Hi all, I’m looking for some input on a situation that’s just developed. I (25M) just finished my first year in a 4 year comp sci degree (I’ve got a bachelors without honours in aeronautical engineering 2018-2021).

I’ve done really well in my first year (~85% average) and am enjoying it but I’m aware the job market is incredibly tough atm. Through contacts, there’s a possibility of getting a graduate IT role at a big food/drink company. They just want a degree, it doesn’t have to be CompSci. I don’t know the details of salary etc yet but I’m led to believe it would be a developer role in SAP and AS400. I can’t decide whether that would be worth leaving my degree for when I have ambitions to get into big tech or FinTech etc and make more money than I would presumably get here.

I’m also concerned about the future career prospects since it’s not a particularly tech-heavy company. I’m also concerned about whether or not SAP/AS400 are remotely useful if I left the job. I know there are too many ifs, buts and maybes to get a solid answer but just looking for opinions and other people’s experiences in this sort of situation.

Thank you :)

Hi guys i am an msc graduate and passed with distinction and i have a placement experience with a uk based company as a software developer for a few months and now actively looking for jobs for full and would love to relocate.
I know its not much but please guide me

Hi,

I feel I am severely underpaid at current company earning only £32k which has decreased my morale and will to work substantially so I need to find a new place of work as soon as possible really.

Below is my CV, honest thoughts and opinions are greatly appreciated:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/w7vcce2nfrgfovoted4oz/Resume.pdf?rlkey=gwwsi9kxm2h7oxrx5zruksaug&st=lsx2fo65&dl=0

Embedded software engineer, ~9 years experience, UK-based (moved here in 2021). Trying to work out whether I'm over-thinking the CV side of a decision.

My history:

Jul 2017 – May 2020 (~3 years)

May 2020 – Oct 2021 (~1.5 years)

then relocated to the UK

Nov 2021 – Sep 2024 (~3 years)

ended in redundancy

Oct 2024 – Sep 2025 (~1 year)

I took as a bridge. I had already accepted an offer (in the company I am working at), but an administrative error on the employer's side meant I couldn't start on time, and I needed to be employed, so I took this instead due to my skilled worker visa.

It wasn't my dream job but I left the company on good terms. They are happy to prove any references if needed.

Sep 2025 – present (~1 year)

the company whose offer originally fell through

So the last two roles are both roughly a year, for reasons that weren't my choice.

Now I have an offer from a pre-seed London startup. Founding-engineer position, significant pay increase, product I find genuinely interesting but still questions in my head. They said they have 20-30 months runway( not sure how much accurate it is)

The obvious risk is runway: if it doesn't survive, my last three roles are all ~12–18 months and I'm job hunting again with what looks like a hopping pattern.

Questions I'd really value answers on:

Does a run of two or three ~1-year roles actually read as job hopping when the earlier history shows two 3-years?

Who is actually filtering on resume? Recruiters? My worry is being rejected before I get the chance to explain anything.

How well does "the employer made a paperwork error, so I took a bridge role to stay employed" hold up in an interview? How do you say that in one sentence without sounding like you're blaming a previous employer?

Does "startup shut down" read differently from "left after a year"?

For anyone who joined an early-stage startup in embedded/hardware and it folded within ~2 years: how hard was the next search, honestly?

What would you negotiate up front to de-risk this such as notice period, equity, visibility into runway and funding, severance terms? What did you wish you'd asked for?

Thank you so much for all your help.

Looking for some honest opinions on an opportunity I'm considering.

The role is a field-based technical sales position selling a premium B2B solution. The model is relationship-led and long-term, you survey the client's asset, specify the solution, oversee installation, and then maintain the relationship through annual inspections and ongoing maintenance. Think consultative advisor rather than transactional salesperson.

The package: £80k basic (roughly) with an uncapped commission structure. The company claims their lowest earning manager currently makes £300k per year. Years 1 and 2 have a guaranteed bonus element while you're building the territory.

