Not a glamorous question by any means.

I am very happy to say that I got an offer for an associate dev position which I'm incredibly excited about. Unfortunately, after accepting this offer, I understand a background check will follow, and I will 'fail' it. For a past offer, I self-disclosed and answered any questions that they had, but unfortunately the offer was rescinded. I know that there is a strong chance that this happens again for either legal reasons or reasons based on the team's comfort level.

Aside from the obvious need to self disclose and practice answering any questions I could expect them to ask about this, is there anything else I could do to minimize the chances that this offer is rescinded?

It's tough enough to get an offer. Getting one and losing one to this doesn't feel great either. I'm very excited for this role, so any thoughts and opinions are appreciated.

Hey everyone, I have an engineering degree, I've worked for a few years and hated the job. I've been thinking of getting into CS, but the few times I told someone about it they criticized the idea, because it essentially meant that I'm starting over.

The only engineering jobs that I'm finding in my country are in power & instrumentation, and I don't enjoy either of them. My resume is not good. which is why I sometimes think about a redo where I do everything that I've messed up the first time right (in term of networking and such).

So I graduated in December of 2023 with my comp sci degree. After job searching for Developers roles and failing to get any of the few in my area I ended up taking a job in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) earlier this month. The money is nothing to brag about but it’s more than I’ve ever made so I can’t complain. Somy question is how worried should I be about being pigeonholed to GIS and forever barred from doing any development work? I plan on quitting and moving to Albuquerque NM at the end of this year so I just want to know if my current job experience will be held against me.

This is something I don't really understand. I get that some companies work on very complex projects, but all my experiences so far have not been a great deal more difficult than school projects or personal projects.

It very well could be that I haven't work at very growth-opportunistic companies, but usually anything new they throw at me isn't necessarily anymore difficult to learn than learning fundamental CS concepts for the first time or even a new technology for the first time.

I keep hearing that companies want "professional" experience but like.. how much more complex can things really get?

I currently live in the US, but I am planning on traveling to Europe in the future. Would love to set up a good future for me when I move. This being the case, besides Java, what is mostly used for the backend in Europe?

Hello, I'm reflecting and looking for some advice on my job hunt journey

Background

I started my hunt about 3 months ago starting from nothing, LC, Resume, STAR, career sites, First round interviews. Lots of learning and improving. I knew I would fail a lot but I kept moving.

• Still Employed at a startup
• Career mid-level but I have a lot of senior influence and responsibilities at my current company.

General Experience

At a startup you can wear multiple hats, I've done PM Work, Field Engineering, Customer Support, Back end, Frontend, Infrastructure, Cloud, New Languages, MVP Products, Proposals, Very large RFQ, etc.

Time to move on

• The company is so small and family-oriented. I know if I don't have meaningful equity and TC, I am throwing my career down the drain. I have no network at work, a terrible market sector, etc.

Resume
From my diverse experience I've found I can write some pretty big accomplishments. The best points cover a large range of areas. From infrastructure deployments to back-end services. For example

Led the strategic overhaul of the Data Aggregation Service, shifting from monolith to Golang-based microservices architecture. Enabled horizontal scaling, achieving a 200% increase in data throughput.

Management Stuff

Project Managed and Supported a "Vary Large Hotel & Casino" IP network upgrade, overseeing the installation of 220+ network switches. ~ $1,250,000 project.

First Accomplishment,

I've been able to get calls, and I've talked to Palantir, Stripe, JPM, Smaller companies < 200 people, and Contract Stuff. Coming from someone who failed to get anything during college, the growth feels good. I've done something right.

Screening calls

I'm pretty personable and happy as I secretly really like talking to people (As a dev who is sitting alone :\).

After the first hump of awkward calls and being unsure how to answer questions, I've gotten to the point where I can't pick up the phone and unprompted take an interview without a sweat. ( doesn't mean I succeed but it's a nice conversation)

• Side note, HR dont randomly call me, send me an email, or something. I also have a job!!

​

This is where I'm unsure what's going on and I'm losing self-esteem/minor depression.
I seem to never get a second call, or it's 1/10 or something. I feel so low and lost all motivation (but not the anxiety). I know jobs can drop for any reason, internal hire, friend hire, budget, not the right fit, not enough experience etc. But I'm not even failing at the technical interview. It's like I can't get a foot in the door. I simply talked to an HR who knows nothing about the position and then ghosted. No feedback, Nothing.

