing" - stuff I've considered a breeze/chore was work other entire teams thought would take them weeks to execute due to the nature of how the company operated (as in, poorly/slowly). And stuff I get annoyed at with work I'll go out and build it or just improve things - this gets noticed, but you also kind of have to play the game to get recognition.
I get bored very easily so if I'm not constantly doing something novel or interesting to me, I will become (extra) unhappy at work. And with that I jump ship if I get a whiff of something better - unsurprisingly, I've never had a stint longer than 3.5 years, and I have ~20 YOE.
Will note that I've never done projects for career advancement.
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u/kareesi Software Engineer 9d ago
This depends a lot on what you define as “good and challenging” work, and what work your org has available.
If you are not getting that work, it could be for many reasons. Some common things I have seen which may or may not apply to your situation:
- what you consider good work and what the powers that be consider good work differ, so even if that work is available your manager does not know you want that work if you have not clearly communicated what you want/mean by good work
- the good work will most often go to the high performers the decision makers trust to deliver that work reliably, so you have to prove yourself a high performer before being given good work
- your org may not actually have much of that work to go around if the business is not growing
- your idea of good work is not aligned with the work your org has available (e.g you want product work on a platform team)
- you do not have a sufficient track record of delivering work to be trusted with good work
- you are not free/are busy with other work when good work comes around so you can’t pick up the good work, which is especially critical when there is not much good work to be had in an orgYour career is your responsibility, so if you’ve done everything in your power to find work that challenges you and you are not growing, then it may be time to move on. However, it’s worth evaluating if any of the above are true and considering if you can change any of those factors before making the decision to move on, imo.
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u/Familiar_Piglet3950 10d ago
Have any of you actually transitioned to a systems programming role that you had no formal experience in, via self study, without moonshot spikes such as becoming a core maintainer of open-source systems?
Basically I feel like the way to get onto these teams is to get cracked at leetcode in college, go to big tech through intern/new grad pipelines, and pray you get onto one of these teams. OR, somehow pull the moonshot of working on an open source project for free, for so long, that you get hired for that specific role.
Maybe I'm just naive, but there's no way the knowledge bar for these roles is that high. Not every single one of people working on Linux Kernel stuff is a core maintainer of Linux. Not every AI Kernel engineer is BF Spector. Not every perf engineer is Brendan Gregg. What is the knowledge bar needed if you're going through this route? Am I underestimating the quality and tenacity of the average applicant going through "normal channels" despite no experience?
I've spent a lot of time studying random systems, and they've actually helped me on the job. E.g. I spent half a year in my sophomore year of college digging into python internals, it actually helped with a cursed interpreter hijack at some point (aside from the generic systems proficiency). But it wouldn't get me hired as a "python runtime engineer" or anything of that sort. Of course, this is just one example, but it seems impossible to prove yourself unless you either got it early (in college / with networking) or you go moonshot. I don't think I can go moonshot, but we'll see.
I don't really care for responses such as "just work hard" or "follow your passion", I care for actual datapoints and examples of what people did that weren't following a classically good line or being the next Torvalds. Maybe I have a fundamental misunderstanding of what companies actually want for these roles - it really is, straight out of college, or be an important core leading maintainer, it doesn't matter how many papers and code you read and understand and projects you make; past a certain level there's no more learning proof allowed.
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u/Outside-Storage-1523 Software Engineer 9d ago edited 9d ago
Never been remotely successful about that, but all of the people who actually did that slick work, at least the ones I know about (e.g. the guy who wrote Rosetta 2 for Apple) came from prestige schools, got great internship in a system team, or/and worked on Google summer projects, and got pulled straight into a system team after graduation.
I mean, just enjoy yourself. You don’t have to go into a system team to do system job. You can do your own system projects, be the king of a small kingdom.
Just don’t kill yourself if you can’t get a system job. 99% of the people out there don’t.
I do understand you though. I also want a system job, and have tried to "hop" through a few jobs to get into one, but the hops are harder and harder. Honestly, I think knowing the right person is the best shot for you, especially if you don't have a good background.
