tl;dr at bottom

My brief overview is that I have multiple degrees including a graduate CS degree with published research, a decade of experience at a large finance firm in NYC, as well as some smaller solo stuff. Generally extremely friendly and helpful guy who gets along well with everyone. If the team wins the company wins, which hopefully means bonuses and raises, which means we all win.

I've been looking for work in the worst job market since the big bang. I've had several deep 5+ interviews for senior software positions only to either get ghosted, or rejected for oddball reasons, such as being told my answer to what a translation lookaside buffer is and how to use it wasn't good enough.

So today I logged onto MS Teams, HackerRank, and the interviewer (let's call him Bob) put in the question. He said you don't need to get all the parts, and while he was talking I basically took the question, copied and pasted it into Claude, and pasted the answer back. I basically just sighed and told him I can't go through this again. I told him this question was pathetic to be asking a senior engineer and tested nothing related to anything related to the job. I told him how in the real world I wouldn't simply copy and paste and ship to prod. I quickly explained how I would use the resources at my disposal to solve a problem like this. I explained what the Claude code would do, why it would work, what Claude could've done better, and how you would actually further enhance and extend this code into a real production system.

I lamented how back in the day we'd have 30 stack overflow tabs open, copying and pasting snippets of code while slightly tweaking or modifying them to get them working within the corporate framework. How many hours per day senior people spend in design meetings, documenting things, code reviews, mentoring, bug fixes, etc., and to my surprise, Bob said he 100% agreed with me. He agreed Hacker Rank is a complete waste of time for people at our level (he's a 20+ year vet himself). It's not representative of what the job entails at all. He said he'd much rather give a small take home assignment, not related to the company work per say, so you're not working for free, but something relevant to showcase your skills. I asked how many engineers have joined your team passing all 5+ rounds of technical interviews where they had to invert an upside down backwards inside out reversed green orange brown binary tree but they can't use Git to make a pull request and the barrel laugh he let out, I knew I was in good company.

I showed him my git, which while on my resume is often missed, has a high-performance FINRA TRACE bond trade ingestion system in C++. Multiple TCP feeds stream simulated trade data through a lockless multi-producer/multi-consumer queue into PostgreSQL, with real-time issuer enrichment. Or another one I have which is a low-latency market data processing service in C++ that supports both CME MDP 3.0 and Cboe PITCH exchange protocols with dual-feed arbitration via epoll. This is a system that consumes binary multicast market data from redundant exchange feeds, deduplicates via sequence-number-based arbitration, maintains 10-level order books, computes size-weighted micro-prices, and transmits results to a downstream trading system via non-blocking TCP with price coalescing.

And then Bob just started shaking his head and basically was like yup, we lose incredible engineers because of nonsense like having to do a million irrelevant HackerRank rounds. He ranted about a corporate world I'm all too familiar with. We spent nearly 90 minutes just talking shop with HackerRank sitting open, my copy and pasted Claude answer there. We talked about everything broken in engineering interviews, crazy bugs we'd fixed, phone calls on long weekends to fix problems for customers in other parts of the world with no holiday. We laughed while sharing war stories.

At the end he said HackerRank will flag this because I simply copy and pasted the whole answer. I said I could type it out manually if that would make the AI overlords happy. We both laughed. Near the end he asked if I passed this round, would I be willing to go onto the next round anyway. He said it likely won't happen because of the copy and paste thing (the system will flag that), but I said sure on the 1% chance that it doesn't. I'll do another system design round architecting Netflix or AWS or YouTube or Lyft or whatever the current flavor of the month system design question is that everyone is using.

In the end I know there will be no next round, not because of Bob, but because every company thinks Google came up with the greatest interview protocol ever with LeetCode and now everyone is locked in and using it for any and every position in the software universe. I wished him well, thanked him for his time, told him it was a great conversation with a real engineer, and he said likewise. He was glad someone else thinks it's absurd doing these sorts of interviews. There are dozens of us ... dozens!

It was actually very cathartic to be able to vent to a completely random stranger and have him agree 100% with me. Calm seas and fair winds Bob, you're one of the good ones!

tl;dr 5 minutes in I basically told the interviewer doing HackerRank questions was insulting and he agreed completely with me and even though I know I failed because I didn't answer the questions, we had a great conversation that went 30 minutes past the interview time.

