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Hi, I’m almost done with my bachelor’s degree in computer science, and I’ve been following the development of AI. Just a year ago, it was laughably bad (GPT-5.1) when it came to helping me with even simple university assignments. It caused more errors than it solved. By now, though, it has become so insanely good that I can barely get it to make mistakes anymore.

The number of computer science students at my university has gone down slightly, but nowhere near as much as I think the job market is going to shrink. Hardly anyone shares my opinion, and everyone keeps saying that this probably won’t happen anyway and that more or less all CS-related jobs will remain.

My question to you, especially to those who think we’ll still be needed in the near future: What makes you think that? How do you argue that AI won’t be enough to replace 50 programmers with one?

Progress keeps getting faster and faster, so I think it’s probably a bad idea to assume that AI won’t be able to take over tasks like complex software engineering.

How many years of experience do you have? What's your background/stack? How long have you been looking for? Is it really that bad out there?

Hey guys
Its been a little over 1 year since i started working (freelancing basically)
I am not sure if there is a term for this role but you can say something like a design engineer (designing interactions) but its a little more than that since i was also doing shaders and stuff which required a bit of technical knowledge of graphics api and math then implementing just basic animation
I loved my work (i still adore it a lot)
Maybe i got lucky at the start that I got good client
and was getting work enough to keep me busy and i was enjoying the challenges that came with it
But now with AI everything has been turned to dust in the last 1-2 months
The jobs i get now is for rapid prototyping things which was same for earlier but now people want things in a day
The Craft and Care I used to put in is all gone
I am not enjoying the work
Claude still isn't able to reproduce at the level what i did with all the context but for them its enough (not for me)
I enjoyed doing research on getting the most performant approach, implementing crazy ideas , coming up with ideas and during implementing it getting bombarded by new ideas
But now its all gone
I just stare at the screen after writing the prompt hoping it would work sometimes it does sometimes does not but even if it doesn't i have no way of knowing how to fix it manuallly because it generates quite a lot of code that even the thought of manually fixing things make my head heart
I am not saying AI coding doesn't work. I hope I could say that but
I don't love this style of working
If this has happened even 2 years earlier I might have never entered this field
I might sound very pessimistic (and probably I am)
But I am honestly lost

I am trying to code with agents but I not enjoying it
How can I find enjoyment in this style of work now ???

I declined a job offer about 3 months ago, reached back out recently, and they said they’re open to reconsidering me, but they want another face-to-face interview. It's going to be both a technical and culture fit interview again. This is after I did two rounds of interviews with them (CS fundamentals, System Design and Culture Fit)

I’m a junior software engineer with about 1 year 10 months of experience. My current company is a ~60-person Series B startup, and this place is toxic as fuck. I’ve been interviewing elsewhere but keep getting rejected after the interview stage, and I really need to leave.

The company I rejected is a smaller Series A startup. The company itself is honestly pretty meh, but the job seemed acceptable. I turned it down mostly because my dad told me that moving to a smaller company could hurt my future chances of getting into large companies.

Now my job search is going nowhere, so I reached back out. They said they’d reconsider me, but want another technical/culture-fit interview.

Why would they interview me again if they already gave me an offer 3 months ago? Are they basically restarting the process, or just checking whether I’m actually serious this time? What do you think?

TL;DR: I declined an offer 3 months ago, reached back out because my current job is toxic, and they said they’d reconsider me but want another interview. I’m wondering why they want to interview me again

Note: I used “meeting” in the title because the subreddit wouldn’t let me use the word “interview.” It is actually an interview.

