Hey guys, using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I’m a dev with about 5 years of experience and I am honestly losing my mind right now. I really need some advice or just some perspective from anyone who has been through this.

Two huge things are hitting me at once. First, I’m getting married next month. It’s supposed to be the happiest time of my life, but the timing is just making my stress ten times worse.

Second, the project I’m on at work is going away. Management said there’s a chance I might get re-assigned to a different team, but nothing is confirmed. I am just so tired of this constant, heavy anxiety of feeling like I’m about to lose my job.

I’ve tried looking for freelance clients or side gigs just to have a safety net, but I’ve had zero luck so far.

Right now, the stress is completely paralyzing. I can't even focus on work. I just spend my days doom scrolling and binge-watching random shows just to numb out and escape reality for a few hours.

I don't know what to do with my energy anymore:

• Do I just put my head down, focus on work, and hope the internal transfer actually happens?
• Do I check out mentally and start aggressively prepping for interviews and applying elsewhere?
• How do I snap out of this freeze response when I have a wedding to worry about in a few weeks?

Any advice on how to handle this, or even just how to cope with the tech anxiety, would mean a lot. Thanks.

I'm an entry-level SDE at Amazon, but they've put me on a PIP and I will be fired soon. I've got a final round interview with a seed stage startup coming up later this week. If I get an offer, should I accept? I know that seed stage startups aren't very stable, but the two other companies I've interviewed with haven't gotten back to me yet, so I fear they might have rejected me.

I have been a SWE for a decade or so. I am seriously considering stepping away for US tech industry entirely. Already have sufficient money for lean fire, not much, but still doable.

The math isn't the hard part. What's hard is that every instinct I have says I am making a mistake: walking away during peak earning years, the boredom everyone warns about, and the very real chance that if I ever want back in, the market won't want me.

I am not looking for financial advice. I'm curious about the lived experience from people who actually did this.

Did you stay out, or did you end up going back? What pulled you back? What filled your days once the novelty wore off?

Did you miss the identity of being an engineer, or was shedding it a relief? Is there anything you wish you would understood before you quit?

Would appreciate hearing from anyone a few years down this road.

So yes, I'm navigating a layoff. I posted on here earlier on but find myself lost as the cut off date approaches. I'm getting severance and everything but lately I have found myself mentally drained, depressed and feeling worthless. Especially when I look at my wife and kids. My confidence, drive and sense of self feels like it has hit rock bottom. I had an interview the other day and did embarassingly horrible. My mental acuity is not there anymore. I have been getting some serious brain fog lately too. I didn't get the job btw.

I'm 44 who had a later start in my career of 12 years and just can't compete with all the young talents. I just need to know, is this happening to anyone else? At what point do I even consider a career change, and is it too late? Finally, how does someone even pick themselves up from here?

So im trying to make the move into DevOps. I work as an Automation Architect/SDET basically currently.

I've been trying to move my way into DevOps, especially with the A.I. stuff looming in. Here recently i've been able to lead a project on Migrating some projects from a TeamCity/Octo deploy to Gitlab which involves learning Kubernetes. Im hoping my current experience is a good "sidestep" career wise. I have a C.S. degree and I do feel like Automation/Pipelines does feel like a good "base" to move into DevOps.

My knowledge is a bit spread around currently, and I understand DevOps is a really deep iceberg when it comes to "what to learn".

I would say im strongest in the Testing Automation area (obviously) with a pretty decent understanding of Gitlab and how it works and how to architect pipelines pretty decently. Ok docker knowledge (I mean I know enough to write a dockerfile/get it going, but probably not like a docker expert) and here lately Terraform (decent knowledge....but not used much) and AWS (limited mostly to ec2/beanstalk + a few other scattered pieces like paramstore/SM/cloudwatch/etc...)

I am slowing developing kubernetes knowledge as well with this project, which I really enjoy.

I've tried to use Certs (since my company pays for them) in a sense to "plan out" leveling up, im really trying to push into a title change by end of year hopefully (my manager understands and supports this). I've also been using KodeKloud to learn.

