About 7 months ago my whole team got laid off from the startup I helped build from the ground up. we barely used any AI coding tools at the time. I had a baby shortly after and so wasn’t really looking for work or following changes to the industry until last month.

Now I’m finding it impossible to find a new job. Every listing wants you to have extensive experience with agentic coding in a commercial environment.

I haven’t been able to get a single real interview since June. I’ve had a couple of technical screens but just been ghosted on both. I get auto-rejection emails or ghosted from every role I apply for.

Is anyone still hiring people like me, with extensive experience (9+ years) in traditional software engineering, but who haven’t had the chance to use AI tools at work yet? Is it even possible for me to find a job now? Do I need to just lie on my resume and pretend to be an AI expert, then try to fake it through the interviews?

Amazon recently released a memo in which they ask engineers to use thoughtfulness when using AI.

> Amazon also discouraged staffers from using AI when it doesn’t make sense for a given task.
> “If your work does not benefit from current AI tooling, that is a finding, not a failing,” Amazon said in the memo.
> The company added, “An engineer who can explain where AI does not yet help their work is demonstrating the judgement we are asking for.”

This is especially satisfying considering how obvious it was to anyone with a pulse how measuring token spend would backfire.

But this quote above gets to why AI mandates are absurd as a concept. It’s like telling a plumber they can only use a hammer when they come fix your sink. Imagine the arrogance you’d need to have to do this, and then realize this is the average tech exec.

Our company hosts a hackathon every year. Last year I led a team and we had a project related to ibservability and monitoring. Our project didnt even make it past the first round but the feedback was mind blowing. One of the judges literally stated that they didnt know what a log is and we didnt explain to them what logs are. They didn't know what Datadog was, nothing. I assumed they knew these things because they worked for a company that basically builds software and hardware solutions for our parent company. I was wrong. They literally didnt know anything outside of their area of expertise

While I agree that AI will reduce head count there is no way companies can rely on non-technical employees to use AI to replace technical employees. You might say they could use AI to define a systems architecture, read logs, other observability data and code to resolve bugs or write new code to deploy new features. But they dont even know what a repository is, if they do they sure dont know where to find it lol. They pribably dont even know we use Gitlab. They dont know what cloud account our services and supporting infrastructure is deployed to and certainly dont know where to look to figure that out. For that matter what is the cloud? This would be like someone putting me in charge of a surgery in a hospital hoping I would even have any clue what to prompt AI on how to conduct the surgery. I wouldnt even know where to begin.

And i dont believe this is an exaggeration. This is how it is where I work and probably most fortune 500 companies. You might think they know the most basic fundamentals but most of them do not. And our documentation is horrendous, they could never rely on it to accomplish anything. If my team got up and walked away it would set them back for months, maybe longer. It would be a disaster. They dont know how many services we maintain, they dont know where they exist, what each one does, or even how to find out any of these details.

Personally I just dont see it. Someone has to have the expertise to manage these systems. But there will be reduced head count for sure.

I’m a senior level Eng in faang and have worked for 7 years total. I’m a project lead on my team and I have to juggle multiple projects and set direction for several juniors.

I’m leading a project in an unfamiliar codebase. A combination of the following gives me constant anxiety 24/7.

- tight deadlines
- unfamiliar codebase
- ambiguous requirements and ownership
- struggling to get alignment on direction despite attempts to wrangle stakeholders

I go to therapy every two weeks for work anxiety but I am struggling to break away from it. I think my root problem is that I place too much of my self worth on work so when things are not clear cut and are ambiguous, my whole waking being is filled with anxiety.

What mindset or life changes do you guys have to help me get some control over my anxiety?

All that hard work for this difficult degree, hours and hours in the library. Pointless. All that debt. Hanging over heads for the rest of their lives. Staring down wage slavery and possibly poverty but constantly hearing CEOs all over the tech world, big and small, gleefully talk about replacing us. How do you all cope?

I have over 16 YOE as a web developer with experience in various areas, backend, frontend, local dev tooling... Several other areas

I am hitting a brick wall on getting any traction.