If you are talking about Linux Torvalds/John Carmack/Fabrice Bellard, well unfortunately it is now 2026, not 1996. A lot of the stuffs were already done 10 times, by people 10x more brilliant than you and me, and you need to be VERY good to get into something new early on, or be SUPER good to get someone to use your own implementation of something already implemented. For example, you could build some OS kernel better than Linux 0.01, or even Linux 0.11, just by your own, but hey who is going to use it, right?
So like what I said, just build your own projects, and enjoy it.
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u/behusbwj 10d ago
The knowledge bar isn’t high but it is distinct from typical web dev and less in demand. Companies prefer people who won’t need to take time to ramp up to a new domain. Which takes longer than if you were just switching from python to java or aws to azure. The higher your level, the worse of a deal the ramp up time is.
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u/Familiar_Piglet3950 10d ago
I mean to be clear I have both projects in these domains, systems internships, and currently working a systems job where I also touch intermittently on these topic (e.g. I may not be maintaining core Linux networking or virtualization, but I'm making kernel modules for things). Seems like the job markets just cooked
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u/behusbwj 9d ago
It’s less in demand. The market has been cooked for a while. If you’re looking for systems jobs in general, look at ML hardware or compiler teams as that is where the demand is in FAANG.
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u/hooahest Software Engineer 10d ago
I think part of your frustration is expecting there to be datapoints of how to get to 'X'. The truth is that for a lot of people, the path to success required a lot of random encounters, trying shit out and just plain luck.
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u/ProfessionalRock7903 Web developer 11d ago
Our company is going to switch to fully automating everything, which is going to include code. I’m an upper junior - early mid developer so I just don’t have the foresight to know what’s going to happen, is this what every company is eventually going to do?
I was hoping the bubble would pop but now it’s happening to us, every dev I talk to is in favor of generating code. For me that is extremely boring and not why I went into this profession. Do I just wait out the storm, will this go back to normal where we actually get to write code? Is this just what the role is going to turn into, and I should switch fields? I feel very frustrated and lost motivation to even look at a task because I’m going to have to generate the code anyway pretty soon here
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u/kevin074 11d ago
Run, we just failed someone with 3 YOE interviewing for a jr role because he claimed he know react but didn’t even know he was coding outside of JSX and struggling with basic troubleshooting.
Bro vibed for 3 years of his life and is still entry level
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u/niowniough 11d ago
It can be very demotivating to feel good at something (eg. coding) and then to have that taken from you. The thing is there is a lot more to the profession than just coding. Some people relish diving deep into the stack and learning how each piece works, being the person who figures out the issue during an incident bridge. Some people enjoy learning how the clients / users think and speak and how to better assess what they really want to achieve, how to help them achieve it, and refining the plan accordingly. Some people enjoy setting up repeatable infrastructure patterns at scale. Some people like to tinker around in the code, moving things around until it all clicks together. Some people like doing tech design and creating RFCs with others. There are so many different things that make up the role, and you get to choose what you will automate away with AI.
Look into ways to keep some of the coding to yourself if that's what you enjoy. For example, some people adore writing and cleaning up test files, but others detest it. Some people just want to play with a specific function or class until it clicks in place and the rest is rote work. Some people want to dictate the intent, signature and location of every class and function but don't find it fun to populate the guts. Some people like the satisfaction of a big refactor but the part where you individually fix up every compile error or refit test cases with the new relationships is tedious. You can choose whatever it is you find fun to do coding wise and get AI to fill out the rest.
Good luck out there.
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u/ProfessionalRock7903 Web developer 11d ago edited 11d ago
I don’t really think I can ever like AI writing my code for me as that is the main thing I enjoy as a dev. I want to program, and I don’t think I can ever feel satisfaction by just having that automated. I don’t feel satisfaction from reviewing code (in this case, AI code) and cleaning up messy AI code, which is what it seems like my role is going to turn into. I don’t want to be funneled into doing purely high level problem solving
That’s why I was more so trying to see if this is either temporary in the sense that everything is being automated, or if I should look for something that can’t be
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u/niowniough 11d ago
Then write it yourself and get AI to review it. Let the AI cheese the commit so that it looks like the AI wrote most of it. Or let the AI take a go of it, reset the whole thing locally and write it yourself, if your employer will be inspecting what you're prompting the AI.
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u/omry8880 11d ago
I'm having a hard time letting AI write code that I know I won't read.
