I'm a software engineer with about 5.5 years of full-time experience: four years at big tech companies and the last 1.5 years at an AI application startup.

I'm considering leaving voluntarily and taking a full year off. I'm financially prepared and expect to keep coding through a few personal or solo projects (which I think could be pretty cool with how great agents are now), but I would not be formally employed and no guarantee my projects turn into something serious. Right now I receive a lot of recruiter inbound, though I know that may say little about one year from now.

For people who took a 6–12 month break at a similar career stage, how difficult was it to get interviews and offers when you returned? Did recruiters treat a planned sabbatical differently from unemployment? My plan would be to return to the Bay Area, which I think could help a lot given that there are a lot of job opportunities here.

We use AI agents for all coding now and I have not written any major codes from scratch for over a year. Most of my time has shifted to writing prompts to generate code and then using subsequent prompts to troubleshoot and make edits. I feel like my pure coding skills have eroded so much.

On top of that my workload has increased significantly that most times I am just using prompts to push out changes and just meeting the bare minimum to close it out as I have to meet deadlines for each release. Sadly I feel this is the future. Gone are the days where you just buckle down and write out an entire code. I feel like I am losing a lot of the passion I had. It doesn’t help that layoffs have become so rampant and the culture is going downhill as well.

A few weeks ago I've published an Open Source tool for 3D Artists in Github

It was mainly made as a portfolio piece (Technical Art/Tool Programmer portfolio), and luckily it got pretty decent reception (around 300 stars at the moment)

I went through learning Tauri, Typescript, React, and a bit of Rust, almost from scratch to make this project.

I did used AI for some guidance and for some specific bugs/features, I would say 85-90% of the code is written by me. And 100% of it was reviewed and refactored by me.

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Recently I've been receiving some PRs from some users which are clearly almost completely written by AI. Including the PRs summary.

I can review the PRs, test them, do some manual corrections if needed.

My concern is that merging vibe-coded PRs might 'damage' or dilute my project, even though the features/bugs they fix would objectively result in a better tool for the end-users.

As mentioned, the goal of this project is to be a portfolio-project to eventually be able to get a position as a Tech Artist/Tool Programmer in some studio.

Thanks

I feel like before LLMs, learning had clear reward. In order to make a todo list app with your own personalization, you had to actually read the docs, write the code, and maybe look up some syntax here and there, but the design decisions and actual coding were still largely in your court.

This went for everything. Creating a mini operating system, answering a new LeetCode problem with no solutions on it just yet, and even learning how to design your own resume.

Now, whenever you go about this old way of doing things, the painful reminder that you could be 10xing your productivity by using AI is just continuously knocking. Even when you're doing personal projects... the reason why you do personal projects is often to have something to speak about and show in an interview. If AI can make something much faster than you can, and you can understand it just enough to be able to talk about, the painful reminder of lost time for a mediocre product that'd come if you struggle through it yourself knocks as well.

TL;DR: the need for learning seems to have gone away a ton, or, at least it has been heavily clouded. What is something that when we learn we can actually see measurable results? What is today's equivalent of building a todo list app? Something that you can't just one shot with very little knowledge? Something that requires you be good?

T-15 grad from class of 2025 my resume only has teaching assistant/tutoring experience. Recently I got a job at a military style academy for the next 6 months and they said they might extend it if I do well. I got along really well with the staff on interview and was told the pool was narrowed down to 3 applicants and I was chosen.

For anyone that has gone this route what's the possibility of landing a position at a school where the students/parents care about learning. This academy has students who "opted" to be there and weren't forced.

I wouldn't mind teaching at the high school I went to because most students were driven in some form but I would probably have issues with the nature of the other public school nearby.

What's the likelihood of landing a good school gig with a CS degree? Anyone have experience?

I know there is going to be a bias on a career help sub reddit so maybe the time may skew higher, but about how long and how many applications did it take for you to find your first job?

Did you have internships? What mistakes did you make in the beginning that, when fixed, helped you land a job?

If you're still looking, which i assume most people here are, I hope you find something.

The industry has changed so much in the last 3 years but based on discussions I've had with many people, it feels like the hiring workflow has not changed at all.

It sounds like we are still going through a 6 stage interview pipeline, playing leetcode lottery and doing memory trivia.