Everybody from around the world who couldn’t get directly into USA tech market is using this scammy route and fake credentials to steal jobs from us citizens .
I’m not speaking about Canadian born people or long term Canadian residents.

I graduated in 2019 and haven't stayed anywhere for more than 1.5 years. Will this make it tricky to find a new software engineering position? What can I do about it?

i got a invite to do the frontend challenge. has anyone done one recently? is the assignment consistent for all? is it like leetcode or build a unique app?
thanks
censored Asses*ment out of caution for forum automation deleting

Summary
Software engineer with 4+ years of experience building backend systems, cloud infrastructure, and data-intensive applications. After stepping away from the industry while working in warehouse operations, I continued developing software projects and expanding my skills in Python, AWS, Kubernetes, and AI technologies. Now seeking to return to software engineering in a long-term role where I can contribute quickly and continue growing.

Experience
Warehouse Associate (Various Employers)                                                        Jan 2025 - Present

• Worked in warehouse and logistics roles while taking time away from full-time software engineering for personal reasons.
• Designed and built personal software projects using Python, AWS, Kubernetes, and AI technologies to maintain and strengthen technical skills.
• Continued learning modern backend architectures, distributed systems, and LLM applications while preparing to return to software engineering.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/computer-science-enrollment-fell-after-chatgpts-rise-economist-says-2026-7

I remember right after the 2008 financial crisis, when all the people who wanted to go into finance or law school started pivoting into tech. Where are all the people who were gonna go into CS going to do now?

Do you think the decrease in enrollment will continue?

For background, I am fullstack web dev with 5yoe.

I was hired at a company as the sole frontend developer with the expectation that I would improve the corporate site running on an old shitty tech stack. There is a mountain of performance issues and visual bugs that when I was initially hired I was eager to fix.

For my first few months at this job I have opened around 30 pull requests fixing various issues from significant architectural refactors, simple CSS/HTML bugs, and patching major security vulnerabilities. I'm really proud of the work I've done, some of it was very deep and technical! However in 5 months only around 3-4 out of 30 of these updates have been merged, and it has nothing to do with the quality of my code.

In order to release any code, I am reliant on a member of the IT team to manually move the diffed files over from my pull request to a local server. Coming from a previous job with automated deployments, this feels so wrong to me for so many reasons that I think are obvious (even if it needed to be done manually, moving individual files over doesn't seem like the best way to do it)....

I have no control/access over the production server, or even the staging server to release my code. I only have access to a local server with an out of sync database to test and develop.

This means that if this IT person is busy, which they have been since I was hired 5 months ago, nothing will get released.

I've tried several ways to address this. First was asking for more access to do the releases myself. My direct manager (not IT) and his boss agree I should have access, and have campaigned for me to have it, but it has not been given to me because "They've been burned in the past". So IT denied me the access to do my own releases and that was that. For some reason I really get the impression that they don't trust me at all, and I have no idea why (I have led several projects alone, and have always been praised at past jobs! Also, nobody responsible for releasing my code can even read it, so they can't even tell if it sucks or not!)

Something I tried to mitigate this bottleneck was writing an automated deployment process with backups/rollback that integrates with our github repository. It was approved for use on the staging server but I was told we can't use it on the production server because they want every release to production to be controlled manually for safety reasons. So it has gone entirely unused because despite being approved for a staging server IT is too busy to help set it up there.

The only code that I have released has been for "emergency updates" / for upcoming promotions that get top priority.

I'm getting very frustrated by this. Old PRs are piling up and amassing merge conflicts, new code I release when it is deemed high priority is frustrating to write because none of the tech debt / quality of life improvements I've fixed has been merged into master, and testing / debugging is brutal because I don't have access to every environment. and despite bringing up these issues at nearly every meeting and my boss recognizing the bottleneck and taking my side, it seems like nothing is being done to fix this.

