Hey everyone, as the thread says I'm in a good spot in the sense of having a nice salary ($200k) that I feel lucky because I have a job many people consider "prestigious" at a top consulting firm, but I'm bored to death 90% of the time and what makes it worse is the hours (60+/wk) are awful and include lots of travel.

I've always been a computer nerd from my first PC running DOS in the mid 90s to building many gaming PCs and constantly reading tech related news. I've just never been technical.

I have some experience using R from grad school (3 courses) and I REALLY enjoyed it so while I can't say 100% I would love to be a SWE I strongly believe I'd like it more than what I'm doing now. I also know I at least have the base level intelligence to succeed -- I scored really well on the GRE and had no problem getting great grades at supposedly "top" schools. I say all that not to brag bc I know there are MANY smarter people probably reading this right now but I know 100% that I have the IQ and work-ethic to learn to code if I decide to make the jump.

But how crazy is it to make this career move when I'm well into my 30s and take a giant pay cut? Would going to coding camp or perhaps some CS masters give me enough credibility to get a decent job? I'm sure hiring managers might find it strange to see an entry level SWE nearing 40...

Just saw a story from the Telegraph that the UK treasurery is paying the head of cyber security £50-£57k. The article mocks the government a bit but really in my experience this is actually high for the UK space.

I really just post this so that people who are new-ish to the sub don't get too upset about sub-£100k salaries if they're outside the US. America is just kinda special due to the high amount of venture capital investments.

UPDATE:

Chat gpt removed this post. Im contacting the mod team.

UPDATE:

My wife left me for Royce.

ORIGINAL:

I have been working as a junior SWE at FAANG-like company for the past 6 months. A couple weeks ago I started noticing that my boss started avoiding me, wouldn’t answer my emails and did not really care about my work.

Then the day came. I got called in for a talk, the HR and the manager were present, they told me I was going to be layed off, and gave no specific reason, even though I asked. The workload had been intense, and I was getting a lot done. Something didn’t seem right, but I packed my stuff and left the same day out of anger.

The next day I came back to the office because I forgot my lava lamp . And there he stood… chatGPT himself, he was tall, well groomed and was shaking hands with the CEO, while my old manager was holding his hand on GPT’s shoulder, GPT had a broad smile and gave me the most humiliating look. My worst nightmare had come true, it felt just like when I found my wife in bed with my cousin Royce. I left the office immediately and wrote to every student in my contacts on LinkedIn, and told them to drop out IMMEDIATELY, no time to explain.

This WILL happen to you too, you should drop out NOW.

Hey guys, I was fortunate to receive offers from both companies and am looking for help choosing/comparing the two?

JP Morgan:

• Glasgow
• £42500

Citi:

• London
• £56000 + unknown annual bonus

I’m bored to looking around at my options for a career change so I want to see what people have to say.

Me and a friend were having a discussion about what companies want for developers and he said that alot of companies what people who can do both the back and front end and dev ops because they want more "bang for their buck" and having a better "bus factor". This looks like a little too much because of all the technologies a person has to know at once. Not to mention this would mean this person would be a jack of all trades and master of none.

I am honestly concerned about this trend because it feels overwhelming learning so much technology languages, frameworks etc. Currently, I work at a position that requires me to do both the front and backend work and it feels exhausting learning so many things as a Junior Developer on top of having really bad pay. I honestly just want to specialize in front end.

Do you all think getting a job in a specialist position (like Front end or back end development) will be become much harder in the future?

It's genuinely grinding my gears to see the same,

"AI is going to take over 80% of engineers",

"A Senior Engineer friend of mine with 30+ years of experience at GoogMeTwitter has said he only uses Chat-GPT for everything at work now. It's time for us to search for a new field"

"I'm in my last semester of getting my CS degree. Should I drop out? C-GPT is going to be doing everything and I don't know anymore. Disclaimer: I know all of you hate seeing this question as I've seen ten others in the past 24 hours but my situatuon is different and I need advice that is wholly unique"

"What are you going to do if AI eradicates your job? Your next plan??"

"All my juniors are useless because C-GPT can do everything they used to do"

"I've not done ANY work for the past two months because C-GPT is..."

I'll stop here as you get the point. Any options to reduce some of these?

EDIT: It seems like the general advice is to go for the money at least until I am more financially secure. That is also the direction I was leaning in. Thank you all for your input, it means a lot!

