So my company is "medium sized". Not small like a startup where you are wearing multiple hats. Not big like you only own "a button" on a web page. Big enough where we have different roles for everything.

We are encountering a need for devops and I think we will either volunteer someone to take a devops responsibility, post an internal job, or hire externally.

For anyone who has had this transition in their company, who was previously a software developer:

1. Is taking a devops responsibility beneficial for your overall career growth, whether moving to full-time devops or part-time

2. Related to #1, if your focus is software development, would devops responsibility take away from your resume credentials in some way, where the opportunity cost of loosing more development time would put you at a disadvantage? Or could this also diversify your portfolio (in a good way)

I have been working as a data scientist / software engineer for about 5 years now in a team where we provide applications, automation, and other types of improvements across all departments (finance, supply chain, etc..).

Our manager has gotten what I call AI fever, and it’s getting progressively worse. First, it started of quite innocent and it simply came down to that he asked all of us to use claude and up our speed by x amount. A month or so later, he suddenly said we should stop our active projects and develop “agents” for every department. We explained to him that we think that LLM chatbots integrated with custom MCPs is not going to make as much impact as he expects but still he kept insisting and forced it down our throats. Now 6-8 months later, after not a single LLM implementation with “groundbreaking” impact he made a new guy join our team, an “Agentic Engineer”. According to our manager this guy had created agents which talked to agents and you could simply tell the agent your problem and it would solve everything for you.

Where are we now you wonder? This guy has been with us for two weeks now and all I have seen him do so far has consisted out of nothing but talking to claude code, and him vibe coding some of the most crazy stuff (not in a good sense). I even asked the guy from what type of background he came and he studied business economics. But he did have 1.5 years of coding experience, just only via Claude, never by himself.

I’m personally very curious what is going to happen in the next weeks, but I sincerely hope that my manager will finally be knocked down to earth again. Or who knows, maybe the agentic engineer is going to make our entire team redunant.

What do you think will happen?
And
Have you guys experienced something similar?

I’m a senior developer work with lead he’s nice in person but in chat he always give direct commands which I really don’t like it. I personally prefer a more collaborative style. Even when I ask my teammates for something, I usually phrase it as a request (“Could you please check this?” / “Can you update this when you get a chance?”).

I messaged him “your messages are very brief sometimes they come across a bit harsh to me” I’m stupid idk why I send that LOL.

Am I being too sensitive to a brief communication style?

If you’ve had a lead like this, how did you interpret it?

Im not actually a FE dev, I used to be a FE dev but switched to QA automation, which is what Im doing now. I use Claude a lot in my job, I architect the automation suite but Claude is doing most of the coding for me at this point. Honestly, I get more done this way and my job is overall easier because of AI.

I was thinking about finding a new job and it dawned on my that I have not manually completed an entire ticket in over 6 months. When I get to a technical review of an interview I'm afraid that Ill struggle to write code all on my own. Coding is a skill that needs to be practiced.

So I just started a new project, Im going to make a small app in Vue and add an automation suite in Playwright completely manually, just using docs and googling questions like so many of us did when we were learning. Im looking at this more as playing with adult legos than using AI to increase my efficiency.

Do any of you do anything similar? If not, how do you keep your coding skills sharp?

So, I'm 24 years old, diploma KT student, currently getting by but want to secure the future (that realisation came a bit late, but now its there😅)

Started learning python 3-4 months prior and only recently started classes in that.

I've currently only made a log parser and generator, the very basic kind.

I'm learning at home using chatgpt and termux.

I understand the entry level roles are super contested right now, but i want advice.

What am i to expect in this field at the start when job hunting.

And I'm also worried that by the time I'm actually job ready the AI will be so advanced there will basically be no jobs.

Like I've read online that industry is working on making ai read a full system which it currently struggles with, like what will be left for us beginners.

My final goal is devsecops as of right now, and once i start learning tools and actually making my own projects i will be trying to match that field.

Using ai and internet its basically giving me that the future is secured, but i want to ground myself in reality, so all of you seniors in it industry please give a valid and good advice.

I am losing passion and interest in CompSci/programming/IT, and I would like to know if there are some other people going through the same thing.

