Microsoft (MSFT) announced on Monday that it was offering voluntary buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees as it looks to reshape its organization for the AI era.

Any insider info on this?

Hi,

My current lead dev, my previous lead dev, and another lead dev on a closely related team are always in meetings.

I genuinely don’t know what they’re working on and I don’t see PRs from the lead often, but they do mention they are trying to finish something they’re working on while also having to catch these meetings. I’ve also heard of this lead working after hours so they can actually work on their assignments.

They also don’t have a good sense of what I’m working on, what the other devs working on, what’s on our PRs (all PRs are approved without so much as a glance I’m pretty sure for 95% of them)

My current lead has been @ this company less time than me but has more exp hence they got the role, but I don’t mind id hate the idea of all those meetings.

But its just very annoying that, I have to give my lead the catch up on everything, clarify on how things work because I worked on it, along with them giving me constant assignments, or new priority tasks coming from above, then next standup I’m hearing how we have to “lock-in” for the actual deliverables.

Except, I cannot deliver to you because I keep getting side track assignments, and when I include my lead dev in the happenings of these side track assignments they always want me to just “present” to them what I’ve found.

I always thought a lead dev should be embedded in the team and that, sure they’ll have more meetings as the liaison to higher ups, but also help the devs they lead by being there and keeping things moving.

Just feels like the lead is more interested in not upsetting stakeholders and other teams but allows all
crunch, out of scope work, dumb deadlines, and rushed work to flow into the team.

Pretty much the title. Studied CS. Secured a job in the worst job market imaginable. But instead of the programming job duties listed in the description, they're having me create reports via a SaaS platform. The company's pretty stable (never had layoffs or hiring freezes) and the pay is manageable for HCOL, but the job doesn't align with my long-term career or financial goals of typical SWE.

Advice? What should my plan/trajectory be from here?

With the exits going on Microsoft, I wonder if there is growing trend/uptick of big tech people in the job market or if they are straight up leaving the field (retirement, pivot, etc.)

People of the hiring side of small to mid size companies, are you guys getting/interviewing more big-tech resumes compared to before?

Currently i have a major review that’s basically done.

One principal who im waiting for to approve has been making most comments. Last week finally got his approval and out of nowhere mutliple people on the team decide to comment on my review. it’s been out for like a month but the principal im working with hates how the code in general (not mine, the projects) is structured and has asked me to refactor my code multiple times so that we dont add to the problem.

By the way this has been out for over a month and i spent the forst few weeks begging people to review and nobody did until last week so it was annoying getting a bunch of comments when im practically done.

But i did them after it lead to a discussion with the principal engineer. Then i finally got his approval again on friday. But i couldnt meege because i needed 1 approval from a random engineer on another team due to their team owning that file and they had already left for the day. Wake up this morning and see 5 more comments in my code. About 4 are just unit test suggestions so i thought to maybe just address it in a new review. But the 5th is a code suggestion (not a nit).

Now im annoyed cause adding a new change would mean trying to get the approvals again which already is annoying.

How do you guys handle when you are about done with review and get new code commenta?

I‘m at a crossroad right now. I’ve been working for 1.5 years for a non tech business doing swe work as a solo engineer. I have 3 yoe. I am way underpaid than what I should be getting. However, I just feel burnt out at this job with the amount of responsibilities and lack of better pay. I work 4 days in office and I don’t have time to schedule interviews within the work week other than working 1 day from home. I talked to boss to reduce my days and he said no. I’m thinking about just quitting and going back home and think about my plans But I feel like a failure moving back home to family. I have enough savings to last for 6 months and that’s it . I might not find another tech job and I’m okay with it. I’m just burnt out and when I was laid off before I was content doing non tech work. I just feel like my identity was lost when I didn’t work in tech since that’s what I studied but I have no regrets moving to another adjacent field. Thoughts on how to navigate this?

I'm a little worried that I’m going to get in trouble at work, and I’m trying to get some perspective on how serious this situation is.

