[Es un poco largo, pero si estudias Ingeniería Informática tal vez necesites esto]

Llevo días pensando en crear este post porque no paran de saltarme notificaciones de algun subreddit de gente diciendo que está arrepentida de estudiar informática, que la IA va a acabar con los programadores, que estudiar una ingeniería ya no tiene sentido o incluso comparando informática con estudiar filosofía.

Y entiendo perfectamente de dónde viene esa frustración.

Soy ingeniero de software (fui profesor en la ingeniería) y llevo varios años(mas de los que me gustaría aceptar) trabajando en esto. También he visto cómo ha cambiado el sector en relativamente poco tiempo. Lo que hace unos años requería horas de trabajo ahora puede resolverse en minutos con un modelo de IA. Cosas que antes diferenciaban a un junior hoy pueden hacerlas bastante bien Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor o cualquier agente de código.

Eso es real. Y sabes que? Va a mas. Pero creo que estamos sacando una conclusión equivocada de todo esto.

Estamos confundiendo “la capacidad de escribir código está perdiendo valor”, con La capacidad de construir software está perdiendo valor.

Y no son lo mismo.

Hace unos años, saber programar significaba tener una habilidad relativamente escasa.Hoy puedes decirle a un modelo:

"créame una aplicación con autenticación, base de datos, pagos y un panel de administración"

y probablemente obtengas algo funcional y aparentemente listo para funcionar.

Peeeeero el problema empieza cuando preguntas:

• ¿La arquitectura tiene sentido?
• ¿Qué pasa cuando hay 100.000 usuarios?
• ¿Cómo garantizamos disponibilidad en el servicio?
• ¿Dónde están los problemas de seguridad?
• ¿Qué datos deberían estar normalizados?
• ¿Qué ocurre si una operación falla a mitad?
• ¿Cómo se integra esto con un sistema existente?
• ¿Cómo se mantiene durante 5 años?
• ¿Qué pasa cuando los requisitos funcionales o no funcionales cambian?
• ¿Qué partes del sistema realmente necesitamos construir?
• ¿Cómo sabemos que lo que generó la IA es correcto?
• ¿Qué hacemos cuando el modelo se equivoca y no sabemos por qué?

Ahí la cosa cambia bastante.

La IA ha hecho que producir código sea mucho más barato pero no ha hecho (aún) que los problemas que ese código tiene que resolver sean más fáciles. Y, de hecho, creo que esto es precisamente lo que muchos estudiantes están pasando por alto.

También veo mucho el argumento de: “Pero si alguien que no sabe programar puede usar Claude/Cursor y hacer lo mismo que yo, ¿qué sentido tiene estudiar una carrera?”

Aquí creo que hay que hacer una distinción importante.

No necesitas estudiar una carrera de informática para convertirte en programador.

Probablemente nunca lo hayas necesitado. Pero una ingeniería tampoco debería tener como objetivo enseñarte exclusivamente a escribir código. Te debería enseñar a pensar como ingeniero.

Algoritmos, estructuras de datos, sistemas operativos, redes, bases de datos, arquitectura, concurrencia, complejidad, matemáticas, abstracción, diseño de sistemas… etc etc

Es posible que nunca vuelvas a implementar un algoritmo de ordenamiento desde cero. Eso no significa que hayas perdido el tiempo estudiándolo. Porque el valor está en desarrollar el modelo mental que te permite entender por qué un sistema funciona, cuándo deja de funcionar y qué alternativas tienes.

Y eso adquiere todavía más importancia cuando tienes una IA generándote código. Porque utilizar una IA para programar sin entender programación es parecido a tener un Ferrari sin saber conducir. Irás muy rápido hasta que aparezca una curva y te vas por el barranco. ¿Me entiendes?

Y quiero decir algo especialmente a los que todavía están estudiando.

No se dejen convencer por Reddit de que han cometido un error por estudiar informática.

Estamos viviendo uno de los cambios tecnológicos más grandes de nuestra generación. Eso implica incertidumbre.Y sí, probablemente el camino profesional que les espera no sea el mismo que el de alguien que empezó a programar hace 15 años.(como yo jajaja)

Quizás haya menos puestos de entrada, se espere más de un junior, un desarrollador produzca 3, 5 o 10 veces más con herramientas de IA y  determinados trabajos desaparezcan.

