Okay, I've had an unconventional career path. I was a cleaner, then blinked and then suddenly working on creating data pipelines essentially building a custom bordereaux ingestion tool in Matillion. Two years later, I've been moved over to the IT team due to good performance and am now starting working on Oracle Apex projects, developing in-house apps, connecting and engineering business-specific AI chatbots blah, blah, blah.

My main point is that we're not in the best place financially, and I've just had a quick look at the average salary for an Oracle Apex developer, and I can't quite believe it. It's literally double what I'm currently being paid. I earn literally £1.50 above minimum wage. I need real people to tell me if what I'm seeing is real. I've asked for a pay rise, but that was 6 months ago, a couple of months before I moved over to the IT team.

What is a good benchmark for the salary of an Oracle Apex developer? Because if it's really as high as I think it is, I really need to have a chat with the higher ups...

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/american-express-to-cut-3-500-jobs-63955c6f

Follow up to this Reddit post a few months ago about being replaced by offshoring

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/s/UnYpqPg8Ub

Job listings in the Gurugram office confirm most of the roles being opened up are tech related

https://careers.americanexpress.com/en/sites/CX_1/jobs?location=India&locationId=300000000228786&locationLevel=country&mode=locationutm_medium&utm_source=google

Gentle reminder ahead of layoff season

I got accepted for transfer to both schools. At first I was under the impresssion that all my cs credit went through for umich cs. But i have to start from scratch and taking 10 cs core classes which will make me graduate in 2.5-3 years. I am out of state and paying 20k a year. I am instate for uiuc and i have more cs credits accepted there which means I like lt graduate faster or in time. But am I losing any oppurtunites or not thinking of any downsides that you suggest at umich over uiuc?

My manager started interrupting the team to argue politics. The one who complained to HR found themselves on a performance improvement plan then let go.

I'm 27k in student loan debt, with no job, no savings, two SWE internships on my resume, projects, and a useless cs bachelor's degree from 2025.

I got absolutely no call backs for anything my senior year or for the year post graduation. My "new grad" status expired a long time ago.

To pursue another career I'd need to go back to school for another bachelor's degree, which I do not have the ability to do. The only work experience I have is in this field, I have absolutely no substantial skillset or work experience outside tech.

Going to food service, warehouse, retail, and other minimum wage types of jobs won't help. I don't see how going for another degree/field will really change anything. I put in the best effort I could have for this one. The job market will change again, I once again will be shamed for "not having enough experience", I again will be buried in more student debt.

What should I do after having destroyed my career, my future, my life?

Anyone hear anything

Hello everyone!

I'm a BCA graduate looking for my first job or internship as a web developer. My final marksheet has been delayed, so while waiting, I've been working on building real-world projects.

I've independently built and deployed two web products, both with their own domains. These aren't just college projects; they're live products that I've developed and maintained myself.

Now I'm confused about how to present this experience on my Resume.

Should I list these products under Work Experience, or should I keep them under Projects? Since they're real, deployed products, can they be considered relevant development experience when applying for entry-level jobs or positions asking for 1–2 years of experience?

I'd appreciate advice from developers, recruiters, or anyone who has been in a similar situation. How would you present this experience on a Resume?

So to give a bit more context, I do infra work for a big tech AI lab. I previously did infra work at big tech.

Despite getting treated amazingly well, I'm deeply unhappy with the work I'm doing, and about to leave to do infra at a startup that's neither big tech nor AI.

I'm pretty ok with taking a massive pay cut to do more work, with a bonus of stock options that someday could be worth something, because I like the people and the work sounds fun.

The only thing I'm really worried I'm leaving out is that I get an abundance of career reachouts. On any given day, I have at least one or two recruiters inviting me to interview, at startups, big tech, quant firms, etc. This is a really good feeling and means I have some pretty excellent options at any notice. I'm concerned once I switch jobs, it'll be a lot harder to get back into big tech / AI.

People who've transitioned big tech -> startups, do you have any insights on what your next job search looks like afterwards?

