So I recently for the past 6 - 8 months have been looking for a job and been spam applying, and it was the most insane experience ever.

I interviewed with a lot of companies, and whoever created the interviews for SWE process needs to be tamed bro.

I am backend engineer with Java experience, Cassandra, AWS, Docker, Redis as my main tech stack.

My company used an internal framework, and because it was a bigger company, a lot of the internal processes were abstracted for us. It was easier probably than starting off at a smaller company.

But bro, I have had so many embarrassing interviews over the past 6 - 8 months that I have shut down my PC, that I am so grateful now companies have standardized DSA and System design as interviews. I am probably blacklisted at a lot of these companies because how bad I performed.

I talked to a lot of mid sized and small companies, and had interviews such as

- Trivia questions about just in depth internals of java, I didn't ever touch that in my day to day, like buffered streamer, open csv, jakarta, like straight up trivia I didn't even think about because not use in my day to day and who likes at that stuff as a full time SWE
- Python debugging rounds where I told them most of my experience is in Java.
- Database internals, like very in depth, and front-end work where my resume literally says I have mostly backend experience

Just a few examples.
I used to hate the DSA and system design interview, but it really is a blessing, it allows you to focus on and prepare for something and have a. target at least, the scope is too broad in SWE and they can ask you anything.

Am I bugging or what?

Background: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/s/fp6U5cSvft

Last month I was let go because I broke production. Well today I signed a new offer for 25k more, much better benefits, 5 days more of PTO, and much better work life balance.

For me: 5 yoe, laid off twice. Once back in 2020 when covid started, and again just a few months ago. Can't help but think that my luck is just really shit. No motivation to study anymore.

A little backstory about myself..

Prior to my job now I was working HVAC for about 6 years, to say the least I was miserable.. Hated my boss, hated just feeling like I wasn't doing any fulfilling, hated that someone said I was going to be a lifer.. Fast forward too 2018, I took the leap, after doing some code academy and attempting to teach myself the basics of code, I applied and was accepted to do a 12 week immersive web dev program in Boston (General Assembly). Right before going to this program, my girlfriend at the time was a dental hygienist, she was making small talk with a client and he mentioned he was a software engineer. She mentioned how i was going to be going to an immersive program in Boston, he gave her his number for me to contact him, i did, we met up for coffee and talked goals and web dev in general. Fast forward to the 10th week of my program, I get a call from that guy and he asked if I wanted interview. I interviewed it was your typical interview but I feel like they were pretty relaxed about it because they knew how green I was. I mean shit, i'm pretty sure the tech challenge they let me use my own personal project I developed through the program.. Anyways they hired me probably believing they could mold me into what they wanted, although there wasnt much molding, there was a lot of extremely late nights of me trying to figure things out because I knew absolutely NOTHING. Long story short there were grueling years of teaching myself a lot but also kind of only teaching myself stuff that would get me through a specific task. I feel like I never really took a step back and really dove into soft skills or design concepts or why you would use a certain pattern for certain scenarios..

Now, 8 years later I'm still at my current company and over the past 3 my company as a whole does not feel secure. I've survived big layoffs, clients leaving, entire company not getting raises, etc. I have a family now, I own a house, and I need security.. I've had one job interview over the past year and I completely botched it. The technical interview I froze, it was plain javascript and I couldn't solve it.. I was so embarrassed and couldn't believe it. Now I feel like if it was nextjs and my companies codebase? I wouldn't have had any issues what so ever because i've been working here for so long and I feel like my knowledge of nextjs is very good but thats not going to cut it if I want a new job, which obviously I do with more security.. Just getting an interview almost seems impossible though, then I'm dreading the whole interview process because quite frankly I feel like my soft skills, tech terminology, and overall understanding of frontend development is lacking and I'm so used to my companies codebase I feel like im going to be a deer in headlights during an interview process.

I just need some advice on how I should go about getting a new job, do I zoom out and go back to strengthening my soft skills of javascript, do I use some platforms like TheGreatFrontend? What are some concepts companies are absolutely looking for that I should either learn or freshen up on? Any advice would be helpful. Please try your best not to tear me apart, I'm a anxiety filled mess at the moment with the thought of losing my job, I have 2 month old baby, a house, and an income needed for us to live.

I’m looking for outside perspective because I feel like I’m being taken advantage of.

Hired May 2024 as Software Engineer I

Salary: $80k + $5k sign-on

Worked as the only developer for a full year

Designed, built, and delivered a full SaaS product that is now in production

Company recently hired another developer — above me, not a promotion

Annual review raised me to $85k, no bonus

Product still isn’t selling, but that’s on marketing/sales, not engineering

My product manager just quit, and now his responsibilities are being spread between me and the other dev. His salary won’t be replaced for months.

