I recently moved to a new remote team that are consisted with people from mid West and Texas. We recently met in person for a company event. Some of them were openly Trump supporters.

How do you mentally prepare yourself to work with them everyday?

I know people say you need to network in order to land a job in the industry, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that. No one I know works in tech, and I live in a rural area so there’s no companies around that hire developers.

Got an offer for a 6+ month long contract role for MSFT as an SDE 2 with the Xbox team primarily to do infrastructure work (package management, build configuration, ci/cd). I’ve got 5 YOE as an SWE so I feel like this would be a step down but I also was laid off 3 months ago and am contemplating if it’s worth taking the contract or continuing to search for new roles. I am getting a decent number of interviews albeit primarily startups. Also the position compensation is pretty poor. $57/hr. If I was desperate for income I would take it but I have a decent amount of savings (good for 2 years) so just debating on if it’s worth possibly taking a 6mo contract and not gaining anything valuable for below market pay and more than likely not a FT position (an assumption based on the work. Not doing actual development.) thoughts?

Is it possible for example to be freelancer and make websites or apps part time. In the past I used to read a lot about such people that were studying software developing and making websites as freelancer forts 4 hours in the morning to earn some money. Probbably situation in It has changed so far. I am also intrested has anyone of you earned while studying for cs degree or know someone which had and what skills have you developed to be able to achieve that?

Was just curious for anyone who has internships at Amazon as a SWE how their experience has been with NG/Intern search the following hiring season?

Ik Amazons FT WLB is shit so wanted to use it as a resume booster and wanted to see other ppls experiences with that?

I’m talking purely in terms of realistic prospects, does someone with say a history/ sociology degree have a better chance of landing a new grad role compared to a cs major? Forget crazy triple faang interns or anything like that, just the average cs vs liberal arts major

I’ve been working in tech for 7 years as a Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and AI Engineer, but I’ve never taken on a senior or lead role—and honestly, I don’t want to.

I’ve been making six figures while working remotely, traveling the world, and never opening my laptop after 5 PM. Career progression has never been my priority; I just enjoy doing hands-on work without the extra responsibilities of leadership.

My question is: At what point does staying as an individual contributor (IC) without moving into a senior/lead role start looking like a red flag? Do hiring managers eventually question why someone with years of experience hasn’t “moved up,” even if they’ve just optimized for work-life balance?

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Yeah kind of a silly question but it's a very tricky question. I want to be a product manager or a strategist which is really enjoyable work for me. Although, I'm an international student applying to the US so competition is VERY rough. I will have to learn programming get atleast an A on my math exam, I'm already pretty good at CS but I need to prepare for Computing Olympiads, learn for GitHub projects and potentially learn competitive programming(hypercompetitive I say), how do I genuinely develop an interest and enjoy these tasks? I have 3 years to graduate school and I must get a CS degree as It'll benefit my job prospects and I DO think it's worth it.

Lots of doom and gloom here, do you think it’s a skewed perspective?

Hi all, I’m moving from associate se to swe 2 and this is my first corporate job, also first job in the field. I was curious if it is normal to negotiate internal promotion salary? Is it only worth doing if you have another offer on the table? I kinda figure that the worst thing they can say is no. Right? TIA!

It's a decent CS program at a state school but I'm starting to realize that it's a little more on the theoretical side. Besides my intro programming courses and a few courses specifically tailored to software engineering most of my other classes tend to skew more on the theoretical side with some programming assignments sprinkled in.

I will be graduating during the spring 2025 semester so I'm at junior/senior level atm and honestly I'm not all that confident in my programming skills despite getting straight As. What kinds of things can I be doing over the next year to improve practical programming skills and make me more employable for software engineering positions after graduation?

I’m curious how much time everyone spends since I’m trying to work on my self improvement and really upskill before I start doing technical interviews and working.

This is genuine hours spent focused, not just scrolling on my phone distracted at the desk/passively working:

• 2 hours a day applying to jobs, I message a recruiter for almost ever app - 18 to 30 apps a day
• 1.5, maybe up to 2 hours hours doing leetcode
• 2 to 3 hours working on side projects

What’s your schedule like? I feel like I should be working harder

Hi everyone I’m looking for some input on my situation since I’m fortunate to have two great offers but I’m not sure what direction to go.

I’ve already accepted IBM so I would have to renege and the pay for the internship is significantly higher at $78/hr. Atlassian is lower in terms of pay at $58/hr but the perks and the work culture from what I’ve heard is better. I also feel like Atlassian is a better “brand” but I’m still not really sure.

This is for an internship so I know it’s not that deep but I’m interested in hearing your input since I’m early in my career.

I don't know it seems fishy and almost like it won't help me but hurt me

Seems to me like once someone is made a manager, they can only fail upwards. I have *never* seen any manager type facing setbacks in their career.

WFH putting the entire mid-level management line at risk? Tell the upper management that the ICs are slacking off at home, earn a massive bonus and promotion. Product/feature not ready to be shipped on time? Force everyone in your team to work harder, and if the end result sucks, push all blame on the developers and get a bonus and promotion. Company needs to cut costs? Fire ICs and assign their duties to remaining staff, get a bonus and promotion.

Recently switched to a new team in a new org. On top of that I'm the only person working on this specific service (there are some people on my team who have some experience with this service before).

I feel completely lost. While I understand my specific tasks very well, I don't know enough about the service to implement them in code. How to implement something specific in this package, how to get my test environment working, etc. Implementing something small takes a while because I don't even know what part of the package to touch or how to test my changes.

