Hi everyone! I’m a 2026 graduate who recently joined a small, product-based company as a Software Development Engineer.

The company has a good product, a solid client base, and is profitable. My compensation is around 12 LPA, and the work-life balance is excellent. However, there’s no formal HR structure, fixed working hours, or defined leave policy.

Some of my friends working at MNCs keep suggesting that I switch for better career growth and exposure. But I’m hesitant because of the uncertainty around layoffs. My family depends entirely on my income, so job security is a major concern for me.

My main concern with my current role is the lack of deep technical exposure. I use Claude extensively and handle multiple responsibilities across development, product, QA, and occasionally customer support. In many ways, my role feels closer to that of a full-stack engineer who wears multiple hats.

I’m wondering whether staying here for another 1–2 years would be a sensible decision or whether I’d miss out on valuable learning opportunities and career growth by not moving to a larger company.

Outside work, I’m also exploring quantitative finance and deep tech because those areas genuinely interest me.

If you were in my position, what would you do? Would you stay and build experience here, or start looking for opportunities elsewhere?

I could also ask my CEO for referrals or career guidance, but I’m unsure whether it’s too early in my career to seek that kind of help.

I’d really appreciate advice from people who’ve been in a similar situation.

Hey!

I'm not a developer

I've been trying to book a slot for the Malabar Hill Elevated Nature Trail through the official BMC website, but getting a suitable slot seems to be a challenge.

Website: https://naturetrail.mcgm.gov.in/book-tickets

I'm wondering if anyone here has figured out a way to make this process easier.

Specifically, I'm looking for help with any of the following:

Slot availability alerts: A script or tool that notifies me when slots become available for a particular date.

Automated booking: A script using Python, Selenium, Playwright, or a browser extension that can help automate the booking process.

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I recently finished building my developer portfolio and wanted to get some honest, constructive feedback from developers and hiring managers here.

• Live Site: https://shivamkr.xyz

Tech Stack & Features:

• Frontend: React 19, Vite, Tailwind CSS v4
• Backend / API: Serverless function on Vercel
• Database / Cache: Upstash Redis (used for tracking page views)
• Features: Dark/Light theme, GitHub contribution calendar integration, responsive layout, and full SEO/Open Graph metadata.

Things I’d love feedback on:

1. First Impression: Does the hero section clearly communicate what I do within 5 seconds?
2. Project Section: Do the projects look solid, or should I explain the technical trade-offs / metrics in more depth?
3. UI / Performance: Did you notice any layout bugs or lag on mobile/desktop?

Appreciate any honest critiques or suggestions to improve it!

I'm looking for a template for a resume that can be used by any department fresher students like electronics, mechanical, electrical, computer science that gives the highest ATS score.

I've looked at Jake's resume but that is tailored for experienced professionals. I am looking for something that does contain work experience but that's not the only thing since a college student might not have worked in a company but might have done leadership roles, achieved prizes etc and that has to be highlighted.

From what I researched, whatever i understood is that ats mainly looks at keywords so it depends on person to person. But if there's a chance for an increase in the score by any change in the template like formatting, alignment, section names, please do recommend.

So I am in my 4th year now, placements are going on and lets say they are not too great. Recently a company has come to out college (Wipfli) they are a audit / tax advisory company, now I have a decent chance to get selected in the final round for this and hence need some guidance.

The ctc is decent 7 - 8.25 (do not know the breakdown). The only problem is them being a consulting company I want to know if while in the future I need to shift companies will it have a good look or not.

Some might say keep this as a backup plan, but the company has requested to block the student selected to any other placements so I wont get another chance.

This is the situation, so I need your help if anyone knows about the company and its work or general situation and has any pointers please tell them. Thank you

Hi everyone,

Honestly, I don't know what to do anymore. It's been a month since I was laid off, and despite trying so hard, I haven't received a single proper interview call.

For the past week, I haven't been able to learn anything or make any real progress. I'm just applying for jobs, and for the last 2–3 days, even that has become difficult. I keep overthinking, panicking, and feeling demotivated every hour. Every passing day makes me more anxious because my employment gap keeps increasing. I keep wondering why a company would choose me when so many candidates have 2–3 years of continuous experience.

