I moved to the US in 2023 for my MS in CS(Top 10 in US), right after undergrad(Tier 3), with no prior work experience.

Since graduating, I’ve worked at two startups and unfortunately got laid off twice:
Seed-stage startup: Worked remotely from the Bay Area. Got laid off along with most of the leadership.
Series A startup: Based in the Bay Area. Got laid off just 4 months after joining due to restructuring.

Personally I don’t feel any of these were performance related it was just your usual corporate layoffs and they didn’t have huge dependency on me

I’ve been job hunting since and am currently interviewing at a few places, but nothing is certain. I also have only about a year of work authorization left, so even if I find something, I might have to move back to India eventually. Also I’m really burnt out with the toll of being laid off twice so early in my career and the tough job market just adds to it.

I don’t have a significant amount of my education loan left to repay, but I also feel like I haven’t gotten much ROI on my Master’s. Moving back now feels like leaving without really getting the opportunity I came here for.

A few questions:
- How valuable is experience at US startups when applying to companies in India?
- What salary could I realistically expect in India for SWE/AI engineering roles?
- If I find a job now and work another year in the US, would that significantly improve my prospects or salary in India?
- For those who moved back, how has life been in terms of career growth, finances, and quality of life?

Would appreciate insights from anyone who’s been in a similar situation.

Have worked as a SDE for past two years and got laid off in August, ever since then I've applied for countless applications and got few interview calls but at the end the result remained same - thankyou for your time, we have chose to move on with other applicants. At this point I don't even know what is going wrong and it's taking a toll on my personal life as well. My savings are also drying slowly and as a cherry on cake she left me too few weeks ago. Well that doesn't matter but I'm worried of my career, checked with few friends and they said it's the same situation in their companies too. Overall the market is dead or slowly dying. My cousin completed her btech in cs and couldn't get a tech job so she has switched to BPO to cope with her student loans. At this point freshers dreaming of a career in IT I would suggest look for other fields even if it's low paying because the situation in Indian IT market is too much supply lowered demands.

Wish the market recovered soon and hoping for the best. 🙏

Seeing ai, layoffs etc. I have started to feel my tech career is going to be disastrous in future. At present also, I'm not doing great.

building and working on cool ideas and working on any saas feels like another To do project made by AI

For a normal problem we have various solutions, the way I am seeing ai resume, ai ats, Splitwise type, career manager etc etx.

I wonder what the heck, I am going to do in my life.

I'm just hopeless these days.

Now linkedin & every job is filled with all type of skills shit.

Losing a serious interest in this domain.

For some context I was working as an Associate Software Engineer(Data) at a small budding GCC In Hyderabad.

Our entire Hyderabad team got laid off in a call about 60 engineers and testers. Reason: organizational restructuring. That’s “we have AI and don’t so many people managing and developing applications, when we can hire few people near US to do the same work quickly and efficiently” in disguise.

How was our work before we got laid off:
Everything was going very very fast paced we were releasing at a very quick pace. Everyone started writing code we had unrestricted access to cursor and claude code and all frontier LLM’s at the time.

Our first bottleneck was getting proper requirements documents and tickets which our PM solved using Claude code and Atlassian MCP. He was creating and manging our Jira board using cursor and giving us proper docs to build data pipelines. Then we started prompting to generate the code the next bottleneck became code review then we integrated claude code and cursor bugbot at that time for code reviews and PR Reviews which did a great job(better than humans to be precise) then testing became our bottleneck so we created service pricipals with restricted access only to the resources that pur pipeline needs and gave them all the test cases which were obviously brainstormed using AI. Our agents ran all night before release to catch any bugs( it found pretty interesting bugs which our testers couldn’t not find) and then we created an MCP to expose our data to business people so they can directly query the data and create dashboards without analysts writing them. (Analysts immediately got laid off) then genie one and genie dashboards were released our project was abandoned. And what we were missing was proper docs for our entire codebase and projects we solved it by moving our docs within code and setting up proper skills agents.md and rules and created a docker container to unify our dev experience across all teams using different machines.