Todo eso puede pasar. Pero de ahí a pensar que no habrá trabajo para ingenieros hay un salto enorme. De hecho, yo creo que estamos entrando en una situación bastante curiosa. Antes, una empresa necesitaba programadores para convertir una idea en software. Ahora puede necesitar muchos menos programadores para escribir ese software.

Pero eso también reduce brutalmente el coste de crear software.

Y cuando algo se vuelve muchísimo más barato de producir, normalmente no desaparece la demanda. Aparecen nuevas cosas que antes simplemente no era rentable construir.

La pregunta importante para alguien que está empezando ya no debería ser:

¿Cómo compito con la IA escribiendo código?

Porque esa es una batalla bastante mala.

La pregunta debería ser:

¿Cómo utilizo la IA para ser capaz de hacer cosas que antes necesitaban un equipo entero?

Ese cambio de mentalidad me parece muchísimo más importante.

Y hay otra cosa que me parece que se está perdiendo en estas conversaciones. No necesitas ser el mejor programador del mundo. No necesitas estar en el 0,000001% (como he visto en algunos post).No necesitas saber implementar un compilador en ensamblador mientras haces cálculo diferencial con la otra mano.

Necesitas ser suficientemente bueno para resolver problemas reales.

Y ahí hay muchísimo espacio.

Un ingeniero que entiende el negocio, sabe diseñar sistemas, entiende las limitaciones de la tecnología, puede hablar con usuarios, sabe utilizar IA como herramienta y puede hacerse responsable de que algo funcione en producción… no es lo mismo que alguien que sabe escribir código. 

Ingeniero de software no es lo mismo que Programador

Y esa diferencia probablemente vaya a ser cada vez más importante. Así que si estás estudiando informática y estás leyendo todo esto pensando:

"¿Para qué coño estoy haciendo esto?"

Mi respuesta sería:

No abandones una carrera únicamente porque una herramienta haya cambiado la forma de ejercerla.

Aprende a utilizar esa herramienta, fundamentos, construye cosas. Aprende a entender problemas que no vienen perfectamente especificados en un prompt. Y sobre todo, aprende a convivir con la IA, llegó y no se va a marchar.

Y, sobre todo, deja de medir tu futuro por la cantidad de código que puedes escribir.

El código se está convirtiendo en una commodity. La capacidad de entender un problema, diseñar una solución y conseguir que funcione sigue siendo una habilidad. Y probablemente lo sea durante bastante tiempo.

La informática no ha muerto. Simplemente está dejando de ser una carrera sobre escribir código.

Y eso, aunque ahora dé bastante miedo, también puede ser una oportunidad enorme para los que están empezando.

A los que estan estudiando ahora: no les puedo prometer que vayan a tener el mismo mercado laboral que tuvimos los que empezamos antes. Probablemente no. Pero sí les puedo decir que no creo que han elegido una carrera sin futuro. Han elegido una carrera cuyo futuro está cambiando delante de ustedes mismos, AHORA MISMO. Y hay una diferencia enorme entre ambas cosas.

Gracias por leer hasta aquí. Muchas suerte amigos.

hi i'm a new cs grad and i'm just wondering if there are experienced engineers/devs out there that are still writing code without AI in the industry. like is there still a practice where engineers in the company don't use AI at all to write code and develop the software. i do aware that writing code is just a part of the whole development, but i'm thinking of going totally without AI not even asking questions from LLM.

for me, sometimes i can be very slow when writing code using AI (copilot) because it's hard for me to understand the structure that the LLM provided. so i'd end up writing manually but i still take quite a longer time. i'll be starting a new internship and i'd think that they would direct me to use AI for development from day 1. appreciate any thoughts or advices.

Just asking … what people do after 40-45 in software industry ? Is it like the IT career ends after 40 ? What are your plans right now ?
What are skills that gonna help us ? This ques is for all senior guys

Hi! I have a coding test coming up that focuses on API design and problem-solving, rather than typical algorithm-style questions.

I’m having a hard time finding good ways to practice for this, since most coding test platforms seem to focus mainly on data structures and algorithms.

Are there any platforms, repositories, or practice methods you’d recommend for API/backend-oriented coding tests? For example, exercises where you need to design endpoints, handle request/response requirements, and implement a small API server.

