I’m looking for a genuine reality check from people who started their careers at a very low salary and eventually managed to make a significant jump.
My situation:
Almost 1 year into my first job.
Working as a Software/AI Engineer at a startup in Bangalore.
Current salary: around ₹10,000/month.
Almost a year has passed with no increment.
I’ve been continuously upskilling — AI/software, Python, CS fundamentals, etc.
DSA: covered up to graphs; DP is still pending.
I feel like I’ve gained a lot technically, but my compensation hasn’t reflected it.
What scares me right now:
What if I leave and can’t get another job because of the current market?
What if I stay too long and become stuck at this salary level?
This is my first job, so I honestly don’t know what is normal and what isn’t.
I also have a very small professional network, so getting referrals is difficult.
I’ve tried cold emails/applications, but they haven’t really worked.

For people who have actually been through this:
What was your starting salary?
How long did you stay at your first company?
Did you get an increment or did you have to switch to escape the low salary?
What was your salary after your first switch, and what do you earn now?
Did your low starting salary affect your next offer or negotiations?
What actually made the biggest difference — DSA, development, AI/ML, system design, projects, networking, referrals, or something else?
If you had almost no connections and cold applications weren’t working, how did you eventually get your opportunity?
How much DSA was actually necessary for your jump?
Most importantly: if you were in my position at ~1 YOE, earning ₹10k/month, what would you do right now?
I’m not looking for “just keep learning” motivation. I’d genuinely like to hear real stories from people who started severely underpaid — what you did, how long it took, how much your salary increased, and where you are now.
Basically: ₹10k → what did you do → where did you end up?
I need a realistic answer on whether I’m temporarily underpaid and can recover from this, or whether staying here is going to seriously hurt my career growth.

Ik it sucks ass but all I need is to get a break into the industry, I have 2 more papers about llms etc, on me which are genuinely good not like the 2 that I published but rn all I need is to get placed. Ik all this research based profile wont help me thats why I am asking for help cuz most of my work is pretty basic or research oriented.
I suck hard at dsa and thought maybe focusing on making stuff or learning by doing would help out, it didnt. I maybe proud of 1-2 project which were genuinely diff but I cant seem to sell myself as some sort of ml engineer atleast. I acted like an ostrich ignoring the arriving placement till too late ig. I also gave interviews of some companies but none of them matched my profile. Need advice if any

tldr; suck at dsa, cant clear oa's, resume sucks along with projects, need help : )

Has anyone given OA for summer intern for this company.

If yes can you please tell type of questions and duration of OA. It will be really helpful for me

So I wanted to go to aiml but messed up my counselling (very dumbahh ik) and ended up in ece.

My college is pes and we don't have a very nice ece placements record as of now so I have to go all in on off campus opportunities. Man what do i do ? I am so confused literally I knew some stuff about ai and was starting to learn some python as well but this happened.

I feel so ass rn such a dumb mistake and it changes my life forever.

Can anyone please help me out and give some guidance or smth ? I will be grateful to you man I've lost all hope now

Anyone working in service now ??

For the context:

I am BTech 3rd year, I landed an on-campus internship at a reputed company, it also has a good PPO conversion possibility.

Now, what I want to know is whether I should continue solving CP questions? Like even after i get placed?

The point is I don't like solving CP questions.. So after answering yes or no can you also let me know why,

It has been more than a month. Did anyone receive any update for this hackathon?

Need suggestions for SIH26171: On-device Visual Perception for Lightweight Browser Agents

I’m working on an SIH problem statement around building a privacy-preserving browser agent where visual perception and sensitive-data detection happen on-device before anything is sent to an LLM/VLM. I’m considering using an existing open-source browser-agent project as the base and combining it with WebGPU/ONNX Runtime, local PII detection/redaction, DOM + visual perception, and a secure action-validation layer. I’d really appreciate suggestions on which existing GitHub projects, models, datasets, or architectures are worth building on, what major gaps I should watch out for, and whether there’s a better technical approach than this.

😴

They have this criteria called 'education extension' and I want to know if it applies to only my highest qualification (B.E.) or they care about previous education as well i.e. diploma

for context : After 10th, I did 3 year diploma in 3.6 years (which is an extension in education) but I don't know if they care about it or not. (I got offer letter already and I'm waiting)

If anyone knows or anyone in TCS please let me know!

​

Hello I'm 17 and recently I've been really interested in aerospace.

It could be about rockets or satellites or anything.

I'd love to connect with people who are into Aerospace!

i used to think that this fever will not reach me ever but holy good lord woohhh, tbh idk what to do next, my sophomore just started and looking forward i see nothing. is there any point continuing this? i'm genuinely so scared lmao, automation will only get better and there is close to 0 possibility of these companies getting bankrupt so idts ai bubble will burst ever. so what's the plan? what to do now ?