What's even worse is nothing matters until you have an offer.

• I got to one final round, and was told "was a perfect cultural fit" but we wanted someone with more experience. Still a little peeved as I did a full 48-hour code project for them, and they could at least, given me an offer for a lower title.
• I asked for feedback and again got nothing, the recruiter said you did great but the employer ended it.

Advice
How do you get past HR and the hiring manager, nothing seems to work. To get hired is like 6 rounds of interviews, and you will get cut at any round. How can I improve if I can't even get past the level 1 boss?

The more interviews I'd do, the more I don't understand what they are looking for?
- Want experience with x,y,z. I have most or all
- Want someone personable and fun. Check
- Want someone willing to move, work in the office Check
- Hard-working. Check
- Reasonable salary, Tell me the bands and "I'll say yes that's fine".

Meh not good enough rejected, what more do you want?

​

https://youtu.be/dMfW2bYfa-M?si=bVa8GLerBpj5NjjB

Excuse my formatting, mobile.

I was offered to run a project for a music label. I know these requirements are vague, but I’m looking for a reasonable starting place. Initial message I received is as follows:

“I would like an app where people can input all their social media accounts, for example, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc., and from there they can track their engagement. I work with music artists and I want to create an app where they can see who their fans are and where they are in the world. This model would be free, and paid subscribers can then invest money into advertising to promote posts on the platform. basically the artists can check the use engagement of each post on the app, they can take a subscription plan to promote a post based on the user engagement details they have and that post will be promoted on that social media account not on the app.”

From my research there are a few existing apps that do something similar, I haven’t received a response yet about what those apps are missing, but I’m going to assume it has to do with music streaming platform integration.

I don’t want to make this post too long so any other information needed I will answer in the comments.

Hi all, first time poster so forgive me if this breaks the rules.

The short is that I'm looking for advice on where to move in my career since I'm completely torn and everyone I've spoken to IRL has given me conflicting opinions.

I've recently accepted a job offer from Capital One for the position of Senior Software Engineer. I'm excited for the work and the WLB is excellent. It's also within walking distance of home. The pay is 170 base + 20 sign-on

Today, I received an offer from Amazon for SDE2 which monetarily is insane: 270 TC (amortized over 4 years) but I'd be putting on golden handcuffs. Moreover, the WLB is guaranteed to be way worse - I'd be on-call regularly and will likely be working my ass off to not get wrecked by their stack ranking. It's also a 25 minute drive from home.

The question then is do I renege on Cap1 and accept Amazon?

Some pros and cons:

Amazon:

- TC is bananas

- Looks better on a resume

- Will likely end up learning more

- Will work way more and be on-call regularly

- Further away

- Potentially burn a bridge with Cap1

- Golden handcuffs for at least 2 years

Cap1:

- WLB is as good as it gets

- Work is more exciting

- Walking distance

- A full tier below Amazon in terms of prestige

​

I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts, especially if you've gone through a similar decision before. I'm happy to answer questions, Thanks in advance.

I graduated back in May 2023 and I've been at my current job for just over 3 months now. I did have another job for almost 3 months back in the summer but got laid off. After I got laid off from that job, I had to update my resume but I struggled to remember what all I did/accomplished during my time at that job. I don't want to repeat that experience again when I am looking to move jobs again a year or two down the line. Currently I take like 10 minutes before our daily stand ups to write out what I did yesterday and what I am doing today, but I often just shorthand to story numbers. Do you guys have a system for taking notes of things you do and accomplish at your job so that you are better prepared to update your resume and discuss what you did at your job down the line when you are looking for another job?

I'm currently a web developer who works on a CMS. The job is very chill. I've gotten HTML/CSS and to an extent JS pretty well, for junior level. I'm now learning React -- on the job. Bless.

We have a project coming up. It will just be me and my co-worker who is about a year out of college, that will be working on building this application.

They're essentially leaving it up to the two of us to build. I've had other dev-adjacent roles before, but this will be my first role working on building an actual application. They're leaving it up to us to decide the tech stack. We chose .NET and React, with a MySQL DB.

