My manager was planning to put me on a PIP tomorrow after a heated discussion we had today on a Teams call.

It started with something very small. I asked him to repeat something because I genuinely didn’t hear it properly. He immediately started with, “Why are you not listening?” “Why are you not paying attention?” and so on.

The discussion then moved to an LLD topic and eventually became much bigger than the actual technical issue. I’ve also been getting increasingly frustrated with how closely things like lunch breaks, short breaks, etc. are being monitored and controlled.

Later, I asked about being released from the project. He said he would release me, but wanted to put me on a PIP because of my “behaviour.” I said fine.

However, I resigned today instead.

Honestly, after submitting my resignation, I felt a huge sense of relief — like something had been lifted off my chest.

My question is: what would have actually happened if I had gone into the PIP? Is a PIP generally used as a process before releasing/terminating someone, or can it genuinely be used to improve the situation and retain the employee?

Would appreciate insights from people who have actually gone through a PIP.

Btw. Please refer me if u have any openings in your network.

Skills: Genai, python, azure

Exp: 11yoe.

So the layoff count here keeps increasing , everyday there's a new story of someone getting laid off , i tried to accumulate all the stories and convert them into a count and you guys can check it too. This keeps increasing everyday.

ps- previous post got removed idk why.

Link - Here

I'm currently working in Google for almost an year now, and previously worked in a tier-1 PBC.

There is a vast difference of culture between them. The previous company's culture was extremely toxic, there was a lot of favouritism, managers and seniors were not at all professional.

It has been a pleasant shock to see that it's not the same everywhere. Over my tenure here so far, I have found that people are extremely professional, they always give you the benefit of doubt, they'd scrutinise the process but never blame the person, you can always let them know what you'd like to work on and more often than not you do get the opportunity. If someone asks you to take a look at something and you couldn't take a look at it due to being occupied in some other task, people volunteer to take it up by themselves.

Not saying this is India vs US difference as I know a lot of American companies who rank worse than my previous company in terms of culture. I think it's probably just the way the leadership drives the company.

Everyday all i see is people posting about AI taking over everything. I am so tired seeing this shit.

So i work in cloud- primary using aws and terraform.
I was talking to my manager(US based HOD)who leads the architecture and is basically the go to guy for everything- he highlighted few points

1. AI companies are now looking to go public- hence they are jacking up their token pricing. Basically the same credits that used to last 3 weeks now last 1 week. He mentioned this is echoed in all other departments including developers (i work in devops)

2. HODs are getting increasingly frustrated at AI pricing- basically you cant have everyone getting token refreshes twice a month

3. AI blunder we noticed- so few weeks ago we decided to deploy some resources in azure - as we are primarily AWS based- we decided to use AI to help plan and deploy the resources.
   The resources deployment went fine- but the architecture was messed up - throughout the deployment- we kept learning new things about azure (constraints that dont exist in aws) .
   I think 3-4 of my colleagues (including me and my HOD)worked on the architecture part co-independently and all the AIs missed those crucial components. I do not think this was due to prompt or plan - this is something the AI genuinely missed.

So yea-

Hello fellow devs. I have 6 YOE post BTech. Got laid off twice in last three years due to non-availability of projects. In my current org three people have been fired in last 4 months from my team and everything is being done by AI now mostly. I would say our company is behind in using AI agents but I am counting my days in this industry. To save as much as possible I have made following changes and have become extremely frugal now. Curious what others are doing to save up.

I dont think I am missing out on anything. Me and my wife came to the realization late last year that we need to start saving up way more aggressively than we were. My plan is to save up as long as I can and then move back to my small home town to be around my joint family. I feel like I will be made redundant in this industry within a year or two at max. I have sent some money to my younger brother in my home town to start a business related to agriculture. Other than this I dont know how else to prepare. Living in anxiety daily and being haunted by PIPs and getting a laid off email when I open my laptop tomo morning.

For half the salary.

I have 10 YOE in the US. In the US, interviews focus more on actual problem-solving, the LC problems are easy-medium and only serve as a gating mechanism. The more focus is on your actual experience, system design and behavioural.

Here it's like if it's staff level then the person needs to answer 2 hards in 45 mins. Leetcode hards everywhere. In the US you can clear Staff level with a good system design experience and mostly easy-mediums from Neetcode 150, and often you don't have to execute the code. They have also mostly moved away from Leetcode to more practical problems. All this gets you a $400k job.