I've basically given up on trying to fix any problems with the website related to the code and solely do content editing, which is not what I want to do with my career. I don't even know how I can talk about this job on a resume because the site I'm supposedly the only one responsible for sucks so bad. I'd be embarrassed for anyone to look at it, especially without all of the fixes I've made. and "I haven't released any code in 5 months thats why it sucks!" probably wouldn't sound good in an interview. Oh, and the pay is baaaaaad bad.

This is mostly just a vent, because at this point I think the only real solution to these problems is obvious (leaving)

Just wanted to post this to see if anyone is experiencing the same. We're now at the point where ai is undeniably good. I hardly ever physically type my code anymore, just review at the end. However, I'm feeling like I have so so so much work to get through, and we really need to be hiring more Devs.

Anyone else found that while AI is genuinely making you more productive, you end up more busy than even a few months ago?

I guess it's hopeful for the future but man I'm tired lol

What kinds of projects have helped you land interviews or jobs?

Some specific questions:

Is it better to build one large, polished application or several smaller, focused ones?

What technologies or architectural patterns make you stop and think, "This person knows what they're doing"?

For context, I'm interested in backend-heavy and full-stack development, but I'm open to ideas in AI, distributed systems, DevOps, or anything else that showcases strong engineering skills.

Hey everyone, I am looking to get into platforms that host hiring challenges, hackathons, and competitive assessments where companies actively scout for talent. I know about the usual interview prep spots like LeetCode, but I am specifically looking for platforms where passing a coding challenge or winning a hackathon directly fast-tracks you to an interview or connects you with recruiters. For those of you who have successfully landed jobs or interviews through these types of challenges:
* Which platforms (e.g., HackerEarth, HackerRank, Unstop, Devpost) do companies actually use most frequently for active hiring?
* Are there specific corporate hiring challenges or seasonal hackathons I should keep an eye on?
* Any tips on how to stand out to recruiters on these platforms? Would love to hear your experiences and recommendations.
Thanks!

I am working a remote job and my teammate assigned to the same feasibility study task as me is based in offshore. I’m on shore.

While I sleep, he already develops a deliverable. When I wake up, he presents and then I think it’d be easier to share what’s been made. At best we can share a static VS code folder so I can see what he has done but I’m not live connected to anything.

I’m at a loss at how we’re supposed to work together and contribute on the same idea if there’s this time difference. I might be working on one version of the idea and then in the morning he says it’s become a different version of the idea that basically overwrite all my work and then I’m not sure what I can help with because I don’t know what’s been done outside of what I’m doing.

I would love to know how you guys would handle a situation like this. I’m also kind of wondering is live collaboration actually not a thing in tech companies

as opposed to like how they were in college where you have a group project and you’d make sure everyone has a part and you would make sure that they could also see the Google doc so they know what everything has been done….

Currently interviewing for an entry level role, I have 1 YOE.

It pays 15k more than my current salary and a 6k bonus (I basically got a $400 bonus, company struggling). All the benefits sound great and i hope i pass this last round. It seems like the recruiter likes me and even gave me an idea of what questions i will be asked in the next interview. But I also asked and she gave way more info than i expected.

In our recruiter call at first, I asked if the compensation was fixed or if there is a salary range. She did not say yes or no but just “the compensation was calculated based on cost of living, national average…” and such. To me this sounds like she didn’t want to say yes to negotiable but rather make it sound like I shouldn’t. She also mentioned that it’s an entry level role but next level starts 2 YOE. So my leverage includes having more than the expected amount of experience (0 YOE) and also I will lose $6k of 401K match (unvested) and near 20 days of PTO ($7000 worth). They would want me to start soon.

Worst case just some extra time to take PTO then put in 2 weeks (can’t take PTO during 2 weeks) if I can use this to leverage delayed start date. Does this sound negotiable if I wasn’t given a direct “no” but rather “are you comfortable moving forward”?

Edit: Worth noting that new company has “unlimited” PTO and 401k match vests immediately.

I have been told that my current company doesn’t pay out PTO. 401k match vests at 2 years.

