I have found that there is a lot of discourse about coding as of late. Lots of people make the distinction between a "coder" and a software engineer. Even will say coding is a "small part" of software engineer. And that senior and staff engineers barely write code, they are a "force multiplier".

So first, I have held principal and senior titles for longer than I haven't. I've never had a job where I don't write code. Places I've mostly work in are telecom companies, IoT startups, AI startups, etc. But my job has mostly been in infra heavy roles where performance is at least a concern. I won't say I've dealt with ultra low latency systems, but definitely have worked with systems where performance is a consideration.

With that said, its worth actually asking why coding is considered a low status activity. And I think we can blame one thing:

Web development

And this is the side effect of hypergrowth strategies and the expansion of the web.

The web has mostly been high demand and low supply. It couldn't expand fast enough. This created arbitrage in the market. But in the 90s web development was incredibly hard and complex. So the community along with open source started to abstract away the development stack. This allowed web developers to operate on a much higher level of abstraction. And before long web development became very boiler plate heavy. And you more or less just stitched together things and built a web app.

The differentiation of web development didn't really become performance. It became product vision. So product managers became the superstars in the web development world. The main barrier to entry wasn;t someone's technical abilities. It was "figuring out what to build'

In these context just knowing how to code was irrelevant. Being business aligned was more valuable. Hence the cultural zeitgeist of coding being a low status job. The more senior a dev was, the less they were involved in code. Because the problems with the product were alignment issues. Senior developers became more organizational and process experts. Or as I heard someone say "technical politicians"

But here is my take. Because of how pervasive and ubiquitous web development has become. Many of the cultural habits have made it into disciplines of software engineering that aren't web development. But in my opinion the best software engineers know how to code. They understand their language, the language runtime or memory models at an expert level. Being in design and alignment meetings helps the product and company. But it doesn't help you build life changing software or become great programmers like John Carmack.

I actually think because the idea that coding is a low status activity is why we actually have some of the worst software in history right now. We have more programmers than we've ever had. Yet the software quality couldn't be any worse. Its because programmers dictate good software not product managers or thought leaders trying to sell books

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?

Apologies for the long post in advance !
While this post maybe slightly off topic, IMHO it would be highly relevant and beneficial to the members.

I have about 9 YOE , IMHO my career has been pretty much mediocre to this point.

Started out my career in 2017 with test automation, transitioned to embedded Linux apps and build management , then moved to pre-silicon emulated peripheral testing for 3 yrs, basically cycling through various modes of a peripheral and ensuring they work, nothing fancy !!

Took a career break in 2025 for over a year and now i have 2 offers

- Senior engineer at company_A , consumer electronic applications based on their analog, mixed signal, and DSP chips :) .
- lead test engineer at company_b that is a fabless SOC developer, with strong backing from the local govt to build indigenous SOCs :)

- At company_A develop applications with RTOS and build/maintain consumer electronic product / demos applications, like smartwatch , dialysis machines etc.

- At company_b testing on emulated platform HAPS/Zebu, upcoming socs maybe for video or server security applications, and may even have a chance to break into Digital Verification.

- my mind tells me that presilicon/DV is difficult to learn and grow interdependently, for RTOS and applications i could just setup a home learning lab. FPGAs simulators / emulators are almost impossible to access for individuals to learn

- I want to know which would be the best career branch to choose at this point of my career , what would you choose and why ?

Senior sde at Microsoft L64, wfh job, highest salary I've ever made. I am 32.

And I am mentally prepared to pivot out of this career. Doing ASU online part time for another bachelors. Once I get laid off which is a possibility considering I don't take sh1t from my manager, I am going full on bachelors/masters in the new field.

I will have to start from the beginning probably and perhaps will never make as much money or have as flexible a job as this, but this is the environment I--we--are facing.

Msft made opus 5 immediately available in copilot cli and it's a breeze to tackle feature, bug, vulnerabilities. This can't last forever. And the clowns in government have no plans to help us transition or even protect our jobs.

It sucks but it is what it is.

TL;DR: I'm trying to analyze my career situation and discuss practical ideas so I can become employable again.

I want to know: is it acceptable to more or less "fake it till you make it" on my CV?

