Hi all, I need some advice. I’m feeling pretty lost and betrayed and I want to know if I have any options legally or otherwise regarding this matter.

I left my full time job at a fortune 50 tech company to join a tech startup which really seemed to have an amazing culture and great values. When I first started, I began working literally three days before my start date because I really believed in their vision and wanted to put my 100% in. Throughout the next three months, I battled lack of direction, structure, and other common startup challenges. This obviously didn’t bother me since I knew it was to be somewhat expected. The main takeaway is that a large portion of their codebase (infrastructure) was extremely premature, to the point where my first two weeks was bug testing it before I could start on my actual work I was hired to do, which was directly dependent on the infrastructure.

Fast forward three months. I’ve been constantly praised by all coworkers, especially my boss, for the quality of my work and the trajectory I’ve been on, smashing their expectations every single week. I had good relationships with my coworkers and everyone there. My boss would frequently tell me in our 1:1’s he wanted to discuss soon my future at the company in management.

Two weeks ago, however, he started our 1:1 strangely. He mentioned he had my resume in front of him and was questioning what leadership experience I had. I explained I had six years of experience, and I had led small teams of devs and interns before. He responded with “So no real leadership.” After this point, he became distant and unreachable.

A couple days ago, I hop on a 1:1 with him and he immediately tells me there’s no way my resume was real. He said I could not be 23 with 6 YOE. I explained that I graduated college early, only finished my associate’s, and started work part time at 17, moving to full time as a junior dev at 18, then becoming a senior a couple years back. The main point is that I offered him references and W-2’s for every single one of my previous roles. He denied to see them. He told me I was terminated and that was that. When I asked him to give me a proper reason, he said my performance didn’t reflect a senior’s because I “coded first,” even though I had to adopt that specific approach because of how premature their infrastructure was. I was also in the process of cleaning up technical debt for the week prior.

After I told him this, he quickly switched the conversation to me having an LLC (it was public on LinkedIn) which was one of the reasons to fire me. I told him i have no business under that company and i used it for tax purposes.

At the end of this, I was obviously let go on the spot. My accounts were all revoked within a matter of minutes and my position was listed on LinkedIn within a couple hours.

None of this was ever brought to my attention at all. I was never given a chance to defend or explain myself. I even reached out to an employee who was terminated a month prior and he told me they fired him because he was taking initiative which our boss viewed as disrespect since he wanted to take lead on that project. He also told me he was fired one month before his stock options vested, and this was also the case with the last employer they fired.

My questions are, is this normal or common? Can I do anything about this, and what should I do now? Has this happened to anyone else? Do I have any legal grounds to consult with a lawyer? I’m in an at-will state.

TL;DR: My boss told me my resume wasn’t believable, didn’t let me provide any documentation or evidence, and fired me on the spot.

My macbook’s battery is fried and I can’t afford a new macbook, so i’m just using my dell that runs on windows.

I was coding an App that I was gonna sell on my macbook, and now i’m struggling to find an IDE that can properly run swift.

Hi,

Western European (French) here. For money, sense of adventure and career reason I am thinking about leaving Europe for another country in another continent (Canada/USA/Japan/Australia/YouNameIt).

Is there some SWE Europeans who did it ? If so, where did you go ? Why ? How happy you are with your decision ? What are the upside and downside of the country compared to the one you come from (visa, money, culture, healthcare, job opportunity etc..) ?

I have recently been in talks with a company for a role and they have set up a meeting with the person who would be my manager in that company if I accept it. What are the things I can do to make best use of this meeting ?

I recently interviewed for an SDE position with AWS's security team. I didn't get the job but the interview team apparently thought I would be a better fit for a frontend (FEE) position. I'm being told that I would only require a "mini interview" testing my technical competencies. Has anyone been through something like this with AWS before? It sounds like maybe I wouldn't need to prep as much on leadership principles but more just on front end systems design and DSA? looking for any experience on what the process might look like moving forward.

Sorry if it sounds obvious I can't find a straight answer to this. What, within a company, leads it to decide its time to hire devs? Is it making features? Fixing bugs? Bringing in expertise? Testing and fixing stuff? Replacing devs who have left or have been fired? Some combination of these things? Other things not listed here?