I was thinking of incorporating other tech such as NextJS and Tailwind. Any other recommendations on how to approach this? The app is an internal one that will display a table with the ability to edit/create/delete and filter records.

I will mostly work on the frontend with some opportunities to work on backend. My coworker will mostly work on backend with opportunities for frontend. What else can I do to maximize my experience with this? I think anything cloud is out of the question, fyi. And will this experience even matter much since it's essentially 2 professionally inexperienced devs working on this?

​

I work in an IT company with lots of Indians who are on visa. I’m a US citizen working in the states and my supervisor is asking for a scanned copy of my degree certificate to send to his attorney for visa extension filing.. is this normal?

Hello Everyone,

I finished by Masters in CS last year and started at a very niche company. In essence they do financial analysis for larger companies.

When I started I was quickly placed into a project, which involved automating some part of the analysis into a web application. Basically to enable customers to do their owm calculations with the data we provide. I was introduced to the Developer team (4 other guys) and the project kickoff started.

6 months later and I am the only one who contributed to the project. The other devs participated in the kickoff, but later said they had no time to contribute to it. I build the whole web application by myself, including backend, frontend, database and server maintenance. I have no idea how I was able to manage to this all by myself, because it also included a bunch of complicated calculations which I never did before.

The product has just been launched and I am being blamed for a dozen of bugs that I did not test for. Although this are minor bugs, I feel terrible and like they used me. I put in a lot of overtime and even worked on holidays to make the deadline.

My questions for everyone in this subreddit is: Did you ever experience a similiar situation at a company? What would you suggest for me?

I am thinking about quitting, because non of the other devs has been helping out and management is shifting all the blame on me. Although the application works well in general. Also it is not like the other devs truly do not have time, I think they jsut generally lack the knowledge to help me with certain issues.

I’d love some thoughts on these offer numbers I received for an ICT3 role based out of Austin. It is primarily a back-end role.

Upon doing some reading here and elsewhere online, I have seen some rather negative things about IS&T, which is worrying me a bit. I would love to hear if these negative things still hold true (i.e. poor WLB, challenging managers, difficulty working with contractors, issues of inclusion, poor technical ability). I would be in the Partner Solutions and Technology organization (PS&T) specifically, so even more insight into that team would be great as well.

Apple Pros

- Apple looks good on Resume

- Higher TC

Apple Cons

- Possible bad experiences in IS&T (bad WLB especially)

- Move to Austin, I know close to no one there

Current Pros

- Good WLB, good tech

- Good people

- May get promoted to senior next year (but not guaranteed)

Current Cons

- Bad comp

- Stagnation in career

I am leaning towards going with Apple for resume and TC reasons.

YOE: 3

Siemens Healthineers pays $32/hour and I’ve been working on the team since last summer (full time during summer and part-time during school weeks). My project this summer relates to building an API for customer segmentation. I’m on a very very low stress team and remote but the starting full time pay is low. At the same time if I ever want to aim for big tech next summer I would have lots of time to Leetcode/interview prep this summer since I only worked about 3 hours a day last summer and they were pleased with my work.

iCapital pays $40/ hour with a relocation and transportation stipen in NYC for the summer only. My intern title is Platform Infrastructure Engineer intern and my role contains working a lot with devop tools and some coding in ruby rails or scala and react. Wlb is definitely worse than Siemens since it’s in-person and I will be learning everything for the first time since I don’t know devops or ruby rails/scala. I’m not sure how much iCapital full time pay is. At the same time, since iCapital is fintech I want to know if it’s actually worth joining.

Basically do I stick with Siemens Healthineers which has great wlb (so I can interview prep for big tech) and a year-round intern pay structure but a known low full time pay or iCapital which there is a lot of unknown but is fintech.

I reached out to a recruiter for an internship, we know each other (barely) from an event. I don’t think he remembers, but I messaged him still. He was very nice and sent me the coding assessment. I BOMBED IT. IT WAS SO SHIT. I did not submit EITHER OF THEM. And they were easy LC.. I just never done leetcode before and haven’t coded in months. why i applied you ask? I thought there wouldn’t be a coding assessment… Don’t ask me why, I’m only a first-year and not from US. So, after bombing the OA. should i message the recruiter that i did bad becayse i havent had time to practice consistently etc? its a company i wanna work for in the fhture. and say something like, ill practice more in the summer and reapply when they announce a new internship? Because the recruiter even said he thinks im fit for the role (i have had 2 internships, 0 coding required).