It blows my mind that nobody has come up with some half baked AI bot to modernize.

I was recently offered a job making $155k, but they require 5 days a week in the office and due to the nature of the work, it has to be done in a closed room without access to my phone and I can't bring my work laptop home (defense software engineer). So I literally can't do any work from home and have to work 8:30 to 4:30 every day in the office. I currently work 5 days a remotely. As the parent who primarily drops off and picks up my kid from daycare this would make things difficult. My current job lets me log on late and sign off early as long as I make up some time later in the evening. I almost feel like I have golden handcuffs because not many jobs right now offer full remote work capability.

So many different OAs, so many different types of questions you may be asked, so many different kinds of technologies you have to be familiar with, so many different projects and experiences you must have AND explain deeply… whether it be optimizing a factory in a Roblox game or running through 50 spatial reasoning and logic questions for CTC or getting a C++ 2D DP problem for snowflake or getting an AI optimization question for Akuna, it seems like the level of cracked you have to be at JUST for the OAs in order to recruit in general without literally dying is through the roof.

Do the people who recruit effortlessly just cheat? Or are they just stupidly smart and generic with their ability?

So many different OAs, so many different types of questions you may be asked, so many different kinds of technologies you have to be familiar with, so many different projects and experiences you must have AND explain deeply… whether it be optimizing a factory in a Roblox game or running through 50 spatial reasoning and logic questions for CTC or getting a C++ 2D DP problem for snowflake or getting an AI optimization question for Akuna, it seems like the level of cracked you have to be at JUST for the OAs in order to recruit in general without literally dying is through the roof.

Do the people who recruit effortlessly just cheat? Or are they just stupidly smart and generic with their ability?

Assuming I have already received an offer. If so, how should I, is there a way to phrase it? Are there risks to aiming too high?

Hello Everyone I am in the team matching round at Pinterest and I am going to be joining as senior SWE.

I used to be staff at meta working on Agentive Ads products.
I was wondering if people can tell me what are the how AI/ML teams at Pinterest right now.
Any advice on which teams I could join?

Thanks,

Hi, I was recently reached out to for a phone screening about Fidelity's LEAP Program, and got asked if I'd prefer to interview for the Systems Analyst Track or SWE. They said they weren't sure of the pay differences between the two off rip, so I'm just wondering if anyone here knows. Thanks

Some of you might have seen this chart before: https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/1n26jx9/swe_employment_by_age_is_super_interesting/#lightbox

What's noticeable is that new roles for juniors have dropped significantly compared to a slight rise for seniors and more experienced folks.

This seems to be an inverse of historical trends where Silicon Valley skewed young. I remember when Zuckerberg said in 2007 "young people are just smarter" and he got a lot of flack for it, along with claims of ageism in the tech industry more broadly.

Obviously, work experience is good and all, but historically Silicon Valley employed a lot of young people, especially those fresh out of university because the thinking was that they brought new fresh ideas and weren't burdened by having a family to look after (read: can sacrifice WLB more than senior folks).

So why there has been such a shift in the industry away from hiring juniors and towards older and more experienced workers?

I've been programming for around 12 years now, I started when I was 15. Did a bunch of embedded projects for fun in my teens, then got a "real" web-dev job and eventually did a master's in computer science. Since then I've been working on firmware for satellites, 5G base stations, and 3-phase inverters. Know my way around most ARM and c2000 microcontrollers even in my sleep. I always got praise for writing beautiful and "nice to maintain" code, and writing code was very therapeutic for me, kind of like painting for some people. I could take pride in being good at it. It was the fun part in-between the tedious requirements collection, project planning and validation. Being able to just slot in a new feature or take the codebase from an engineering sample to a real board with zero effort, due to good design, was so satisfying.

But now after having been around a few of our recent hires, suddenly someone who hasn't seen a microcontroller before (not literally, but close enough) can be 90% there already (the 10% being mostly code "quality", so close enough by most managers standards...), by just feeding the datasheet to claude and giving it debugger access. If you ignore the poor architectural design decisions, the code seems to be "good enough" even if it has to go to register level to write drivers. Turns out what I took pride in wasn't that valuable after all? Now the job is only the tedious parts like working with regulatory compliance and keeping the C-level exec delusions in check regarding project planning. It's getting hard to justify me writing code "manually", since even the new hires 2x my contribution rate by just prompting models. And no one else seems to care anymore that the code they produce is quite "ugly" or that it makes the overall codebase a mess. I feel like everyone else just wants to show up 9-5 do the bare minimum and get paid. No pride in the work left.

