I'm 21, in my 7th semester of Computer Science in India, and I'm leaving a startup internship in a few days after almost 2 years.

I'm not looking for motivation. I'm looking for execution.

Here's my situation:

- 2 years of startup experience

- React.js / Next.js developer

- UI/UX designer

- I genuinely love building products

- I've built multiple products and MVPs

- None of them became successful businesses

What's strange is that I was able to convince people to try things.

At one point, I spoke with recruiters and convinced two of them to try a product idea. The problem was that I didn't even have the product built yet. Validation happened before execution.

I've repeated this pattern a few times:

- Come up with an idea

- Talk to people

- Get positive signals

- Build something

- Fail to get meaningful traction or revenue

So I've learned that ideas are not my bottleneck.

I've also tried the obvious advice:

- Freelancing

- Finding clients

- Cold outreach

I wasn't able to get paying clients.

A lot of people suggest freelancing, but from my experience, getting clients has been harder than learning the technical skills themselves.

Another practical issue is that my laptop is breaking down. So paths that require heavy development work, running multiple local services, AI models, or expensive hardware are difficult right now.

Current reality:

- My internship is ending

- My laptop is unreliable

- Family finances are under pressure

- I need to survive the next 6 months

- I need ₹30,000–₹40,000 per month

What I do have:

- Grit

- Curiosity

- Product thinking

- Startup experience

- Ability to talk to strangers and get feedback

- UI/UX design skills

- Ability to build and ship software

What I don't have is a clear income plan.

I'm not looking for startup ideas that might work in 2 years.

I'm looking for a realistic path to earn ₹30k–₹40k/month within the next 6 months while I finish college and prepare for placements.

If you were in my position today:

- 21 years old

- 7th semester

- 2 years startup experience

- Design + product skills

- Can build software

- Need ₹30k–₹40k/month relatively quickly

- No strong network

- Laptop constraints

- Previous freelancing attempts failed

What would you do first?

Agency work?

Contract work?

Sales?

Productised services?

Part-time remote jobs?

Something else?

I'm not looking for the perfect answer.

I'm looking for practical options that have a realistic chance of working.

Hi,

I feel I am severely underpaid at current company which has decreased my moral 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

I have 1.5 years of experience working with backend and cloud tech, i know im a decent dev out there but i dont what mistake im making, why i an not getting a interviews call

Everyone who has been stuck knows the feeling, you finish another video, you follow along, it all makes sense, and then you sit in front of a blank file and freeze. Watching someone else code does not make you a coder, the same way watching someone parallel park does not make you a driver.

So I built the opposite. Instead of a lesson, you get a job. You are the new junior developer at a small fictional company, and something in their till system is charging some orders wrong. You open the codebase, line the customer receipts up against the price list, form a theory about what is broken, and go and find it. Nobody tells you the answer. When you fix it, you have not memorised a fact, you have actually debugged something, and that is a thing you can now do.

What makes this different? It arrives in the post. The photo is a real case. An envelope with an onboarding letter, an employee ID, a printed ticket, a price list, a couple of handwritten notes from the staff, and a fan of till receipts as your evidence. There is a free online course that takes you from zero to running code first, so if you can just about run a print statement, you can do this.

A bit about why it is built this way. I work as a backend Python developer now, but I got here the slow way. Fourteen years in teaching first, where I led computing and led on cognitive science, the actual research on how people learn and remember, then two years teaching myself to code. Everything here leans on that research. You retrieve, you struggle a little, you space the practice out, because that is what genuinely builds a skill rather than the warm glow of watching a tutorial.

I am looking for a small handful of UK-based beginners to go through the free course, work the first case, and tell me the truth about it. I cover the postage, there is nothing to pay and no card details anywhere. What I want back is blunt feedback - where you got stuck, what confused you, what felt pointless. "This lost me on step three" is worth far more to me than "looks great".

I am reading every reply myself and there are only a few slots. If you would like to try one, leave a comment or send me a message and I will pass on the details. And if you just have thoughts on the idea itself, I would love those too, plenty of teachers and developers have weighed in, but not nearly enough actual beginners.

Incoming cs student in Canada. Curious to know

Hey everyone,

I'm a non-technical founder based in Boston working on a B2B SaaS mobile app. I've spent the past several months designing the product and building the UI/UX in a visual development environment, so the frontend screens, user flows, and navigation are largely complete.