Hi all,

I am having a hard time deciding which path to take here, so I thought I’d ask and see if anyone with more life experience than me can give some input.

I currently work in information security as an automation engineer. I make $100k. I don’t particularly have a passion for infosec, and I’ve reached burnout in my current position.

I applied around and currently have 2 offers on the table.

One is for SWE/DM at a prestigious university, working in cooperation with a government agency on satellites and other space missions. It’s a dream job. But it will require me to undergo a long federal background investigation, and the salary is only $75k. I’d be taking a big pay cut, and I’m concerned that with my debts I may end up struggling financially, or will not be able to save money for a house anytime soon.

The other is for information security analyst at a different company. It’s not a dream job, but they are offering $125k, full remote, and a start date next month. It would be like my current job, but far less responsibility (or so it seems).

I’m really struggling to decide what to do here. Do I take a 25% pay cut and wait a few months to potentially work in a field I’m interested in? Or do I take a 25% raise and gtfo of my current job? Do I leave the private sector, or stay?

Thanks for any kind of advice you may have!

I have a year left of school and have always planned to be a software engineer (I will have 2 internships in that field by the time I graduate). I have a good GPA (>3.9) and would likely prefer a job that is coding heavy. I am wondering what are some other options for someone interested in software engineering? I don’t know too many career paths and would like to feel out what options I have. I know of data engineering and software engineering but there has to be more that I would be qualified for. I don’t even understand how people become front end developers like web developers. No classes at my school teach any front end development, everything is backend. I am also interested in AI if that helps.

Hi All

I am 28 years old and have been an ASP.NET software developer / analyst programmer for almost 6 years now in the industry. I landed my first job after an apprenticeship with that company and before that I studied software development at college.

I've been in my current job for 9 months. When I landed this job I was amazed. It is for a big global company (only worked for small companies in the past) and I thought it would be great for my career and open many doors for me and give me a great route for the future. The first few months of the job was great, I was introduced to one of their systems and I was learning it and implementing new features into it, making improvements etc. I loved it. After that I was tasked with creating a new console based application from scratch. Not too complex but my first big project. Again this went well and was a great experience and learning curve for me.

However from there is where its started to go down hill I feel. Throughout all of this time I've only been working with one other person my line manager. This is also a hybrid role where the team is only in the office once a fortnight. I've decided myself to go in the office every Monday because I enjoy the different environment. Most days went with me working on my own and maybe I'd get a call from him at the end of the day, sometimes he would be able to help me out with something quickly but sometimes he wouldn't. Some days I would go the entire day without talking to anyone. Over my time at the company I've managed to find out that there is a massive project ongoing that I am not involved in at all and apparently the managers don't want me involved in. This meant that my line manager was in lots of meetings most days so I understand why he wasn't calling much. Now my line manager has left and so currently I've been assigned a new line manager.

The latest project that I've been given is a real horrible beast. Before my line manager left we were working on it together. This project is an extremely old code base that has basically been passed around various departments in the company and nobody wants it nobody knows how it works because everybody else who has worked on it has left. It is a horrible code base, there is no naming standard, there is commented out code, there is code marked as obsolete, there is code marked as replace this, its a complete mess of 35 different projects and there is no documentation at all. The team that handles the applications themselves don't even know exactly what is supposed to happen, they only understand it in terms of "it takes stuff from these databases and does stuff with them and sends that data to this API so it can be accessed by this website". They have tons of issues that they want fixed with these applications and they have big plans for improving them.

Some of the improvements and issues me and my old line manager have already done and deployed to test however almost a month later I'm still waiting for feedback from that team on the progress of testing, yes they have been chased several times. Because I am still waiting I do not want to be making too many more changes. As part of taking over this code base I have been adding it into Dev Ops Git and learning and setting up pipelines for it. Pipelines are completely new to me so I've done a lot of learning and mainly playing around to see what works and what doesn't. Git I've used in my previous jobs so that i already know and understand. This I think is another contributor to my issues, no one else in my team knows or uses Git or Dev Ops. So I'm completely on my own with this. The wider department is really pushing moving everything to Dev Ops but the manager is very reluctant and basically being dragged kicking and screaming. They do use the boards aspect of Dev Ops but it's only my projects at the moment that are in my teams repository. The rest is still in another extremely old source control.

