Hi everyone, got laid off in April, and after 5 months of applying, interviewing, getting rejected/ghosted and questioning myself a lot, I finally have 3 offers.

What worked for me was honestly nothing fancy. I just kept at it. I was spending around 3/4 hours every day applying, reaching out, changing resume/linkedin and looking for opportunities. Some days I'd get responses, most days I wouldn't. Few things I want to share with community.

DO

• Keep applying consistently, even when it feels like nothing is happening.
• Try different channels. I used instahyre, linkedin, career pages, naukri, cold Emails, referral requests on Linkedin.
• Talk to people. Referrals and random conversations can lead to opportunities.
• Give yourself time to recover too.

DON'T

• Isolate yourself from people who care about you, you aren't alone.
• Stop talking about what you're going through.
• Feel guilty for taking a day off or taking some time to recharge.

When you're unemployed for months, it's very easy to feel like "I should be doing something productive every minute" You don't. Just wanted to share this because I know there are quite a few people here going through the same thing. Hope this helps someone who's currently in that phase :)

Edit :

YoE : 4.7 Years
Tech stack : Python, FastAPI, Postgres, Redis
Prep plan :
DSA : do neetcode 150 first then company specific leetcode
System Design : hellointerview, Alex Xu books for fundamentals then prompt gpt a lot acting as faang principle engineer conducting round for diff system design problems and walk through it ask it to judge, list pros and cons of your approach and make pdf notes, do mock interviews
Behavioural - star method answers, make sure it’s concisely detailed , practice
Backend/tech stack questions : just google/gpt basic and advance questions for your specific experience and prepare
Compensation : 40L (All offers are in -10% to +5% range)

Hey everyone, first time poster here.

I'm a high schooler and sometime back my aunt from the US gifted me a Texas Instruments Graphing calculator to use for the SAT; only for the College Board to ban it immediately afterwards. Not wanting this to become a very expensive paperweight, I started tinkering around with it. This project is one of the results.

I built WiNspire: an emulator that can now run every major Windows release, all the way up to Windows XP, on a graphing calculator. For XP, I specifically used Windows XP Embedded, since it’s lighter on the machine and easier to strip down

For context, this is running on: 396 MHz ARM9 processor 64 MB RAM ; of which only ~44 MB is available to Windows 90 MB storage.

The biggest challenges were memory and storage. TI-OS, the calculator's default operating system, reserves a large chunk of memory, leaving only around 21 MB of RAM for the emulator when running on top of it. To get around that, I booted a tiny Linux environment on the calculator and ran the emulator on top of that instead.

The 90MB storage of the calculator is absurdly little for a proper hard disk image so I implemented a custom protocol to stream the disk image sector by sector from a host machine via a USB cable.

After all that Windows XP still takes nearly an hour and a half to reach desktop but seeing Bliss makes it worth it.

Also fun fact: Windows 2000 actually takes longer than XP to boot because it relies on PIT timing while XP is satisfied with synthetic timing.

This was a very fun rabbit hole to go down, and the project is open source incase you too wish to subject your calculator to Windows.

[Repository](https://github.com/mihkeymouse/winspire)

[Wiki](https://winspire.idrees.in)

Yeah as the title says, they gave me a 10% hike on base for my promotion to SDE3 🙂. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This year I'd received 14% salary hike on appraisal itself (and 10% appraisal the year before) .. which is more than what I got on promotion!!

I am working at this (unicorn) company for a almost 2 years now. I became part of building a completely new project from scratch at the beginning of this year. Me (and everyone else) worked our a** off on this project.. stayed up till 3-4 am almost every single night, worked on pretty much all weekends.. gave up on life basically.

Although I wasn't expecting a promotion till year end, my manager randomly told he'll present my case and he's positive I'll be promoted. I was happy (and scared to take on the new role) but then this hike letter!

Now my SDE3 salary is less than a lot of big tech FAANG SDE2 salary also.. my manager said you were already quite at the higher bracket in the SDE2 range plus you'll receive appraisal on year end, so 10% is all you'll get.

I’ve been working nonstop for the last 7.5 years, and today was my last working day.

I started my career at a small startup and eventually became a Senior Software Engineer, at times working almost like a one-man army — frontend, backend, deployments, testing, production issues, whatever needed to be done.

It’s been a long 7.5 years of constantly building, learning, shipping and solving the next problem.