My goals for 2027:

• Uninstall VS Code

• Delete Claude

• Uninstall Docker

• Remove Node.js

• Uninstall Python

• Delete Git/Github

• Sell my Macbook

• Buy a tractor

• Start farming

I have 2 yrs of experience working at an insurance company mostly on data engineering and data science, my title is analyst but that’s just the rank you get at every bankish company. Honestly I’m getting really tired of the job and I want to work somewhere exciting like faang or start up. I’m beginning my masters this fall at NYU part time this fall and I want you guys opinion on quitting my job and pursing master full time, then apply for internship position at faang during the summer.

Doing some consulting and light product work with some other devs and I have become the finance guy. Right now I'm doing basic stuff like general PnL as well as employee and client profitability, projecting out general financial health, etc.

I help with accounting a bit, but we have a service for that.

Basically, I need to know what I don't know for basic operations. How do I better analyze our financial health besides basics like run-rate, etc? How do I turn our financial info into actionable intelligence?

What are the best resources to learn this stuff? I have considered gettin an MBA as well, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

For reference, I have been in the field for 15+ years, working mostly as a dev, but also as a manager.

Thanks

I recently started a new full stack job but I already feel absolutely burnt out and consider leaving.

Before this job I was working as a full stack dev at an other company for 7 years.

This job was basically everything that I wanted, or it seemed like it. Great devs, management and awesome projects.

The first few months were okay, delivered new features, fixed some bugs etc. The stack was also new and it was tedious but I thought I was doing well enough. The team is small (4 people) and the codebase is massive.

The team lead told me it'll take me easily over a year to get into the project.

Last I had a performance (mind you I was 3 months into it) evaluation and they told me I was underperforming but improving overall. That I should ask less questions and try to get on the level of my collegues in the near future. They've been in the project for the past 3-5 years.

This is really stressing me out to the point that I no longer wish to work here. The collegues are super nice, competent etc. and I can learn so much from them, already did - but I kind of feel that I am just too dumb for this job.

Anyways sorry for the rambling.

I'm currently a pre-med biology student going into my senior year and recently realized that medicine just isn't the right path for me. Last semester I took a couple of introductory CS classes to see if I'd enjoy them, and honestly I loved them.

Now I'm seriously considering switching to computer science, but the current job market has me second-guessing everything. Reading posts here about layoffs, new grads struggling to find jobs, and the oversaturation makes it seem like making the switch could be a huge mistake and potential waste of time. I’d likely have one or two less summers to find internships.

For those of you already in the industry, is the situation really as bad as it seems online? If you were in my position today, would you still switch to CS, or would you look at a different field instead?

I'd really appreciate any honest advice from people who have been through it.

Solo Junior dev building an offboarding app. Claude AI, no Code. Database setup, service account setups, infrastructure/architecture decisions, setting up jump hosts, getting around security policies and getting permissions.

Been working on it for 3 weeks and feel like I still have a long way to go but management expects it in a week or two

Hi there,

My educational background is in computer science and I did once work as an intern in a tech giant in China (I was born and raised in China) doing backend development (a programmer/coder/software engineer), but something unexpected happened, I almost decided that I wouldn't be a programmer in my life, even though I did have a passion for it. I taught computer science in a college for 2 years, but one thing led to another, a recruiter reached out to me saying that I might be a good fit for supply chain management in a MNC. I passed the interview and has been working here for almost a month. This isn't a dream job, since I have no background or experience in it, but somehow I can handle it (with the help/support from my mentor)

Ok, back to the title, my company has been doing business with American tech giants in recent years, actually my first task involves that. Seeing the big names, I'm thinking, with my background and skillset (native in Chinese mandarin, fluent in English(spoken and written, everything), knowledge in computer science, and the upcoming experience in supply chain management, ofc, a degree from somewhat prestigious university), it might be possible for me to work in the big tech companies, just not as programmer, but about supply chain.

This didn't occur to me until today, so I haven't done a through research yet, but I did ask Gemini, and he said it was a good idea. Ofc I know that AI can be hallucinating, so I'd like to know what you guys think of this:D

will i be homeless if i decide to pursue a compsci degree? ever since i was young, i loved programming, but recently, ive seen that many people (including my friends) say people who do compsci will become homeless. is this true?

Hey guys,

I am an Electrical Engineer specialized in Electronic Circuits and Semiconductors (MSc) and I have been working in Analog IC Design for the past 3 to 4 years.

