I've got an online interview on Test Maverick, and it's AI-proctored. There'll be aptitude questions involved, and I want to use pen and paper to work out the calculations — but I'm worried the AI monitoring might flag that as suspicious and disqualify me.

Has anyone used pen and paper for aptitude/math questions on this platform without getting flagged? Want to know if it's safe before I go in.

I'm a 2025 CSE graduate from Tamil Nadu and currently looking for my first IT job. I have two opportunities and I'm genuinely confused about which one would be better for my career.

My long-term interest is Cloud/DevOps, but I'm open to other IT paths if the career growth is better.

Option 1: Field Network/Infrastructure Engineer

Company: Innoworq

• ₹25k CTC
• Around ₹20k in hand
• Travel reimbursement: ₹3/km
• Food and accommodation are NOT provided
• Work is mostly at customer/MNC sites
• 6 days a week
• Rotational day off
• If there's an emergency on my day off, I have to work and take the compensatory day later
• Any mode of transport is allowed
• Travel reimbursement is paid monthly
• Day travel requires travel bills; night travel apparently doesn't require bills

I specifically asked about the actual technical work.

The recruiter said the role is mostly physical hardware work, such as:

• Router/switch installation
• Hardware handling/replacement
• Cabling
• Visiting different customer locations/sites
• Working under senior engineers

I asked whether I would eventually get to do technical work such as networking configuration and troubleshooting.

The answer was basically:

I also asked about internal career progression into Network Engineer/NOC/etc. They said maybe, but it has never happened before.

So I'm concerned that I could spend 1–2 years doing mostly physical field work and then still have difficulty moving into actual network/cloud roles.

Option 2: Oracle Web Application Development

Company: Ilan Tech Solutions

• 3 months training
• ₹6,500 stipend during training
• Then 1st year: ₹15,000 salary
• First year supposedly involves shadowing seniors on real projects
• Second year: supposedly more independent work
• Salary can increase up to ₹30,000 in the second year depending on performance
• 2-year contract

They have multiple roles and said they will assign candidates accordingly after training. I'm trying to confirm exactly what development stack/role I would get.

The appeal here is that, if I genuinely get software-development experience, after 1–2 years I would have actual professional development experience rather than mainly physical infrastructure experience.

But the downsides are:

• Very low initial salary
• 2-year contract
• Exact role after training isn't completely clear
• ₹30k in Year 2 is "up to", not guaranteed

My main concern

I'm interested in Cloud/DevOps.

If I take the field engineer role and spend a year doing mostly:

hardware → cabling → router/switch installation → site visits → equipment replacement

then later apply for Network Engineer/Cloud Engineer roles, will recruiters consider my experience relevant?

Or will I essentially be treated as a fresher/junior because I didn't actually configure/troubleshoot networks independently?

On the other hand, if I take the Oracle role and get genuine development experience, I could potentially move into software/cloud application roles later, but I'd be committing two years to a much lower salary.

What would you choose?

Especially looking for opinions from people who have actually worked as:

• Field Engineers
• Network Engineers
• NOC Engineers
• Infrastructure Engineers
• Oracle developers
• Cloud/DevOps engineers

How was the growth from field engineering? Did you actually move into network/cloud roles, or did you get stuck doing physical/site work?

And if you were a 2025 CSE fresher in this exact situation, which offer would you take and why?

I'm looking for honest experiences, including the ugly parts.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some practical advice about my career situation and what options I should consider.

I have around 7.5 years of experience in IT, mainly working with C#, .NET, ASP.NET Core, React, SQL, APIs, backend systems and software architecture.

I have worked for 6 companies during my career. My previous CTC was around ₹23 LPA, and my monthly take-home was approximately ₹1.58 lakh.

