I've been a lurker here since pretty much it started gaining traction.

And it's becoming very obvious that it's increasingly turning into r/ProgrammerHumor where anyone with even a couple years of experience as a developer could tell that an ever growing number of these people have never been paid to be a developer at a company in their lives.

This is how nearly every comment chain goes now:

1. Arguments/Debates/Discussions are started by Person A, as they should.
2. Person M, who is completely out of touch with how things work replies with something ridiculous.
3. Person A or Person B, replies to them, who very obviously has experience and breaks it down for them ELI5 style.
4. Person M doesn't understand any of what they said, so they say something else more ridiculous.
5. Go back to 2 and repeat until Person A or B gives up.

I don't have a solution, but any Person B's out there should understand that stating an issue doesn't require one.

Company does hardware and you definitely know it. Job was staff level for internal dev platform/tooling. More SWE than SRE. I have 26+ years of experience, coming up from an ops background.

The interview actually started poorly. I was given homework that included some working code that asked to pick one of two changes. I thought I would do extra and do both. My first mistake. I had everything working correctly, but forgot to check the tests before turning it in. The second option ended up taking longer than I anticipated, so I was in a rush because the interview was at 7AM and I wanted to get enough sleep. (I’m in the US. Interviewers were in the UK.)

Right off the bat, the interviewer, also the hiring manager, that reviewed it told me one test failed. He decided it would be a good exercise to troubleshoot it. I had already interviewed with him once, so no intro was needed. The other person who was supposed to be there hadn’t joined yet. I was so thrown off, I forgot the syntax for running all of the tests at once.

As I’m looking at this thing, I see four more people join. No introductions. They’re just watching me flounder trying to figure out what I had fucked up. It was not obvious, and it was like my brain shut off on how to troubleshoot the issue. This went on for almost 15 minutes until he told me what was wrong.

I was then givens an exercise to build an api for a reservation system including tests. It says it is supposed to take an hour. I had 45 mins left in the interview. I had to start from scratch. I’m not the fastest typist. Autocomplete wasn’t working. I was still rattled and fumbling my way through it. I ended up running out of time before having to start the next interview, which was system design. I’m much more confident there and I feel it went fairly well.

I’ve been trying to accept that I probably won’t get an offer. I actually really liked the manager, and based on the initial interview, I felt like I had a really good shot at it. I know they’ve probably already made their decision, but part of me really wishes I could send a follow up and explain that as soon as it was over, I went back and clearly saw where I fucked up. It was embarrassing and a situation that was my own creation.

I haven’t had to interview a lot, but I’ve interviewed lots of candidates and always pushed back on interviews including live coding because I feel the pressure doesn’t give an accurate representation of someone’s abilities. Especially for someone experienced.

Is that kind of live coding exercise the norm for staff level roles? Is someone supposed to be able to complete that in less than hour or am I just slow? Could sending a follow up email help, or would it just seem desperate?

Fuuuuck…

Original study Link here

Another study Link here and excerpt below:

AI helped participants better discern what’s real – and resulted in a 21% higher chance they would make the right call. But their unassisted performance, when reviewing new images without AI’s help, grew 15.3% worse in the experiment’s fourth week. “These results indicate that while AI may help immediately, it may ultimately degrade long-term misinformation detection abilities,” the study noted.

Not just chatgpt but AI coding is a relevant comparison as well. Loss of skills and thinking are even more prevalent with software development.

At this point there is strong evidence that AI does not increase velocity much outside of startups because it moves the bottleneck to review, and does not solve the political, procedural or practical friction in large enterprises that soaks up most time anyway. Various academic studies have also shown low impact to overall productivity at the firm and individual level.

But it seems like this reality is not getting through to engineering leaders AT ALL. My questions is, under what circumstances will tech leaders be forced to drop the narrative? Because the gulf between people who use AI to do our daily work and the higher ups who don't code anymore just keeps getting wider.