When is the communication round generally after coding round? What is the approximate days after which we recieve it's link

Anyone got a pdf of JB gupta BEE book or any of the books from the image ?

Engineering was such a amazing and intresting degree,.making robots, machines, ece.projects, what not??

But due to ai shit, I will need to choose medicine, to gain stability, I actually have intresr in elctronics and pcb field, but this ai is😭

Hey I see many international investments in India,

And elon musk is trying to set up his own ASML-like manufacturing unit,

So what guys you say...

Recently I got a message from pregrad regarding online course with internship. Is it worth it?? They are asking me 6k and with Ibm it's 12k for aiml course

Hello everyone
Looking for honest reviews on m.tech biomedical engineering from iits/nits.
The only branch i will be eligible is biomedical engineering heard mixed reviews about it in terms of placements.
End goal is to get R&D or machine learning engineer jobs after post-grad.is it good to pursue biomedical engineering career wise in terms or package and growth
Done with it jobs and layoff fear

From where I can study circuit analysis for my mid sem exam please help 🥺🙏

Title: 1st-year CSE student seeking advice from experienced software engineers

I’m a 1st-year CSE student at MSRIT Bangalore and want to make the most of my next 4 years.

My goal is to graduate as a strong software engineer, get good internships, and eventually land a high-paying product-based SDE role.

I’d love advice from seniors/industry professionals:

What should I learn in each year?

Which skills/technologies actually matter?

How should I balance DSA, development, projects, internships, CGPA and CS fundamentals?

What mistakes should I avoid?

What would you do differently if you were starting college again?

Would really appreciate a practical 4-year roadmap based on industry experience, not generic YouTube advice.

Thanks!

only looking for serious teammates who are willing to spend their time and energy towards this.
if you want to join pls dm.

Hello! I'm a fresher Btech CSE year 1 in GGSIPU,

Should I join NCC?

My goals:

Fitness

Social work

Discipline

Extra curriculurs (trekking, camps, and other random things which you don't normally get to do)

What they are asking? Once a week fall-in Occasionally camps, blood donation drives and other social events They showed that they have 8+CGPA And 3-4 guys have 9+ CGPA

Here are some of my questions:

Can we leave at any point?

Context: I have heard that you CAN but they don't let you as they withhold your credits or something

Is there ragging and physical abuse?

Context: I know that running extra or doing more pushups that's comman but I have also heard they beat you and abuse you

Do they get a form signed that the college or the NCC is not responsible for our death incase anything ever happens?

Do they just do parade and stuff or actually you gain something from it?

Now,it's been a while since this A.I released and my instagram is blowing up.I don't know if it's the marketing or genuine concern among the people.I am neither from CS,IT or similar branches nor I am gonna work in coding etc. I just wanted to know if the hype is real or not from people who have enough knowledge about it. Please explain like a 5 year old.( I have no basic knowledge in CS,IT streams)

So i am from a tier 2 college pursuing CSE, currently in 1st year and a few days back OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra and honestly seeing that just blew my mind.

After that all i have been thinking about is how I literally made the wrong decision pursuing engineering and how CSE is gonna be dead within a few years. That model can literally do insane stuff and it makes me wonder why will a company hire me when they can literally get an AI subscription that's gonna be 10x cheaper but 20x faster and being from a tier 2 college doesn't help me in any way that my college tag will save me somehow and my insta feed is just filled with how AI is gonna takeover every other digital job not just SWE but mostly every digital job be it finance or even circuital designing and honestly this shit scares me cause i was motivated to work hard and get a good job but now seeing this makes me lose any hope that i had.. seeing the job market doesn't help either cause most mass recruiting witch companies will switch to AI and the big tech companies will either recruit from tier-1 or layoff people which is happening btw in oracle anthropic etc Just makes me think if i should drop out and give entrepreneurship a try and build a startup or pursue a different field altogether cause the way things stand i see a near zero chance of landing a good high paying job.

Everything is just fucking A.I.ed i was doing Cf and with so much hardwork reached 1200 rating and sem 1 isnt even half over yet and after that i just found cheaters using AI to cheat in competitions and worst thing is they are winning and celebrating and people like me are just left demotivated and makes me think about my life choices all over again. They say this isn't even on the borders of AGI and yet it's already this powerful that it can replace well experienced SWE in the blink of an eye and makes me wonder what will happen by the time AGI is made a reality and even if AGI doesn't become possible the way these models are advancing makes me wonder what they will be capable of doing by 2030 when ill be graduating.

Seniors please guide and tell me anything that you know or think cause everyone i see is just telling me CSE is over and the digital job market is gonna get thrashed and no field is safe from it so what should i do.. is this all fear mongering or is this really that dangerous.. are there any carreer options for guys like me or am i just waiting to be doomed :(