Got placed at a product-based company as an Associate Full stack Developer from a crap college at the start of this year. Did my internship until August. Had a probation period which was supposed to end in November. Out of nowhere I get a MS Teams meeting invitation "regarding my employment".

Joined the meeting and they let 17 of us know that our roles are redundant because of AI and we are no longer needed. I literally was working on my probation report which I was supposed to submit on the 23rd and now they let me know they no longer needed me.

I'm upset, demotivated and frustrated that stuff like this happens out of the blue. Not a single hint that I was going to get sacked but here I am now. Thankfully I saved up most of my money so it will keep me afloat for a while.

Looking for another job in this economy is looking like hell. I guess I'll take some time off and brush up DSA again and attempt at another job. It's a shame because the workplace was really close by and the pay was decent too.

The question is simple, would you fall behind if you don't use AI tools to develop projects or in general?

I am tired of babysitting everyone in my team. There is a woman works remotely in my team not always show up in standup. Her PRs don't follow the instructions. Adding nonsense stuff outside the scope of her tickets. No test cases and no description about what she did.

Another new grad in office with a master degree in CS, she has trouble with basic RDBMS concepts. Using AI to generate code without review. She did something like fetching the entire table and filter the results instead of just query the matched results from DB directly. (The table is huge can easily hit few million rows in production). I have to work on everything like Java, TypeScript, Python development, System design, DB migration, different kinds of testing, understand hardware and work with the embedding systems, CI/CD pipeline, building Docker images and compose files etc...

Since our main business is selling hardware solution with software as additional service, the CEO and founder is a sales background doesn't know much about software development.

I don't understand why we can't hire proper candidates. And recently my colleague interviewed a guy with master degree for networking related position. From what I heard that guy doesn't even know how to use SSH and basic bash commands.

Title. Im making 60k. I am filtering for remote roles.

Ive been applying and looking since January and havent been able get many interviews. I dont know what Im doing wrong. I botched the first interview by blanking out and couldn't reverse a string. I know im probably going to get flak for that.

I made it to the final rounds for the next 3 interviews pipelines, but got passed by people with more experience. Each they time they called and personally told me I did great in the interviews and would keep me in mind if any other positions open up. I assume thats a good sign for my interview performance since thats never happened in any other of my job searches.

Look here.

I dont know what im doing wrong in getting more interviews. Im only applying to postings within 24 hours and if i match 80% of the reqs. Yes, I know we are problem solvers and I shouldn't market myself as a".Net" dev, but in my experience HMs and recruiters do care about your tech stack and will filter you out. All positions and interviews ive gotten have been because of my tech stack.

Any advice?

I got offered a PhD position in parallel computing (in the US). But given the way AI is taking over fields such as math and software engineering, do you think fields such as parallel and distributed computing, GPU programming etc. will have the same fate in the next few years? Will the value of having specializations go down? Thanks.

I’m not sure if it’s the circles I find myself in, but I do frequent some discord channels for certain Linux applications I use and world of Warcraft Addons.

I’ve met some absolutely brilliant people. But I noticed a similar pattern: many of them are also flat broke. Like broke broke.

I don’t understand how someone can be so tech brilliant but be living almost destitute.

Is it just that most of them are autistic and can’t work in a corporate environment?

I’ve seen the pattern too many times to ignore it as coincidence. Like these people are more brilliant coders than people I’ve met working for big tech companies, but are living on government subsidies and rent assistance.

28YO with 7 years of experience as a data eng.

just got out of a recruiter screening for a wealth management fund, the recruiter had a genuine crash out and asked point blank : "Just to make sure and avoid any further embarassment, you know SQL right ? because there's an epidemic of data engineers that DO NOT know SQL which sounds crazy to me."

I was flabbergasted and while i definitely feel the market is tougher now i cant help but think that there's just a flood of people like these and the issue is less the amount of job openings but rather standing out and making HR feel like you're not gonna embarass them further down the process. Im guessing Tech Recruiters get rated and evaluated on the amount of successful hires/people that go to the end of the process so they are all the more incentivized to be cautious and prioritize resumes that will reassure them.