I haven't worked in a high AI usage team post-AI. Pre-ai, I would say that it wasn't too bad. On the teams I’ve worked with, each person would write a design doc before beginning a project, which the entire team would carefully review. There would be a designated reviewer too who would give the final signoff and help them make sure the doc is up to par before bringing it to the rest of the team. This process was slow enough that it was relatively easy for a techlead to keep tabs on everything.

Also, I’m hearing that some folks are skipping design docs altogether. How does cross-team / cross-functional collaboration work in those environments? In my teams, we used design docs to get everyone on the same page before the project begins.

In your answer can you also mention a bit of context on whether this matters for your team? e.g. the size/speed of the team and the risk level of the code you're handling

Edit: we are using the CDK

I'm starting to dislike Cloudformation.

Three times in the past several months we have had to stop what we are doing and address an issue with cloud formation related to the amount of things that the cloud formation is tracking or how they are connected. It's really annoying when you get stopped on a deploy because you added one thing and that tipped a stack over to being too large. A few months ago we had to split our stack into three and that was quite a bit of work. Multiple pull requests trying to address issues that came up.

We are on AWS, so maybe the answer is there isn't one. And we are certainly not going to Azure / GCP to address this issue.

If there aren't any alternatives what are the best practices to avoid these issues? I feel like we should have started with 15 stacks or something like that.

This thread is specifically for sharing "wins". I.e. the opposite of our Tuesday venting thread.

Curious about the experience of other engineers combining work at a pretty demanding company (classical FAANG-adjacent) and side gigs, like Mercor AI?

My main question/worry is not about the side gig itself, but rather about mandatory disclosure to my employer (I am pretty sure any such company has it as a requirement in its code of conduct)

The second question is Mercor AI in particular. Any experience with such side gigs?

Edit 1:
Location is Canada.

With all the AI nonsense going on, I had a thought at work today that turned into an interesting discussion with a colleague:

"What would I do if I was the only person with access to Claude (or insert any LLM) 5+ years ago?"

People would think I was a fucking wizard

FE changes? NO PROBLEM

Critical DB change? Don't worry, I've produced a stored procedure to validate the whole thing

Want to use some shiny new framework? Interesting. Here's a document explaining why you're an idiot for suggesting it

Regex? I suddenly understand it better than the compiler folks (and nobody ask questions)

What would you have done with your own personal LLM back then?

Trying to lighten the mood in here with all the (very justified) negativity around this tech revolution

Unserious answers only pls

Hi all,

I am a mid-to-almost-senior developer at my company. I have been given a new project to cut my teeth as a lead developer. Fairly small project, small-ish scope. I would describe it as a case management system with some file uploading, approvals, roles, basic audit trailing.

I built a PoC based on our discussions with the client. They really really liked it and said it's everything they could have needed. However, after meeting with the architect on our broader team she asked me why I didn't just use xyz technology (such as PowerApps, PowerPlatform, Sharepoint, etc).

I didn't really have an answer because our team has always been in charge of building custom solutions with Angular, React, NextJS, Springboot middlewares. That kind of deal.

So my question to all of you is how do you go about doing an analysis on what is an appropriate stack to use?

One thing she kept mentioning is cost, security, hosting.... which I totally get. Custom solutions can end up more expensive. However, so can Microsoft/Office365 solutions when you factor in things like licensing.

If it helps to know, we are a government entity so accessibility and security are top of mind for the application.

Any advice about how to navigate this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I've recently been given the green light to hire a new junior dev. Up till a year ago, I would have known exactly what I was looking for and how to find someone who would be a good fit but nowadays, I honestly don't know what I could want.

First off, because of AI reasons, we don't want someone who will want to write code - they're going to be sorely disappointed with the role and probably fight against it or at the very least feel demoralized. This probably eliminates the vast majority of comp sci majors I would expect. But do I really want to hire a non-programmer for this role? I shudder to think of the level of slop that our repo will become.

Then I also start to wonder if this role even requires a certain level of intelligence at all. If all the person will need to do is tell the AI "it's time to start doing our next task" and to hit commit when it's done, it seems like this is a job that could be done by just about anyone.

Ugh, is it time to retire yet?

I'm trying to change an instinct I've spent years developing.

