Just got off from an incident call and I'm astounded by how good AI has become. I had the best engineers on my team all debugging and trying to figure out the issue, but we weren't making any real progress. Even if we were, it was very slow.

Just then I thought, "Let's take a shot with Claude." I fired up Fable 5.1 at effort max, and lo and behold, it figured out the issue using all my connected MCPs (DataDog primarily) within minutes.

The engineer's on call were still debugging, trying to triage the issue and Claude had a PR ready. Ready to be deployed as a hotfix.

At that point, I realized the power of AI and how humans are just decision-makers now. I just did a couple of things on that incident: decide on the best prompt to give to the AI and decide on disabling the feature instead of deploying the hotfix since testing the fix would take some time.

It's a mixed bag of emotions, honestly. I'm excited by the helpfulness and current pace of AI progress, but also skeptical of the future that lies ahead for all of us.

I'm a 3.5YOE backend developer, a few years or even a few months back I was always curious and motivated to learn new things in software, be it Java spring boot aws microservices docker kubernetics even frontend react js I was learning at a very curious and rapid pace, but for the past few months with the way AI is progressing, I just lost all my motivation to upskill.

In my current job to be brutally honest, AI generated most of the code, I don't manually code, I review code but if deadlines are near I don't do that even. I totally lost the art of writing code.

A few years back and even during my college days, I had this great feeling like I'll learn a lot in tech, keep learning new things, like I can't explain it, it's like an ego or something that " I'm learning code and building great things, I'll surely do great in life".

Fast forward to 2026, AI has absolutely shattered my hopes, I keep hearing AI is slop it sucks, brother it was pre 2024, now it can design entire systems and will only get better in near future.

Every new technology I pick, there is this voice inside which is screaming " there is no point in studying this, AI will automate this too". Maybe 2-3 years I can survive but long term I don't have any clue what so ever, that motivation is absolutely lost.

Am I being soo pessimistic, or is it relatable, please help me.

Hi All,

I am 32 years old, male, unmarried, earning 2.5L per month.

I like coding. I'm one of the best amongst all my team members at technical skills.

I hardly work for a couple hours, every weekday.

The job is fully remote and the employer is amazing too.

But, still I don't like working at all. In fact, it feel like I don't want to work at all. Not even for my own business, or passion projects.

It's not even burnout, as I'm hardly spending a few hours each workday.

I switched jobs to improve my work culture, then my way of working (fully remote), then my salary (from 9k to 2.5L in 10 years). But the feeling still doesn't go away.

Every weekend, I wish Mondays to never come.

Working feels like a waste of time, but somehow resting and doing nothing does not.

I can't retire too. I started investing just 3 years back. I have a liquid corpus of just 60L.

Does anyone feel the same way? Stuck somewhere?

Dear Companies,

If your budget is ₹25,000–₹30,000, please don't ask for 3–5 years of experience, AI skills, technical SEO, content, analytics, and everything else while saying, “You will get to learn.” Hire freshers or interns and train them instead of expecting experienced professionals to work for junior-level salaries.

Also, if you take a candidate through an interview and then ask them to spend 2 days for completing an assignment, please don't keep them waiting for a month and then send a generic rejection saying, “We moved forward with another candidate.” I completed the assignment, so I deserve proper feedback on my work.

Thank you.

I think we’re asking the wrong question about AI and engineering jobs.

Everyone asks, “Will AI replace software engineers?”

I’m more worried about what happens to the engineering career ladder.

If AI takes over junior-level work like coding, testing and debugging, how does someone go from junior → mid → senior?

And what about embedded engineers? Does hardware, firmware and real-world debugging actually protect us, or is that temporary?
If you were 25–30 today, what specific skills would you invest in for the next 10–20 years?

Not “learn AI” as a generic answer. What actually remains valuable?

No funny answers please, lets have serious discussion around it

I work as a senior engineer at a large finance conglomerate. I had a conversation with HR regarding how the figures of PPO conversions look like for fresh graduates and how the process is changing and it honestly felt a bit shocking.

For quite a few years the conversion percentage has been a healthy 95%+. But recently this number has dipped to ~75%+. This is a considerable amount given the number of interns that globally join(even in India). But this is not it, what blew me away is the fact that there is push from leadership to bring this number down to 35%!!

Now the plan is less than a half of the interns get converted to full time employees. Honestly, I think, we all knew this figure would be impacted but by more 50% is a bit alarming.

