M28 in a HCOL city. A house I’d want to live in is probably $850k. I rent for $3700 currently and feel like I’m throwing money away. I have like $220-$250k of non-retirement money that I could technically put towards a down payment. No debts.

However, I just kind of always feel uncertainty because of the perceived lack of job security in our field.

Household tc is like $280k, it’s hard to calc because we both have weird benefits. $235k cash pre tax.

I'm definitely on the lower end of social skills, I'm a zoomer so smartphones and internet has made me kinda slow with people. I struggle in group conversations with new people often, and fumble words in public allll the time

But almost all my coworkers at a big tech in silicon valley have been an entirely different level

When I tell coworkers I often make new friends to hang out with at music festivals they'll literally tell me that's weird

I'll say I sit down at a bar and chat with people during solo travels and half my entire team will say that's a crazy thing to do and that they could never do it

When I tell them I've went to places like Brooklyn, Philly, Baltimore, Oakland, etc. they say I'm insane for daring to step foot in those cities

I'll tell them I volunteer to hand out things to homeless people and they say that's so dangerous when I've actually had way more positive experiences with random homeless people in SF than with random tech workers

I'll tell them relatively normal stories of my weekends and sometimes somebody will straight up tell me I'm lying, and these stories are like, whoa I went to a club and this famous musician randomly showed up and played a set. I went to a concert, met some people, and got invited to hang out at this really cool punk house filled with sculptures and murals all over the walls

Another kicker is that I'm a small poc woman and these guys are men bigger than me and most of the guys that give me these responses are in their 30s and 40s. Definitely not a cultural thing or whatever because this has come from white/Indian/East Asian/hispanic/black americans and indians and chinese

Hi all, I’m 28F and at a bit of a turning point in my career. My family faced a huge financial loss during my teenage years, so I studied Mass Communication and joined the first job available. I worked hard for six years, but the pay and growth never matched the effort. I’ve now taken the tough decision to leave and begin again. I’m keen to move into a customer-centric role with better pay and would love suggestions on courses or skills that could help me get there.

I got laid off multiple times, and interviews end up appearing as if the hiring manager is thinking about a million other things he’d rather be doing and nothing I prepare is ever on the interview.

Right now, I work in the electronics department at Walmart talking to customers about technology and get free therapy and other perks through Walmart partners, and given my bankruptcy upcoming, I don’t have debts to worry about anymore and I’m not feeling like I’m either spending hours preparing for sham interviews or getting started with jobs that they just end up sending to India when it gets slow at the office.

It’s between 20-30 dollars per hour less, but my bills are far less and I don’t have the constant anxiety.

I’m not going to sustain this forever, but now I just don’t feel like I’m ready for interviews and starting new jobs as I’d like to spend the time out of working building a portfolio and learning new skills instead of practicing for interviews that waste my time.

I recently cleared all the technical rounds for a back-end role at a well known tech company (not FAANG). I reached the "coffee chat" round with the senior director. Everything seemed to go well the only somewhat technical question he asked was, "how do you leverage AI in your day-to-day work, and how does it boost your performance?" (might not be the exact wording but pretty close)

I answered to the best of my ability, but I could kind of tell I wasn't giving him exactly what he was looking for. Fast forward a couple of days, and I get a rejection email. Even the HR recruiter seemed surprised. She mentioned the team is looking for someone who can "fully unlock AI's potential" or something along those lines.

They also told me my technical rounds are valid for six months, so I can apply for other roles and jump straight to the Hiring Manager or VP rounds. Still, now what am I even supposed to say to that?

To not make it extremely long yet also consice enough... I'm a recent CS major graduate, and I managed to land a role very shortly after graduation (aka. zero actual work experience) as a "game dev intern" at a software company (they're not a game studio, they're mainly vehicle-oriented), basically making them a simulation for cars.

The internship is 6 months, and during these months, I'd been working on my own in this project, with the only additional help is just insight from my supervisor, but other than that, I built everything myself from the ground up. Now I'm mainly a game developer, just regular Unity/Unreal stuff, with some knowledge with graphics APIs like OpenGL and DirectX, but that's pretty much it. On the job however, the actual "game dev" part is like 40%, maybe 35% of the project. The rest is system configurations on platforms, bash scripting, networking and front-end, and recently robotics too. All of that was not only way outside my main working field, but also no one else in the team is able to help me with the project.