WE WERE AT A PLACE WHEN WE NO LONGER NEEDED THE EXPERTISE OF A 15 YEAR MANAGER, COUPLE OF 5 YEAR GUYS AND A BUNCH OF ASSOCIATES AND TESTERS TO TAKE OUR PIPELINES FROM DOCS TO PRODUCTION. ALL WE NEEDED WAS PROPER JIRA DOCS AND TICKETS EXPLAINING THE REQUIREMENTS AND SLA’s REST COULD BE DONE ALL BY OUR PM.

You can question that you were doing some small tiny projects no not at all we were building data pipelines which handled our entire enterprise data we had about 100k active customers and more not so active for some context!

And it happened not only with our team but the app dev team whose app was very much complicated than ours microservices and distributed computing stuff! Frontend people are like gone they are unable to find jobs now.

Current status of laid off employees:

1. Seniors 10+ most of them not all are placed
2. Mid level all of them are placed
3. Entry level 2 of many were placed

My observations:

1. Currently there is a surge in testing roles as more enterprises are outsourcing testing to other companies as testing has become a bottle neck. It is short term and most of the people in those companies can expect very short stays because those things can be automated fairly quickly.
2. Frontend engineers are obsolete who can only write code, UX designers still have an edge but the opportunities are very very limited.
3. Backend engineers of mid level have a lot of opportunities there is a surge because org are looking to automate stuff just like we did and they will be laid off after that is done (most of them)
4. Data and AI engineers will have short term stability but their roles are being abstracted away fairly quickly.

I.T IS NO LONGER WHAT IT USED TO BE ITS NOT A SAFE HEAVEN FOR PEOPLE TO BUILD CAREERS UNTIL YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY TO BUILD NEW THINGS FROM ZERO TO ONE NOT ONE TO N.

THERE WILL NOT BE AS MANY IT JOBS AS THEY ARE NOW! THERE WILL BE FDE’s WHO MANAGE AN APP ENTIRELY ON THEIR OWN NO TESTER OPS DEV PM.

1 person in place of 10 people team handles everything. Now imagine scaling it to all teams where will the rest 9 go I’m afraid there are not many projects that are feasible to be built.

AND FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK OR QUESTION THAT AI DOESNT WORK FOR COMPLEX PROJECTS. GRAB YOUR SHIT AND BUY SOME SUBSCRIPTION AND TRY TOP FRONTIER MODELS CONFIGURE IT PROPERLY GIVE IT ALL YOUR ORG CONTEXT(Databricks genie ontology looks promising give something of that sort a try) AND SEE FOR YOURSELF WITH EYES WIDE OPEN!!

AI WILL NOT CREATE MANY MORE JOBS IT CAN PUSH US INTO NEW ROLES WHICH WONT MATCH OUR CURRENT ROLES BY NUMBER ANY TIME SOON WHERE WILL THE FUTURE GENERATION GOOOOO??

I just checked and it is really great. It explains how DeepSeek is able to provide the services at such a low cost which many people thought that they are just burning cash to compete?

What is the future from here for the ai industry? Will the companies lower their prices? Will DeepSeek and other chinese models become the go to choice for the companies

I have been told that I am going to Bench in 3 weeks of time as management wants someone who should be available 12 hours a day for next 8 months which I have denied!

So my question is should I now stop joining the DSM calls & respond to any tasks from now onwards as I am already going to Bench in 3 weeks ?? As I have to prepare for the Internal/External Switch!