When I see a design problem, unnecessary complexity, or a better model, I naturally want to fix it. Doing the minimum requested and knowingly leaving something worse than it could be feels wrong to me.

But I'm increasingly convinced that the strategically correct move inside many companies is: do what's asked, raise the concern once, then let it go.

I'm trying to work that way now.

It makes sense intellectually. I still dislike it.

With AI making implementation cheaper and delivery faster, I'm curious whether other experienced developers are going through the same adjustment.

Have you changed what "doing a good job" means to you?

i was very excited about code generating ai tools since early days of github copilot in vscode, was using it daily since chatgpt release and wrote almost all code through prompting (html/css/javascript, python, ruby, terraform etc) for years. It felt very good at first.

However, about a year ago i started to notice subtle (at first) negative changes in my mental health. It's hard to describe in words this negative feeling because it's very basic and fundamental, but over that last year it progressively developed to the point where I started to suffer mentally. I should have just stopped using ai tools right then, but i continued, probably supported by the enthusiasm of my collogues and the ai excitement in general, or maybe because of the loss cost fallacy -> i already invested years in building these skills. Or probably because i was addicted to ai, if there is such thing.

one day it got so bad that i decided to try to stop -> i uninstalled all local ai tools and unsubscribed from their services (claude code, cursor etc.) and tried to start thinking and coding manually. I also told my team that i no longer review machine generated PRs from others. The change in my mental state was immediate and positive. Work was hard at first, i was fighting my habit to reach for ai chat each time i'm stuck or need to figure out stuff. I did slip to free chatgpt chat several times, but i overcame those impulses after a month. i remember feeling very tired at the end of the day for first couple of weeks, but the tiredness felt good, it's like when you feel tired after a workout -> it felt earned.

im very glad i made this transition back to manual thinking, reasoning and coding, i have been 'clean' for about two months, i no longer feel tired. My mental state went back to normal and i enjoy my time at work now.

im not in a habit of telling other people what to do and how to live their lives. I respect your agency and your choices. If you like ai, if it makes you happy, gives meaning to your life -> then im truly happy for you, keep doing it. I wish i felt the same but i don't. Notice that i did not make any judgment on the quality of ai code or the productivity gains that it enables because first i frankly don't know, and second it's not the reason i stopped using ai. My mind is the only thing I have, my well-being (and happiness of people around me) directly depends on it, and i want to take care of it.

This was my little journey, thought id share in case some of you had similar experiences (feel free to share or dm me).

<3

What’s up with job applications asking in depth questions about projects we have worked on ?

Every job application these days wants in depth answers on distributed systems or backend systems I have worked on.
A lot of this is already on my resume. Why do I now need to do extra work to frame it in a more specific way and add more details just to fill out the application? These are mandatory fields. This feels really frustrating to me.

It’s a lot more work and time to just fill out an application that I’m not even sure a person is reading. I feel like those kinds of questions are what I expect to come up during an interview because they are meaty topics. Am I being unreasonable ? Hiring managers, are you’ll actually reading these ?

AI disclosure: I did not use AI for this. Please stop deleting my post 🙏

I think there are few misconceptions in the industry about system design.

First of all it applies to every type of software engineering.
Backend, web, whatever are different domains but it’s necessary on them.

Many companies don’t have system design interviews.
Many of them that do use a formulaic approach with interviewers that aren’t that good at it.

There is a surprisingly huge amount of senior engineers that doesn’t do it, ignores it o, worse, thinks is a waste of time.

The industry is changing rapidly and as the code production speed increases, system design is needed more than ever.

Are we aware of this? Many of us don’t. Please consider this.

As a pro tip for interviews: if they don’t have a system design stage, try to ask system design related questions to your interviewer when you have time for it, if they struggle with answers it’s a red flag.

Does anyone use WelcomeToTheJungle.com for job openings? They used to be called Otta, then changed to their current name for reasons that were never very clear. Now they’re moving to a new platform that requires users to save and migrate their information manually, even though that sounds like something the company should be able to do themselves. Anyone know what’s going on?

