I'm a startup founder in Bengaluru, who has previously been a founding engineer in many US startups before scaling infra to millions of users.

For years, I've worked on mobile and web apps, but that is now changing.

Every company, now wants users to be able to use their product from ChatGPT, Claude or use it in WhatsApp and iMessage (just like instinct).

This is not a trend, it is the future.

So it is tremendously important for all of us to learn how to do that.

It is going to be as important as the mobile app moment in 2010s when everyone was launching apps. And it is here to stay for a decade.

Why is it a good thing?

1. Creating good MCPs are hard, so people still need developers for that.
2. Many opportunities to get hired once you get good at creating MCPs, because companies desperately want to launch them.
3. You can learn it in < 1 week.

Here are a few resources for you to learn building good MCPs:

1. https://github.com/flow-engineer/flow (A MCP + CLI framework, i'm a contributor here too)
2. https://huggingface.co/learn/mcp-course/en/unit0/introduction (advanced MCP course)
3. https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/ (Official docs)

---------
Edit: For anyone thinking MCPs are just API calls, this is exactly where you get wrong.

Sentry's team spend month polishing their MCP to be the most optimal for agents.

• A MCP for a real product could be 150+ tools, which bloat model's context window.
• Tool descriptions can be confusing for models and they may not be able to use them right
• Latency, error rates etc matter a lot.

A lot of efforts go into building production ready MCPs, similar to how it goes for product ready APIs.

I graduated from a tier-3 college last year, but didn't let it define my profile or career trajectory. Would love to answer any questions or doubts.

I'm aware that there's always luck involved and there's no universal playbook. What worked for me might not work for everyone, but I wanna do my bit in guiding others who might be in the same boat.

Secondly, this is not a brag post, and I'm sorry if it sounds like one. My only intention with this is to show people what's possible, inspire them and hopefully guide them in getting there.

Looking forward to your questions thanks!

Edit (adding more details and context):

My background:

This is my second job. I've been working as an AI engineer for about 14 months. Started that role at 10 LPA, and recently got a 25% hike, based on which I secured this new offer. Also did a bunch of internships before that, most were at startups. Needless to say, all of this was purely off-campus, as my college had limited opportunities.

Tech stack holds little value today, I've mainly worked with Python and its libraries, and some Javascript based frameworks as well. I had the chance to build and work with AI agents used by US based enterprises, which played a big role in this opportunity according to me.

About the company and interview procees:

It's a YC backed startup so this pay isn't uncommon there. One just needs to demonstrate that they can add meaningful value to a company and take ownership of problems end to end. I believe a major contributing factor was that I had previously worked on a production AI system with real users.

The interview had 3 rounds (all were kinda chill/informal)

Round 1: Intro chat with one of the co-founders

Round 2: Completed a small take-home assignment. Later that evening I discussed this solution, my approach, how I implemented it, etc. on a call.

Round 3: I visited their office (it was close by) and met with the co-founders, had a coffee with them. This was very informal and was more of a background/culture fit round.

Got the final offer on the same day. End to end, this went from intro -> offer in 4 days.

My thoughts on the industry:

The value and demand for 'pure' software developers, who just know how to code, is diminishing very quickly. But people who can figure stuff out on the go and take ownership, they are still very much in demand. This means your ability to learn and adapt quickly. Software has always been a field that constantly changes and rewards those who can keep up. The exact roles and requirements keep changing but as long as you have this learning mindset it's still a good industry to bet on. Nothing is risk-free these days anyway, so might as well grind it out here.

We Indians never had a temperament to research on a basic topic how do we expect that we will be foundationally strong on anything those who have we have send them foreign to send dollar to save our falling economy

​There are thousands of cases previously, and there will be ahead unless there is spending on research.

​This security lapse is just 1 of the cases. Even UI, backend see govt websites, they look like shit on the web, not even talking about mobile optimization.

​I still remember one guy told me govt websites are not meant for high-end devices only, they are also for low-end devices. Low-end devices? Even a flagship processor is not able to render a button or make it clickable.

​When I was a kid, my father opened a Bank of Baroda account for me. It was pathetic 10 years ago too, and still is now. Anyone who has that account can relate you have to manage 4–5 passwords, several passwords and PINs, and I am pretty sure other PSUs have the same condition.

