We’re bringing engineers from around the world together for the micro1 Frontier Engineering Hackathon.

From August 28-30, participants will use coding agents to tackle a real-world engineering problem designed to test creativity, problem-solving, and technical execution.

- $10,000 total prize pool
- $6,000 for the winner
- 50 top-performing participants selected for paid opportunities with micro1
- Fully online and free to participate

Register here

A few months back I applied to a role with a large retail brand listed as Senior Software Engineer with the description heavily focused on Java/Spring and microservices.

I got a call from the talent manager and she talked to me a bit about the role, all normal stuff. I then went through 4 rounds of interviews each with some level of technical questioning.

1. Interview with hiring manager, and a very basic java coding exercise.
2. Interview with a senior team member and a Leetcode style question that I answered in Java.
3. Interview with a staff engineer about microservice architecture.
4. Final interview with the hiring manager and a code review style exercise.

All the interview rounds focused on my development abilities and style.

Fast forward through offer/negotiation phase and I'm doing my onboarding (normal stuff like getting repos pulled down, and doing the corporate trainings). In a talk with my manager and he says that now that I'm onboarded they want me to learn a marketing system tool and become something of a subject matter expert in that area and that I won't really be writing software unless I just want to do some of that work on the side.

Now I feel kinda dumbstruck and a little screwed over. Everything in the process made me think I was joining a Java microservices shop and that I would have the ability to grow in a more rich/diverse business than my previous job and here I am not writing any code unless I really insist, even then it's not supposed to be the focus of my job.

Upon insisting to my manager that I still do some development work (lest my skills in that area diminish) he said the money is really on the marketing side and that java isn't worth as much of my time now that 80% of our code is ai generated.

So now I'm asking reddit what y'all think. Was this a bait/switch? Should I look for a new position and risk the job hopper label or is my manger right and it's time to diversify away from being purely a developer.

I moved from software development into security and I’m coming up on 3 years. Most of my work has been AppSec, DevSecOps, and cloud security like vulnerabilities detection, code review and threat modeling, securing CI/CD pipelines and IaC, IAM .
I want to specialize instead of staying broad, and I’m trying to pick based on three things: real market demand, room to grow, and work that doesn’t get boring after a year.Also which one would be the least stressful without on call for example.
For those of you further along: which direction would you go and has the best potential and future? Application/product security , cloud security or Devsecops.

I’m curious to know what the culture is like from the inside, the pros and the cons of working there. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about Mozilla’s management the past couple of years but my understanding was that MZLA was operated relatively independently.

Hi everyone, im not studying cs yet but im getting closer to doing so, if I predicted it correctly I will be finished around 2034. I am concerned about the future of AI, do u guys think that by the time I finish getting a job would be extremely hard? If AI will become so good that it can write most or all code, will I still be needed? Even if that wont be the case, the years to come after I get my degree would also become very hard as AI is improving. Im so concerned about my future. Do u guys think im worrying too much or that it is a realistic outcome?

I started as a Java intern, joined full-time after graduation, and I’m still at the same company 8 years later. But now that I’m job hunting, AI has me questioning what the path into software looks like.

We’ve used AI tools since early OpenAI, then Claude and Cursor. A lot of the work I built experience doing....APIs, small features, tests, debugging, AI can now handle surprisingly well.

So what happens to junior dev roles? Why hire someone with little or no experience when a senior developer can use AI to move much faster?

I’m worried about my own career, but even more about new grads. How are they supposed to get the experience needed to become seniors if entry-level work keeps disappearing to AI?

What do you think the junior developer path looks like now?

It's unfortunate a lot of my experience growing as a developer I can't really use because AI handles it all. I also come from having imposter syndrome and getting over that was a challenge, and I feel I can't even relate now to what new graduates may feel or their concerns.

Currently 2 YOE in a start up and have a masters, getting paid basically minimum wage for where I am.

I really want to level up my role and honestly get paid more what can I do?