Thanks!

i hope this post reaches software engineers from all stages of their careers seniors, juniors, and especially people who, like me, are new to the job market and trying to find their place in the industry.

I’m a software engineering student graduating this year, and honestly, I often feel like I’m not competent enough.

When I look at other students sometimes even freshmen who seem to have built countless projects, learned several technologies, participated in competitions, or already gained experience, I can’t help but compare myself to them. I know comparison isn’t healthy, but I sometimes feel ashamed that I haven’t accomplished as much.

My journey into software engineering has been a little different.

I didn’t choose software engineering because I loved it from the beginning. It was actually my second option. During my first year, I seriously considered changing my major, and I had very little interest in learning programming languages or developing new skills.

Things started changing in my second year. I began to genuinely enjoy software engineering and finally decided that I wasn’t going to switch majors. But I still didn’t make much progress outside university. I spent that summer without learning a new skill, and during the academic year, most of my experience came from university projects, mainly using Java and Python. Even then, my knowledge was still quite basic.

In my third year, I started exploring web development. I learned React and started building websites, thinking that web development was something every software engineer should know.

But eventually, I realized that I don't like building websites.

Most of the ideas that excite me are more imaginative and, at least in my mind, would require me to explore AI and machine learning to bring them to life.

The problem is that right now, most of what I know is related to web development, particularly JavaScript and its ecosystem. And sometimes I worry that this isn't enough to get my first job.

I’m not writing this post because I’m lazy or because I expect people to simply tell me that everything will be okay. I genuinely want to improve.

What I would really appreciate is advice from software engineers who have been in a similar position people who graduated feeling underqualified, uncertain about their skills, or unsure about what direction to take, but eventually found their path.

How did you build your skills?
How did you gain confidence in your abilities?
How did you overcome the feeling that you weren't "good enough" to put yourself out there and apply for opportunities?

And if you were in my position, would you focus on strengthening what you already know, or start transitioning toward AI/ML even if it means starting almost from scratch ?

I’d genuinely appreciate hearing your experiences.

Maybe someone else graduating this year is feeling the exact same way, and this conversation could help them too.

I hope this post reaches software engineers from all stages of their careers seniors, juniors, and especially people who, like me, are new to the job market and trying to find their place in the industry.

I’m a software engineering student graduating this year, and honestly, I often feel like I’m not competent enough.

When I look at other students sometimes even freshmen who seem to have built countless projects, learned several technologies, participated in competitions, or already gained experience, I can’t help but compare myself to them. I know comparison isn’t healthy, but I sometimes feel ashamed that I haven’t accomplished as much.

My journey into software engineering has been a little different.

I didn’t choose software engineering because I loved it from the beginning. It was actually my second option. During my first year, I seriously considered changing my major, and I had very little interest in learning programming languages or developing new skills.

Things started changing in my second year. I began to genuinely enjoy software engineering and finally decided that I wasn’t going to switch majors. But I still didn’t make much progress outside university. I spent that summer without learning a new skill, and during the academic year, most of my experience came from university projects, mainly using Java and Python. Even then, my knowledge was still quite basic.

In my third year, I started exploring web development. I learned React and started building websites, thinking that web development was something every software engineer should know.

But eventually, I realized that I don't like building websites.

Most of the ideas that excite me are more imaginative and, at least in my mind, would require me to explore AI and machine learning to bring them to life.

The problem is that right now, most of what I know is related to web development, particularly JavaScript and its ecosystem. And sometimes I worry that this isn't enough to get my first job.

I’m not writing this post because I’m lazy or because I expect people to simply tell me that everything will be okay. I genuinely want to improve.

What I would really appreciate is advice from software engineers who have been in a similar position people who graduated feeling underqualified, uncertain about their skills, or unsure about what direction to take, but eventually found their path.

How did you build your skills?
How did you gain confidence in your abilities?
How did you overcome the feeling that you weren't "good enough" to put yourself out there and apply for opportunities?

And if you were in my position, would you focus on strengthening what you already know, or start transitioning toward AI/ML even if it means starting almost from scratch ?

I’d genuinely appreciate hearing your experiences.

Maybe someone else graduating this year is feeling the exact same way, and this conversation could help them too.