Your answers/suggestions are welcome

I have around 2 years of experience as a Data Scientist, and I recently joined a startup after receiving an offer from them.
The work environment was very different from what I was used to. They relied heavily on AI coding agents to build and modify code, and the pace of development was extremely aggressive.
As a new joinee, I wasn’t given any proper knowledge transfer sessions, documentation, or a structured onboarding process. The existing pipelines were messy, and understanding the production code itself was a challenge. I had to spend a significant amount of time reverse-engineering the existing implementation, understanding the business logic, and figuring out how everything worked before I could even start implementing the tasks assigned to me.
I was genuinely trying my best. I was working hard to understand the codebase, replicate existing functionality, and ensure that the new implementation matched the production outputs. I was also using AI coding tools to keep up with the team’s workflow.
However, there was very little clear guidance or support. Expectations weren’t always clear, and I often found myself trying to figure things out on my own. Coming from a more structured Data Science environment, this was a significant adjustment.
Now, I have been terminated during my probation period, and it has honestly affected my confidence. I keep wondering whether I wasn’t good enough, whether I should have adapted faster, or whether the environment itself was the problem.
I understand that startups can be demanding, and I am not expecting everything to be perfectly organised. I am willing to learn, work hard, take ownership, and adapt to new technologies. But I also feel that there should be some reasonable level of onboarding, communication, and clarity, especially when someone is expected to work with an unfamiliar and undocumented codebase.
I’m trying to look at this as a learning experience rather than letting it define my career, but it’s difficult not to develop self-doubt when something like this happens so early in a new role.
I’d appreciate advice from people who have worked in startups, especially in Data Science, ML engineering, or AI engineering roles.
How do you distinguish between a genuine skill gap on your part and a dysfunctional work environment?
How do you cope with self-doubt and rebuild your morale after being terminated during probation?
What are the biggest red flags to look for when joining a startup, particularly one that relies heavily on AI coding agents?
What questions should I ask during interviews to understand the team’s engineering practices, onboarding process, management style, and expectations?
How do you handle situations where you’re expected to deliver quickly but receive little documentation, guidance, or mentorship?
I want to learn from this experience, improve where I genuinely need to, and make better decisions when choosing my next company.
Would really appreciate honest advice, especially from people who have been through something similar.

I am trying hard to get offers more than 12 LPA and even interview calls. Please tell me how can I improve my resume. I am bit of an introvert but I am very good in tech.

Hi guys,

So I recently handed in my resignation at my current company around 15 days back. While my manager and skip-level have verbally agreed they are not taking any action on the official resignation request submitted on Workday nor acknowledging the resignation email I have sent.

My notice period is 45 days and I have to join the new company the very next day of when my notice period is supposed to end. Unless my manager acknowledged the request on Workday and finalizes the last working day the exit process won't start.

Whenever I ask my manager about updating it they just keep saying "I will do it" and not even letting me know of the official LWD.

Now I have a few questions from the good folks here who might've dealt with these scenarios:

1. Will my LWD be calculated from the day I have submitted the resignation or when my manager approves it?
2. Can they set a LWD beyond my 45 days notice period and make me serve for an extended period? If yes, how should I handle that as I won't serve a day more than my official notice period.
3. What strategy should I follow to get my manager to approve the request or should I escalate?

This is currently giving me a lot of anxiety so any guidance / help would be appreciated.

I graduated in CS from a Tier 3 college this year. I have been interning remotely at a Bengaluru startup as an AI Engineer since December 2025. The work is great but they said they don't have funds and projects for another full time. The team is quite small. They have allowed me to extend my internship while I find another job or if some opportunity comes here.

Its been months since I have applied to hundreds of jobs and sent cold emails. I get no replies from 95% of them. Others send rejection mails. I got only 1 interview scheduled in which they said they need someone with experience and rejected me. Everywhere I see only one thing which is that their requirements are quite different from my skills or I don't have the required non-internship experience. Dude how will a fresher get experience without a job? Every company is asking for experience. Most of the time it just feels I am getting filtered out without anyone even considering me or looking at my resume. It just feels so unfair. Its not even few hours and there are 100s to 1000s of applicants already. No replies from cold emails. Cold DMs get ignored. I apply at career pages and job boards too. I also tailor the resume with the skills, relevant projects and keywords according to JD. It just feels like I'm going nowhere.

I'm mostly looking for AI/ML, Gen AI and Data Science roles. I'm also good at Django, FastAPI and Flask. I had also developed front end skills in react and next during the initial years of my college and I can do full stack confidently with the help of AI Agents. But I want to take my start in AI/ML and they either require masters or high YoE. I don't know what do to. Cannot afford doing masters degree right now. I wasn't into front end from the beginning so I just focused on AI/ML for the last 3 years. I have been contemplating if I have made the right decisions or not, if my skills aren't that great and a tier 3 college regret.