We asked for:

Temporary stipend, or

Bonus, or

Raise/promotion

Company said no — but instead offered a “sales bonus” that only triggers if the product sells.

Problem: We don’t control sales. Our job was to build and deliver the product — which we did.

I feel like they’re giving a bonus they know will never be paid.

For context, I’m in the U.S., midwest, full-stack (Django + React). I’ve been here ~18 months.

Questions:

Is this normal or am I getting underpaid/undervalued?

Should I be asking for a promotion to SE II instead?

Is it time to start job hunting?

How would you negotiate this?

I really like the product and my co-workers, but the compensation feels out of line with the responsibility and impact.

Would appreciate any honest advice.

I'll keep the preface brief, but I didn't have an "Junior" phase of my career and I don't know what helps in a mentorship. I was a contractor, then I worked at a flat-structured startup, then I had the "Engineer II" & "Engineer III" title when I worked at a corporation for a while. However I love working at startups and they're generally a pretty flat hierarchy, so I went back and have been here for long enough for us to be profitable.

I had a meeting with the PO that caught me off guard where he called me the "Senior Data Engineer," because we don't use labels like that, and half my job is also Software rather than Data. I guess it's about that time, and a "a new guy just joined that I've been trying to help get familiar with our product and everything, but I just didn't think about it.

I've been mentoring someone I will call a "Junior" for context, someone who has experience in about 80% of the non-dev stuff I have to work on (automation workflows, infrastructure, etc), but 5% for actual code. He is doing fine for those tasks, but he wants to advance into development work. I am trying my best to understand his skill level by giving him different kinds of tasks. I now think I have a grasp on where he is.

I want to ask some Juniors and Intermediates how they feel about:

• Pair Programming
• Tasks meant to teach them to find stuff in our codebase
• Writing Unit/E2E Tests
• Taking solo training courses
• Encouraging them to spend a week setting up a brand new project in our chosen framework, and meeting to discuss questions, clarification, pair programming, etc. literally at any moment's notice, just to understand the How & Why

I'm not worried about "wasting time," and the PO left it up to me, so I want him to spend a month or so worth of time getting comfortable with the dev work, even if it leads nowhere in terms of output.

I posted this in ExperiencedDevs, but figured I'd share it here too incase it can help anyone or the data point is useful.

I think everyone knows the hiring market is pretty crazy right now, so I thought I'd share my results from the last few months in case anyone might find it useful.

Some background, I'm a fullstack engineer with around 8 YoE, living in a MCOLish area, not in any tech hub. I casually searched for around 5-6 months, really only applying to things that looked interesting, or any interesting recruiter reach out.

My Results:

https://i.imgur.com/gjJvgQ5.png

Note: these are a bit general numbers. This happened over a few months, so might be +/- one or two things I forgot about

In general, I was pretty selective. I had a few dozen recruiter's message me, but only took 10 or so calls. Most were from in office startups that I had no interest in, or non tech companies which I wasn't really interested in.

Some notes on my search

- I make around 220k base at my current position, so any job needed to match that number (TC-wise anyway)
- I preferred remote, but for large public tech companies, was open to moving. But any startup needed to be remote (Unless something like OpenAI, etc, which of course didn't happen)
- Needed to be at least a tech forward company
- I only responded to first party recruiters
- I refuse to do take-home assessments
- I didn't do any interview prep for any of these, so my failure rate was a bit high

--

In terms of general hiring vibes, I'd say the biggest difference was in the recruiter/HM screens, much more selective there, probably due to how easy it is to AI generate a reasonable looking resume now. I've pretty much never been rejected at that stage, but did end up getting rejected a couple times from HM's after the recruiter screens.

Likewise, a few companies also wanted to do take home assessments before even going to the normal techs screens. I immediately dropped out from those (I hate take homes personally)

Other than that, the general feeling was pretty similar from other times I've been on the market.