I was working with a contractor for a task at work (I was in charge of working with him on this). He needs to use a drive for his work. One of the IT teams here required a change to the drive’s password (it's part of policy to do this if we are using an external drive), so I changed it but I forgot to tell the contractor about it (I was looking at the machine when I handed him the drive. I was on the other side of the machine and for some reason, my brain thought this would just be a plug and play and I totally forgot there's a password on it). He ended up typing the old password enough times and it got locked out. As a result, I had to get the IT team involved to reset it, but they said they couldn’t reset it without wiping the drive.

Now the drive has been wiped. I spoke with the contractor, and he said he has a backup drive elsewhere, but I need to get that backup drive figured out for use now with the IT team, and I don't know how long that'll take. I'm worried that I made a mistake that could get me in trouble professionally. I'm literally set to start a new internal role next week.. and now I'm worried.

As a senior undergrad I don’t really have the a professional perspective on any of this but it seems AI is just dominating SWE. Along side that it also seems tons of security problems are now cropping up. AI can do most general SWE tasks quite easily. It really feels like eventually all SWE functionality will just become AI generated (which honestly i think is fine imo) but I keep questioning the security of AI generated software.

Do you guys think the future SWE will heavily lean towards security instead of just simple programming? I mean it seems everyday there is some new major vulnerability discovered by AI or humans. I know architecture is also super important as you need to tell the AI how to create the project but if AI gets smart enough maybe it can infer most of those things itself.

Idk AI just seems so powerful, i’d like to hear people’s thoughts especially those who are working professional jobs.

Curious whether anyone currently working at Coursera (or who recently left) has noticed an increase in formal performance improvement plans, voluntary separation offers, or other workforce reductions across different teams.

Given the company's history of restructuring, I'm wondering whether there are broader organizational changes happening that haven't been formally announced.

Not looking to speculate or identify anyone personally - just interested in understanding whether others are seeing similar trends across the company.

Would appreciate hearing from anyone with firsthand experience or observations.

I have job interviews coming up and i am straight out of college. One question that always bugs me while answering is the question i've mentioned above.

Realistically speaking, I am applying to these jobs cause they pay well and as per the job description I can see myself doing the work and not dying out of boredom even though I don't have every single knowledge the JD expects me to have. But then idrc about what the company does because i dont know what most companies do in the bigger picture and i dont have any big grand motive to work there either. So given that my answer most probably won't be very appealing to the HR and AI answers are way too uptight and too formal for me to possibly say in an interview- how exactly do i answer it so that the answer also somewhat feels authentic and not a copy paste from ChatGPT

You remember around 10 years ago, "just learn to code, bro" was the answer for everything.

How to get out of poverty? Code. Gender pay gap? Code. How to solve the problem of poverty in Africa? Code code code.

It was dumb in how it was pushed without acknowledging and considering nuances, but there was some rationality in it, since programmers don't need formal education and licensing, and could learn the craft for free at home, as long as computers and the internet were available, at the same time pay was good.

Is there anything like this now? I mean, a similar career path.

I'm a frontend developer and I'm looking to upgrade my skills list before I'm made obsolete, so I'm trying to decide which language to focus on learning. I could do one and then the other, but I need to decide which one to do first.

C++

I see many job postings that ask for these where I'm searching. And there are people at my current company who use it that I could learn from. I also have a foundational knowledge of it from my college years. But I'm worried that it's going to be a big jump from the JS and CSS I'm used to using.

Python

This seems to be the language of AI, so it could be important to know in the near future. And it looks like it would be pretty easy to learn and use. But no one any my current company uses it.

Which one would you pick first?

Hi,

I’m currently employed as a SWE at a F100 company. My team pretty much has no work for me and I’ve managed to hit 1 year and want to apply for new jobs. I’ve been searching for jobs all over the east coast (this is non negotiable for me to be closer to my family) but can’t seem to find a lot of jobs that I qualify for. Most job postings I see require 2-5yoe.

I’ve been avoiding new grad positions (outside of big tech) because I’ve been getting auto-rejected for them and don’t want to downlevel myself. But I’m also seeing barely any new grad positions to begin with.

Does anyone know where I can find legit job postings outside of LinkedIn? And should I just apply for jobs requiring 2yoe anyway even if I don’t meet the criteria?

Thanks!

I keep getting asked the following questions and its seems like they arnt satisfied with my answers Im a 3.5 yoe dev btw.

Question: Explain your day to day work/ Walk me through a day in your work day.