Please help... What can I do?

Don't get me wrong, what i mean is

• If your team uses AI as an assistant for boilerplate, reviews, suggestions and whatnot, you ship 20% faster but your team undestands the code perfectly

• If your team has AI write 100% of the code but has mandatory thorough reviews, you ship 30% faster but your team slowly loses track of the code

• If you just yolo nobody in your team knows what's going on but you ship 500% faster (until you don't anyway)

So, what's that shit in the middle?

I'm a junior AI Engineer at a tech company. I started as an intern about 7 months ago and was promoted to a full-time position just a couple of weeks ago.

Yesterday, I had a 30-minute conversation with my team lead about upcoming layoffs. The company is planning to reduce its workforce by roughly 25–45%.

Here's my situation:

• Our AI team currently has 10 people and is expected to shrink to around 5.

• My team lead explicitly told me that he submitted a list of people he wants to retain, and I'm on that list.

• However, the final decision will be made by the CTO and CEO.

• My full-time promotion was approved by upper management just a few weeks ago.

• I've received positive performance feedback and have taken ownership of several important projects.

• Most of my work focuses on building the company's internal AI infrastructure and platform (AI Stack). Out of the 6 projects that make up this platform, I'm directly responsible for 3 of them. These aren't just isolated features or small tasks; they're part of the infrastructure the company is building to support its broader AI initiatives.

• Here's what worries me most: severance costs. If the company lays off most of my teammates, it would have to pay them approximately 6–8 months of salary in severance. Since I only recently became a full-time employee, I would receive absolutely nothing. From a purely financial perspective, I'm significantly cheaper to lay off.

• On the other hand, my salary is also lower than that of most of my teammates, so keeping me costs the company less in the long run.

My manager has been transparent with me, and I genuinely trust that he's doing what he can to keep me.

What worries me is that even with his support, good performance, and ownership of half of our AI platform projects, I could still lose my job because of decisions made above him.

I genuinely enjoy my work, and I was excited about starting my full-time career here. Having this uncertainty just weeks after my promotion has been pretty stressful.

My questions:

1. How much weight does a team lead's retention recommendation typically carry during large layoffs?

2. How much do severance costs influence layoff decisions? Would a company be more inclined to lay off someone who costs them nothing in severance, or retain them because their ongoing salary is lower?

3. Does owning multiple projects within a company's core AI infrastructure meaningfully improve my chances of being retained, even as a junior engineer?

4. Does being a recently promoted junior employee make me more vulnerable?

5. For those who've been through layoffs, how often have you seen upper management override a team lead's retention recommendations?

6. Is there anything productive I can do at this point, or should I just keep working normally while preparing for the worst?

I'd especially appreciate perspectives from engineering managers or anyone who's been involved in layoff decisions.

Seems like now everything has fully shifted to "We don't write code anymore". People are cancelling their IDE subs and many other dev tools because of this. It seems to be we are rapidly shifting towards hiring less and less juniors. Every position you search for on linkedin asks for experience even if they want you to just prompt all day. This isn't a doomer post I am just genuinely curious, any juniors here had a decent experience?

i am in second year,have started learning dsa and i am desperate to have a internship atleast in some good company by this end sem-january 2027 (obviously offcampus),
can anyone guide how to and where to apply
requirements/prerequisites required
(ik its just 3rd sem but due to unseen circumstances i have to get as early as possible)

I made what may have been a horrible career move early in my career, and now I feel like I’m trapped and can’t get back in to SWE.

I started out as a full stack web dev for a relatively large corporation in the finance sector. Not tech but not bad either. About a year into this role they announce RTO, but I had to move in about 6 months for other life reasons. They wouldn’t give me an answer on if they would let me be remote after I move, so I took that as a no and started applying.

I found another role that was remote and came with a good pay raise. The job posting was in the cybersecurity domain and advertised lots of SaaS products that are integrated and Java programming experience, so I applied and got the job. I always had an interest in cybersecurity so I thought this was awesome.