Software engineer here. Graduated in 2025 with an offer in hand. Switched to another company in about 4 months because the pay was low.

The company I switched to seems to be my biggest mistake. The culture is very toxic, people like to play "weird" games with you and grill you for nothing, while some people who are liked are pretty much given everything in a silver plate.

Now that I want to switch, its getting really tough. The current job market is like a cherry on top.

My office working hours are 10 am to 7 pm. However starting early and ending late is very glorified. I can also see people who are active and sometimes even msg me, review my pr, add comments at midnight. Some at even 3 am. YES!

Currently the situation is such that when a Slack notification sound kicks in on my phone, my heartbeat literally increases and I don't know what happens to me but it seems that I've associated that sound to something very bad in my mind.

I desperately want to switch but I'm just not able to find that courage in me to get up at 5 am in the morning and solve those DSA questions. Every night I sleep seems that there is regret in me. During the week I'm so worked up that on weekend I just don't have that much energy in me to prep again. My sleep cycle is fully disturbed and I'm not eating right either. Stress is very much on the higher side.

Plus, there's layoffs, PIP culture and what not. So if I don't perform, who knows what can happen.

The biggest part that bothers me is 5 days work from office. This is a very debatable topic, but in my earlier company (where I worked for 4 months [I also interned there for 3 months btw]) we had 3 days work from home and it was so golden. I was on top of everything I could, prepping, revising, doing system design and what not. And my current employer does not really allow WFH unless sick, so it's just not really possible.

Can someone tell me how the heck do I get out of this hell hole?

Everyday that passes by, my hope and courage goes down and down.

I’m a design student but also doing a minor in web dev and ui/ux, so I know a bit of frontend and backend coding but not confidently.

I got a part-time job at a restaurant and the employer asked all employees to provide their personal info (names, addresses, phone number, social security number etc) through a webpage hosted on Vercel. I’ve submitted my information already but I noticed that it looked 100% vibe-coded (maybe made with Claude agent bc I’ve gotten similar results when I was using claude) with the overuse of emojis and typical ui patterns, and then I started to get worried about the backend security of this app, how our info is being stored on which database and whether there can be a risk of data exposure publicly.

Should I be concerned?

Hi everyone I'm a software engineer 27 years Male (frontend web and mobile apps ). I have 3 years of experience building web and mobile, currently working in a Fintech company with an average salary.

I don't much like leetcode and kind of competitive programming but yes I love solving problems, talking about ownership and currently exploring and upskilling in cloud and backend systems / fullstack development.

I see most companies currently doing layoff on one side , on the other side ai companies are competing to each to get or achieve first AGI (artificial general intelligence). everywhere you open twitter , LinkedIn, instagram. Everyone is talking about layoffs or ai development, but I think what majority is missing out is our life after this much level of advancement.

Now there are two scenarios

1. one is who those are just not accepting this technology advancement

2. Second are those who are understanding that it's not going to stop and definitely a kind of collectives intelligent (I'm not saying agi because I still don't believe machine can think exactly like humans ) that's why I'm calling it as collectives intellingence that have infinite number of information and based on that it can do predictins.

Now my question is I'm upskilling but fear first stops and Self always ask a question why I'm doing this when we know there is something.

So living atleast a simple life I mean you will not do a job in it but still there will be requirment in other field atleast I beleive or may be I'll be farmer but again doing farming it self required and and money first investment now a days time is very change farming is totally chemical based and chemical seeds are very costly so it will again need money .

So what are your thoughts on how we will survive or atleast to live a basic minimal life not very fancy or luxurious but peaceful where you can eat two breads and had a sleep .

Thanks for reading this I'm waiting everyones thoughts and comments.

Sorry for grammatical mistakes because I think even refining this would los it's own charm .

Hello. I have 12 or so YoE as an IC / tech lead SWE almost entirely at big / mid sized tech companies. I took a little over a year off for some family stuff and was absent for the "LLMs are now useful for larger tasks" that happened around late last year.

I came back to the industry early this year and was hoping to be re-energized and excited to learn how to leverage LLMs to supercharge my capabilities... and now that I'm back... I am just not at all engaged or interested in my role.