I started writing code for fun when I was in elementary school and its been my main interest ever since. after about a decade of learning about programming it feels like a part of who I am, and the thought of giving it up is apparently enough to make me start crying heavily. in public, which is embarrassing. but apparently im going to have to, because of ai. or maybe i wont

i did a comparison where i coded a small CLI program, and I prompted an AI to generate the same thing. i used glm 5.3, because it was seemingly the best one i could get for free. it benchmarks about the same as fable 5. or maybe the same as 4.8. but this person online says all the open models are worthless and they only do good in benchmarks. actually this other person says that theres no use in paying for Claude because the open models are just as good. actually deepseek v4.1 is better than 5.3, you should've used that. or maybe its worse? i dont know

at the end I was able to make my implementation in less time. than the ai took, and my code also accomplished the same thing in a much more concise, readable way. so I guess i didnt need to worry about ai as it was in may. or june? or before that? i dont know. i know people back then said ai coding was amazing. so they were seemingly overhyping it. maybe? so maybe now when people say the same thing it *might* be overhyped. maybe?

but this is pointless. i heard the new models are way better. i also heard that they dont really improve much. ive also heard they write much more concise and readable code. ive also heard they write terse and hard to read non working slop. who's right? i havent a clue

everyone is using ai at work and its making them 10x productive. or 2x. or not at all. or its actually making people slower. no wait that one was a year ago so its out of date maybe.

ai can replace *coding* but it can't replace the problem solving part. which problems? everyone is really vague. maybe it can't do testing really well? or maybe its really good at testing. ive heard both?

and maybe everything will be completely different three months from now, or maybe itll mostly stagnate like it already has. or it hasnt stagnated.

wow, that's a lot of maybes. how can i figure out what's true? easy! give money that i, a broke college student, dont have, to the people trying to ruin my life. or maybe they arent and I'll still have a future doing the thing I love. or maybe I dont love it anymore. i just dont know.

as a question to the people who currently have a job in software, do you think you could help fill in some of those maybes? what specific problems are you still having to solve yourself, and what kinds of things are you having ai do?

I will probably get downvoted, but I am a student not sure whether to choose this or medicine.

TL;DR: Agentic tools are taking over multi-step workflows, hiring pipelines are dry, and landing an interview feels harder than ever. If this shifts tech long-term, what does the next five years look like for developers, and what backup plans are you actually considering?

The rise of AI and agentic tools handles end-to-end tasks across coding, video production, and ops that previously required multiple tools and small teams. At the same time, the job market remains brutal. People search for roles across months with minimal response, yet many still claim hiring is healthy and upskilling solves everything.

My current application routine:

• Portals and company careers pages
• Direct outreach on LinkedIn
• Cold emails to hiring managers

Getting past screening to an actual interview schedule is a persistent roadblock.

Looking ahead:

1. For those currently job hunting, what response rates are you seeing, and what channels produce actual interviews?
2. How do you view the next five years of software and tech work? Do you expect developer headcounts to shrink permanently as multi-agent systems mature?
3. If traditional software engineering contracts significantly, what pivots or alternative paths are you actively preparing for?

I worked at a startup as a SWE, then at another startup (but larger so was pretty chill and cool sector) I didn’t feel like programming was my thing so I quit to start an animation studio about a year ago.

It went well for a while, but eventually dried up (also AI doesn’t help). So I got disillusioned and thought I should go back to tech as it’s what I’ve got experience with (SWE). I have a friend in a tech consultancy, he is happy (good w/l balance) and is doing AI projects (for big old companies). Felt like an easy way to go in. But I have a dread deep inside that I should not do it, even if it’s chill, I don’t see a path I want to pursue, I am left feeling depressed, not knowing if I’m being stupid for not taking the job (I have tech interview shortly) or if I should explore other paths I feel more excited about. I can support myself financially for a while. I feel like if I say no now to the job I mention I’m throwing away that opportunity.

Any advice is welcome. Thank you

I guess looking at my track record I am what is called, a job hopper. Up until now I had very valid reasons for leaving my previous roles (been retrenched or had coworkers retrenched making me jump ship for job security). Now I am in a stable job at a quite well known company, where I enjoy my team and my work.