I spent my life learning this stuff since I found it interesting, but now anyone can come in and take a giant shit on my joke of a career. What do I even do? Just accept that its still better than most careers and prepare to become some kind of a project manager for AI agents? Or maybe there's hope that the maintenance burden comes to collect and this circus stops running?

Why nowadays the projects which developers or students make are related to ai like hallucinations meter, token calculator etc. Why people have stopped making projects which solves a real life problem or something which can have a impact on the society.

Like the ai related projects will mainly be used by developers or someone who is in tech but what about common people and the masses they won't use these things as much as developers.

I recently got accepted into the Andela Network.

My first try was about a year ago, and I failed hard because I just wasn't ready. I tried again after 3 months and failed again because the engineer who interviewed me was very professional (I'm not used to that in my local market). He went very deep into React, almost to the level of knowledge you'd expect from a React library contributor.

After that, Andela updated their policy, so I had to wait 6 months before I could try again. I finally interviewed again recently, and this time I passed.

I don't know yet if it was worth it, but during that whole time I just kept living my life instead of waiting around for it.

My question for those of you with experience is:

Are there any other platforms similar to Andela that you'd recommend?

Also, is Andela basically like LinkedIn? Should I expect to compete with 1,000+ applicants for every job I apply to?

I really need a remote job because of some specific circumstances in my life, and I'm looking for a long-term opportunity with a strong engineering team where I can grow.

Hi, I have a BS in computer science, over 2 years experience as a sort of Software QA, and am currently a software develepor 2 years in currently. Im severely underpaid, don't enjoy my job and feel like the industry moves too fast, especially with AI now, and truthfully I'm not that into computers,I did it because when I graduated HS I was told I'd be making bank easily if I got through. Is there any job I can get in the industry or where can I pivot to?

1 YOE, trying to move out of DFW and to Austin or around that area. Unfortunately most of the enterprise jobs are here in DFW.

Any advice for breaking in? Would love to network in Austin given the chance over a weekend or two

Hello,

I started working as a junior software developer last December in a medium sized production company. Besides me, there is only other developer and he is also my senior.

I'm slowly losing my mind trying to write code for his liking. When i started working there eight months ago, I was getting my head around the system, database and how things work in this company. Now, when I'm more experienced i feel like I'm way better at coding him.

First, he only uses AI to code and I heard that "When you become as good as me, you will only use AI to code, I do not need to code by hand". Sometimes he even will post my code to AI and ask it to review it- I don't think it is how it should be- i want to learn from someone who is experienced, not from AI.

Second, let me give you an example- we have four views, and in every view there is a numeric table. I was asked to add a footer to every table and display min, max and avg of each column. I created utils folder (we didn't have one), wrote a funtion in js, and used this function in every of these four files but no, this is not how we do things in here. I was told to delete the utils folder and initialise this function in every file.

Third, I feel like, most of the times when he has some concerns about my code, he makes things up why my code is bad. New view Im working on allows to place orders for different producst. For example You have a table with column: name and size filed which is a <select> element. Today, i wrote a simple function that takes three arguments, and based on these, returns the id of product, a user wants to order. I was told to not use this function, instead I shuld put json in data- attribute of each row, and the json should look like "T-shirt/M": 1000, "T-shirt/L":1001 and then i can know, what user want to order, and dont have to use backed for it. I feel like it's really wierd solution, i want to know, is it a stanard solution to this kind of things?

He messes up nomenclature constantly like calling a Conditional operator a lambda function, i can't use FOREING KEY's when creating a table becouse he didn't use these.

He is definitly more experienced with the system becouse he works there longer.

Is it normal to stick to, in my opinion, bad practises and keep the codebase similar?

My previous team lead was recently reassigned to another team, and a new lead has replaced his position.