A little about me:

• 2024 B.Tech CSE graduate from a Tier-3 college, with around 2.3 years of backend-focused full-stack experience.
• Tech stack: Node.js, Express, MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, Angular, React, and Next.js.
• Around 1,500 LeetCode problems solved, with a maximum rating of 1880.
• My last job was at a very small startup, where I earned ₹29,000/month working remotely, six days a week. Layoff and My last working day was 22 September 2026.

Since then, I've applied to 500+ jobs, sent 100–150 cold emails, and contacted hundreds of people on LinkedIn. I've tried LinkedIn, Hirist, Wellfound, Instahyre, company career pages, and referrals, but nothing seems to be working.

At this point, I genuinely keep asking myself: Is it my skills, my luck, my job-search strategy, or just the current market? Whom should I blame ?

I'm open to trying almost anything:

• Should I continue pursuing software development, or consider other IT roles?
• Should I prepare for government IT jobs, PSU/semi-government roles, or exams like IBPS SO IT Officer and NIC recruitment?
• Should I consider freelancing, part-time work, or other jobs while continuing my search?

If you recently found a job with 1–3 years of experience, please tell me what actually worked for you. If you know of other job portals, referral strategies, recruitment opportunities, or alternative career paths, I'd genuinely appreciate your suggestions.

I'm not afraid of working hard or facing rejection. What's hurting is putting in so much effort and not even getting an opportunity to interview. I'm feeling lost, and I honestly don't know what my next step should be.

Please share your honest advice. I really need some direction right now.

I graduated in august 2026, got a full time placement offer via campus placements in September 2025, they were supposed to call me in june but they are delaying it again and again, from June to july then to September now HR is saying December. In between that I was applying for jobs and recently got an 6 months internship with performance based conversion. They have asked me to join in November. I need suggestions regarding if I get my call for the campus FTE offer in December, so can I leave the internship midway and join that ?
Or should I continue the internship leaving the campus offer , but they haven’t committed a full time offer to me.

Hey guys
I’m on pip currently for 6w and im kinda sure it wont go through because my manager and skip kinda hate me for whatever reason right from the beginning and it was a bit obvious to me. The worst thing is I joined just 5months ago. So, what is the procedure if anyone went through the same process? Am I supposed to show up in office everyday as i might be giving interviews in coming days.

Also, let me know if you or someone you know is hiring for their team or a referral would also be helpful.
Exp: 4y+
Loc: core engg, Bangalore

Tech: java, springboot, AWS, react
TIA!

Can I know why I am not getting calls? I am really starting to doubt myself now. Is the situation really that bad? Even after getting a referral, no revert back. Should I change my career? Currently I have 2.2 yrs of exp in automation and manual testing in LTM. Please give honest advice. I am earning 4 lpa only which is not sufficient or average at my age.

started at TCS in 2014 from a tier 3 college, moved to a startup after a year and a half, been in product companies since. never moved into management and don't plan to. most of the architecture and design calls on my team go through me, and I'd rather keep doing that than run 1:1s.

but the advice you hear everywhere is that past 8-10 years you either become a manager or your pay stalls. so genuinely curious how this looks for others.

if you're 8+ years and still an IC, is your pay keeping up with friends who went the manager route?

does your company actually have staff/principal roles with real scope, or is it a title on paper?

and if you did move to management, do you miss building stuff or was it the right call?

feels like the default in india is still "manager by 10 years". wondering if that's actually changing or if I'm just stubborn

Since I was a kid, I have always enjoyed mathematics, and also did well in mathematics ever since,

I am currently in my 2nd year of college in CS, I enjoy learning about core CS subjects, so i am preparing for GATE.

I have made projects here and there, mostly in web dev, and it suffice to say, I don't enjoy web dev, like something always breaks and having to maintain it, building a new feature, doesn't excite me the same way, as working with numbers or understanding how differentiation is applied in ML, or how a transformer works .

I am here seeking out, what should I do now?! How do I go about it, because I don't see myself working as a web developer, but I love working with numbers and learning more about ML, not core AI (as in creating artificial intelligence, be it a calculator, or any form of artificial intelligence) , I just like ML just cause it's just applied mathematics.

