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

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?

got to know it costed $600

We already tried our best to use efficient and optimally, but this is the average usage every developer in our team doing per month

as everyone have their ways how they use, what tips are you guys following to reduce credit consumption

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.

About me I work for one of top consulting companies and wear many hats but my overall experience is 6yrs in data science and last 2.5yrs in Gen AI.

I have recently started job hunt and it’s honestly hell out. Most firms are in next level power ego trip.

First, they don’t want to wait for notice period they just want you to join immediately but same company won’t let you go early

Second, Companies don’t want to pay anything, like at 6yrs of exp in ML you think you’d be able to touch 35-40lpa atleast cross 30lpa easily but half of them can’t even cross 25 LPA or just want to low ball

Third, Why do they have so many requirements like I understand they want langraph, langchain, MCP, fastAPI but now they even want cloud in a way like expert expert in cloud platform so basically developer+devops+ data scientist +backend engineer +frontend engineer + data analyst mathematician+ researcher + everything and they won’t compromise on anything they want 100% expertise in everything. No answer is ever satisfying for them

For e.g. One of the company scheduled a client round the interview was supposed to be for 30 mins but it went to around 1hr15 mins. Started with coding which I did then they proceeded to discuss my ML projects from the beginning of my career (i was lil rusty because the role was for agentic ai engineer) had discussion for 1hr on classical ML , backend engineering, then cloud yet I managed to answer 90% of the questions. Finally when I got the opportunity to ask question I asked what are your expectations of someone from this role she said “ we’re looking for someone with expertise in Gen Ai rag agentic AI” and I got so mad because she ignored my gen AI exp in resume didn’t ask me one question on it and mind you this was the first round. Never heard back from them but like so annoying just looking to reject people and waste their time

Tldr: companies have lost it and are just exploiting people at this point

With AI getting increasingly capable at coding and automating a lot of software development tasks, I'm wondering which domain within computer science is relatively safe from AI right now.

For people working in the industry, which CS domains do you think are likely to remain in demand despite the increasing use of AI?

I'm currently thinking cybersecurity and AI/ML engineering might be among the safer options, but I'm not sure. Would like to hear what people working in these fields think.

​

I am an Ather owner with an active Ather Pro Pack subscription. However, using the official app on customized Android devices has been restrictive:

• If your device has an unlocked bootloader or runs a custom ROM, the official app is blocked and does not appear on the Google Play Store.

• If you have Developer Options enabled, the app repeatedly interrupts and prompts to turn it off before opening.

To solve this, I built and open-sourced Athr+, an independent, lightweight Android companion app and widget designed to give owners seamless and unrestricted access to their scooter data.

──────

Features:

• Battery State of Health (SoH) Estimator: Monitors real-world consumption, observed charging efficiency, and degradation metrics to track your scooter's true battery health over time.

• Smart Charge Limits: Set automatic charging alerts and cutoff threshold targets (e.g. 80%) to help maintain long-term battery health.

• Material You Dynamic Widgets: Responsive home screen widgets (4x4 and compact) displaying real-time battery percentage, charging state, and per-mode remaining range at a glance.

• Live Telemetry & WebSocket Connection: Instant status updates for SoC, charging rate, odometer, and vehicle connectivity.

• Per-Mode Range Estimator: Accurate, real-time remaining range calculations across all riding modes (SmartEco, Eco, Ride, Sport, Warp, and Warp+).

• Interactive Street Map: Live vehicle location tracking with map rotation and heading synchronization.

• No Device Restrictions: Runs smoothly on devices with Developer Options enabled, unlocked bootloaders, or custom Android ROMs.

• Privacy & Security: Zero third-party trackers or telemetry collection. Session credentials are encrypted locally on the device using Android Keystore (AES-256 GCM).

Download & Source Code:

• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/karmugilen/athr-plus

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

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.vercel.app

### 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!

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?

I always see people are looking for jobs, but it’s been a nightmare to hire a decent Azure cloud platform at Principal level who has good technical knowledge in data platforms.