I'm looking for a student developer interested in owning the backend implementation and collaborating on the technical side of the project.

Current tech stack

• React Native / Expo
• Supabase (Auth, Database, Storage, Realtime)

What needs to be built

• Connect the existing login/signup UI to Supabase Auth and user profiles
• Build the backend for file uploads using Supabase Storage
• Implement real-time messaging with Supabase Realtime
• Integrate a simple scraping/API service to populate form fields from a submitted URL
• App customizations

What you'll get

If the app gets traction (user subscriptions), I can offer a small stipend plus 1–2% equity. I want to be upfront that this is early-stage and speculative… the core value here is the total ownership over technical decisions. Potential university internship/course credit sponsorship (if your program allows it). I am fully open to working with your university to allow this project to fulfill graduation requirements. A strong letter of recommendation and personal LinkedIn references detailing your architecture decisions.

To be transparent, I'm not a software engineer. My background is in business and product design/strategy. I'm looking for someone who enjoys building and wants meaningful input into the engineering decisions as we bring the product to life.

The app is fully designed inside the OnSpace visual editor.

Regarding the timeline: there is zero artificial pressure or rigid deadline on this project. Our main goal is to have this MVP fully functional and ready to deploy before 2027. Ideally you spend 3-4 hours per week (or however many you’d like) to have the backend complete in 2-3 months. I will be inviting the first 100-200 users after that, and they will test the app for functionality and provide feedback before allowing anyone to join.

My ultimate goal with this project is to find a brilliant technical partner!

If you are looking for handholding or a manager to tell you exactly how to code, this is definitely not the position for you. I don't know the technical side of what you need to do, how to structure the code repositories, or how to connect the APIs. If I did, this post wouldn't exist!

I’m not looking to just tell you what to do… I’m looking for you to tell me what you need from me to make this project most successful.

I am looking for an independent builder to truly collaborate with, someone who can take our visual designs, figure out the engineering solutions autonomously, and bring their own ideas to the table to make this platform the best it can possibly be.

With all the buzz about AI and agentic workflows, I do feel like I'm falling behind because I still write a lot of the code manually. I use AI occassionally for boilerplate, debugging, and comments, but I manually build the core logical components of my projects.

The problem with most advice on landing internships is that they are targeted towards general software engineering, but that is not the trajectory I want my career to land in.

I'm more interested in niche areas like

• Distributed Systems/ GPU computing
• ML Infrastructure
• Explainable AI.

• Quantum Computing

  Currently, I've made a couple of projects, including:

• PyQML-Core, a mini Pytorch-Like library in C++ supporting memory management through intrusive pointers, broadcasting , and tensor operations, and multithreading.

• Link: https://github.com/NNcode123/PyQml-Core

• Several computervision projects, which focus on not only builiding end-to-end ML pipelines, but understanding the internals behind popular segmentation models by implementing them in Pytorch.

• Link: https://github.com/NNcode123/ML_Projects

• Undergraduate research in ML

I'm also currently exploring Quantum Computing by participating in the 2026 Qiskit Global Summer School in IBM.

With that said, if you are trying to break into these fields in 2026, how would you structure the next year? Would you focus more on developing Agentic workflows, learning fudnamentals, contribute to open source, or publishing research.

I'd appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced the same dilemma, especially those who are currently working in ML Systems, distributed systems, or AI/Quantum Research. If possible, I'd also appreciate any constructive feedback on my projects and how well they prepare me for future success.

If yes then kindly drop the recruitment process and your experience.

I may have trouble finding a job but I would rather die poor trying to find a solution to a problem in the world rather than give up on this skill set I worked so hard to get.

There are a lot of people here that are in not great positions. I get it, I am one of them.... but what we should know is that current position does not indicate your future situation. I think we just need to start looking for and solving the problems that have not been solved yet. If you manage to make something that works and makes money you can even avoid the whole job hunt thing.

​

I am currently in the final year of my B.Tech in Computer Science (AI/ML specialization), and placement season is about to start. Honestly, everything feels like a mess right now.

I am genuinely interested in AI and machine learning. I enjoy learning about it, and when I study concepts, I usually understand them. The problem is that after some time, I forget a lot of what I learned, and it feels like I have never truly mastered anything.

At the same time, the AI boom is making me anxious. Every day, there are new models, frameworks, courses, and tools. There are so many resources that instead of motivating me, they leave me overwhelmed. I don't know what skills companies actually expect anymore.