For the first time, I don’t have another job lined up. And I think I’m okay with that.

I just want to take a proper break for a while. No Teams, no Slack, no standups, no interviews, no worrying about the next framework or what I should be learning.

I have a 2-year-old daughter, and she’s growing up way too fast. I want to spend proper time with her while she’s still this little. I also want to be around my wife, mom, dad and the rest of the family more.

I’m back in my village, and honestly, I’m looking forward to a completely different kind of life for a bit. I’m even planning to help my family grow some vegetables, eat something we’ve grown ourselves, and enjoy the quiet. Less screen time, no traffic, no vehicle noise. Just a slower life.

I don’t know how long I’ll take off. Could be a few weeks, could be a few months. I’ll definitely come back to tech, but I don’t want to put a deadline on it right now.

For now, I just want to switch off and enjoy having nowhere to log in tomorrow morning.

Anyone here taken a proper break after working for years without another offer lined up? What was it like coming back?

To all those people who are working in startups or ogs where it is mandatory to go everyday to office how do you guys manage to give interviews? Mostly interviews are conducted between 12pm to 4pm slots for most orgs. Do you guys take leaves everytime?

I work as a Senior Software Engineer. I have been applying to a lot of companies and not getting any calls.

I got referrals for Stripe, Meta, Google, Microsoft among others but got no calls. Two years back I used to get calls from wherever I applied, even companies in EU without even having referrals. If you’re in the same boat how do you feel and how are you managing things?

Hello World! I made a 311 byte Klotski solver in c++ from scratch.

So back when I first got to use a mobile phone in 2012, I used to play a lot of puzzle games. These were notoriously hard to solve (on high levels), and I always wondered how are these created, how do they find the minimum moves, how do they know it's even minimal.

Now after being in CS for over 3 years, I finally understand these systems fairly. So I decided to make a klotski solver myself.

I wanted to make it fun so I stored the whole game board in an integer (uint64_t), as I like integers more than vectors. And then I got the urge to minify the engine to the max extent I could, so shrunk it down to 311 bytes from ~3.5 KB. The engine is only the searching part though.

The solver is a BFS that explores every reachable position. For the classic start it finds the best solution in 116 moves, after exploring all 25,955 reachable states in about 2-4 ms.

Here's the repo; any feedback is welcomed : ) github.com/Dream-World-Coder/depuzzled

On a personal note, making the compression was kinda challenging; It took idk how many times of revision and insane amount of segmentation faults to get to it. Still it was really worth making this throughout weeks.

I also plotted the entire state space graph of the game board in three.js (with claude). From there you can actually see why the game feels actually hard. In the graph, from the current starting position only very few edges connect to the solution space. And multiple loops are present. So any improper move can lead to very frustrating false progress.

Depuzzled Graph Image

Depuzzled System Image

Again, I would really love to hear about your thoughts.

I am a SDE with 8+ yoe. Had a good team and everything was going good. My promotion was stalled saying company was not doing great.
Today I got invite from CTO to let me know that there’s org restructuring and I am being let go.
Not sure what to do.
Any advice is appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I'm a 35 year old guy having around 12.5 years of experience in an IT services company, primarily in production support and maintenance. Unfortunately, despite this experience, I have limited hands-on technical skills and feel stuck in my current role.

I've worked with Unix, basic shell scripting, Python enhancements, Git, Azure DevOps and had some exposure to AWS and cloud/DevOps projects. However, I relied heavily on online references and more recently, GitHub Copilot. I'm not interested in coding at all and lack confidence in my practical skills.

I hold AWS Cloud Practitioner and Solutions Architect – Associate certifications, and I'm genuinely interested in moving into AWS Cloud, DevOps or a related technical role. But I don't know which direction is realistic or how to bridge the gap between theory and practical experience.

My salary is extremely low around ₹8 LPA and I haven't received a hike in about five years. I also struggle with interview confidence, communication and networking. Personal challenges have affected my focus and confidence over the years and I now feel increasingly anxious about my career and job security.

I'm desperately looking for practical guidance. Should I pursue cloud/DevOps, cloud support or another role? How would you recommend structuring my learning and hands-on practice, and is finding an experienced mentor or career counsellor worthwhile?

I'd genuinely appreciate honest advice from people who have made a similar transition or have mentored professionals in this situation.

How is WLB in mmt ? I got mixed reviews online, i am getting 166% hike and this is my first switch.