I've submitted a lot of applications, gone through a lot of interviews, and gotten a lot of rejections (and hopefully one offer but they're dragging their feet so i'm not holding my breath). A lot of the rejections (after multiple technical rounds) have amounted to "We found someone we consider a better match for the role, but please do reach out about future positions".

My question is - I assume I will start at zero just like everyone else if I apply again. Is this true? I mean there's some tiny optimistic part of my brain that thinks they would like to skip 6 hours of interviewing by going with someone they already talked to for 6 hours and generally liked, but then the much bigger part goes "when there are hundreds of potentially qualified, better candidates applying, why would we go with someone we already passed on?"

I'm curious if any hiring managers or people in a position to actually make this decision have any thoughts...

I've sent a lot of applications and few companies reply back. That's okay, that's completely normal.

Then I have to mentally prepare for 2-3 motivational interviews for each company (I kinda hate how fake it is) and then there's the technical interview. At the end they tell me "We're unable to offer you what you asked for because you don't have a degree yet. We encourage you to finish your studies asap".

The problem is that I dropped out of college when I was 20 because I had no money and I had to work (also because of the pressure of my dad) and just recently I started studying again WHILE working 8 hours a day, and yet it's not enough!! Is there anything good I've ever done?! I swear. And why do they tell me that at the end?! And why do they need to be so paternalistic in saying "hurry up"?

I don't know what to do.

Our token spend is orders of magnitude less than what we are paying for random consultants, PMs, and AI engineers. Massive amounts of scope creep (ex: let's rebuild a multibillion dollar AI startup in house instead of paying for it), endless POCs, demos, and presentations, explaining to upper management what a RAG is, actual deployment of a alpha version is still months away.

Am I the only one with horror stories like this? Every time I log onto linkedin there is a new story about how AI is going to make [x] profession obsolete yet my lived experience is the opposite.

bro im so fucking tired of business people and their corporate bullshit man.

like genuinely as a technical person why the fuck am i expected to understand half of their business domain too?? im a software engineer. i got into engineering because i wanted to work with technology, build shit, solve problems, work with systems and infrastructure and all that. not become some fucking MBA guy who spends his entire day talking about business goals and market positioning and whatever the fuck.

i didnt sign up to be a software engineer + business analyst + product manager + marketing guy + project coordinator + professional powerpoint presenter all at the same time bro 😭

why does knowing how to code suddenly mean i have to do five other peoples jobs too??

and the worst part is you cant even just build the thing properly. no. first you have to understand what the business wants, then why they want it, then what the customers might want, then what the market wants, then what the stakeholders want, then what some other person thinks the stakeholders might want. BRO JUST TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THE SOFTWARE NEEDS TO DO.

what about the actual engineering side of things?? architecture, maintainability, performance, security, reliability, making sure the thing doesnt fall apart in 2 weeks?? does any of that matter or not??

apparently it only matters if you can fit it into a business presentation.

AND WHY THE FUCK DOES EVERYTHING NEED A MEETING.

you need to change one tiny feature? meeting.
need to discuss the feature? another meeting.
need to make sure everyone is aligned about the thing discussed in the first meeting? ANOTHER FUCKING MEETING.

then someone sends a meeting summary about what happened in the meeting, then you have a follow up meeting to discuss the action items from that summary. im not even joking what is this shit 😭

BRO JUST SEND ME THE REQUIREMENTS.

write down what you want. tell me what the problem is, what the system should do, and let me figure out how to build it. why are we spending an entire hour discussing something that couldve been explained in like 5 minutes??

and then after 3 hours of meetings people wonder why the actual work isnt done yet.

BRO WHEN THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO IT??? DURING MY LUNCH BREAK??

i swear some companies care more about looking busy than actually getting shit done. your calendar is full, you're on calls all day, writing updates, making reports, explaining what you're gonna do, discussing when you're gonna do it, then discussing the discussion about what you're gonna do.

WHEN DO I ACTUALLY GET TO DO THE FUCKING THING.

apparently doing the work isnt enough anymore. you also have to constantly prove that you're doing the work. like if im spending 4 hours debugging some weird issue and finally fix it, thats apparently less impressive than spending 4 hours making a powerpoint about how we're gonna fix it.

and then there's the fucking corporate language.