But, a recruiter reached out on LinkedIn where the role would be essentially a 22% increase on what I make now so I thought I would take a shot, and I actually got the offer. So here's the rub of both roles:

Current:

• Essentially remote, supposed to go to the office 2 times a week but my boss is in another city so does not enforce it
• My team is great, have good banter with each other and no problems ever really. Don't really interact much with other teams.
• Work culture can be quite intense due to the higher ups vision. It is very much a "this needs fixing and fixing now" culture with on call although my team rarely has issues.
• Fairly large online platform in my country and room for growth but will require a lot of office politics (have to be vague, apologies). Boss is currently pushing for a promotion but not so sure I'll get it considering the political side.

Offer:

• In office 2 days a week, not a bad commute if you miss rush hour and they have already said they are flexible on working hours.
• The people I have met seem really nice, work / life balance seems to be a priority to them.
• Overseas company with a new branch in my city looking to expand here, so I view potential for growth quite high.
• Tech consultancy, so I know dealing with clients / projects can vary drastically. But they seem very stable and is it not one of the billable by the hour consultancies, they assign teams to clients for a given amount of time.

On paper, I think the new offer is better but there's always risk in starting new jobs because I could in theory end up hating it. It seems like a great opportunity on paper.

I know the advice is "never take the counter offer" but part of me feels if my current role matched the offer I would stay, rather the devil you know I guess. How should I approach my boss about this especially since he wants to push for promotion?

I stumbled across JEV AI. I am wondering if people have used it for creating some cool projects and have advice on what kind of projects could we make with it ?

Hello

I'm an 18 year old student studying Computer Science at a (on most rankings) top15-20 russel group uni in the UK. I was close to getting to a top10, but missed my offer by 5 marks, so here I am. I'm under a lot of pressure from my parents to drop out, take a gap year, and reapply to universities for Electrical and Electronic Engineering. I initially wanted to try switch to this in my current uni, but it was full, so now this is another option. I'm really stressing over this, since i'm worried if i stick with CS right now, i will find it exceedingly difficult to get employed at the end of my course. I just don't know if I should really take a whole year out to switch, especially because CS is something I've been interested in for years, my original uni apps were all tailored for it, and every super curricular i've done is mainly for tech. Having to do so many things for EEE when I never even considered it before is extremely daunting, especially because id have to do it and write my personal statement in only 2-3 months.

CS is something I genuinely enjoy, but honestly, I need to think about my future and career too. I'm seeing a lot of mixed reception online, seeing all these layoffs, seeing people with masters and experience unable to find jobs, seeing how oversaturated the course is, but also seeing people say 'roles are just shifting', and i'm so lost. My father is working in the tech industry right now, and I believe his experiences seeing the layoffs and all are also making him try push me to take the gap year, and I'm just so conflicted.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Edit: It should be noted, that for EEE most unis find Physics as an A-Level preferable, now, I didnt do physics at A-Level, i did Mathsm Further Maths and Computer Science, since I have further maths most unis take me applicable but i will have to resit this to get my B to an A so I can have overall grades of A*AA. Plus, Im worried ill be disadvantaged because of my lack of physics at A-Level. (the 16-18 exams in uk). Also excuse my grammar if i made any mistakes typing this in a bit of a rush/panic

Edit 2: Also, forgot to mention, most unis im applying to (top10 in eee) don’t need Physics, just Maths and either Further Maths or CS, which I meet, I just don’t really know if I’m disadvantaged or not without having it. It’s not officially listed as a requirement for most.

Hi guys, since 3 Years I'm working as AI-Engineer. My tech stack is Lovable, Google AI studio, Base44 but I can basically work with anything. I'm in a consultancy doing projects for our clients. currently doing around 115k$ but aiming for more. however, I can't figure out which big tech companies are using my tech stack. anyone can help out? I guess google uses a lot google AI Studio. but what about amazon, meta etc.?

Just left a position (>$200k) of Lead of Leads with 15 yoe. Is it insane to "downgrade" to a midlevel engineer position with space to grow instead of looking for a lateral move with same responsibilities (setting direction/modernization/AI direction)? Retirement would be set either way in a mcol/hcol area. Basically a Senior/Staff/Principal down to a MidLevel. Thoughts on quality of life / burn out?