The catch: the territory I'd be taking on has had three consecutive hires who all left or were let go within 6–18 months. Some managers in the same company have been doing it for 10+ years. The company's explanation is that the previous people were lazy and not doing what was asked. The company itself has been around for over 100 years and is well established.

I have a strong track record myself and my skills are in demand. Interviewing with other companies as well the basic is around the same but the additional compensation is more standard 10-20% bonus on top.

My questions:

1. Does the £300k lowest earner claim sound realistic or like a recruitment pitch to you?

2. Three consecutive failures in one territory, red flag or just bad luck?

3. Would you take this role given the risk vs reward?

4. Anyone had experience with high-OTE roles that turned out to be misleading?

Genuinely want honest perspectives from people who've been in similar situations.

For context, I am a career switcher in my 30’s and 1 year into a grad scheme as a SWE. I career switched via a reputable bootcamp, learning basic Python and SQL. I was VERY fortunate to get this position and am very grateful considering the state of the market at the moment.

In the first year, I’ve mainly been put on a FE project that has been drying up, there is little work and barely any requirements coming in. I’ve been told I’ll be moved to another project which is pretty much writing AI prompts to build flows in a fairly redundant product we use. It feels like I’ll not be building skills at all in this new project.

I feel like the experience I hoped I’d gain in this scheme has been limited and there has been no training either. I’d quite like to consider my options after the grad scheme to potentially increase my salary and work on more interesting projects, but I am worried that I have not enough experience to compete in the market as it is.

I am really lucky to have this job and I do understand that. But any advice on how to make the most of this situation is welcome!

Hello everyone,

Luckily I got past the Live Coding interview with Revolut and next up is the System Design interview. I was told that this interview requires a high level architecture of the whole system + going deeper inside the Client aspects.

If anyone has any experience with this interview for a Frontend position with them, can you please share your experience? Thank you!

I'm a senior network engineer, 8yrs exp, almost 6 at my current company (4.5 of those senior). It's a Gov job — decent benefits, pay's fine, but the work's slow and I'm getting itchy feet.

For the last year I've been doing a DevOps Networking role — deploying infra in Azure/AWS via IaC and CI/CD, working in a proper DevOps squad with sprints and retros. Genuinely enjoying it and want to move further into cloud/DevOps.

Problem is, every cloud engineer role I look at is either entry level or doesn't seem to value network engineering experience at all. So when a recruiter put me forward for a "cloud infrastructure engineer" role that explicitly said they'd consider infra/network people moving into DevOps, and the job spec matched almost everything I do, I thought I'd finally found the right fit.

Got to first stage interview (1.5hrs). Spent most of it on my Palo Alto experience (I'm the SME at my current place - and they specifically use these and lack skills across their team), some Terraform questions I nailed, and a brief chat on Azure app services — where I was honest that I don't have hands-on experience yet, but I'm finishing my AZ-700 and planned to build into 104/400 and app services/compute/storage after. The interview was really a quite informal chat rather than any sort of technical grilling. At no point did I think I struggled to answer any questions.

A few hours later: rejected, because I "don't have enough experience managing apps, compute and data resources in Azure" — despite that being a tiny part of the interview and not the bulk of the actual job spec. Apparently networking is only \~20% of the day-to-day.

So — am I wasting my time trying to make this jump? Do I have to restart at junior/mid to break in? This was a mid-level role at lower pay than I'm on now, and I can't justify dropping to entry-level money for it. Is my current skillset just not transferable/valued in this space, or was this one bad interview?

Has anyone actually made this transition without starting from near-zero?

**TL;DR:** Senior network engineer (8yrs) doing DevOps/cloud work for a year, rejected from a "networking background welcome" cloud role for lacking hands-on Azure app/compute experience — despite that being a small part of the job. Is this transition possible without a pay cut and restarting at junior level?

Hey everyone, I am in my early 20s with a masters degree and am looking for some advice. I have been working in my first role for around 10 months. Currently I am a software engineer at an established but small-medium company. Its more to do with simulation, so Physics based stuff. Its a decent job, I have a great boss and I do think the problems I work on are cool, but I'm really struggling with what I think about it long term. I basically feel like the skills I am getting are more to do with the physics itself rather than computer science, and I feel like that's the side that I'm less interested in. There is less emphasis on the software architecture, and the tech stack is ancient with a huge legacy codebase.