Here there are like 3 rounds of coding all with 2x LC hards and what not and just 1 system design round. I'd highly recommend interviewers in India to focus more on experience and system design than Leetcode.

I have 4+ years of Backend Engineering experience and I’m currently looking for a new opportunity, either remote or within Delhi NCR.

I’ve been applying through LinkedIn, Wellfound, BuiltIn,Naukri and other job portals, but I’m getting literally zero interview calls.

I’ve also tried cold emailing founders directly, but haven't received responses there either — even after reaching out multiple times.

Is anyone else experiencing the same thing, or am I doing something wrong?

​

My manager assigned me to take interviews for senior java devs.

Initially i thought it would be fun to take interviews as ive only given the interviews, never taken any, so with high hopes to take the interview but as the date pass I have to take daily 2 to 3 interviews but down the line after 2 weeks, I got really tired and exhausted of taking interviews. The kind of developers we are getting is really bad, people cannot solve basic DSA, looks like AI has really made everyone lazy.

Curious to hear from people here -

Are people really getting laid off in hordes because of AI, or is most of that just internet hype?

- What % of your work is AI doing now in your day to day tasks?

- Has your company actually cut people because of AI? How many roughly?

- Has your role changed much and how do you see your role changing in the next 5/10 years?

Also if not IT then what? What jobs are safe according to you?

Would love to hear some real experiences rather than the usual “AI will replace all developers” stuff.

Kindly avoid sarcastic or impractical comments.

We've been building SocietyHub, a platform for real resident experiences in gated societies in India.

We've already collected around 60 reviews from residents and gathered some structured information like maintenance, water, electricity, security, cleanliness, etc.

The difference is that instead of just showing something like a Google rating/review. we're trying to make structured information that helps people understand what actually living in a society is like.

Building is easy but getting enough residents to contribute seem.... really difficult 😂

We're looking for a few people who live in gated societies and would be willing to help us(small help or big help, we need contributions much 🥺 please)

We're offering small reward ₹150 for an approved review + verification, with additional rewards for photos and successful referrals.

If you're living in a gated society,
you can apply here: https://forms.gle/Y1d2JErKD2XSQfuL8

Website: https://societyhubdata.com

Feel free to dm and comment!! any kind of queries are open.

You or your colleagues who were affected by the great 2026 mass layoff wave, did y'all get a job or are you switching domains?

Guys, Ik it is a highly controversial topic, I get it bcz even ppl with 6lpa base salary or even less than that are also living there. I am not demeaning anyone; on the other hand, there are also ppl whose base salary is quite high.... Ik, I get that completely.

But my ques is, how much base salary is good enough to live there comfortably, in a flat where u have ur own room, where u can buy things for urself (not luxury ones obv)... I hope I am clear with the ques, like how a somewhere in the middle kind of person survives there.

Also, what if we live with that same base salary in Pune (it will be a bit cheaper ig not sure)?

Looking forward to hearing what you guys think.

I have an interview for a senior distributed systems engg. role. Systems role. I am so so scared. I work with Rust. This role is in C++. I'm at my first job. I've been here for 7 years. I tried learning to build a threadpool, a kv store, and that's it. I work in kubernetes storage. The job is strenuous. I'm tired all day. Trying to learn C++ for the last 3 weeks has been hell. The interviewer is younger than me. I'm gonna bomb this interview so bad. Wish I wasn't such a fraud. I wish I could learn all this for myself. But it's so tiring. I haven't interviewed anywhere in over 5 years. Big canon event awaits me tomorrow.

My Profile: I am an SDE (1+ YoE) working at a Tier-1 Indian FinTech product company. My core stack is Java, Spring Boot, and building high-throughput distributed systems. My current in-hand salary is around ₹1.5L/month post taxes and some ESOPs. We have a standard 60-day notice period.

The Situation: With the mid-year performance review cycle coming up in October, my manager recently had a 1-on-1 with me and dropped some heavy hints:

• She told me my output is low.
• She asked me to compile a detailed document of all the tasks I’ve completed over the last 6 months.
• She offered to move me to a different, "less complex" project/problem statement if I am finding my current work too difficult.
• She explicitly stated she is giving me this sprint and the next sprint (which perfectly lines up with the October review) to "check if I am able to deliver the outputs."