Right now my sort of "Cert path" is this:

- Skipping: A+/Network+/Security+ (I just don't know if these are "Really" useful, but feel free to say if they are)

1. Linux Refresher: We are a windows shop....but outside my homelab I don't use linux a ton and I've forgotten a lot. Don't feel like a cert it needed here.
2. AWS Cloud Practioner: This feels like a good first step/resume filler. My AWS knowledge is pretty limited in scope. Hoping around a 2-3 week learning/turnaround time for this.
3. Terraform Associate: Hoping a similar turnaround to the above. I have decent knowledge but don't use it enough to be an expert.
4. KCNA: Probably the harder bit, it's a good thing to do because this migration im working on is 200+ services.....so i'll be getting experience.
5. CKAD/CKA: Unsure of which one, I think CKAD is probably harder but "better" but curious on that, this one obviously is a longer study.

After that the skys the limit I guess. Thoughts on this? Im hoping my automation experience mindset will "serve me well".

edit: company B is stripe

I am a recent new grad in Toronto, all values in CAD. I started at a company A that pays 140k a year, 160k stock over 4 years (private company), 15k sign on, and I've been working here for 3 months. I recently got an offer for a new grad job at company B that pays 123k base, 48k stock per year (private company but have the option for cash), 25k sign on, 13k reloc stipend, and a target bonus around 10%, based on performance. I think company B tends to pay a lot more down the line as my career progresses, and has better name value, and hence I feel it's worth "restarting" my new grad progress to start there, even though I've already worked 3 months at company A.

The problem is, I do like company A. I like the project that I'm working on , and I like my manager and my team, they're really smart and chill people. I am leading a project that only my manager had been working on for a while, and in that way I've taken a lot off his shoulders. I am really struggling with the thought of accepting the offer from company B, and having to tell my manager and team that I'm leaving because I think I can earn more at another company. I feel bad because it seems like I'm leaving so soon after joining, having spent time with my team and having my manager onboard me to everything, and company A doesn't even pay that badly.

Also a small concern I have is that I think company B might have a more grindy work culture than company A, but I do think I can ultimately handle it (as long as it doesn't get out of control in the future). I just don't know how rare it is to have a good team and work I like doing like I currently have at company A.

I guess I can't really ask for advice on what to do, I feel like my mind has kind of been made up that I need to leave for company B in order to prioritize my career. But if anyone has any advice on how to deal with telling your company that you're leaving, please let me know 🙏

I'm a software developer with 6 yoe at the moment, but, I want to make a change on my career, I don't have any bachelor degree at the moment and I live in a 3rd world country, I'm not jumping ship because the job market is bad atm (it is bad) but more so for passion, I was passionate about software development but that pasion has died with the advance of AI on the field, it's pretty souless now and I'm really interested on Data Science and the applications you can do to really help people by combining it with medicine and other fields, I would love to study online because I work a lot so I can't assist to any of the public universites from my country, they have awful schedules for workers and they are far away from where I live (1:30 hs of travel at minimum) what would you recommend for my case? is there any good or at least decent online bachelor degree that I could do? Like a B.S in Data Science / Computer Science / Statistics / Applied Maths / etc?

My current company, a large boring corporation that's not in tech used to be very encouraging of everyone using AI (but they weren't AI pilled and shoving it down everyone's throats) and they used to handed out licences to all sorts of AI licences like candy.

But a few months later now, not only are they straight up not issuing licences to a lot of them and very heavily restricting the one they settled on (Claude and ChatGPT) and they are removing licences of people that aren't using the ones they have access to.

They recently made three moves that were a bit surprising.

Due to how much AI has been costing they've done a few things:

First, they are refusing to increase usage limits to the few we do now have access to, and asking your manager isn't enough. If you really want to, they want to see cold hard numbers in how much it'll save in money, and no not even time savings count.

Second, they are denying access to the expensive models and telling everyone to use the cheaper ones (ie Sonnet and Terra and below)

Third they made us do a training module, and it wasn't just "You can't provide confidential and sensitive data to the AI" it also straight up told people to be more conservative and to prompt better so it won't be burning so much tokens.

They're also telling people that they are responsible for the accuracy of their work. But also they gave some prohibited examples of AI use that made me think that it's actually what was going on. Like how they can't use AI to screen, analyze, or even summarize resumes and interviewers. And telling managers they can't use AI to do performance review and analysis for their team, especially pertaining to bonus, raises, and promotions.

However, my own team has noticed some issues with AI too, while it for sure has helped us, it has caused problems of massive PRs, and even more difficult surprisingly are AI slop generated documents and reports that are really important, but don't have the luxury of a compiler or a linter to at least do basic quality control for.

