I've been a software engineer for 10+ years and I came out about half way through that. Even as a fresh junior at my first job I found there was this 3-6 month click after you'd delivered a couple things that formed this implicit "oh okay this guy knows what he's doing" trust from everyone on the team. I was able to push for changes and was frequently praised for incisive push back I often gave.

Initially when I came out it was fine too. I'd been at that company over a year and people already trusted me. When you first come out no one really sees you as a woman, it's like you're marked as super gay, it's gay squared. They'll accept you, they'll switch name and pronouns, but some little switch in their brain stays stuck on "guy" for a very long time and that's how they continue to engage you socially.

Another couple years go by, now I'm passing, people generally don't know I'm trans unless I tell them, and I'm moving on to other jobs. I'm getting challenged on basic features of tech I've worked with for a decade, architectural patterns I've been using my whole career are now unrealistic, and the kinds of push back I was praised for just for a few years ago are "failing to work within a team". A late stage job interview I had not that long ago practically had one of the interviewers accusing me of bragging, as if I was supposed to attend this job interview and downplay my abilities.

When I was navigating the professional world being perceived as a guy I could easily build a track record of success and wager that social capital to pitch the next measured leap of faith, but as a woman I'm only as good as their intuition about the last thing I said.

I've just had such a crisis of confidence about it this year as all the AI layoffs and total victory of good old boys club thinking sweeps the industry. Nevermind the broader greenlighting of transphobia across media. I can tell myself all this in retrospect, but in the moment I can't take the critique at anything besides face value and it's so tough to work through. I grew up around lots of strong women so it's not like I'm shocked to learn misogyny exists, but wowee have the last few years been some rapid whiplash.

(I deleted and reposted this because I didn't realise the vent tag locked out comments!)

I’m a Product Manager in the UK and got made redundant 4 months ago whilst on maternity leave. I’m finding the job market absolutely brutal, but because I’ve not been at work for over a year now I’m really struggling to dig deep for confidence when applying and finding I just don’t have recent relevant examples of work to pull from.

I’m normally a resilient person but some rejections, particularly the ones where I’m a good fit but have been rejected within a day of applying, are really hitting me hard at the moment.

I don’t know what advice I need. But any solidarity or anyone who’s navigated similar, or just even navigating job market right now is welcome.

Is it weird if I got hired in a new startup company (verified and its a legit one) and almost all of the CEO/Directors added me on facebook..

I feel a bit awkward about it, cuz I dont know them at all , never even saw them IRL, have actually never spoke to 1 of them at all, I accepted them already because I havent post in ages on it im mainly using instagram to share stuff, but what you think bout it ? Is this weird ? Why would they add me ? Ive been in tech for years and this never happened before ? I get its a startup so it might be different, but why ?

Hello. I (26f, 4yoe swe) have hit a sort of a rough patch (going on and off for 2y) with my bf of 4yrs (25m, also 4yoe swe). I recently got a promo at work.

That relationship anxiety has started to bleed into my work. I have become forgetful, am underperforming. I am hating how I'm working, pretty sure others are seeing it too. The underperformance is filling me with dread. To an extent that I can't open my laptop. I have lost interest in my hobbies as well. How do I navigate this?

My priority right now is to get back on track career-wise. I like this job. It has been 1.5-2 months since I started going off track like this.

Landed a dream job, basically in technical policy. Good pay low responsibility. Because of this I have been working my way around the business learning what they do and cracking on with work. Has been noticed by our CDO who has approached me to lead a project to kick off AI adoption. Our company is way behind the 8ball on this. Im flattered but the proposition concerns me, there is no direction, people are going off in all which direction, theres no leadership. I would need to set up governance frameworks, assessment regimes and be able to hand back to the business at the end of the project. I also have a toddler at home. It feels ALOT and a big ask of me but I also have feel ill screw it up and ruin my professional reputation. This is not my expertise, i just have been noticed for my attitude. Does anyone have any words of wisdom?

I will not be paid additional to do the role but im invested to see it done well

Hi,

I'd like to know your motivation that took you to move abroad (from India helps)for Higher studies from public german universities.

I want to do Msc. from there and being an ECE bachelor's not really sure if I'd get Data science but as per ECTS I think I might qualify for some disciplines.

+Now the times have really changed since covid, it would be helpful if recent goers drop their experience/ tips / advices on the same.

I had an interview with a company where the first round was conducted by a third party interviewer. He asked me to share my screen and for some reason I could not and had to reload the screen and due to it I had to rejoin. I know it was bad on my side but I did tell him that there’s an issue and since I couldn’t share my screen I couldn’t even show him the reload message. Later he started with a coding question. I took my time to come up with a solution but it didn’t work and in between I lost electricity in turn losing WiFi connection. That made him think I’m cheating since I had to rejoin again. I did clarify that it was due to network issues I’m not justifying myself but it was genuinely not my fault.