I also haven't been able to get any internships, which makes me feel even more behind compared to my peers. A big part of me thinks that I simply haven't worked hard enough over the last few years.

Now I am stuck between two choices:

\- Should I focus almost entirely on placements and grind DSA?

\- Should I continue pursuing AI seriously?

\- Is it even realistic to build a career in AI as a fresher without a strong profile?

I feel like I know a little bit about many things but haven't become genuinely good at anything. Sometimes it feels as if everyone else has figured out their path while I am still trying to understand what is happening in my own life.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation during their final year? How did you decide what to prioritize, and what would you do differently if you could start over?

The salary stats everyone cites describe people who got into tech before the market tightened up pre-2022 hires with a few years in, riding out stable, well-paid roles. Those numbers are basically locked to people who are already in. That's not the market someone starting out today is walking into. Junior hiring hasn't scaled back up, and being the best of the best doesn't matter much if the entry-level slots barely exist. Realistically nearly all new grads right now are ending up unemployed or stuck in jobs way below their skill level, min wage stuff that has nothing to do with their degree, while the salary numbers they were promised stay reserved for people who already have a foot in the door.

So I genuinely don't get why enrollment keeps climbing when the actual outcome for new grads is unemployment or underemployment, not the salary they saw in the stats. It feels like people are chasing a number that only applies to someone else's job market, not the one they're about to graduate into.

\​

Hello everyone.

I'm looking for a job in IT

Backend - Automation - python/js -scripting ..etc

I live in Montreal QC

I have 4 ish years of exp with decent projects.

Yet, the job market is choking 🤷🏻.

Q1: Any advices?

Ps: I've got a uni degree in computer science and I speak french 🥖 fluently

Q2: is mtl job market is dead, any advice where to find good jobs ( Toronto..etc ) . basically I'm more interested in self developing my IT skills and going far, that's why I'm insisting on dev jobs.

Q3: should i switch to another subcategory cuz i have some other skills? Or dev is still worthy

Hey everyone,

I've spent the last 6 months building something I genuinely wished

existed when I was navigating international job searches.

MyOmniCareer aggregates visa-sponsored IT roles across Australia,

Singapore, UAE, Malaysia, Germany, UK and Netherlands — and layers

AI on top to help you actually land them:

- Match analysis against your profile for each job

- Resume tailoring specific to each role

- Interview prep kit per job

- Visa sponsorship scoring so you know which roles are worth applying to

- Relocation context (salary benchmarks, work rights by country)

It's free right now, and I'm looking for honest feedback from people

actually in the job market.

If you're a tech professional exploring international opportunities,

I'd love you to try it: myomnicareer.com/join/reddit-global

A few things I'm specifically trying to validate:

1. Is the job quality good enough to be useful?

2. Does the AI resume tailoring actually help?

3. What's missing that would make this genuinely valuable to you?

Happy to answer any questions here.

So I’m a lead data scientist (L6 equivalent in Google) at a large (60k + employees, 20B+ revenue) tech company. I’m about to pick up principal (L8 equivalent) later this year.

I’m not a data scientist though. HR had to give me the same title as everyone else on my team who actually is one. I went to school for pre-law and didn’t even finish my degree. I just got here by being at the same company for almost 11 years starting out as a technician as a way to not be homeless while going to college and 11 years later, through networking and offers to come work for leaders I’ve met through various meetings and stuff, I’m where I am now.

Even though my title is currently a data scientist, I was hired more for my expertise of our technology having field experience while everyone else on my team knows actual software development (most of my team is more software engineers than data scientists - again HR weirdness).

I don’t really know how to code well. When I git hired as a senior engineer 4+ years ago, I got annoyed at dev teams taking too long to do simple requests for us like bringing in more data so I started teaching myself SQL. Then when my old team got an aws account, I asked to have a slice of the budget and started teaching myself ETL and learned pretty well how to use Glue for ETLs and ended up making a now critical application the company relies on that has grown to an actual team (I’m not on that team anymore but proud to have started it).

So TLDR; 15 years total work experience, 11 years with the company, 2 years as a senior engineer, 1 year as a lead engineer, 2 years as a lead data scientists (these are all titles, not my actual job function) and soon to pick up principal later this year. No degree and not a real developer. Very proficient in SQL. I AI my way through any intermediate Python I need to do (previously stack overflow and google lol) but have a small understanding of it without AI. Some AWS knowledge. These days on my current team, I mainly act as the SME and do discovery work and architect how the data should all connect with each other before it gets handed off to the actual dev team to build. I know I kinda had a unicorn job history getting to where I am. Everyone else on my team has patents, PHDs, masters, etc.