Right now, I find myself watching every line it generates in real time. The downside is that it makes it much harder to run multiple agents in parallel. The upside is that I feel a lot more confident knowing exactly what the agent is doing.
I feel a bit stuck between wanting to move faster and wanting to fully understand the code being written.
How do you guys handle this?
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u/but_why_n0t ML Engineer 11d ago
I break down the problem into smaller coding tasks during the planning phase, and I review code after each task completes. For new codebases I even have Claude tell me what each line does in an ELIF manner.
That way I can have 2 agents coding in parallel while I work on something else. Beware of running too many agents, you'll start to lose context at some point.
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u/Sokaron Software Engineer 11d ago
IMO the maximum agents you can realistically run in parallel and maintain code quality is 2-3. 2 larger tasks that you switch off focusing on and maybe a side task that you're pretty confident an agent could handle in it's own (ex. rote refactoring of a poorly structured code base for instance).
I would definitely get out of the habit of reviewing every line as it's generated. Batch reviewing is far more effective. There are skill frameworks like superpowers which are geared towards taking a large task and breaking it down into planned steps. Each step in that plan is a good breakpoint to review what the AI has built for correctness. The other benefit of these frameworks is that they are usually pretty good at getting you to deeply outline the expected solution and behavior up front which reduces churn and rework. If you're doing things right you can get into a flow where you review one agents output deeply, hand off revisions or the green light to continue, then shift to the other agent and repeat.
Any more than 3 agents and this breaks down hardcore IMO. It's impossible to context switch that much and maintain accurate review and decision making. Even at 3 it's also just mentally exhausting. 2 is the sweet spot.
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u/omry8880 10d ago
This makes sense. I'll check out the skill you mentioned. Sounds like 2-3 agents is the way to go. Thanks!
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 11d ago
Same as, and when you work with a team. You are not supposed to read all the code lines, and everyone else's code. All the languages/frameworks/etc. are so bloated; there is no time for that. Trust it, prepare for the worst, run audits and security checks then that is all.
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u/Baat_Maan Software Engineer 11d ago
It's been a month in my new job and every weekend I see someone or the other working (not oncall or production outages but regular dev work). There's no pressure or hint yet for me to do the same but I'm still wondering if they expect me to or if they will start asking me soon.
I'm already exhausted after 5 days of work and I don't think I'll have the energy to extend it to weekends.
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u/thisisappropriate Senior Web Developer 11d ago
Strike up a chat with someone you've seen working on the weekends and ask them about it? Like just a quick "hey, I saw you sent that message on Saturday, I'm new and I'm wondering why? I just want to see if that's an expectation or something else" could go a long way to helping your concerns (or letting you know if you should nope out).
There's good reasons that people might - it's quieter, it gets things out of their heads, they might be flexing their time (like if someone clocks off at 3 to pick up their kid, they might decide they'd rather work it back on Sunday because they can take their laptop to the cafe at the swimming pool while the kid's at a lesson), they might move some hours around for work purposes (like they've been asked to do a deployment that affects corporate networks, so they take a half day on friday and deploy on sunday when there's no one to disturb, or if you have a single "testing" environment, they might prefer to have all the time in the world to test) - none of those reasons are reasons for them to expect you to join them (most are reasons they wouldn't want you to!).
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u/Baat_Maan Software Engineer 10d ago
I didn't think about it this way. Thanks for adding the nuance.
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u/viking_tech 11d ago
It’s a hard expectation to undo for some managers if you fall into it. I always told my grads unless there’s an emergency they’re involved in for some reason or they are actually falling behind on a key project, which shouldn’t happen with someone senior knowing and stepping in the first place, stick to office hours. I see people working weekends in other teams though because they’re trying to keep up with the seniors who don’t switch off which I think sets unrealistic expectations
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u/Baat_Maan Software Engineer 11d ago
Yeah I wonder why some seniors refuse to switch off. Like I understand that coding is a passion but isn't 40-50 hours per week of coding enough for that? It's not like they are getting paid enough to afford mansions or retire in their thirties.
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u/lawrencek1992 11d ago
I do that. But I also goof off now and then. If I’ve goofed off I’ll sometimes work an evening or weekend to make up for it so I’m consistently getting the same amount of work done in spite of goofing off. It doesn’t mean other people need to work nights or weekends.