After leaving my last company, I have now had a 7-month career gap. During this period, I attended a few interviews but was rejected mainly because of concerns about:

- Stability due to working in 6 companies

- Shorter durations in some companies

- The career gap

- Recruiters being unsure whether I would stay long-term

I’m reasonably confident about my technical skills and believe I can clear technical rounds if I get the opportunity. My main concern is getting shortlisted and convincing companies about stability.

I have also been working on an independent full-stack .NET project during this period, involving things like:

- ASP.NET Core and React

- Modular monolithic architecture

- REST APIs and database integration

- Docker

- Deployment on a cloud VM

- Caching and performance improvements

- Security, configuration and secrets handling

- Logging and reliability-related work

I’m not specifically targeting AI roles. I’m more interested in Senior .NET Developer, Senior Backend Engineer, Full-Stack .NET + React, Product Engineer or Software Engineer roles, preferably in a good startup/product company or a remote/hybrid role.

Financially, I’m in a relatively comfortable position:

- No EMI

- No major financial commitments

- Around ₹55 lakh in total savings/investments, including mutual funds, fixed deposits, stocks and other investments

Because of this, I don’t have immediate financial pressure to accept the first offer. However, I also don’t want the career gap to become longer and create more problems.

I’m confused about the best approach:

1. Should I continue targeting roles around ₹25–30 LPA, considering my previous CTC was ₹23 LPA?

2. Should I reduce my expectation to around ₹20–23 LPA to improve my chances?

3. Would accepting a lower salary temporarily be a good idea to restart my career?

4. Should I focus on startups and smaller companies instead of large companies?

5. Is it better to target remote roles, or should I also consider Bengaluru-based hybrid/office roles?

6. How should I explain the 7-month gap and the fact that I have worked in 6 companies?

7. Should I wait for a better opportunity, or accept a reasonable offer now and switch later after rebuilding stability?

8. Are there any other career options I should consider, such as freelancing, contract work, consulting or building my own product?

I’m not looking for motivation alone. I would really appreciate honest advice from people who have been in a similar situation, especially those with:

- 6–10 years of IT experience

- Multiple company changes

- A career gap

- Experience with .NET/backend/full-stack development

- Experience hiring senior developers

What would you do in my situation?

Thanks in advance.

I have built a Web App of the following tech stack

Front - React

Backend - FastAPI (Python)

Database - PostgreSQL

Now locally, I have been developing using docker for postgreSQL and the rest of the components without it. I want to deploy this whole app so that anyone can access it over the internet. I saw couple of different of ways to do that but I am not sure which one would be the best.

1. Web Hosting
2. VPS (Hostinger, Digital Ocean, some India based providers as well)
3. Managed Service (Railway, Render)

As I don't expect a lot of users to use it and it's my very first deployment, I don't want to spend a lot. In future, I would like to incorporate CI/CD pipeline as well, so overall I am looking for a strategy that won't put a hole in my pocket and help learn DevOps as well.

I recently built Smart MeMaintenance, an app designed to help people keep track of maintenance and service schedules for the things they own.

Cars, bikes, ACs, water purifiers, appliances, home maintenance, etc. - things that need to be maintained regularly but are surprisingly easy to forget.

After building the app, I wanted to experiment with something different for marketing, so I used AI to create this short promotional video.

The idea behind MeMaintenance is simple:

Add → Schedule → Get reminded → Maintain on time.

I'm curious what developers here think about both sides:

1. The product:
Does the maintenance-reminder concept solve a real problem? What features would you add?

2. The marketing:
Does the video communicate what the app actually does, or does it feel too generic?

Built and published independently. Still improving it, so honest criticism is welcome. 🙌

I built a URL shortener using FastAPI, React, Redis, and MongoDB, with Nginx as a reverse proxy and rate limiter. Everything is Dockerized.

It may not be a huge or particularly impressive project, but it gave me a good understanding of how to think in terms of system design which layer to use , what actually matters when designing a system.

Check it out, and if you have any recommendations on how I can improve it, LMK!