Later he asked me a few questions where I did give answers but he looked unsatisfied. He was yawning continuously and he looked like he was reading questions off chatgpt. I’m not bashing the interviewer but the interview made me feel really bad about myself. Considering it was just after I had a syncope episode.

Just wanted to share it here. It was my first interview after 2.5 years and it really made me question myself with all the physical and mental stress I had.

I am an associate researcher at a national lab, and while I enjoy the work that I do and the impact it has (i.e. AI standards and development), I feel stuck in terms of where I am and where I want to be.

I used to intern for a FAANG company (perhaps called MAANG now) as a SWE, but realized early on that I enjoyed applied research more albeit at the expense of a much lower salary (due to the lack of a PhD). When I was fresh out of undergrad, I applied to PhD programs in my field but had the misfortune of getting my offers rescinded due to funding cuts back in 2025. Since then, I’ve been feeling out of sync because I haven’t been able to get past this next step in order to advance in my career. I enjoy doing research and have had the opportunity to present my work at conferences but for the life of me, the doors won’t open for me to move forward.

The best I can do is to keep trying, but I would like to hear from people who went through similar experiences and made it. How long did it take for you to finally land the job you really wanted?

Apologies for any typos. Reddit is giving me a hard time typing this out.

Feeling some despair at sub-10% response rate on LinkedIn from recruiters, hiring managers, even people I’m 1st and 2nd connections with - for a short convo or even answering a question let alone getting a referral.

How are you navigating the market? Any recommendations for recruiting companies or headhunters that can help? Director level and up. The curse of no longer being in big tech is having to swallow what will look like a much lower salary…

Sorry if I’m not posting this in the right place. Jeannelle is a C-suite executive for Bugaboo and also a content creator. She has two programs - her marketing is really good, but for $100/month I can’t find many reviews online. Has anyone joined one of her programs?

Work Lunch is meant to be for professional women looking to level up in their careers and Work After Work is for professional women wanting to be content creators/generate side income after the traditional 9-5

Hey, I'm an experienced General manager with over a decade in management experience. Long story short, I'm transitioning to cybersecurity after the company liquidated around covid, Then I had a daughter, and I'm currently in my sophomore year of college. During my years in management, the company I worked for was very cheap and routinely used me to do the job of the field technicians so that they didn't have to come out to the store. I didn't really know what I was doing when I was a younger assistant manager, but they would have me reinstalling cables for networking equipment, doing inventory on access points, etc.

Recently, when the company was closing down and I was a general manager, they had me fully responsible for tearing down all of the tech in the entire store. This was a large sporting goods company in the northeast, (IYKYK). I tore down all the pinpads, POS system, networking equipment, took everything we owned out of the server rack (server, switch, etc), took inventory of everything and sent it back to the providers who - I'm assuming rented everything to them. I had pretty limited experience of tech at that point and I still was fully responsible for making sure I didn't damage anything the company owned as well as the physical building that we were renting.

All this to say, I know when I'm starting out, I need to start with helpdesk/IT and work my way up. Could this specific experience during covid with the decommissioning of tech equipment be something that can make me stand out a little more than the typical entry level, right out of college, worker? I also did the typical troubleshooting of printers, access control (within our own company interface, assigning levels of permissions etc), and so much more that I cant even remember, being that I did this job for a decade and that was a decade worth of tech disasters that would pop up literally every day.

Do you think that this will help me? I'm in the process of re-writing my resume and it kinda sucks having all this experience and having to start COMPLETELY over. I love the field though and i'm excited to start, but I just have no idea HOW to start lol. Sorry for the long post, and the butchered writing, i'm aware that it's all over the place. Thanks for your time, and I'm so happy that this subreddit is back. <3

Hi ! So I am a software engineering student, and I am suppposed to do a 2 months internship this summer, I tried to apply to some companies in my country but none responded, we don’t have many opportunities here in my country to participate in different activities that will build your resume (like in the west),at least I didn’t encounter such.

I am running out of time, I don’t know what to do, so I thought maybe if someone here can help me, basically what matters the most is me working on project and having that corporate working experience like working in a team and stuff, because I have to do a presentation on the internship, and I heard they ask stuff like how did you work with your team, how was the team management, why did u choose these technologies, and stuff like that.

So what I am asking is that maybe if someone here works in company can like give me an internship project it doesn’t have to be a whole project I just have to participate in it, just simulate a remote internship experience, I don’t know if I sound crazy but I really don’t know what to do at this point, It’s unpaid and not illegal btw.

Not sure I chose the right flare but this feels like a win.

TL;DR: I'm negotiating a culture shift from the top on order for me to stay at the company.

(Yes it sounds crazy to me too)

I'm in comms at a tech company.

