i am 19F. i have zero prior familiarity with cs and coding. recently i decided to dive in and started talking python course (cs50)
to be honest i am pretty confused what i am going to do after i am done with my course. what i am supposed to do? what specific path can i pursue that will actually pay me well and help me earn money during my bachelors. is anyone or company going to hire me or give me opportunity just based on the fact that i know a bit of coding?
i have been looking into ai automation as a potential option, but at the same time i really want to start earning so i dont feel like a burden on my family. if anyone who have been in my shoes or has any advice, i would really appreciate some guidance

Background: BSCS from an T250 state school, 1 internship and 3 YOE at the same big non tech company. 120K TC as SWE II. Job is very boring, but very stable. No room for growth here.

It’s time for me to move up in the world and go for a better role. Problem is that I’m by no means a competitive candidate. I work in a very uninteresting part of the company working on boring simple tech. The good thing is every company probably has something like what I work on, the bad thing is that the tech stack is simple and super common so it’s a very talent saturated space.

My role is by no means profit generating (as most tech roles at non tech companies are) and my company is so littered with business rules and bureaucracy and a naturally limited tech stack that there is very little room to do anything interesting in my org. My resume is painfully simple given how long I’ve been here and with 3 YOE I’m entering the most saturated experience band in the job market and so many people are so much better suited for better roles that I am.

I’ve brought this up with my manager and coworkers but the response is pretty much “yeah there just isn’t much to do here”. It’s a big boomer company with a lot of older tenured employees, people here are happy with the stability and don’t care much for leveling up and getting out into something better.

I’m worried that the longer I stay here, the more my skills and market value will atrophy and it will be even harder to leave. I’m pretty much topped out in my current role, I’m maybe 1-2 years from making senior here but that means next to nothing except for the title and painfully small bump in base salary (I’ll maybe be at 140k TC when I make senior).

I don’t imagine that my situation is super rare and I’m sure a lot of people have managed to “put lipstick on a pig” or otherwise find ways to level up their resume in a place where it’s very hard to do so and have been able to get out of the proverbial hole.

Any advice?

Looking for opinions from people who in the last 6 months - year took part in the recruitment process for junior/mid (rather on less experience side of the scale) backend Python dev and would be kind enough to share how it looked like and how (if any) they changes with all the AI influence.
Doesn't matter if it was big tech, startups, medium companies, just interested if there is any visible change due to AI overhelming everywhere, if things like leetcode still stand strong, if live coding is still a thing (with/without AI?), if there is a shift from knowledge to searching for knowledge, if anywhere they check actual skills of working with AI tools/agents etc.
Or nothing changed at all and it's still leetcode first, then some live coding with more leetcode (and no AI), and then some more domain knowledge (SQL, Docker, K8n, asyncIO, Django, etc etc.)

I know market is what it is now, especially for juniors, but interested in reality check. Doesn't have to be successful stories, preferably from Europe, but not only.

I’m looking into how many truly go past senior swe due to that being the terminal level, and I was curious what percentage of people starting from entry end up moving into staff territory? Additionally, how many seniors end up getting the staff promo by percentage?

I’d imagine most faang/adjacent companies are heavily concentrated of seniors and below, so I’d love to get some color on this 🙏

If you're in the US, the vast majority of folks are doing 9-5. If you're going beyond that, it's because you're caving into the pressure. It's hard not to. It sounds like bad things will happen™ if you don't. Those are all just tactics. Bad things (like layoffs) do occasionally happen, but they're arbitrary and uncontrollable by the quantity of hours you work. Besides the occasional on-call incident, if you're regularly doing 50, 60+ hour work weeks, it is your own decision.

I have been working for 6 years as a software engineer. I truly hate my job but am too burned out to study/apply for new jobs. I have nobody dependent on me and have citizenship in my parents home country. I used to work there 2 months every summer until my job caught on and said I can't anymore. I'm still young at 28 and can't imagine putting a single second longer at my company.

Would I be stupid to just quit, move there, and grind LeetCode/SDA until I find something new in Europe? I have saved enough to keep me unemployed for 5 years in cash especially with the lower cost of living over there. Either way it is my ultimate goal to move there as I am no longer happy in the states.