"lets circle back"
"lets take this offline"
"we need better alignment"
"lets leverage synergies"
"we need to drive impact"
"move the needle"
"cross functional collaboration"

BRO WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING. CAN YOU JUST TALK LIKE A NORMAL PERSON FOR ONCE.

if something is broken just say its broken. if you want something fixed then tell me what needs fixing. if a decision needs to be made then MAKE THE FUCKING DECISION. why does every sentence sound like its being announced at a fortune 500 shareholder meeting??

AND WHY DOES EVERY LITTLE THING HAVE TO BE A HUGE DEAL.

its a favicon bro. A FUCKING FAVICON. its a tiny icon in a browser tab. why are we acting like we're launching a new fucking country over it.

its a small UI change and suddenly we need to discuss brand positioning, user perception, business objectives, visual identity, market strategy and whatever other shit people can come up with. BRO ITS AN ICON.

sometimes a button is just a button. a config file is a config file. a small technical change doesnt need a strategy document, stakeholder review, roadmap, presentation, committee and six people giving their opinions.

WHY DO WE KEEP TURNING SIMPLE SHIT INTO CORPORATE PROJECTS.

and everyone has an opinion even when they have absolutely no idea what the technical consequences are.

someone just randomly goes "why dont we add this feature?"

bro do you even know what adding that feature involves?? do you know how the existing architecture works? what dependencies it has? what it could break? have you thought about testing, security, edge cases or maintenance at all??

no. you had an idea in a meeting and now its somehow my job to make it happen by tomorrow.

and if i explain that the idea is technically bad then suddenly im being negative. im not being collaborative. im not being solution oriented. apparently im resisting change.

BRO IM TRYING TO STOP US FROM BUILDING A PIECE OF SHIT. HOW IS THAT A PERSONALITY PROBLEM.

sometimes a feature just isnt needed. sometimes the existing solution is fine. sometimes we should finish the thing we're ALREADY BUILDING before adding 10 more features to it. but apparently saying no is illegal because someone already promised it to a client without even asking engineering if its possible.

and OH MY GOD THE FUCKING DEADLINES.

business people promise things to clients or executives or investors before even talking to the engineers who have to build the damn thing.

then they come to us like "we need this by friday".

BRO YOU MADE THAT PROMISE. WHY THE FUCK AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR IT??

you cant just make up a deadline, ignore how complicated the thing is, skip the technical discussion and then act shocked when someone says its not realistic. software isnt magic. servers arent magic. putting a date on a powerpoint slide doesnt magically make a system reliable.

and rushing shit doesnt always make it faster either. sometimes it just means more bugs, more technical debt, more outages and more work later. guess who has to deal with all of that? THE SAME FUCKING ENGINEERS.

then when something breaks suddenly everybody cares about reliability. suddenly everyone wants a technical explanation. suddenly its "why didnt we test this properly?"

BECAUSE YOU SPENT THREE WEEKS CHANGING THE REQUIREMENTS AND GAVE US TWO DAYS TO BUILD THE ACTUAL THING YOU ABSOLUTE GENIUS.

and even when we do exactly what they asked for we still somehow get blamed.

they tell us to implement something in a certain way. we explain why its a bad idea. they insist anyway because theyre the decision makers. so we do it.

then when the result is bad its "why did the engineering team build it like this?"

BRO THAT WAS YOUR FUCKING DECISION. WE LITERALLY TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

YOU ASKED FOR IT. WE EXPLAINED THE PROBLEM. YOU SAID DO IT ANYWAY. AND NOW YOURE BLAMING US??

HOW IS THAT FAIR.

and the double standards are what really piss me off. engineers are expected to understand business requirements, customer expectations, marketing, budgets, deadlines, product goals, stakeholder priorities and whatever else.

but do business people put the same effort into understanding engineering??

do they know why database migrations need testing? why deployments fail sometimes? why architecture matters? why a feature that sounds simple can need changes in like 4 different systems? why you cant just keep adding shit forever without thinking about performance, security and maintainability??

sometimes they dont even wanna understand. they just want the result.

they want everything to work perfectly, instantly, cheaply, with no bugs, no downtime, no delays and unlimited changes. apparently we are supposed to provide infinite flexibility for free.

and when reality doesnt match their expectations they look at engineering like we personally betrayed the company.

BRO WE BUILD TECHNOLOGY. WE DONT GRANT WISHES.

