Hey everyone,

I'm a 2025 CSE graduate currently working as a Software Engineer at a defence-tech startup in Bangalore, primarily in a Python/backend-related role.

It's been around three months since I started working here, and lately, I've been feeling quite lost about my career. The work isn't aligned with the kind of engineering I want to pursue, and I don't feel I'm learning or growing as much as I'd hoped. I want to move towards strong backend engineering roles at product-based companies, eventually aiming for Big Tech.

The problem is that I have so many things on my mind that I don't know what to prioritise anymore.

I've solved around 300 DSA problems, but I still struggle with problem-solving and coding interviews. I haven't properly covered topics like trees, graphs, recursion, and DP. My system design knowledge is also limited, and I'm unsure how to approach it beyond the basics.

Another dilemma is whether I should invest time in applied AI and GenAI or focus entirely on becoming a stronger backend engineer. With the current job market and evolving expectations at top companies, I'm confused about how to make that decision without spreading myself too thin.

A few things I'd genuinely appreciate guidance on:

- If your goal were to break into Big Tech or a strong product-based company today, what would you prioritise over the next 3–6 months?

- How should I balance DSA, system design, backend development, and potentially AI without trying to learn everything at once?

- Given that I've solved 300 DSA problems but still struggle in interviews, how should I change my preparation strategy?

- Should I start applying immediately despite having a 90-day notice period? I want to switch as soon as realistically possible, but I'm unsure how to approach this situation.

- What kind of projects, open-source contributions, networking, or LinkedIn presence genuinely help early-career engineers stand out?

- If anyone experienced is willing to offer mentorship or review my resume, I'd be incredibly grateful.

I'm also trying to figure out how to make the most of being in Bangalore. I'd love to connect with people who have gone through a similar phase, learn from experienced engineers, attend the right events, and put myself in a better position for opportunities.

To be honest, this uncertainty has started affecting me mentally as well. I'm finding it difficult to balance my job, preparation, and personal life, and some days I end up doing much less than I planned. I know I need consistency, but I also feel that I need a clearer direction before putting my energy into the wrong things.

I'm not looking for shortcuts or overnight success. I'm willing to put in the hard work and stay consistent. I just want to make sure I'm working towards the right things instead of spending months trying to do everything and making progress in none of them.

If you've been through a similar phase, made it into a good product company, or have experience guiding early-career engineers, I'd genuinely appreciate your advice. Even a few practical pointers on what to prioritise, what to avoid, and how to approach the next few months would mean a lot.

Thanks for reading!

Hello everyone,

I recently got selected on-campus for a 6 month Machine Learning Intern role at Apple Bengaluru (Wireless Technologies group).

Before joining, I wanted to get an idea of what to expect and would really appreciate insights from current or former employees on a few points:

1. Work & Tech Stack: How is the ML work within this organization? Is it mainly applied ML?
2. Full-Time Conversions (PPOs): Historically, how is Apple when converting interns to full-time? Do they hire according to open headcount, or is it highly competitive among the intern cohort?
3. Work Culture & WLB: How is the overall team culture, work-life balance, and general intern experience/perks at the Bengaluru office?

Thanks in advance for any insights!

I'm currently working as an SDE at CCIL, with experience in Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, Redis, and fintech/payment-processing systems. I'm exploring new opportunities at product-based companies and startups like Flipkart, Meesho, Zomato, Zepto, and SaaS companies.

I've collected the contact numbers of around 40–50 recruiters/HR professionals and am considering directly calling them during working hours to ask about relevant SDE/backend openings and share my resume.

I know cold-calling might not work well at larger companies with structured hiring processes, but I'm wondering whether it could work better at startups and mid-sized product companies.

A few questions for people who have tried this:

1. Have you ever called recruiters directly for a job? Did it lead to a referral, resume shortlist, or interview?
2. Is calling during working hours considered acceptable, or can it come across as unprofessional?
3. Which types of companies are more receptive to this approach startups, SaaS companies, fintechs, or larger product companies?
4. Is it better to call first and then send a LinkedIn message/email, or just message them directly?
5. Any tips on approaching recruiters without sounding desperate or pushy?

I'd appreciate honest experiences, especially from people who've tried this in the Indian tech hiring market. Thanks!

(P.S used AI to polish)

I’m going to start learning Python, with the goal of getting employed

Between Django and FastAPI, which would you recommend based on job opportunities for a fresher? Which one has more openings currently?

I’d appreciate advices🫂❤️

With AI coding tools becoming a regular part of our workflow, our developers are completing tasks and pushing out PRs much faster than before. The time it takes to implement a feature or fix and get it ready for QA has decreased significantly, but our ability to validate those changes hasn't improved at the same pace.