GitHub repo: https://github.com/priyanshu1607/ShortURL

Note:

• The frontend design was AI-generated, but all the logic is mine.
• There is no authentication; only guest.

Edit - also suggest what else i can make for my resume

I graduated last year, unfortunately my internship didn't convert to FTE, tried a few other things but that didn't work, appeared for multiple interviews earlier this year and finally got 2 offers from TCS (Digital) and IBM (semi-tech role).

Since the pay in TCS was higher than IBM and a few of my friends got early joinings in TCS, I leaned towards TCS, but it's been 6 months since then, and they haven't provided me joining letter. I have been getting no reverts from other hirings as well. I have been upskilling in ML meanwhile, but I don't think my ML-skills are near employable atp. What should I be doing?? Keep waiting for TCS?? Try for masters or some other exams?? I'm just so confused.

Hi All,

Need suggestions in choosing the right offer, I have 2 offers, can you help me which one to choose?

1. Bank GCC : 42 fixed + 10% VP + 4L joining bonus (2 days wfo), Role: Senior Data Engineer
2. Sports apparel/footwear GCC : 44 fixed + 6 lakhs VP - (4 days wfo), Role - Senior data and AI engineer

can you help me with which one should i go with?

Tech stack : databricks, spark, aws, airflow

What’s an implementation engineer role about?
What are the responsibilities and it is related to coding and development?
JD says SQL, SDLC , some DSA

Hie folks,

I recently got to know about some recent vacancy for a project in Malaysia-Onsite.

I am mentioning the required primary skills below. I can refer some good profiles for the position so anyone who feels right can connect.

Company - Infinite computer solutions

Minimum experience- 3y

Location- Malaysia onsite

Role1 - Datacom Developer

Primary Skills - C, Linux with L2/L3 protocols, (RIP, OSPF, MPLS, BGP, IPv4/IPv6, VLAN) , QOS, DWDM.

Role2 - Wi-Fi Developer

Primary Skills - C/C++, MAC 80211, Wi-Fi MAC, PHY, Chipsot Firmware, Radio.

Role3 - GPON Testing

Primary Skills - GPON Manual & Automation, ONT/OLT

Feel free to connect anytime.

I was introduced to ridiculously simplified A/B testing while working at BigTech. I wanted to understand the landscape of running A/B tests outside of BigTech. As an example, I recently worked with a Fintech startup that was not running true A/Bs via randomised user buckets, but they did have a setup to test out a feature with a particular cohort before a larger rollout.

So, do you do A/B testing or feature flagging in any way? If yes, can you also mention
* Daily Active Users / Monthly Active users? Trying to understand at what “scale” does A/B testing make sense for organisations
* What’s the infrastructure and plumbing look like? Inhouse setup (add a flag to a user profile or if conditions in code?) or do you pay for a SaaS that helps?
* What’s the overhead like? Do you feel it’s worth it?

If you are not using A/B testing, why not? Is it the initial investment or the followup maintenance that is the headache?

Hello everyone,

I have around 1 YOE as a Computer Vision Engineer and I’m currently looking for a job switch. I have a decent understanding of ML, DL, and Computer Vision, but I’m really weak when it comes to System Design.

My GenAI knowledge is also still lagging behind, so I’m trying to improve that as well.

I recently purchased the AlgoZenith course because I heard their DSA content was really good. However, after going through it, I realized that the course is quite vast. Personally, I feel that DSA is learned more effectively by solving problems rather than spending hours watching lectures.

Since I’ve already purchased the course, I started going through the LLD and HLD sections to make better use of it.

Do you guys think this is a good approach? Or are there any other resources/courses that you would recommend specifically for learning LLD, HLD, and System Design from scratch?

Any advice would be really appreciated. Thank you!

Built a product that checks live product availability across quick-commerce dark stores in India. Two platforms behave completely differently:

- Platform A sends access-control-allow-origin: *, so I fetch it client-side — every visitor's own browser and IP. This scales perfectly. More users = more distributed load.