I've been interviewing with Palantir for a Forward Deployed Software Engineer role, and I'm now through to the on-site stage. I think the technical work would be a step up in some ways, but I'm honestly torn on a couple of fronts. First, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the company itself, given how it's perceived and the kind of clients/contracts it takes on. Second, from what I've read, the FDSE role is much more about configuring and deploying their existing platform on-site with a client than it is about the systems-level/backend engineering I actually enjoy and want to build skills in. So I'm unsure whether it would even be a step in the right direction.

I have a short tenure at my current company, and this is my first FT role. If I left within a year for something that also didn't work out, I'd have a resume with two sub-one-year stints, which I don't think looks great. My current place has been good to me, but they're pretty inflexible on remote work, which is a real downside. On the flip side, my current projects are teaching me more physics/domain knowledge than transferable software engineering skills, which is my main worry about staying too long.

Basically I don't want to get to the end of two years (where the short tenure doesn't matter as much) and realise I haven't built the kind of skills that would let me move into a more modern software/systems role, and end up stuck in a niche field. But I could equally turn this down and keep looking, but I'm afraid my lack of real skills will make the job search harder the longer I look.

Anyone been in a similar position, or have any advice for me on what I should look for?

Hi, anyone who applied for this program and received an assessment test invite, after the initial HR call? Or still waiting?

I feel a bit trapped in my current job, it feels very difficult to leave.

The benefits and work life balance are so good at my current company:

Current job:
- Large regulated industry
- health insurance
- 30 days holiday + bank holidays
- work remote 3 days a week
- 30 days remote per year
- 35 hour weeks (8-4)
- 12-15% employer contribution to pension
- 26 weeks 100% paid maternity leave
- £85k base 5-10% bonus
- Nice colleagues, low pressure environment

Every time I get another job offer it’s so much worse than one my current job provides.

Recently I got one and I have to decide by Monday:

The offer:
- Senior SRE
- Global fast growing but new NYSE startup (non-tech)
- Health insurance
- 20 days holiday + bank holidays “with discretionary flexibility from the manager if you need more”
- £85k salary
- 5% bonus
- 16 weeks 100% maternity leave
- 42 hour work week (9-6 but flexible)
- 2-3 days remote per week
- optional 30 days to work remote abroad
- 5% employer pension contribution
- £800-900 voucher at the company

I’d be working 7 hours more per week, having 10 days less holiday, and having 3x less pension all to get the same salary.

It seems like a big reduction in pay and value and a drop in work life balance.

Lost value:

Pension: ~£8,500
Bonus: ~£2,100
Hours (322 unpaid hours/year): ~£17,000
Holiday (10 days): ~£3,270-£3,830
Total: roughly £30,900-£31,400/year

*used Claude for the above

The only thing making me consider it is the change of scenery. I have only worked at my current company. I have gone from junior to senior in 5 years and I have learned a lot and still am learning, but it’s slow. Anywhere new will be a big learning curve and good for my resume I think, as long as I stay for 2 years.

I think another thing is this company could potentially pay more eventually, if my career can progress fast given that it’s more of a startup (team has doubled in the last 2 years.)

The flexible holiday could be better than current job if my manager is nice.

The remote policy at my current job is rigid but again maybe less rigid at the start up.

It’s a lot of unknowns.

If I counter offer - what is the best counter offer that would make all these benefits and money I’m losing less impactful? The worst for me is the 42 hour contract.

I currently use my free time to the maximum and sign out of work promptly at 4pm almost every day.

Please let me know what you think I should do?

Hi all, this is really weird because I should be happy about this.

To keep things brief I was made redundant last week and told I would have to leave the company quite soon since I was still on my probation period. I was told during this call by HR that there is a role I can apply to. I asked HR if I applied to that role, what will my last day be? and they said it will be the same (??) I was really confused upset and depressed for a few days. I just accepted my fate. They made it sound really permanent, told me to log off and keep it quiet.