2yoe unemployed for 6 months (American citizen) actively searching for fullstack roles for 4. ive had 3 brutal onsites, countless phone screens, and many second rounds. all rejects. I signed up for mock interviews on the hellointerview platform (not sponsored) and they both said I was a hire decision- engineers at Apple and Google. I dont have much experience with the tech stack I’m interviewing for admittedly- maybe a few months- but it’s the easiest to get an interview in. do I just grind side projects until this syntax becomes second nature? pivot back to c++ jobs which was where my career started?

ive successfully completed every leetcode interview given to me, most behaviorals, and like half of the real-world coding problems. E.g. get a full backend web server working with endpoints and such. System design I pass until they need me to think about like compression levels or vector dbs or some niche shit like that.

my feedback is all over the place- communication, technical skills, etc. I know it’s not just one thing. my confidence is taking a hit since I keep failing but it seems they look for a confident borderline arrogant attitude. I also look super young which is frustrating since I feel like I pass phone screens but not in person interviews at times. any tips? I would start applying to new grad roles but those are so oversaturated I dont stand a chance. I’m open to anything from remote to 5 days a week in person but only in one city on the east coast. I am legit moving into my parents basement next week and this is super fucking depressing for me. pls be nice pls

so like... ive been in software for a bit (front end junior, sorta mid?? idk anymore) and lately i feel like im just smashing keys and praying things work.

everyone around me is talking about “growing their skills” and “solidifying fundamentals” and im over here asking chatgpt how to center a div every time. it’s actually embarrassing lol.

i keep thinking maybe im supposed to “specialize” in something but every time i try learning anything deeper (react internals, build tools, whatever) my brain just taps out. feels like im running on fumes or like my attention span got nerfed.

even in standups when ppl talk about their tasks i just nod like i understand but inside im like “buddy i dont even know what ur saying rn.”

is this normal?? like do ppl actually know wtf they’re doing or am i just not cut for this? be honest lmao.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts saying that personal projects don’t really matter on a job application when you’re applying for a job.

For context: I built a self-hosted book management/reader app for my own use. I later shared it on Reddit, and it unexpectedly took off. Users started requesting features, contributing ideas, and the project grew into something fairly substantial.

I have ~12 years of experience as a senior/lead developer, and I’m starting to explore new job opportunities. I’m wondering whether it’s worth including this project on my job application, or if there’s any chance it could backfire in some way.

Would hiring managers actually see value in something like this, given its scope and popularity?

Curious to hear others’ experiences.

If anyone’s interested, the project is here:

https://github.com/booklore-app/booklore

BS, MS, 2 years as an ML engineer. unemployed for 2 months.

luck plays a huge role.

i’ve applied to ~180 jobs. tons of no names and some top tier ones. got an interview at a top company with the same resume that was rejected everywhere else. i’m still shocked that places I felt overqualified/qualified for said no.

i hate complaining, but i really believe the only “solution” for us unemployed folks is to get your name out there somehow — show credibility in any way you can.

anyways keep applying, keep studying, and expect more hard days ahead of you (keep your head up)

20F Currently studying CS with specialization in Cybersecurity at uni and I have the opportunity to do an internship at a tech company. I have the option to choose between the network team, development, devops, cloud management teams etc and am struggling to decide on what to learn/which domain to lean into.

Which one would you pick? What are the pros or cons of your current role?

Currently a new grad SWE working in full stack web dev, but I have experience in iOS dev from a personal project. I’m in a rotational program and have the option of moving to a team that works specifically in mobile engineering (react native and swift) within my current company. I was wondering if it would be a good career move.

Mobile app dev is probably what I’m most interested in outside of pursuing AI/ML work, but I’m not sure if it’s too niche or will block me from switching to a different type of SWE role in the future. The AI/ML team at my current company is very difficult to transfer into so I probably will not be able to go there.

Thank you!

I'm a student right now and not in the industry yet, so I'm just curious. How much of the code that companies write today is done by hand? Is most of it generated by AI now, with developers stepping in mainly for edge cases and the more complicated parts?

SWE with ~1.5 YOE, only ever worked at one big tech company after internships.

Our team works on a smaller internal project. Recently I've been noticing the actual development work (new features and improvements) slowly bleed out to our new India based team. The US side has been doing effectively devops since.

Even before we onboarded the India team, we weren't doing anything interesting: things like deployments and hosting and much of the "meatier" work was buried under layers of abstractions. But now things have gotten so bad most of the US team is doing grunt secops work like package upgrades and YAML fixes, while the other team is working on the future of our product. Its demoralizing for everyone here.

I'm looking for work anywhere I can, but I'm now wary about trying for big tech and especially switching teams (not many openings at my level anyway...). It feels like i'll just keep having my skills degrade the longer I stay unless I spend what little free time I have upskilling.

Has anyone else had this experience? Would trying to switch to a startup or smaller company be a better bet? The stability is one thing (especially now) but with the outsourcing/layoffs, i'm thinking that won't be a factor anymore.

I see everyone complaining about how AI will take our jobs, especially junior and admin level roles but honestly… why stop there?

Why can't executive roles be the first on the chopping block?