So at the moment I'm on my own trying to figure out this project / code base trying to write unit tests for it but the setup of it and my lack of knowledge is making this impossible and so I'm just extremely demotivated. Especially knowing that clearly this is not an important task, nobody responds to my code review requests, nobody is testing the new deployments. Most days I just talk to myself.

I've raised my concerns and issues with both my old and new line managers and all they've said is they are very happy with the work I'm doing. They understand that I'm currently trying on my own but soon the whole team will be fully moving over to Git and Dev Ops and my experiences and knowledge will be very helpful and valuable. They also want to move other developers over to help on my project so that knowledge can be spread around and we can avoid the current issue with knowledge being lost. So again the knowledge and experience I'm gaining from my current work will be vedy helpful and useful. Yes, this was said months ago just before Christmas and again just last week so moving at a snails pace.

Everything else about the job is great, the pay, the benefits, the office location, the commute (Left a previous job because the commute was awful).

Tl:dr: 28 years old, 6 years in the industry, 9 months into first job at big, global company. Line manager has just left, have been assigned project with extremely old and horrible code base that no one in the company understands because everyone else who has worked on it has left and there is no documentation. Team is only in office once a fortnight so most days I'm at home talking to myself.

Is this the reality of working at a big, global company? Is the problem me or the company? Any advice will be appreciated, have any of you been in a similar situation?

I was put on a 30-day improvement plan. 2 weeks in I went from "negatively impacting team velocity" to "adding to team velocity but there are still things I want to see you improve on". Realistically, how much of a chance do I have here?

Greetings. I am currently a high school social studies teacher and I am miserable. Go over to r/teachers to get a taste of what we deal with day to day.

I’m thinking about quitting and going to one of those coding boot camps. I currently have a BS In psychology and a masters in healthcare administration. Do the boot camps really set someone up to get a programmer job? I don’t want to spend $10k-15k and not find work afterwards. All I need to make to pay the bills is about $60k a year.

If the coding boot camp is a bad idea are the Google IT courses any good?

I’ve been having trouble getting interviews for the last month. I was given some advice to reach out to recruiters and/or engineers at companies to have a better chance of getting past the resume stage. Has anyone had success with this? Any advice on how to approach this without just getting “apply here <link>” and essentially being at square one

I have 4 years of IT experience, and 2 years of being a sys admin.

I got a IT help desk job when I was a freshman (upgrade from working in Walmart, lol) and worked my way up to sys admin, all while in school for computer science.

Now I’m about to graduate and I feel stuck in IT. I make 75k and I repeatedly get emails for jobs that pay 90k. Add in my CS degree and experience I can get a high end IT job relatively easily.

But, I’m screwed regarding becoming a software engineer/developer. I don’t have any experience except school coding wise (except for writing scripts). And I feel like if I were to become a super junior software engineer I’m restarting my career, definitely won’t get a job making 90k (especially in my MCOL state and the current job market for devs)

I also am realizing that IT jobs seem more secure then software engineering ones (from what I’ve seen). I live in a state with a LOT of startups and so many of them are having a shit ton of layoffs.

I tried getting a software engineering internship but I kept bombing the coding interviews.

I feel like I’m just way better at IT stuff.

What should I do?

My background is a 3D artist, I feel confident that I at least understand the game art and design process, but where I lack knowledge is the game programming side.

So essentially I want to know what would be the bare minimum programmer positions to create a small - mid indie game with online potential. (Think gangbeasts with guns)

My lack of knowledge for programming makes me worry that I don't know what the red flags are when hiring a programmer, I don't exactly know what to look for, I'm worried I could be hiring someone either under qualified or the wrong type of programmer, etc.

If you guys could share any advice for me I would massively appreciate it

UK based. Currently in electronics (aerospace). I find myself at an awkward crossroads whereby I have warranted enough experience to justify a move to a senior electronics position, however - the SW field is calling for me and I feel as if i would have been granted my time over, I’d have instead done a CS degree rather than an EEE degree.

I don’t know why, but the EE side of my current role is very stagnant and I find things a real chore. However, absolutely anything to do with coding is really great - be it writing code for microprocessors in C, LabVIEW, VHDL for FPGA control, or even learning python for raspberry Pi devices (as a hobby) - it feels like I’m almost better at the SW side of my role (although very limited)it because I enjoy doing it so much more. I thought it may have been because SW is still largely an undiscovered beast to me, but when i look back its always been the best bit of any project (even at uni), and I’m stupid for not realising until now, i guess that i thought electronics would get better eventually but sadly it just hasn’t.