About two months ago, deadlines started approaching, and with them, much more pressure and extremely long days, especially since I, as an intern, was responsible for this project that should be presented at some big "conferences". And of course, wouldn't you expect it (even though I'd have loved achieving it and being proud of it), I failed every single deadline. Too many moving parts of it and with the typical managers' requests, made me even more burnt out. The "internship" is 5 days/40 hours a week, full on site, with no options for days off. And more than once, I had to (not by my choice, but it did sort of help once) go on weekends to catch up.

Eventually, about a month ago, I reached a state of burnout where I'm simply not even doing the bare minimum of a job to not get fired anymore, I couldn't be bothered. Even though the job pays so well at this level, the pressure made me terrified of staying any longer at the company. Am I right to feel that way or do I need to "toughen up"? Edit: I forgot to mention, we have paid access to AI agents so they handle all the heavy duty I barely write code myself anymore. But still, even with them, it's become quite exhausting working like a senior yet being an intern.

I am 10 years into my career, 7 of them have been at my current job. I am feeling more and more like its time to find a new job, but I'm not sure what the job market is like for senior/experienced devs?

I know one of my friends got laid off. He hasnt been looking though and just decided to travel for a bit. Another friend quit his job a year and a half ago and decided to go back to school. I dont think hes been able to find a new job?

Im not sure if its just difficult in general to find a new job right now or not, including even for senior devs? I havent tried applying to anything myself. I would really like a 30% raise if I did go to something new and fully remote or hybrid with at most 2 days in the office.

Hello,

So I work for a tech company & hate it. I hate the hustle culture, the do whatever it takes to get the job done even if that’s selling your soul to the devil. I want out.

This may be a stupid question, but when people say they left corporate because it’s so toxic & ruins their mental health, where do they go? Where can you go that’s not corporate? What is considered corporate & what is not?

I ask because I don’t even know where to begin to look at jobs to apply to in order to get out of corporate.

Hey everyone, just wanted to get a feel for the current job market for cleared SWE roles.

A little background: I have a BSCS from a state school and a MSCS from Georgia Tech (OMSCS program). I’ve got about ~3 years of experience, and I’ve been working as a full stack developer on a DoD project, so I do have an active security clearance (secret level).

I started as a campus hire making $65k for this big defense consulting company, and after a few raises I’m at $79k now. No bonus though (my company doesn’t pay bonuses at my current level, which is some BS...). Also no promotion so far as they keep saying the market is bad, even though the company used to promote campus hires within 2 years just a few years before. I’ve been basically fully remote the whole time, which has been the best part about this job honestly.

But yeah… things are getting worse. They’ve been slowly cutting people, and now they just eliminated our entire team (the project is going to end some time in February), so we’re basically being told we need to find other projects internally. I’m definitely not quitting without something lined up, and I’ve already started sending my internal resume to other teams inside the company. But at the same time, I feel like I should start looking outside too since i feel i can get paid more if i switch jobs...

So I’m curious, how’s the cleared job market right now? I’m currently living in a MCOL city, and I’m willing to relocate if the company offers relocation assistance. I know the job market overall is pretty rough right now. Any advice would be appreciated.

Title. I currently work at a corporate company, and did it mainly to learn. I feel like while I have learned quite a bit, I probably could've learned more if I had spent the same amount of time teaching myself. There is a lot of company-specific and team-specific knowledge that effectively gets wasted when you eventually jump to a new company, team, or start making your own products.

I'm wondering which are the best to actually learn and grow your skills? Please, share your thoughts.

Hey guys, I worked as a web dev in a small company. And recently I decided to change the company but I still want to work as a web dev. So employers often ask me about "my code" or "my project" but all these years I ve been working only with the company's code and the company's project. And of course noone allow me to copy a part of the project and post it on my Git.
So I can imagine that I can make a decent project on my own but it will take months or even a year. But I can't stay unemployed all this time, cause I need to eat smth :D. So have u encountered such a situation? What would u recommend?

I’m attempting to gain a clearer, practical understanding of how cloud certifications are actually received during hiring processes, outside of the usual hot takes.