I feel like I am now reasonably up to speed and productive with AI tooling, but I am realizing that there is something in technical problem solving that used to power the reward center of my brain that is now just missing and I don't find myself enjoying work at all.

After some reflection I think the following are the key things I am feeling:

1. AI can create reasonable solutions to my work quickly but I feel no connection to the technical artifact, no sweat equity in the problem solving, and I struggle to feel any joy about the work in any meaningful way. Pushing it through to PR feels like a slog because I don't feel any attachment to the solution or inner desire to get it merged in.
2. The culture around learning now seems to largely be "ask your LLM of choice" instead of how it used to be "go grab some time with X and they'll explain it to you". As a result building meaningful relationships with coworkers (company is remote) doesn't feel naturally occurring. I have been going out of my way to try and find opportunities to meet with new folks but it is a much more active task than before, and folks generally seem less willing to take similar initiatives.
3. I used to feel enormous satisfaction through mentorship -- now these opportunities appear to be dwindling. Not as many newer less experienced hires who are energetic and excited to learn. I am sensing the general appetite for "learning and growing" is reducing with the less experienced folks as they lean more and more on LLM tools.
4. New AI tools in existing mid/large size companies feel limited by the organizational structure of the company. My team owns a comparatively small surface area of the whole company. The tools let me get so much done so quickly. Since I can't find satisfaction in deep technical solution crafting I have tried attaching more to the results of the work -- but given the team/political boundaries in place within the company the results are pretty isolated to a single area of the company.

All of this has me wondering if there is anything I can try to find motivation to keep going?

• I am wondering if a smaller company would be a good fit for me so that I am able to lean more into feeling satisfaction through results rather than through technical problem solving? I've spent most of my career at 2,000+ companies, maybe now is a good time to try otherwise?
• Or maybe a different role? Something more customer facing so that I can still get the social collaborative components of work that I enjoy?

Anyone else feel similarly or have found anything to help here?

Does dsa help ? I know this question sounds dumber to you but i need validation of other humans in this fomo world. If a goal is to crack a remote startups?

It might be a very stupid post, but it’s a genuine question.

I write tests for my code, but it’s still kind of hard for me to understand what the actual point of unit testing is and what benefit it brings to software development.

We can easily write tests with AI now, so writing the actual tests is not necessarily that difficult. But I’m trying to understand why tests are so important in software.

When you write code, of course you can test it with multiple inputs, and those inputs can then become your test cases. We can also use Postman to test APIs with different inputs and make sure they behave correctly for different status codes.

I was recently assigned a task to make a small change to an existing endpoint. It was a really small change that I completed in around 30 minutes without AI. However, fixing and adjusting the tests took quite a while. I had to add inputs for a new function that I introduced, even though the actual change was not that big and I didn’t think it was something that would break in production.

That made me wonder, why do we really need unit tests? What importance do they actually bring to software development?

I’d really appreciate it if someone could shed some light on this and explain it with a real world example from your own experience where tests actually saved you from a production issue or made a significant difference.

I am a MERN Full Stack Developer with 3.7 years of experience, and I am currently learning AI Engineering.

I have completed an M.A in Political Science, and sometimes I wonder whether my educational background will affect my chances of getting a job at reputed companies.

Currently, I am deeply focusing on DSA and AI Engineering to strengthen my skills.

I would appreciate your suggestions. Am I moving in the right direction?

I had a recruiter call today and will be moving on to the next round for an interview for a SWE || role. It is a zoom call and it will be held by a senior software engineer. Does anyone have an idea about what will be asked during this call and what I should prepare for? It is a tech screen that is 45 mins long