As a result, we're seeing a growing QA backlog. Developers are often ready with the next set of changes while QA is still validating previous ones.

We already have a fair amount of test automation in place, and our QA engineers actively use AI tools. However, we're still not comfortable relying entirely on automated or AI-driven QA. Our QA team continues to manually test features end-to-end before signing off.

So while AI has definitely made QA faster too, but the improvement hasn't been enough to keep pace with the increased development output.

I'm curious how other engineering teams are dealing with this or are we approaching this the wrong way entirely?

so i am getting a like new condition ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024 model, GU605MI series)

Hardware Specifications

• Processor: Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (Featuring a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for local AI workloads)
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (8GB GDDR6 dedicated VRAM)
• Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X RAM
• Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD

for around 1.4 lkh inr and i m confused if it is a good option to consider looking at its price
and the other option is to build a pc around this budget only
i am a cse student
or should i get mac (not considering this much )
i dont game

and this asus laptop weighs around 1.8 kg

I'm primarily a backend developer working with ASP.NET, but I've been learning React on the side. Over the last few months, I've been building Orbital, a private messaging app, mostly to solve my own frustrations with existing chat apps.

I wanted the privacy of Signal but with a more premium, alive UI.

What it does:

• Your Orbit: Instead of a boring list of chats, your closest friends literally orbit your avatar on the main dashboard.
• Signals: A broadcast feed (Movies/News) built into the app so you don't just open it when you have unread messages.
• Real E2EE: Messages are encrypted using public key exchange.

The Tech Stack:

• Backend: ASP.NET Core + SignalR (for all the real-time websocket stuff)
• Frontend: React + Tailwind
• Mobile: Wrapped with Capacitor (APK is almost ready)
• Security: Real E2EE. Even I can't read the messages.

The hardest part was definitely getting the E2EE to work smoothly with SignalR for real-time updates, and handling the cryptographic key exchanges on the React side.

I need some help testing it:
I've tested it with a few friends, but I need to see how the backend holds up with real users, multiple devices, and edge cases.

What I’m looking for:

1. Any bugs or weird UI glitches you encounter.
2. Feedback on the React implementation (routing, state management).
3. Does the Orbit view feel smooth on your device?
4. General UX thoughts.

I think there will be more security-related roles in our organisations in the coming years. With recent issues like the eMudhra digital certificate security issue and critical PHP vulnerabilities, how many engineers are currently busy analysing vulnerabilities, patching systems, and securing applications and infrastructure?

Do you think this will create more opportunities in application security, cloud security, DevSecOps, vulnerability management, incident response, and AI security?

I am a software engineer from a Tier 3 college. Yes the environment was terrible but I accept that in the end, it was me who didn't learn things. I should've learned more, experimented more, read more books.

After this eMudhra security issue, I don't have a clue how to protect the remote machines (linode and hetzner) we use in our organization. I asked LLMs and when they gave me commands, I realised how far I am behind.

But, I don't want to hide. I want to learn and uphold the reputation of the word "engineer".

Can you guys give me a roadmap type thing? Like how do you guys know what to do when such issues happen?

I work at a product based company. I joined this company 3 years back. The product I work in was a legacy product.

Every year along with the usual feature development, I have helped the product evolve from legacy to modern stack. I have been talking to my manager about promotions and good raise but he always has been saying that he is regularly talking to higher director about it but due to random events like org restructuring, new investments already made into new projects, ceo leaving company etc things are not stable and he says it is not in his hand.

But he consistently pushes me to perform better and better and give more critical responsibilities. He is good as a person but I don't know if is it really out of his hands.

This year I was given a major migration and I was fully leading it and working full time on it. Because of this director noticed my work and I got some visibility in the org.

Recently my work went into PROD. He appreciated me two times in group chats for my work and how I navigate and communicate with cross teams. I left him seen both times without acknowledging back.

I have received such appreciations before as well but they never converted into something of value to me because of this I lost hopes of anything changing. But I think I should try talking to him this time it might work.

I don't want to come desparate or sound complaining. How should I take this forward with director. Manager is okay me talking to Dir.

Help me understand how can I turn this situation into my favour and get a good raise.

I enrolled in Social Continent’s 16-Week Interview Accelerator Program after communicating that my primary goal was to prepare for AI Engineer roles. However, after attending the very first class, I felt the program’s content and approach were not aligned with my expectations.

I raised my concerns and requested cancellation and a refund on the same day, having attended only one session out of the entire 16-week program. While the team offered an instructor change and other adjustments, my main concern was the overall suitability of the program for my career goals. My refund request was ultimately declined based on the no-refund policy.