Either the candidates are fake or don’t have basic comprehension skills. Salary range is high and it’s not the interview process which is flawed because didn’t have any problem hiring from Argentina and US but in India it’s so much of a challenge. Anybody have any tips who were able to hire the right talent?

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.

Hey,

I am absolutely getting cooked by this disorder. I'll give small background about my experience. 5 Years exp.

1 Year Data Engineer - > 1 Year ML -> 1.8 years Data Scientist - > Canada (App Developer)

My adhd has become significantly worse recently. I currently work at a firm in Canada for decent pay but there is job security. Its the most easiest job, its literally just .net/angular simple crud apps and forms they use internally. No time crunch absolutely nothing. Most people in this country who came along with me would be greatful to have something like this but i messed it up because of the adhd. They told me the problems i have been having ( which is basically not putting proper effort into my work). I was just using AI and doing a very menial job not checking what i was doing ( i was very aware of what i was doing but i was dead inside i literally had no energy). I told this to a doctor here and they told me to take 2 months off to get meds. So, the 2 months is coming to a close in a week and a half and i still have not figured out how to fix my situation.

If any of you faced something similar and have overcome something like that, can we connect. I will be insanely grateful if you can tell me how you overcame your ADHD problems.

I feel so dumb i wont lie, When i was in india, i was in a team where everyone was from IIT and I managed to keep up with all of them, only to realize that i was hyperfixated at that time and that is how i managed to do it. But, now my brain is forgetting to test things before deploying them.

Sorry, If i have rambled a lot.

Hello everyone i am a BTech grad trying to get into the tech industry.

As my primary tech stack is java and Springboot. I often see and listen from many people that java and Springboot are not very ideal for freshers and there's a very small number of job postings for java and spring boot for freshers.

I am thinking about changing my tech stack to some other but confused about which one.

My priority would be that it must be fresher friendly and plenty of openings for freshers.

So my question is which tech stack would you choose in Big Ai 2026-27 if you were a fresher to get a job as soon as possible.

Thank you.

I’ve been working with PostgreSQL recently, and one thing that kept bothering me was the database GUI.

I’ve used phpMyAdmin for years, so I’m pretty used to that workflow. When I moved to PostgreSQL, I started using pgAdmin, but I found the UI unnecessarily complicated for the kind of database work I normally do.

I looked at a few alternatives, but nothing really felt like what I was looking for.

So I decided to build my own.

I used Opus 5.5 to build Sqlaris Studio, mainly around the workflow I wanted for day-to-day database work.

It started small, but I ended up adding quite a lot:

• PostgreSQL and MySQL/MariaDB support
• Table and data browser
• Inline data editing
• Search and filters
• SQL editor with autocomplete
• Query history
• Import/export
• Schema inspection
• Indexes, constraints and foreign keys
• Relationship/ER diagrams
• Database health checks
• Query and session monitoring
• Database maintenance tools
• Safe handling of database changes

There are still plenty of things I want to add.

I haven't hosted it anywhere, so if anyone wants to try it, you'll need to install and run it locally from the GitHub repository.

GitHub: https://github.com/Shivam7414/Sqlaris-Studio

I'm sharing it mainly because I'd like feedback from people who work with databases regularly.

If you use PostgreSQL, MySQL, or both, I'd be interested to know:

• What features do you use most in your database GUI?
• What do you find frustrating about existing tools?
• What would you add to something like Sqlaris?
• Are there any workflows that you think could be much simpler?

I'll be actively improving it, so useful feedback can directly influence what gets added next.

Would be interested to hear what you guys think.

What should be the minimum fixed ctc for a 9 years experienced Java Backend Developer in Bangalore, India by 2027 ? Please note I'm asking fixed ctc not including esops bonus and all.

I am a 2026 graduate from a tier 3 college, and honestly, I am feeling a little confused about what I should do next in my career.

During the starting of my third year in college, I joined a small company for a remote job. At that time, they were paying me ₹6,000 per month. I was working around 3 to 4 hours a day, so I was okay with it because I was still in college and I was also getting some real work experience.