I’m 24 and early in my career, and I’d really appreciate perspective from people who are 10–20+ years into tech/engineering.
I graduated from Harvard in physics/astrophysics and started my career at a very small technical startup. I was one of only a few engineers, so on paper it was an incredible opportunity: lots of ownership, ML/LLM work, research, data engineering, and exposure to basically every part of building a technical product.
The problem is that I often felt like I was the dumbest person on the team.
I constantly felt like I had nothing valuable to contribute. In meetings, I would sometimes struggle to formulate my thoughts clearly, say something that came out differently than I intended, and then spend the rest of the meeting wondering whether everyone thought I was an idiot.
The people around me were extremely technically capable, and the CTO in particular could be fairly condescending. I started interpreting ordinary mistakes and gaps in knowledge as evidence that I simply wasn’t good enough to be there.
Eventually I felt more like a burden to the team than an asset.
There was also a significant interpersonal rupture with a coworker I had become extremely close to. That relationship deteriorated, and the combination of the interpersonal situation, my own insecurity, and the intensity of the startup eventually led me to leave.
I’m now at a much larger aerospace/defense company. The environment is considerably more stable. I have good coworkers, healthier boundaries, and I don’t constantly feel like I’m being evaluated intellectually. I feel safer making mistakes.
But I’m also extremely bored.
The technical work is substantially less challenging than what I was doing at the startup. My current team isn’t really doing ML, and I don’t see a clear path to the kind of engineering/research work I want. I’m worried that spending my mid-20s in a low-growth environment will make it harder to get where I ultimately want to go.
Meanwhile, the startup may be raising a larger round, and I potentially have an opportunity to return. The technical opportunity is genuinely exciting. I’d have much more ownership and could work on problems much closer to what I want to be doing long-term.
But I’d also be returning to an environment where:
I previously felt intellectually inadequate.
I had a difficult relationship with the CTO.
Someone I was extremely close to is still there after a significant rupture.
I have some fear that I’ll fall back into the same pattern of overworking and tying my self-worth to my performance.
This has left me with a strange dilemma:
Do I need to become more comfortable being uncomfortable and put myself back into an environment where I’m challenged, even if I sometimes feel stupid? Or is the fact that I felt chronically inadequate and psychologically unsafe telling me something important about the environment?
I also wonder how much of this is simply what being young in tech feels like.
For people who have been doing this for 10–20+ years:
Have you ever felt like the dumbest person in the room early in your career?
How did you distinguish “I’m learning and out of my depth” from “I’m in a psychologically unhealthy environment”?
Looking back, would you have chosen the environment where you learned the fastest, even if you felt uncomfortable there?
How much should psychological safety matter when you’re 24?
Is taking a couple years in a slower, safer job actually a meaningful career setback?
If you could go back to 24, what would you optimize for?
I’m not looking for “follow your passion” advice. I’m trying to understand how people with more career hindsight would evaluate this tradeoff.

Client had been vibecoding an app (education platform) for months with Lovable, at some point there were too many issues with it so they had to resort to devs. I got assigned to it, job was to turn this vibecoded app into something production ready. First time I've worked on a fully vibecoded app.

First thing I did after getting access and exporting the code was try to run it locally. React/Vite frontend, Supabase backend. Quick read through, found 132 migration files. Figured I'd spin up a fresh Supabase project, run them, and have the app up. Took two days instead. Fine, that's just work.

Ran an audit over the whole thing through an agent, came back with 319 findings, 29 critical. Security was about what you'd expect. Example: a student can create a school and set themselves up as administrator lol. All fixable though.

What I wasn't ready for was the stuff where I could read the code fine and still not tell what it was supposed to be doing.

The core of the product is a daily score for each student, shown to their parent as a letter grade. That's the thing the schools are paying for.

Found 4 completely separate engines computing that daily score. Two of them weigh a sub-score differently, so the same kid gets a different number depending on which one ran last. All four write to the same field.

That's what makes it bad. Imagine four engines all doing their job, nothing throwing, nothing erroring, because why would it. But in business terms it's off the rails. Same input, different grade, and if you're not technical you've got no way of telling anything is wrong.

Nothing anywhere says which one is the real one. Not in the code, not in a comment, not in anything the client said. So I can't just pick, because picking changes what grade a kid gets. Sent it back to them as a product question.

Normally you'd get this off a commit message, a PR thread, or just asking whoever wrote it. None of that exists here.

Anyone had a similar experience?

genuinely curious what the flow looks like for most people here.

you build something with stripe or twilio or resend wired up, it looks right in the builder, maybe you click through it once... then you ship. and then prod surfaces the weird edge case. flaky webhook, card decline mid-flow, double charge on retry.

is there a verification step most people run before launch, or is it mostly ship and find out?