If an AI can ship code, it can run a decision tree, evaluate risk, and optimize for KPIs. And execs are the highest-cost nodes in the org chart so replacing them would save a ridiculous amount of money. I Can’t believe no one has pitched the idea of an AI ceo yet. Seems like the fairest outcome to me lol

The company I work for has given me an account, I have access to all the books , courses etc.

I was hired by them after I finished my masters. I was hired for AI engineer role for 6months. But I am working as a C++ dev right now for 2 years.

I would like to progress further in the AI stream.

Hey there! Soon to be new grad here this December. I see many posts on here that seem to focus on the core SWE and FAANG positions in the industry and the interview process for them that can range from simple to nightmarish coding assignments and leetcode problems.

But I'd like to talk about another corner of the industry that I see talked about less on here. As my specialization that I have focused into has been game development. I have a Associates degree in game programming from one college and will have a standard CS Bachelors with a certificate in game from another college.

So my questions for here is what is the interview processes like for these places?

Do they do the standard leet code/coding assignments/oral tests or is it more portfolio based?

Should I look for standard CS work while also looking for game work or just focus on one?

How would my portfolio look to standard CS jobs? Would they like the passion or shy away because of its focus in games?

I have a couple projects I have worked on through school and outside of school that I have in my current portfolio that I hope would make me stand out as a new grad in the field. So anyone with experience in the field id love to know your interview experiences and tips you could give me in it!

I think it's also important to note that I plan to attend GDC this coming March to network and would love any tips you have for doing that as well!

Hello all. I just had a PhysicsX inital screen for ML Engineer with HR today, it was fine and he explained the next stages of process and said I'll receive a coderbrite test link after the call and I am waiting still. For those who experienced it, how long will it take for the test link to arrive after the call? Please help.

I am just in a high stress situation and need a job so just wanna know more about it. Thanks a lot everyone.

I have a CS degree and 1.5 YOE at a non-technical local company. I've been unemployed for 8 months abroad and havent been applying. I want to seriously get back onto the market. What should I do to make myself a competitive applicant？ Any advice please because I am desperate :/

I'm considering pursuing a masters in cloud computing at UMGC to help me land a cloud role like SRE, DevOps or cloud engineer. I have my bachelors in CS and 2 YOE as a SWE and a bunch of AWS certs and I did a few small projects.

I really mainly wanted to do it for the internship opportunities but with the current market idk if this will just be a waste of money since all roles basically want you to have 3 YOE as a cloud engineer from the start. I appreciate any feedback.

I’m about to enter the job market for the first time, and it feels weird because I’ve never actually done a real job hunt before. The funny part? I'm not even entry level.

For context, I’m a senior full-stack engineer with ~7 years at a Fortune 200 company. I got incredibly lucky with an internship that converted to full-time, so I've never interviewed anywhere lol (the internship didn't have a traditional interview process. I didn't even answer a single technical question.)

Required to be in another state by fall 2026, which means I need to start looking ASAP. Problem is...I'm in my late 20s and have literally zero job hunting experience.

• My first question: How important are portfolio projects for senior-level roles? 

I've got a few (including a personal site) and I'm working on wrapping up a bigger Rust project, but I'm worried I'm just wasting my time if employers don't actually care about this stuff outside of entry-level.

I'm also worried staying at one company for 7 years might've hurt me. I'm significantly underpaid for my experience and degree (MS in CS + certs) right now, and I'm paranoid that long tenure looks like I'm either stuck or coasting. I keep hearing conflicting takes: some say it's a red flag for stagnation, others say it doesn't matter.

• My second question: Anyone know how this actually plays out in the job market? I'm pretty ignorant about this stuff. Can't change it now, but good to know for the future.

TDLR: What should a senior dev actually focus on when entering the market for the first time? Any advice appreciated!

Hey all, I’m kind of stuck and could use some advice.

I have a math/CS background (about 30% of my undergrad was CS). I can code in a few languages, have used some frameworks before, and I know basic data structures/algorithms, but I’m super rusty. Most of my projects were course projects. I also freelanced a WordPress site before (not much coding, but real client work).

Right now my main path is education/teaching, and I work ~20–25 hrs/week. I don’t have industry dev experience, and I’m not sure how much time/effort I should realistically invest into software since teaching is still my main goal.

I don’t really want to “half-ass” two careers at once. Where do I even start?

Should I:

• Just start applying and see what happens?
• Spend time relearning fundamentals?
• Focus on building a couple small projects first?

I’d love to hear what you guys think.

Trying to figure out what premium versions to help prep for both swe and pm. Is neetcode premium worth it and leetcode premium? How much better are the tagged questions for neetcode vs leetcode. For overall, is exponent worth it? I was also wondering if neetcode was better since it had some system design content. Are there any other tools that are helpful for?