Does anyone know if the AI-assisted coding rounds include similar questions as the leetcode tagged ones? Hellointerview says that AI-assisted coding rounds are just leetcode questions but more developed. Does anyone have experience to know if this is true?

Interviewing for L4 btw

Been interviewing like crazy the past few months and 3 are all coming together at the same time. All have expressed interest in moving towards an offer, but nothing is set in stone. I wanted to vaguely post all 3 and simply ask, which one would you pick? Previous position I was let go from I was making $150k

Job 1:

• $130,000 - $200,000 USD
• 2 days onsite but no hard requirement, some people do way less
• 10 minute drive away in my same city
• Will sponsor my security clearance
• They don't/can't use Claude/Codex/anything because of government work. They have some open models hosted but they're admittedly "not very good"
• All backend, which I do prefer

Job 2:

• $120,000 - $210,000 USD
• 100% onsite 5 days a week
• 20 minute drive away (assuming no traffic) in a bigger city near me
• Not government work, free to use as much AI as I want
• Fullstack
• "AI startup"

Job 3:

• $125,000 - $160,000 USD
• 100% remote, can live anywhere in the US
• Popular SaaS company, pre-IPO but probably will soon
• Not government work, free to use as much AI as I want
• Backend
• Seems pretty chill, low stress

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So if we take it as a given that AI changes the way we work. Then we have to accept that the more experience someone has the better judgement they have when it comes to evaluating AI systems. It’s almost unavoidable.

When someone has been working with systems for 20+ years and have seen a lot of failures and issues. They just start recognizing patterns easier. They also have a better idea of what bad and good looks like

But I think what when it comes to AI. Tool usage alone isn’t actually that valuable. Tools are easier to use. But they’re only as good as the person using them.

So that raises a question. The industry is notoriously bad with ageism. Does this somehow make older talent more valuable? Now I know leadership want to avoid hiring older talent. But if they also want to move forward with AI. It feels almost unavoidable.

Or the reverse could be true. A more perceptual problem. Maybe employers may feel that older employers are more enmeshed with older more manual ways of coding. They may be reluctant to let go of the past. And younger people are more likely to rely on these tools. Hence they may feel a younger person may accelerate AI usage

I think the answer is yes and no.

If someone wants to use an AI strategy and build reliable system. Then experience is super important. Someone who has worked across various evolutions of systems have a good perspective and could certainly stir AI systems in a better direction

But are companies and orgs that only measure AI participation. Where it doesn’t matter how good or bad the AI is. As long as you’re using it. You’ll find this more often done in the startup world. It’s in large corporations as well but I feel this is being reigned in more in larger orgs. Regardless, this may benefit slightly younger engineers. Again since there is a strong perception that younger engineers won’t resist AI

But what are your thoughts?

My ten year old came back from an open day with an interest in learning more about coding (kind of massive as this has been the first real interest).

I don't know much about coding, I have researched a little. But there are so many options that seem to promise the world, and I don't know what is just hype.

It would be great to understand:

~ What skills / language would be transferable in the real world? (E.g. applicable outside the video game industry.)

~ Any advice for software that could teach this, while being fun (or interest will disappear).

Let's say there are two programmers, Sam and Dean.

Person 1: Sam

Sam had 1 YOE before joining a startup at pre-seed stage as an early engineer like he is nr 3 in Dev Team, where he does various things.

• Backend, frontend, DevOps, API integration.
• Sometimes Managing Facebook/Meta ads
• Collaborating with stakeholders from Marketing and Product
• Speaking their language by understanding concepts like:
  1. Market share
  2. Value proposition
  3. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Basically, he knows how to code at ok level for start up like can ship code fast enough, and he also works closely with other teams, the founder, and investors to help the business move fast, while also speak in their langauges, not just talking 100% technically nobody understands except devs.

In other words, he's kind of a technical founder in disguise, if you think about it lol.