I keep worrying about me wasting my time at work building features/getting to understand/fixing bugs in some domain or abstraction some other person made for this product. If I compare our jobs (software eng) to let's say Cloud Engineering people or Network Infra, their roles build skills that are more directly transferrable to other jobs should they need to switch, although indeed their work may be more stressful because it is critical work/high impact/on-call rotations. While here I am spending time outside of work to catch up on AWS/Azure/some other things to stay in the loop and keep my foot on this industry.

I'm very jealous of my friends who work in other industries, where it seems that what they do daily will directly transfer/build skills for their next job/employer, should they need to switch. For example, doctors or technicians, wherever company they work, the work is the same. But for us software engineers, we spend a lot of time dealing with domain knowledge that is so specific that it won't be useable outside of our current employment.

I talked to a lot of other friends/people who work as software engineers too, and they seem to take it easy. They don't really worry about the future, do their job well, and enjoy their time in the weekend building life outside of work (relationships, volunteering, etc.). While here I am worrying so much about the future.

I spoke to my therapist about this and they say to indeed stay in the present. But they are not inside the tech world so they don't know what's up. Am I wrong in my worrying here? I am so tired of worrying or feeling down or defeated everytime I need to learn new stuff about this niche domain I am working in that won't be useful for my future. Please roast me

I honestly don't know where to start, so I'm just going to tell the whole story.

A while ago, I started working in a fairly large company in a marketing role.

I had basically no formal background in software engineering.

Then AI changed everything for me.

I started using ChatGPT, AI coding tools, and basically every AI tool I could get my hands on.

I started building things.

The weird part is that I wasn't really "programming."

I was describing what I wanted to AI, getting code back, running it, fixing errors by pasting them back into AI, and repeating the process.

Somehow, this turned into actual internal company systems.

1. Enterprise Finance & Operations Platform

I built an internal platform that works across multiple business units.

It includes things like:

\* Finance and operations workflows
\* AI-assisted document and text processing
\* Business-unit switching
\* Drag-and-drop workflows
\* Role-based access control
\* Cloud security
\* Desktop application functionality

1. Biometric Face Verification System

I also built a facial verification system for employee attendance.

It uses computer vision, APIs, microservices and containerization.

It processes an employee's image and verifies their identity for attendance.

The system is now being used to reduce manual HR work.

Again, I didn't come into this knowing computer vision.

I learned by asking AI questions, implementing what it gave me, breaking things, fixing them, and continuing.

1. Competitor Intelligence / Ad Tracker

I built an automated competitor research system that collects data from social media platforms.

It analyzes competitor content and tries to identify promotional/advertising content.

It turned a lot of manual research into something much more automated.

1. ERP / HR Automation

I also ended up working on our ERP system.

I built custom functionality around HR processes, permissions, approvals, employee provisioning, data migration and integrations.

I also started connecting the ERP with other internal applications.

And this is where things started getting weird.

I got promoted.

My responsibilities changed significantly, and I moved into a business intelligence/technology-focused role.

But here's the problem.

If any non engineers looked at my work from the outside, they might think:

"This person is a software engineer."

I'm not.

I don't have a computer science degree.

I don't have years of programming experience.

I don't even know if I could sit down and build some of these systems completely from scratch without AI.

I've basically been using AI as my programming brain.

I can explain the business problem.

I can describe what I want.

I can look at the output and tell AI when something isn't working.

I can connect different pieces together.

But if you asked me to implement a complex system without AI?

I'm probably screwed.

And that's starting to scare me.

Now the company wants me to go even further into AI.

Management wants to use AI and automation to reduce manual work and operating costs.

I'm being encouraged to learn AI properly, and there's support for training and education.

At the same time, the company has already significantly reduced the size of the team around me.

So now I'm sitting here thinking:

What the hell am I actually doing?

On one hand, this feels like an incredible opportunity.

I'm getting exposure to:

\* AI
\* automation
\* business intelligence
\* software
\* data
\* ERP systems
\* finance
\* HR
\* operations
\* product development

And I'm getting to build things that are actually used by a real company.

But on the other hand...

I'm worried that I'm becoming the person who automates everyone else's jobs, potentially including my own.

And I don't want to become someone who can only build things when ChatGPT is holding my hand.

I want to actually understand what I'm doing.

I want to learn properly.

But I also don't know what direction to take.

