I received an internship offer but I have another interview coming up for another internship that could potentially be better. What is the convention when it comes to responding to the first internship offer given that the second internship could take some time to respond (with acceptance/rejection)?

Title.

Hello, I work as a manager at an educational non-profit and have for more than a decade, I'm 31.

I manage projects, implement programs (especially events), and oversee grant reporting for my projects. I'm a great communicator and I love what I do, but I'm feeling stalled and having a lot of trouble with that feeling. I've run and managed a number of great projects/programs over the years, I've been fantastic at it. But none of them are related directly to CS.

I completed my CS degree in 2022. I've always enjoyed writing code but don't think I want to be a software developer. I keep a little brushed up on coding through the occasional microcontroller project.

This might be impostor syndrome, but I'm a little worried that I am going to let my CS skills dull and would lock myself out of ever being able to move into that field.

I make around $60k living in a flyover state, and while I'm curious about making a career change, I'm not really wanting to make the major change without there being a significant paybump.

I've been curious about data analyst/data science roles for awhile, but it's not clear to me what a daily role would entail. I'm not sure how to best prepare for an interview/application either.

Does anyone have advice of careers I might consider? Does anyone who has background in data analysis/science have an idea of expectations and what to do to prepare?

Hey everyone, I’ve been working at a company for a little over 1.5 years. In my performance review last year(8 months into working there) my manager mentioned that he wanted to promote me already and if it was up to him he would’ve already but mentioned I’d “for sure” get promoted in 2024. I haven’t heard anything about a promotion all year long even though all the feedback has been great throughout the year in all of our checkins. My performance review is happening soon and im expecting it to go very well based on feedback and accomplishments. How do I bring this up to my manager? That he promised a promotion but nothing happened? I have no leverage because the market is terrible in Canada.

I received a message from one of my contacts at Google (Mountain View) today. They found some material from the Alphabet Workers Union in their building this morning and sent me a picture.

I've known that morale isn't exactly great over there but that's a new one. Has anyone else seen anything like this or is this the work of an isolated individual ?

If anyone has interviewed with sonar before, how was the experience and difficulty?

I am a 6th sem B.Tech cs student from India. I am from a tier 2 college and my current cgpa is 8.76. I have learned c,c++ at intermediate level, HTML,CSS and basics of Javascript. I have learned basics of Linux, networking and basics of Cybersecurity. I have started DSA recently. I don't know what path should I follow so that I can secure an internship and land a job in futute, I have a bit of interest in networking but I don't know if freshers in India can get jobs in it. I am mostly at intermediate or slightly above intermediate level in all these, Please suggest me what path should I follow I only have 4-5 months to land an internship and then start preparing for placements

Are those days gone? Can I not just have one general resume and apply to every job that I know I could easily do because of transferable skills? Or do I seriously need to lie about the tech stacks I used at my previous job just to get past this bullshit?

I'd like your perspective on being classified as a very strong mid-level with 'senior traits'' during experience based 'team fit' interviews, despite having performed senior responsibilities in my past roles. At this point I'm not even sure if I need to up my 'pitching game' or is this a technique to lowball candidates into doing senior workload for mid's salary. Previously in the past I accepted the lower mid-level pay where compared to 'senior' colleagues, I performed at senior level as expectations for me were basically the same. Not a big fan of repeating this again.

While I do understand that a senior in one company can be a mid level in another company, I still fail to grasp between the expectations of differences between senior and mid candidates.

My experience includes:

• Leading a team of 3 developers (in my last job) while constantly refactoring releasing and optimizing
• Establishing architecture and design systems, conventions, taking care of CI/CD, documentation, etc.
• Driving performance optimizations and constantly suggesting/pushing initiatives
• Mentoring other devs
• Thinking on org/team level, being responsible for entire team/project, basically acting as a team/project lead, a buffer between my team and managament, even participated in recruitment processes.

I have 7 YOE as native android developer. My potential gaps: project scale ranges from B2C apps with 100k+ downlods and around 30k active users to B2B apps with 1k+ downloads except for one where we supported around 50k point of sale devices. Most of this experience is with startupsa and agencies. However worked once with an enterprise company for a year, so I kinda understand really big codebases and my experience wasn't all MVP's.

It feels like they expect a senior to tell them about projects with 100 modules catering to million user audiences and they expect that candidate to never use word 'We', always use word 'I' and basically impress them with stories about how he single handedly crushed issues and delivered solutions everyday and saved millions of dollars for those big companies everyday.

How can I better position my capabilities during interviews? What kind of KPI's or ground breaking achievements should I talk about in order to sell myself better? Like how to display all that sweat and blood that I put in everywhere I worked at?