Answer: So I usually start off my day by going to our daily stand up with my team to discuss updates and any blockers. Afterwards, Ill look through my messages to see if there is anything super urgent that came up and that i should be working on. After that, Ill work on my assigned user stories for the sprint. And throughout the day, Ill usually meet up to support QA in their testing, answering questions, helping unblock or clarify things for other developers, mentor new developers in pair programming sessions, and meet with Business Analysts and or project managers to discuss existing and future projects. (So far, no one has really like this answer.)

Question: How do you specifically use Sql Server/ C# or {insert x skill} skill.

Answer: Yea so C# is the programming language we use to create our apps and systems. Ans Sql Server is the database engine we use to handle our data. So I used SQL and C# to build this automatic application intake system that resulted in XYZ.

Then the recruiter says, yea but how do you actual use SQL? At this point, i reiterate how SQL is used for data handling, and sometimes Ill do a bit of query optimization if i find something is running a bit too slow. Recruiter didnt like this answer.

I have been applying to programming jobs since May and I have encountered a reasonable amount of entry level positions in my area (near Seattle, so a lot of tech). One of them was literally called an "Entry level internship" looking for new grads so I applied. 25-30/hr which is obviously fine for entry level but under preferred qualifications they wanted SQL, react, C#, database knowledge, docker, etc. so a lot of project experience. But it was under preferred, so I ignored it and just applied.

Well, I get on a call with an HM and they say some reassuring stuff like "Yeah we don't expect people to know anything going into this position, just basic object-oriented principles and programming" I was like wow thats a breath of fresh air in the age of Entry level jobs just secretly looking for experienced people!

Well, come the actual technical interview, I am shown a 10+ page design document detailing an actual tool the company would want to create and was told to just start coding. Out of respect for the interviewer (since he is a really cool person) I won't disclose what the actual problem, but in the design documents it had logic diagrams, hundreds of bullet points, a lot of interacting parts and requirements, half the interview was just understanding what it all even meant. So pretty much for an entry-level internship, I need to scan an entire multi page design document, be able to plan out everything in my head, and then afterwards code the classes and interactions in 15 minutes.

I tried but every part of my code was questioned and even though I had an answer for one aspect, it wasn't "the best" one the interviewer was looking for. I could see the interviewers disappointment, wiping his face, and just realizing I wasnt the experienced person the company was looking for.

At this point a few minutes in, I just didn't care enough to truly try my hardest and complete the exercise. I felt that this company wasn't looking for someone like me, they were looking for a SWE with experience already who could just solve it on the spot. The interviewer even admitted that they had "High expectations", even though the HM told me that they didnt expect people to really know anything. In my eyes, they were looking for an experienced person and just wanted to pay them an entry level wage.

I thought internships were if you are willing to learn and show initiative, then the company expects to mold you into something. Like yes, you need to know basic programming and interactions in code and data structures and algorithms because thats what you learn during your degree. But for an (and I cannot stress this enough) ENTRY LEVEL internship, I would not expect an applicant to know how to read an entire design document and translate it all to code, mostly on their own, with only some if not minimal direction from a superior.

Funny enough a few weeks later I checked back in on their linkedin and they had a SWE I post, explicitly saying 0+ years of experience, with the SAME EXACT requirements as the entry-level internship, word for word but with actual SWE pay (like 90K+). Maybe I am too tin-foil hat, but that might have proved my point.

I have an interview for FDE for Tesla in Texas. Does anyone the interview process?

Hi guys, im (frontend of 10 years going into fullstack) being unemployed for a year now, when my last company did cuts because of AI. I had some interviews (applied more than 150+, having 20 first, and 3 technicals that were awful). Right now I'm trying to keep up coding on my own and asking old college questions about how they do things, but I don't know what to expect in a technical interview. Does a technical challenge where you code manually and explain your thought process? Do they give you AI and an idea and you put them into tickets and let the LLM do the rest while you guide it and review it? Something in the middle?

I have a lot of pressure of performing in this interview and I sense that many people applied, so it will be tough. Any of you guys did an interview recently and want to share your experience and tips?

Thank you!