I work in the medical field as a Sr. Software Developer. My team is 7 people, where myself and one other developer actually know our stuff. The remaining developers are what I call "forever Jrs" - they know enough to make code compile, but they don't have any interest in learning or writing good code. I carry the team by taking on new projects, finding/fixing bugs in existing legacy code, and giving assistance to my underperforming peers when they get stuck (all the time).

We're working on a individual development plan for 2025. I filled out my plan and it was kicked back to me by my manager. He said that his manager reviewed it and wants me to include an area of opportunity. Exact words were:

"Learn when changes/enhancements have reached “good enough,” focusing on progress over perfection."

This bothers me a lot. I am the reason projects go out on time, I am not holding things up because of the coding standards I hold myself to. What also bothers me is that this manager has a significant degree of separation from what I do and how my code performs in production. It makes me feel like I'm being negatively viewed for taking pride in my work, and he's just saying that to make the under performers he hired look better.

Am I being irrationally upset about this?

Hello everyone, I am 2nd y computer engineering student. Our major is really far from engineering and more like CS plus core engineering subjects.

Now, I feel there's a dark future coming into the higher level software jobs cuz of high number of graduates and rise of AI. I can now give a whole project to Chatgpt and it codes it instantly so in the upcoming it will become better and better.

So I began to think that I should go for double majoring with electrical engineering. But I did terrible on my electronics class and I am still unable to solve basic circuits. At the same time, I don't really want end jobless in future cuz I didn't expect something that's already happening. That's just my pov which I have no clue if it's entirely true or not.

I know it seems smth personal, but what do you advice me to do? And what's your perspective about software engineering jobs in future?

Hello all, I’m a student from Europe who chose Computer Science and Maths at A level and Physics at intermediate, (as we are only allowed to study at sixth form 2 A levels). Would you say that this is a good combination? I was doubting if Physics at intermediate level is a good choice as I enjoy it and was planning on taking it at Advanced. However, im equally passionate about CS as I am with Physics so I don’t know if I should have chosen Physics as the primary subject.

Would you say Physics would open up more doors in future? Let’s say courses like AI, would having Physics and Maths be suitable and would it be much harder that way without studying CS prior? After university probably working with a company would be an ok choice and having the possibility of working remotely would be a benefit although being in a community is also essential.

Also if you could suggest any career paths that will be optimal studying for in the coming few years, I’d greatly appreciate it!

I currently work for a Tech Giant as a consultant implementing their product for a client it's been only 2 years since i started working here, straight out of college but i quickly grew in levels and i'm currently in a position to grow my career as a functional consultant than a tech consultant (not to be domain/product specific). I'm curious about the prospects of this work in future as the only places I can switch from here seem to be WITCH/Accenture/SAP kind of companies. I want to know about the prospects of this career when compared to the usual FAANGM Devs career trajectory. Since I'm in a position to switch I want some insights on whether to continue in this role or to switch to SDE roles.

Hi everyone, I’m a 25M from India, working at a service-based company. I was trained in Java and Spring Boot, but since joining, I’ve been assigned work involving Python and Generative AI.

I primarily use C++ for DSA and competitive coding, but despite working with Python and GenAI, I don’t have deep expertise in them.

I’m seeking advice on what to do next. Should I start practicing DSA and competitive programming in Java or Python instead of C++? Should I focus on personal projects using Spring Boot and Java?

I’m feeling confused because I don’t see many openings in GenAI these days.

I started a full stack development job 4 months ago and it hasn’t gone smoothly as of late. While I am able to complete certain tasks, there are huge red flags that are beginning to appear.

There are hard deadlines that aren’t given out ahead of time. It could be Monday and they would ask you to complete something by tomorrow. This is poor planning and management. Also sometimes those deadlines can move ahead of time just to appease stakeholders. I don’t feel like I am given enough time to complete these tasks sometimes. I don’t have a mentor as I am the only developer in the office. The person with seniority besides my non-technical boss is a project manager with no development experience, he has his own work and doesn’t really lend a hand. Sadly we don’t conduct code reviews which I feel like would benefit me greatly because I would be able to learn and take coding advice from others.