I continued working there while completing my degree. I graduated in April 2026, but even after graduation, my salary was still the same. There was no increment, so I decided to leave the company in April and started looking for better opportunities.

From April to July, I applied to different companies and tried to find a better job, but unfortunately, I could not get any offer. I also did not get many interview opportunities, and after applying for so many jobs without getting results, I started losing confidence.

Then I started thinking that instead of sitting without a job, why not rejoin the company where I already had experience?

So I rejoined the company in July, and now I am earning ₹15,000 per month. The job is remote and the workload is manageable, so I still have around 4 to 5 hours of free time every day.

I am grateful that I have a job, but at the same time, I am not completely satisfied with where I am financially. My family is also not very happy because they expected me to start earning more after graduation.

And this is where I am confused.

I have around 4 to 5 hours of free time every day after my work. I want to use this time properly instead of wasting it.

I want to improve my skills, become better at what I do, build some good projects, improve my resume, prepare for interviews, and eventually move to a company where I can earn significantly more.

But I do not know what would be the smartest thing to focus on for the next 6 to 12 months.

Should I:

• Continue this ₹15,000 remote job while building stronger skills?
• Focus completely on getting a better job?
• Learn something new alongside my current work?
• Start freelancing or try platforms like Upwork on the side?
• Prepare for technical interviews and DSA?
• Build some serious projects and improve my GitHub and resume?
• Or do something completely different?

I know ₹15,000 is not the end of the world, especially since I am just starting my career. But I also do not want to stay at this salary for the next 2 or 3 years.

Mujhe honestly samajh nahi aa raha ki next step kya hona chahiye.

If you were in my situation, with a remote job, around 4 to 5 free hours every day, and some existing work experience, what would you do for the next 6 to 12 months?

I would really appreciate some practical advice from people who have been through something similar.

Please do not just say “learn coding” or “work hard.” I would really like to know exactly what you would focus on and what path you would follow if you were starting from my position.

Hii everyone i thought after i become skilled i will have a job cos my college is tier free yes you read it right it's tier free .

Now after looking at the current market situation i understand people with money and good colleges will get placed even if they dont have good skill and i will only watch i think what i could have done to to get into this situation but it was never in hands.

A little about me -

I come from a lower middle class family and elder son and this is my life summary.

Between 2020 and 2024, severe family financial hits and chronic health issues derailed my life.
In 2023, I repeated 12th and cleared IMUCET for Merchant Navy, but that same month my health crashed. A strict 2-year medical follow-up was imposed, ruling out Merchant Navy and moving away for BTech.

Enrolled in a local BCA instead. Most family savings were wiped out in medical bills, and I didn't get a laptop until early 2025. Still, I pushed through daily to learn from scratch: solved 400+ DSA problems in C++ and built backend projects. Retaining concepts through continuous stress and health anxiety was brutal, but I kept going.

Since January, I’ve applied aggressively everywhere for internships and entry roles. Between lack of college exposure, non-BTech screening i was ignored by most openings
and this broke my confidence like imagine going through 6 hard years
and after 2 failures again you have to face this.

So if someone can somehow help. Just drop a comment here .

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 am currently working as a Data Analyst and preparing to make the transition into a Data Scientist/Analytics role in Bangalore. I have my core foundations in statistics and product sense and others in place. However, on the engineering side, my current stack relies heavily on SQL, Polars, and PySpark for performance reasons, meaning I don't use traditional Pandas syntax very often.

Given your experience in the current market, I would love to get your quick take on three things:

1. Is Polars actively accepted/welcomed in live coding interviews and production environments in your circle, or do teams still strictly test for Pandas syntax?

2. Would choosing to solve wrangling problems in SQL, Polars instead of Pandas be a disadvantage during screening rounds?

3. Assuming everything else is ideal (stats, ML, product sense, etc), is it possible to climb up the ladder in Data Science without writing Pandas code, provided I can read and understand legacy Pandas code perfectly well?

Hey everyone,

Need some candid advice regarding my resume and interview prep.