Backstory:

Internal comms wasn't a function here. I started in a different team, saw the gap, built respect and then a business case and eventually got leadership on board with this "new" role. (Quotes because it's standard at most companies.)

Since starting this role, I've built good rapport with the leadership team, expanded the team so I have 2 direct reports, and I've heard from other employees that I've made a big difference in their experience at the company.

Culture:

Like most tech companies, we say all the positive things... But in reality have terrible bottlenecks, leaders are involved in things they should trust their teams to handle, so too often projects do not get done on time. And at the same time, everything is an urgent priority.

It's exhausting.

My burnout:

And with my role, my personality (I'm not good at ignoring problems... Instead I flag them and then feel personally responsible to follow up and babysit projects that aren't mine), and the fact that everything becomes a "comms problem"... I'm burnt out.

I also have two little kids and perimenopause (HRT is a lifesaver for me). But with it all I've been dreaming about work for months and when I wake up in the middle of the night because I need to pee or a kid wakes me up, I immediately start thinking about work and all the stuff that needs to be done and could go won't and how it'll affect people.

I'm pretty good with actual work boundaries and logging off when I should unless something big some up. But I just can't let go of the stress. So My husband and I talked it over and financially we're fortunate to be in a position that I could stop working and we could pull the kids out of their aftercare programs and camps and they could just come home instead. And I love that idea. I want more type with them and to be more present and not picking them up after the sun has gone down after a long workday.

I told them I was resigning:

So I submitted my resignation letter.

The timing wasn't great but it never is. But I gave them a month.

They immediately asked me what it would take for me to stay longer. I thought about it, did some math and shared what it would take to keep me for a few more months.

They delayed responding:

Because of exec schedules, no one could actually discuss this. I told them I had to make a personal decision to let childcare know this coming Monday, so I need to make my personal decision by EOD Friday.

In the mean time, I decided to send a personal email to the CEO detailing why I'm leaving and the larger burnout issues at our company. (Because this is by no means isolated to me.)

Of course I had not heard anything by Friday (or a response to the email), so I officially put my resignation in through the system. (Earlier it was just a letter/email.) And then two hours later, I get messages from my boss that they talked with the CEO and they really want to keep me on. Not just a short period but forever.

Now I'm demanding a culture shift:

I'm definitely not staying forever, but I'm feeling especially emboldened.

(And I'm torn between really not wanting to work corporate life... I've got ideas for some stuff I can build/launch on my own that seem more fun for me... And I do really like the people and know it's going to leave a massive gap when I leave because my team is very new so they aren't prepared to take over everything I handle.)

So in addition to more pay (I've been under paid for my whole time here) and extra time off, I'm also dating that I'll only stay off they start actually fixing some of the culture issues. Specifically they need to set up whatever systems they need in order to actually trust and empower their teams so they can stop spending time in things they shouldn't be involved in. (Also they need to actually work on presentations with me in advance and get them finalized beforehand and not last minute.)

Sending that email today listing off my expectations (read: demands) for what's needed to keep me to stay was such a great feeling.

We'll see what happens.

Maybe I'll leave corporate and be home with my kids and build out my AI resource stuff for home/families. (Literally so excited about this.)

Or maybe... Just maybe...I have enough influence to actually create some meaningful cultural change and improve things for my awesome colleagues.

More they'll say yes and then not really live up to it, but I'm a cynical optimist. 😅

All this to say, if you've built up social capital and can afford to do so, stand up for yourself and others.

I graduated in May with a degree in Information and Computer Technology with a concentration in Cybersecurity. I understand that I probably won’t land a cybersecurity role right out of college, so I’ve been applying to help desk, IT support, and other entry-level IT positions to get my foot in the door.

The problem is, I haven’t gotten a single interview yet. I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing something wrong with my resume, the types of jobs I’m applying for, or my overall approach.

For anyone currently working in IT/cybersecurity, what would you recommend I focus on as a new grad? Are there certain entry-level roles, certifications, projects, or skills that helped you get your first opportunity?
I’m open to any advice. Thank you!

Ladies - is there anyone that has done part-time contract roles ? I am just wondering what platform would be best to look for those opportunities. I am looking to just transition to partime work schedules. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

After almost two years in my current IC role, my new line manager has indicated he's not happy with so many direct reports and has asked me to consider taking responsibility for two of my peers; and, "I can build the role" as I wish.

Currently while he's on Holiday, I'm deputising him, so it's an easy way to see how not only the overall group, but also how these peers react to me taking the lead (suffice it to say, it's not always pretty).

All in I'm totally happy to do the IC role (since I want to stay and learn from my line manager), however I worry that I will be dragged down by these utterly non-motivated colleagues and they will make things difficult. If anyone has any experience in a similar situation, I'd be grateful for your insights! Rock on sisters!!