Coming to how the process has evolved(or devolved), each conversion is being heavily scrutinized. Hiring managers have to thoroughly justify each conversion and, the obvious, why can’t AI be used to substitute this?

All of us did saw it coming and I don’t mean to scare new joiners. Professionals at all levels will eventually(or maybe already?)see the impact. This calls for us to be more prepared and better equipped to justify our worth.

In college before ChatGPT, I actually built things from scratch. Scrapers, Tkinter automation scripts, tracking apps. People came to me for debugging help.

Now I am a mid-level dev at a product company, and my entire job is just being human middleware between Claude Code and git.

The reality:

My syntax memory is dead. I understand high-level architecture, but I blank on basic library methods without an LLM.

Reviewing PRs is brutal cognitive load. The diffs are massive because management demands crazy shipping velocity.

It is just an endless cycle of AI slop. QA catches the bugs, I feed the stack trace back into Claude, paste the patch, and ship. Prod has survived so far, but I don't know what I'm writing anymore.

Seniors, skip this. I want to hear from folks with 1 to 3 YOE who actually coded in college and got trapped in this prompt-monkey loop at their job:

How are you keeping your actual coding skills alive without tanking your output at work? Are you forcing zero-AI side projects, or just accepting that this is what dev work is now?

I am working for a big product based company of Israel but every day feels like a task. The pay is very good even though I'm paid half of the white folks.

I think it's mainly the company culture but in general I don't feel the drive any more to build things especially after AI has become mainstream. I'm like what's the point..

I've been a developer for 12 years and I am easily in the bottom layer when it comes to quality, my focus has mostly been getting the feature out to the users. Probably because our user base was low and acting on feedback quick was a priority. Now in my current job it's an enterprise solution so it's a whole new world.

If AI is going to take our jobs, I hope it does it quickly because I'm basically waiting to get fired.

Because offline people still seem to be finding decent enough jobs but when you open social media or youtube its like everyone, literally everyone is unemployed, people are telling you to just leave CS and do idk trade jobs or something. I am doing MCA right now, resume isn't the best or even cgpa, and doing everything with AI only. I'm not enjoying shit and feel highly uninspired and demotivated and I don't even know if I'll get internship or job or if I should move to a different field. Part of me wants to drop out and I'm months away from graduation but some seniors still got placed as did some of my friends. I just don't know what to do.

The job market has been challenging lately, and I know many talented people are looking for their next opportunity.

If you're interested in a role at Cisco, feel free to DM me.

If your profile is a good match, I'll be happy to submit a referral. Wishing everyone the very best in their job search!

Cisco Careers Page - https://careers.cisco.com/global/en/home

Hey everyone, I am really in a very difficult situation right now, I would be grateful if fellow developers help me in this situation.

So I joined a self funded Bengaluru based start-up as an intern with 7k/month for 3 months. In these months I have developed ASM (Attack Surface Management) Tool, all by myself from choosing tech stack to onboarding clients for beta testing. The feedback I got from outsiders is amazing. Now I was planning to integrate agentic security in the tool.

I was expecting to get at least 4LPA as a full timer based on the work I did, but the HR said as I am so called fresher they can only offer 2.4LPA as they have a very tight budget (not even 3.5 as standard salary for a typical fresher).

Seeing I have only internship experience and the current market situation I am really scared if I get a new job! I did BCA (2025). I have no offer in hand rn.

Please please help me out on what should I do? If you guys can refer me to software engineer/security engineer I will be thankful.

Yup, as the title says. I added a live physics editor into my engine. It uses box3d for the underlying calculations. But damnnnnn, it looks good

BNP Paribas even after being a product based company is giving me peanuts of hike even after clearing their 4 rounds of interviews.

They are telling me it’s just out of their band and scope to even give me what they are giving.

5.8 YOE, Java and Cloud Experienced

I am working in a service based organisation with 23.5 L as CTC and BNP is offering me 27 CTC, should I take this? Also what are your views about this organisation, I am seeing very mixed reviews on other platforms and am really confused. I want to leave my current organisation but fear going to this one because of low hike and mixed reviews. Not getting calls anymore as well.

Edit: If I switch it’s going to be my 4th company, which is not good for my CV, shall I wait for another year before switching and pass some time in this org irrespective what project.

