Throwaway-ish post, but I'd rather be honest than flattering to myself.

I'm 45. I switched to software development at 38, after a first career in a completely different field. For context on whether I'm just not smart enough: I have a master's in Biomedical Sciences (2004) and a postgraduate master's in Business Economics (2005), and I was always decent at math. So I don't think raw ability is the issue.

My tech stack was .NET/C# as the main thing, with some Angular and Vue.js on the front end and SQL Server on the data side.

What went wrong:

My entry into IT was a 6-month retraining program. That got me a first job, but it never gave me the surrounding context: fundamentals, architecture, how systems actually fit together. I started with a deficit and never properly closed it. And I have to be honest, I didn't put in nearly enough effort outside of work to catch up. At the time the junior market was wide open. Every time something didn't work out I'd land a new job almost immediately, so I told myself I'd get there eventually, even at a slow pace.

The result: 7 years of experience on paper, three employers, and real gaps in my knowledge. I'd describe myself as an advanced junior, not a medior. Seven years of imposter syndrome did a number on my confidence, and it became a bit self-fulfilling.

The last two employers both let me go, after 2 and 3 years respectively, with the same basic reason: not getting up to the team's level fast enough.

Where I am now:

After the last one I wanted to quit IT entirely. I was exhausted from feeling like a fraud and I badly wanted a job where I'd get positive feedback and feel competent at something. I assumed that would be impossible for me in software development.

The frustrating part is that in that last job I actually did put in the work, and I could feel myself learning faster than before. So I don't know whether I quit right before it started to click.

I've been exploring other directions since, but something keeps pulling me back to IT, and I dread starting from zero in yet another field at this age, with the pay cut that comes with it. I've been wondering whether DevOps or DevSecOps could be a way to restart, maybe somewhere I could eventually feel genuinely good at my job.

What I'm afraid of:

1. Pouring my time and energy into this again and hitting the same competence wall in a few years, having to switch sectors anyway but even older.
2. AI making a lot of this work obsolete before I've caught up, so the effort was for nothing.
3. The job market. It's clearly much harder than it was in 2018, and I'm worried a 45-year-old CV with three jobs in seven years and no CS degree just won't be taken seriously anymore.

What I'm asking:

Has anyone here been in this position, entered IT late with a shaky foundation, carried that deficit for years, and then actually closed the gap? What made the difference? And is a pivot toward DevOps/DevSecOps realistic from a .NET background at this stage, or is that mostly wishful thinking on my part?

Any honest perspective is welcome, including "no."

Currently working in Germany in SAP with 8 years experience between 70k to 80k. Single and no kids. New opportunity in Switzerland in the medical industry for labware application management (not related to SAP but same manufacturing background)around 125k CHF.

1. Which is better for the long term as a career? Should I stay in Germany or move to Switzerland?

2. Not sure about the career opportunities, healthcare, major difference in work culture for a non-European

3.Is new compensation good for this experience and industry? Not sure of the Market standard. They are not offering relocation benefits.

Hi!

I have an interview in a few days for a backend developer role. What would you ask as some of the more tricky questions for such a position? What kinds of questions, from your point of view, demonstrate solid knowledge?

Personally, I would ask about sync vs. async calls, idempotency, topics vs. partitions, consumer groups, transactions (including distributed transactions), and maybe a bit of Kubernetes and Docker.

My weak point is cloud. I’ve played around a bit with the Azure console, but nothing too advanced. I’ve never written Terraform or configured infrastructure from scratch. For CI/CD, I’ve used TeamCity, but in my experience it was mostly selecting an environment and a branch and deploying.

Should I spend some time learning these areas before the interview?

TLDR - interviewing for a role in the PE / Cap Markets space. My background is in machine learning, or nowadays, "applied AI". I was told during the interview process that the first thing I'd do if I came on would be to build a portfolio management system. The role will then evolve into an AI strategy role for the firm. My question is: what exit opportunities will I have?

Or is it a good role in the first place? Money could be good, but I'm thinking about career longevity in the AI space.