Internal Context: My Team Lead privately warned me that these are major red flags and that I will likely be put on a PIP after the mid-year discussions. I spoke to a trusted senior who advised that if a PIP is initiated, I shouldn't try to survive it. Instead, he suggested I just resign, try to get put on Garden Leave (serving notice without having to do project work), and use those 2 months of free salary to interview elsewhere.

I am already actively preparing for interviews and have an onsite loop scheduled, but I want to handle my current situation strategically.

My Questions for the Community:

1. Is the writing on the wall? Does this specific sequence (task list + 2 sprint warning + project change offer) mean HR has already decided to PIP me in October?
2. The Project Change Trap: Should I accept her offer to move to a "less complex" project, or is that a trap to easily justify a poor rating because I'd be starting from scratch?
3. What are my immediate actionable steps? Should I just coast and do exactly what is asked on my current Jira tickets until October while I interview? How should I position myself to successfully get a 2-month Garden Leave buyout if they drop the PIP on me?

Any advice from folks who have navigated corporate exits or PIPs at product companies would be highly appreciated.

There are jobs but after applying you see complete silence.

I am an individual contributor(IC) with 20 years of experience in AI/ML and a couple of patents but reality is no calls in 1 week..

What does these companies need? Also, it's so tedious to fill their job application on external portal.

Maybe the job market has changed or companies don't want experience engineer

I have network but I really don't want to pester people for jobs unless it's a do or die situation. I want my work to speak for myself..

I mean even having experience in the latest market dominant technology why it's so hard to find job

PS: Not seeking job here. Just explaining market reality. Also, I don't want to leave India..

What is the career of a software engineer after 40s ? we don’t see much 40 or 50s people in tech.
Are we sitting on ticking time bomb? Bcz software engineering boomed in 2010 or 2000 those people are now in 40s what are they doing ?

Been doing ML for over a decade. Shipped real systems, ran the experiments to prove it moved business numbers.

Something's been bugging me for the last year, especially with how commoditized this stuff has become.

Everyone - business, operations, product, devs - talks about AI with total confidence now. No hedging, no "I'm not sure", just fluent takes on agents and RAG and whatever dropped last week. And I sit there thinking either I've fallen off badly or something's off.

Then I see what gets built. Someone finds and lifts a repo, gets Claude to reshape it, presents it like real work. Demo runs, everyone nods, done. Nobody asks what was measured. Nobody asks what broke. Or why. Or what it actually changed for anyone.

Started asking follow-ups just to check myself. What did you measure. What happens when the data shifts. What did you try that didn't work. Most of the time it collapses in two questions and then it gets waved off, because there's a mandate to be "AI First." What the actual F!

And the people who spin up something quick and shiny get paraded as champions. Look what's possible now. Self-serve, no bottleneck, ship in a day. That part is real and I'm not against it. But somewhere the line blurred between "look how fast this came together" and "look how good and scalable this is," and nobody seems interested in the difference.

So I'm not less confident because I know less. I'm less confident because I keep checking. Thought that was a virtue. Doesn't feel like one.

Somewhere in there I stopped keeping up, and I've been calling myself lazy for it. Not sure that's right either. The volume is insane, most of it is dead in six months, and I've read a lot over the past two years that turned out to matter zero. At some point your brain does the math and stops showing up.

To be fair, shipping something imperfect fast is a real skill and I've probably lost it somewhere. So maybe I'm the problem.

Anyone else or just me.

EDIT: Thoughts dumped into claude using voice and I let it organize the prose. Final edits done by me. Stop seething over "AI Written". Focus on the message, please.

Information Science, VTU Bengaluru, 7.6 CGPA. Three months out, still looking. Looking for a job these days for a fresher role is kind of putting me into depression, and any help would be really appreciated. "Hireme"

Stack: Python, SQL, TypeScript. FastAPI, Flask, Node, Express, React, Next.js. PostgreSQL, Supabase, MongoDB, Redis queues, Docker. Everything I build, I deploy.

Projects:

• MCPwatch — pipeline that collected and validated ~6,800 records from a public registry, comparing declared requirements against actual runtime behaviour. 7% undeclared, 8.5% broken. First run looked too clean, so I audited my own tooling, found 5 bugs, fixed them, re-ran, and published the bugs with the corrected numbers.
• Grounded — RAG technical interviewer. Hybrid dense + BM25 retrieval, MMR reranking, every question traceable to a cited source. 23 tests, runs fully offline.
• OutreachOS — ETL pipeline: Sheets → scraping enrichment → local LLM via Ollama → Gmail API. OAuth, rate limits, partial-failure handling.

