I'm sure you remember those videos from a few years ago. Girl in her twenties flexing high quality work environment with unlimited free food, spending their day playing ping pong or meeting, no coding, and then ending the video with "oh and I made a quarter of a million dollars last year btw, and another company just offered me 300k TC".

Do these roles still exist? How has AI and the general turmoil in tech affected them?

Hello everyone, I was recently invited for an intro call at a startup in my area. It’s for a FDE role, and all I know is that it’s a buzzword and is about working with customers. I’m wondering what a FDE might do at a startup or what the interview process would be like for this type of role. I have my call next week so I will ask many questions but was hoping for guidance on how I can prepare for an interview in the meantime. Thanks in advance!

I'm a senior ML engineer at an R&D lab. I've been trying to make a transition from research lab to production house. I've been invited to several interviews now (for senior ai engineer positions) and a first round screener question I keep hearing is "Tell me how you go about doing evaluations on a project." To me, evaluations is an extremely overloaded term. It could mean people evaluations, model evaluations, cost evaluations, risk...etc. So I typically ask if there is a type of evaluation they'd like me to describe before making assumptions and jumping into an answer. They look at me like I have 3 heads and say something like, "just tell us how you would do a normal evaluation." So I just kinda go into how I might eval a model (performance, cost, risks, etc.). I have yet to get any call backs for a second round lol. There could be another reason why, but this seems to be common between interviews and this is just one vector I'm trying to debug.

Just curious to know if anyone has any experience being asked or asking this question in an interview. Do you have any advice on a general framework on how to answer this question?

I'm also wondering if evaluation has a very specific meaning for the ai engineer position that I'm just unaware of.

Hello fellow redditors,

I’m currently working as an L1 SOC Analyst in India, earning ₹3 LPA. My goal is to reach ₹12 LPA by October 2027, and I’m looking for honest advice from people who have made a similar career jump.

Here’s my profile:

Experience: 2+ years in SOC operations

SIEM: Wazuh, ELK Stack

EDR/XDR: CrowdStrike Falcon, Bitdefender, Blumira

Other technologies: Sophos, Fortinet, SonicWall, Microsoft 365, Active Directory, Cloudflare WAF

SOC responsibilities: Alert triage, initial investigation, IOC analysis, incident documentation, escalation, shift handovers, SLA/KPI management, SOPs and playbooks

Achievement: Tuned Wazuh rules and reduced false positives by approximately 30%

Certifications: CrowdStrike Certified Falcon Administrator, Falcon Threat Hunter and Falcon Incident Responder

I have hands-on experience in 24/7 SOC environments, but I know I still need to improve my technical depth to qualify for better-paying roles.

My target is to reach ₹12 LPA within the next 12 months.I don't know I'm gonna achieve this but at any cost i have to do this like I know it's very hard but I can work . I need some advice how I can achieve this should I do certificates or should I do something else just comment below it means a lot to me if you can help me achieve my goal .

I graduated from a decent-to-good university for CS in Spring 2025 and have not yet been graced with a job offer. I did not have any internships during my 3 years of studying, but I did have some decent projects, like partially writing a kernel for my capstone and working on a promising but then-unfinished game. I spent 3-4 months applying to SWE positions out of college, and after a string of failures, I figured it would be best to wrap up and publish my game commercially to strengthen my resume.

A year of development passed, the game came out, and nothing changed much. My resume is definitely more attractive now since it has no loose ends, but it's still a far cry from being good: it has no trust signals in the form of formal work experience. I've had minimal interviews this whole time, though I've been flown out for two companies: one was a random NYC startup, the other was Amazon. Neither panned out.

I think I'm in a pretty classic bind of needing experience to get experience, and the state of the market for the foreseeable future is such that no one, at any level, has a reason to run the risk of hiring me. It's not even a question of exposure or volume: my dad is a now-retired software engineer who hit up his entire network to give me referrals, most of whom work in FAANG, but none of it panned out. I don't have any personal contacts in the industry, either. My resume is just unappealing, and my "new-gradness" is already on its way out.

I don't really know what else to do: I feel like my standards are already as low as they can be within the field. Maybe I should pivot to something completely unrelated, like a trade or something? It just feels like I missed the boat big time, and it's not coming back. Is that the case?

I’m a software developer with about four years of experience. Seeing people lose their jobs with AI being given as a reason has me wondering what I should be doing now.

I’m not expecting the world to end. But I am worried that finding decent work will get harder, and I don’t really see what the alternatives are supposed to be.

People often say “learn a trade,” but wouldn’t those jobs feel it too? If a lot of office workers lose their income, there’s less money to spend and more people looking for other work. Or am I missing something?

What would you actually do in my position? Save more cash? Buy stocks, since companies might benefit from automation? Gold? Move into a different field?

