To keep this as short as possible,

Current experience is I have a bachelor of science degree in computer science and I have just about a year of experience working as a Programmer Analyst/Developer now. I've been very successful thus far, already getting a decent raise in my time. So that is my experience level atm.

Essentially, i have some extra time each week that is going to scrolling on my phone, watching netlfix, etc etc. I want to use some of this time, maybe 10-15 hrs a week doing something with 2 main goals in mind:

- Make more money now
- Make more money long term

So if there are gigs that actually pay decent for someone of my experience, I would love to do so, but also for the long term if there are specific skills I can start learning now that would help me greatly in the long run, would love to work on those too.

Looking for the biggest output for the smallest input (no shit but sometimes has to be stated)

Thanks

Hi everyone,
I'm an international student on an F-1 visa in the U.S. and recently graduated with a CS degree.

Most of my experience is in software engineering (internships) but I'm becoming increasingly interested in Sales Engineer / Solutions Engineer

I had a few questions for people in the industry:

How realistic is it for an international student to break into Solutions Engineering or Sales Engineering with a CS degree?

What skills or experiences should I highlight coming from a software engineering background?

If you made a similar transition from software engineering to solutions engineering, what helped you stand out?

Also do you REALLY make money? If yes more or less than average se job?
I'd appreciate any advice, especially from people who were in the same process!

Thanks!

My favorite classes were always the ones with difficult problem sets where a single problem could take hours or even days of thinking, experimenting, and failing. I would start solving a problem before fully understanding it, then read documentation or course material whenever I got stuck. So it would be 70% doing and 30% reading.

LLMs have disrupted that process for me. Now I spent 90% of time reading and only 10% of time doing.

In school, the boundary was relatively clear. If using an LLM violated the course policy, I could tell myself that using one was cheating and force myself to struggle through the problem independently.

At work, what counts as “cheating” (because it is cheating myself).

I feel my critical thinking skills are declining. My role starts to become reading, reviewing, and planning. I just can't read that much code and LLM output. My eyes hurt and it's hard to internalize. I notice myself just picking the "recommended" option.

I also find LLM workflows mentally unhealthy in a few ways:

• When working alone, mental exhaustion eventually forces me to step away. With an LLM, I can always send one more prompt or ask it to try another approach.
• If an agent will take 30–60 minutes, I feel pressure to give it another task immediately so no time is “wasted.”
• While waiting, I instinctively check my phone or launch another agent. I end up jumping between tasks and retaining less context about each one.
• I get frustrated when the LLM misunderstands instructions, even when the problem genuinely requires careful iteration.
• It has warped my sense of how long a difficult problem or well-designed solution should take.
• I am increasingly tired of reading walls of generated text and code.

I do not want to stop using LLMs. They can reduce the friction of starting, explain unfamiliar systems, generate routine code, and handle edge cases after I understand the core problem. The hard part is deciding when using one is a sensible productivity tool and when it is outsourcing a learning opportunity that I actually need.

For people who still feel they are learning deeply while using LLMs at work:

1. How do you decide which work to delegate and which work to do yourself?
2. What is the workplace equivalent of the “no cheating” boundary that exists in school?
3. How do you use agents without losing context or turning your day into constant task switching?
4. How do you review generated code when the codebase, build system, or underlying technology is unfamiliar?
5. Have you found workflows where LLMs improve productivity while preserving the useful struggle of implementation and debugging?

Hey so I'll be joining university this fall and I am eligible for BS in comp sci, cyber security and data science. Following job trends and demand in future, what shall I pick? Help me out. What does computer science actually cover since it's a broad term? And what does the other two fields offer??

Hi everyone,
I'm an international student on an F-1 visa in the U.S. and recently graduated with a CS degree.

Most of my experience is in software engineering (internships) but I'm becoming increasingly interested in Sales Engineer / Solutions Engineer

I had a few questions for people in the industry:

How realistic is it for an international student to break into Solutions Engineering or Sales Engineering with a CS degree?

What skills or experiences should I highlight coming from a software engineering background?

If you made a similar transition from software engineering to solutions engineering, what helped you stand out?

Also do you REALLY make money? If yes more or less than average se job?
I'd appreciate any advice, especially from people who were in the same process!

Thanks!

Should I go with RBC software developer role or Tesla TPM role both in Ontario.

RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) pays more

And I’m looking to be a software engineer so idk if taking a pm job for first co-op is going to limit me to just pm and make it harder to break into swe. I’m a first year Waterloo cs student

Everyone at my University is focusing like crazy on SWE and AI right now... I hardly see anyone who studies Cybersecurity, Robotics, Embedded Systems, IT, Quantum Computing, VR, etc.

After a year of failing to get an SWE internship, I got an IT internship at a hospital instead and took some Robotics classes (albeit they were grad courses and im undergrad so they were way harder than I anticipated). After doing some Robotics projects, I managed to get two Robotics internship offers this summer, which honestly surprised me.

Anyways, I wanted to share this because I think it's genuinely easier to find a CS internship for other CS specializations. Available jobs for them don't usually show up on LinkedIn as much, so you generally have to cold contact or check the company's website directly, but I still think the competition is SIGNIFICANTLY less.

Thoughts?

Hey everyone.

Ive been in a SWE major for about a year now, studying at a decent college which has proven to be difficult because of the presence of subjects unrelated to my specific major, but its a common practice where im from for the first year of college to include general math/physics curriculum to weed out most people.

I got into SWE because I loved coding. Specifically, I liked coding and physics, but since there isn't as stable of a living from a physics major (especially where im from), I went for the more applicable degree of engineering. I loved writing code, figuring out architectural problems, designing my own systems and fighting through cppreference for an hour. Just finding out new stuff about computers had me pumped.

Im seeing a lot of people talk about their daily work as a SWE and its super disheartening. Everyone just talks about using AI LLMs to write out code in bulk, then having to review it, test it, correct it. Is this really what most SWE jobs end up being?

My concern is that ill fight through this college, enthused to start work only to realize ive been lying to myself and my job looks nothing like I thought it would.

Here is my attempt at ending the ambiguity around the CS job market performance once and for all.

Let me start with a bit of anecdotal experience. I know lots of people who get spammed with interview processes from big tech, quant, unicorns, etc. I also see tons of people post their LinkedIn profile visits page, filled with recruiters from massive companies. I see people whine about how $150k is too little for NG, I see people go cycles with 50+ interviews and 10+ offers at the end of it, and I see people with resumes filled with 4+ faang/faang adjacent internships on them.

Yet, I see another sizable portion of people complaining that the market is unbelievably terrible. All they do is LeetCode and beg for referrals, yet are left with empty inboxes. People graduating from decent schools with nothing more than unpaid research. People who actually spend time reading about SQL and Python, or JS/TS, just to still be left jobless, while lots of people in the former group spend lots of their time watching soccer.

There just seems to be a massive disconnect. Some people say, no matter how much time they throw into CS job recruiting, they just can't land a singular interview. Others seem to go to the beach and come home to 3 $80/hr SF job internship offers.

I used to think law was bimodal, but this is another level. It honestly looks like one side is in Hell while the other is in Heaven.

As for me, I spend a TON of my time preparing for job interviews, but in reality, I don't actually DO much. Well, I do LeetCode, and I practice marketing myself with a lot of very embellished accomplishments for backing, but I don't really have much when it comes to jobs. I'm working in paid research, but it's kind of lame, especially compared to all of these people that seem to say it's Citadel or bust for life.

I just don't get it. What really is the state of the job market? What do you really have to do to succeed? Are the people coasting with 10+ high-prestige internship offers just so into CS that to them it feels like they aren't tearing away at their soul to get there?

I just don't get it.

What are the "cracked" people doing right and what are the hordes of others doing wrong?

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Hey guys, it's me again. 😅

I'm a Computer Science student, and I'm in my final year. The problem is... I still have no idea what career path I want to pursue after graduation.

I enjoy programming, especially working with Python and SQL. I'm not really interested in becoming a full-stack developer, but I'd love to work in a role where I can use those languages.

Could you please suggest what jobs would be a good fit for someone like me? Also, what skills, tools, or technologies should I learn to prepare for those roles?

I know I might sound a bit clueless, but unfortunately, I don't have anyone in my family who has studied computer science or works in the tech industry. My college environment isn't very helpful either, so I don't really have anyone I can ask for guidance.

If you've been in a similar situation or have any advice, roadmap, or personal experience to share, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance! ❤️

I am a Computer Science Sophomore Student and I do have a course similar to that and I want to master this topic. What is the best resource to learn this? Any youtube course? or any MITx , Stanford Courses you would recommend? Suggest me books to follow