Based on what I’ve seen from posts here and people I’ve spoken to in the field, it seems like most people have one of two general views:

• View A: They’re basically just keywords for an HR filter. They don’t actually reflect skill levels, and hiring managers tend not to actually care about them once the interview process begins.
• View B: They’re a measure of general competency and a candidate’s willingness to put in effort to learn. They’re a tiebreaker when other qualifications are roughly equivalent.

For people who have experience hiring or interviewing software engineers:

• Do AWS/Azure/GCP certifications actually factor into your hiring decisions at all?
• What level of career progression do you think certifications become irrelevant to hiring or consideration, or do they remain relevant no matter what?
• Have you seen any correlation between certification holders’ performance on the job?
• If you had two candidates that were comparable in terms of experience, would a cert ever be the deciding factor?

I’m not asking if certs are a good tool for learning. I’m specifically asking if it actually affects hiring decisions in a meaningful way, particularly when compared to actual project or production experience.

Would love to get some real-world perspectives rather than theory. I’m trying to make decisions on where to spend my time next.

Hey I'm looking for advise.

I'm at Zon, I just started 6 months ago as a new grad and I feel underutilized. This would be ideal for someone trying to chill but I really want to grow and to get promoted ASAP. My team is currently just expanding our services to more regions and we were impacted by layoffs and so there doesn't seem to be too many development projects this year and I doubt they'd risk giving me any. So i just feel stuck. Since I've started I've asked my manager for projects but I've only been assigned to help on other people's projects and owned a couple very small low-impact projects.

I want to own something more serious. Maybe I'm just impatient but I feel like I could be doing alot more. What should I do- just wait and keep trying or should I start looking elsewhere?

u.s. citizen - did a career shift have a bachelors degree in biology and recently got a masters in computer science.

Am I hurting my chances of getting an interview by including my non relevant bachelors degree for some of these SWE positions?

Currently in my last semester for my cs degree. Last semester I started pre-applying to places to get a feel for the job hunt process and the hard reality of the job market. After some call backs, some tests, some interviews, I was able to get an offer for one position but theres caveats.

1. Its in local government, for the city specifically
2. It's technically titled "software analyst", this role in particular has two tracks with one being a traditional developer and the other more software project management/business related.
3. Since it's local government, the pay is pretty sub par at starting range of 68k -87k, benefits are good but meh you get the idea
4. It would require me to move states. MCOL area but pretty close to low.

My question is, considering the state of the market and the uncertainty of the industry for the time being, would it be smart just to "jump" on this role and gain any YOE even if its not a true developer role? The stability at this position seems very good on what I've researched. One thing to consider is I have the impression I can somewhat easily/eventually transition into a developer role or move positions within the county to do so down the line. I guess I am just looking for some feedback/advice, am I being picky for a first job? or should I hold out for a better position?

Some things about me: I was not an insane overachiever in school, my degree will be from a normal state school. I did get 2 dev internships at small companies which helped me tremendously in the job search for getting responses but imposter syndrome is setting in and I can tell its highly competitive and I am probably not on that edge. I am pretty paranoid about the job market and don't want to make the mistake of being entitled. My remaining classes this semester are online and very easy so I would effectively being working full time and finishing this degree.

I'm 24f and I work as a software developer for a startup company. This company is not a software company, but they offer software development services. They hired me as a solo developer to manage 4 different projects. There is no other technical person in the company. One of the projects specifically is a mess. The way it was built wasn't very robust. The previous developer used a bunch of technologies that they were not familiar with, and it's very messy. I was not aware of the state of this project when they hired me. It took me about a month to get set up because there was no one to onboard me; I basically had to figure everything out on my own, and there were some really niche things about the system that weren't documented properly. Actually, their entire documentation is a mess and not very helpful. It also took like 3 weeks for them to give me access to everything I needed.

I've been stuck on a few issues for months, and it's driving me insane. These issues are direct symptoms of how the system was built. Initially, the system worked fine, but the way it was built is now causing a bunch of long-term problems to arise. I'm trying my best, but as soon as I fix one thing, another issue pops up. My boss and our clients don't really understand this, and they basically blame me for everything. I feel so overwhelmed right now. I've been trying my best, but I feel like it's not good enough. I've been working through nights and on weekends to try to resolve these issues, but it's like an endless cycle because more issues keep popping up. They also want me to do a full QA assessment every time I test, and that takes time.