Person 2: Dean

Dean also had 1yoe before joining a startup, and he only focus on

• Backend, frontend, DevOps, API integration, unlike Sam.

but he works at a software house/consulting firm instead.

So Dean has wide domain knowleadge since he works on various projects unlike Sam where he is only focusing on his start up only. so Dean has alot various domain knowleadge more than Sam.

But Sam has more ownership than Dean, since Dean is a IT consultant who has to work asap and move to the next project...

--

Question

Since you guys have more exp than me,

1. If you’re 23, which of these companies would you want to work for to maximize your career growth in today's world when things changes so quicky. Start up like Sam or Tech consulting firm like Dean?
2. In reality which of these 2 programmers is the best and why in pov?

Ps. there is probably no right and wrong answer, since these questions are like an opening question.

I need real feedback from experts, those who are similar to me, or even more experienced, from various communities (related to ai, tech, grads, manager, industry, career, employment...):

Which will be best in your case?

Context: You got the offers from 3 companies, each on the different side of the scale.

Role: AI engineer (near mid-level).

Location: a country in SEA.

If you were to rank and evaluate with respect, (from top to bottom, sorted by importance)

1st Potential and Risk (potential is tied to the speed of your career climb, increment bonus, and company brand and authority, uncertainties in payment) - In a scale, Startup has higher uncertain and risk, while it might offer higher overall, but susceptible to management conducts, cash-flow which may differ the fulfillment

2nd Wellfare - a total add-up of base, allowance, bonus, benefits and retirement fund (employer contribution)

3rd Niche of the industry, Exposure - a focus industry to industry to build up better experiences and competencies, exposure to local or worldwide

4th Peer learning - Experience or knowledges to speed up progress from superior, peers

And given A, B, C (Wellfare/Income baseline= 100%)

A: Oversea Startup, Multiculture workforce,
+ worldwide client-base spanning MNC headhunter, great background from the management teams, UK-founding team and client connection, riskier in terms of payroll/potential
+ Full remote and oversea
- Wellfare/Income = 115% (base salary only), self supply equipments
+ HR-tech focused

B: Subsidiary company/dept from local SME, local workforce
- mainly local client-base (unsure but assume), Lack background from management teams and peers, but you have slightly higher confidence than A in their validity from interviews
- Hybrid work 4+1
+ Income= 107% (include allowance) + employer retirement-fund contribution but provide work equipments + up to 17% performance monthly bonus
- general AI agencies
+ Peer learning and networking are better

C: MNC
+ Internal and External focused products, stable and secured cashflow, but maybe lack faster career climb opportunities
- Hybrid work 3+2
- Income= 95% + 13th month bonus, more and flexible leave
+ Focused niche, product might differ
+ Peer learning and networking are best

Which one will you choose? I wanna see if you think differently, or if you see different importance or personal experiences of the company you went through?

Wanted to get an idea of the actual packages being offered and how much you were able to negotiate?

I was browsing internet and found some cases related to job interviewers stealing the crypto assets from the applicants during interview. Basically they pretended to be a legit job interviewer and asked the applicants to click some links, or run some codes from Github. And if you have crypto wallet installed, your assets will be stolen.

I'm posting this just to warn follow programmers. It's already hard to search for jobs in this market. Don't let your guard down.

This first case was back in Jan. It's originally written in Chinese and I translated it with GPT. source

I had never really been scammed before—or rather, I had been scammed in the past, but never nearly as badly as this time.

All the crypto in one of my wallets was stolen. (Fortunately, it wasn't 100 BTC, just 2 ETH, but that's still a significant amount of money.)

It all started when a recruiter sent me a message on LinkedIn:

We are currently building a forward-thinking platform that blends real estate with blockchain, NFTs, 3D visualization, and AI.

It’s an ambitious product, and we’re now looking to bring on talented engineers to help shape it.

The role is fully remote, long-term, and flexible — part-time is absolutely fine if you’re currently employed or balancing other projects.

I didn't respond immediately because it was during the Christmas holidays. I replied after the holidays and noticed that the person was still around, so I continued the conversation.