My last job change, I ended up having an overlap of two months while I was offloading the last couple projects at my previous job (I was part of a layoff due to offshoring with a set timeline for my end date). Both jobs were remote and had no set hours, so I just worked longer days/weekends to get through the overlap.

Fast forward to me looking for a new role. How do I explain the overlap? It's already come up from one recruiter, I just don't know if the truth would be looked down upon.

Other option is to fudge the date by a month, but would this be flagged on a background check?

Hello. I'm a CS sophomore looking for a summer internship for either SWE, security, or networking, but I have a collection of rather niche experience that I'm not sure how best to convey to a recruiter/hiring manager.

In short:

• I have my own fully peered public ASN on multiple IXes
• I have an IBM z114 mainframe, which I fully rebuilt and setup myself
• I have three full racks of lab equipment going back ~7 years, with 100+ VMs, running a very full enterprise stack, and a large number of custom-developed programs I've deployed myself.
• I'm also a state-certified CLEC in NY and TX, running my own scratch-built VoIP switches, with a custom developed billing and OSS/BSS stack.

Does any of this matter for job search purposes? If so, how do I best leverage it? I'm afraid that I haven't really put much time into building a good/clean GitHub or personal portfolio. Should I wait on this to start applying? I'd really appreciate any information that you can provide.

1.5 YOE at FAANG in cloud and I'm looking for my next opportunity. I want to try something new and don't want to be pigeonholed into cloud for the rest of my life. I feel like as a junior, I don't get exposed to the interesting decisions that make cloud a unique space. And I really do not want to do oncall ever again, I don't care if some customer's instance is acting strange, I cannot keep being paged in the middle of the night.

Outside of CS I'm very interested in learning natural languages and I speak several. So I was thinking about ways to mix SWE with my interest and experience with languages.

Although from my understanding you need a PhD or at least an MS to do anything with computational linguistics or NLP? I have an MEng from a T10 school, and only a tiny bit of academic exposure to computational linguistics. I don't want to go into academia long term, and most likely am unwilling to go back to school either (I'd be reluctant to go to any school besides my alma mater, and I have zero chance of getting into a PhD program there)

Hello, can anyone please recommend to me fields in programming that do not require designing or/and building a UI & don't require high level mathematics? And please also recommend roadmaps for the fields and whether those jobs/fields pay well or not, have a future and I can progress in my career having that job/working in that field.

Can you also suggest a good roadmap or/and a course for DevOps & Backend?

To be clear: I am not trying to make rust vs zig post here, wanted to ask in specific scenario which one should I pick if I only have time and resources for learning one of them.

I have fair bit of experience with full stack development with Python, php, typescript and react stacks and also done some desktop app development experience on top some data analysis and ML experience. I want to chose one of them which can help me in long term career goal and complements something like python mainly. I am very confused after reading about both and wanted to ask what people with more experience think.

Why am I trying to pick one of them? Python is excellent when you understand and are comfortable with a low-level language, especially when performance is crucial. However, I want to choose a language with broader applicability and better future prospects, like Rust with Tauri, and I'm sure Zig will offer something similar soon.

Why not both? Cause I am also learning other cloud related techs and system design atm and do not have time or resource and I am hoping to get deeper grasp of one of the two.

I wanted to reiterate that let's not make this a vs post : )

I've effectively worked 10+ years with staff engineer-level responsibilities, but this year, after changing company, is the first time I'm officially assessed as a staff engineer.

The feedback was... harsh. As far as I understand, I was supposed to:

• somehow ship in time a project that was never staffed
• stop filling bugs/issues on the documentation of other team's projects and fix them myself
• ask fewer questions, because this decreases the trust people have in me (also, somehow, this is labeled as "not having a bird's eye view of the company", which feels rather off the mark, especially when the question quoted was "can someone remind me of the URL for [feature X]?")
• also, you shouldn't push for quality because we don't have bug reports from clients
• oh, but thank you for your side-projects, two of which are now company-wide strategic objectives, because not having them seriously threatened our credibility, so you can keep leading one of them and you won't be credited for the other one.

(and also more meaningful feedback, both positive and negative, but I'm focusing on the stuff that feels weird)

I need to digest this, but right now, I feel that I have the following options:

1. swallow, ignore the feedback that makes no sense, absorb what does, hope for the best, and hope that it doesn't leave too much of a mark;
2. contest, at the risk of leaving a mark;
3. update my résumé.

What is your experience with staff+ feedback? How do you deal with such expectations that feel... well, not entirely realistic?

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I've done 2000+ applications in 4 months. I'm just mentally done. If the US is fucked, are there options with immigration? I'll take anything in tech at this point.

I mean, watching what the industry became is confusing right now... The ai revolution, layoffs from companies, too much candidate population and being a student inside this is a mess.