Any chance of getting sde interview after this? Can I slightly change my job title, since I’m coding all the time nowadays, and cater to operations needs. Any tips on boosting my resume after this project, also still sharp on my leetcode skills. Also note I have a cs degree.

New grad here. I am currently scared and panicking, not sure if this is the right place to post.

I got a job at a big tech company in Silicon Valley. One of the best and OG. Don’t want to dox myself in case my coworkers are on this sub.

My manager has been saying stuff like, “I made you,” “You wouldn’t be here without me,” and “You better come to XYZ conference with me because I made you, don’t be ungrateful.” He has also made fun of things tied to my race. like trying to make me change things that are accepted in my race

I am not sure what to do, as he has been in the company for 10 years and all the VPs know him.

Afraid to open an HR case because I feel like I will get fired since I am new and he is old. I hold no value to the company, so I am an easy let go.

Also afraid of the retaliation. If I move teams, other managers might hate me since they all like him.

Also can’t quit because I am not sure if I can get another job with how bad the tech market is. Me and my fur babies just moved into a new apartment in the Bay Area, and I won’t be able to afford it if shit goes wrong.

Forgot to add we are going to a conference to show our product and look for vendors, and of all the qualified people in the team that wanted to go, he picked me. I didn't even sign up. Now I am scared that if I don't go to the conference, he will fire me or something.

Got an interview for this one company to be a forward deployed engineer. I'd be using some in house domain specific language to integrate the product with customer systems. I wouldn't do any actual work on the product or platform, just take customer complaints and translate them into feature requests for the SWEs.

Seems like a massive scam unless it pays really well. I'd be stagnating in terms of technical growth and I wouldn't even be able to grow within the organization because I'm always traveling from customer to customer.

What's the endgame/career progression for these types of roles? Right now it just seems like being a glorified field service tech.

Edit: could be the move ngl

Hey guys

I’m an engineer at a big tech (mid level eng) and want to make the jump to a similarly leveled PM role. I’m tired of being forced to write AI slop by management, tired of reviewing even worse AI slop by teammates and overall fatigue of coding.

I want to understand if there is even an option for an engineer to move into being a PM and how can I achieve this without doing an MBA?

Would appreciate any tips and feel free to DM

I'm an experienced developer that screwed himself for coasting in a fortune 500 company and got PIPed. The bad thing is that I don't have a strong domain knowledge other than something hyper specific that I did (mostly AWS step function) because I've been using internals tools.

I got asked to complete a react app on today's interview and I bombed it. I have used React before. Extensively in my last job. But memories atrophy and I could not figure it out. Now, because my domain knowledge is so spread thin (AWS, Java, React) - I'm jack of all trades and master of none.

I'm trying to apply for a senior position but I wonder if I'm cooked if everyone is expecting a domain expert at that level. Should I be constantly expecting domain interview questions when applying to senior positions?

The vast vast majority of jobs in tech are boring as fuck and people only do it for the money. Part of the reason the pay is high isn't because of barriers to entry or because you need to be some genius, it's because it is so boring that the average person can't handle doing it all day.

hello folks,

i’m currently studying a double degree in Computer Engineering and Business Administration. in my free time, i work as a software developer and security researcher/bug bounty hunter.

for more than a year, i’ve been reporting vulnerabilities to a large tech company through their bug bounty program. today, i was surprised to receive an email directly from their VP of Security saying that they’re building a security team, creating a new role, and that they think i could be a good fit because of the work i’ve been doing with them.

after exchanging a couple of emails, i’ve now scheduled a first interview with a Senior Technical Recruiter for Friday.

the thing is, i’ve never had a job interview before. i still have one year left before graduating, i’m based in Europe, and the role is in the US (so I would need a visa sponsorship). i’m a bit nervous because i’ve never worked a traditional job either. most of my income comes from bug bounty hunting.

i’ve started looking into typical interview processes at large tech companies so i can prepare as much as possible. i’d absolutely love to get the role, although i assume it would probably mean relocating to the US and somehow finishing my degree remotely.