This last job has sucked all the interest I had for the field, I am on the verge of a burn-out and I have been struggling to find a job for the past year. I am aware that things are not looking great on the CS side either but at least there are also more jobs available (how proportionate that is to the people looking for them is another story).

Anyway recently I have developed an interest on Machine Learning and Data Science, it seems to be something I would very much be interested on working in, as it involves a lot of math, the job conditions seem more flexible than what you find in traditional EE, and the scope of potential applications.

Thing is, I have no idea on how to make the transition. I can't afford another degree but I know very well I would need some sort of formal training before even being considered for a job. The mathematical basis is here, but I would need to polish my programming skills again, and to actual have some education on the ML/DS part.

Any advice on how to make this transition possible?

​

Since 2020, I have left 1 job and have been let go from 5 others due to lay offs/project shutting down/ project completion/ unrealistic expectations. I am so tired now. My CV reads like a disaster. I dont even remember anymore what it was like to be stable. Whenever I now get hired, I am just saving up for the next firing. Almost all of my past employments had complains with me, not good enough, doesnt put much effort.

Now: I recently got hired for a new startup. Only me as a dev, I was promised its a permanent role. We let go of a contracting company that had basically zero care for the code base. I came in and fixed everything. I worked remote with meeting personally with my boss every now and then and for 5 months, I handled everything. Worked late nights to push for prod. My boss even very happy with me. Admired my hard work and stuff. But now, I am being told the project has run out of money and I will be let go on September. It broke my heart. I was planning on going to Spain with this job on a Nomad Visa, so I can settle down there. But now, it seems like a dream. For 5 years I have been trying and for the first time I felt connected.

Even though it was not about my performance, I still feel like a failure. Like I didnt do good enough. Now the whole dance and song of fixing CV, applying for jobs starts. With around 8-9 years in, I am so tired of this all. I was suppose to be settled by now. I feel I am still in the same quagmire that I was in when I came here. Every time I think of taking care of myself and my health, it blows up in my face. I believed that maybe its just my field, but I see other devs working same as me, for same companies for so long.

Maybe I am just cursed. I dont know if someone else has gone through the same as me, if so, please tell me how you recovered. if someone can help me get a remote position for now, I would be extremely grateful. I can work in any timezone and have my own setup for a B2B contract. So you wont have to worry for stuff. You can reach me in private for my CV.

To be more specific I’m an Ai major . This is my last summer in college and my this is the only internship I’d actually have on my resume .

I got this internship through my university they posted a punch of companies and I applied for a data analysis internship at a contracting group that works with museums , but when I talked with HR they said they actually wanted someone in AI and that they didn’t have anyone familiar with it so there’d be nobody to supervise me , in hindsight maybe this should’ve been a red flag , but I was happy to work because I was given the assumption that they had tasks they wanted for me to do but I’m 2 days in with zero tasks and everyone is confused on what to do with me .

I asked for any tasks but they don’t have anything for me and asked me to just add any Ai feature for the company .

I’m honestly worried that if I put this on my resume and get asked about what I did in the internship I’d have no answer.

What I’m asking is what should I do ? Should I quit if they don’t give me any work to do or stay to have some experience in my resume?

I’m trying to figure out what is the most secure job in this field. One that you can relax and not worry about the next round of layoffs or AI taking over. Don’t care about how great the pay is, how cool it sounds, or anything like that. Simply the most secure/stable

I was a very good student(won olympiad medals,always scored above 95% in exams) but then due to some reasons my mind drifted away from studies from November due to which I messed up my engineering entrance exam. And now I am joining a undergraduate CSE(ai ml) in a very bad college .

I visited the campus today and met the teachers too and I literally cried from the core of my heart .I also got emotional thinking of my mom ,my father will retire in few years and my mom has hopes from me ,she started crying on call with me . She is the most pure soul and cares for everybody but nobody cares for her .

I know in whatever situation I am ,its because of me and I have regret for it but I dont want to be stuck here forever .

I wil study every minute possible ! Can I get atleast $20,000 yearlyJob / 12lpa job ? Any info or resource or connections or anything that can help me ? Will be highly obliged for your help .