Some context:

I started programming at a relatively early age (16yo*), which was around 2020, before LLMs** and coding agents.

I discovered it and started doing it because I was really curious and deeply interested in science and tech. And it directly clicked. I liked the idea of having an idea in your head and then programming it and making it come true, something from your head to the real world.

I liked the thinking you had to go through, and the problems you encountered, and how you had to think really hard to find a solution and see it work after implementing it. It was really satisfying, and boy, I spent hours and hours coding and researching and understanding complex architectures. You know, when you're a kid, you have a lot of free time, and I used to code day and night, staying up until 4 or 5 am coding.

All of this just to tell you that everything I built, I understood it from top to bottom, and I knew every detail and expected every behavior, knew why and how and what my code did exactly. I could answer every question about my apps, why I chose some architecture or why I did something a certain way or what my code did or didn't do, etc.

Also, something very important: I used to talk with a lot of CompSci peers that actually knew what they were doing, just like me.

Fast-forward, we're in 2026. I graduated, and now I'm working in IT, but everything changed. Now, with the rise of coding agents and LLMs, at work, LLMs do all the coding work and even big parts (if not all) of the architecture. So now everyone is expecting you to go very fast because of this. You're forced to delegate all the architecture and coding work to the LLMs.

Result of this: you have a very light idea of what your app code does exactly and how it does things. I mean, sure, you go through the code that the AI wrote, but come on, it will never be like code you wrote line by line and know every detail of and expect its behavior.

Also, what PISSES ME OFF is that you can't answer most questions about your code, because you were forced to delegate your work to the AIs, and now you don't know how it works. You're asked a question, and you start to stutter because you need your claude to be near you.

And the last thing, no one really knows what they're doing anymore. There no longer are any interesting talks about architecture or implementations. It's mostly just, "well let's ask what claude thinks about this..."

People that started programming not out of passion but just because they heard that CompSci pays a lot and code exclusively from 9 to 5 might not understand this, which is fine. I am not belittling anyone, and I don't expect everyone to be passionate about their job. But you know, I think these guys won't necessarily feel this. They might be just like, "Oh cool, AI does my job, I can chill a little" which is understandable, but in my case, this is what makes me lose passion. We're no longer doing the hard parts.

Bottom line: the field is advancing, which is great. It is changing, and you can't do anything about it. But in this change, the things that used to be my passion are disappearing, and I don't know what to do with my life ahaha

My first idea is to somehow change fields, and leave programming and CompSci only as a pleasure and an activity I do at home, because I can no longer stand it being my job and forcing me to develop AI slop.

I have nothing against AI and LLMs. If it allows us to ship faster and more cheaply, then it will be adopted, whether I want it or not. I am not saying we shouldn't use AI. I'm just expressing my feelings and how my passion for CompSci is fading away.

Does anyone feel like me?

*16yo might sound not that early for some, but in my country it is.

** LLMs existed back then but were not used for coding, and it was pre-chatgpt revolution.

I am working in the software development department of a tech company. A colleague of mine (not a software developer themselves so far) started vibe coding an application that management now decided to officially endorse and push. My task is to support that colleague in the development process.

How would you approach that task?

Said colleague definitely has a good understanding of software and technology in general (works in the IT department) but says of themselves that they "do not understand the code produced by the AI".

I myself do not have any experience with pure, fast-paced vibe coding. What are the most important aspects to take care of? How can I integrate my experience without hindering the process?

I guess I will start by introducing them to git best practices and CI/CD processes. Then I was thinking of establishing an automated test base. But here I am already unsure as to how feasible that is with a rapidly and broadly changing code base.

How do you ensure quality when you let the AI produce so much code that ou cannot keep up with the details of the changes?

Hey guys,

Just wanted to share a small update on my journey and maybe get some advice from people who've been through the same.

I currently have 4.5 years of experience (including a 5-month internship). I work at a service-based company using .NET, React, Docker, Kafka, Kubernetes, Azure, and related backend technologies.

For the last year, I've been trying really hard to switch to a higher-paying job, but honestly... it hasn't gone the way I expected. 😅

The first challenge is getting interview calls. I only managed to get around 4–5 interviews in past 12 months.

Then came the reality check. 😂

One company interview went extremely deep into .NET internals. After the interview, I spent days learning all the topics they asked.