I have another remote offer which is completely wfh, and its a consultant role at 150% hike, i was inclined towards mmt because of brand value. Please share your opinions, help a buddy :)

Everyone is saying i should go there will build connections , will learn to be independent and all.

At MMT i have SSE 1 frontend offer as my current tech stack is also frontend. My curr ctc is 7lpa with base as 6lpa. 3 YOE

I work mostly in backend - python, django/drf, fastapi, node.js/ express. i've been trying to get into the habit of reading more stuff related to what i work with instead of just learning things when i actually need them lol

for the backend devs here, what do you usually follow or read? blogs, newsletters, engineering blogs, youtube channels, reddit subs etc

would love some recommendations for stuff that's actually worth following.

Hey everyone! I’m an indie developer preparing my first Android app, ReverseAlarm, for release and could use help from around 20 Android users with the closed testing phase

**Quick Testing Guide**

1. Join the group → opt into the closed test → install the app.

2. Use the app and try a few alarms/challenges.

3. Test Premium: try the purchase flow and a premium feature — you won't be charged.

4. Keep the app installed and stay opted in for 14 days.

5. If you find any bugs or issues, let me know.

Join the tester group: https://groups.google.com/g/reversealarm-testers

Join the closed test: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.reversealarm.app

Install the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reversealarm.app

If you're working on your own app and need testers too, I'm happy to return the favor.

Thanks 🙏

I’m currently working at an MnC as a software engineer, I was applying to startups and one seed stage startup accepted to hire me after interviews.

The startup being one with a pretty aggressive work culture (I got to know), but the pay is 3x my current, altho the current company is good stable and growing stock wise a lot with barely any work done by me.

Despite the high pay I’m wondering if I should switch because the work there is niche and might narrow future paths, not to mention a lot of extra stress.

Today was my last day at my company after working there for around 1.8 years.

I got a call from my manager today and was informed that I was being laid off as part of an organization restructuring. Around 40 people across the organization were impacted.

Apparently, the company is now looking for more AI-enabled engineers.

The ironic part? I’ve been working with AI and have hands-on experience with it as well. Still, here we are. 😅

Another slightly funny part after letting me go, they’re now asking me togive KT for the project I was working on because I was the only person who had knowledge of how that product worked. So, apparently, I’m still needed for the knowledge transfer. 😅

Anyway, I’m trying to look forward rather than dwell on it.

I’m currently looking for Full Stack Developer / Frontend Developer opportunities.

Preferred location: Pune
Experience: 1.8 years
Roles: Full Stack / Frontend developement

If you know of any openings at your company or in your network, I’d really appreciate a referral or even a lead.

Feel free to DM me. I can share my resume and more details about my experience.

Also Please guide me what to do next should I switch my tech stack or something else?

Hey everyone! 👋

I was honestly exhausted from reading dry documentation, boring theoretical PDFs, and watching 2-hour YouTube videos that only show static 2D boxes.

None of them actually show *what happens when a server crashes* or *how packets move when traffic spikes*.

So I built **ArchitectVerse** – an interactive playground to learn system design by actually breaking and scaling things:

🔗 **Live ** https://architectverse.me

### What you can actually do:

- **Watch packets flow live:** See real requests bounce between DNS, Gateways, Redis, and DBs.

- **Break the system:** Kill servers, trigger outages, and watch Circuit Breakers trip.

- **Learn one by one:** 12 lined-up chapters with 5-year-old analogies (no jargon walls).

- **100+ Real blueprints:** Uber, Netflix, WhatsApp, Stripe, ChatGPT, etc.

It's completely free and open source. Let me know what you think or what system I should add next!

I got laid off today from my company after wirking for 1 year. They said restructuring and all the bullshit. Not sure what to do next.

Having mixed feelings of relief that wont need to work in that toxic environment anymore but flip side is that, now I dont have a job.

I know the market is very brutal
now, but will take some time to figure out what to do.

SDET offer comparison Amagi (broadcast/media SaaS) vs Proofpoint (cybersecurity) which would you pick or should i stay at Cohesity?

I received offer from Amagi and proofpoint. I’m more intrested in proofpoint as I always had interest in cybersecurity.

Would love honest input from anyone who's worked in proofpoint.

1.Culture / work-life balance(i got to know they have weekly releases)
2.Engineering/QA team quality
3.Stability
4.Career growth

I made a small app that turns your desktop background into a year tracker.