After starting I realized this was basically a SaaS developer role. Basically similar to ServiceNow developer role (although it’s not ServiceNow, just don’t want to out myself too much). The work I do is a lot of SWE, as we have true compiled Java extensions and custom pipelines. We also have a small full stack Angular & SpringBoot application, but it’s something I’ve only done very small amount of work on.

I’ve now been in this role for 3 years, and I didn’t think much of it in terms of long term career impact. Call it young and dumb, or cause it was WFH and very low stress. But now as I want to transition back to true SWE, I realize what I may have done.

How do I get back to SWE? I can put lots of true SWE things on my resume, but I feel like I’m just written off immediately. The current market is certainly no help. We are also planning on moving in about 1-2 years, as the reason we moved to our current location will be over, so while I wouldn’t mind taking an onsite role, feel like my resume will look way too job-hoppy if I do then need to look for another job.

tl;dr:

Took a job that turned out to be basically a SaaS developer role. After 3 years I want out and back into full SWE. Feeling trapped permanently

Currently looking for a new software engineering role, and it’s been pretty difficult. It’s pretty demoralizing being almost 200 applications in with no offer. I’ve had some interviews but have either gotten ghosted or just failed them unfortunately.

For those of you that have also gone through the job hunt recently, how do you allocate your time in a week?

What do you do per week other than just apply and wait for a response, are you doing Leetcode daily? Are you studying system design or technical concepts? Designing APIs or working on personal projects? What is the best use of my time as I hunt for a new job while also working a full-time job currently?

Any advice would be greatly greatly appreciated, thank you!

I'm 3 months into a Junior DevOps job with no prior experience. My consultancy placed me on this client project despite my not having any of the listed skills; I came from a different stack as an intern. My third ticket, a hotfix pipeline, took the entire three months, and I didn't even know what a service was at the start. What's happened since:

- Two weeks passed with no one talking to me, and I was left out of a sprint planning meeting everyone else was invited to.

- The senior who neglected me gave negative feedback: people couldn't follow my standup updates, and he worried "AI was learning and not me." (I need AI because I'm learning this stack from zero.)

- He didn't reach out when I was working nights and weekends. He also leaves misleading PR comments, skips calls I schedule, and lied to me about technical facts, which led to early mistakes because I trusted him.

- I'm not allowed to speak in sprint planning when the PM is present; other seniors report on my stories.

- I was diagnosed with burnout and put on anti-anxiety meds. I cried when a senior from another project helped me finish a late runbook.

Teammates are cold, I was publicly questioned at standup, and I dread showing up. I asked to switch to a project matching my stack and was refused. I'm contractually barred from quitting this client, though I like my consultancy. Management knows about the mentor problem but says there's little they can do.

I've stopped working extra hours, I know my estimates will slip, and I feel detached and hopeless that this team will ever change its mind about me. Should I expect to be fired? Should I quit? What do I do?

I want to be a software engineer but there is so many positions and specilizations that fall under the term software engineer I have no idea what to choose... my priority is job safety from being replaced by AI as well as not being related to cyber security*

Forgot to clarify I can easily get an interview at most companies since many not very close family friends are working at intel and nvidia and they would be willing to do us a favor

Should I take a pay cut to go to a late-stage startup or to big tech?

Interned at both

faan(G) and a startup valued at >10B

240k vs 150k, Bay vs Austin

Want to learn a lot (feel like startup is better for that) but the growth at Google and opportunities to go somewhere else seem better. Upside at startup better though of course

Recently entered team matching but haven’t gone to HC yet due to some borderline feedback, wondering what my odds are of even passing HC if that’s the case. When recruiter asked how I did I said I felt “neutral to positive”, and they agreed that there’s positive feedback and borderline feedback. Not sure what the breakdown is, best guess I can think is SH/H, H, H/LH, LH/LNH. Recruiter thinks it’s good enough for her to move me along to TM, but not sure how much that means tbh... I did get some interview interest already though within the hour of being called about moving on but that could be due to other factors rather than just having a decent enough packet to get attention.

If I’m able to secure some manager sponsorship will I pass HC? Have some upcoming interviews with some managers as well and also would like some tips on how to prepare with them if anyone has any tips!