​For a real customer, getting into the account is a 10-minute process because he has to keep notes. But then in the news, what do we get? Hackers get millions of Indians data, and it is lying on the dark web.

​This is just starting. We Indians are going to face lots of setbacks, because our culture is to just worship, not do actual work.

started at TCS in 2014 from a tier 3 college, moved to a startup after a year and a half, been in product companies since. never moved into management and don't plan to. most of the architecture and design calls on my team go through me, and I'd rather keep doing that than run 1:1s.

but the advice you hear everywhere is that past 8-10 years you either become a manager or your pay stalls. so genuinely curious how this looks for others.

if you're 8+ years and still an IC, is your pay keeping up with friends who went the manager route?

does your company actually have staff/principal roles with real scope, or is it a title on paper?

and if you did move to management, do you miss building stuff or was it the right call?

feels like the default in india is still "manager by 10 years". wondering if that's actually changing or if I'm just stubborn

Hey guys
I’m on pip currently for 6w and im kinda sure it wont go through because my manager and skip kinda hate me for whatever reason right from the beginning and it was a bit obvious to me. The worst thing is I joined just 5months ago. So, what is the procedure if anyone went through the same process? Am I supposed to show up in office everyday as i might be giving interviews in coming days.

Also, let me know if you or someone you know is hiring for their team or a referral would also be helpful.
Exp: 4y+
Loc: core engg, Bangalore

Tech: java, springboot, AWS, react
TIA!

Why do folks who are SDEs at top product companies like Amazon, leave to do MBA? I myself am a one yoe dude in qualcomm . Is it worth it to pursue MBA in IIM

Hey everyone,

Over the past few months I have been working on a solo project called Iceberg DB (https://icebergdb.in) and wanted to share it here to get some honest feedback from other builders.

The main reason I started building this was frustration with existing cloud vector databases while working on RAG and AI agent projects from India. Almost every managed vector DB hosts its free or starter tiers in US-East or Europe, which adds around 180-250ms of network round-trip time before the vector search even happens. On top of that, paying $50+/month in USD plus separate OpenAI API bills just for embeddings gets expensive pretty quickly for indie devs and early startups.

Here is what I built into Iceberg DB so far:

- Hosted in Mumbai (ap-south-1), so query latency inside India stays under 20ms.

- Built-in server-side embeddings using FastEmbed (384-dim MiniLM). You can just send raw text or upload a PDF directly and it chunks and embeds it on the server without needing an OpenAI API key.

- Hybrid search out of the box (combines dense vector similarity + BM25 keyword search using RRF) so exact product codes or names don't get missed.

- A built-in agent memory endpoint (/memory) with short-term (1h TTL), episodic (30d TTL), long-term, and semantic memory so LLM agents can recall user context across sessions.

- SDKs for Python (pip install iceberg-db), JS/TS, Go, Rust, C# (.NET), and Java.

There is a free tier with 100k vectors that doesn't pause on inactivity, and no credit card is needed to get an API key.

Link: https://icebergdb.in

If you are building anything with RAG or AI agents, I would genuinely love for you to try breaking it and tell me what feels clunky, what is missing, or how I can improve the docs/SDKs. Happy to answer any questions about the backend stack or architecture!

I'm a recent graduate and a fresher, and I have a genuine question about the IT industry.

When we prepare for software jobs, we're expected to learn coding, DSA, development, and many other skills. But I'm curious about the actual coding abilities of people who already work in the industry.

For example, in a software company, there are developers, testers, QA engineers, DevOps engineers, and people working in different domains.

Are most of these people actually capable of writing code and building a functional software application on their own if they need to?

I don't mean just making small changes or writing a few functions. I mean having enough coding knowledge to understand a requirement, write the necessary code, debug it, and build a working application independently.

Before AI coding assistants became popular, were most software engineers capable of doing this themselves? Or were there always people who were good at coding and people who depended on their teammates for the actual implementation?

Also, are most developers genuinely capable of writing code independently, or do many rely heavily on existing codebases, documentation, Google, and help from senior engineers?