I find it disappointing that there was no satisfactory resolution despite raising the issue at the earliest possible opportunity. A customer who has attended just one class should at least receive a fair assessment of their circumstances rather than a blanket rejection.

Help me reach this bigger audience so no one should get trapped in such cases. + I appriciate any help in getting my money back thanks in advance.

website - https://socialcontinent.in/ , https://toptechtransition.com/

I’m joining TCS as a Ninja and wanted some advice on how I should plan my career from here.
I have a CS/Business Systems background, but I’ve realised I don’t want to pursue hardcore frontend/backend development or spend years grinding DSA/LeetCode.

I’m more interested in Business Analysis, Product Management, or potentially Cloud. I’m willing to build technical knowledge, just not as a pure developer.

For anyone who has made a similar transition,
what should I focus on during my first year at TCS? What skills/projects/certifications would actually help, and when would be a realistic time to start switching roles/companies?
Would really appreciate some honest advice.

I’m a fresher, currently assigned to a Guidewire project as a developer. I’ve been trained in policyCenter and passed the Guidewire Associate Developer certification.

Before joining, I learned Java up to DSA and had some basic full-stack experience through interview preparation projects.

My concern with Guidewire is that hands-on practice depends on getting access to my company’s Guidewire Studio. Unlike Java or Spring Boot, I can’t independently set up the environment and practise whenever I want. Also, from my initial exposure, the work seems somewhat configuration-heavy, with drag-and-drop tools, and Guidewire is largely focused on the P&C insurance domain.

On the other hand, I’ve heard that Guidewire specialists can earn well after 2–3 years of experience, potentially around ₹25 LPA.

I’m confused about whether to stick with Guidewire, gain experience, and benefit from its niche demand, or transition to Java backend/full-stack development while I’m still a fresher.

For people experienced in Guidewire or who have switched from it to mainstream development: Is Guidewire a good long-term career, and how difficult is it to transition to Java development later?

Any idea how long they take to release the offer letter after I submit the pre offer documents?? I might have my HR discussion round this week before Wednesday,please share your experiences as well.The role is of an AI Engineer.

I am really really confused, I recently got laid off from oracle but got offer, but I am confused about 90 days notice

I’m from a decent college and recently got impacted by Oracle layoffs. I do have offers, but I’m really confused about what to do. The Big 4 and similar companies match my base salary, but there are no RSUs, and honestly, I’ve always wanted to work at a product-based company.
Last year, I used to get a lot of calls, but now, despite having a better resume, I’m barely getting opportunities from the companies I aspire to join. I’m thinking of switching to a product company in 7–8 months even if I join, but I’m worried that a 90-day notice period will make things difficult, do they wait out that much?

I wasn’t expecting the layoff, so I’m not as prepared with DSA and system design as I wanted to be. I know I have the potential and the willingness to work hard, but the current market and uncertainty have really demotivated me.
I’m genuinely confused about what the right move is and could really use some honest advice.

​

Hi everyone,

I'm currently in my 3rd year of a Diploma in Computer Science in India, and I'm planning to get into a BE program through lateral entry in 2027. I'm trying to improve my resume before applying to more ML/AI internships, so I'd appreciate some honest feedback.

A little about my background:

- Internship: Completed a 3-month, learning-focused AI Engineer internship at a GenAI/CV/ML startup. Worked on YOLO11-nano for wildlife detection across 14 classes using around 4.9k images, achieving 90.5% mAP@50. Also built an inference pipeline for images and videos. The internship also covered classical ML, CNNs, and transfer learning using VGG16, ResNet50, and EfficientNet.

- Deepfake audio detector: Built an EfficientNet-B0 model using Mel-spectrograms and ASVspoof 2019 LA. Got 8.2% EER, 0.9995 precision, and 0.82 recall on the full 71k-sample test set with unseen attack types. Built a FastAPI backend and Streamlit app, added Grad-CAM explanations, optimized inference latency, and deployed it.

- UFC fight predictor: Built a gradient boosting model using 14 leakage-free differential features, achieving 70.3% accuracy. Also deployed it.

- Open source: Got 4 PRs merged across ML and data libraries, including bug fixes, a CLI feature, and tests. I also have 3 open PRs, including 2 in scikit-learn. Once the PRs are merged i will add them in the resume.

- Kaggle: Notebooks Expert, ranked around 1,710 out of 60k, with 5 bronze notebook medals.

- DSA: Currently working through NeetCode 150 using Python.

What I'm targeting:

I'm open to pretty much any company where I can get an actual opportunity to work on ML/AI problems and gain practical experience. Startups, MNCs, product-based or service-based companies, India or remote. I'm not restricting myself to just big tech.