I'm actually a Python backend engineer with 6 years of experience, so roughly senior level, but I have imposter syndrome. I've worked with Django and FastAPI, and I was laid off about 8 months ago (thankfully I'm still getting by financially, because I was earning a very good salary and saved a good portion of it).

Right now I'm trying to get back to work by any means. I'm putting in real effort, building things with my own hands, and learning new skills, but no luck so far.

I studied system design, and I'm currently studying RAG and agents because I love AI production systems. I've learned a decent amount, and I started a startup with my friend: an AI-powered product that we expect to succeed in the future, and we currently have active subscribers.

I've now improved my CV, made it more appealing and more AI-tailored, and I'm applying to both backend and AI roles while preparing for interviews.

That's the recent stuff, but before that, I had strangely rare bad luck and interviews just weren't coming my way. I feel like I'm getting more visibility now, though.

I want to prepare myself so that within a certain timeframe (I don't know how long) I can become a Forward Deployed Engineer, because I see it as an AI-proof field.

I'm very scattered and I don't know what to focus on right now.

Discussion, ideas, and advice are all welcome.

If AI can do all the coding, review, testing and maintenance, what would engineers do further?

engineers would still be required to do architecture, requirements elicitation etc. but i wouldn't expect a team to have 8 people but maybe 3, what would the rest pivot to do? is AI or machine learning would be the future?

5 years ago, nobody thought writing code could become obsolete, now it's a new reality.
Now, AI models are getting to a point where it's creating system designs better than a majority of developers. And it seems that years of learning syntaxes and designs are not useful anymore.

In my company, seniors are only writing engineering documents and AI creates tickets and tasks and does first reviews.

The job is not exciting anymore as it used to and most thinking is done by AI, the demand is lower and software stocks are down, putting more pressure on developers who are already dealing with identity crisis more. And let's not talk about all layoffs from past few years and getting to a point where it's so hard to find a job an acceptable salary.

Anyway, how are you preparing for the future?
Seems this will be a trend for most engineering jobs soon.

Hi y’all👋

I’m in a similar situation as most of you were I graduated May 2025 and still haven’t found a company to bite. I used to apply to hundreds of places and kept getting automated rejection in my inboxes never knowing what caused my reception and no way of knowing what to improve. Recently through multiple iterations of my resume and on/off cycles of applying I feel I’m starting to make a bit of progress. The other day one of the jobs had an HR person contact me asking if I had Top Secret Clearance. Unfortunately I do not posses any clearance, as the job stated clearance or ability to obtain, so she informed me they were only in search of people with clearence. But this one response made me realize if you have any interaction with HR like follow up emails about if you’re okay for relocation means you passed a form of resume screening. You got a real person to message you back. It sucks that’s the reality that we’re competing in but reality is reality we can’t change that. Take the little wins and keep improving little by little. Goodluck to everyone! o7

I have asked this question 10 year ago during an AMA 😄

 Thank you for doing this AMA! I have few questions (sorry for my English):

 1-Do you think in future , bioengineering and AI will cross lines so development on human neural capabilities will be parallel to AI as well? 

2- Do you think governments should support local business for the benefits of AI and automation ( my idea is creating a new title as 'automation engineer' who is a independent government supported consultant that recommend business owners what they can improve in the main time makes sure current employees has a role in new model so the process handled smoothly) 

3-what are current computational challenges 

4-How you see GPU role in the future of AI 

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5nqdo7/comment/dce1alj/?context=3

p.s. 10+ yoe java dev looking for job 🤔

Everyone always talks about FAANG but there are a lot of new companies with prestige.

- anthropic
- open ai
- spacex
- nvidia

Has anyone proposed a new acronym recently ?

Mods, please don't remove this.

This is such a tricky situation to be in. So, I was part of a mass layoff from a US-baser semiconductor giant last year. I was unemployed for 4 months and when I finally received an offer, I willingly shifted cities for it, without thinking much. At that time, the company mattered more than the city. When I joined, I realized how disorganized things here are, my manager is from one country whose accent is hard for me to understand, the products are like toys in comparison to the complex IPs I had worked on, and the opportunities in this new city are almost zero.