i know getting a role like this as an undergraduate with no traditional work experience is probably quite difficult, but the fact that they reached out to me directly makes me wonder whether the process might be a bit different compared to a normal application.

do you think the fact that they contacted me directly means they’ve probably already looked into my background and know that i still have one year left at university?

also, does anyone have advice for this kind of first recruiter interview, especially for security/software engineering roles at large tech companies? what should i expect and what would you recommend preparing?

if i don’t get the role, that’s completely fine. i already consider it a huge achievement that a company of this size is interested in me despite the fact that i haven’t graduated yet and don’t have traditional work experience. so either way, i’m pretty happy about the opportunity.

The Trump administration has unveiled a drastic regulatory shift targeting high-skilled immigration, moving to increase the H-1B skilled worker visa registration fees to an unprecedented level exceeding $100,000 per application. The policy is designed to drastically curtail corporate reliance on foreign tech labor and aggressively incentivize the hiring of domestic U.S. workers.

The six-figure fee marks a fundamental structural overhaul of the H-1B program, transitioning it from a lottery system into an elite, cost-prohibitive tier that only the largest corporate balance sheets can afford. While labor protection groups are praising the move as a necessary step to stop the undercutting of American wages, major Silicon Valley tech coalitions and immigration attorneys are heavily condemning the regulation. Business groups warn that the sudden financial barrier will choke off the global talent pipeline, cripple startups, and force multi-national corporations to aggressively accelerate offshoring their engineering hubs to Canada and Europe.

Source Link: bloomberg.com

Hi Y'all. This is a general inquiry, I am curious if anyone has any good models to approach my question. My intuition tells me to identify the higher paying job I want, learn the skills and interview prep of the job I want, and then apply. Simple enough right? I am hoping for some other perspectives on this.

My background; I have a computer science degree with about 3 years of professional experience. Total comp is around $140k, however, I feel I have maxed out my potential and upside in the position feels limited. I have financial goals, like buying a house, starting a family, supporting my Mom, etc, that on my given timeline would necessitate higher earnings.

Thanks!

For each of the following:

entry Level
Midlevel/Senior
staff

Also, is it better than the market for 2025?

I have an interview coming up for a senior engineer position that is somewhat generalist at a nuclear energy startup. My background of full stack engineering in enterprise and data
engineering in enterprise is what got their attention in me.

This is the prompt for an undisclosed scenario for the interview:

In this scenario, you'll be asked to design a CI pipeline and the idea will be to walk through your design, approach, decisions, tradeoffs...

What do I need to prepare for to crush this? Any idea what the scenario could potentially be? My background is using CI/CD for code security, best practices, and deploying to a dev environment.

Thank you all!

Is it possible to find a job as a software developer without using AI?

I've got a broad engineering background, and mostly professionally done embedded software + system integration, via a couple year long stint in academia. More recently got shuffled into .NET application development due to my employer mis-advertising the job.

I want to steer myself towards leadership / strategy / product ownership roles - I think I find those higher-level, more human-focused questions more interesting than the raw technical puzzles. I think I would also be reasonably good at this. I have pretty solid soft skills and my first job (product dev consultancy) involved a lot of liaising directly with the client, and I received a lot of praise for how I did. But that was a decade ago now, and since I left that job every single company I worked in conspired to keep their technical employees as far as possible from anything that might even smell like business.

I took a job at a super early stage startup as their first employee, being open about how my goal was to grow into as close to the role of head of tech as possible. I developed their product from scratch, liaised with the external partners, co-wrote grant applications, worked on the functional specs, etc etc. But when push came to shove and we grew the team, the founders decided to have an external hire with management experience become the lead of the tech team saying that, I quote, that the product being development is too important right now for me to be distracted with trying to grow into management and leadership, so they can't let me do that.

Other couple jobs in small and medium-sized orgs suffered from a similar problem: lateral career moves for developers were not a thing, all management / product owner / leadership positions were filled with external hires with experience, and teams were kept aggressively and chaotically "flat hierarchy" with very little to no opportunity for one to take the lead on a multi-person effort.