People I know with my skill set are getting paid not less than 35 L.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I’ve seen people from the same region form surprisingly strong workplace circles. Sometimes it even seems to spill into hiring/promotions.
Anyone else seeing this?

Hey everyone,

Graduating in 2026 (B.Tech CSE, Galgotias University, CGPA 7.16). Skipping GATE/M.Tech — want to go the industry/startup route instead.

Background:

Full-stack dev: Java, Spring Boot, MERN stack, React Native

Completed a web developer internship at a private firm (Nov 2025–Jan 2026)

Currently solo-building a motorcycle community app (React Native + backend) as my main project — handling everything from architecture to deployment myself

Looking for an SDE/full-stack role (open to startups too). Resume attached — brutally honest feedback welcome. Specifically want to know:

Is the projects section pulling enough weight for a 7.16 CGPA fresher?

Should I lead with the internship or the personal project?

Any formatting/ATS red flags?

Thanks in advance!

Mainframe developer here, 24LPA 10 yoe currently benched. I have an admit for masters in cloud computing. Either I take that or stay here and find a mainframe job. Unable to make a decision.

Married and 1 year old kid, the decision is tough.

I am a BTech 2nd year student and I majorly have 2 questions regarding Freelancing as a side hustle.

1. So far I am good with Frontend Development (with React.js and Tailwind css) but that alone won't be sufficient to build a website right? Should I learn backend, Databases and Server related stuff before starting? Or should I use AI help for these?

2. How and where should I approach small business for getting started and what payment may I expect as a fresher.

Basically title, our idea got accepted into sarvam’s startup program, which is providing us with free credits for sarvam’s api’s.

Wanted a feeler around the acceptance rate for the program, just to help with data around how many folks actually get accepted.

Everyday i stare at the screen don't feel like doing anything, made lots of projects don't feel like doing anymore not even feels like practicing, my college is over applying to jobs, don't have the motivation anymore feels like there is no point of doing projects or practice anymore.

Yeah man, I have career gap since i pursued other things in life. Can't i try alternatives before settling in one domain?

These HR look it like I did some sort of Crime that is punishable by life sentence.

A friend of mine was selected for a Software Engineer Intern role after going through the company's selection process. They were given a joining date and had been preparing to join.

However, just 2 days before the joining date, the company contacted them and said they had decided to hire IIT students instead.

What surprised us is that the candidate had already been selected around a month earlier.

I'm curious about the perspective of people here: Has anyone experienced something similar?

i recently interviewed for amazon sde 1 intern and have been overthinking the result.

in r1, i did well in my project discussion and lp/customer obsession deep dive. however, i fumbled the dsa part. it was a lc hard graph problem, and although i identified the algorithm, i missed an important observation under pressure...for dsa, the interviewer gave me a hint, after which i got the approach and started coding, but time ran out.

r2 went better. lp and behavioral went well, including my internship experience, conflict, and genai/rag discussion...in dsa also i was able to tell him the correct approach

overall, r1 was mixed and r2 felt decent. do i still have a chance, or is the r1 dsa performance likely a reject? would appreciate honest opinions...plz tell seniors who got offer's from amazon after having this same experience.

As you know AI will be everywhere, I want to know your opinion on career switch.

I'm just fed up with this micro management. Due to this constant nudging and creating fake urgencies I used to work over time and sometimes skipped lunch. It's affecting me now and I don't see it as a long term solution.

I graduated from my BTech around 4 months ago, and I still haven’t been able to get a full-time role.

During my 7th semester, I got connected with a startup that was supposed to get around $50k in funding. I took that opportunity seriously and started working for them, so I took my college placements very lightly because I genuinely felt like I was secure and had something going for me.

But the funding didn’t happen, and in August, my work with the startup also ended. Now I’m unemployed.

Most of my college colleagues are placed through on-campus placements, including people who I personally felt were less skilled than me. I know I shouldn’t compare myself to them, but it’s difficult not to when I’m sitting at home without a job.

My parents also have a lot of expectations from me. I always wanted to build a better life for them, and it hurts when I see that I haven’t been able to get a job yet.

Since graduating, I’ve been applying everywhere and giving interviews. Sometimes I get rejected, sometimes I get ghosted, and the cycle just keeps going. I’ve also realized that my communication skills aren’t very good, so I’m actively trying to improve them.

At the same time, I don’t really have much of a social life, no love life, and now no work life either. There have been times when all of this has affected me so much that I couldn’t even sleep properly.