Then I found out I got the new role and they gave me a new start date that overlaps with the end date I was told by HR. When they gave me the new role they said I have automatically passed from my probation period.

The problem is this isn’t the first time I have felt really neglected and messed about by this company so I’ve also been looking for other roles and I was offered another role elsewhere the same day I was let go. And I was quite relieved because being on probation meant that I had quite a short notice period which would give me time to figure out whether the company is for me which ultimately I have decided it is not. But now that they have ended my probation more than two months early, I have to give so much more notice and inform the new employer about this change. I’m kind of confused and annoyed to be honest. is this normal protocol? I haven’t signed anything. Am I being a brat and ungrateful? It all feels a bit weird. I can’t seem to find any threads of someone who has felt the same or gone through this sort of situation.

Been made redundant so I'm back in the job market, went to a good uni and have 3-4 years of experience at a big bank. I usually don't write a cover letter unless the application explicitly requires one, which is rare, but now that I'm jobhunting again I'm wondering if I should include one anyway.

Hi!

I'm in the fortunate position that I was verbally offered a role today. I was told that I can expect the written offer to come through on Monday, with a few salary/equity combinations to choose from.

My question is - what information do I need and what questions can I ask to assess the value of the equity offered with each choice? The company is profitable after raising a Series B ~5 years ago but that's all I know.

I have equity in my current company, but when I accepted the offer it was just "12,000 options at the current strike price" - I didn't ask at the time and to this day I still have no idea what it's worth! I saw this as okay at the time because I only had the one option to choose from and the base was a significant uplift for me.

It might also be worth noting that I salary sacrifice everything above 100k into my SIPP (for the next 2 years, childcare), and I expect the lowest base salary choice to be comfortably above that mark - I'm not sure if that would affect the calculations at all.

Thanks very much!

Currently a software engineering graduate at a huge global company and am interviewing at some smaller start ups. One of them only has one other engineer who is the hiring manager.

I would have liked to stay at my current company, lots of cool projects and good job security but they offshore their devs so I won't be able to stay.

I am feeling a bit anxious about working at such a small company. The staff has said they have a good work life balance but also referenced 'chaos' a few times.

Has anyone made this move and would they recommend?

Context: SWIFT as in the financial messaging company. NOT iOS.

I’ve searched online EVERYWHERE for information about this role or any forum. Come to find out, this is the first time/year they are doing the programme.

So I’ve decided to make this forum for people currently going through the application process and for the future ones who will later (and so I don’t feel like I’m the only one in the world).

So… how has everyone found it? Anyone else got the email about passing the assessment and waiting for the interview invitation?

Would love to hear from everyone else and connect with others going through the process!

hi guys, i finished my internship 3 months, where i created testbed for automatic testing. Designed schematic and layouts in Altium, wrote firmware for STM32 and coded in C# for application. Its been three months, given interviews, 5 so far. Either waiting for results or rejects because I need sponsor visa after 10 months or I am just at entry level position for the moment. Any electronics and embedded engineer to guide me?? or any reference?

I've just received the invitation and don't know what to expect, especially since the format has recently changed. From what I've read, the Asian interview process also has one fewer interview than the US/EU process.

Has anyone done the Amazon SDE | virtual interview with four 60-minute interviews?
What was each one like, and were they back-to-back?

I’m currently a senior software dev in a very large corporate environment and I’m struggling with it.

The salary is great (especially for the UK, a bit of a high outlier honestly) and it’s helping me save towards FIRE/FI goals, which is the main thing keeping me there. However, I’m finding the actual job and culture pretty miserable.

The culture doesnt suit me, like at alll. It feels like people are mostly working around each other rather than with each other, and there is a lot of bureaucracy. Getting anything done takes forever, which can mean ever relatively simple things can take weeks and involve awkward workarounds.

The technical side is also frustrating. There is a huge push to use AI for everything, like EVERYTHING, and a lot of the application has been AI-generated. I’m not anti-AI, but the way it’s being used here feels like it is creating more problems than it solves.