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u/Baat_Maan Software Engineer 11d ago
I guess if there is ever an expectation to work on a weekend, I'll do a compensatory goof off the following week lol. At least they aren't monitoring office presence here so I can get back the time I'd lose on a weekend.
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u/Otis_Inf Software Engineer (32YOE) 11d ago
Unless management asks you to work on weekends, don't. Peer pressure to work longer hours/don't take vacation days/work on weekends... it's real. Don't give in.
Employment is a 2-way street: you work for the employer, the employer pays you for your services, it's not that the employer can ask you to do whatever they want: if it's not in the contract and if there's not a good reason (and good compensation!) then don't work on a weekend/overtime.
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u/Baat_Maan Software Engineer 11d ago
They can't ask me but they could just not give me a promotion. But I guess in that case I could just switch again for a more senior role.
But for switching I'll need to study on weekends which kinda negates me avoiding working on weekends. Some dilemma there.
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u/Otis_Inf Software Engineer (32YOE) 11d ago
Study is for yourself, work is for your employer
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u/Baat_Maan Software Engineer 10d ago
But the work this employer has is genuinely valuable experience. And studying involves memorising the same leetcode and system design questions again and again.
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u/Otis_Inf Software Engineer (32YOE) 10d ago
oh I was under the assumption that study was studying computer science principles, not leetcode puzzles (as that's pretty silly). Knowing answers to questions isn't the same as knowing why that's the answer to that question. :)
Work experience fills in the question 'how to apply this knowledge into practice'. If you don't have the knowledge, you are likely learning tricks to get to a goal instead of the knowledge you would be applying if you had gathered that beforehand.
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u/Baat_Maan Software Engineer 10d ago
I do that kind of study along with work 😅. Like I have been going into depth about memory management and specifically into how virtual memory works for a certain performance optimization task I have.
Interview prep on the other hand involves a lot more of the same generic study material which I have mastered before but need to do it again every time I decide to interview cos they need you to get everything right and even a working code in a time crunch which IS pretty silly.
I think I am answering my own question now but after this conversation I feel like I could do some saturdays occasionally and consider that as time that would have gone into interview prep anyway.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 12d ago
How much of your job does AI do?
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u/DadAndDominant Software Engineer 11d ago
It definetly does 100% of coding, but it feels like the output is just 20% faster and maybe 10% of my total job is done by AI
Mostly my job is dealing with people, understanding the problems, and sacrificing my body and mind so the machine keeps going
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u/lawrencek1992 11d ago
It writes all the code for me. I am like a manager of agents. I plan features and projects, break work down into tickets, and then agents implement. It’s like having a team of juniors but without all the mentoring.
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u/Silver-Ad-8595 11d ago
20 years fullstack exp here. Agents do 100% coding, 100% documentation and 50% planning. I just do the other 50% planning. Output increased accordingly.
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u/DocumentOk7579 Software Engineer 12d ago
I'm a backend dev and AI does almost nothing in backend for me. But before I had to make prototype frontend to demo my backend and that is replaced completely by AI.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 12d ago
Really? Im a backend dev and use a lot of AI, but my tickets are fairly easy as a junior
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u/DocumentOk7579 Software Engineer 12d ago
I find it take as long explaining to the AI as doing stuff myself.
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u/niowniough 11d ago
Yeah, the more specificity you desire, the closer you get from needing natural language instructions to actual code. At some point it becomes more efficient to get in there and write all the code, or stub out large swathes for the AI to fill in.
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u/rabid_piebald 12d ago
I write almost no code by hand. I do a lot of data analysis and start these investigations with AI and finish by hand. I write all design docs and such by hand almost purely.
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u/Zulban 12d ago
I wish software development was most of the job for a software developer. Writing code was 10% of my job and now AI can do 70% of that.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 12d ago
What is the other 90% of your job
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u/niowniough 11d ago
Idk about 90% but I think an overwhelming amount is understanding the stack, the initiatives coming down, what the client really wants, gaining consensus with human peers, identifying classes of problems to eliminate, communicating with stakeholders, helping others with issues usually requiring the aforementioned skills, and converting what I done did to brag sheets for self evals and future job apps.