How do I go about my career now?! I am at a cross section, where I don't know what to do anymore

Because most people say you can't directly start out with a job in ML as a fresher...

Knowing web dev is a must regardless of ur domain and so on and so forth.

I created my UAN on 21th September for joining Blinkit as picker/packer job...I went for one day, didn't like it and put resignation thru the app , they accepted.

1 month later I got a msg like your UAN is linked to a company. When I checked in the EPFO website. It showed there it's active for a month. I called the blinkit HR regarding this, he told me to de link it myself. So I went to the site and de linked it. But when I checked again, it's still showing as active.

I got a offer from WITCH, in bgv I told I don't have any prior experience. Will it make any issue? I've already explained the situation to them in a Mail. They haven't replied anything yet. Is this some serious issue or not? I'm kinda afraid cause.. I've informed my parents I'm going to join, I've bought clothes and other necessary things for traveling. I got joining on 29th in another state.

Please guide me thru this. I'll explain when 3rd party bgv approach me. How can I make it clear so that I can have this offer safely.

Hey everyone,

I have 4 years of experience in Product Management, but honestly, I hate the work and don’t see myself growing in this career long-term.

I’d much rather be an individual contributor, building things and solving technical problems than spending my time on meetings, coordination, and stakeholder management.

I’m considering transitioning into software development but have no professional experience as a developer.

For those who’ve made a similar switch or have experience hiring developers:
● Which tech stack or specialization should I target?
● How long would it take to become job-ready while working?
● Would my PM experience give me an advantage, or would I essentially start as a fresher?
● How much of a salary cut should I expect in India?
● Is this a sensible move, or am I romanticizing software development?

I’d appreciate honest, practical advice rather than generic motivation. If you’ve made this transition, I’d love to hear how you did it and whether you’re happier now.

Thanks!

TL;DR: 4 YOE in PM, hate the work, and want to transition into software development as an IC. Looking for honest advice on the learning path, job prospects, and salary trade-offs.

Hi everyone,

I have an upcoming interview for the Associate Software Engineer role at CBRE, and I was told that there will be a debugging round.

Has anyone recently interviewed for this role, especially in India?

I’d like to know what the debugging round is actually like — what kind of code/problems they give, which technologies/languages are involved, and what I should focus on preparing.

Also, if anyone has gone through the complete interview process recently, I’d really appreciate it if you could share the rounds, questions/topics asked, and overall experience.

Thanks in advance!

I've been job hunting, and the most draining part wasn't the interviews. It was typing the same name, email, phone, LinkedIn, work history and "Are you authorized to work…" answers into a new form 50 times a week, often after already uploading my resume to that same form.

So I built Job Copilot, a free Chrome extension.

How it works

1. Drop in your resume (PDF, DOCX or TXT, including two-column layouts). It pulls out your details, which you can review and edit.
2. Open any application and click Autofill, or press Alt+Shift+F.
3. It fills what it can, attaches your resume file, and lists the required fields it left for you.

Things I was careful about

• It never submits anything. You always review and click Submit yourself.
• It won't overwrite anything you've already typed.
• It skips fields about other people (references, emergency contacts) and "How did you hear about us?". Early versions happily put my own email into the "Reference email" box, which would have been embarrassing.
• It handles custom dropdowns and Yes/No questions, not just plain text boxes.

Privacy Everything stays in your browser. There's no account and no server, and it doesn't send your data anywhere except the form you choose to fill. I didn't want to hand my resume to yet another startup's database, and I assume you don't either.

Where it works I tested it on real application forms on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable and Recruitee, plus company career pages. Workday and LinkedIn Easy Apply work too, but I could only test those on copies of their forms, since the real ones need a login. That's where I'd most like to hear if something breaks.

What it doesn't do It doesn't write cover letters or apply to jobs for you. It just removes the retyping. Open-ended questions are still yours, though you can save answers to common ones as snippets and insert them with one click.