Im looking to potentially transition, however i have no idea if this would even be a possibility financially due to my current earnings and commitments (I’m not on loads as an EE, but more than a trainee SWE and my finances wouldn’t allow such a pay cut).

Basically at a loose end with it all and unsure what i should even do so took a punt and wrote this, not expecting someone to solve all my problems and its a bit ranty, but just wondered if anyone else had done a mid-career switch in such a financial situation and what the progression was like going from trainee level to being somewhere in the region of £40k-ish. Trying to see is this is realistically achievable or if its just a pipe dream really.

If not, thanks anyway, cheers all.

I have a 2nd round interview coming up with them for entry level software engineer and I was wondering how is the culture like in their Phoenix, AZ location. I didn't opted for their New York or Florida location because I don't like the East Coast and I love sunny weather in AZ (I don't mind the intense heat tbh) so I was wondering how is it like working with AmEx in AZ?

Since I last posted I have received more interest as a candidate for entry level jobs now that it is getting closer to graduation time. Among others, I keep getting messages from Revature. I know they are supposed to be one of those companies that hire entry level developers and will train them, but is it worth doing? I have this weird bias against them because I feel like it is scammy sort of. I get that they are a real business and all but something doesn’t sit right with me about them. I have received actual offers from two other employers that I am not allowed to name, but their processing is going to take quite a while due to the fact that I will have to wait to get a security clearance. I would like to at least look into other options that may get me started earlier, and Revature is sort of tempting. Does anyone have experience with them? Was it worth working for them?

Hey everyone! I've been following the community for a bit now, and was hoping for a bit of career advice for anyone so-inclined to help.

I graduated from college May of 2022 with a degree in Emerging Media and a minor in Computer Science. That being said, I took many more CS related courses than was required for the completion of the minor. My goal is to end up as a Software Engineer, preferably somewhere in the realm of Backend Web Development.

I took the job hunt pretty seriously out of school, however due to my parents health I had to take a break and focus on them and my part-time job. A year later, I'm finally able to start putting sincere time and effort back into applications and personal projects. However, I'm concerned as I made the mistake of not getting any internships in college as I was very focused on extra-curriculars - none of which were CS related. When I was still actively applying, I crunched out about 200 applications only to hear back from a handful of companies, and received two interviews. I've read through many of the similar posts here, and seen many people receive great advice.

I've tried to follow the resume-guidelines suggested in the FAQ, modified to take up a bit more space and give hiring managers a bit better of an idea at the skill set I've accumulated thus far without over-burdening the page. If you'd be so kind, the questions I have are:

• What edits, if any, could I make to my resume to better grab the attention of hiring managers? I've tried to keep it concise with what I've learned/accomplished from my projects and courses.
• Are my projects at a scale of knowledge that would show I'm able to participate in a junior role?
• Would it be worth my time to consider alternate roles, such as IT desk support or software consulting? I say this with potential hopes of breaking into a development role further down the road.

Thank you very much in advance for any/all advice you all could offer me. As everyone else is, the massive layoffs have me worried that I'm now competing with an even greater number of people, most of which have more industry experience than I do. Looking forward to hearing back from you all!

Link to my resume: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Z6M4CPGJqzlHHJ1kvvAyakSVdzlzt_vBK3WoagZwk4/edit?usp=sharing

As the title says, I'm an experienced engineer who recently joined a team that requires front-end work. First time in my career doing this, and I have paternity leave coming up so looking to grind on some courses to level up in these 3 technologies. I was thinking https://www.theodinproject.com/, but please share other suggestions as well.

​

Thank you!

Why would you accept a job requiring 4-5 month overseas travel that pays $400k base + $100k in travel expenses + $300k guaranteed annual bonus?

It’s a remote US job. No on site requirements.

Yeah, money is real good, but asking for constructive feedback on the idea of traveling major Asian metro cities for 4-5 months a year.

I’m currently employed and the other day there was a thread where someone mentioned their start date at their new employer was 4 months out. I’m currently planning on hopping jobs ideally in like half a year when my lease is up. How far out can I apply and expect a company to wait for me to start working? I know this is going to vary by the company needs of the project I’d be working on etc. I’m mostly looking for a good rule of thumb here.