So should i message thr recruiter? What if this bombs my chances of getting OA next year? Or he won’t care?

Hello,

When someone asks about your experience with one of thousands of technologies, How do you say you have little expertise without exing yourself out of the first round interview?

"Do you have any experience with Graphql?". This is how I've approached this problem, connect as many points as you can and be truthful. Some - little experience is better than zero? right?

My answer:
I wrote an MVP using Graphql as an extension to our public-facing Python API, but we don't use Graphql actively here at "current company". bla bla bla then try to connect their use case for Graphql back into your conversation (to show you you understand the benefits of Graphql).

There are thousands of technologies and keywords, and it feels like if you say something wrong you're cut.

Am I doing something wrong, is this the wrong way to approach this?

Hello Everyone !
I’m very new to coding, going the self taught route as I can’t afford school and it’s difficult to juggling school, family & full time work. I’m 22, and I’ve been in the social service worker field since 17 so it’s a complete turn around for me. I really want to get into either software engineering the most but I would be equally happy to get into full stack coding or DevOps and they are my back-up open options so I don’t limit my opportunities. I target my more specific questions down at the very bottom. 😊
Currently I am enrolled in a coding camp that teaches me the very basics of the following ( please let me know in the comments which ones you feel I should focus on more with the current needs in the coding industry ) :
- HTML ( course-complete)
- CSS ( course-complete)
- JavaScript ( course-partial-complete)
- VsCode ( course-complete )
- API
- Git
- GitHub
- Hosting
- AI
- Bootstrap
- SEO
- Responsive
- React.js
I felt I needed a lot more advanced exposure to HTML and CSS after finishing the camp, so I went looking for a YouTube step-by-step tutorial video that could teach me more as I have ADHD and need the instructions layed out start to finish with every click. So far, I’ve been doing great and feel that I’ve gotten HTML & CSS down ( I watched a 6.5 hour YouTube video by SuperSimpleDev and it was very informative/amazing. I was able to replicate the YouTube website he was teaching with near ease. Though I do feel I need a bit more practise with Grids and Flexbox as they can get a little confusing.
In terms of my next steps I’m thinking of tackling either JavaScript ( which I got the very basics of such as ‘let’ ‘alert ‘ and how to build a button + call a button and add an EventListener, however I haven’t gone past it and still need some more practise on calling the button itself), or I was thinking of tackling python. I am completely open to getting certificates like AWS and Cloud, Azure because I know the importance of them but based on what I have said above are there any other suggestions you can make for me ? In Addition to the above, once I learn basic coding I do really want to learn Version Control, Linux, Agile Development, Coding SQL, Operations, Docker/KUbernetes, Infrastructure as Code ( Terraform or ASW Cloud Form), Ansible, CI/DI Pipelines, Jenkins and learn monitoring. However, I know all those majorly apply to Devops and I have tried jumping into learning them but i've run into the problem that my computer ( Mac) is just too old for the programs and is not able to download then even with the older versions, I also feel that when I jumped into it I wasn't able to yet find a good "teacher" on youtube and have been looking to possibly take the "Zero To Mystery Devops Engineering course" as it offers almost all of the above and I hope that it'll introduce me to it all just like my front/back end boocamp did.

I know I’m no expert yet and I am not even close to getting a software engineer job/full staff coding but I’m in a bit of a sticky situation with my current job truly affecting my physical and mental health and I really do have the motivation to learn and get this rolling. Even though the imposter syndrome has peeked in once in a while as running into issues like semi colons missing or even just a simple spelling mistake of a missing letter I have still been able to push through and come back again and again with motivation to learn. I am hoping that someone can pave a little bit of a road for me that I can use so I’m not running all over the place learning everything when I might not need it all. I would also be super appreciative and thankful if someone can suggest any meat-ups and events to make connections with other coders and build those relationships ( location ON, Canada ).