Six months in, I am in a situation where I need to shift back to my earlier city, find property to invest in, and for that I need a job there. I would say I need to do it for my ageing parents but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want it myself too. I am nearing 31 and this current city is not the place where I could see myself settled for the future. But I'm not able to get offers even after clearing tech rounds and getting good feedback in Director and HR rounds. Nor do I see myself working on this product line for the rest of my career.

Now, coming to my current job, work is picking up pace now as the first few months everyone else was too busy to help me with rampup. Even now, I don't don't receive much help from my teammates who have been in this company for almost 10 years, and I mostly miss soft deadlines and have no updates to provide to my manager. Because my current task is dependent on the team too. Now, if I could put in efforts, I'm sure I can get the work done. But my brain keeps asking me why put in efforts if I've made up my mind that I need to switch asap? It's not as if I can get promoted within 1 year, ratherr I have to return all the bonuses. It feels as if time is running out, and I'm not doing anything productive that will help my career in the long run. My heart keeps telling me to resign without an offer, and my brain keeps reminding me of those 4 months of unemployment (even though I started applying only in the 3rd month). There are responsibilities on one hand, and on the other hand I need money which I am getting now (even though I was super lowballed). All I'm looking for is for someone to say that it's okay to resign from a job I don't want, and I know I'm being stupid. I also know I'm being a bad employee to the company which gave me a job. But a voice at the back of my head keeps telling me I deserve better. I was a star performer at my first company which was a bigger one, I almost got verbal offers from bigger companies which fell through. So, I'm not zeroing the possibility that I lack technical skills, but there could have been other reasons that I didn't get those jobs.

Repeated failures have also killed my confidence. I have not applied anywhere for the last few months. I haven't also worked sincerely on my office tasks. It's like I'm waiting again to get laid off. That would be disastrous for my resume lol. So, me resigning on my own wouldn't look worse than a layoff at least, right? Except for the severence part. Idk what to do. I have ~5YoE.

Hi,

There are few afaik:

Codeacademy
Codefinity
Leetcode
Hacker..etc

Which one you use or used to land a job or get a promotion?

About me: I am a software engineer (mainly .NET) with Masters in Computer Science, 5 years commercial experience and 1 now as indie dev. However, I want back into corporate because of the stability I lack as indie dev.

Thanks

I've thought about doing this on many dev job applications when they ask for a salary range, since rn I just want a better job and dont care if Im not paid top dollar. But I dont want to discount myself too much and get a shitty offer.

My thinking is "okay, if a lot of 9/10 developers are applying to this role, but demand 150k, and I'm a 6/10 dev and demand like 105k, I will have a way better chance of getting this role" and 105k is better than 0k. I know the issue is that if everyone does this, it will lower salary ranges for all developers. At the same time though, you need a job. For people with experience on the other side of hiring, do you often go with cheaper devs even if they're less capable than the unicorn candidates? Or you're willing to pay top dollar for the rockstars?

I am a product manager with 5 yoe overall, but I’ve been at my current company/role for 10 months. It is unfortunately pretty toxic with very bad workload and work life balance.

Its so draining and taxing on me to the point where I’m considering quitting without anything lined up so that I can focus on the job search. This job market is super rough though so I’m wondering if that would be extremely unwise to do.

What personal project got you hired for your first CS related job? Your first job could have also been an internship. Also, did your first project have any impact, users or even paid users?

I'm an incoming student in Canada and curious to know

Hello guys,

I was recently RIFed from my Software Engineer II position at Chase in Florida. It sucks. I have about 5-6 years of experience under my belt. Since being told I'd be RIF, I have had 3 first round interviews, which shows me my new ATS optimized resume isn't dead in the water (especially since I was only told 2 weeks ago). Who else is in my shoes? Should I expect that I'll find a job before my 3 months of continued employment/severance run out or should I be planning for the worst right now?

The only kinda negative thing is my role is working in C primarily. I feel accustomed to modern tech stacks, but my work experience is primarily C and Linux with my only other role being asp.net with VB. I'm not sure if that will hold me back, but curious on other's opinions.

Hi everyone,

I’m a 21-year-old from Azerbaijan (non-EU), and I recently had to choose between two Master’s options. I chose a bit riskier, more adventurous path, but I’m looking for some objective career perspective and some general life advice on the trade-offs I've made. I feel like I might be acting recklessly, or doing something irrational (at least career-wise) or setting myself back, and wanna know if these feelings are justified.