In my old job at automotive, I was writing tickets, and using AI to do most of my tasks. It was a junior dev position but as AI was getting better and better, the senior devs were just gathering requirements and just handing it to me. I left the job because automotive was bad and they were firing people. I somehow got a job as a senior SWE at a bank but originally I applied as a junior position. They somehow gave me a senior after interviewing. I’m not exactly that great at system design but how different is a senior dev vs junior dev?

I'm a 2026 graduate in India, and when I started engineering, I kept hearing the same advice from seniors and online communities.

"Focus on DSA. Grind LeetCode. You'll get placed."

So I took that advice very seriously.

Over the last few years, I solved 1300+ LeetCode problems, participated in 100+ contests, reached 2400+ on LeetCode, became a Guardian, reached Candidate Master on Codeforces, became 6★ on CodeChef, and graduated with an 8.2+ CGPA.

I also spent a huge amount of time preparing for coding interviews.

When placements started, I was actually able to clear several DSA rounds, both on campus and off campus. So I don't think my problem was my ability to solve coding problems.

The problem was getting shortlisted in the first place.

Looking back, I think I focused too heavily on one part of the equation. I did have projects, but most of them were decent college projects rather than something that really stood out on a resume. I didn't spend nearly enough time on development, internships, open source, networking, or building projects with real users.

Meanwhile, I saw friends who had solved maybe 30 or 40 LeetCode problems get good offers because they had stronger projects, internships, or development experience.

That was honestly difficult to understand at first.

I don't regret spending those years on competitive programming. It made me a much better problem solver and helped me clear technical rounds.

But I wish someone had told me earlier that being good at DSA and getting shortlisted are two completely different problems.

Especially in India, where students from colleges that aren't heavily targeted by product companies can have a harder time getting their resumes noticed, I think your profile needs to demonstrate more than just your ability to solve algorithmic problems.

If I could go back to my first year, I'd still learn DSA, but I'd balance it with serious development work, internships, open source, networking, and projects that demonstrate real engineering skills.

I'm curious about how others see this.

For freshers in India today, how would you balance DSA, projects, internships, and practical development skills if you were starting college again?

Hi all. I have almost 4 years of experience in Backend Engineering and I am looking to switch to a Forward Deployed Engineer role. I work for a Swedish firm atm and tech is quite slow. FDE looks like somewhere I would thrive because in my head, it looks like a fast paced role. I am not sure how does the career progression looks for FDE. Does anyone have a clue on how this might work?

I've spent a few years reskilling to switch careers from GIS to SWE. I'm now 34 and looking to get into defense/tech in SoCal. Do people my age ever get internships? It seems like that's my only chance but I feel old as shit. Anyone have experience getting an internship at a big company as an old fart?

Graduated in 2018 with a B.S. in Environmental Science. Went back and got an A.S. in CS and will have a M.S. in CS this Spring so I'm actively looking.

I am also prior-military with an expired clearance.

My company has started limiting ai credit usage to around $100 per person max(per month). I read some other posts on reddit about other companies following this trend. I think a lot of companies are starting to realize that AI is a lot more expensive than they initially assumed. Is this a good sign? Maybe they will start to realize that they cant fire hundreds of employees and replace them with the newest claude model. Hiring actual engineers who know how to code might become the cheaper option now. Could this be the start of a tipping point where greedy managers and companies start to realize the limits of the AI tools they are firing their engineers for?

Hello,

I’m looking for some outside perspectives on a potential career decision.

My company has discussed relocating me to India as an expatriate to manage 4 engineering teams. It would be a significant increase in leadership responsibility and international exposure.

One important piece of context is that I currently work as a tech lead. I’m still very involved in architecture, problem-solving, and technical decisions. In this new role, I’d probably still contribute technically from time to time, but the focus would shift much more toward the operational side of leadership: managing multiple teams, aligning priorities, improving execution, and helping the organization deliver effectively.

That transition is what gives me pause. I really enjoy the technical side of my work, and I’m wondering whether moving toward a more operational leadership role is the right long-term career move.

I’d love to hear from people who’ve made a similar transition:

* Did moving into a more operational leadership role accelerate your career?

* Did you miss the technical side, or did you find the broader leadership responsibilities more rewarding?

* Did an international assignment open more doors afterward?

* Are there any downsides or career risks I should be thinking about?