Questions:
1.What kind of portfolios ( specific if possible) would you recommend I do to impress an employer for someone who doesn’t have a degree? ( for ex, would recreating a page on twitter or Reddit be impressive enough).
2.Based on what I know so far, where would you suggest I go next in order to increase my chances of getting a software engineer job or full stack developer/coder?
3.Do you have any suggestions of meetups/events that occur in ON,Canada that I can attend and network to ensure better chances in the work force or even just in general good connections to have ?
4.Do you have any recommendations of certifications you highly suggest I get ( even if they are on the more expensive side ) that will help me stand out a lot to employers and show them I know what I’m doing?
5.Lastly, what recommendations do you have or do you have any examples of what a fully entry level resume for this industry should look like ? As I don’t have any job experience I am hoping to fill it with tons of portfolio but I need recommendations on how my resume should look without the job experience section.
Thank you so much again ! I hope I can get lots of feedback.

Just as a note, the offer I accepted is not for SWE, but is instead for "Business Intelligence Developer". I abandoned the SWE dream in around February or so. The other two offers were for an RPA developer position and a data analyst position.

Having said that, here's what I'd learned since October:

• Being early truly is key. I found far, far greater success when applying to newer positions.
• I hadn't had many, or any, LeetCode questions in any of the technical interviews. One used their own proprietary software, so that was an interesting challenge. I received many HackerRank questionnaires, though. Generally timed and all of that jazz. They seemed more common with the banking companies I was applying to. One company asked me for the five main HTTP methods.
  • I want to note, though, that these Leetcode questions could come at later stages that I didn't make it to. Considering the state of the current landscape, they probably abandoned me early on in favor of some ex-MAANG employee or someone with a Masters in CS.
• For SWE adjacent positions I had found that the technical questions were basically nonexistent. They seemed far, far more interested in soft skills and rapport. Thankfully I am pretty good in that department, but it's taken a long while to be as comfortable as I am now (I grew up with crippling social anxiety).
• Don't assume you're "in" even with an offer. I have a friend who had made it all the way through the Meta interview process, received an offer, and was not able to be placed, despite being absolutely incredible at LeetCode and having 3+ YOE. Keep applying.

If you, like me, have to abandon SWE hopes and dreams, try searching with more vague terms like "developer", "engineer", or "analyst". I found positions I'd never even heard of, like "analytics engineer", and had interviews for many of these positions.

Best of luck to you, and may you suffer as little bullshit as possible.

​

The projects I have done  and are here and here. . I was wondering if it is possible to tell, even by briefly looking at them, if they can somehow count as data science and/or machine learning experience. Maybe if there is a way to present the work and its applicability.

I work in HR and i am aiming for 11.5 LPA but they are offering 10.5 with 1.05 Yearly bonus How to negotiate What all good things i can say to get that offer, i need that money in my daily salary and how to negotiate on relocation allowance. How to ask for it? What are the good points i can put!

I am currently studying a technical degree in programming and they teach us java (not in depth) and later springboot, I am new in this world and obviously I see myself working in the future in this world. I have a question, which are the most requested languages and frameworks? I am Colombian and here what is most seen is java, but I would like a more "international" opinion. It is worth clarifying that I like the backend. Thank you for your attention.

Given that CS is in some sense a Math degree, and would from a pure undergrad major standpoint qualify me for math-related roles, what are some things I could pivot into instead of doing SWE? Are there any certifications or licenses I could get to make me immediately hireable in this type of field?

I just graduated with a degree in Software Engineering. The most coding I’ve done is for school projects, mostly in Java. I want to be job ready for both Java and Python. With Java, I’ve been going over texts books. And I’ve been practicing DSA with Python. What’s the best way to get job ready for both languages? Also, is there a good way to practice SQL querying?

Mostly experienced in frontend is not really helping in the current market. Trying to work on personal hobby projects using backend tech stack Node,MongoDB etc.
Is it reasonable to add self employed engineer title and include month/years of experience of new tech stack in resume along with hobby projects, would it be a problem under?
It's hard to get hold of backend work in org when there are dedicated backend already. How would you suggest to go about it in the current bad market condition?

I’m in my late 50’s with 30 YOE, mostly large companies working on full stack enterprise projects, all Microsoft. Got laid off a year ago from a good F500 job with 200k tc and quickly got a contract at $75/hr while I looked for an FTE role. 3 months after layoff, I got a hybrid job for around $120k at an IT backwater but it was close and stable. New jobs is boring AF and I am looking at the prospect of maintaining web forms apps or doing Power BI with maybe some Azure work if I’m lucky.