I am really interested in game development and was considering a path in this way, but seeing all those doom posts about "im saying do not enter this field as a game dev" or "you will compete with seniors who lost their jobs" etc. Really makes me think i should do this or not. But these posts are EVERYWHERE and every field. So i want some guidance...

I might have a chance doing an internship at taleworlds: a global known game company located at my university campus. I was thinking about applying there, also i started to create my own game with unity. Im really motivated and i really enjoy to spend my time creating my own game now. But i dont know how it is like to work in a company.

So my country is doing world records in inflation statistics, and i really need a stable job to make money(or maybe try to find a job at germany where my siblings live, or chase remote jobs), but people say do not enter this field if you want a stable job...

Is it that bad and will i waste my time there? Or should i completely ignore doom posts and just do what i love? Because i feel like i will fail whatever i choose.

We have these options:

1. Continue to work on my game and hone my unity, C# skills(maybe mastering C# will help me to a possible switch to another area? Or maybe start my own studio because i believe myself about creating good games)

2. Study computer graphics skills, PBR Theory, ray/path tracing, neural rendering etc. (i took CG Course this year and found it interesting, but people say its a niche area and you should really be a master to find a job)

3. Just grind leetcode and swe stuff and try to find a popular job in the market, or start to chase freelance jobs(this could be a B plan and maybe i can grind these in my spare time... Im not sure)

What do you guys think?

So for context I couldn’t get into a typical CS Major in an university. I technically could even right now but I applied for a course called Ba (Hons) in Music Production and Sound Engineering in the UK. I chose this because I’m a music producer myself and I want to break into the music industry, and this is an amazing opportunity for that. Now I checked my university’s website and they also offer a Bs (Hons) in Music Production and Software Engineering, where they would teach me about VST Plugins (used for music production) development and all the other technical side of it.

Now, I have taught myself python and other languages, some common DSAs, and built a couple of projects. I’m also really good at math and teaching myself ML too.

My main priority is growing as an artist, but I also want to break into the tech industry. Given the current job market, would it be wise to have a solid resume and a Bs Music Production and Software Engineering degree or a Ba Music Production or Sound Engineering degree?

Do I need the Bs degree to get a job in this current scenario EVEN if I have a very solid resume by the time I’m graduating in 3 years?

I’m not familiar with how these kinds of structures work, but I know HR isn’t my friend and is there to protect the company. I work in Academia IT.

Feb 2024 - put on a PIP. Performed well, hit all requirements, “now you must continue to improve.”

I apparently did not improve to satisfaction (manager cited 2 procedural mistakes that were the equivalent of not dotting an I, not to mention the procedures were brand new and the first time I, or anyone, had done them). Verbal Warning and a meeting with HR to discuss “guidance”.

Consistency was 1 of the 4 pillars in the PIP I needed to improve on, but now it’s starting to feel like a trap that any even slight mistake going forward is justifying the idea that I’m “not improving post PIP”, and makes termination easier.

I would like to have a genuine conversation with HR - but what am I actually supposed to say if I want to keep my job? Ideally, I’d be working the same job in the same establishment - but with a different team/manager. But I feel like complaining about difficulty working with my manager is exactly NOT what to say

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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.

THE BUILDS I LOVE, THE SCRIPTS I DROP, TO BE PART OF, THE APP, CAN'T STOP

THIS IS THE RANT THREAD. IT IS FOR RANTS.

CAPS LOCK ON, DOWNVOTES OFF, FEEL FREE TO BREAK RULE 2 IF SOMEONE LIKES SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T BUT IF YOU POST SOME RACIST/HOMOPHOBIC/SEXIST BULLSHIT IT'LL BE GONE FASTER THAN A NEW MESSAGING APP AT GOOGLE.

(RANTING BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT EVERY FRIDAY, BEST COAST TIME. PREVIOUS FRIDAY RANT THREADS CAN BE FOUND HERE.)

I work at an in-person R&D lab and struggle to find enough work to do for the full 8 hrs I'm contracted for. Most of the time, my assigned work can be completed in a few hours and then I'm left staring at the screen and trying to look productive for 4 hrs. I've talked to a couple of my coworkers and they find themselves in the same position.

What do you do? Do you stick around in office for the full 8 hrs and stare at the screen for 4 of them? Or do you just leave early once you've completed all your work? We don't have daily stand ups and only have meetings once a week or so to do demos.

Do you guys work full 8hr days or do you have a ton of free time at the office?

Hey all,

I just graduated with a CS degree and started as a "Associate Software Engineer" at a decently sized software MNC.

The scope is basically handling tickets related to development errors with the company's software. So I receive a ticket, understand their issue, try to reproduce the error to see if it is within our scope, and potentially suggest a fix (can be environment, setup, code, etc) and if I cannot fix it, provide a temporary workaround and pass the issue to the respective departments (e.g. The specific product departments working on the product)

Is there any future in this role? Should I use this as a stepping stone (despite not getting much dev experience) or should I leave and find another job if I want dev-oriented work?