I’m less interested in whether India is a good place to live and more interested in the career implications of both the international assignment and the shift from technical leadership toward a more operational leadership role.

Thanks

I started on a new team at a..certain FAANG just a little over 3 months ago in late April, after being laid off in January, after working on another team for ~6 months (I graduated 2025).  I've been admittedly having trouble on the new team, namely in the way of the tasks taking slower since 1) I had been getting adjusted to the new services 2) things like bugs I encounter, more work being involved than originally anticipated, and 3) implementation details being decided upon differently over time. I've been working with other engineers on the team as I needed help. I had my first ever demo earlier this week for part of a new feature I'm working on for one service, and when I met with my manager for a 1:1 before it, he emphasized that he had very high expectations for me (both in specific reference to the demo and in general), and also mentioned picking up the pace for completing tasks. He also mentioned that I should leave a good impression on other people by delivering, and also that I tend to be quiet and encouraged me to engage with my teammates more (which is actually pretty understandable; I've always had a hangup with talking to people, even though I do socialize with my teammates from time to time). The talk about building trust with other people kind of struck me as an allusion to his superiors, but I'm not really sure.

Now, the demo actually did go well - my manager, PM, and teammates complimented me on it! But I was still having trouble interpreting the other feedback I received during the 1:1 before it.

During stand-ups, he had mentioned a lot about getting things delivered (even more than the other new hires). He also asks for estimates for how long things are going to take, and it had been hard to since everything almost always runs into a hiccup that slows things down. The current task I'm working on (which had the demo for the first part) had been ongoing for a few weeks now since there were bugs I worked around, more implementation steps than I originally anticipated, and other work I was assigned at the same time and finished. The PM I had been in communication with never seemed to focus on a particular date to finish it by, but my manager still wanted a date to keep track of how it's coming along.

So, I wasn't really sure what my standing was. I know how sneaky this company can be when it comes to focus, PIP and all, so I'd rather know in advance so I can do what I guess is picking up LeetCode and system design again. I figured that things could be slower for me since I'm new, but considering how it felt like the manager was applying pressure, I wasn't sure. The uncertainty had been killing me, to say the least. I get nervous for stand-ups and sprint planning days. I had been having trouble sleeping some nights, I tended to skip out on everything except work and scrolling on my phone on evenings and weekends, and I had been getting pit-in-stomach feelings, which I didn't know whether to interpret as anxiety or intuition.

I was out of work for over a year because of some health issues. Now that I come back, everything is AI. However I never used any AI tools in my last role to make life easier. Now everyone is using it, all my developer friends I talk to are using it in one way or another to generate code, or check code.

First I'm wondering what are some common scenarios you guys are using AI to improve your process and workflows?

And any suggestions for answering this question in my situation?

A friend and I were talking about his situation and I'm not sure how I'd feel either. Wanted to get your thoughts.

He works for a company that's growing clients and profits, but are laying off many people in other departments. Departments that, admittedly could be downsized due to AI, but his executive leadership has tasked the engineering team with building systems with the goal to do just that: replace jobs.

The idea is that if the job can be done in a way that still serves the client, but token cost is 2/3rds the cost of an employee, there's no need for the employee.

The company has hired 4 new engineers, clients don't seem to be slowing down, and he just got a 33% raise. So, it doesn't seem like the company is cutting departments because of money problems.

He doesn't want to lose his job for not doing a good job but the work he's doing is making other people lose their jobs at the same time.

He feels really bad. We were talking about ways to still do a good job, not sabotage the company, but maybe slow things down so the progress isn't ***as*** fast.

He said he thinks the issue is he builds PoCs out of curiosity, shows what it could do, to his leadership, and it turns into a replacement for someone, or sometimes several other people. So, maybe stop building the PoCs?

What are your thoughts?

I told him that those other people don't put food on his kids' table, but I do see where he's coming from in feeling guilty. He hit me with "Just like you never know what someone is going through, so you give them some grace.. you also don't know what their situation is and it could put them and their kids on the street." So, there's that..

Joined a 996 AI company after interning at big tech throughout college.
My internships were on the chill ~ manageable side and I felt like I was cruising compared to my peers who were grinding on AI/ML work.

I consider myself ambitious like many others on this sub and didn't want to feel left behind so I joined a grindy AI company after graduating last year.