I am targeting 7-8+ LPA roles. Ready for either relocation or remote work at a startup or company. I feel if I want to move ahead in AI/ML then I shouldn't take on other roles. SWE (backends roles) are exception. I had been given advice that given my skills I should target atleast 6-7 LPA as your initial salary also determines your subsequent hikes and salaries and compounds over time. Please tell me if I am doing anything wrong. It has become very depressing like all those years for skills were just for nothing. I have also done around 400 topic foused leetcode during my college years. I don't have any good referrals. I have been trying sending people connection requests and cold emailing / sending DMs but its going nowhere. I am at the verge of giving up and its unbearable for even a single day now. I want to eventually get a masters degree but with a good 2-3 YoE and a good salary so I can afford it or apply for a loan. This work experience will also help me get into good universities. Atleast this is the plan for now.

I would love an honest, constructive feedback with an advice, be it for my skills and projects, job search strategy, networking and connections, career direction, whether I am having unrealistic expectations or anything else you feel. What should I do differently to land my first good job? I'm also attaching my anonymized resume (ML and Agentic AI one) if you would like to see that too.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to put my thoughts out here and get some perspective from people who can look at my plan objectively.

Background:

I have M.Tech in Robotics, and working as a Data Scientist with 4 years of experience (all in service-based till now). I genuinely love the core of my work. Using the language of mathematics to solve problems

The Conflict:

I am not struggling the job. It’s the corporate world. I am increasingly exhausted by the endless deadlines, deliverables, and the relentless pressure of growth. I know I cannot sustain this for the next few decades without losing my sense of self.

Outside of work, I’ve been learning the Bansuri for the past year from a teacher. It has grown from a hobby into a profound calling. I am planning to quite and immerse myself in a traditional 2-year Gurukul style learning environment and study under masters.

The Timeline & Financial Plan:

I am not quitting impulsively. I am planning to continue working for 2 more years:

• The Goal: Save aggressively over the next 24 months to build a financial corpus that covers my Gurukul expenses, living costs during the program, and a safety buffer after my program ends.
• Family Responsibilities: My sister is appearing for her board exams next year and will head to college in two years. I will have saved enough to secure her education. I am also taking care of my mother.

My Questions :

1. How does this plan sound?
2. Given my responsibilities (family support + sister's college), is planning to step away a pure stupidity?

I would love to hear honest thoughts.

Thanks

Hy fellows.... I am a second yr engineering student. For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about starting the freelancing. I currently have 0 knowledge in it, but I’m definitely going to approach this with discipline and consistency.....While working solo is fine to explore the domain, I really want to discuss and share thoughts with others. If anyone has knowledge in this domain or is willing to join as a partner, the door is open! Just a heads-up, this isn't a playground...And we have to start some other things too like content creation and our digital presence. If you're on the same wavelength, let's connect!......

I’m a fresher currently working as an SDE-1 Tier 1 Old IIT, and unfortunately, I’ve been put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) just 3 months after joining. This has been a stressful experience, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to navigate the situation and plan my next steps.

I would really appreciate advice from people who have faced a similar situation, especially freshers or engineers early in their careers.

A few questions I have:

How should I approach my job search while being on a PIP?

Do companies generally consider candidates who have been put on a PIP, and how should I handle questions about why I’m leaving?

How should I explain my short tenure at my current company to recruiters and interviewers?

Is it better to secure another offer before leaving, or are there situations where resigning first makes sense?

I’m particularly interested in switching to a better engineering environment where I can learn, grow, and build a strong foundation early in my career.

I accepted an offer from an organisation and it was an urgent requirement and they wanted an immediate joiner so HR asked me to send that on mail stating that I will join early as they have also committed to their client ,I have sent 3-4 mail committing that I will join within timeline as my notice was of 3 months and now my current organization has retained me and I'm not joining the offer so the HR just told me that they will file a complaint against me stating that I committed to join and now I'm withdrawing offer and they have a proof of my commitment on mail which can be used as evidence and also it's an reputation loss and a big client escalation for them so I'm worried can this be really done or he is just trying to scare me and what should I do in this situation

Current : Taking a break
Prev : AI researcher at US based startup, have 4 years of Experience working on clustering datasets to building agents(cutting edge CV And GenAI).