The work load is becoming unbearable as I am required to complete the frontend, backend, database as well as monitor through Azure and implement CI/CD pipelines. I am effectively doing the work of 2-3 other people in a team who aren’t being hired to help out because the boss wants to keep labor costs down. (Pay isn’t great either but I’m here for work experience)

There was a data analyst who quit two months ago. Instead of hiring someone to fill that position, my boss just took his leftover work and gave it to me to complete alongside the app that I was hired to do.

I don’t want to quit as the job market is tough right now and there is no guarantee I can get another job immediately. I was thrilled to take this job as it was my first real job but I am beginning to feel like I am stagnating when it comes to my learning as I am the only developer here with nobody to learn from. Not to mention the stress, pressure and responsibility of being in charge of a massive application.

Thoughts? I want some advice on how to proceed.

Looking for some career advice around if you think I can advance further as a dev or if i should pivot to something else. The backstory is I’m a self taught dev who has never worked on an “engineering” team, I’ve mostly worked either on teams or by myself that are focused on solving a business problem. Maybe that’s building a web app for mortgage application processing, or an etl that aggregates data from numerous sources and spits out a report.

The work is difficult in its own way in that it takes a lot of creativity and resilience to get anything done in a highly regulated environment, but it’s not building systems that are being pounded by millions of users.

I just wanted to ask because it doesn’t seem like that skill set translates directly to a FAANG, but at the same time it’s kind of at the heart of what most tech companies say they do, they write code to solve problems.

So idk. I just wanted to hear some other opinions, is my work experience valuable enough to get a job at a major tech company or would i be better off using my coding experience and just become a super technical pm?

Experience: 6 years

About Me:

• Age/Location: 24 years old, living and working in the UK.
• Professional Background:
  • 2 years of experience as an SDET at a national media company.
  • Over 1 year of experience as a Software Developer at the same company (official title: Junior Developer, but I list it as "Software Developer" on my resume).
  • Current salary: £38,000.

Career Goals:
I aim to land a position at a big tech company. I feel undervalued and underpaid in my current role and am ready to move on.

Questions:

1. Company Reputation: Would a national media company (similar to EE, BT, or Sky) be considered a "no-name" by big tech? These are medium-sized national companies where technology isn’t the core focus. I know that these companies are probably unknown is most other countries that are not the UK.
2. Experience Level: With 2 years of experience as an SDET and just over 1 year as a Software Developer, what level would I likely be considered for when applying to bigger companies? From what I am reading online, it seems like I should just apply for the lowest level I can, this applies for FAANG at-least.
3. Resume Screening Concerns: I’ve almost completed the Neetcode 150, but I’m feeling discouraged. If I can’t even get past resume screenings, what’s the point of all this preparation?

Looking for insights to improve my prospects and boost my confidence. At the moment I feel my time is just being wasted in this job as if it is considered a "no-name" company then I should really be moving onto a company that is more well-known internationally.

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[profile review] University shortlist

I need help to shorten my shortlist- Profile- 8.04/10 VIT, 315 GRE(168quant), 8.5 ielts, 3.5 yoe at Motorola solutions, no research papers. Ambitious- Umass amherst, upenn, UCSD, UIC,Uwisconsin(prof MSCS,All non thesis MSCS if possible) Moderate- SBU, NCSU, Virginia tech, NEU, CU Boulder Not planning to apply to any safe schools, instead, im planning to apply to- CMU (MS Software Engineering), UCBerkeley(MIS), UMD(MS SE), USC(MS SE), UT Austin( MS SE),Santa clara(MS SE), CMU(MIS)

Main goal is to work as a software developer after graduation. Please help me shorten this list to 10-12 applications max. I was hoping for 4-5 moderate-ambi MSCS, and the rest in slightly ambitious MSSE or MIS programs. Cost is a factor unless it’s a really really good university.

I am 3 years into being a contractor on a team at a FAANG company. I would much rather be an employee.