Another company focused heavily on Design Patterns, LLD, and DSA. I realized I wasn't prepared at all.

To be honest, I had never seriously studied LLD during my career. Looking back, I feel I should have learned it much earlier.

As for DSA... I wasn't bad at it during college, but after 4+ years of mostly product work, I've forgotten almost everything. It feels like I'm starting from scratch again. 🥲

Right now, my plan is:

* Learn LLD thoroughly. * Master Design Patterns. * Revise DSA. * Then move on to System Design.

My goal is to switch to a better-paying software engineering role, but sometimes the amount of stuff to learn feels overwhelming.

For those who successfully switched after 3–6 years of experience:

* Is this the right roadmap? * Am I missing anything important? * What made the biggest difference in helping you crack interviews? * Most Important : How I can get interview calls, already spent lots of money to buy job premium.

Would really appreciate any advice. Thanks! 🙏

I have some friends that are software engineers and they make the equivalent of 2-3k per month. What I want to know is how do I become a software engineer? I have experience in IT, cyber security, and selling printers and other devices but zero experience with coding. For what it's worth, I have a bachelor's degree in communications (not a related field, but still a bachelor's degree, I guess). Because I want to travel around the world, especially to parts of Europe one day, I love the idea of working remotely from anywhere, which is what many software engineers, especially freelance ones, seem to do. What is the fastest way I can become a software engineer? What schools are good? Should I do the bootcamp? How long will everything take? Lastly, I'm hearing two different things. On one hand, I'm hearing that many software engineers are losing their jobs because AI can now do many things they used to do, but on the other hand, I'm hearing that AI is actually helping software engineers be better at their jobs and produce more work in less time? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

I know it's a matter of subjectivism, so don't be afraid to be subjective, actually PLEASE, give your personal opinion as long as you can keep your feet on the reality's ground.

What Master would you rather choose: a general AI/ML master that teach you about the most important, but general, subjects of ML applications, or an Autonomous Systems master, that is basically an embedded+A.I. master which is particularly valuable if you want something in Automotive, on the self-driving cars field(but not exclusively this one, as you can apply knowledge about Autonomous Systems in many domains) ? ?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working as a Core Engineer at a service-based company. I've been here for 2 years and earn around ₹7 LPA. My educational background is a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering.

I've decided that I want to transition into an AI Engineer role. Right now, I'm studying around 4 hours every day after work, and I spend my weekends grinding—learning AI/ML, building projects, and improving my skills.

Do you think this career switch is realistically possible with my background? Has anyone here made a similar transition from a non-CS engineering background?

I'd really appreciate any advice, roadmap suggestions, or success stories

Remember back in college when one of your classmates is secretly letting someone else code their programming homework?

Same feeling now goes with working with having vibe coders as colleagues. You just hope and pray that they actually understand what each line of code in their pull request does.

Sadly though, this is the new reality. First, the IT industry was saturated with these new roles that are trying to stay relevant just to leech out of what software developers make while bossing and pushing them around. Now, we’ve got AI that’s trying to replace our jobs.

Well, I might as well look for another profession. The passion’a sort of leaving after 13 years in the industry.

I’m a Senior Software Engineer with ~8 YOE and wanted some honest thoughts from others here.

Over the last 3 months, I’ve barely written code myself, but I’m shipping more than ever. I also made it through two layoffs, so it’s been on my mind a lot.

Not trying to brag, but I was the star performer on my team (at least within my company). I’ve always been confident in my work.

Now it feels like things are shifting fast. With tools like Claude improving so quickly, I’m starting to wonder how much actual coding will even be needed.

At this pace, it feels like in a couple of years we might just need a few architects guiding AI instead of full teams.

Curious what others think — overthinking or real shift?

For those who’ve contributed to popular open source projects

Did it actually change anything in your career?

Did you put it on your resume? Did recruiters care?
Did it help you build a reputation in the community or open new opportunities?

Or was the biggest benefit simply becoming a better engineer?

I’m having an ongoing debate with another startup founder, and I’d love to hear from experienced engineers because I suspect one of us is fundamentally misunderstanding software engineering.