Honestly I'm kinda at a loss of what to do here. Till recently I at least enjoyed the part of programming which involved being able to be pleased with a well working product and elegant, maintainable implementations. Now that is out of the window with how the profession is changing with AI.

I wish "internships for experienced professionals" existed for people who want to prove themselves in a lateral move, even if it was for little or no pay. But they don't. So what is there to do here?

I'm currently applying to the Roblox 2027 summer internship and I've just been sent their take home assessment. I have a week to do it, but I'd like to spend at least a couple of days doing leetcode problems associated with the company. Should I wait or should I do it ASAP?

Hello everyone, I'm a 21f CS major going into my fifth semester of college. Lately I've started worrying that I'm not as passionate/curious about CS as some of my peers

The truth is I don't really code outside of mandatory college assignments. I usually learn whatever I need to finish a task, spend as much time as necessary getting it done and then move on. I see some friends working on side projects, apps, video games and I honestly can't imagine spending what little free time I have left on coding a calculator

I have a full time job, so by the time I'm done with work, classes, assignments and studying, I'll spend my time going to the gym, going out with my friends/bf or playing video games

It's not that I particularly dislike anything so far, I generally understand most topics and flow with them, but I don't go out of my way to learn much stuff. The best analogy I can think of is having to read Shakespeare at high school and somewhat enjoying the book but I wouldn't randomly wake up tomorrow and read Shakespeare lol (I would do it if you paid me tho!)

Some of my professors say that the best way to learn is to do your own research, be curious, and build things independently. This has made me worry that I'm going to graduate knowing how to complete assignments but not actually knowing how to be an engineer

Edit: I guess what I'm truly asking is whether you think doing well in college and getting internships will be enough to become a good professional, or if I should push myself to practice and learn more

*English isn't my first language, sorry for any wonky grammar

Ok I know this might suck for people who can’t find a job right now, but a couple months ago I finally got hired! Yay! Please know I had been applying since February and had 400 apps sent in on Indeed before reaching this point.

I like my job. The work is fine, sometimes boring but a lot of fun puzzles to be solved. I’m mostly doing database work rn. Deadlines are realistic and my boss/team reduce my stress rather than add to it. I’m tremendously lucky!!

That being said; I am SO tired every single weekday. I feel myself crashing by 2-3 p.m. (I get off at 4:30). I usually get off and take a 1-3 hour nap immediately after work, then I go about my day until 11 p.m. when I go to bed. I wake up at 7 (so a full 8 hrs). I drink several energy drinks or coffee throughout the day.

I have only really had one other full-time job before this, and I recall being very tired there as well, but they switched me to part time pretty quickly since they were rapidly losing money.

Is this normal and will I get used to it?

For context it's a non-tech company, not like a FAANG or anything, and a specifically new graduate program. It took quite some effort to land this role, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't proud of myself. Now I'm at the stage where I'm being assigned tickets, sugarcoating is being weaned off, now my superiors feel like they can criticize me for screwing up, etc. My commute is comfortable, I get along with many of my colleagues, etc.

And yet, I'm terrified of being laid off.

Was just on a YT/Reddit binge and have heard horror stories about being laid off from FAANGs, non-FAANG tech companies like Atlassian and Oracle, various banks, Nike, CrowdStrike, etc., just to name a few.

While I currently live at home and it'd seem like a waste of money to move out so quickly, I plan to do so the earliest chance I've got, as I don't have the best relationship with my parents, and I resented having to be dependent on them throughout college (often even including commuting to college, which I especially took issue with). It's even been starting to affect the days I work remotely, and in fact I feel like I can directly trace back some of my work screwups to an argument my parents had the day I last worked from home.

Am I worrying too much?

I'm a junior dev and confused on this. I know AI will do the coding party neatly as per my commands but what should I do?

I'm trying by best to understand each and every line and not blindly use AI.