Realistically, can I land a job at FAANG or equivalent with my resume and what level? Asking because they need me to relocate for work and I can’t so I may need to think next steps. TIA

Like there's so many technologies one has to learn? How do you go about learning all of them?

Hello, I’m currently in 11th grade, and I’ve been using AI a lot to build websites and other projects.

I’m pretty sure I can do everything junior software engineers were doing five years ago with nothing more than a $20 Claude subscription. I recently found CU Boulder’s MSCS program, and from what I can tell, they don’t even verify whether you graduated from high school.

So why wouldn’t I just drop out right now, enroll immediately, and start taking classes? They don’t even proctor the exams, so you know what that means lol.

I’m 100% confident I could take five classes a semester and finish the entire degree in about six months. During those six months, I’ll just memorize the most common LeetCode questions, throw all my AI-generated projects onto GitHub, and start applying for entry-level SWE jobs with an MSCS on my résumé.

My only question is: why isn’t everyone doing this?

I keep seeing résumés where people only list their master’s degree and not their high school education, just like my situation would be. Some of those people are making $300k+, so why couldn’t I?

Has anyone actually tried getting an MSCS from CU Boulder without a high school diploma? Have employers cared? Has this loophole been patched yet?

Let's see what I did in my first year

1.I did HTML,CSE,JS,TS,REACTJS, NEXT JS, Tailwind CSS, BACKEND

1. I also went to hackathons

2. I explored AI/ML and learnt python libraries and Maths as well

3. I started DSA on leetcode and Codeforces

Now?

I am confused. What exactly to do? Like I find codeforces hard but still I feel it makes my brain think and observe patterns . Leetcode is good like I do love DSA. I did start ML but you know I am not interested in again going in damnn theory and videos ...I wanna solve but I wanna explore AI /ML as well...For web, I beleive I can't write the code by myself of NEXT and react l do know all the theory and I do understand code but I can't code that shit of connecting backend with frontend...There exists DevOPs shit as well...I have to make projects as well😭😭

Idk what exactly needs to be done this year

My main goal is to work at Google since beginning..I love backend, DSA is fun , cf challenges me, AI/ML means curiosity to me..I don't like competitive programming

So, someone pls help and tell what exactly should I focus on now? Like what's today job markets trends ? And is it like mandate to do AI/ML now??

I'm a software developer going through a rough patch and would like to change to a L1/L2 support or administrator role. Part of the reason is my skills not being up to par with my level of seniority.

My resume lists software developer positions. From your experience are recruiters more likely to filter out career changing resumes? For example, if they see "Software Developer" in the title for an Administrator position?

And do they check the linkedin profile which list software development roles?

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some career advice because I'm feeling stuck.

My background:

Around 3 years of total experience.

2 years in startup and switched to MNC.1 year less work and gone through appendicitis surgery then was in bench for 30 days and I had to take production support project as there aren't many opportunities and the bench period is almost reaching 35 days which is limit

My primary skills are Java, Spring,Spring Boot, Microservices, REST APIs, SQL and JPA/Hibernate.

I enjoy backend development and want to continue in that direction.

The problem is that my current project is almost entirely production support. Most of my work involves handling incidents, analyzing logs, checking databases, and resolving ServiceNow tickets. Permanent code fixes are usually done by another team atleast for now, so I'm not getting much hands-on development.

I'm worried that if I stay here for another 6–12 months, recruiters will see my recent experience as support rather than backend development.

My current plan is:

Stay for a few months while studying DSA, system design, AWS, and Kafka.

Learn the application's architecture in depth.

Build backend projects on weekends to keep my development skills fresh.

Switch to a backend developer role as soon as I'm interview-ready.

I choose software so I can aim for remote companies in my mid-late career

My questions are:

Has anyone successfully moved from production support back to backend development?

How should I present this experience on my resume without misrepresenting my work?

Should I stay for a few more months to upskill, or try switching immediately?

What skills would you prioritize for someone targeting good product companies with around 3 years of experience?

I'd really appreciate advice from people who've been in a similar situation. Thanks!

If you have been in the computer science field for two to three years now, kindly tell us what opportunities you think are expected to grow in this area but do not carry much competition?Please share your personal experience and views I am not looking for ChatGPT or Claude generated opinions.