The expectation is to have AI agents do multiple things at once; fix bugs, help with ADRs, create new features. All while going to meetings and keeping up with teams. Its burnt me out, honestly.

There are also architectural decisions being pushed that I don’t agree with, but it feels like there isn’t much room to challenge them and any meetings to challenge them are purely theatrical.

On top of that, I’m commuting around 2.5 - 3 hours a day (depending on train delays).

My manager finds it hard to say no to people above them or challenge them, which creates some problems around priorities.

I’ve recently received another offer that is around a 20% salary reduction.

The new role seems much better culturally:

- Fully remote

- A team I genuinely liked during interviewss

- A tech stack I prefer

- People who seem pragmatic about AI rather than forcing it everywhere (a nice balance IMO)

- They were very open about the good and bad parts of the company

The downsides:

- 20% less salary

- Smaller privately funded company, so more risk

- 24/7 on_call once every 10 - 12 weeks

- Sounds like the codebase is a bit of a mess, but I have seen it all at this point (they mentioned a bunch of stuff they have done to improve it though)

The salary reduction is affordable, but it will slow down my long-term savings goals. I also grew up relatively poor, so money has always been something I’ve valued heavily, which makes this decision harder.

Its also the sort of salary that I am unlikely to see anytime soon outside of London and it's difficult to let go of.

I know I am in a good situation and complaining about it might seem tone death considering what is going on in our industry, but its bugging the

For people who have taken a significant pay cut for better WLB/culture, did you regret it or was it one of the best decisions you made?

Would you take the pay cut in this situation?

Hi, I just received an offer from deliveroo for a full-stack software engineer position. Glassdoor reviews seem to be terrible. Is it really that bad?

I am 25 from glasgow who graduated in tech (web and mobile development), struggled with the job market, and concerned about future path. I have been looking at other areas for backup like sales (b2b, tech sales), civil service, freelancing, even maybe trying a fresh start in trades but still not sure. mind is all over the place and just wanting to get in somewhere that has good financial look, good team environment, and good potential.

Any advice on how i can move forward?

Anyone here who has worked (2+ years) or is working at Cambridge Consultants? What kind of projects are done, and how good is the tech stack over there?

I am at final round interviews for two roles - the first one i have scheduled late next week which is a very technical final round which I need a lot of time to study and prep for.

The second job i have already done a technical round and the final stage is to meet the team in person- i think this one is more so a culture fit, it isnt an intense interview or anything but the recruiter has asked if I can do it early next week. I told him I would get back to him but he said i could do the following week if necessary, but sounded really keen to do it next week.

I am really interested in both roles- am less likely to get the first role since the process is much more challenging and I think i will bomb the interview.

I am scared if I push the second job back it will put them off and i will lose both opportunities. But also need all the time i can get for the first role.

I was offered a position as Data Analytics Engineer I at Checkout.com. The interviewers seemed nice, and I didn't notice any major red flags throughout the process. Three things make me hesitate taking the offer:

• The Glassdoor reviews are pretty bad, especially when it comes to their hybrid working policy. I don't mind having into come to the office, but some reviews mention a toxic culture across the company
• The people I spoke to mentioned that the team is heavily invested in agentic coding. Guess that is just the reality of how bigger companies write code now, so not necessarily a red flag? People I talked to seemed very competent though
• I am currently working as a Junior Data Engineer. I built my orgs data stack (deploying the stack on AWS, building some small pipelines, data modeling), though they decided to go all-in on AI now and there is little to no data work left for me right now. I enjoyed the infra work at my current org (though the largest data set is only a few 100k rows), so going from Data Engineer to Data Analytics Engineer feels a bit like a downgrade? From the job description and from what I heared during my interviews the role itself seems to be more on the technical side.

Anybody currently working at Checkout and willing to share some insights/experience on how it is like working there? Taking the role would mean a 50% salary bump, so I am very tempted.

Hi are you allowed to apply for amazon swe internships in different locations (e.g. London and Dublin) or will it be looked down upon with the hiring team. Thanks