AND NOW WE NEED DATA ANALYTICS BEFORE THE PRODUCT IS EVEN FINISHED????

IM BUILDING A WEBSITE BRO. LET ME FINISH BUILDING THE FUCKING WEBSITE FIRST.

how am i supposed to give you meaningful analytics when the product isnt even done yet?? how am i supposed to tell you how users are interacting with something that isnt even properly available to users??

let me finish the implementation. let me test it, fix the bugs and make sure the system actually works. THEN we can launch it, get actual users, collect data and see what happens.

thats literally how this works. theres a difference between planning ahead and demanding results before the conditions for those results even exist.

but no everything needs to happen at the same time because someone wants to show progress in the next business review. we need analytics, we need a dashboard, we need a report, we need metrics, we need a presentation. THE PRODUCT ISNT EVEN FUCKING DONE YET.

and thats what makes this whole thing so exhausting.

everything is a performance. you cant just do the work. you have to talk about the work, document the work, present the work, justify the work, defend the work, explain the work, then explain why the work took so long to people who dont even understand what the work involves.

you can spend an entire day solving some horrible technical issue and nobody really sees how much work went into it because the end result is just that the system works. which is literally the point.

but someone spends an hour presenting 6 slides with all the right buzzwords and suddenly they look like the most productive person in the room.

WHY DOES THE PERSON TALKING ABOUT THE WORK GET MORE CREDIT THAN THE PERSON WHO ACTUALLY DID IT??

why does everything need to be explained in terms of business impact before people can respect the technical work?? why cant good engineering just be valued for what it is??

why cant i just be good at my fucking job without learning corporate politics as a second career.

i dont wanna spend my life learning how to sound impressive in meetings. i dont wanna spend 20 minutes carefully wording one sentence because somebody might get offended. i dont wanna negotiate over every little decision that shouldve been a straightforward technical discussion.

i dont wanna pretend every tiny task is some strategic milestone either.

its a feature, not an initiative. its a meeting, not a sync. its a problem, not a "business blocker". its a normal engineering task, not a value driven transformation or whatever the fuck you call it.

I JUST WANNA DO ENGINEERING.

i wanna open a terminal, connect to a server, configure linux, build infrastructure, write automation, debug systems, optimize performance, figure out how machines work and solve actual technical problems.

i wanna build something, make it work, test it, deploy it and know i did a good job. thats it. thats the whole fucking point for me.

i wanna be judged on my technical skills, my engineering decisions, the quality of what i build and whether the systems actually work. not on how good i am at presentations or how well i can make a status update sound impressive.

i dont want my entire career to revolve around keeping people happy with slides, meetings, reports and random business demands.

and honestly i wouldnt even mind moving away from software development if thats what it takes to get away from this shit. power plants, industrial automation, embedded systems, networking, operating systems, infrastructure, robotics, hardware, whatever man. ANYTHING.

i just want a technical environment where the engineering is actually the main thing. where people care about how stuff works and building it properly.

and yeah obviously i know every engineering job has budgets, requirements, safety rules and people you need to work with. im not expecting to sit in a cave and never speak to another human being. i understand business requirements exist. im not saying engineers should completely ignore users or the people paying for the product.

BUT BUSINESS SHOULDNT BECOME THE ENTIRE FUCKING JOB.

not every technical decision needs to turn into a political negotiation. not every small change needs to become a major initiative. not every question needs a meeting with 8 people. and please for the love of god stop making promises on behalf of engineers and then acting like its our fault when your made up deadline isnt realistic.

give me a reasonable problem. tell me what needs to happen. let me use my technical judgement. give me enough time to do it properly and let me take responsibility for the result.

IS THAT REALLY TOO MUCH TO ASK??

i chose computer science because i liked computers. i wanted to understand technology and build shit. i didnt choose this so i could spend my entire life participating in corporate theatre.

LET BUSINESS PEOPLE HANDLE BUSINESS.
LET MARKETING PEOPLE HANDLE MARKETING.
LET PRODUCT PEOPLE HANDLE PRODUCT STRATEGY.