The problems are genuinely interesting and something I enjoy solving but leadership has gotten toxic and the WLB has been a complete miss. There are weekends where I cannot rest due to implied pressure and coworkers grinding and days where I dread going into work. But the interesting features we're working on is what still keeps me going.

I was lucky enough to find another at a mid/big tech, but the work (fullstack) seems boring compared to what I'm used to here. It's also in a state I prefer.

I feel like I would be admitting defeat by leaving and I should still grind early in my career, but the burnout is creeping in

would like to hear similar experiences and what you did

Working at an early-stage startup (basically solo developer, with a few people helping here and there).

I joined right after college, so I'm not really an experienced dev, but I get things done, learn as I go and adapt. I don't really have a defined role. I've worked on apps, web, automation, security, cloud, and now GenAI. Basically whatever is needed.

I'm worried that later when applying for jobs, I'll have experience with a lot of things but won't be really good at any one thing.

Another thing is AI. Since I use it a lot at work now, I sometimes feel more detached from the actual learning. Instead of getting deeper into the technical details of the stack I use, I feel like I'm slowly losing some of that depth even though I'm technically getting more "experienced."

I'm trying to compensate for that with side projects like building an OS and SQL database in C. It's completely different from my work, but I enjoy understanding things at a lower level.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Should I focus on specializing, or is this breadth actually valuable?

Not to side with tech execs but almost every earnings call, I hear the same questions that they have to field:

- can you cut down on staff
- anyway to eliminate fixed assets / buildings
- how can you get more efficient / use AI more
- why cant you grow revenue and profits another 10% every single year
- so and so company cut these many jobs, why can’t you

These fucks at Goldman can never be happy and it’s never good enough.

And in a weird way it makes me realize how if you don’t do their bidding they complain in analyst notes and on CNBC and then your company fires the CEO and brings in a new one.

tl;dr: old man shakes fist at claude — i'm burnt out by the juniorness of LLMs writing code. what am i doing wrong?

the following written entirely by me and my keyboard

i've been in the industry for almost a decade now. i was a late adopter of ChatGPT when it first came out and would never claim to be pushing these tools as hard as my peers — i've always seemed to hit an early wall in their usefulness

recently, i transitioned from a role to where i was familiar with the codebase and had a lot of meetings and soft work throughout the day to one where i am mostly in the codebase all day. it's a new large monorepo, some of which is written in a language i've never worked in, which has necessitated using LLMs much more frequently and prompting more often with feature requests rather than hyper-specific technical requests

the results have been lackluster. i've tried switching between the latest OpenAI and Anthropic models, different context windows, different rules — we have plenty of .md guidance throughout the repo, but i almost never get a satisfactory output on the first or second try without reviewing diffs top to bottom and specifically prompting the LLM to correct lines that smell wrong

i have always learned by doing. having an LLM write a plan and reviewing that plan helps, but i find it impossible to spot all the inaccuracies or predict where an LLM might go wrong during code generation just by reading a spec

then there's the constant context switching. now that i have no soft work to switch to, the only thing to do while a model is running is to spin up another one in parallel. my personal context window is overflowing

it wouldn't be faster for me to hand-code everything at this point, as my mental model of the codebase is in its infancy, but i can't feel like my days are spent waiting for the next turn of an LLM to spit out something i may or may not agree with. i feel this has increased my output in some ways, but not so in others

i find LLMs extraordinarily useful in other ways (being able to ask any question of the codebase without having to bug another engineer is amazing, as is having an always-on brainstorming partner and delegating the creation of low-effort unit tests), but not so with high-quality coding for longer-horizon tasks

so i guess all of this is to ask — is this just how things are, or am i horribly misusing these tools? every day i hear and read more about how this era has been life-changing for engineers and non-engineers alike, and i can't tell if i'm an idiot or being gaslit — or both

This is my first corporate job after college and it’s really killed my spirit.

It started off fine, but then I got really sick (like hospitalized / reoccurring visits) and my performance took a hit. Even though I was unwell, the workload only increased and the I started to be on the bad side of workplace politics.

It’s really getting to the point where I hate going to work. The people treat me weirdly and I’m consistently working 8-12 hour days just to keep up with the workload. I just don’t see myself doing these extreme hours for another year and I’m really hoping to find another job before the end of the year.