So far I have done well in the role but not perfect. Part of that is my compensation and actual authority is low and so most important decisions I have to defer up a level. I also don't always have complete information. The team is overworked and is currently not in a great state.

Should I apply?

I'm worried they might think I am not equipped for it or that they want a fresh person on the team. Could this harm my current role?

Title, I'm a sophomore rn and looking for which of my offers to choose from.

Expedia (SDE intern - Austin TX) is 45$/hr and 6k housing and runs for about 9 weeks

Wells Fargo (technology swe intern - Charlotte NC) is 48$/hr and 2500 housing and runs for 10 weeks.

Garda Capital Investment (swe intern - NYC) is 50$/hr and not sure about housing yet.

Please let me know in comments why you voted for a certain company over others, thanks everyone

I got a job offer with a 20% pay bump. I've been job hopping for a couple years - each job I've spent 1-1.5 years at. I'm not sure if this job is somewhere where I can actually grow my career - is it worth taking if I'm just going to job hop again in a year or so or should I wait until something better potentially comes along?

The culture seems good but the company is an acquisition of a larger company which doesn't have amazing reviews on Glassdoor unfortunately.

The issue

The content of this and many sub-reddits has been overwhelmingly negative.

I have my reddit home page set to only CS sub-reddits. My goal was to absorb some info while browsing.

This has been very emotionally draining.

Acknowledgment

I would like to take the time to validate everyone's issues. Your feelings are real, and your perspective is valid. None of what I am trying to say is taking away from that.

Large multi-national corporations suck. They value shareholders over stakeholders. Teams of brilliant hardworking people creating amazing products are cut because they don't contribute positively to the bottom line. These are all the realities of our world. These are the realities of most job positions not CS alone unfortunately.

My perspective

I finished a bachelor in finance. I wanted to help people. What did I come to learn? People are viewed as dollar signs. I had internships staring at excel sheets for 8 hours a day all week. I came back the next year to find the same managers making the same annual reports like clockwork. This pushed me back to CS. There was no art, no love for the craft in finance.

Studying computer science gives you the most elegant modern day paintbrush. You can breath life into machines with words on a page. Almost anything you can imagine can be created. Doesn't that sound beautiful? Want to improve or automate a part of your life? You have the very skills to do that thing.

I see so many negative sentiments, that it gets hard to remember why so many of us find this field fun and interesting.

I got into tech as a kid. I used to sit around for hours watching unboxing videos of the newest devices. I started building computers, taking CS classes. All of it was out of a love for the subject. Where has that appreciation gone?

There are many days recently where I struggle. I feel the embers of that young kid inside me fading. This gets exacerbated when I come online to find support and read countless negative posts.

My challenge

Can we share a little positivity here? I want to challenge you to share why you started in this field. What drives you? What would the kid inside you look at in your current life and be amazed by. What projects do you work on that make you feel fulfilled not your resume?

CS COOKED GTFOH

I work in a tech company that is series B and it’s growing giga fast

my co-worker is in sales.

we both work 100h+ a week

i get paid about 25k more than him

my 100h a week gets me a “hurr this button needs to bounce 2 pixels higher durr”

he cleared 770k this quarter

he went on parties and drive cool cars and travelled all paid for either by clients or by company while banging top tier girls 100%

he is happy and i am miserable

if you’re american, get in sales. u have english and the american culture that will get u american clients because it’s easier to relate to. indians will take ur job and churn out code faster and better than u and they enjoy doing it for 200h a week for lesser pay. goodnight

cs is so fucking cooked

I'm 24, graduated with a CS degree in spring 2023. Actually got a job a month out of college, but after being there for a year and a half, I've realized this company just isn't for me. It's a startup and while it's something I thought could be "a dream job", I think the lack of structure has really hindered my growth in a lot of areas. I ended up being the founding software engineer, so I've done a ton of raw programming, but because of this, I received next to no guidance on things someone with 1.5-3 yoe should typically know.

I know I want to leave, but I'm just not sure on next steps. I've been applying to places, and have gotten a couple interviews, but have mostly failed at the technical interview stage (I only recently started grinding leetcode, so it's partially my fault). I'm worried once I quit my job, it'll be even harder for me to land interviews. But I also don't want to stay at my current job because if I gain too many yoe, I won't be considered entry level anymore.