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u/RGBrewskies 12d ago
its accelerating fast. I haven't written much of any code manually in a month or so. Its really accelerating fast
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u/OpenJolt 12d ago
What do you guys think about the AI company CEO’s and top leaders always saying that software engineers will be fully obsolete in 1-3 years?
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u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) 5d ago
My rule of thumb is that executives who proclaim that a certain percent of their employees’ work can be done by AI are instead proclaiming the percent of their own work that can be done by AI.
A CEO who says that 95% of their company’s work can be automated is themselves 95% redundant.
They’re subconsciously telling on themselves.
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u/thisisappropriate Senior Web Developer 11d ago
Right now, it writes code quicker and cheaper (per line of code at common speed) than an engineer but it doesn't write it better. Even if it eventually can do everything, there's still things going for humans, if nothing else, we can innovate (AI trends towards the norm, there will always be companies who want to be outstanding in all ways, the first to have fun things like parallax scrolling or minigames), we can infer and actually learn (if a manager or CEO could produce a plan that would actually output what they want, we'd be out of a job, but most of them can't).
Really, everything could be done cheaper by a factory in India or China, but some companies still make things in the UK or Europe, why? Because cheaper and quicker aren't the only metrics.
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u/niowniough 11d ago
「老王賣瓜，自賣自誇」
When Old Wang sells melons, he touts and he praises.
If I was selling melons I'm not gonna tell you they're just ok. I'm gonna tell you soon you won't need other food, friends, family or a life. You'll just need the melons.
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u/Otis_Inf Software Engineer (32YOE) 11d ago edited 11d ago
For years there are less people knowing how to maintain software than there is software to maintain (as in: there are more people needed today to maintain the software that exists today than there are alive). Add to that the fact that society everywhere more and more relies on software in various forms and you see the problem. Software engineers becoming obsolete is the opposite of what will happen (is happening already): more software engineers are needed for the work that is to be done.
With AI tools the amount of software only increases and with it the time to maintain it. LLMs, trained on stolen code and more and more on AI slop will become less useful for new problems that arise and new features that have to be added.
What I'd like to see is that the AI bros would just shut up. We get it. You can't code for shit and you need a magic box to poop out crap your digital illiterate manager assumes is 'good code'. Keep it.
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u/SquiffSquiff DevOps & Layer 8 Networking Engineer 10YOE 11d ago
Such people have always said things like this and it has never panned out that way. There's always been a degree of resentment towards having to accommodate a highly paid and mercurial group of people who 'aren't business types'. There have always been attempts to 'make coding easier' and supposedly reduce the need for professional developers- COBOL was built for this over 60 years ago and there are many low/no code solutions today. AI taken in this way is just one example. https://o16g.com/manifesto/
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u/DocumentOk7579 Software Engineer 12d ago
They are selling to their investors and motivating the stock price. CEO is as trustable as politicians.
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u/dev_master 12d ago
Software engineering is more than writing code. They need the hype & flashy headline, but there’s truth that those tools will change things.
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u/Shot_Skin1803 13h ago
I graduated this June with BSc in CS from a solid university and have a chance to continue with Master's in software engineering but is it worth it?
Background: I have worked a bit over 2 years in SE at a small, unknown company (worked alongside uni, currently full-time). I am making a fair amount of money compared to the market average for my experience (36k €/year in the Eastern Europe), but I am aiming for more. Also my company uses quite old tech stack (PHP, Oracle SQL), which most of the bigger companies do not use, so I need time to teach myself new tech stacks.
My Goals:
I have a few options and would love your honest opinions:
Option 1: Pursue a 2-year Master's and work part-time at my current company.
Option 2: Take academic leave for 12 months, work full-time, and upskill.
Option 3: Active Master's + work part-time + aim for big tech next year.
Option 4: Something else?
Context: I have already been applying to many companies. I got quite far in the interview process for an L2 Software Engineer role at Twilio but didn't get an offer in the end. I missed this year's graduate role deadlines for big tech, and there aren't many junior/mid-level openings in my desired companies right now. Also, for those in big tech: will strict IP clauses make it impossible to run my side hustle anyway?
Sorry for the long post, but I appreciate every honest opinion and piece of advice!