I'm trying to understand what the average software engineer's actual coding ability looks like in the industry, rather than what we're expected to demonstrate in interviews.

I'd appreciate hearing from people with industry experience.

Recently joined Rippling as an SDE 1. What are some important things I should know, prepare for, or take care of to make the most of my time here and grow as an engineer?

I had a 6 month job hunt from January to August. Sharing the sheet that I used to track all my applications

I think there will be more security-related roles in our organisations in the coming years. With recent issues like the eMudhra digital certificate security issue and critical PHP vulnerabilities, how many engineers are currently busy analysing vulnerabilities, patching systems, and securing applications and infrastructure?

Do you think this will create more opportunities in application security, cloud security, DevSecOps, vulnerability management, incident response, and AI security?

I am a software engineer from a Tier 3 college. Yes the environment was terrible but I accept that in the end, it was me who didn't learn things. I should've learned more, experimented more, read more books.

After this eMudhra security issue, I don't have a clue how to protect the remote machines (linode and hetzner) we use in our organization. I asked LLMs and when they gave me commands, I realised how far I am behind.

But, I don't want to hide. I want to learn and uphold the reputation of the word "engineer".

Can you guys give me a roadmap type thing? Like how do you guys know what to do when such issues happen?

With AI coding tools becoming a regular part of our workflow, our developers are completing tasks and pushing out PRs much faster than before. The time it takes to implement a feature or fix and get it ready for QA has decreased significantly, but our ability to validate those changes hasn't improved at the same pace.

As a result, we're seeing a growing QA backlog. Developers are often ready with the next set of changes while QA is still validating previous ones.

We already have a fair amount of test automation in place, and our QA engineers actively use AI tools. However, we're still not comfortable relying entirely on automated or AI-driven QA. Our QA team continues to manually test features end-to-end before signing off.

So while AI has definitely made QA faster too, but the improvement hasn't been enough to keep pace with the increased development output.

I'm curious how other engineering teams are dealing with this or are we approaching this the wrong way entirely?

I’m going to start learning Python, with the goal of getting employed

Between Django and FastAPI, which would you recommend based on job opportunities for a fresher? Which one has more openings currently?

I’d appreciate advices🫂❤️

I am really really confused, I recently got laid off from oracle but got offer, but I am confused about 90 days notice

I’m from a decent college and recently got impacted by Oracle layoffs. I do have offers, but I’m really confused about what to do. The Big 4 and similar companies match my base salary, but there are no RSUs, and honestly, I’ve always wanted to work at a product-based company.
Last year, I used to get a lot of calls, but now, despite having a better resume, I’m barely getting opportunities from the companies I aspire to join. I’m thinking of switching to a product company in 7–8 months even if I join, but I’m worried that a 90-day notice period will make things difficult, do they wait out that much?

I wasn’t expecting the layoff, so I’m not as prepared with DSA and system design as I wanted to be. I know I have the potential and the willingness to work hard, but the current market and uncertainty have really demotivated me.
I’m genuinely confused about what the right move is and could really use some honest advice.

I work at a product based company. I joined this company 3 years back. The product I work in was a legacy product.

Every year along with the usual feature development, I have helped the product evolve from legacy to modern stack. I have been talking to my manager about promotions and good raise but he always has been saying that he is regularly talking to higher director about it but due to random events like org restructuring, new investments already made into new projects, ceo leaving company etc things are not stable and he says it is not in his hand.

But he consistently pushes me to perform better and better and give more critical responsibilities. He is good as a person but I don't know if is it really out of his hands.

This year I was given a major migration and I was fully leading it and working full time on it. Because of this director noticed my work and I got some visibility in the org.

Recently my work went into PROD. He appreciated me two times in group chats for my work and how I navigate and communicate with cross teams. I left him seen both times without acknowledging back.

I have received such appreciations before as well but they never converted into something of value to me because of this I lost hopes of anything changing. But I think I should try talking to him this time it might work.

I don't want to come desparate or sound complaining. How should I take this forward with director. Manager is okay me talking to Dir.

Help me understand how can I turn this situation into my favour and get a good raise.