Seeing what's going on from the higher up's decisions and the impact of AI on our own team I think a lot of people were intentionally or unintentionally generating slop work that makes the rest of the team hold the bag and figure out or just straight up using AI on things they're not supposed to just to be lazy. The AI slop and the extent of the usage raised alarm bells with the higher ups and now they're putting the lid on it.

It's not some cutting edge company, just a boring big enterprise. How's it going on at your place?

Joining the trades. Self taught dev with 4.5yoe. It was a good run.

If your a CS major, please look to pivot. There are many careers where you can make a lot of money and problem solve.

If I have a 2-year gap due to medical issues is it recoverable?

If you've doomscrolled this sub I'm sure you've seen the buzzword jargon of how "nobody writes code anymore" and it's all about "system design and architecture" but you never see people go in depth about what that actually means for them I feel. Which is starting to make me believe that latter quote is cope talk.

Like what are you actually doing? Are you giving general inputs and expected outputs in your prompt and hoping AI does the rest? I don't understand.

I'm taking intro classes for a masters in SWE so for example, nested for loops: iterate through for each item in this sequence, iterate through for each item in that sequence. That makes sense to me, I actually understand the logic of the code and how/why it's written that way.

But to all the AI noise: What new level is AI unlocking for you? It seems like the argument is all that "low level" code logic is supposed to be irrelevant now or whatever.. so what's left? I grew interested in programming via vibecoding but in my experience the AI would assume a lot, and make a lot of wrong assumptions about my intention, (Also largely based on what I believe to be the limitations of my communication in this process!!) and the whole process was cleaning and learning why what it built was wrong and then how to fix, or how to stop. I feel like my bottleneck was that I couldn't produce beyond a broken MVP because I didn't have this high domain knowledge of how to build something large-scale. Which led me to pursue a formal education.

... but that takes me to another point... taking the AI armageddon stance... shouldn't developers with like 30+ and 40+ years of experience be pumping out high-profit startup businesses like smoke? If you have all the domain knowledge to not make the mistakes of somebody with none who can't judge AI output, and AI is all it's being talked up to be, what's stopping you from being a, forget 10x engineer, 1000x engineer?

I totally get like not having to write the boilerplate code, i could maybe see how commenting an outline of the definitions for the functions in a new file, and having an AI do the deliberate writing of the code. But where are all the developers that are getting so amplified, and if possible, could you PLEASE explicitly explain, with an example, how that's actually going for you? So much the doom around this just seems like larp. Or maybe mourning of the idea of what this once was 10 years ago? Idk I'd do this programming stuff for 30k a year.

Also my understanding is that code is instructions for a machine. So prompting is writing instructions, to have a middleman (the AI) write instructions for the machine?

I spent 7 months in my job after spending 6 months of unemployment due to my past layoff and got fired yesterday for failing the PIP. I moved to another city for that job and now I feel mentally drained and I’m starting from the negative not the zero.

I don’t feel like using my laptop anymore to apply for jobs and contact recruiters. I feel so terrible for being in such a situation I don’t know how to explain what happened in the interviews to the recruiters, and my connections. It feels like a shame to get fired for being a bad performer. I was working so hard on the PIP to pass it (60 hours a week) because I had this mentality that this is the only job I can have. I believed my boss that if I do good enough, I will stay but I got trapped at the end. My boss acknowledged verbally in our 1:1s that my performance got better and I still ended up getting fired.

I do have a back up plan and have another offer secured but it’s not a software engineering role and it can’t be translated to any tech role. However, they require a CS degree for it (government role). In addition, I have to relocate at my own expense and I’m in the middle of a lease. I also don’t feel like doing any job anymore as I feel mentally drained from this. Also, the moment I start this job, it will be difficult to land back to a SWE.

I have two years of software development experience.

Hey everyone,

I currently have Claude read a JD, look at my Master resume and use Jake's Template to regenerate resumes to match each JD, it also goes and tries to fill out as much info as it can.

However, I have never figured out how to have it just submit on my behalf. Everyone in my life claims that they have Claude do all of it, but when I ask how they bypass it not letting submit applications on a applicants' behalf, they get very quiet/gatekeep.

So my question is, is it truly possible to do that, and if so, how, or have people around me just been lying.

Thanks!

Hey! I haven't been to any interviews in the last 6-7 years, and the current job market situation looks very scary now that even ex-FAANG developers with plenty of solid experience are out of luck.

I have some additional personal reasons that make finding a new job very challenging, so it's important to at least be as competitive as the average Joe.