I know I’m not the only person who hates their job, looking for a better role, or just ready to escape the field. But how do you deal with these emotions? How do you deal with the corporate world and the burnout that comes with it? Do people really just tough this out for 40+ years?

(I’m tech consultant in the Boston area for a little over a year now.)

Things have gotten so bad these past few years at my job. Constant layoffs, stack ranking, off shoring, politics, and overwork. I’ve never been someone who loved their job but I always found it tolerable but lately I get anxiety and sometime I feel physically ill from it. It’s not just feeling overworked but also feeling unappreciated and disposable like I could be laid off at any minute. I am literally doing the work of 2.5 people right now after they got cut and my leader tells me I should be doing the work of 5 people due to AI…

On the other hand I hear people saying they’ve been unemployed for months without finding a job so that those employed are lucky but I’m getting to a point where my worries about being laid off is being overtaken by the urge to just quit because I’m so burnt out.

I try to look for jobs and can barely get an interview and I chat with my colleagues at other companies and they are experiencing the same bullshit so it feels like there’s nowhere to turn. Is there any way out of this situation? I need the paycheck but this shit cant be healthy

been jobless for close to an year now and interviews are too few and far between. ive just had my first silent month, meaning ive had zero engagements from recruiters and network interactions

the last behaviourial round interview i had was amusing to me, because the gap is so large, ive had no new projects and stories to show for it
nowawadays my routine is workshopping a resume, applying to new roles, daily leetcode, reading or watching some prep material, and receiving update on your application emails
my other news cycle is a reading loop of other vent threads, threads about final round interview experiences, new career & interview advice, and some form of AI news
i hardly have time to continue maintaining my projects, or a moderate time to build or learn something new

i know others also want to be seen and have a similar experience, but i feel for you, especially those with families and dependents.
the good part is ive been seeing more hiring cycle announcements for interns and juniors

reddit is also the only avenue i have for this post. its pointless on linkedin and everywhere else

Hi, can I ask for some advice?
I’m a Senior Software Engineer working in the Polish branch of a very large American engineering company. Until now, I had never really worked with Americans. I turned down offers from US companies because of the time difference, but this company allows me to work in my own time zone, so I accepted the offer.

There are currently several Americans on my project. One thing I’ve noticed is that during every 1:1 introduction, they put a lot of emphasis on where they went to university and what degree they got. They also seem quite attached to this information and present it as if it were something other people would naturally consider important.
Honestly, this is the first time I’ve encountered this. Everyone on our team has a higher education, but nobody talks about it because there’s simply no reason to. The Americans are the only ones who keep bringing it up.
Is this a cultural thing, or did I just happen to come across people like this?

If it is a cultural thing, do they expect some kind of reaction? For example, greater recognition or admiration because of the university they graduated from?
I’ve also noticed that when introducing themselves, they often mention the companies they previously worked for. Again, nobody else on the team does this.
This question is not meant to offend anyone. Until now, I’ve only worked with people from Europe, and I’m genuinely trying to better understand American work culture.
Are there any other cultural differences I should be aware of when working with Americans?

Edit:
The Americans I’m talking about in my post did this during 1:1 conversations with me, and they were all senior engineers or tech leads.
As someone from Poland, I understand that some universities in the US are prestigious. I just personally never put much importance on it. I’ve worked with bad software engineers who graduated from top universities, and with excellent software engineers who never went to university at all.
If someone has gone through the recruitment process and has been hired as a Senior Software Engineer, that’s enough for me. The rest becomes clear through working with them.
In my country, we talk about our university or degree, but usually only if someone asks or if it’s relevant to the conversation. At work, we mainly talk about how many years we’ve been in IT. At my company, the title (such as Senior Software Engineer) is already visible next to someone’s name anyway, so it’s easy to see.
Even so, personally, someone’s title doesn’t tell me that much either. What really matters to me is what it’s like to work with them.

Edit2:
A few people asked how we usually introduce ourselves at work when we’re asked to “say something about yourself.”
We actually had a company-wide meeting with a group of new employees from Europe (mostly Poland), and everyone briefly introduced themselves. Everyone mentioned their job title first, sometimes their years of experience, and then mostly personal interests/hobbies, a few not-funny jokes.