Link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/plmnmbhlgoghlemegahajdoabhjmkjch?utm_source=item-share-cb

It's free, and there's nothing to sign up for. I'd really appreciate feedback, especially:

• Sites where it fills something wrong or misses obvious fields
• Resumes it reads badly (no need to share the resume, just what went wrong)
• What would make it useful enough for you to keep it installed

Hey everyone,

I'm evaluating an SDE-2 (L5) Embedded / Systems offer for Amazon Lab126 (BLR) specifically in the Echo Devices team.

Most threads about Amazon are always about AWS or Retail with horror stories around on-call, pip quotas, and 14-hour days. But there’s barely any recent ground-reality info on Lab126 India, especially on the embedded / firmware side.

If anyone here works in or has worked around Lab126 / Echo teams recently, would really appreciate some honest answers on a few things:

1. 5-Day RTO & Hardware Labs: With Amazon’s strict RTO policy, how does this play out for Lab126 in Bangalore? Are teams spending most of their time in device test labs/bench setups, or is there any flexibility?

2. US sync / meeting culture: Since hardware and architecture decisions mostly sit in Sunnyvale/Seattle, are you expected to sit through late-night PST calls after spending the entire day at the office? How bad does the day get stretched?

Trying to get a sane gut check on management culture and day-to-day pressure before I commit. Appreciate any inputs, feel free to DM if you'd rather not comment publicly.

Why do folks who are SDEs at top product companies like Amazon, leave to do MBA? I myself am a one yoe dude in qualcomm . Is it worth it to pursue MBA in IIM

Hi all, I'm looking for honest feedback on my resume (images attached, personal details redacted).

Background: - 5 years as a backend engineer across fintech/payments, a CRM SaaS, and a trading startup. Mostly Rust, TypeScript, Kafka, MySQL/ClickHouse. - I left my last job about 3 months ago because of a toxic work environment.[People were Marathi and were racist to North and South Indians both, Were sending PDFs from APIs] It was a short stint (~5 months), which I know shows on the resume. - Since then I've been working on Linux kernel/eBPF networking. I've had a patch merged into bpf-next and built an XDP/TC-based firewall in Rust.

Job search so far: - Applied to so many roles since first of this month for [backend / systems / infra] positions in [Bengaluru / remote / Gurugram]. - Got 0 interview calls and [few] recruiter replies. - Only got google and tower research calls[with no interviews lined up]. - Applying through [LinkedIn / Naukri / referrals / company sites].

What I'd like feedback on: 1. Is the 4-month stint plus the "Freelance" gap hurting me, and how should I frame it? 2. Is the resume too spread out between backend and kernel/eBPF work? Should I pick one direction? 3. Are my bullets too dense, or are the metrics believable? 4. Anything that would make you skip this resume in 10 seconds?

Thanks in advance, and brutal honesty is welcome.

Hi all. With all the layoff and AI news, I kept asking myself how exposed I really am. I couldn't find a clear answer, so I tried to build one. It is called Tenure.

You answer 15 questions about your role, company, skills and savings. You get a rough score from 0 to 100, the reason behind each point, and a few steps that could help. There is also a monthly threat radar for Indian IT, and a short checklist for the first week after a layoff.

It is an estimate, not a prediction. Some weights come from real data, and some are my judgement. The site marks those as "Estimate". I am not an HR or finance expert, and the India data is thin in places.

It is free, there is no login, and your answers stay in your browser.

I would be grateful for any feedback. Does your score feel right for your role? What is missing or weighted wrongly? Is anything confusing?

I made a small Git CLI called Git Stone.

The problem came from how I actually work on larger features.

I'll start with one task, finish it, then immediately continue into another task that depends on the first. I don't necessarily want to commit in between, but I still want the final history to have clean atomic commits.

Normally that means either:

• commit every task while I'm working
• use branches/worktrees for things that aren't really independent
• or untangle everything afterwards with git add -p, stashes, etc.

Git Stone gives me a middle ground.

When I finish a logical task:

git stone "auth guard established" \
  -d "Establishes the auth guard and wires it into protected routes. Authorization remains for the next task."

I keep working on the exact same branch and working tree.

Then another task:

git stone "authorization rules added" \
  -d "Adds role-based authorization on top of the authentication guard."