I think I am going to take a break from social media and coding and everything and try to focus on my mental health because something isn’t right, I’m feeling too strong of feelings about this

TLDR: I am extremely depressed and facing a crisis over AI and I don’t know if I need therapy or I’m right or if I’m wrong or if I’m just genuinely losing my mind

Let me preface: if you like AI, you probably won’t like this post. Sorry, not trying to step on anyone’s toes, but it’s probably best to turn away now.

A little background about me. I’ve always loved math and science and used to want to be a physicist (and still would like to go to grad school for it). But I also found a passion for computer science which has pretty much ruled my life since middle school. Picked up JS in 7th grade, Python 8th, then went on deep dive into C++ in freshman year of Highschool. From there I was hooked. Been programming for 10 years now, primarily in C and C++, and graduated college last semester. But AI has driven a hard confusion in my life that has led me to even existential levels of dread.

At first I never noticed it. I used to program all the time, mostly things dealing with graphics and embedded systems. I also got into electronics and firmware stuff as well. I would get home from college and program from the time I got home until midnight and then play games for an hour or two. It’s always been something I’ve enjoyed. It makes sense, especially considering that I am diagnosed on the autism spectrum and fit a lot of the stereotypes lol. But I love it. It gives me more dopamine than most things I do.

But my junior year I began to get very bogged down. My friends that did not enjoy CS and hated it were vibecoding entire projects in the course of a day whereas I would work to handcraft every little part of a project and logic through it on my own. My professors began pushing AI like crazy. Every single post id see on LinkedIn and Reddit and YouTube would be vibecoded projects. And in all honesty it made me more and more overcome with anger and depression. This actually led to a year and a half of severe alcoholism, where I got so bogged down I couldn’t think straight without racing thoughts and turned to alcohol. I was drinking 2 Liters a day of 40-45% liquor a night. Then I also turned to opiates on top of that, mostly oxycodone and hydrocodone. I was a complete mess. I also had some happenings with bipolar disorder which I got sorted out and eventually led to me getting my life baxk after getting put on mood stabilizers. I quit alcohol and opiates (almost died, don’t cold turkey lol) and barely graduated because my senior year grades were so bad.

But getting my life back on track, I realized that I still knew a LOT about computer science, specifically and mostly embedded systems and computer graphics, because I actually like went through and programmed everything I ever did line by line and read lots of books. My bookshelf is lined with textbooks that I buy on sale and read for fun. And my friends and professors all knew I knew my shit when I would go on an autistic rant about some topic. So I found a new lease on life as far as programming goes that made me feel like it is worth it to actually program rather than let AI generate code

But even at that, I am being extremely bogged down again. I’ve been working on a Gameboy Emulator that I was making amazing progress on for 2 months, but now this month, I have been faced with incredible amounts of depression from seeing so much AI generated content and feeling like I’m just some Luddite loser thats too stubborn to change. And it’s slowing down my production of code because I’m so goddamn bogged down by the weight of all of this and in all honesty I’m just confused. It doesn’t help that I’m trying to build a portfolio before my girlfriend gets out of school in a few months so I can get a job.

The thing is you can’t tell me to change. I fundamentally oppose the treatment of code as anything but an art. Just like my girlfriend draws art for 5 hours a day because it’s fun and it gives you meaning in life, thats how I feel about programming. You could make the same argument for art, but when it comes to programming, why is it all of a sudden a green area for AI use? Why do people oppose AI in art but not in programming? I just don’t get why people don’t see things the same way I do and I hate it I want to tear my fucking skin off I HATE everything so much.

I just wish that there was somebody else out there that sees it the same as me. I don’t know if there’s just something fundamentally wrong with the way I view the world or what. Do I need therapy? Am I right in my thinking? How do I deal with this? I’m just so goddamn confused I can’t even fucking think straight anymore and I’m backsliding really bad into bad habits.

It is also important to note that morally and philosophically I am FUNDAMENTALLY opposed to AI and AI corporations. I’ve never been big on the big tech industry which is why I’ve always stuck to low level systems. But personally I would love and relish in the complete fall of these greedy corporate psychopaths that think they can plop data centers down and replace humans with their shitty tech. FUCK AI

Edit: it’s also important to note it’s not affecting only programming, but also writing and music production which are my two other passions. My coworker today literally told me he wrote a book wirh AI in 2 weeks and meanwhile I’ve been writing a story for 3 years now and not even close to being done. I just wanna give up

Ive been deep in reviewing PRs, architecture designs, even tickets and slack threads by engineers no less than "senior" level. I feel like im seeing increasing levels of quite obvious fundamental gaps in that I don't think would have been there maybe even a year ago.