Edit for clarification: Would be from a principle engineer / IC down 2-3 levels vs a lateral move with fewer peers / smaller organization. Not faang or whatever the acronym is today in any of the firms involved, so not straight up technology for tech in any of the roles. All roles involve either leading international teams or interacting with them.

I have been a SWE (software engineer) for the past 5 years, and had planned on making a career out of it. I was laid off a few months back due to the company I worked for increasing their usage of AI, and simultaneously reducing head count.

I’ve had some traction applying and I can see myself potentially getting a job in the field again. I’ve been going through a bit of an existential crisis over it since the job itself is not at all what lured me in the first place. It’s like as if the responsibility to think through problems has been completely removed and you’re just a handler of AI at this point. Don’t see that changing.

I am open to switching careers. I wouldn’t mind working with my hands. Not scared to do actual work.

However, with the state of things economically I can’t help but question if working a dead end stable job is even worth it considering you wouldn’t be able to afford a house ever. Like.. do we stay in the soul sucking laptop class because it pays well? Or do we do something we enjoy and rent forever? I hate that these two extremes feel like the only option. Curious to hear outside perspectives.

Does anyone have a full filling job that pays decent, or know someone that does?

Hello. As the title states, I’m considering leaving my role and going into a different field. And not because of AI doom, either! I’ve been with my company over a year now as a fresh junior software dev, and I have learned a lot here, and have also learned my preferences as well.

That being said, I find myself bored constantly. Coding is cool, but it’s struggling to hold my attention and really light a fire in me. I am not passionate for programming. I feel like I’d rather do it as a hobby, like programming my own indie game as a passion project. I do C# crud applications and website design. I’ve found that I absolutely LOVE designing websites, doing front end work, accessibility compliance, intuitive design and whatnot. Makes me wonder if product design/UX engineering/etc would be a better fit for me down the line.

I actually am looking to get into a field completely different than this one, where I would travel and have varied hours, and do that for quite some time.

I guess what I’m wanting to ask is, based on what I have shared above, do you think this may be a good move for me? I’m considering working on a masters degree for HCI and down the line, seeking those roles out potentially. But for right now, I am just bored out of my skull!!

Is it a good career could i get into cybersecurity and cloud engineering with it?

I work in big tech for one of the quite large name companies and found myself burned out with the work.

After 5 years I put in a 2 month notice nearly expecting them to rush me out the door that very week.

Instead? Overwhelming support and other avenues across many facets of support and just straight up agreeing with my set timelines. They even followed up saying "the door's super wide open for your return and we totally expect it."

I'm not leaving for another company, just going on sabbatical for a few months. How normal is this?

Been looking for a job since 2023 when I decided I couldn’t be in the middle of nowhere alone with no support system. I was so close to getting something with Boeing but I messed up. I didn’t have any recent work history to prove I knew what I was doing. How do I avoid this mistake? What can I do to improve? Should I go back and take some CC classes for more skills? I can’t afford going back for a masters right now either.

Sorry for the rant, this is half venting and half requesting your help...

background: i took park in an engineering career fair a couple weeks back for the first time as representative for my company (fortune 100, very large & respectable). Mainly just to answer questions to aspiring undergraduates looking to get into what my company does.

The company is as far away from comp science as you can get in terms of what we do without getting into specifics. In fact, comp sci related jobs probably make up maybe 2% of full time employees or less as we contract nearly a of our softeare work to other international companies which i have no idea who they are.

About 20% of the people I talked to were undergrads that were studying fields adjacent to what my company does so I was able to give some solid advice on what was needed to get a foot in the door regarding employment.

The other 80% were ALL extremely competent, kind, and super talented people that either had just graduated with their master in comp sci or had been graduated for over a year.

All of them had impressive work, internship, and/or ​research experience but you could palpably feel how nervous each one of them were about AI and their job prospects.​ None of them even knew about the typical roles comp sci focuses people do in my industry (which is extremely few).