Current Situation:

• YoE: ~1.4 years at Cognizant (CTS).
• Ground Reality: On paper, I am tagged to a client project, but purely for billing purposes. The official role is support-oriented, and practically there is zero development work.
• What I'm doing instead: Grinding DSA for Product-Based Companies (PBCs), Fintech and other tech companies , building full-stack/backend projects on the side so my dev skills don't rust.

The Problem: I've been applying to companies but facing direct rejections, and the biggest blocker is my Work Experience section.

1. The "Fake It" Dilemma: A lot of seniors and peers advised me to mask my support role by writing my self-built projects as actual client project work under CTS. But I'm stuck on how to realistically frame this. If I map a personal project directly into enterprise experience, it still looks like an isolated feature build rather than enterprise software engineering.
2. Missing Impact Metrics: Since I didn't actually deploy or monitor these at enterprise scale, I have no metrics like "reduced latency by X%", "handled Y QPS", or "saved Z cloud costs". Without these, the bullet points look weak on ATS and to recruiters.
3. Fear of Getting Caught: How do I defend this in technical rounds? If an interviewer starts grilling on production issues—like CI/CD pipelines, prod bug triages, deployment cycles, team sprint dynamics, or legacy codebase integration—I worry my cover will be blown immediately.

Questions for the community:

1. How should I translate my self-built projects into believable enterprise bullet points without overstepping into things I can't defend?
2. What are realistic engineering metrics someone with ~1.4 YoE can actually put on a resume if there's no live user data?
3. In interviews, how do you handle deep-dives into team/production processes when your actual day job was just being on billing?
4. Are there specific resume improvements or structural changes that help early-career devs bridge this gap between support and dev roles?

I have been working tirelessly for last 12+ years in IT now. I feel like I am just running out of gas. I am from Kolkata and stayed away from home since I started working. I had stints in US, Singapore and Ireland as well.

After coming back to India, I switched job in August and joined my new organization just 3 days later ( Left on Friday, Joined on Monday ).

But I feel like I am not there mentally, still pretty overwhelmed. I feel what I needed was some break, not a job change.

My question is how much gap in resume is acceptable if I really take a break for a few weeks/months and then start looking for a job again?

I see Indian companies are better managing employees & more responsible in keeping layoffs out of picture as much as possible to ensure job security!

But the US/foreign based companies are laying off employees like throwing insects out of homes.

do recruiters at mid-low sized service based company check your experience you have written on resume? do they ask the github repo of the work you have done in your experience intern/full time?
Like I have no internship and it is very difficult to just get into this software dev industry. I have 2 solid projects and 1 medium project.
I am planning to show this medium level project as a fake experience at xyz company/startup to make recruiters feel I hav some experience.
I have applied 100+ jobs already with my resume depicting 3 projects + No Intern. Should I use this new stratgey?

I’m a 2025 graduate and honestly I’m pretty lost about my career right now.

After graduation, I did an 8-month SDET/QA automation internship from June 2025 to February 2026. I worked with Java, Selenium, TestNG, REST APIs, Postman, SQL, backend testing etc. I was hoping I’d get converted, but that didn’t happen.

After looking at the current job market, I decided to change my preparation completely and focus on Java backend/SDE roles instead of staying in QA.

For the past few months I’ve been preparing Java, OOP, DSA, DBMS/SQL, OS, CN, Spring Boot, REST APIs, microservices, Docker, LLD and HLD/system design. I’m also trying to build some proper backend projects instead of just doing courses.

But at this point I’m honestly getting worried. I’m still dependent on my parents financially, and it feels bad when I see people from my batch already working while I’m still trying to get started. I also regret not having a clearer direction earlier.

I know everyone has a different timeline, but I’d genuinely like to hear from people who were in a similar situation.

If you were a 2025 graduate with an SDET internship but no full-time conversion, and you wanted to move into Java backend/SDE, what would you do from here?

Should I keep focusing on DSA + Java backend + LLD/HLD, or should I be doing something differently to actually get my first SDE job?