I’d like to avoid looking back in a few years wishing I’d done something while I still had a steady income. Curious how others are thinking about this.

Hey everyone,
I recently got laid off from a Senior Frontend role here in London (6 YOE) . Tbh, I’m completely burnt out on the SWE interviewing process, job hunting and the saturated dev market.

I want out of pure engineering but I need to protect my income and land a job ASAP (minimum £65k/$90k baseline to live in London). I also hate technical coding interviews, whiteboard loops and live LeetCode tasks. I want a role with high AI resistance and near-zero daily coding volume.

My research narrowed down my top 3 options to:
- Cloud Security Governance / Assurance Analyst
- AI Security Governance Specialist
- Technical GRC / Security Assurance Engineer

I am heavily leaning toward Cloud Security Governance / Assurance because of job availability in London, it requires near-zero daily coding and skips live coding for conversational, scenario-based interviews.
My plan is a full-time study sprint (35+ hours/week) to secure the AWS Certified Security - Specialty and the CCSK badges to trigger recruiter keywords.

Am I over-simplifying how realistic it is to leverage my software background to jump straight into a mid-level Technical Cloud Governance role at £65k+/$90k within 2–3 months? Has anyone else made a similar jump to escape interview anxiety?
Brutal honesty welcome. Cheers.

I've been getting spammed by LinkedIn recruiters on the daily, most of them reaching out about founding engineer roles at AI startups in NYC.

I have 4YOE, at a no-name startup, and had joined as eng #3. I've worked across the platform, having joined as a frontend eng but eventually transitioning to being a full stack engineer. My profile is not remarkable.

I get inMail like:

• "first engineer at a pre-seed NYC startup building an AI back-office (bookkeeping, AP/AR, payroll) for SMBs. $150-200K + up to 2% equity, in person in Manhattan. Fancy hearing more?"
• "The role: AI Product Engineer on a 7-person pod. Full stack, features owned end to end, on customer calls yourself. Unlimited AI tooling budget, meals in office, monthly team dinners at Michelin-starred spots. $200K to $300K base, top-of-market equity, Hudson Yards 4x/week"
• "Not only will you get to work with some of the brightest minds in the space (ex Ramp, Google, Clay, Poolside), but you’ll have the opportunity to own features end-to-end, bring structure to ambiguous problems, work directly with customers and iterate on their feedback, make strong technical decisions, and ship high-quality code. Cash up to 300k + significantly above market equity".

Most of these sound interesting but as someone with limited experience, how do I spot a good one from the rest, and why am I suddenly receiving so many of these when my experience is not really commensurate with the roles they're trying to fill? What skills should I have in order to be a good fit for these, and how do you generally interview prep at one of these places?

Thanks!

The best people will take the deal as they're the ones who know they can get another job easily. It'll be like the reverse of what Jack Welch instituted at GE.

I’m looking for a free ai mock interview tool for me to practice speaking and gives detailed feedback. Asks interview questions, analyse speech with pace, pauses, filler words, gives a report with scores. Most tools I found have free trial limits, websites, GitHub projects, self-hosted tools are all fine.

Does anyone here work on one dedicated large scale project in their SWE role? I juggle a few projects and it’s cool to see different aspects of the business, but I wish that I could “lock in” entirely on one project and learn it in and out.

I have one guy on my team who has one dedicated project that he works on, but i’m curious to see what the norm is.

I've been doing this for a little more than a decade, mostly on average, slightly above the average companies. Since a few weeks, I've been aggressively looking for job, which usually means going to three saved searches I have on Linkedin, check the first three pages from each search, and apply away to those who seem to be a match. (Which, as you are well aware, usually require a full match on the position and most of the technologies in the stack).

So, I open one "LANGUAGE Backend Developer" offer.

• One paragraph describing the very generic history of the company.

• Another one describing in a very generic way why they are not very generic and a super duper cool place to work.

• Requirements for employees copied from one of the big companies in the sector because most of them don't know what they are doing.

• The stack description and the whishlist of technical requirements that no one really covers fully.

• A generic list of benefits, which usually don't include the salary ranges.

Special points for "BACKEND DEVELOPER" offers that have buried in a wall of text their actual stack (which is never mine) and those companies that repost the same offer every. single. day.

This times 30 or 40.

I'm honestly baffled for the amount of bullshit every company writes, and I can't believe any single human being has read those texts fully while applying for different positions. I mean, even companies that seem to know what they are doing and/or have an interesting product are filled with corporate bullshit no one will ever read.

Am I the only one here?

Microsoft (MSFT) announced on Monday that it was offering voluntary buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees as it looks to reshape its organization for the AI era.