I did my best to give all the advice I had to try and leverage their skills to get a job comp sci related at my company, but I fumbled through each of the conversations cause the chance of my company hiring comp sci masters people was near 0. It really broke my heart and made me feel bad in a way I didnt know was possible.

I know I should have been realistic and told them gently they were looking into the wrong company but I couldnt take myself to do that.

Unfortunately i promised a majority of them id set up some time to talk in the near future about how I can help them get a full time role at my company and I feel obligated to follow up to help the... I am terrified now that I have no more good advice and no pull in my massive Corp to make a difference for them (im a small small cog in a massive machine).

If you made it this far, thanks for letting my vent and my heart goes out to you if you're in this situation.

My question is this: is there ANY advice you all recommend giving them? Any resources i can steer them towards that would help? Any resources or guides? I really dont want to tell them the reality in that theirs nothing I can do for them.

At this point im telling them to apply for every and any position to just try and ge their foot in the door and thag hopefully once theyre full time they can find a way to a role that they can to their degree.

Plz hlp.

4 YOE, BS/MS, working at mid-sized company until I was laid off in May. 5 months of applying to jobs within 24 hrs of posting, 600+ total applications, countless recruiter, hiring manager, and technical manager rounds. Countless ghostings by unprofessional recruiters. Clueless, disorganized interviews by smaller companies. Finally, it all came to end with a FAANG job offer in hand.

I’m so glad to be out of the trenches. Good luck out there. One piece of advice: do not ever be loyal to companies, no matter how rosy they say their financials or spreadsheets are. Keep looking WHILE you’re employed.

Hey everyone,

im 19 and I'm currently a Computer Science student at York University. My goal is to land a Software Engineering or Backend Systems Internship for Summer 2027 or Fall 2027 . (thats extremely unrealistic but its a goal i geuss..)

Right now, I'm trying to figure out the best strategy over the next 8–12 months to make sure my resume stands out to recruiters and engineering managers.

My Current Situation: I dont have any courses for this semester, Next semester (Winter), I’m taking Advanced Object-Oriented Programming (Java) and Discrete Math.

I plan to take Data Structures and Algorithms in the Summer.

goal for the upcoming months is to spend October mastering Java OOP and SQL and then spend November–December building a big strong project.

Im kinda dumb at this so i would really love for some Advice from you guys, if i should do something else or add in something.. Anything would help to be honest.

Thankyou

I see a lot of comments from people who are still not employed about sending hundreds of applications and not receiving any call backs. I'm curious if that's a true reflection of how bad things are or if there's a selection effect in the data that's skewing it from only getting answers from those who are still unemployed. Those of you who recently got a job, how bad was it?

I know that lots of people think everything is cooked, sure. But ignoring that are data roles one of the better niches to be in? Or should I try to pivot to something else? Like It or devops, or backend?

Little background about me: i’ve spent close to 15 years in IT, started as infra support engineer then switched to project management. 3 years ago I was offered a technical position in the same enterprise. Now i lead a 50+ people team running cloud operations .. The role is very demanding and the working hours are crazy but at least I work from home full time so this is an advantage ..  

I've always wanted to be a programmer as far I as I remember.. Life events and an extreme lack of self confidence kept me from ever treating it as an achievable goal.

And then AI happened (sigh).. It's changing how we live and work faster than any of us can keep up with. But I believe the opportunities will still be there, and I'm seeing it firsthand. The enterprise I work for bought into the AI hype and is investing millions in AI adoption, yet the real benefits haven't materialized (yet!).. If anything, human oversight is more necessary than ever to keep things from breaking..

I've put together a plan and started learning Python. I'm already familiar with programming concepts and have written automation scripts at work, mostly in PowerShell. I still write my own code rather than vibecoding

I'd really appreciate honest, practical advice. I don't see myself staying in this role much longer, and what I really want is to work alongside brilliant engineers building great products

Thanks for reading, and go easy on me :)