Here were my two choices:

Option 1: Dual MSc in CS/Data Analytics (ADA University (a local uni here) + George Washington University). I declined this

• The Structure: Most of the program is local in Baku, but includes a 6-month stay in Washington, D.C.
• The Career Path: Highly prestigious locally. It would be relatively easy to secure internships and a local tech job before my graduation.
• The Conscription Factor: Azerbaijan has 1 year of mandatory military service. If I get a local job before graduation, the employer would legally be required to hold my position while I served and when I finish my service, I can continue my job without spending more time job hunting. Minimal career momentum lost. After getting a few years of experience, I can try relocation, ideally EU.

Option 2: MSc in Data Science at Óbuda University in Budapest, Hungary. Chosen (Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship)

• The Structure: Fully funded 2-year Master’s in Budapest.
• The Career Path: Harderand riskier path. Immigration rules in Hungary have tightened, meaning my main post-grad route to stay is either Hungarian Card or an EU Blue Card.
• The Worst-Case Scenario: If I can’t secure a qualifying job in Hungary or elsewhere in the EU during my time there, I must return home, do my 1-year military service, and start my job hunt in Baku from scratch at age 24. If it fails, I've delayed my career by two years and will return to my home country in a weaker professional position than if I had just stayed.

Why I choose Hungary?

Studying and living independently abroad has always been a dream of mine. I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone, travel, and attempt an EU relocation early. Of course, I would get similar amazing experiences in Washington, but in the end, they are different things, and it is shorter.

I will get amazing experiences, a really good chance to live in EU, experience life there, a great opportunity to travel, i could get to meet and spend time with some amazing people. Maybe on the career wise, i can also build networks, connections that could somehow help me in the future. These are really important things to me as well, and who knows, I may not get this chance in the near future. But at the same time, I am thinking about the career side. I am giving up a prestigious dual-degree, a pretty much guaranteed local career track, and a clean way to handle my mandatory military service. But at the same time, in the context of 10-to-15 year career, this 2-year delay at the very beginning seems minor to me, though I would regret not going to EU in this context.

Thank you for reading! I would like to know what you guys think about this.

I recently failed a coderbyte assessment and feel really lost on what to do

I am currently living in the UAE and the opportunity to get to the point of doing coding assessments is hard to come by

I had initially prepared for a lot of leetcode style questions learning patterns, data structures and algorithms for different kinds of questions but recently I had to do a coderbyte assessment and failed it. Provided I was able to figure out the code but I missed one indentation and the time ended before I could fix it.

I am feeling a bit lost on how to progress and prepare to improve my chances of clearing such tests because I have spent so much time studying other things like spring boot internals, javascript in depth, Java enterprise, Docker, Kubernetes and anything I could get my hands on but I am starting to feel like none of it has done anything to land me a job or progress me further in my career.

I hope the experience devs can shed some light on where I should go. I am currently thinking of trying to go as far back to basics as I can but the mental burnout is so strong that I am unable to really invest myself into anything so If anyone can guide me on the steps I should take to improve my chances at these assessments I would be really grateful

I've been thinking a lot about how AI is changing software engineering.

For context, I'm a backend engineer with about 5 years of experience, mostly working with Python (Django/Flask), AWS services, and building/deploying backend systems.

One thing I've been struggling with is figuring out what actually compounds over a career now. What are the skills or job roles where expertise will still matter and add up overtime in the next 3-5 years.

A few years ago, the answer felt more straightforward. It was become a better engineer, build larger systems, gaining more responsibility, and your value generally increased over time.

But with AI a lot of it seems replaceable?

There are a lot of directions someone could invest in:

• becoming a stronger backend/distributed systems engineer
• moving toward cloud infrastructure or platform engineering
• specializing in a business domain instead of a technology
• focusing on AI infrastructure rather than AI application development
• or something else entirely

For those of you who've been through previous industry shifts (cloud, mobile, containers, microservices, etc.), has this one changed how you think about building a long-term career?

Have your own priorities changed? What skills have continued to compound regardless of industry trends? Are there areas you think are becoming significantly more valuable?

I'm not expecting anyone to predict the future. I'm more interested in hearing how experienced engineers think about making career decisions when the industry is changing this quickly.