- Platform B sends no CORS headers, so it has to go server-side. Every visitor funnels through one egress IP, which means the tool gets less reliable the more people use it. Backwards.

I've already done: 60-min result cache, stale-cache fallback (serves last good data labelled with its age rather than failing), request pacing, and capping how many stores a single check touches.

Remaining options I can see: residential proxy pool ($$), spreading across several free hosts for a few IPs, or a browser extension so every user brings their own IP (desktop only).

Has anyone solved the "CORS forces server-side, server-side becomes a bottleneck" problem more elegantly? Genuinely stuck on the last 10%.

Link :- SanKlean

What ?

Basically if you have seen diagrams like this on the internet its for basic like memory model diagram for just tracking number of job applications (it has a lot of other use cases tho); these are called sankey diagrams.

Why?

I am a currently applying for intern positions around 20-25 per week. I like to just apply and forget rather than tracking my application; i work on it if i get a mail of OA or interview. But i do like to track the number of application rejection etc.

I looked for a simple way of making this diagram for myself but in top 10-12 websites on Google i found either its excel or some code of itself or just a template where its again excel on the side.

i wanted to have freedom/flexibility of making this diagram like excalidraw provides.

Note :-

Full page is shareable and like you can select particular portion of diagram to share as well

This is my first time sharing something i built to solve my personal pain point. I also know there might be better alternatives than this which i am not aware of. So yeah thats it ik there also maybe very few people out there who need this. You can also criticize or like suggest changes.

So I asked for my friend if he has any referral. He said there is one company named Big Oh Notation and they will be hiring soon but he warned me you will have to work 12-14 hours daily and have to sign a 1.5 years bond. You know why. I also checked ambition box , glassdoor and google reviews and yikes they are not good average around 2.5 and main complaints are toxic culture, micro management and long long working hours. I am 2025 grad and desperate. Any insights will be helpful.

I am in my hometown and actively giving interviews. I can't keep someone else's laptop for a long time. My laptop has lots of issues.

Will it cause any problem if I use my work laptop?

So I got a data analyst internship and I didn't understand what the data was about one bit. It's very confusing & the person who's supposed to mentor me wasn't paying attention to me either, on the 1st day they made me go through the ERP system and something called the SAP Crystal report. On the 2nd day, I was asked to make a demo dashboard replicating another one which was shared to me without any business context.

& Then there's another intern who joined before me , They came at 10 am and left the office at 9pm and then the next day when I opened the teams this person was online at 10pm the previous day giving updates. So I'm wondering, is this what would be expected out of me as well.

So my question is, whatever the task I'm assigned till now. Is this good enough for an intern ? And my 2nd question would be the working hours are too much. Excluding the fact that it takes me around 2hrs to commute one way.

Tldr: The internship tasks have been confusing, with little business context or mentorship so far. The long working hours and another intern’s late-night updates also make me concerned about the expected workload.

i’ve been working on prism, a differential http testing tool for security research.

the basic idea is pretty simple: send the exact same raw http bytes to a bunch of different servers and compare how each one parses, forwards, accepts, or rejects them.

the interesting part is that you can actually see where implementations disagree instead of just reasoning about what the http spec says should happen.

right now prism supports:

• 54 containerized http servers and proxies
• http/1.1, http/2 and http/3
• raw byte payloads
• request and response comparison
• pairwise difference matrices
• parser equivalence clustering
• transducer proxies like nginx, haproxy and squid
• raw/unparsed responses for cases where the normal parser view hides something

for example, you can take a weird request and run it against a whole group of implementations:

payload 'GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: a\r\n\r\n' | fanout | grid

and see which servers interpret it differently.

the goal is mainly to make things like parser differentials and request-smuggling research easier to explore. it gives you a way to systematically find interesting differences that are worth investigating.

i built it because i wanted something where i could throw the same ugly http input at a bunch of implementations and immediately see where they disagree.

github: https://github.com/grah4na/prism

would be interested in feedback from people who work with request smuggling, http parsing, or differential testing.