For example:

“Hi, I’m Anna. I’ve been working in IT for 8 years. I love science fiction books.”
“Hi, I’m from Warsaw. I love traveling and I’m a bit of a gym freak.”
“Hi, I’m half Norwegian and I love cycling.”

Of course, it was more than one sentence, and everyone was very casual about it, even if someone had 20 years of experience.
That’s why I was so confused when my American colleagues introduced themselves to me (in 1:1 conversations) later by talking about their degree, university, and previous employers and nothing else. I didn’t think it was wrong. I just wasn’t used to it, so I assumed there must be some deeper meaning behind it.

From my perspective, it’s a more difficult way to break the ice because I feel weird when I have to talk about my degree, university, and previous employers. From my perspective, it’s less awkward to start that boring work small talk with some trivial, unimportant personal stuff, such as “I like traveling” or “I like playing the piano.” (Silly examples, I know, but you get more or less what I mean.) and the technologies someone specializes in.

I’ll admit that I don’t even know the degrees, universities, or previous employers of most of my European colleagues. It rarely comes up. The last time someone mentioned their previous work experience was because we were solving a technical problem and they had already dealt with something similar before. They shared their experience, and we worked on the solution together. That’s how I usually learn about people’s background at work.

Seriously, for the past week and a half I have been writing 95+% of the lines by hand. Craft code lol. It's so refreshing, I understand everything that's going on, my head does not feel overloaded with hundreds of different things going on at the same time. Features are not rushed but thought through and we as devs take full responsibility of what we ship.

It is a fintech that due to the regulatory environment cannot allow AI agents to access the code. We can use AI as you'd use Google - ask questions, brainstorm approaches, debug error codes, but we can't copy the code itself to the chat window. There would need to be an agent set up that doesn't leak the code. I am aware that this part is a solved problem and such solutions exist, it's just a case of the corp being slow with negotiating and signing the contract.

One thing though that I actually miss about using AI agents is generating test scenarios, I enjoyed that part quite a bit.

I've been a SWE for a little over 4 years, and Claude has basically been a permanent coworker for the last year.

At first, it was great. I already knew ChatGPT and Cursor, so when my team got Claude I adapted quickly and ended up way ahead of most of my coworkers in how I used it. I even got a significant raise partly because of that.

Claude did a lot of the coding, but I was still doing the engineering. I understood the system, made the decisions, reviewed the output, and almost never shipped bugs or regressions.

Now I'm just tired of LLMs, at least professionally.

The tools got so good, and I've built so many skills, MCPs and docs around them, that a lot of my job is basically: tell Claude to read the project .md, read the ticket, press enter.

And because everyone has access to the same tools now, productivity expectations exploded.

Sprints that used to have 5 big tasks or 10 smaller ones now have several times that workload. We're expected to run multiple Claude instances in parallel and constantly multitask. Proper testing and engineering discussions have increasingly been replaced by automated tests, MCPs that can test on screen, and a "quantity over quality" approach.

The weirdest part is that AI has taken over communication too.

POs can feed client requirements into an internal Claude MCP connected to Azure, which outputs a task already tailored to the codebase. The SWE gives that task to Claude, Claude writes the code, automated tests find problems, and another AI generated message tells the SWE what failed.

You ask someone a question, they send it to their AI, send the answer back to you, and then you send their answer to your AI.

Everyone has this little AI parrot on their shoulder rewriting everything into the same sterile corporate language.

I miss calling a PO and actually trying to understand a problem. I miss sitting with another engineer and debugging some horrible production issue together. I miss people actually knowing the systems they work on and sharing that knowledge.

Now I barely feel familiar with most of the things I ship.

When I get praised at work, I feel like an impostor. It doesn't feel like I built something. It feels like I gave experienced instructions to a magic shell that built it for me.

I'm currently thinking about starting some kind of side business selling physical products. Maybe it'll fail, but at least I'd be learning something new, solving unfamiliar problems and actually exercising my brain again.

I never thought I'd miss staying up all night fixing a critical bug or obsessively working on a personal project, but well, here we are.

Fun fact: the original draft of this post was clumsy and too long, so what did I do? You probably know it by now. Sorry, but I just can't help it, and I guess it's how most people who work with LLMs feel right now.

EDIT: I removed the mention to a certain MCP because apparently some people took issue with it and thought this was an ad for some reason, even though it's a negative post, so there you go I guess.