My recent experience is about Go, PostgreSQL, Google Cloud, APIs, and working with data pipelines. I don't have any niche knowledge and in general my main principle has always been striving for simplicity and using "the boring technology".

Of course, saying that you try to use Go and PostgreSQL for 95% of your work tasks isn't very fancy for technical interview, so I am starting to realize that even my CV is sort of boring despite almost 8 years of experience.

With all the LLM craziness, I am trying to understand whether it's still necessary to grind Leetcode, which I haven't done for a long while.

I like system design and I think this part of preparation is going to be enjoyable, but solving algorithmic problems is only worth it if it's still important.

Any kind of advice is welcome.

6 YOE, with 6 months to <2 years at each role.

I have under 2 years at my current position at company A as a data generalist. The job title is data analyst, but it's 60% data modeling/analytics engineering, with 40% BI and data science.

The data modeling is the most interesting part of my role, so for the past few months I've been applying to actual roles titled "analytics engineer" and I've reached the reference check stage for company B.

If the offer comes, I am considering taking it since the title & responsibilities match my goals but I also have doubts.

Why I don't want to take the offer:

• <2 yr tenure at all roles: had a coffee chat with someone in the industry who mentioned this could be a red flag. It has also come up in interviews, which I was able to explain, but I'm sure this has filtered me out of initial resume screens for some companies.

• Company B is a non-profit, and have been slower to adapt to modern industry trends & AI tooling.

• Company B uses a different warehouse & orchestration stack, so I wonder if I'll be wasting some of my existing experience with specific platforms

• Compared to other companies in the industry, it is pretty rare to see layoffs and firings at Company A, and it is unionized

Why I still do want to take the offer:

• AE seems more stable and future-proof post-AI. Company A has has high competition for promotions and AE internal transfers

• Company B will likely have better WLB. My team on Company A is understaffed and overworked, with increasing pressure which has impacted morale

• Company B is fully remote

• Company B is profitable without external funding and growing, so layoffs seem unlikely

What would you do?

Hey folks,

I have an upcoming interview with ZoomInfo for system design. Do you know typically what they ask? Is it going to be the standard Design whatsapp etc, or will it be more specific?

I cannot find any info on the web about this company?

I’m working as an SDE (Frontend) at a pretty good startup. I joined the company as an intern, got converted to full-time, and it’s been around 2 years here now.

I’ve learned a lot during this time, but lately I’ve been thinking more about my career growth and whether I’m actually moving in the right direction.

I want to have a proper conversation with my manager in my next 1:1 about my growth, expectations, and where I stand, but I’m not really sure what questions are actually worth asking.

What are some questions you guys would recommend asking your manager after being in a company for ~2 years?

Things around:
Career growth / promotion
What I need to improve
Am I performing at the level expected from me?
What should I focus on over the next 6–12 months?
How do I become a better engineer?
What skills should I build if I want to move towards senior roles?
How do I know if I’m actually growing or just getting better at my current tasks?

FYI- Used ChatGPT for the edit

I graduated in May 2025 and have been working as a Systems Engineer at a medium-sized insurance company for about a year. I recently received an offer for a new role through a family friend, who is a program manager at the company.

The new role is a significant increase in pay, from $72k to $105k base with similar benefits. I also had a very positive impression of the team throughout the interview process, so I really do not want to miss out on this opportunity.

My issue is the timing of my start date versus resigning from my current job.

I had a vacation planned for September 24 through October 2 months in advance. After I received the offer, the hiring manager and recruiter emailed me saying that, after I accepted, we could work out a start date.

Shortly afterward, I spoke with the family friend who referred me. She asked when I would return from vacation, and then asked whether I could start on October 5. I said yes without thinking through the fact that I would need to give my current employer notice. I assumed the date was still something I would formally work out with the recruiter and hiring manager.

However, she communicated October 5 to the partner organization involved in the project, and my offer paperwork later reflected that as my start date. I asked whether we could move it to October 12, so I would have at least some time after returning from vacation to resign. She said yes, although she made it clear that the delay was inconvenient because they wanted me included in meetings with the project’s Principal Investigator.

Then the drug-test situation complicated things further. My first test was reported as dilute/inconclusive, so I received an order to retest. I have not used marijuana in 36 days, but I do not want to resign on some off chance that I test positive.

I plan to take the second test tomorrow, but I likely will not receive the result until Wednesday. If it comes back negative, I would only have time to give my current employer about three business days’ notice before the October 12 start date.