Don't get me wrong, I understand people make mistakes and we're all here to learn and grow from each other regardless of seniority. There's always room to learn something new, and that's not really what I'm talking about here.

I'm more so talking about things that seem to contradict some pretty fundamental understanding about our systems and stack. When you've been working on a system for a while, building things together, making decisions, understanding why certain things work the way they do, I feel like you naturally develop some level of intuition about it, what we're trying to achieve, and that understanding kinda informs the development going forward. Now for sure along the way things diverge and new ideas take over but in all those instances there are fruitful discussions and brainstorms that always pave the way.

But lately I've been seeing more and more things that just seem to come out of left field. Like I'd be reviewing a PR or an ADR and genuinely think why are we suddenly doing this? And doesn't this go against the whole reason we designed this thing the way we did in the first place? But what's actually worse is when I ask about why its that way, theres really no answer...like they cant defend it or provide their idea behind what theyve built and instead just "oh right, i'll change that".

And it's not like these are necessarily new people who don't have the context. Even people who have been involved in building these systems, who were part of the discussions and decisions that made along the way.

It can also be the opposite issue. I've come across changes where I can almost tell that a particular piece of code exists because there's probably some instruction in the AGENTS.md somewhere telling the agent to always do things a certain way. And sure, that convention might make sense for most cases. But these particular cases isn't one of them. If you actually think about what the code is doing and why, you'd realize that the convention doesn't really apply here, but again, the PR gets raised and when asked about it, there was again no thought or reasoning behind that.

I feel like even with AI, things like that would've previously been caught by the engineer themselves (these very same people) before even putting up the PR let alone asking for a review. I thought the design, problem solving and creativity is the value that human engineers still provide in this crazy agentic era but is that just...going away too?

Im also slightly sensing accountability and ownership of your work slipping away in place of blaming the agent...

Idk if anyone else has ever experienced this lately but id love to hear other perspectives. This makes me kinda sad tbh :( hopefully these experiences are just outliers

how do people navigate referrals? hiring is done on a rolling basis and you want to apply as soon as apps open but it takes time to get referrals no? I didn't attend the greatest of universities and I want to give myself the best shot, should i farm engineers now to get referrals when apps open or try to get a referral once the application opens?

Hi, I'm torn between committing fully to SWE or MLE.

SWE is competitive, and I worry personal projects won't make up for my lack of professional engineering experience. MLE is also equally challenging but I believe topics like inference engineering seem niche so maybe that could be something that I could focus on? Almost every tech guy is building AI agents these days so that alone won't make me stand out.

Which path holds greater long-term value and offers a more practical return on effort?

My background:

I work at a non-tech, finance company as a data analyst. For the last couple of years I was mainly working with SQL and PowerBI.
Since the past 6 months I have been working on building AI agents at my job. While that is fun and interesting, I don't think that alone is good enough to build a solid career. Pretty much every tech guy is doing this rn but probably in a better setting, more complicated problems and team. My company is outdated in terms of AI for eg - team members are still learning how to use AI agents like GHCP

Also, I'm a CS grad (BS + MS), studied ML, Deep learning in school and worked on few projects. I have some background of ML (including maths but kinda rusty)

For MLE, I was planning to follow this: https://inferquest.org/
For SWE, I was planning to use Hello Interview system design + DSA

​

Hi, I am a computer science student in Europe, and I have been observing what happens in the job market, especially AI development.

AI is able to take on more and more tasks. It seems like it doesn't matter how complicated they are, since it can solve things like millennium problems and very complicated mathematical problems.

So I don't think questioning AI capabilities makes sense anymore, especially considering future AI improvements.

I remain in computer science since it's the only thing I can do well, and I also have another high school degree, for which I don't think there is an equivalent in the USA, which allows me to work in fields closely related to hardware, so I am a bit safer.

So, for the optimists here, what's your case? What's your reason for thinking that not just programming, but computer science altogether, isn't dead?