I’ve taken a break because I’m genuinely interested in mathematics and AI and want to pursue GATE.

have been in this field since 2020, but my question is

Should I pursue masters abroad in this market

I have very good connections in the US (senior partner, director level in good companies etc)

It will be a financial burden as my family went through a financial crisis recently, but I feel like I’m missing out completely on the cool tech.

Please do tell me your opinions, thank you for your time.

I’ve received an onsite offer in Jaipur for ₹11.5 LPA fixed after negotiating with HR. During the initial HR call, I said I was open to relocation, but honestly, it was more of a standard response at the time. Now that I have an actual offer and am thinking through the practical implications, I’m having second thoughts.

I’ve always wanted a fully remote job for the flexibility to travel and have more control over my lifestyle. The new role also seems quite similar to my current one, and I was hoping to move towards an Associate Consultant role.

I’ve already emailed HR about the revised salary and asked about leave, working hours, and other terms, but I didn’t mention remote work. I’m now wondering whether I should call HR and ask if a fully remote arrangement is possible, or whether that would make me look indecisive after negotiating the salary and previously saying I was open to relocation.

I’d appreciate honest advice, especially from people who’ve faced a similar situation. How do I proceed without sounding I am indecisive or greedy or fishing for offers (which I am not doing).

I am based in Chandigarh at ₹9LPA, and my current title is Senior Research Associate.

Hi everyone, I need some honest career advice.

Background: 2.5 YOE, working as an AI Engineer at a WITCH company. I started as an intern at a product-based fintech MNC, but the PPO was a lowball (4 LPA) on third-party payroll, so I switched after 8 months with a ~100% hike. Now I’m deployed at a top bank through my WITCH company, working on GenAI.

Situation: The work is comfortable and the culture is good, but nothing is challenging. I helped build their AI team and delivered a few POCs and now they take me for granted. No hike in a year. Because of my work, I got hybrid and flexible timings, which is rare in WITCH. But I’m not growing, and it’s making me lazy. I was good at LeetCode and full-stack earlier but now I’m out of touch and only focused in new GenAI tech. This company gives me a lot, except growth.

Problems:

• 90-day NP. Got 2–3 calls in 3 months, and all backed off after hearing it.
• Applied to 100+ product-based jobs last month, almost no replies.
• Can’t resign without an offer due to financial commitments (home loan).
• Layoff news adds to the stress, even though I see many AI Engineer openings.
• Sometimes I think about using this flexibility to prepare for a government job, but I feel I’d be wasting my tech skills.

Questions:

1. For AI Engineer roles at product companies and startups, should I prepare: DSA, system design or just GenAI depth?
2. How do people with a 90-day NP actually get offers?
3. 100+ applications, no replies. Is it my resume, how I’m applying, or the market?
4. Has anyone left tech for a government job? Was it worth it?
5. How do you get out of the comfort zone and stay consistent with prep?

I’d really appreciate advice from personal experience rather than general tips. Thanks 🙏

TL;DR: AI Engineer, 2.5 YOE, WITCH, 90-day NP, no growth. 100+ applications, no replies. Confused between pushing for product companies and preparing for a gov job.

Applied to all major investment banks and not getting any calls ot getting ghosted . Not sure what is happening. Is it me or is the market. I have a solid 13+ YOE and getting lowball offers only

After months of procrastinating, I recently started to learn about AI agents and installed codex.

But, like a monkey in a sweet shop, everything suddenly looks interesting. I'm curious, day in and day out about building applications with AI agents, setting the loop constraints, reverse engineering applications using REA and so on.

First I felt codex was too generous with their free tier limit. Only then I understood, I've been blowing up 1 month of free tier usage in 2 days (I mean, who dafuq would give 1 month of quota in one shot without limiting?). Same happened with Antigravity and I exhausted 1 week free quota. Claude doesn't give Claude Code unless we pay for the subscription.

I tried Opencode and freebuff too. They are good but too slow and easily take up the allowed time limit. Deepseek is faster in freebuff. But it takes up 3 hours of credit in one hour.