I've been contracting for a US software startup out of Spain for 3 years, invoiced monthly, set my own hours with no benefits or holiday pay…

And when they let a chunk of the team go a few weeks back they told me contractors were fine because we weren't employees on the payroll.

A Spanish friend who works in HR mentioned that what I've described sounds a lot like "falso autónomo", which is where continuous work for a single client over a long period doing the same work as their employees would qualify the relationship as employment under Spanish labour law anyway, and she mentioned there's case law on it for exactly this kind of setup.

I'm not in a bad position right now since I kept my contract while other people were let go, but if she's right then the company has been getting the cost structure of a contractor while the relationship has looked like employment.

And from what I've read the usual fix is them converting me to a proper employment contract through an EOR like Deel or Workmotion, though I'm not sure whether raising this changes anything good for me or just makes things messy.

For anyone who's been through something similar, does raising this tend to go well or does it just blow up a relationship that's otherwise fine?

I worked at a single firm for a decade as a software engineer and was recently laid off about a month ago. Started off working at the firm as a frontend engineer straight out of college on a team using ember.js, and got moved around in the firm over the decade learning new skills and frameworks (mainly React.js, Spring Boot and API/backend, and AWS), and taking up more responsibilities (deployments, training new hires, etc).

By the time I was laid off, I primarily worked across the stack building APIs (from SQL -> UI presentation) and doing cross team collaboration, and I had been doing that for the later half of the decade.

I've been applying for senior software engineer positions with more rejections emails than I count, but I have gotten some interviews (some of which I was told I got the job, all of which lead to no offers).

I'm curious if I should take the leap and apply for staff/principal engineer positions, and looking for guidance from the community. To be honest, I read the job descriptions for some of these positions and think there's no way I'm cut out for them. They tend to ask for leading infrastructure design, meeting and organizing changes across the whole org, and making decisions that I quite frankly haven't had the opportunity to gain experience in my YOE.

On one hand, I think I'm just suffering from imposter syndrome, because I know I can learn and do just about anything (if I can't do it today, given enough time I will be able to). On the other hand, I think there's real legitimacy to my concern, and that I'd actually be making a fool out of myself applying for these roles.

The "new grad" flair here is almost its own sick joke. Feel free to laugh.

I graduated back in December of 2022, with a B.S. in computer science from a state university. I had initially thought that I had a shoe-in at a tech role - some small contracting company, which we'll call "R", had enjoyed the resume I sent and offered me a position as a contractor in training back in Thanksgiving, so I gladly accepted.

I ended up working part-time at a pizza place for a year before "R" took me off their waitlist and accepted me into a role (which, being vague, was not actually software-related). I took the role like an idiot, and flunked the first interview because I didn't have the right experience. They offered me a second chance, but the interview ended up getting put off for so long that I finally bit the bullet and left "R" for a more promising position, at another contracting company called "F". If you know how these contracting companies work, please feel free to bring out the clown horns and cream pies.

"F" was, for what it was worth, much higher quality than "R", and I did briefly hold a "production support" role at a bank for a while. It wasn't programming, though: I essentially stared at a wall of 3000 processes that ran as a batch a few times daily, and there were a few deadlines throughout the day where my team would have to ensure that the processes were fully finished. I also did some light ticket work that involved some basic SQL queries in a company database, but that's about as close to programming as the job got.

Budget cuts happened. I got let go from the bank, returned to "F", and after I couldn't secure another position in 3 months (mainly because I was picky and didn't want to leave my immediate state), I got let go from "F" as well. I got a low level IT job a few months later, and I've been coasting on that ever since (about 10 months), but again -- that's IT, not software. I don't think I've written a single line of code at this job, unless you count Outlook inbox rules to filter emails to the right place.

I can't help but feel like a failure. I took an expensive degree at a state university because I fell for promises that it would be free money and 75K salaries right out of college. Now I'm making 45K and just got off the phone to ask my mom for $500 because I can barely make rent.

I've hardly done any programming since, either professionally or as a hobby. The entire field feels like it's shifted since I graduated - I "laid low" for a bit, hoping that things would eventually stabilize and that entry-level positions would open up again, but they never did, and now the job market looks entirely unrecognizable to me.

Be honest: is it too late for me? I'm realizing now that I'm four years past graduation and still barely self-sufficient, and I feel like it's my own fault.

Any insider info on this?

You hear about the job market being awful since 3 years, when would we have some normality back?

Hey all,

So I created a web app from backend to frontend for an organization as my undergrad course ending project. I then sold this web app to an organization and it's now working.

I am also currently applying for CS related roles as my first job in the field, but I have been unsuccessful so far. A common feedback has been "This app is a really strong point in your CV but since we can't see any of it it doesn't convince us." I'm also actively developing some other projects to strengthen my portfolio and this knowledge would be welcome

So what is the professional, industry-standard way of doing this? I don't want to get into any trouble by making the code public, but at the same time I need a way to "show it off".