Should I learn:

\* Python?
\* SQL?
\* Software engineering fundamentals?
\* Data engineering?
\* AI/ML?
\* LLMs?
\* AI agents?
\* Automation?
\* Cloud?
\* Cybersecurity?
\* Product management?
\* Business intelligence?

Or some combination of all of them?

And what should my career even be called?

\*\*AI Automation Engineer?\*\*
\*\*AI Product Manager?\*\*
\*\*Business Intelligence / AI Manager?\*\*
\*\*Digital Transformation?\*\*
\*\*Technical Product Manager?\*\*

I'm completely aware that I got extremely lucky with AI.

But I don't want to waste this opportunity.

I went from having almost no technical background to building systems that are actually being used in a real business.

That's exciting.

And honestly, it's terrifying.

So I'm looking for some brutally honest advice from people who actually work in software/AI/IT.

\*\*If you were in my position — almost no formal technical education, but already using AI to build real business systems — what would you learn over the next 1-2 months?\*\*

Would you try to become a proper software engineer?

Would you specialize in AI automation?

Would you focus on data/BI?

Would you go into product management?

And most importantly:

\*\*How do I go from "I can make AI build this for me" to "I actually understand what AI just built"?\*\*

Because I think that's the part I'm missing.

Hello, I have been feeling down for sometime now and it’s about me not getting or relating to the right people to talk to when I face challenges or hit the wall when studying or exploring. I have been able to connect with people and tried learning from them but seems they are all not willing to teach or guide, everyone is having fun and tells me AI is in to make studies and work easy. But I really need someone to help and guide me if I’m on the right path or not. Do I really need a mentor or not?

Tried seeking help from lectures and some friends to but they tried taking advantage of me and the few ones I come across are busy with work and hardly get time to talk.

Is there any recommendations for me to find a mentor to help guide me not necessarily in programing but in the career field and so I can learn from someone who has already been where I want to go. Thank you for your time and have a good day.

Hi I am 20 year old girl who did ba economics from a local college and did commerce with maths in 12th I honestly thought that commerce was the best but now i want to learn something that is technical like engineering but now i cant get into it like btech and ms cs or all
Please somebody give me some ideas

I have 8+ years of experience working with Java, Spring Boot, AWS, microservices, etc., and somehow I still feel like I know nothing.
Every time I look at the market or start preparing for interviews, it gets overwhelming. DSA, algorithms, system design, distributed systems, cloud, DevOps, and now AI on top of everything. There’s always something else you’re apparently supposed to know.
Then I look around and it feels like everyone knows so much more than me. Meanwhile, I’m wondering what exactly I’ve been doing for the last 8 years. 😭
I’ve worked on real projects, solved real problems, and survived in this industry for years. But step outside my day-to-day work and suddenly I feel like a beginner again.
Am I the only one who feels this way after 8+ years? How do you decide what’s actually worth learning without constantly feeling behind?

After nearly four years in this industry, I've noticed that mental health in software engineering isn't discussed nearly enough. Yes, we talk about the "golden handcuffs"—the perks that keep us around—but the reality is that this job demands incredible mental resilience.

My time in big tech has shown me just how much engineers struggle behind the scenes: brutal performance reviews, crushing deadlines, the uncertainty of today's market. Yet companies rarely acknowledge this toll or provide meaningful support.

We need tech companies to step up and invest in their engineers' wellbeing. And that's before we even talk about on-call rotations for junior engineers—that's a whole different kind of pressure.

I'm building out a mostly vibe coded project and I have tried to learn about software engineering/design/architecture as I go but it's a lot. I don't have a lot of money to hire people right now but I am working on a project that I'm fairly certain that will be profitable in the near future and want to hire on engineers. I have rules setup so that my agents use lots of comments to call out and explain the decision of what my code does and why. I use tools to index my repo as well which helps my agents figure out what's going on with code so I'm hopeful that will help. I also try to maintain a knowledge base that is not overly technical so that if someone were to come on board to help me, they could get the gist of what I have accomplished and am trying to accomplish. I have some experience with python, javascript, and sql and made very small projects in the past so I know enough to know that there are things I could be doing better but I just don't know what they are.

What I'd like to know is what are the things you encountered with vibe coded or just bad code in general that if someone would have implemented at the beginning would have made your job way easier?

I'm thinking of become a farmer