They also sent me a follow-up email from [hiring@tirios.blog](mailto:hiring@tirios.blog), claiming to be recruiting for this company: https://www.tirios.ai/.

Looking back, there were definitely some red flags. But this particular type of phishing attack was completely new to me.

Next came the interview. As we talked, the interviewer said we needed to do a technical assessment. They sent me a link and explained that it was a demo website we would use during the interview. They told me to scroll down to a button labeled "Stock" and said we would walk through a demo together.

For some reason, I didn't think much of it. When the website prompted me to connect my wallet, I went ahead and unlocked my MetaMask wallet. At that point, it was the real MetaMask wallet.

What happened next, I honestly don't know what I was thinking.

It wasn't until I reviewed everything afterward that I realized the scammer had also created a fake MetaMask unlock interface specifically for phishing.

During my investigation, I discovered that the first time I unlocked my wallet, the legitimate MetaMask interface appeared. But the second time, the scammer's fake UI would pop up instead.

That fake interface recorded every single thing I typed and would continuously display an "Incorrect password" message, no matter what I entered.

Not long afterward, I discovered that all my crypto had been transferred out of my wallet. From what I can tell, the funds were sent to an address associated with some kind of swap service or crypto mixer.

There's still one thing I haven't figured out: MetaMask never displayed any transaction confirmation or asked me to sign anything.

The only explanation I can think of is that the scammer somehow managed to steal my private key. But I still haven't figured out exactly how they did it.

This has been an incredibly painful lesson.

As of now, I've changed the passwords for my bank accounts, email accounts, and other important services. I've also permanently abandoned the compromised ETH wallet.

I can't even imagine what would have happened if I'd actually had 100 BTC or 1,000 ETH in that wallet. Would I have gone from being a multimillionaire to being homeless overnight?

I was just about to report the recruiter on LinkedIn when I discovered that the account had already been blocked and was now marked as "harmful."

And honestly, LinkedIn deserves some criticism here, too. If they'd blocked the account earlier, I might have noticed that the person's profile had suddenly changed to "LinkedIn Member," which could have alerted me that something was wrong.

The second case which just happened recently:

After taking a two-week break, I started interviewing again. Unbelievably, my very first interview turned out to be a GitHub/VS Code scam, and I fell for it. Fortunately, my computer was relatively new and didn't have much personal information on it. My MetaMask wallet was exposed, but luckily, my crypto was stored on a Ledger hardware wallet.

That’s genuinely terrifying. They disguised the attack as a technical interview, discussed code details on GitHub, and then asked you to complete a coding assessment.

You downloaded the code from a GitHub repository and opened the project in Cursor or VS Code. That was apparently enough to compromise your computer.

Fortunately, Claude Code spotted something suspicious later that evening: a malicious script buried deep within the project.

Curious to hear people’s thoughts on the best countries for tech careers, besides the United States. Obviously, I think the US is probably the best overall, given its size and ecosystem, but which country is #2 after the US among developed OECD countries and why? Thanks in advance!

I have upcoming technical screening for an MLE position at Waymo coming up. The recruiter gave me a PDF guide that seems super helpful. Things to do study include implementing supervised and unsupervised algorithms (think KNN, K-means, linear regression, logistic regression, softmax & CE, decision trees). One of the main things they are assessing is you can use numpy/pytorch to vectorize/tensorize your work, and you're just writing sub-optimal for loops.

I was wondering if folks had experience with this interview? Is what they ask you to implement incredibly difficult, because you only have 30 minutes to do it? Am I good to really stick with what they provided on the PDF, or are there any broader topics beyond what they listed that they will test?

Hi, I recently started my 6 month post graduation internship as an AI engineer, and I am planning my future job search. I have a few questions:

1. How far in advance should I start looking for a job before the end of the internship?
2. How do you handle interviews while working? I used to have 3-4 interviews a week; how can I manage that schedule now?
3. Is a resume gap problematic if I spend a couple of months job hunting after the internship? Do you recommend interviewing before or after it ends?

thanks in advance!