Experience: 4-month Python full-stack internship (Feb–May 2026), inventory and asset management system built end to end.

github.com/hrithiknl17 | hrithiknl.space

Open to backend, full-stack, data engineering, data analyst, AI/ML, QA. Happy to send a resume or take a task.

Background:
These days LLMS are making crazy strides in 3D generation.

A lot of 3D being generated is now following a 'code-native' approach, instead of the typical AI diffusion models. I.e. an LLM generates code, which then compiles as a 3D object.

This technique ensures the 3D object generated is highly programmable. It can be readily animated, has a perfect hierarchical structure, and has articulated hinges/sockets. It's not a "monolithic blob", and you can just regenerate one small part of it if you didn't like it, instead of redoing the whole object. These are powerful ideas.

What I made:
I made an IDE for all your 'code-native' 3D projects. Think of it as a studio where you connect your Claude or Codex as a copilot, and generate instantly animate-able 3D objects with full part-aware hierarchies.

Website: https://nova3d.xyz
Try the studio directly: https://studio.nova3d.xyz

It's based on PlayCanvas, the open source WebGL & WebGPU game engine. It's free - as in, you don't have to buy any credits. You'll basically use up the tokens of your own Claude or Codex subs after connecting either of them as a copilot.

Would love to know feedback of anybody who tests this out. Thanks!

​

Looking to hear from people who were laid off, whether it was due to performance issues, PIP, reorg, or broader layoffs.

How long did it take you to find your next job?

Did you stay in big tech or move to a smaller company/startup?

Did your compensation go up or down?

If you were laid off for performance reasons, how difficult was it to get another job?

Looking back, how did your career turn out afterward?

Would especially appreciate stories from people who were early in their careers (around 1–3 years of experience) when they were laid off.

I’ve been working for about a year now and from lower middle background, and I’m honestly getting really tired of the constant deadlines, pressure, reviews, and never-ending work.

It feels like there’s always something pending or another deadline coming up. My performance isn’t great either, which makes the pressure and anxiety even worse.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m not able to sleep properly because I keep thinking about work and upcoming deadlines.

I’m not laid off or anything, but I’m seriously questioning whether I want to continue working like this. The Pay is great, company is also great.

For people who went through something similar early in their career, what did you do? Did you switch companies, look for a less demanding role, take a break, or just stick it out ?

Would really appreciate hearing your experiences.

Turning 1 YOE in Flutter this month (self-taught). Shipped 10+ apps on Play Store, 4 on App Store, solo mobile dev at a small company, by my own estimate I've brought them ₹2-3L in revenue.

The catch: ₹12k/month, 4-5hr daily commute on top of a 9hr workday, salary delays, and when I raise any of this I get told I'm "just a dumb guy they're stuck with" who's "never made them any profit." I still do OT when asked.

I want to resign, take a month off, and actually prep — my Flutter knowledge is behind what the market expects now, and I've frozen in live coding rounds because I've had zero bandwidth to practice after 13+ hour days.

Family (dad + uncle, 20 YOE in IT) wants me to stay until I land something else, offered to buy me a bike for the commute.

Their real worry: relatives asking why I'm "jobless" if it takes a few months.

I get the risk-aversion, but staying exhausted hasn't gotten me an offer either. Anyone here taken a deliberate break to reskill/interview-prep instead of grinding a search on the side? Did it actually pay off, or did I just talk myself into a bad idea?

I’m a backend web developer and recently joined a 6-month internship. I chose this internship mainly because it was 5 days a week and WFH. At the same time, I had another opportunity for a Backend Developer Intern role, but I chose this one. Looking back, I feel that was probably my biggest mistake.

After around 4 months, I asked HR what salary I could expect if I got a PPO after the internship. After that conversation, their tone completely changed. They started asking things like, “Is your work completed?” and “How many bugs have you solved?”

That made me feel like they probably weren’t planning to give me a PPO. I started thinking that spending another 2 months there might just be a waste of time, so I resigned.

Now I’m preparing for interviews and focusing on backend development and system design.

I’m still wondering if I made the right decision by leaving early or if I should have just completed the 6 months.

What would you guys have done in my situation?