I’m joining TCS as a Ninja and wanted some advice on how I should plan my career from here.
I have a CS/Business Systems background, but I’ve realised I don’t want to pursue hardcore frontend/backend development or spend years grinding DSA/LeetCode.

I’m more interested in Business Analysis, Product Management, or potentially Cloud. I’m willing to build technical knowledge, just not as a pure developer.

For anyone who has made a similar transition,
what should I focus on during my first year at TCS? What skills/projects/certifications would actually help, and when would be a realistic time to start switching roles/companies?
Would really appreciate some honest advice.

I'm currently working as an SDE at CCIL, with experience in Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, Redis, and fintech/payment-processing systems. I'm exploring new opportunities at product-based companies and startups like Flipkart, Meesho, Zomato, Zepto, and SaaS companies.

I've collected the contact numbers of around 40–50 recruiters/HR professionals and am considering directly calling them during working hours to ask about relevant SDE/backend openings and share my resume.

I know cold-calling might not work well at larger companies with structured hiring processes, but I'm wondering whether it could work better at startups and mid-sized product companies.

A few questions for people who have tried this:

1. Have you ever called recruiters directly for a job? Did it lead to a referral, resume shortlist, or interview?
2. Is calling during working hours considered acceptable, or can it come across as unprofessional?
3. Which types of companies are more receptive to this approach startups, SaaS companies, fintechs, or larger product companies?
4. Is it better to call first and then send a LinkedIn message/email, or just message them directly?
5. Any tips on approaching recruiters without sounding desperate or pushy?

I'd appreciate honest experiences, especially from people who've tried this in the Indian tech hiring market. Thanks!

(P.S used AI to polish)

a full stack developer (PERN stack, plus some .NET Core, TypeScript, Redis and Docker) with about 3.2 years of experience. My last salary was 5.5 LPA.

I left my first company after 3+ years because of little learning, no real projects and micromanagement. I joined a second company, stayed 2 months, and left again. Low pay, little learning, a poor culture, 3-4 months away from home, and no WFH. I’m not job hunting right now, and I’d only take a role that is genuinely good.

Where I am: I’ll likely move back to my small hometown after December, or by mid-January at the latest. My family has a small, stable business that gives a comfortable life. I want to use the next 1-2 years to learn it properly, since after that there won’t be anyone to teach me. Family pressure to return is also rising.

What I do besides coding: I shoot cinematic reels of places, events, sports and activities, and I have a small network of local creators around me. I don’t earn anything from video yet, but it’s the work that makes me feel most like myself.

The part I’m struggling with: I moved from a city with energy, people and creative projects to the prospect of a town where you can drive every main road in an hour and every day looks the same. I feel like I’m losing the life I built, both city life and creative life, and starting over from zero. I’m worried about the money, and I’m just as worried about staying mentally alive and motivated.

My questions:

How would you take a developer with 3 years of experience to ₹1L/month: remote roles with foreign companies, freelancing, product companies?

Has anyone gone back to a small town and kept a creative or remote career going? What did your days look like, and what kept you from feeling stuck?

How do you handle the emotional side of this move: boredom, isolation, feeling like you’ve stepped backward?

What mistakes should I avoid? I know I tend to start too many things at once.

How I can get the freedom again without losing my parents and own confidence?

Honest or blunt answers are welcome. Thanks for reading.

Which BU is most likely to be effected? Any idea about GPU? Any information is useful.

I joined in January 2026 and was eligible for this years annual review.

I'm holding an offer right now, and I'm got a call from HR from another firm. She asked if I was holding an offer, for which i said yes. Didn't hear back from her.

The current offer is fine, but I'm expecting to join a product based company. What shall I tell the next HR who calls me for a job offer? Should I convey the info upfront, or not convey until the negotiation happens? Are there any repercussions by doing so?

Recently I got an offer from London based mid-size org with salary ~79K GBP.

YOE = 4.5, tier 1.5 (non-circuital branch)

I am roughly making 40+LPA (Remote, all Cash and with ESOPs it's ~ 50+LPA).

I have another offer with comp ~60LPA (All cash, BLR).

I feel like salary wise it's compromise but work seems interesting.

Would appreciate honest perspectives and advice, especially from those who have walked a similar path and made these choices themselves.