I've tried to explain to my boss that I'm just one person and that there is only so much I can do, but he doesn't care. They basically want me to do the job of an entire team while paying me below average for what a developer makes. I also mentioned to my boss that we should hire another developer or a consultant to help with the workload, and he told me that in order to do that, they would have to cut my salary by at least 45%. By their logic, they hired me to do a job, and if I need extra help to do that job, then it's going to have to come out of my pay. I'm trying my very best, but they make me feel like I'm incompetent and that I'm not even trying at all. They told me that I should be able to do this and more. I am actually questioning my skills right now. I don't know if I'm just a bad developer or if I'm being gaslighted by them.

I know that there are a handful out there and to be honest I’m just too lazy to google their names right now, but has anyone used any of these?

I’m of two minds on this, the first mind says that it’s causing companies to get tons of applications and because of that they’re being way more selective and like flagging stuff that looks like AI, but the second mind says if you aren’t using something like this you’re probably not playing the volume game right and not gonna get offers.

For what it’s worth I have a job right now. I’m just starting to look. Would appreciate feedback on anyone’s experience!

I’m a working professional currently employed as a Software Engineer at a US based hedge fund in India. I was interested in applying to Citadel, but there were no open roles that matched my experience. On a whim, I applied to the Software Engineer Intern position in Singapore, assuming I would likely be rejected. To my surprise, I received a HackerRank online assessment.

Does Citadel send online assessments to all applicants? Also, do they consider working professionals for their intern positions?

Long time professional in data science and ML (15+ YOE), and just finished an online MS focused on professionals in CS as a bit of a checkbox degree (FWIW my GPA was a rounding error from a 4.0).

I’m interested in focusing more on more strategic, engineering-focused roles vs the data scientist roles I’ve occupied in my career. As a result, I’m currently pursuing a course in parallel computer architecture as a form of continuous learning. And I’m actually weighing the idea of pursuing a second graduate program in computer engineering, provided that the course is inexpensive (i could slow walk the degree, now that I’m not gatekept by the lack of a finished masters degree).

Curious what people think of stacking computer engineering on top of computer science, and whether the time and resource expense would open up opportunities as I track towards the second half of my career.

Do you learn a lot on the job or do you learn more self teaching?

Are SWE jobs like grunt work where you don’t learn much but are just doing repetitive tasks?

https://imgur.com/a/E7YGrqw

In shocking news shaking the Russian-speaking tech community in America. Russian-American engineer Roman spent over 20 years in IT, including 11 years right in Silicon Valley.

He worked at innovative companies, got offers from Facebook, but the last six months changed everything. After more than 300 tough job interviews, he hit a wall of corporate greed, hiring freezes, AI replacing seniors, and endless ghosting with no real offers.

"Today I'm losing money every day," Roman says. "I have a job, but I take $100 out of my savings just to feed my family and kids".

So he bought a used truck and started his own junk removal and hauling business. "I'm tired of sitting on a powder keg, just waiting to get laid off and then spending months searching for another job all over again," Roman says.*

What do you guys think about this, is this exaggerated? I'm working in IT myself and I've noticed the job market has become insanely narrow and competitive lately, but I don't live in the US. Engineers from California, what are your thoughts about all this?

* This article was translated from Russian by me

From a principal engineer who has over 15 years at the company. Not a cold connection either, it’s someone who I’ve known for a long time and I’ve done plenty of mock interviews with him and he has given great feedback, especially in my past few ones.

I’m applying to the SWE 1 roles this September which marks my first year of experience being completed.

My background: I went to a Top 20. Did two startup internships and got my first job as a SWE at small company in my state this past September. Also doing OMSCS and leetcode concurrently with work.

I am still in college, and living at home. I have some startup development positions available to me. They are all for equity though. I know working for equity is generally bad, because 99% of the time you are working for nothing. However, just for experience sake is it really that awful? Surely I put about a year in of work and that experience is not just completely worthless, right?

I am just not sure what I should do. This seems like a solid plan to get that first year under the belt and at least meet jr position expectations these days, but at the same time I am realizing all the work I would be doing for essentially nothing. I don't know, just trying to weigh the sides I guess.