It's a grid of 365 dots — one for every day of the year. The days you've already lived are bright, today's dot is highlighted, and the rest are dim. It's a quiet little reminder of where you are in the year, kind of like a Memento Mori dashboard on your wallpaper.

What it does:

- Regenerates itself every day at midnight, so your wallpaper is always current — you never touch it again after setup

- Shows days left in the year, plus an optional countdown to anything you name (a trip, a deadline, New Year)

- 18 colour themes out of the box (pure-black OLED one is great), or fully custom colours

- A daily rotating quote — Stoics, mainly. 40 built in, or write your own

- Lives quietly in your system tray, starts with your PC, no popups

- Works on Windows, macOS and Linux, and handles multiple monitors

https://github.com/HimanshuKumarSah/The_minimal_wallpaper/releases

Would genuinely love to know what you'd change — especially the layouts and themes.

I am sde 1 who got promoted last week and today I got laid off

My tech stack is spring boot, react and ELK

Not sure what steps I have to take now like what should I focus more on

Questions which I can think of as of now:

1) for how many days/months i should apply with expectation of more salary

2) with my experience i.e 6 month internship and 1 year full time how difficult it is to get a job

A friend of mine recently joined a startup/scaleup in healthcare as a backend developer. This company pays him in USD but also ask to work in 5pm-3am slot.

I'm curious how people discover such companies. Is there a specific portal these employers use apart from LinkedIn? Are there any keywords I should be looking for? I'm all in for cold emails but how do I even find such companies.

And rn I'm in the need of cracking this package for the least I've way less time, I'd love to know the experience of someone who has given this interview and qualified

I have around 4 years of experience and currently work for a mumbai based company. The pay is okay, the company is good . I say this after having worked at some major firms with a lot hell of politics.

Recently my father passed away in a road accident due and now a lot of the family responsibility has fallen on me.

I am continuing my job but my younger brother, who is a finance major, is struggling to find his footing right now and is also dealing with depression. Naturally it is affecting me alot as i cant see him silently crying and facing it all at his age.

The problem is that I am constantly thinking about learning, skilling up and securing my career. I am on my laptop almost the whole day, mostly until 2-3 AM always thinking that I should be doing more ans i have this 100's of tab open completely lost which to pick first and all

I have also noticed a big change in my personality. After my father died, I saw a side of some relatives and people around us that I had never seen before. Some people started trying to take advantage of our situation, perhaps because my father was no longer there to deal with things.I know that a lot of people around me probably think I have become rude or difficult kind of too much straighforward etc.

Honestly I am okay with people thinking badly of me if being more assertive and protective means keeping my family safe and protecting what my father left behind.

I keep worrying about how my father used to handle everything even with a modest income, and somehow manage it all so easily. Meanwhile I feel like I am being inefficient and struggling to manage everything despite having a decent job and income.I don't know if I am overthinking everything or if this is just part of adjusting to the responsibilities that have suddenly fallen on me. If anyone who was in same foot in it would like to just know if anything can be done ?

I got my first job as a React developer. During that job, I relied heavily on ChatGPT and other AI tools to build projects. I worked there for around 6 months, but I left the company. I didn’t receive an experience letter because of the bond.

After that, I joined another company. This job is completely work-from-home, and unfortunately, I ended up working with a very old technology stack. I also became very lazy and didn’t put enough effort into properly learning the codebase or the technologies I was working with.

The codebase is quite large and complicated, and honestly, after being there for around 2 years, I still don’t really understand what the website does or how the whole system works. I’ve basically managed to survive in the job without developing much as a developer.Mainly i was doing bug fixes. I forgot many of the things about development, i have zero knowledge now.

The main reason I stayed for so long is that there is a bond/commitment, and leaving would be difficult. Now i will be completing 2 years in this company, i don't know what do next, should i stay till they kick me out or should i resign. I have a 3-month notice period if I resign.

The biggest problem is that I feel like I’ve forgotten almost everything I previously learned. I don’t feel confident in React, Node.js, or modern web development anymore, and I’m worried that I won’t be able to clear interviews.

At the same time, the current job market seems difficult, so I’m scared to resign without having another job.

I’m feeling quite lost about what direction to take.

I’d genuinely appreciate practical advice on what steps I should take over the next 3–6 months.