AND LET THE FUCKING ENGINEERS ENGINEER.

give me a technical problem, give me the tools, give me the time to solve it properly.

then please just leave me the fuck alone and let me do my job.

no more corporate bullshit. no more meetings that couldve been an email. no more buzzwords. no more turning every tiny thing into a massive fucking deal.

JUST LET ME BUILD SHIT IN PEACE.

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/changes-coming-to-canada-s-express-entry-immigration-system/article_eebb06d8-697b-5300-9fe0-a877bf33d7b0.html

Companies will hire the cheaper worker most of the time, Canadian government has decided that high-salary (57k+ CAD) jobs do not need labour market opinion check (ie. no check if a local can do the job) for prioritizing for permanent visa. In other words, Canadian tech market will eventually be flooded with immigrant devs willing do the work for 57k.

Or am I wrong and this will usher in a new golden age for Canadian tech?

Edit: here's the current government outlook for software developers: https://www.services.labour.gov.on.ca/labourmarket-ui/jobProfile?nocCode=21232&lang=en

Edit: please be civil, we don't want to give anyone the excuse they're looking for to lock the thread.

I actually tried to dodge AI for most of my degree, I just make games. I'm not some coding whiz, I knew what I needed to know for exams and kept it moving to the next class.

But I try to make projects I enjoy, that's really all I got. Not even leetcode. No undergrad research.

It really seems like AI is miles better than me.

People around me in school seem to tell me: "they'll always need someone to verify it" , "the funding will dry up" , "they need someone to fix the slop", "energy can't meet the demand"

But idk, it seems like we are really going full steam ahead. So many people already saying the job has shifted from problem solving to code review just as a mainstay. People saying "oh it can't design complex systems" , okay since when do Juniors do that?

It feels like that's just expected now.

Would it be right to assume that even if the AI train slows down, the expectation of a Junior has gone way up for good and essentially cooks all non high performers?

For someone mid like myself - should I show myself out?

Hey everyone,

I recently applied for a Senior SWE role at this Drupal web development agency, and I received a mandatory home assignment before any introductory call or recruiter screen, with a 5-day deadline.

The scenario is a fictional 6-person web agency " managing ~50 client sites (WordPress/Drupal/Shopify), and they want a monitoring service to learn about outages and such.

Here is what they want built and designed:

Part A: Monitoring Service:

Build a working monitoring microservice from scratch. It has to check 50+ sites in a local Docker setup for availability, response times, keywords, and TLS expiry with dynamic check frequencies based on criticality. It also requires building custom debouncing logic to prevent alert storms, state storage/history, automated tests, and notification stubs.

Part B: Azure Architecture:

- Deploy the monitoring service to Azure with cost estimates and repeatable deployment definitions.

- Design a target multi-region high-availability hosting strategy on Microsoft Azure for privacy-sensitive clients. Requirements: all data must stay in Canada, and sites must survive the total loss of an entire Azure region with explicit RPO/RTO commitments. Covers compute, databases, files, backups, secrets, networking, and edge.

Part C: Written Explanation:

An up to 8-page document covering architectural trade-offs, how the monitoring scales to 500 sites, CMS-specific monitoring, self-monitoring, security, cost, and a future roadmap.

What gets me is that this is sent before any human conversation. No intro call, no culture check, just straight into designing a multi-region disaster recovery cloud architecture and a full monitoring suite.

Thoughts?

I haven't been on this sub for quite a while, but I remember most people being very worried for their future in technology due to the saturation of the job field and rise of AI.

I also was very worried for my future. I had invested many years of my life and debt to get a CS degree well into my 30s just for the market to become ultra competitive. Of course I got my degree while working full time so I never had internships or projects to speak of.

I finally finished my degree after like six years and got a promotion to help desk technician at the manufacturing company I was working at. I have been working that position for the last year and half and was just informed that they have promoted me to 'Full Stack Engineer'.

The company was implementing a warehouse management system to integrate with our ERP system and I saw the holes in the project and rushed in to fill them. I wrote two major pieces of software for the company that are being used on a daily basis including our automated order release system and a shipping app for our non-stocked items that ERP doesn't touch. I was informed if it were not for my efforts that the project would've not launched.

My recommendation to anyone with zero IT experience is to take the first best offer that you can get and demonstrate your capabilities within that role. At the time, I was just happy that I could get any tech related job at all, even if it was help desk. My resume is worst resume on this sub, so it was a blessing to just get that help desk job. I nearly got kicked out of school multiple times.