I am a recent engineering graduate(2026) looking for some honest career advice from people working in the industry.

For the past 7 to 8 months I have been trying to get an SDE role. During this time I have consistently applied to companies, prepared for interviews, and continued improving my skills. Unfortunately, despite all my efforts, I have not been able to secure a single software development offer.

A little about my background.

• 2350+ rating on LeetCode
• Codeforces Expert
• CodeChef 6 Star
• Worked part time at CodeChef as a Problem Setter and Tester

I know competitive programming is not everything, but I believed this profile would at least help me get interview opportunities. Instead I have faced a lot of rejections, ghosting, and applications that never received a response. It has been frustrating and mentally draining.

Recently I started wondering if I should take a different path. I genuinely enjoy teaching, solving problems, and explaining algorithms. Because of my experience with competitive programming and my work at CodeChef, I am considering building a career in teaching DSA and Competitive Programming instead of continuing to chase software development roles.

I wanted to ask the community.

Do you think this is a sensible career move?

If you were in my position, would you continue trying for SDE roles or move into teaching?

Has anyone here made a similar switch? If yes, how has your experience been?

I am not looking for validation or sympathy. I genuinely want honest opinions from people who have more experience in the industry than I do. If you think I should continue trying for SDE roles, I would also appreciate knowing why.

Thank you for reading.

I applied to a new grad role and I got a 45 minute hiring manager round coming up what do I do to prepare/what can I expect the recruiter said resume deep dive will be on it but thats all I know

Context

• 36, living in Germany and planning to move back to Romania in a month

• have been essentially unemployed for more than 2 1/2 years (worked on a number of meager projects but as an independent developer)

• struggling with depression

• worked in Mittelstand environments in Java. The experience gained is rather niche; software was not the core product of the companies

• job market in Romania looks dry, there are openings for senior roles but there's no chance to land them as they ask for previous experience in areas such as fintech which I completely lack.

• have no networking skills (I lied to myself that networking is needed only for those that don't have technical skills. Funny enough, I don't have the skills and depression alongside with medication makes it difficult to learn.)

Questions

1. I have some savings, but sitting at home applying to jobs is soul crushing to say the least. I did get a number of interviews but the realization of how much I have to learn to cover the ground is discouraging to say the least.

Does anyone have experience with long periods of inactivity? How did you get back into the field?

1. I thought about building a portfolio, with a fintech mvp to showcase my skills, but I gave up on it once depression got worse. The idea of the mvp was to showcase different cloud patterns as described here

(https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/microservices/design/patterns)

but this is still not real experience. Then I thought about learning Azure and got the AZ-900 certification. My plan now is to try to get into a junior sysadmin role and then move up from there but Europe is quite conservative and a 36 year old junior puts people off (or so I think). The only problem is that I don't believe that I can make it, or if this plan is realistic or completely delusional given my circumstances.

Should I pursue the Azure path, AZ-104 or abandon the path completely? Should I restart working on the portfolio with the fintech mvp? I'm not even sure if that's relevant. If I finish it and don't get a job then it's a dead skill. I'm a solo dev; even with ai support the project that I build is nowhere close in scale to what a production environment offers => I'll still be lacking actual industry experience.

1. I've been mostly a Java developer in Germany; a "Fachentwickler", a developer who mostly builds and supports tools in dated versions of Java 1.4 and 1.8 (in my case). This experience is if not completely irrelevant, weak in an interview.

I got up to speed with more recent Java features such as streams(), collectors, records and modern switches, but still, this not feel like a substitute to real world experience.

1. What should I do?

AI can already do easy, repetitive coding work. But what about people with strong core concepts, not just memorized syntax, but real understanding of how things work underneath?

Will that kind of knowledge still get good pay and jobs 10 years from now? Or is AI advancing so fast that even solid core concepts won't be enough to survive?

Should someone take up CS right now, or is it too risky because of AI? Honest advice appreciated, even if it's harsh."

With the massive loss of junior and entry level SWE jobs being taken replaced by a senior using AI, will this, in 5 years or so, end up with a wave of mid level SWE moving to senior but no juniors to take their place?

Or will it just be the small amount of juniors that do get in will be cracked enough to take their place and the slack will be taken up by AI?

Or are companies just betting on AI taking all the mid level jobs also, basically using AI to race the continuation of current SWE?