Thank you so much!

Alright, so I graduated in May with a bachelor’s in Computer Science, a concentration in Cybersecurity, and a minor in Project Management.

During my junior year, I interned in product development within investment management. After graduation, I completed another internship in IT product development at a logistics company. Now, I’m working as a Business Analyst at a defense contractor.

I’ve been in my current role for almost two months, and I’m honestly not too excited about the work. Most of what I do involves analyzing data, creating dashboards, managing projects, and basically helping the program manager with whatever needs to get done.

The salary is pretty good, especially for being fresh out of college, so I can’t really complain about that. However, I don’t see myself doing this long term. I went to school for CS because I genuinely enjoy technology, and I feel like I’m slowly moving away from that field.

I’m not necessarily looking to become a software engineer or spend all day coding, but I do want a career that’s more technical or at least more closely connected to technology. I guess my question is, what should I be doing right now to position myself for a more technical role in the future? Are there certain skills, certifications, or career paths I should be looking into?
I know I’ve only been at my current job for two months, so I’m not necessarily trying to jump ship immediately. I just don’t want to get too comfortable and end up stuck in a career path that I don’t really enjoy.

Hi,

I graduated with a bachelor degree in business. Graduated years ago. Now about to graduate with another bachelor in CS. I have been unemployed all my life. I literally never worked a single job my entire life. I’m upset with that and I feel like I lost it. Some of my peers even called me a “loser.” I’m terrified of turning 30 and remaining unemployed especially with AI displacing entry level jobs even professional ones. I am on the spectrum and got some low motivation issues. What should I do?

What are the usual tasks of mid level and VP level developers these days? I’m hearing from the news that these people are vulnerable right now to AI. I thought the problem was just with the juniors?

I've had limited work experience, but it seems like writing code manually vs having LLM code is now what writing in a high level language vs writing assembly was. If it's not something that is trivial to change, it seems like the LLM can do a faster and better generally. Especially when working with tools/frameworks I'm not familiar in.

edit: Would appreciate more context if you reply, interested in how different areas use it

Hey everyone, looking for some outside perspective on an issue I'm facing with work.

I’ve been at my company for about 5 years, working in C# .NET and Angular, with some Azure sprinkled in mostly for logging purposes.

A few months ago, management informed us that our product will be rebuilt in Power Platforms with a target go live date this time of year in 2027. We will all be starting training in the next few months.

I’m pretty stressed about my marketability. From what I gather, Power Platform is heavily low-code/no-code, and with AI already shifting how software is built, I’m worried that spending the next couple of years in a drag and drop system is going to tank my resume. Sure, having a CS background helps build cleaner and more scalable solutions within the tool, but does anyone actually respect Power Platform experience for a traditional software engineering role?

Is this a massive career detour, or am I overreacting? Angular is already dated and I've heard nothing but complaints and annoyances about Power BI, so that doesn't instill confidence in this announcement.

I would love to hear from anyone who has made a similar shift or hires devs with this background.

Growing up I always had a genuine passion in the tech field and always imagined making a career out of my interest. Fast forward to the present, and I am slowly working into it. In recent years, though, I am starting to lose motivation and I'm falling into crisis mode.

After high school, I joined the Navy and served 5 years to pay for college. During my time there, I had gotten some of the basic certificates (A+, Net+, Sec+) to get ahead. After my time in the Navy I came home and got a part time job in Helpdesk while I attend school to help pay the bills, which I have been working at for three years now. Working in Helpdesk has been incredibly draining, where I feel like I spend my entire day doing nothing more than being shat on and slinging laptops. My goal was to pursue a career in cybersecurity, but my employer will not give me a chance, and instead hires new part time employees to fill the CyberSec roles, and will not move me there and replace me in HelpDesk regardless of how much I have pushed for the chance. I have also applied to about a dozen other jobs, but have not gotten any replies in over six months.

I am now in my last year of college, and my time in school has turned what used to be a passion into more of a chore, just knocking out homework and activities to meet deadlines without really understanding or appreciating what I am doing. Not to mention, the onslaught of AI has been making me realize that unless I am truly exceptional the second I leave school, I'm probably screwed trying to find any kind of real work.

Over the last few months, I have been fantasizing about working a civilian counterpart to my job in the Navy (aircraft maintenance), which is easier said than done, as I would need to start over again with school and training for my A&P license to work that kind of job, and given I am in my last year of college I feel I would have just thrown away 4 years of school and my work in the Navy to pay for it.

So, to my full time workers out there: are things really as bleak as they seem right now? Am I walking into unemployment pursuing this field in this day and age? What ignites your passion for this field and keeps you wanting to do what you do, and how could someone like me develop that same mindset?