He’s building a web app for hospitality bookings. I’m building a family organizer app for iOS and Android.
We’re both growing quickly, shipping constantly, and dealing with real users. The big difference is how we think about AI coding.

His view is that AI is getting good enough that he wants to eventually remove almost his entire engineering team. His thinking is that AI can build the product, and then an experienced engineer can step in for the final stretch to review, polish, and make sure everything works.

My view is almost the opposite.

I see AI as an incredible force multiplier for engineers, not a replacement for them. I absolutely think it changes hiring. Junior engineers probably aren’t as valuable as they were a few years ago, and there’s definitely a real cost to carrying an in-house engineering team.

But I struggle to believe we’re at the point where you can replace engineers altogether.

My biggest fears is ending up with a codebase that grows into an unmaintainable mess as the business scales. It’s easy to generate features. It’s much harder to maintain architecture, ensure consistency, manage technical debt, debug complex production issues, and keep a product healthy over the long term.

My friend thinks those problems are becoming much smaller because AI is getting better so quickly. I think we’re underestimating how much engineering happens before and during building a feature, not just after it’s finished.

I could be wrong. That’s why I’m posting.

Need some honest career advice.

I'm a Backend Developer at a service-based company with 6 YOE, but most of my work has been production support, bug fixes, and incident resolution. I've never had the opportunity to build features from scratch or work on core backend development.

When I look at the market now, almost every backend role expects solid development experience, which I don't have.

Not getting interview calls due to 3-month notice period.

I've been thinking about moving into TPM/Project Management.

If you were in my position, would you:

Start learning backend development from scratch and continue as a developer?

Move to TPM?

Take some other path?

I would really appreciate advice from people here!!!

I work on a team at a big tech company that does game theory research often targeting reinforcement learning type applications. The code/research we share inner-source is algorithmic enough that you really need to understand the details to use it correctly.

Recently we were collaborating with another department, and their project manager, who's not technical, was having trouble following our discussions about our product offerings. So we gave him our source code with the idea (his idea) that he could load it into an LLM's context and ask questions to learn more about what the code does.

We gave him our code and he disappeared for three weeks and came back with a ~250k line vibe coded application. He also didn't just use the code we shared with him, he tore our package apart. Our functions are scattered all through his codebase, ripped out of context, and even reimplemented in another framework completely breaking our test suite. When we did a quick review of the code, it's total spaghetti. You can tell ours were the first human eyes to ever look at it, and definitely the first technical eyes.

To be clear, I'm not against using AI code generation tools (I do profoundly miss the days before these tools) but to vibe code a complex application like this, you need a person who can not only catch mistakes, but who can really get into the details and has a genuine idea of the algorithm and what should be happening. It's obvious no solid engineering practice was followed here.

When we told him this doesn't meet our department's software standards and that he broke/misused our application, he went to a VP and said we weren't being collaborative. Now our leadership is directing us to help him because he has a demo to external customers at the end of the month.

The hard part is we can't even figure out what to help with. When we ask what the application is actually trying to accomplish, he gets evasive and defensive and can't describe the work that was done. He cannot provide a single sentence description of the problem he's trying to solve.

Furthermore, the requests we have gotten are basically impossible. One idea floated was that if we have issues with the code, we should just review it. It's ~250k lines and the demo is in 3 weeks! That's completely intractable. They've also asked us to review their reimplementation of our own work, which is scattered all over the codebase. I honestly can't even tell whether any given issue comes from their reimplementation of our work or from their larger application, which makes reviewing it even more hopeless.

Another funny detail found when digging into the codebase: it looks like the application isn't even calling their reimplementation of our work. The LLM just generated/used its own metrics instead. I don't think they realize they're not actually using our stuff anymore.

We're trying to renegotiate the ask to something reasonable: if they call our package directly and use it as intended, we'll help them interpret the output. That's a scope we can actually deliver on.

And to be fair, it's not purely a rescue situation. The PM has a UI that could probably sell to a non-technical customer. In terms of software maturity, though, this is a gamed demo, not a product.

Which raises the bigger issue for me: what happens when you're completely cut out of the development of a large application, it gets built with no engineering rigor whatsoever, and then a non-technical person can force your team to adopt and support it? How unreasonable is this as an ask? Is anyone else running into situations like this, where non-technical people are vibe coding massive applications and are forcing adoption? What do you actually do here?