I also have internship experience that was 1.5 years long. I guess just grinding the leetcode is exhausting when it's not even really applicable to my career. And I'm envious of all the other engineering fields or even any fields that don't do any of this for interviews, it's typically way more applicable to the actual job 💀

When I quit I'll probably spend the unemployed time getting an AWS certificate and maybe revamping my portfolio website. Applying for jobs of course.

I guess I'm just lost. I want a Junior role because I feel like I need the guidance to learn the things I missed. But to get into a big company with more mentorship opportunities, I just have to suck it up and get better at leetcode. I like software engineering and have fun doing it, but I'm not the type to do it outside of work or anything (I probably would for fun if I was unemployed, but I just don't want to code more than 40 hours a week). I'm wondering if maybe that aspect of myself is why I'm not enjoying CS? I genuinely think I just don't enjoy CS is because of the company I'm at right now, and if I join a larger more structured place, I'll feel more supported.

I'm just an overthinker, so worried about how everything will go, even though I know everything works out. If I can't find a job by August, I'm debating going back to school for my master's, but I'm not even sure what to go for. My initial instinct is to go for a Data Engineering program cause that'd be enjoyable in CS, but it wouldn't allow me to escape the hellish CS job market if I needed. I debate Mechanical Engineering, but I don't want to work on physical devices or robots, I'd probably just want to work with CAD or some building schematic software or something. So maybe a different engineering masters? Also wonder if Engineering Management could be a good path, cause I'd honestly really love project management, but I feel like that won't get me a role as a project manager, especially since I'm so young/inexperienced. I also know I can get that role without a degree. Even debating going for teaching, but if I did I wouldn't have access to the career fairs I'd want to attend, plus that has it's own hell haha. I really just would get the masters so I can access university job fairs, internships, and new grad positions again. Not really wanting a master's, but it would give me those opportunities.

Anyone else feeling as lost as I am? Any suggestions or words of encouragement? Thanks a bunch.

I came across something that could be a great opportunity, and I’m unsure if I should share it with a friend. Part of me wants to help and see us both succeed, but another part feels like keeping it to myself might give me an advantage. I also wonder, if the roles were reversed, would they share it with me? What would you do?

Received a 1 hour call for a frontend engineer role for Canada after doing the OA, was wondering what to expect?

https://www.crn.com/news/channel-news/2024/ingram-micro-to-lay-off-850-employees-in-restructuring-move

Hi guys,

I am a software developer with like 3 years of exp and is hoping to make some money as a side gig, I love tutoring and I am considering using Varsity tutor as a place to find tutoring work. But I have a few concern, I will definitely be working off hours (weekends and evenings), should I let my employer know about this instead of risking them finding out, will this make them feel like I am disloyal to the company? Also, do you guys think this is a good idea or am I just wasting my time?

Thanks

I've been working in my first junior SWE role for about 10ish months now. Honestly, I still can't believe I got my foot in the door at all—especially with a remote position. I know I'm highly privileged and lucky in that regard.

The first 4-5 months at my new job were tough but rewarding. I had to learn a new tech stack, a lot of internal tools, and a plethora of company history and context around a lot of our workflow and tooling. It wasn't easy for me, and I made some big mistakes. But I did grow more confident, despite my expectations for myself. I am somehow starting to enjoy CS beyond just "surviving" it as I did in college. I even got interested in giving a master's program a chance and applied to a couple online masters programs. I somehow (again) got in to one of them and planned to start this fall of 2024. I was even working on some ideas for personal passion projects with our tech stack. Overall, I'd say things felt promising for me in life, both in and outside of work.