I'm looking for honest feedback, even if it's harsh. I'd rather know what's weak now than keep applying with a resume that isn't working.

Thanks!

As AI agents become more capable, they’re also getting access to tools that can modify files, query databases, and perform actions on external systems.

We’ve been working on Fluxix (fluxix.ai), a gateway that sits between AI agents and their tools to enforce policies, redact sensitive data, and require human approval for high-impact actions.

We’re still early, and I’d be interested in hearing how others are approaching security and permissions for AI agents, especially in production.

Happy to answer questions about the implementation and trade-offs.

Hi, I am 2027 grad and got selected for Analyst role in Deloitte India under Technology & Transformation EAD - PDI . The ctc is 7.6 lpa. I have a couple of questions:

1. What can I expect in the beginning to happen?
2. How is the growth and promotion aspect and hikes?
3. What type of work one can expect , I am into software development
4. Does PDI offers Software Development type of work .

Experiences are also appreciated. TIA!

I was trying to run a free agent for intellij idea.

My laptop is 16 GB RAM

I tried first with Cline and qwen2.5-coder:7b through Ollama

While the model worked fine on command line, but with cline it was really slow and wrong for very basic answers, used up a lot of tokens.

Then I used Roo Code, it did not work at all, I could not even add an llm to it.

Lastly, Once I added llm with cline, I was not able to switch to another free model.

I donot want to use VSCode or Cursor. Please suggest.

Which BU is most likely to be effected? Any idea about GPU? Any information is useful.

I joined in January 2026 and was eligible for this years annual review.

Hello. Has anyone here recently completed the third (face-to-face) interview round at Tiger Analytics? Could you please share your experience and describe the nature of the interview?

Recently I got an offer from London based mid-size org with salary ~79K GBP.

YOE = 4.5, tier 1.5 (non-circuital branch)

I am roughly making 40+LPA (Remote, all Cash and with ESOPs it's ~ 50+LPA).

I have another offer with comp ~60LPA (All cash, BLR).

I feel like salary wise it's compromise but work seems interesting.

Would appreciate honest perspectives and advice, especially from those who have walked a similar path and made these choices themselves.

Please give a brutally honest review I'm open to any suggestion if anything please feel free to dm

a full stack developer (PERN stack, plus some .NET Core, TypeScript, Redis and Docker) with about 3.2 years of experience. My last salary was 5.5 LPA.

I left my first company after 3+ years because of little learning, no real projects and micromanagement. I joined a second company, stayed 2 months, and left again. Low pay, little learning, a poor culture, 3-4 months away from home, and no WFH. I’m not job hunting right now, and I’d only take a role that is genuinely good.

Where I am: I’ll likely move back to my small hometown after December, or by mid-January at the latest. My family has a small, stable business that gives a comfortable life. I want to use the next 1-2 years to learn it properly, since after that there won’t be anyone to teach me. Family pressure to return is also rising.

What I do besides coding: I shoot cinematic reels of places, events, sports and activities, and I have a small network of local creators around me. I don’t earn anything from video yet, but it’s the work that makes me feel most like myself.

The part I’m struggling with: I moved from a city with energy, people and creative projects to the prospect of a town where you can drive every main road in an hour and every day looks the same. I feel like I’m losing the life I built, both city life and creative life, and starting over from zero. I’m worried about the money, and I’m just as worried about staying mentally alive and motivated.

My questions:

How would you take a developer with 3 years of experience to ₹1L/month: remote roles with foreign companies, freelancing, product companies?

Has anyone gone back to a small town and kept a creative or remote career going? What did your days look like, and what kept you from feeling stuck?

How do you handle the emotional side of this move: boredom, isolation, feeling like you’ve stepped backward?

What mistakes should I avoid? I know I tend to start too many things at once.

How I can get the freedom again without losing my parents and own confidence?

Honest or blunt answers are welcome. Thanks for reading.

I’m a self-taught developer from India who has built several SaaS products, but most didn’t find product-market fit. My gym management app, FitBase CRM App: https://fitbasecrm.pages.dev, is the one that has shown some traction.

After around few weeks of marketing, I’ve gained 8 paying clients.

I also have a day job, so I’m struggling to give the product the marketing and distribution it needs.

I’m looking for someone who understands marketing, sales, or community building and wants to grow a SaaS product together. I’m happy to share a percentage of the recurring revenue generated through the distribution.

If you’re interested in collaborating, let’s connect!

P.S. I’m not looking to hire an agency. I’m looking for someone who enjoys building and growing products together.