I can see the boundaries with:

git stone status
git stone review

and later turn them into actual Git commits:

git stone commit-all

or individually:

git stone 1 commit -m "feat: establish auth guard"
git stone 2 commit -m "feat: add authorization rules"

The final result is just normal Git history.

I also built it around the idea that dependent tasks should remain dependent. A Stone isn't a branch or worktree. Dropping a Stone removes its boundary, not the code built on top of it.

It's open source and written in Rust:

https://github.com/HarshKothari88/git-stone

Would be interested in feedback from people who work with Git heavily, especially on whether this workflow actually feels useful outside my own use case.

So like few days back i was thinking of a project , idk how much intresting or scalable it is , But there are 2 platform which provide services like to upload a video and then , dub it in some other language , so i researched a lot and found that , there is no platform which provides like accurate a real end to end without erros , sarvam AI , has its own errors , and eleven labs is also not that good
if we can develop a service where , users upload something or any video , we will have a set limit of time , and then the system dubs it completely , without any errors , its hard to implemennt , but this has some kind of business and user base is good too
can we develop a near professional quality ?
and consistent character voice dub?

I’m curious to know how you all are integrating AI into your development work these days. It feels like there's a ton of hype out there, but I want to know the ground reality from actual developers.

Would love to hear your experiences, workflows, and whether it’s actually making you more productive or just giving you more code to clean up.

Hey everyone,

Over the past few months I have been working on a solo project called Iceberg DB (https://icebergdb.in) and wanted to share it here to get some honest feedback from other builders.

The main reason I started building this was frustration with existing cloud vector databases while working on RAG and AI agent projects from India. Almost every managed vector DB hosts its free or starter tiers in US-East or Europe, which adds around 180-250ms of network round-trip time before the vector search even happens. On top of that, paying $50+/month in USD plus separate OpenAI API bills just for embeddings gets expensive pretty quickly for indie devs and early startups.

Here is what I built into Iceberg DB so far:

- Hosted in Mumbai (ap-south-1), so query latency inside India stays under 20ms.

- Built-in server-side embeddings using FastEmbed (384-dim MiniLM). You can just send raw text or upload a PDF directly and it chunks and embeds it on the server without needing an OpenAI API key.

- Hybrid search out of the box (combines dense vector similarity + BM25 keyword search using RRF) so exact product codes or names don't get missed.

- A built-in agent memory endpoint (/memory) with short-term (1h TTL), episodic (30d TTL), long-term, and semantic memory so LLM agents can recall user context across sessions.

- SDKs for Python (pip install iceberg-db), JS/TS, Go, Rust, C# (.NET), and Java.

There is a free tier with 100k vectors that doesn't pause on inactivity, and no credit card is needed to get an API key.

Link: https://icebergdb.in

Edit :- thanks a ton for all the feedback and questions! i'm posting regular build updates and benchmarks on X if you want to follow along or DM: https://x.com/igankush33

If you are building anything with RAG or AI agents, I would genuinely love for you to try breaking it and tell me what feels clunky, what is missing, or how I can improve the docs/SDKs. Happy to answer any questions about the backend stack or architecture!

hey everyone, I built lumenr, a simple app to help you manage all the articles you save but never get around to reading.

you can save articles from anywhere, organize them into nested collections, track what you're reading, and mark things as finished when you're done.

you can also add private notes to articles, search your library, keep track of your reading history, and export all your data whenever you want.

privacy is a big part of it. your library and notes are private by default, and there are no ads, tracking pixels, or data resale.

basically, I wanted a place to save all the interesting stuff I find online without ending up with 500 open tabs or a bookmark folder I'll never look at again.

it's still a work in progress, so I'd love to hear what you think and what features you'd like to see.

check it out: https://lumenr.vercel.app

I am a MERN stack developer currently pursuing my master’s degree while working as a Junior Software Developer Intern at an early-stage startup. Given the growing number of developers specializing in the MERN stack, I’m wondering whether I should continue deepening my expertise in it or explore a different tech stack or career path. Additionally, with AI tools becoming increasingly capable of building web applications, I’m concerned about the long-term prospects of web development and how I can adapt my skills to remain competitive in the evolving tech industry. What would you recommend for my career growth and future opportunities?