The leap from help desk to full stack engineer required a lot of effort as you may suspect. I worked many weekends, provided after hours support, led meetings, and made critical decisions. We just went live with our project and my software has already released thousands of orders and shipped hundreds of packages.

Prior to this position, I was a lead for a different department and I worked other stressful jobs over the years. That's the thing, I am coming into this at the age of 34 and many of you are in your early 20s and lack the soft skills that employers are looking for. The most important experience you can bring to a job are critical thinking and soft skills. A lot of this comes down to experience and age - and that is okay. Go work a help desk job, get some certs, become a sys admin, and get experience that life throws at you.

I am going from an overpaid help desk to an underpaid full stack engineer. 64k -> 71k (with 8% yearly bonus). HCOL area where median for full stack engineer is 125k. But you know what this doesn't bother me in the slightest and I am more than happy to gain the experience and build my salary over the years. As long as I work as hard as I have over the years, things will work in my favor.

Anyway, I hope this provides some inspiration to anyone feeling down about their job prospects. Let me know if you have any questions.

Want to learn more about day to day of the role from those actually doing it and those who did it before.

Would love insights on whether you enjoyed working closer to the customers and how you managed the travel. Also would love to hear what you ended up doing afterwards (for those who used to do this role) and if you went back into an SWE role or decided to shift into a more product or managerial role?

I’m currently an SDE at Amazon with 1.5 YOE and am on a PIP. I’ve been interviewing and recently received two offers. I’m trying to decide which would be the better move for my career.

Offer 1: Chewy — Software Engineer I (Backend)
$120K base
$48K initial RSU grant vesting over 4 years
Eligible for annual discretionary RSU grants targeted at 40% of base salary
Eligible for a merit increase in the next review cycle
Hybrid (3 days onsite)

Offer 2: Seed-Funded Startup — Software Engineer (Platform)
$115K base
20K options vesting over 4 years (uncertain value)
Previously raised seed funding and is now beginning its Series A fundraising process

My biggest priorities are WLB, career growth, and job stability. After my experience at Amazon, I want to find a healthier engineering culture where I can grow without constantly worrying about performance management or burning out.

I’m leaning toward Chewy because it’s a more established company with publicly traded equity. However, I’m unsure about its engineering culture, WLB, and whether it would be significantly different from Amazon.

The startup could offer more technical ownership and faster career growth, but I’m concerned about its funding runway, job stability, and whether the WLB could be worse.

EDIT: my manager at chewy will be a former Amazon manager so that’s one thing I’m nervous about

I work significantly faster with AI. Not “we can lay off half the team” faster, but the difference is there. At the same time, even colleagues who long dismissed the possibility are now starting to worry about their jobs.

There are two things I don’t understand:

1. Why lay off developers instead of building more with the same team?

If a team gets more done with AI, why not develop more products, ship features faster, and take market share from competitors? Why produce the same output at a lower cost instead of aiming for more revenue with the existing team?

2. How much additional pressure can better models actually create?
For many of my tasks, AI already produces nearly perfect code and integrates it well. If that already works, the additional productivity gains from further improvements should eventually get smaller.

So why do we expect continued job losses as models improve? Am I underestimating how much can still be automated beyond code generation itself?

Something else that makes me skeptical: some companies also automate reviews and testing once those become the next bottleneck. I worry about technical debt, while we developers barely get a say in these decisions.

I see the productivity gains. What I’m missing is an explanation of why they should lead to less demand for developers. Where is the flaw in my thinking on these two questions?

Hello!

I have been in the workforce for almost 1.5 decades now. Lately, I have been considering what to do next with my career that would earn me more money.

Here is my profile:

• Started as a software engineering analyst (those guys who support production applications and debug code and scripts, but very rarely writes code)
• Became a sysadmin, 3x (UNIX and Linux flavours)
• DevOps engineer (tooling monkey)
• Wrote tens of Ansible roles and playbooks
• DevOps engineer (piece together the application repo and the tools made by the tooling monkeys)

As you can see, I don't have a solid coding and low-level experience. No architectural experience either. It's somewhere in between. I have no masters and my CS bachelors was not that solid.