TLDR: I'm walking into a team with no SDLC, version control, and aren't using the technology properly and I want to change everything.

​

Hey guys,

I've been out of work for almost 3 years. I spent all that time improving my programming skills, applying, and getting some certifications. I survived by doing side gigs in AutoCAD work and living off of credit cards. That all changed when I was recently hired to a local firm (I'm sorry for being vague). I will be a Data Engineer there with a good salary for the area. I like the salary and benefits and I like the people I'll work with (its a small team). But there are some serious issues that needs to be addressed and I'd like some advice on how to go about solving these problems.

So let me explain the situation I'm walking into. The team is small, less than 5, they will probably expand since the business sees a need to invest in data, I want to break into this field. During my on-site interview after they explained the work they did and expressed their excitement to have someone new to the team I started to ask the list of basic questions I've developed after dozens of interviews.

Me, Question 1: "What do you use for version control? Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket?"

Them: "What's version control?"

My inner voice: "Shit..."

Them: "We just keep a master copy of our code on the server and make local copies. When we update the code we just overwrite the master copy."

Me, after a short pause: "How do you keep track of code changes?"

Them: "We ask that everyone write comments in the code explaining what they did so the next programmer can work with it. We had problems in the past because when people leave we lost track of what they did."

My inner voice: "Shhhiiiiiiitttttt......"

Me: "I noticed in your VS Code console that there isn't an environment set for your Python script. How do you manage virtual environments?"

Them: "What's a virtual environment?"

My inner voice: "Oh my God..."

Me: "When you work in Python you often import packages to use libraries that aren't available to you, such as Pandas, and typically you begin your project by creating a virtual environment to install those packages to. You can then share that environment by freezing the packages into a requirements.txt file and bundle it with your software."

Them: "Really? We just install the packages using pip. We didn't even know about virtual environments. Sometimes we have problems with not having the right package installed on our computers so we have to update everything."

My inner voice: "Stop asking questions NOW!!!!!"

So there you have it Reddit. This is what I'm about to walk into. I'm not senior level and the team is small. When I start the job the first thing I'll do is demand some common sense changes. Here is my list:

1. Define a development process. They need a software development lifecycle established years ago.
2. Set up version control. I'll probably request Gitlab because I like Gitlab.
3. Establish code review process. I've been teaching myself to code for years. I'm currently reading through Clean Code in Python and a bunch of other books I got through HumbleBundle. I am not an expert but I will try to share my knowledge and grow with them.
4. Adopt Continuous Integration. I've been playing around with Jenkins to learn it but I may default to Gitlab. They need to have automatic tests. I was afraid to ask them how they did their tests because of the answers I got so far.
5. Implement Continuous Deployment. I have no idea how they deploy their code. I was afraid to ask.
6. Set up automation tools for their pipelines and repetitive tasks.
7. On going training. I walked in with the Google Data Analysis certificate and I know that was helpful to me. I will try to convince them to have some sort of training or certification program for the team. At least for future members.

My questions are: Is this list a good start? What technologies should I investigate to set up an efficient software development workflow? How much time would be reasonable to set this up? I don't mind wearing multiple hats but would this be detrimental to my career?

Thanks for your input.

I'm a junior engineer at one of the bigger companies. After a year and a half in the role, I don't feel any personal growth. After a year with the codebase, if you are telling me to pick one thing to improve about the pipeline, I would still have zero clue. The worst part is that my coding style is getting worse, and I start to keep making trivial mistake in my code. I think it's only a matter of a time before I'm let go. I want to know what I could be doing so I don't end up in the same shoes again.

My current plans of moving abroad prohibit me from getting employment on my current local market (regulations...), so I have the option to either

A. Get a internationally remote job (think AngelList, etc.)

B. Go freelance and find clients on my local market, invoice them from abroad

I have about 2 YoE (work) and 5+ years in software development, and looking at statistics from multiple agencies that place you with potential clients, that's not nearly enough to freelance (most people there are in their 40s and 50s)

Comparing this to the extreme competition and the thousands of applicants on remote jobs, which option is more likely to succeed for me? Compete worldwide, or spend weeks to look for projects with the ever-creeping risk of being without a next project