Then one day, my manager approached me about moving teams to join a high-priority project as the sole junior developer. They thought it aligned well with my skills and prior background and thought I was a good opportunity for me, and my parents and friends encouraged me to take the opportunity for my career growth. I honestly had some hesitation, but I agreed, since there was a small part of me that was also interested in the project. But once I joined, it quickly became clear that the project's scope was massive and the timeline unrealistic. There was so much more history and internal knowledge I didn’t have or gain from my initial first couple of months, which a lot of the seniors on the team do have, not to mention the different tech stack being used. After some discussion as a team, I was assigned some research and design tasks for one aspect of the project. I spent months working on that instead of actual development (which I did come to enjoy, slowly). However, somehow, that morphed into me taking full ownership of the project's most crucial part. That’s when my anxiety and constant dissociation really kicked in.

I started working 1-2 hours overtime on at least 1-2 days a week, deferred my master's to Spring 2025 since I felt super anxious and nervous about delivering the project at work, and got overwhelmed by extra project tasks that were assigned to me because of my background in research and design, despite it being work not directly related to the research I was initially assigned for the project. After almost a month of growing anxiety around the timeline, I voiced my concerns to my tech lead privately, and it almost felt as if they were brushed off so that we could "play it by ear." That made me even more uncomfortable. Eventually, I felt like I had push back during a stand-up—something I hoped senior devs would do since they also expressed that the timeline was unrealistic but also had more social capital to do so. Somehow it worked out, and we managed to extend the timeline, but the pressure hasn't gotten any easier. Honestly, it's gotten worse. Now I'm constantly afraid my initial green-lit research & designs might not work or that I’ll miss something critical only as we hit our new deadline. Not to mention that the seniors are handling much more complex tasks faster than I can handle my more simple tasks by comparison.

Every day it feels like I'm in over my head. Some days I think I’ve got it; most others, I find myself forgetting programming basics or things about our tech stack that are obvious, or I end up making silly mistakes like forgetting to include null checks or how to write a switch statement. I constantly fear I won't deliver on this and get fired. Even asking for help feels daunting now because I worry about judgment or lack of context, since I am the main person who has been taking the lead on this highly critical feature and thus feel like I am the one expected make decisions on it. The constant stress and fear of failing are taking a toll, and I sometimes wish I’d get fired just to escape it.

On top of this, personal stressors are piling up. A close friend moving away has hit me hard, and the possibility of a return-to-office policy and leaving my aging parents is adding to my anxiety and nerves. The online masters program, which I once felt excited about, now feels like another overwhelming weight. My friends and family keep urging me to start it now, worried that I’ll lose my motivation if I wait and put it off to work through my anxieties since it can help my career. But honestly, the thought of balancing this high-stakes project with intense coursework feels impossible. I’m terrified I’ll break down trying to juggle both, failing at work and in my master’s program, and not having time to find personal fulfillment at all. The pressure to make the “right” decision only adds to the constant stress and self-doubt.

I know a lot of this is not directly unrelated to my work stress, but it feels like it is all compounding on me right now. And once this initial work is done, there will be more, and more, and more, and more. and it won't end. I just sit at home forever and do this to pay bills and survive.

Is just what being a software engineer is like for others? I'm genuinely wondering if I am in the wrong field, if any of my anxieties that I have mentioned above are justified, or if this is just normal growing pains and I need to reset my expectations on working life. I’d appreciate any advice or feedback you have, I honestly just feel so alone right now, even though my parents and friends are telling me that this is normal and I am not alone, it doesn’t feel that way.

Hi everyone, I am interviewing for a software engineering internship position (C++ is what they advertise to be important) for autonomous driving (planning) at a big tech company. Now, the problem is I have not done programming interviews for ever. I am a PhD student and research interviews usually takes a different route. What would be my best strategy here. I have a week. What do I expect from the interview + how do I prepare for the interview.

Any help will be much appreciated!

I've been working for an online game startup as a game programmer for three years. I also create data-driven BI reports and build dashboards for this game company, so I suppose that makes me a data analyst as well.

I recently completed my master's degree in Data Science. However, I haven't had the opportunity to work on any 'real' ML models at my current company, the only ML models I’ve worked on were during my studies. I understand that mock projects at university usually have a smaller scope compared to real projects, which might put me at a disadvantage when applying for roles that require more experience.

I want to apply for a Data Scientist role at a different company (because my current company isn't hiring for that position). Which level should I aim for? Should I apply for an entry-level or mid-level role?