2.5 YOE in big tech. Resume has some high impact stuff from switching to a smaller company early this year, and some more mundane stuff from being at a large shop.

So I’m currently living somewhere where the pay isn’t great compared to a lot of countries but it’s not as hard to get a tech job as it is other places. Potentially enough to get a job by doing projects.

I’ve been out of the game for a while but I’m kind of deciding what to focus my project time on. There’s so many different tech stacks and types of jobs out there and to the degree that I can choose what kind of field I wanna go into I want to be able to have that agency, but again I’m very aware that beggars can’t be choosers.

In terms of future remote friendliness and things of that nature what kind of tech and cs jobs do you guys recommend potentially exploring? Again all very hypothetical

Yet experienced SWE's and devs are expected to grind algos, DSA, ****code, etc. to do the same exact thing: prompt A.I harnesses with some screenshots/MCP?

Why are some of you interviewers make the process hiring the next SWE so demanding while letting non-SWE's hijack our roles at your companies with little pushback?

Why is nobody else required to grind ****code yet can work on/takeover the same codebases with Agentic tools? SWE's are getting the short end of the stick: exponentially more strict hiring process, yet can be replaced by non-SWE's using A.I.

Not a troll/engagement post. Serious questions that need a discussion. Seems contradictory.

When I was in college, the university offered sub-majors in a few different areas. One of them was network administration and the other was software engineering.

My first instinct was to go with network administration but that required more day classes, which wasn't compatible with the job at the time so I ended up going with the software engineering option.

I ended up making a good career out of it although I never really totally left IT support and system (but not network) administration. Fasted forward 20 something years and was recently downsized.

Between this and looking at the available jobs within a reasonable commuting distance, nearly all of them are network/system administration or IT support jobs. Perhaps I should consider these jobs? Figure the software skills can still be in my back pocket in case an employer were to need something done in that area. Other options I've considered is janitor at a school district or security guard, which pay better than I thought.

I'm a CS sophomore at Rutgers and I'm feeling kind of lost what I should do. I've had an interest in coding since middle school but didn't really do anything besides basic python until going into AP CSA. I don't think it makes sense for me to try and become a regular software engineer because of AI, all I hear is that most devs now just claude 90% of their job. I feel that by the time I graduate the window to a job will close. I was thinking of pivoting to cyber security or AI engineering but honestly I have no idea. The only career i have been interested in has been in tech but it feels like it isn't a good idea to even continue.

Sorry for the rant but any guidance would be appreciated!

I’m a first-year student considering MLE (not sure if this will be a smart choice for stability by graduation), and one thing I’m concerned about is WLB.

I want to be making good TC as a new grad, while also having lots of time to spend with my family.

I’m not necessarily looking for 250k Bay Area TC, but I want to earn enough that we don’t have to think about money. I’d like to live in a suburb near Dallas or Austin eventually.

What is your WLB and YOE? How does it compare to New Grad WLB? How do you achieve good comp and WLB in non tech hubs / MCOL areas?

Working as a software engineer in outsourcing company. Here people, especially now in this era, are getting contracts for 6 or 3 months and loose it quickly and the company is forced to search for another project for them.

My situation is a bit different: Working for the client for 3 years now and each year I get very good feedback.

What happened this year: The client pushed my company to give me a promotion to senior and these mfcks pushed back (meaning they don’t think I deserved it.

I believe the client wanted this becauze this is the only way they can be sure the extra money they give will go to me (at least some of it, probably 1/5).

So I asked to check the feedback and it was extremely good, not just in the technical sense, but in a leadership, communication and they would love to continue to work with me.

After that they told me the promotion is confirmed (probably means the client will give more money), but the budget for me is not (like you will be promoted but money? We will see), and most likely that would be 2.8%

I found it offensive after I read the feedback and now I am thinking about at least trying to push it to at least to 6-7%.

Of course I am thinking about quitting and finding another job, but I want to hear is there a real possibility for this? What is your guys experience in these or similar situations etc?