I heard through the grapevine that the new CTO is bringing in one of the WITCH companies and my boss is also a fan of the offshore model. Most of the dev team blatantly works on side hustles and is consistently MIA (half work remote) so I can’t really blame management for thinking they can pay offshore devs half the price of a local to sit around and not do shit. Our apps are crap and despised by the users but there is no mandate to rewrite them properly. Most were done by consultants and thrown over the wall to my team to maintain. Our Dev to QA ratio is 12-0.

Sometimes I think I should just CoastFIRE until the inevitable shit-canning and training my offshore replacement, but I have current skills and recent certs. Most of my days are spent learning about microservices, cloud-native apps, and Blazor, and stacking certs.

Recently I updated my resume and applied to a few jobs, and got a call today about a 6 month remote contract to hire role paying $65/hr with a conversion to $139k. I never really trust the conversion promise but this project involves getting everything upgraded to .NET 8 with containers and microservices, and the recruiter mentioned that this is a rewrite of a failed near-shoring effort brought in-house. Maybe occasional trips to the office an hour away for some agile ceremonies but probably not any RTO plans.

Should I just chill out and risk getting laid off again, or take a gamble and hope to convert at higher pay and working on current tech? The downside is I could be out on the street again during the holidays if my contract ends, but that may be the case anyway at my current job.

Hey there r/cscareerquestions people. I was laid off a couple months ago as Application Engineer (my primary function being able to automate/create in-house tools). I started out as analyst, and automated a bunch of tedious tasks for my department and others which led to the creation of this new role. Unfortunately, 8 months later the company fell on hard times and sadly I was axed.

I've found another backup role since as a network engineer, and I'm thankful. I'm still on the hunt to fill the roll of an automation engineer/ in-house tool dev role hole. I loved creating widgets and tools for assisting repetitive work for people using python, google app script, VBA, or finding out what stack a department uses and creating something for it. The joy I get when I cut a big chunk of annoying work for someone can't be beat. I'd love to do it again, but haven't been successful in my search yet. The tricky thing is it's hard to pin down what an In-House Tool maker is called. I think the closest example was a process dev role which had the following quals/description:

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage all projects related to process improvement initiatives, ensuring timely delivery.

• Implement new process changes to enhance team productivity.

• Review current processes, identify inefficiencies or areas of improvement.

• Collect requests, assess requirements, and ensure process alignment across departments.

• Ensure processes comply with relevant data validation and requirements.

• Identify and mitigate risks associated with process changes.

• Utilize existing tech stack and leverage automation tools where applicable.

• Document processes and organize standard operating procedures (SOPs) for teams.

• Analyze process performance metrics to identify trends and areas for improvement.

• Develop training materials and conduct sessions to educate employees on new processes and tools.

• Conduct regular audits to ensure adherence to processes and desired outcomes.

• Proactively seek feedback and iterate on processes to drive continuous improvement.

• Communicate updates and changes related to process development initiatives to leadership.

• Address issues and find solutions collaboratively with cross-functional teams.

• Coordinate with external vendors or service providers as needed for process development projects.

Any advanced tips out there for securing a role like this or similar?

Hi, I am a CS student from GT and graduating this semester (am gonna do one year masters too). I have had two internships (doing another this summer if I don't switch careers lol).

How much does luck matter in this field? Is the amount of effort and hardwork I put in not likely gonna be proportionate to my career outcomes?

I am seriously considering a switch to the medicine route and this is one of the factors. I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success. But here, I just don't know. I don't want to always be scrambling for less that I deserve because of awful market conditions and what not.

ALSO do you even like your job?

Specifically, I'm getting my masters (with reimbursement). If I choose ML/AI as my main focus, will I lock myself into being an ML or AI developer? What if I choose Systems and study Cryptography and Network Security and choose ML/AI as one of my side topics. Would I be locked into a software security position and thus not able to work in ML/AI?

How much does your main area of study specifically matter to employers?

(I put a student tag, but I'm also an experienced dev. 3+ years)

Which companies have roles with 0-2 YOE for SWE?

I am trying to job switch with 1 YOE, but all positions I find are either new grad or 2+ YOE.