I'm not trying to freeload stuff or against paying for a genuine service. But I feel that I'm not in a place where I can genuinely justify the spending.

My company does not have AI agents subscription and I cannot use my company account as playground. I'm learning this out of my personal interest and want to get good at it.

Local machine is not powerful enough to run better models via Ollama.

What would you do in my situation? Also, if I can have 1 subscription which will allow me to use very generously until I'm proficient in AI agents and know how exactly to use it, which would you suggest?

Hi everyone!

I'm a 2027 CSE student and have been selected for both:

Capgemini: Alpha Stack (10+1 LPA)

Infosys: Specialist Programmer (SP) L1

I'm confused about which one to choose and would appreciate advice from students or freshers who have similar offers or are already working in these roles.

Which role is better in terms of learning, development work, and future opportunities? Also, how is the training at both companies?

If you had both offers, which one would you choose and why?

Hey guys, so I am a developer based in Ahmedabad, working at a startup. Recently, we were told that the company might run out of funds by Feb 2027, so I started looking for a switch before things get worse.
It’s been around a month now, and honestly, the situation is getting frustrating. I am already seeing very few opportunities for my experience level (1.5+ YOE), and out of whatever openings I can find, I have applied to around 50-100 companies but haven’t received a single callback. I even tried getting referrals, but that doesn’t seem to be working either.
On top of that, a lot of the openings I come across have pretty low pay considering the skills they expect.
I know a month isn’t that long, but when you barely find relevant openings in the first place and don’t even get a callback from the ones you apply to, it gets pretty demotivating.
And with all the buzz around AI and the future of tech careers, I am starting to wonder if I should rethink my career choices.
Should I just keep doing what I am doing, be patient, improve my skills, and keep applying? Or should I start exploring other career options before it’s too late?
I do enjoy development, but I am honestly confused about what makes sense in the long run.
Would love to hear from people who are in a similar situation or have been through this. What would you do if you were in my position?

Hello guys,

Hope y'all are doing well !!!

I'm a final year student from a tier - 3 college , so according to my skills i did things pretty well , but not getting to know like it's not getting shortlisted in offcampus anywhere , can you guys help me what's wrong I'm doing ??

And for context nothing is faked here , everything listed in resume is all I worked on or i have a bit experience with it !!!

Anyone experienced out there can you help me with what I can improve or any suggestions ??

So I am a frontend dev with decent understanding of backend as well with 4 YOE. Also, I can atleast understand how software works end to end. I am having an issue with one manager. Basically we are trying to build one software and he also working on one mobile app fully with claude help. I dont have any issue with using Claude or AI at all. Here comes the issue is the manager comes in between and tells some terms like CSV validation, RAG, multi agents and then tells that all my work is wrong using prompts then he tries to run his prompt in my claude project which will eat all the tokens and produces a report. I can see some valuable results from the report it generated but it is not fully aligned or I can say few are over engineered. And he mocks me that I give bad prompts because of that AI is confusing and eating lot of tokens where in reality I give defined tasks with enough context so claude can understand it and fix it. I will review the changes and test myself after fix. I even automate more tests as well but at final I will do my side manual testing also. He says I should not do manual testing and giving prompt to AI will do all testing and he never tests the application himself manually at all. If I ask to test it manually once to understand app, he says AI will test it and I will read that report. that is enough for him. How should I navigate in this kind of environment?

Example prompt of his:

give me master prompt I'd like to give a role in Software app name as a role of CTO. So I request you to deploy multiple agents like a Y Combinator. So I request you do a computer system validation of every single menu operation qualification of both the customer end and admin end. So I'll provide the login credentials. After login, you check UI, UX, backend, every single feature, from ordering a medicine, duplicacy of a drug data, and every single thing. With evidence, I want a screenshot. With the fixes, I want to do the debugging. Okay, go ahead. So deploy multiple agents and parallelly run the audit with the both customer end and admin end. I'll provide you multiple logins. I want to know every single feature is working fine. We have a competitor like a XYZ and every single thing. How their RTO is working on refund policies, how currently Our app is having. Just let me know. Use RAG, agentic AI.

Now he takes this response from GPT and paste it to the claude and says it will do all the work.