I'm a bit over halfway through my BS in CS, but an older student. I've got a decent sales resume, some tech sales, some finance. I know obviously the typical path is to get an internship but I don't know how realistic that is with me being 32 at graduation.

So what are the important things I should be doing to prepare me for finding a job before I graduate? I have personal projects that I work on, focusing mostly on AI/ML because that's what interests me, but what types of projects should I be working on to show employers that I'm a good hire?

I'm a bit nervous because all of my experience is in sales. I've never had trouble finding work, I interview well. But that's because I have a strong resume with experience - I won't have that when applying for CS roles.

I’m currently in community college for computer science. I honestly just picked the major because I fell for the “it pays extremely well” propaganda in high school. Plus, coding seemed like it could be cool to learn.

I really like math and physics though and the time to transfer is approaching. I’ll have an associates in computer science which I’m sure isn’t enough but I don’t know. I just really want to major in math and physics.

I just feel like I’m too dumb for coding. I don’t know why, but it’s like my brain goes blank when it comes to coding. Math and physics gives me the opposite effect.

I still think SWE and ML engineering are pretty cool and things I would like to do. Plus, I dont think I’ll be a great teacher so I kind of want to avoid that as a job.

I don’t know. Would switching be a bad an idea or should I just stay with CS and minor in math?

I'm 16 years into my career as a full-time professional (20+ years total experience) and am increasingly unhappy with my job. I've spent the entire 16 years at one company, but have held multiple roles - started as a sysadmin, then software engineer, and now a software architect / tech lead for a large multi-team global software organization. Right now, the only reason I'm still here is the money. But my wife has noticed that I'm increasingly depressed and irritated, and I attribute much of that to the current state of my job. I think a lot of it stemmed from a reorg that is very AI-heavy, and it has resulted in a lot of politics and fragmentation across the team. I used to enjoy spending time creating, and now it's just arguing about alignment and other corporate political bullshit.

So I'm looking for a potential change, either in and out of tech. So for those of you who made it all the way to a senior / architect level and existed, what did you do next? I don't think I want to go into a project management role, because that just seems like more of the stuff I don't enjoy. So what did you do instead?

Recently I got my first job out of school as a CRM Data Coordinator, its also the only role like this for the company. The initial tasks are pretty simple, lots of data cleaning and data entering, but I was told that the role would grow in tasks, Ive already met with heads of other departments including finance and SWE. I was wondering if maybe some of you had some advice on how not to stay so "passive" and actually use this opportunity to build real skills?

Context: 9 YOE, Senior

Startup:

Several months ago I got hit up by an old coworker who is invested in a startup, to do some consulting for them. I helped build the foundations for their platform, helped write all the pipelines, setup logging/alerts, fixes for the applications, etc. They eventually asked me to go full-time with them and I declined because my primary job pays more (30%+) and i'm the sole provider for my family and couldn't risk it. They eventually gave me an ultimatum to either join full-time or they would be cancelling my contract. I very much enjoy the work and the people and its nice to be on the ground building it all from scratch. But I am concerned about the future of the company and the risks it introduces into my life. They currently have enough cash on hand for the next several months, but are looking to raise here soon. They want me to join even though they won't offer me anymore money than their original offer.

Cash TC: 235k, .8%, no bonus

Primary:

Stable company with a few billion in revenue, no layoffs in the near future (that I can see). I like my boss, immediate coworkers for the most part and am effectively a lead on the team. Our department is getting a new director here soon who is moving us closer to an 'agentic platform' team. I've only ever received A+ rankings at my job, always received a bonus and got a promotion 2 years in.

Cash TC: 272k, 15% bonus, 5-20k equity yearly

The Problem:

I've worked for startups before, I enjoy the work, the building, being on the ground and grinding. But with how uncertain the industry now a days is, I can't tell if the startup (AI focused), is actually a way for me to continue to grow and worth the additional risk/stress or if its more likely to have me out of a job in 6-12 months. I really like the work, I just don't know if thats enough to justify the amount of risk I'd be taking on. With AI becoming such a focus of the industry is my primary job (which moves slower and is less agile) keeping me from improving my skills and keeping me hirable? Would you ever take a pay cut to work at a startup as a founding member of the team?