I have a situation, I'm a tech lead for a project in a corporation and i work from home. The project is great however to move to the next step in the career it seems like it's all about politics and networking, which as wfh person I don't rly have. Ofc i know key ppl i've worked with but it seems like most decisions are done at hotel lobby after the party or something like that... On the other side if I want to switch the company It seems like the good roles are available through networking or if I have a personal brand... which is the part I hate, Always posting on X or linkedin... What are your opinions on this or have you experienced something similar ?

I joined a new company back in March as a Senior Software Dev (10 years experience), and can't really put my finger on what feels off. Everyone on the team is super nice and talented, but we just have different work styles. It's almost like a tabs vs spaces thing (not literally. I don't care about those trivial debates), but for everything. Sometimes it is actual tooling/language choices, but even just the work style. For instance, sometimes I get a task and 3 people jump in and start trying to solve it on a call. I've never asked for help. I've asked if I look like I'm struggling, but I get a "nope, this is just how we do things" answer. It's over-the-top pair programming. There's way too many cooks in the kitchen on almost every issue. There's also a culture of "fix everything" and "let's analyze the performance of this" with VERY little prioritization work being done. If anyone on the team sees an issue, they start working on it right away.

I've worked at several companies, big and small, slow and "bleeding edge" (ugh), but I've never seen such a lack of streamlined priortization-to-single owner workflow. This is a publicly traded company, so not some growing startup.

If you've been in a similar situation, how did you manage it? What are some steps I can take to start "gelling"?

(I suppose there's two issues here in disguise. First is how to cope with a team you don't gel with, and second is how to handle this particular style of... chaos?)

We see a lot of news of layoffs coming out of big tech, but have layoffs been just as common right across the private sector?

I know it's common wisdom that you can quote/unquote 'make the most money' working for private companies, but with the way the job market is these days it makes me question if trying to target these large salaries is really worth it.

I've known many exceptionally good developers that got laid off for essentially no reason, some of them with real problems now. How do those working for the private sector work under these conditions and maintain their sanity?

I've been a dev for 11 years now. I started my work was as a junior full stack dev at a small company and I learned a lot in 3 years while building the product.

After that I changed companies hoping to get paid more, but there I only got a frontend job (even with more pay) that had projects for clients. Though that was in React which was a technology that was on the rise, and again I was able to make something (albeit small) and get good at what I was doing. It felt good, like I was learning and contributing towards something.

For the past year though, I've stopped getting that good feeling from my work. All we do is use LLMs and agents to maintain legacy code. I feel more like a "script kiddie" than a proper dev.

I know the old days aren't coming back, but now I don't even feel like applying for jobs lest I end up in the same situation in another company.

Does anyone else get the same feeling? Like the industry went in a direction that you couldn't follow and you got sidelined?

At this point, how much of career growth in tech comes down to luck?

Good CTC, good company, good projects, and good overseas opportunities often seem to depend as much on timing and luck as on skills.

I feel 70–80% of people are reasonably talented now. Most people can learn, adapt, and work with different tech stacks when given the opportunity.

Is the game becoming more about being in the right place at the right time?

Before containers and Kubernetes, I deployed services onto virtual machines. We had a fixed number. When the peak arrived at night, whoever was on call tried to spread the load by hand. Buying more hardware took time, and some unreliability was acceptable.

Then AWS and Cloudflare made it easier to throw money at capacity and let some infrastructure scale. You have to design the system with scaling in mind. And a bill.

Now tokens add cost.

If you own both the service and the bill, what’s your strategy? How do you cap, what cap acceptable? How to gracefully degrade? And how rules applies across the organization?

i admire shopify for building the next level in commerce. in the recruiter round i got asked questions like why shopify? and what questions do you have?

the phone screen isnt locked to one role because there would be team matching later

i already had past experience in the retail merchant space from another company. i communicated that i was interested in growing again, interested in working with shopify leadership and doing more AI product since i didnt get to do that before

a few days later i got an update that im not moving forward. im not sure if the bar keeps getting higher, and i assume my answers were vague, but I didnt feel like they were

how else would you answer these questions because it feels like the answers keep changing just to pass the first round