A few times I tried asking for package-specific help, such as what a certain build error meant or for permissions. I asked in my team's general channel, someone on my team who used to work with this service, someone on the team who owns that service, and the manager who owns that service (for permissions), and all of these people straight up ignored me even though they've previously helped my teammates with similar permissions.

I have a bit of a big picture understanding of what the team is about, but no idea what anyone else is working on. Standups are utterly confusing because I have no idea what problems are being discussed or how that area works. At the beginning we had some team-wide onboarding meetings telling us what the team was about, even those didn't make much sense to me.

I'm reluctant to ask for help because either I feel like I "should" know these things already, the error I'm getting with the build is my fault somehow, or because nobody will be bothered to help me anyway. I don't want to ask stupid questions in front of everyone. I had my first 1:1 with my new manager yesterday and told him my situation. He said "why didn't you ask for help earlier? I didn't know you were blocked or confused".

I know this is a bad habit, but it's not like I don't have experience that justifies it somewhat. How do I get over this?

I am wondering if it’s worth starting a YouTube channel about tech and software. I’ve been in software for 7 years and would like to create content, but I’m intimidated by editing and showing my face, etc. However, I believe that’s something I can overcome. Does anyone have advice on how to start, and is it worth it?

Warning: This is a long one.

I recently got converted from an internship to a full-time SDE 1 at Amazon. I know that, career-wise, I could be making more money if I switched to Google, and I believe that with 1–2 months of prep, I could likely pass the interviews. The prestige, compensation, and reported work quality at Google all seem like clear advantages.

However, I just relocated for this job, and my quality of life is great. I live close to the office, go to the gym next to work almost daily, and really enjoy my new routine. My team is great, and I’ve already started making friends (even though I’ve only been here for a month).

The dilemma is: it feels like staying in Amazon is the “wrong” professional move because I could aim for something bigger. But at the same time, I’m genuinely happy, and leaving so soon feels like I’d be sacrificing a good work-life balance just for prestige and money.

Would you recommend I start preparing now, or is it reasonable to stay for a while and reconsider later? How do you approach career progression when your current job is enjoyable but not the most optimal choice?

P.S. Working in Brazil, not U.S.

I wrote this blog post about my study and interview process to get Staff engineer offers from Canva and Atlassian. I also used it previously to get a Senior role at Tesla.

https://tomdane.com/blog/interviews.html

I'd love feedback or thoughts. It covers leetcoding, but also system design and behavioral interviews.

I graduate in May and understand I'm pretty behind. I'm not confident on leetcode and I have decent projects I've done through school. Should I focus on doing a more advanced personal project or spend my time leetcoding so I can do good in an interview?

I've also been applying to jobs but I feel that I should take that time to focus on making myself a better candidate.

I have heard that even big companies, like Duolingo or Spotify, stop sponsoring work visa? Especially now with trump administration

Recently failed the phone screen at Rain Forest even though I am positive I solved the technical question given. I think the biggest contributing factor is that I work at a startup and don’t really do anything technically challenging in my day to day, but wondering what the odds are of getting in to Rain Forest but on a different team?

The email read: “It was a difficult decision, but we have decided to move forward with other candidates in the search process in order to target the candidate whose skills and experience best meet the current needs of the business.”

Just some automated BS or did I actually do the technical stuff right but the resume just isn’t impressive?

And for those that do work there, any tips to better improve? Maybe my behavioral wasn’t the best smh, wish there was more feedback!

Commenters - why do you think the manager in question wasn't able to do that one thing right in the first place?

Has anyone had any experience with this company? https://www.cloudberry.services/

Got an email from them with the subject "Last Chance! Free Python & AWS Training + Job Placement". They thanked me for making my profile on Dice.com, described their 5-week course, and attached an overview of the curriculum. Seems like pretty basic stuff, but if it's free and includes job placement support I'm interested.
I just don't get why a company would offer a course like this for free and makes me think there's an angle to it. What does Reddit think?

Thanks in advance.

Do some employees use office small talk as a way to monitor what people do on their spare time, so only the “interesting” or social can keep a job?

Does enforcement of these unwritten social norms make for better code?

Does forcing someone to pay gas tax or metro/bart/bus fare to go to an open plan office just to use the type of machine you already own… somehow help the economy?

Does it help to prevent carpal tunnel or autistic enablement from stims that their coworkers can shush?

hi everyone! i'm not really sure who to ask about this. but i had a recruiter screening for a crowdstrike internship yesterday (security research) and was wondering if anyone knew about the next steps. they said i would get some kind of OA and then maybe an interview. it was some kind of platform that i forgot? not like codesignal or hackerrank or anything like that.

does anyone have experience with this? would really appreciate it! even a pm would be so helpful as i don't really know anything about recruiting or have any mentors :')

I'm asking because I can't get any interviews at all. I've seen some SWE positions and tried applying for can't get the interview. I was wondering if I take a store associate position, would it increase my chance for an interview and getting hired later?

I'm 30 years old and have been working as an analyst for about 5 years. I have an undergraduate degree in physics and on the job experience of using Matlab and Python. More and more I have found myself wanting to move into a software development job. I have been considering undertaking a masters degree in software development. I am too old or is the job market too awful at the moment or both to attempt doing this? I'm based in fhe UK and have no immediate plans to move elsewhere

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!