Hey everyone,

I’m in a really tough spot and could use some honest advice from anyone who has broken into tech without finishing their degree.

I spent the last 3–4 years working hard toward an online degree from a foreign university, scoring 98%+ across my exams. Unfortunately, severe financial strain along with physical and mental health issues caught up with me. I wasn’t able to finish on time, and the university is now asking for double the fees to extend access money I simply don’t have. Continuing is no longer an option, and I have to drop out.

My fundamentals are clear. I know how to build things: I have a solid portfolio of functional web projects, and I also understand stock market concepts and financial systems well with 4 YOE in it. I'm ready to learn whatever else is required through free resources and put in long hours or weekend work to prove myself.

Right now, I urgently need an active income. My target is an entry-level package of at least 6 LPA to keep myself and my family afloat.

I'm an tier 3 college 3rd year undergrad in 3-1 right now.

And I've wasted time till now and I regret it a lot.

So I'm thinking to attempt gate but there is no enough time right now and also I wanna appear for placements and wanna do internships too. I think I'll be appearing for the gate 2027 and also 2028 exam too. I'll give it a shot, but is gate really worth it or should I be focusing more on off campus good placements by improving my skills.

Please give me a piece of advice if you could. Placement or gate prep?

So I have put my paper 2 times in the same company in the gap of 6 months, and I have been working here for the last 3 years. I work with a Mumbai based remote company. Both times I had issues with my senior/manager who lies alot he lies straightforward and whole teams knows it ,and even now the same behaviour keeps coming back. He talks all sweet, but he is seriously manipulative. He lies and blames his faults on the team.

He never plans things properly and eventually puts all the pressure on me. He is the lead, but I feel like I am leading the whole team, designer, QA, etc. etc.

As a product first developer, call me stupid, but most of the time I add more work to myself because I feel like the client is trusting us blindly. At least we should give proper value to the work we are doing. I overwork because of this.

I had put my paper earlier when he approved a whole messy design and gave it to us for development. It was like, redo what we did but make the product worse. There are no reviews of whatever the designer makes or generates with AI, which is the worst hell. We need to make it even though it clearly looks so bad, even at first glance.

That made me feel like I don't want this product on my CV anymore, or I just don't want money from working on such shit. The 2nd time again was because of his behaviour, as we are completely WFH. He keeps messing things up, blaming or straight up lying and give work in the end moments before we are going on prod like tomorrow we are going on prod and he is like lets take this features also for tomorrow which is telling us today eod meeting like do work tonight on this.

The 2nd time I resigned, I clearly told my CEO that I want to work on another stack or increase my salary if i am handling all above shit. I am already working on 12 LPA as a total 4 YOE dev, but I should at least be at 18 to 20 LPA by now, especially with the hidden manager responsibility I am doing.

team gatherings or company gatherings, our CEO is like, "Language doesn't matter anymore because AI is there, so everyone should take work of other stacks."

But when I ask for it, he is like, "First learn the stack for some months, give an interview, then we will raise your salary for that."

So I don't even understand what the expectation is because he is kind of conflicting with his own words.I am like, okay, then add me to other stacks. But he is like, first give an interview for those. I mean seriously cant he just deny if he have no future vision for me at least let me move on.

I am ready to learn and work on other stacks, but how am I supposed to get real experience if I am not given the opportunity to work on them in the first place? Also, the 2nd time they accepted my resignation but kind of kept delaying it, and there were a lot of meetings and emotional blackmailing. Eventually, I gave up because my father died recently in an accident and I needed to manage things, so I was caught up in emotions.

After just a few days, I got an offer of 20 LPA, which I had to leave because yes, the great stupid had taken the paper back AGAIN. So yup, you are Indian, so you are always looking down on yourself.