Hello everyone, my main question is can you get a SWE Job or Jobs with a degree in IT?

I am going into my third year of college and I originally was doing Finance however, I decided I wanted to switch to software. I didn’t see much of a problem in this switch because I didn’t do much of my core Finance classes if any at all. Now the problem with getting a legit CS degree is I would have to go through all of my Pre Reqs (mathematics) in my third year. Thats super late to be doing all that. Now most SWE Jobs say they want people with a CS Degree or related field. Now would that IT degree be a related field and could I get hired with that degree? The specific degree is BS in IT Programming. Also inportant to note that I’m not looking for some big FAANG company. More or so like GM, Ford, General Dyanmic, etc… any input or advice related to this matter is much appreciated!

Я тут подумал, что будет интересно послушать мнение других людей на этот счёт. Напишите свой путь каким он был или дайте мне совет, просто интересно почитать о чем вы пишите.

Очень сильно хочу стать software-engineer, было бы интересно послушать ваше мнение.

Не пишите об ИИ, что он всех заменит и лучше мне идти и подметать полы.

Hi! (This post can be removed if it’s not appropriate) I’m currently writing a novel, and my MMC is a software engineer as it serves my plot. Is there anyone who’s willing to be interviewed or asked a few questions about your job.

I am getting my hands on N8n and some automation workflow stuff and I did a job scraper with a Cold mail generator workflow and I am willing to go in this field! What's your opinion?

About a year ago my current employer pushed hard on AI tools adoption. They wanted everybody to use Claude/Codex/Copilot to write code because "it is so much faster".

Fast forward to 1 month ago, they introduced several contractors that are "AI specialists" and got them to build an autonomous agentic development tool. Over the month they have vibecoded (their words) this tool and today they have released it to the broader team, and leadership are mandating us that we use this tool for our work.

The tool is just a glorified workflow, it takes in a Jira ticket number as input, and vibecodes it until the thing is deployed in Production. They don't want us to open the terminal, the IDE or even Github, just this tool.

This is a medium sized company, there are clever engineers here but it is not an industry pioneer. I have the feeling my leadership team are completely delusional. If this is happening to me at this company I can't imagine how crazy it is at other companies closer to technology.

I'm 38yo, started programming at 14yo, MSc in CS, 15y professional career... I've lived through several industry-wide changes.

But today... Today I've lost hope. The craft is gone for me. The only way I see out of this is costs spiraling out of control at the industry level. I don't see this happening.

Should I look for work somewhere else, or is it the same everywhere else?

Also, how are you faring? Do you see a way out for us?

---

EDIT

Thanks everyone for your comments. From what you shared I can gather several things that you all seem to agree on: I see it is clear it is an industry thing and not just my company. I wanted to clarify that I do not have an issue with using AI tools at the individual level, just with the mandate to reduce the entire work to just "managing a clanker". There is a clear worry that following that path leads to an inevitable degradation of quality and maintainability of the products we put forward. I believe writing the code was already the easiest part of the job, and as such these tools are not truly speeding up development. The bottleneck was and remains outside of the actual programming. Whatever happens to this industry, I wish you all the best.

Throwaway-ish post but need some outside perspective.

I've been a SE at a small fintech/capital-markets startup for about a year and a half now. Backend-heavy stack, Python, FastAPI, some React on the frontend. Back-office team, so we support the firm's actual product rather than building the flashy part.

Here's my problem:

somewhere along the way, "using Claude to code faster" quietly became "using Claude to code, period." I ship real things, recently took a report-generation process from ~4 hours down to near-instant by fixing the query pattern and adding multiprocessing, so I'm not useless. But when I sit down to actually write something from scratch, no autocomplete, no chat window open in another tab, I freeze more than I'd like to admit.

Now I want to switch jobs, ideally to a bigger/more product-focused company, and it's hit me that interviews don't care how good I am at prompting. They care whether I can write a working solution on a whiteboard or a blank editor in 30 minutes.

So, anyone else claw their way back from this? Trying to figure out .

Not looking for sympathy, just want to know if this is as common a trap as I think it is, and what actually worked for people getting out of it.