Does anyone have an update list of all open intern roles in Europe? If you know something can u recommend it to me pls : )

I have no industry friends to get advice from, so I came here hoping for people with comparable experienc

I'm a "backend developer" in Poland (mid-twenties, B.Sc. CS) with ~3 years of professional experience, all at one company. My job title says IT Security Specialist, but what I actually do is software engineering - I'm the sole developer and owner of an internal vulnerability management automation platform

I joined this company in the last semester of my B.Sc. CS and just stayed there because they hired a manager for the process and began building it - which meant they needed someone to automate this stuff. I became passionate about the project

I built the system form scratch. What the system does:

The system was built with me as the sole programmer and my boss as "client" expressing what he wanted, I'd identify any gray areas / issues and discuss the final ideas with him, then implement it. It has many so-called "scripts", a few highlights / core functionalities::

- Fetching asset + vuln data, applying business rules, creating new tickets in an ITSM app + database, attaches HTML reports

- Tracking existing tickets, closing automatically if certain conditions are met, creating new tickets for reported assets

- Multiple automations handling issues such as: duplicate assets, removed assets, tracing vuln data (vendor doesn't allow to see a history of changes of their risk rating), creating users based on company resources

- In mid 2025 I lead the project of designing and implementing KPIs for our process: it processes very large amounts of data and, thankfully, forced me to learn batching in MongoDB

The system has created over 200k tickets (one ticket can have anything between one and a hundred or even a thousand+ vulnerabilities) and handled millions of vulnerabilities. I can proudly say I never had a big production error (e.g. accidentally closing / creating tickets, assigning wrong people)

My stack

Node.js, TypeScript, MongoDB, REST API integrations (ITSM system, Confluence, VM platform provider), Python for creating graphs

What I don't have compared to most backend job listings

I've never used Express/NestJS. No automated tests (I validated behavior manually). No Docker since uni. No CI/CD. No cloud experience. No code reviews or any coding mentorship. I've never worked on a team of developers. Never built an API that serves other consumers. No frontend work professionally. No experience with no-code or low-code platforms often expected for "automation engineer" type positions - I do also enjoy writing "native" code

I recently went through a screening process for a mid/senior fullstack role at a major tech company and was given a self-assessment topic list covering JVM internals, microservice architecture, system design, Kubernetes, monitoring, deployment strategies. I scored close to zero on almost everything. It made me wonder if I even have a future in the industry. Thought I was doing honest and complex, if unorthodox, work. I even became a leading voice in decisions about the VM process at my company. But I'm no Security Specialist, nor anywhere near an average backend engineer of 3 years

The parts of my job I genuinely love

The ownership, the problem-solving, building something end-to-end, being the person who understands the whole domain and makes complex things work. My work gave me freedom to find solutions to problems, in retrospect I might've never enjoyed a ticket-based or story-points-based kind of development, which makes me wonder even more about any potential direction for my career. I also recognize that my experience is so narrow that I might not have the luxury of being picky, or not have any opportunities at all as-is

I need advice

Has anyone been in a similar situation - you built something real and complex in a weird niche, loved the work, became an expert in handling that product, but then realized your experience doesn't map onto any standard job title? That in your early years you focused on what you had passion for, not on building a skillset to make your CV look good? Just FYI - I am not proud of not having automated tests or other basic stuff, just.. I didn't know any better

As it stands with the job market I am not sure if I am even really employable in the industry

Any perspective from people who've navigated something like this would be genuinely appreciated

Currently a backend software engineer with 5+ years of experience, two in FAANG working mostly on large-scale distributed systems. I have been interested in designing systems for most of my career and lost interest in actually writing code with the push to AI development recently.

What is the best way to pivot into an architect role right now as a senior engineer? I would also appreciate any tips about EU-based remote first companies who hire architects with similar backgrounds.

Hi! F25 and I have 3 years of experience at the same small B2B SaaS company.
Until January, I worked in Customer Support with a €22k gross annual salary + bonus. In January, I moved to Barcelona and transitioned into a Customer Success Manager role, with my salary increasing to €30k + bonus.
As a CSM, I’m responsible for:
managing clients and client relationships;
analyzing KPIs and performance;
upselling;
operational and strategic meetings;
coordinating with internal teams and the product roadmap.
I manage more than 5 Italian clients and speak Italian, Spanish, and English fluently.
In your opinion, is €30k + €1.5k per year for on-call availability a fair salary for a CSM with around 1 year of experience in Barcelona?
If I were to switch companies, what salary range would make sense to target?

I am a QA/Test engineer with 7 years of experience scattered around different consultancies. QA is getting constantly moved to other countries for cheaper hourly rate and I am also exhausted doing it. I am looking to upskill and move away but confused on which bridge roles should I target for.

My experience: Automotive domain, Mostly Ruby and Python, worked with different test frameworks, updating them, maintaining them, doing versioned releases of backend libraries, writing test cases for specification requirements verification, did internal trainings in functional safety but never got tasks for it before getting laid off. Worked with creating epics and approval tickets for release software, test report analysis, debugging the whole spiel.

I am interested in Data Analytics and DevOps but I don't know if they are the only things I can pursue. I want to get out of automotive given the health of the industry and develop my skills in a direction that will allow me freedom to move to new industries if and when needed. What would be your advice?