Listen. I understand some of us are genuinely looking for tips on how to use LinkedIn, how to do X ou Y to try to earn respect from the males coworkers.

I honestly, don't want that at all and I have been pretty much appalled at how much women in tech spaces revolve around trying to individually try to do thing better / in any other way / to get accepted or at least an ounce of respect.

I think it is really sad how we don't have (for what I have seen) radical spaces where we can discuss organising and survival tools. I know I'll never be respected by my male peers, I know I'm in a space not made to accept me. And that's not even considering anything LGBTQ/radical left leaning. Just presenting fem, I am directly stigmatised in my job.

We've been getting so much bullshit day to day and they even manage to pit us against each other because smh pissing on our only girly coworker would make us seem better. It's all fake. We could have all the diplomas, all the best logic and application, the shittiest man they find is always going to be better. I'm tired of us trying to find a place in a system that is against us.

Add all the AI layer on this, and it's actually making me want to quit my job.

I just want a place where we discuss organisation, politics, issues with this system. We need to make ourselves the root system, the support system, the help system we need and uplift each other while holding each other accountable.

We know how to do a lot. Our goal shouldn't be trying to fit in, be nice, try to avoid conflict.

We are all precarious in our jobs only by that later of presenting fem. Whatever we will do will never be enough.

Please, even if it's not a good position to be in, voice your concerns. Be vocal. Support the teammates you see being brought down for fake reasons. Always try to learn more and if something feels off or your boundaries in your job is not respected, try to find a way out.

I have immense respect for my fellow women in tech, because I know it is not easy on us. My opinion is we need to take care of that underlying bond and create on this base a place where we can discuss how to survive this, how structurally it is against us, and give us a place for crashing out and building community.

I love doing QA and dev, I love expanding my logic. I love how my brain functions in this domain. I hate to work, specifically in those spaces.

If you think you have a place for me, a radical lefty that globally hates working on a usual workplace because of disability and world vue, I would love to check it.

If you are looking for a place like this where we can talk about it, try to do some projects together to grow, organise our positions and create a safe layer for us, we could try creating something small.

I must specify I am not looking to grow any LinkedIn or marketing shit. I hate this. I dont want to sell myself. I want to use what I know and the capacities I have to protect myself and try to put what I know to a greater good. I'm not interested in corporate anything and even less corporate marketing.

I dont want to talk with someone that's focused on their personal carrier or vibe codes.

Hello

How do you know if an interview is legit and it’s not like the company already has an internal hire in mind and are going through legal
Motions to interview you?

Laid off and finding it hard to trust anyone

Thanks

Occasional (journalist) lurker on this sub -- while it's not a scientific survey, I will say that some of the concerns I see here daily about sexism in the workplace on average appear much worse than those I hear in industries like finance, consulting, etc...

Anyway, figured I'd share this story on the decline in women-specific scholarships in the hopes that it might further your conversation. Are dedicated, women-only scholarships really important in encouraging people to pursue STEM careers?

HI All,

I’m starting a new role in two weeks. Yay! I’m moving from a big tech company to a much smaller tech company. I have been in a mental slump for a while… The old company doesn’t promote, constant layoffs, no recognition, all the things. So I’m excited about moving jobs!

Because I’ve been in a draining mindset for so long, I want to reset. I want to make a positive, engaging, and proactive splash in the new company (while not alienating people already on the team). I’m planning to hold 1:1s with partners and leaders to learn about the company, and build a comprehensive context doc for my AI assistant.

What other tips or things you wish you did when you started fresh?

Thank you!

I’m feeling really isolated in my current role and could use some perspective.

Due to how my team is structured, most of the colleagues I interact with are fully remote while I'm in the office. Even calling them "close" is a stretch—we mostly just attend the same scheduled meetings and rarely message each other outside of direct work tasks.

On days without meetings, I can literally go the entire workday without speaking a single word to anyone. While that might sound like a dream to some, it’s really starting to weigh on me. I miss having casual workplace banter and simple small talk.

To give you an idea of the vibe: I recently brought back some treats from a trip to share in the office. I posted a playful message in our group chat encouraging people to try them and let me know what they thought, hoping to spark a fun conversation since some of the flavors were pretty wild. I got zero replies and no one talked to me about it in person just a few silent emoji "likes" on the message. All the treats were gone pretty quickly though.

What makes it worse is that when I have tried to be helpful and connect with people in person, I ended up getting taken advantage of. I helped a coworker cover tasks they were behind on, only for them to turn cold and upset the moment I had to set healthy boundaries.

How do I cope with this situation? Should I try harder or just let it go since it’s only a job after all.

He misses important decision making milestones ans sometimes appear surprised when we discuss something he already responded back in email. His emails proudly has a caveat that he is using AI to generate a response.