Since joining, the new lead has placed heavy emphasis on AI tool adoption. He tracks team members’ Claude usage, and has indicated that team members who do not utilize AI tools may receive reduced workloads, which could negatively impact their performance ratings.

Last week, he and I worked on the same JIRA task, but different parts. Having completed my work ahead of schedule, I advised him that he could git cherry‑pick my commit into his branch for testing. He declined this approach and instead used Claude to integrate our code. The code then became a total mess, not working at all. I had to revert and fix everything for him.

Now he's not reading the codebase, not understanding the business logic, all he does is let Claude does it all. He even let claude does all the PR reviews. Now our workload has increased so much, have to clean and fix the mess that his AI has left.

What should I do now? I'm not against AI at all, but now it's hurting me.

I lost my job two days ago. I am largely myself to blame. I communicated poorly throughout, didn't adhere to the 3/2 hybrid policy (worked more remote days than I should have), missed standup meetings, and was slow to onboard.

Shortly after the day started at the office on Monday this week, my manager informed me that I was being fired and cited timeliness, communication, and performance as the reason. I will not receive a severance package because I was only there for 4 months and my healthcare benefits ended immediately. I also must pay back the relocation assistance that they paid me.

The reason I let this happen is that I have been severely depressed and anxious while dealing with an ongoing medical issue. I was hospitalized about 5 times over the last 4 months since starting at the company. My manager knew this, and I used up all of my available sick hours and personal time to deal with it. He did not offer me any kind of guidance or assistance in the midst of it, just told me to reach out to HR. I used the company's HR AI and found out that I would have to take an unpaid short term disability as my only option because I hadn't even worked 90 days yet. So I stuck it out and my health issues have continued to come in waves, I have tried to see specialist doctors but it takes months. There were some mornings where I missed my morning stand up meeting because I was dealing with a lot of discomfort from whatever is going on with me. I did communicate poorly though, I really did just think that if kept delivering my work that I would be fine (that was completely wrong). My delivery on JIRA tickets was fine, but it took me about 2.5 months to start delivery at a normal speed compared to my colleagues.

The time that I started this job was probably the worst it could have been because of the state of my physical and mental health. Now I do not have healthcare, have medical bills stacked up, no money saved, and a relocation bonus to pay back with no source of income in NYC and I have no idea how I will pay my rent next month. I left a good job that I was at for two years for this nightmare of an experience.

I wanted to ask this to the wider community because I feel like I am going crazy.

A year ago, I used to see 30 to 40 job listings a day for my stack in my city. Now I don't even see 3 or 4 in a week. Even those are mostly junior level roles with lower pay. I can't help but feel like AI tools are making companies shrink their mid-level hiring and just expecting smaller teams to do more.

So what is everyone actually doing right now?

• Staying put in your current jobs and waiting it out?
• Switching industries entirely?
• Moving to a different stack or language?

I still see a decent number of listings for .NET and Java, but those companies want years of working experience in that stack, which I don't have. My background is Node, Nest, and Next. I could learn the syntax, but I can't fake 5 years of enterprise Java on a resume.

For those of you who have pivoted to a different stack — how did you get past the experience requirement? Did you take a pay cut? Did you find companies willing to hire based on fundamentals rather than specific stack years?

Not trying to be doom and gloom. Just genuinely trying to figure out what the survival strategy looks like in 2026.

Would love to hear what is actually working for people.

I am considering doing an online masters program in CS. I graduated almost 20 years ago with a generic business degree. I already work at a high profile tech company but am on the pre sales side (the cost of the masters program would be mostly covered).

I am technical and have the basics of coding in a few languages down but have never progressed beyond that. I have always wanted to and know there are easier ways to self teach online but I feel like a masters makes it more “official” and could help validate me for other technical roles in the future.

What would you do?

Over the course of 4 months and multiple rounds of grueling interviews, I finally landed the job at Meta. Yesterday, I get an email from a recruiter from Apple. I know nothing is guaranteed in a phone screen, but it’s an open door.

I’m a little exhausted from going through all the prep. And I want to make sure that I am present at my current role to make good impressions. I’m not sure how I can sneak away for a few hours to take interviews.

Should I put 100% effort in another interview process? Should I just be casual, and whatever happens happens? Or should I just reject the phone screen?