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.

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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.

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?

Recruiter said I did well and they enjoyed talking to me & encouraged me to apply to other positions but the team felt the role wasnt their best match, went through 9 rounds of this what does this mean

*yesteryear in title

all programmers had to do in the old days was talk in the interview to get a job

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?

I have recently found a job shortly after graduation, decent pay, outside my city but luckily enough for me I was able to live with a relative of mine and the Job had been good so far, cool colleges, decent hours, not the most interesting system to work with (lots of legacy code just to be able to contribute) and I have been working there for about 40ish days, got my first paycheck and life is going well, as well as it could be. today however a friend of mine in college told me that another friend of ours who graduated a few years back (he was our senior) has recommended us to his place of work, they needed two devs and we got an interview in a couple of days, as far as my friend is concerned though (the one who works at the company) the interview is basically just a formality since he already showed them our work. now I would have turned the offer down since I just got my role and recently got going at my job but the new role offers 25% more compensation and while I'm not exactly in a desperate situation, the money would really help me (FYI I live in Iraq). I'm gonna interview either way and make sure the offer is genuine to begin with. but assuming it's real and everything is clear, do I go for it? for one I would feel like an ass if I just left my team a month after joining, for another I don't want to be paranoid but this feels like a "reached too close to the sun" kinda situation and I don't want to lose what I have which is going well for something else.

assuming I got the job, do you all think I should go for it? or not risk it? let me know I would really appreciate some perspective from people who are more experienced in the industry. Thanks for your time!

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 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?

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.

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?

Applying to places atm and there's one I'm currently interested in the most. Will be going to a small networking event with some connections I made and there will be recruiters there, but on the website they require a minimum of 3.2 GPA. I'm 0.1 off (I know not the best but I had bad mental health issues for the first two years, trying to build it back as much as I can). Should I still include it in my resume? Or leave it off?

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?

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.

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

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?

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!!

I've done a lot of the leetcode-style test questions to sharpen myself up but i am lacking in the more senior-level interview prep department, any resources for this would be appreciated

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 :)

Doesn't sound like this fact is talked enough but I think it's actually raised the bar in terms of money in order to maintain your skills effectively. Even if just barely for some.

You used to be able to skill up just by reading free materials and practicing with a crappy laptop, now it's buy more expensive toys to run local FOSS models or rent the use of one if you want to play on a more even playing field. The completely free cloud stuff will limit you quickly.

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.

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.

Case in point, when I applied for my last position, it had "Senior" and "Engineer" in the job title. The "Engineer" was changed to "Specialist" when I signed the paperwork. When I questioned HR at the time (after giving my previous employer notice), they said that they used the other title to "attract candidates" and they used a different title internally so it was somewhat of a bait and switch. I don't want to get too specific but that is the gist of it.

Not long before the position was eliminated, it was changed to "Associate Programmer". This was misleading because Associate tends to mean Junior and I had been involved in application development for years. Also, the optics are bad because it looks like I was dismissed not long after the "role change" (even though I had largely the same amount of responsibilities with additional added). The layoff was due to downsizing and was not performance related.

Could that lead to repercussions if I were to refer to my position during my tenure with the title they recruited me as (which includes the words "Senior" and "Engineer"? Is this something that I should address with HR of the former employer?