Some of the options I considered in the past:

• Specialize in a cloud platform - I never had the chance to land a cloud role mainly because of the disconnect between my YoE and the starting pay for people with 0 cloud experience. Nowadays, it feels like the job market is already saturated with 'cloud engineers' with tens of certifications.
• Move to a management role - I never liked navigating company politics and dealing with people's attitudes. I'm confident I can, I just don't like these.

What do you think should be my next career progression based on this? Of course, I am open to putting in the work.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: one path I am considering is still Linux-based but specializing in low-level systems instead of being a sysadmin. For example, working with high-performance networking, memory management, profiling, etc. I recently landed interviews with similar roles (job titles were all Linux Engineer) and I felt like the interviewers were put off because my skills were not 'low-level enough'.

Hello all,

Let me give you some quick context about my career so far. I'm a 35M from Spain where I studied my CS degree, and later I did a Master's that gave me the chance to spend the second year in the US on a work visa so that's what I did.

After finishing the Master's I started working for a US startup in 2015 and lived there for three years. In 2018 I decided to head back to Spain, but the company let me keep working remotely so I took the opportunity. In 2020 the startup was acquired by a much bigger company and I was the only one who stayed on after the buyout, continuing to work remotely from Spain until recently. Over all those years I was consistently a top performer and the feedback from my managers was always great.

This year there were some organizational changes and things started shifting. I also became a father three months ago, and when I came back from paternity leave the company told me that keeping a US salary while living in Spain was no longer possible, asking me to take almost a 50% pay cut. I obviously declined so we just parted ways.

After more than a decade in tech I have a solid network with plenty of doors to knock on when I'm ready, but I've been thinking about taking a break for a while and having a 3-month-old feels like the perfect moment. Working on a US salary from Spain for so long put me in a very comfortable financial spot, so I can easily afford taking time off for as long as I need.

My plan is to take about a year off to enjoy life and focus on my family, but I still want to put in a few hours a week on something technical so I stay sharp and have something to show when I decide to get back out there. Basically my question is, what would be the best way to spend that small amount of time to stay competitive?

A few options I'm considering:

• Personal project: I already have an idea in mind that could be fun to build and would give me something concrete to demo down the road.
• Open source: I've never contributed to open-source projects before, but it seems like a good way to show public work since my entire career has been in private repos, though I wonder if the learning curve is too steep for just a few hours a week.
• Refresh some of the basics: I have some very good O’Reilly Computer science, Software Engineering and Machine Learning books. Might be a good time to refresh my memory with some of the complex theory.
• LeetCode or similar: Is grinding LeetCode still relevant in the AI era and actually worth the time for future interviews?

If you have any recommendations on what to focus on during a break like this to stay in a good spot for the market later, I'd really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks everyone!

I watched a yt video, a manager, VP or something at Microsoft said

they hired psychologists who studied at Stanford to train management and also C level people about growth mindset.

One of the reasons for doing this is to transform the culture of Microsoft

And head of people of Microsoft who used to be a SWE, she also helped alot changing the culture there.

-

I'm still new to tech industry and don't live in the US but it's kinda WOW for me that they hire psychologists for that and head of people of Microsoft is not traditioanlly HR and her background is SWE.

As the title says, maybe someone here who at Microsoft at that time, maybe you could share us the story in details here..

What tier of US universities is it comparable to?

I was like 2-3 back then but I read that in the past during DotCom, any companies that have HTML websites

They are seen as top shit companies like they are today Google or Nvidia.

And devs back then coded in Notepads and sometimes write code/algorithim in a physical paper loL

And they used a CD disk to store code unlike today we use GIT.

Zuck was probably 20-21 and wrote Facebook in PHP and tried to compete against MySpace, MSN or something

Besides people who were 20-30 that time they probably got their first job as SWE easily with HTML, SQL, and can build simple CRUD app like ToDoList without doing 8 rounds of interviews.

--
Unlike today where I as Gen Z CS kid grew up and learn to code from IDE like Blue j, CodeBlock, VS code.

And at work I just use AI to code and review the AI generated code.I

It is kinda hard to get a job nowadays if you don't have a good network or if you are not the top 10% of the rest or something.

Besides it feels like IT/technology they move so fast nowadays.