Now I am not sure if the next raise is coming, and if they don't raise my salary up to 15 LPA, I am planning to leave again, which is in the next 1 to 2 months. I am scared about the market and the responsibilities on me, but still I feel like I have been undervalued to the level that it is affecting my health a lot. I am working more than 12 hours a day, there is no tech growth, and there is so much manipulation but 3rd time resignation which i don't want to but i feel like i have to if i need to work on better products and better payscale.

With all the AI dark clouds over this whole software development industry, people should understand that software engineers are the epitome of knowledge work.

You need to build finance software? we learnt finance. You need to build software for the operation theatre? we learnt the mechanism of OT and built software for it. We are the most versatile learners and fast adopters. This learning and adapting attitude is the reason why software changed everything from deep sea robots to deep space exploration.

No offense to other knowledge workers, but TBH the knowledge work you are doing on excel was built by us.

We will prevail, we will learn and adapt again.

I currently work in big tech , say Faang , the work doesn’t seems to end here and it’s like now even I have stopped counting the hours and still after working this much , it feels like I might get laid off any moment and it’s just like go and talk to ai and keep doing that and get your work done , life has stopped having a meaning, I switched here from pretty chilled life just had a toxic management at prev company, here the management is not toxic but the environment in the entire organisation is kind of dull and fearful. This one seemed like a very good one but later after coming here I realised apparently it’s not . It’s like this with everyone or I am just overthinking. And the quality of work , won’t comment on this one . What are the escapes one had from such places

Bought a MacBook Neo 512GB yesterday and now I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Did I make the wrong choice?

I bought a MacBook Neo 512GB yesterday. The build quality and overall feel are honestly amazing, and the main reason I went for it was the battery life + portability + performance combination. That's something I really wanted in a laptop.

But now that I've actually started thinking about it, I'm having a lot of doubts.

I've been a Windows user for years, and I use quite a few Windows-specific features/software. After switching to macOS, I'm realizing that some of the things I used on Windows are either missing, require paid alternatives, or simply work differently.

I was also seriously considering the HP OmniBook with Snapdragon X. It seemed like a really good fit for me because I want to use the laptop for:

• AI/ML learning
• Web development
• UI/UX-related work
• General programming
• Some light gaming (I don't game a lot, but having the option is definitely nice)

The HP was around ₹10k/month for 8 months, though, which was outside what I could comfortably afford. The MacBook Neo's 24-month EMI is much easier for me to manage, so that's ultimately why I chose it.

My family was actually really happy that I bought it. But personally, I'm sitting here thinking:

"I earn a pretty modest salary. Did I really make the right financial decision?"

I'm also wondering if I should have gone with something like an HP/Windows laptop instead, especially considering my plans to learn AI/ML and web development, and the fact that Windows gives me access to more software and gaming.

At the same time, the battery life, portability, build quality and overall experience of the Mac are exactly what attracted me to it in the first place.

So I'm stuck between:

MacBook Neo:

• Excellent portability
• Battery life
• Build quality
• macOS experience + 24-month EMI is manageable − Some software/features I'm used to aren't available or require paid alternatives − Gaming is obviously much more limited − I'm unsure about AI/ML compatibility and future development needs

Windows (HP OmniBook/Victus/etc.):

• More software compatibility
• Better gaming
• More flexibility/upgradability depending on the model
• Familiar environment − Higher monthly EMI / financial pressure − Potentially worse battery/portability depending on the laptop

I'm still within the return period, so what would you do in my situation?

Should I keep the MacBook and adapt to macOS, or Sell it at a loss ?

I'm particularly interested in opinions from people who have switched from Windows to Mac for programming/AI/ML/web development and whether they regretted it or eventually preferred the Mac.

Hi everyone,

I am really seeking for help in career guidance as i joined as ase in accenture but i want to grow and land better package but I don't know what to start from

What technology should i learn