I feel stuck between two bad options:
- Ask the new employer to delay my start date again—possibly to October 19—after already requesting one delay, risking that I look unreliable or that they reconsider the offer.
- Give my current employer only three days’ notice, which I feel is unprofessional and could burn a bridge.

What would you do in this situation? Is it better to ask for another start-date adjustment, or accept that I may need to give short notice to my current employer?

Timeline clarified:
- September 7: Received offer
- September 14: Accepted offer; background check started; October 5 start date set
- September 16: Requested and received an adjusted start date of October 12
- September 22: First drug test
- September 24–October 2: Vacation
- September 28: Notified that first drug test was dilute/inconclusive
- October 3: Received order for second drug test
- October 4: Planning to take second drug test
- Expected Wednesday: Results expected, leaving roughly three business days before the October 12 start date

Also, yes, I used AI to clean this up. I have the Flu and cannot think straight right now.

I’m currently in high school and trying to decide what I want to study at university. My parents are pushing me towards Computer Science, mainly because they believe it has good career prospects and that I could eventually go into cybersecurity. The problem is that I’m honestly not that interested in coding. I don’t completely hate it, but I’m not someone who enjoys programming, spending hours on GitHub, or building software.

What makes me even more confused is the current AI situation. AI is becoming increasingly capable of writing code and automating parts of software development, while at the same time I keep seeing people saying that CS graduates are struggling to find jobs. So I’m wondering whether CS is still a good and safe degree to choose if I’m already not particularly interested in coding. I don’t want to spend 4 years studying something mainly because my parents consider it a “safe” career, only to find out that the job market has changed.

My parents say I should do CS and then specialize in cybersecurity, but I’m not sure how realistic that is. From what I understand, cybersecurity still requires a strong CS/IT foundation and can involve quite a lot of technical work. I’m also wondering whether cybersecurity is actually more resistant to AI automation or whether it will face similar problems.

So, is CS still worth doing in 2026 if you’re not particularly interested in coding? Is the job market really becoming that difficult, and would you personally recommend CS for someone in my situation? I’m not completely against CS, I’m just genuinely unsure whether it makes sense for me.

Thanks.

Now that AI is able to code so good most of us have moved our focus on specs , research , prompting ,design and review. Most of this do not take so much time and is not fun like earlier leetcode grinding or solving code problems which used to help us too in getting good job so now what do you guys focus on in order to move to a better job from your current one. I got time but feel confused on what to grind and spending my time on random topics everyday so i am looking for something to spend good time that will help me too in getting better job

I've been in the field for over 25 years and have resisted using it for a couple reasons: 1) Not wanting my information out there for anyone to see. I have worked with a handful of narcissists and sociopaths and I don't want any contact with them, and 2) Not wanting my employer at the time to think that I'm looking for a new job if I create a profile out of the blue.

I was recently laid off and my former manager offered to write a review on LinkedIn and a couple co-workers said they looked for me there but couldn't find me. I then wrote the awkward response that I don't have one since it seems like everyone does these days.

I have a ton of former colleagues whose personal contact information I don't have so LinkedIn is probably my only way of reaching them easily. That's my main reason for considering it. Yet it might look like I'm only reaching out now that I'm out of work.

Is it worth it? Or should I hold off on it for now and see how things go first? I've never had issues getting calls and interviews in the past (even in downturns) but I hear that this downturn is pretty bad.

Get this, there are jobs available outside FAANG. No really. I know, it blew me the fuck away as well. But apparently there are thousands and thousands of companies out there that, get this, have some kind of technology in house. And they need humans (for now) to run that technology. And they're not all located within a 30 mile radius of San Francisco. Some of them are even outside California.

Look guys, I know I sound like a lunatic. And believe I had to ask myself the same question, am I having some kind of hallucination or mental breakdown or something? But no, it's real. These jobs exist. These cities outside of SF exist. There's this whole world out there.

So as we know Claude can code very quickly. But one of the downsides I've seen is an overwhelming amount of PRs to review. I've been hearing that some companies have been experimenting with automating some or all PR approvals(not just aiding reviews, but automating approvals to avoid human reviews being a bottleneck). I'm curious if anyone has seen this be adopted?

After 6 years and an unexpected redundancy I’m currently interviewing.

Had the first stage with recruiter, went well. Next ones are hiring manager interview and then technical.

What can i expect from HM? Is it a technical discussion or is it more cultural fit etc?

Thank you