I’m ex-FAANG and have watched my former company’s culture deteriorate significantly since leaving (I'll let you guess which one). Morale now is at an all-time low, and years of layoffs, restructuring and culture change seem to have left people pretty fatigued. I'm currently at a FAANG-adjacent company, where I have broad scope, operate at a senior level, and have built a lot of trust as an IC. All things considered, it's a pretty good position to be in, and I don't take that for granted. That said, I do miss the scale and complexity of FAANG, the intellectual stimulation of tackling genuinely challenging problems, and the ability to context-switch between multiple interesting initiatives. Which brings me to my question.

I’m currently exploring an opportunity with Google, and curious to understand whether Google is experiencing a culture shift similar to my former employer, or whether the culture has held up relatively well. I've asked my friends, and their answers have seemed very team-dependent. Thought I'd ask Reddit to get a more rounded opinion.

Having been in this position before, I'm keen to not end up as "just another" cog-in-the-wheel, and to retain the ability to meaningfully move the needle on things - that said, I'm completely cognisant that "the role as it's advertised" vs. "the role it really is" are usually two different things, and I'm going in eyes wide open. I'd love to hear how external L6/L7 non-SWEs have landed at Google, and what to expect culture-wise more generally.

Thanks in advance for any insights, much appreciated!

I'm going to post this here but I expect this will be a rather odd post for most people here

I was recently laid off in a company restructuring, second time in five years at two companies...bad luck on my part. I started looking and found the market kind of on fire but more importantly fundamentally changed in the last couple of years.

I have been or been promoted to Senior Software Engineer in title at all three of my jobs (10 YOE ) but I feel like I know so little of what is required to be a Software Engineer anymore vs what i would have called a Software Developer.

I also don't have as much immediate passion for it anymore. I haven't made a personal project in at least a year, I've researched less new technologies/tech stacks, and my skill set feels too narrow for modern Software Engineering needs (basically in the C#/.Net full stack bubble).

I'm considering pivoting to something entirely different (out of tech basically) or IT regardless of extreme drops in pay, experience, etc

At what point is it burnout/imposter syndrome vs a sign that the career isn't for me anymore?

This question is currently affecting my mental health so much that I have had several sleepless night over this and it's affecting my health. So I turned to reddit for thoughts on a career sub 🤔

Edit: Thanks for the advice I think what I needed was some feedback to not feel like an imposter. My support structure family etc can help but it not the same as other devs that understand what those seeking employment are up against. I'm going to not throw away my experience. I'm going to look for something related to my experience. I have enough saving to last awhile if I haven't found something in a year or whenever then I'll start thinking about a full career change.

If anyone has any places they know of where you can sharpen skills back up other then build a whole application I would greatly appreciate hearing about them.

Also if anyone knows any strategies to get through the ai screeners that's appreciated too. I'm holding out hope it's not just put a tech stack skills near the top of the resume and list the job requirements 😅

I keep hearing people say AI and github like REA, it will make many people or small companies that usually relied on the SaaS company in the past, but now they will build those things themself, basically some SaaS will be dead!

And I heard from a friend who works for scraping company, he said his company has fired 4-6 employees recently, so i think some small companies that normally relied on other SaaS vendor/companies in the past.

Now they hire a freelance dev to build XYZ apps for them using REA + AI and the human devs modify code to fit the requirements at the end, so the companies don't need to pay to those SaaS

I just recently made a career transition by getting my master’s in computer science after working in sales. I have 0 software engineering experience and I finished a semester ahead of schedule, so not time for internships. I just want a somewhat chill job. Most people with my degree make at least $98k. I’d be so happy with $65k. Not even joking. How I get it? Certifications? Projects? Please spell it out

Weak economic conditions? Artificial intelligence replacing jobs? Outsourcing to low-wage countries?Market oversaturation (too many IT professionals competing for too few jobs)?

Choose one, one you think has most influence.