Appreciate for any advice!

Hello all. I need some advice since I feel really stuck in my professional career, if I can even call it that. I graduated in 2018 in CS but due to life as well as covid, I was unable to seek employment with my degree. From 2018 to 2023 I was a full time caregiver of a family member. Besides caring for them, I was mostly just reading and doing leet code to keep up during that gap. After they passed and I grieved, I tried to get back into my work but no one would so much as look at my resume. Since then I've gotten several certifications for front end and back end development from meta and the like, built personal portfolio projects and ramping up my leet code to try again. I'm feeling pretty hopeless honestly. I'm genuinely afraid of not being able to work in something I struggled to achieve. I could use some actual advice please. Thanks.

I completed half of cs50 during my 1st semester (basically the C part) and submitted my week 5 assignment 4 months ago . It was very helpful as my college was teaching C as well . In the second semester , my college's using C++ and I have decided to learn C++ through my lectures only ( partly because there's no cs50 like course for C++) . Do you guys know a website where I can practice C++ questions (preferably topic-wise )? More importantly , should I go back and finish cs50 or take up something else like doing a MOOC course on Java or Web Development ?

Hi all, long story short, I am scheduled for a final round interview at meta for E5 later this month. This interview includes a product design portion, and I am getting mixed messages on how this differs from a typical system design interview. Going off "Cracking FAANG" Youtube videos, it's very different with a focus on UX and API. It might include doing some UX design in the interview. But other places, like Hello Interview mention the flow is almost the same as system, with just a little bit more focus on the API and DB Setup like PK and SK. Some are saying that it depends heavily on who your interviewer is.

I wanted to ask here for anyone that's interviewed for Product Design what their experience was. Do I need to refocus on my prep on UX and API, or am I safe in following the standard flow of System Design?

I recently got a new job after looking for over 6 months, over 1,600 applications, 1 interview, and landed the job easily. My CS degrees are in Networking, Information Systems, and Security. All I seemed to find in those categories were companies that wanted a software developer with a little networking experience. It was frustrating to say the least. I am the kind of person that likes what I do and try to avoid any coding I can because I don't enjoy it and I suck at it.

I started applying for positions outside of normal CS gigs and found that, for me, the job I landed was actually a great fit for me. I took a chance for a video security position and while reading through the job requirements, it looked like yet another dead end. The position I took, uses the education I learned in all 3 degree fields, and has absolutely no coding at all involved.

When I interviewed with them, they asked a lot of questions that were specific to networking, so I was quite comfortable with my answers. The final part of the interview was a test to see if I could terminate a Cat6 cable correctly. Even though they said to take my time, I had it done in about a minute and it tested correctly on all strands. Come to find out, I was the fastest one to make the termination, (though speed was not a metric,) and was the only one to complete the termination correctly. Needless to say, I got the job and they offered near the top end for their pay range, which was an added bonus in my eyes.

This was my experience, I'd like to hear from some of my other CS counterparts on your career journey and if you have taken something outside of just developer positions. It seems like the industry is flooded with just those recently, and I'd like for people, like me, to share so others might not be so discouraged.

I currently work as a frontend developer on my team and its been about a year since I've joined. This is my first job right out of undergrad. The work does not really interest me as I find it repetitive at times and feel like I cant really grow into the engineer I want to be. In the future my eventual goal for the moment is to transition to the ML side of engineering. At my job we heavily utilize a frontend framework that's very specific to the company I'm working at. I feel like my experience with this framework cant be transferrable to another company if I choose to move in the future. At this moment I'm trying to explore other avenues that mostly involve working with backend technologies so that I can progress my career.

However, I do like the company and the product my team works on. The work environment, culture and people are amazing. How do I go about requesting my manager to allow me to spend some of my time to contribute to a different team so I can gain some work experience in a domain other than the frontend. I have done my fare share of networking and I communicate regularly with many engineers on the backend as well. My manager is not super approachable with things like this because he's previously told me at times to just work on the things I've been assigned to and focus on getting better at that and also the demand for the UI team to deliver is high.

Please suggest how I can move forward with this or suggest things I can do right now so that I can work towards my career goal. I have also thought about maybe switching jobs to something that may suit my interests.

All advice is appreciated and thank you!

My girlfriend is looking to get into computer science and I recommended that she try a quick boot camp since she doesn't want to spend too long on it.

Are there any courses that would take less than a year that would have a good chance of getting her a beginner entry level tech job?

She does not know how to code yet. I think she probably had some classes 15 years ago but it's been some time.

You don't hear about any other banks or credit card companies hiring in such big numbers and presumably they have bigger market share etc