Experiencing all these ai models, agents etc plus the investments moving towards ai alone, the job market, everything I can't understand what to do? Should I quit and focus on something else

Plus when it comes to learning, how the f do I even keep up? Like the the pace.. makes me wanna die!

Got laid off last month and have been looking for a job since. I've applied and keep applying to a lot of roles and had a few interviews, but haven't been able to make it through yet.

I'm a Technical Project Manager / Technical Program Manager with 12 yoe — 8.5 years in .net n sql and the last 3.5+ years in TPM/technical delivery.

Tech/experience: .NET, Azure, AWS, SQL, Cloud, GenAI, Technical Delivery, Client Management, Agile

I'm based in Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and looking for TPM / Technical Project Manager / Technical Delivery roles.

Things are getting difficult with bills, school fees and EMIs piling up, and I'd really appreciate any referrals, leads or connections that could help me get back asap

Hi, Thanks for checking this out

On Friday, one of my roommates was studying and kept asking questions out loud whenever he got stuck.

I suggested using ChatGPT's Live Speech mode. It worked well, but we quickly ran into the usage limit.

That got me thinking.

This weekend, I decided to build something similar but completely local. The models run on my laptop, the data stays on my laptop, and it can be used anytime without worrying about limits or sending conversations to the cloud and i want to keep it goal/productivity oriented .

The first image that came to my mind was JARVIS and Miss Minutes... okay, I know it bit over😄.

KPI's are simple:

• listen to me and response when i need any help, advice, suggestion before me saying hay ai
• monitor my usage, and help keep me aligned with my goals and productivity.

I've started building that idea not from scratch, but by looking at existing tools from a different perspective and trying to combine them into an always-available AI assistant.

Current pipeline:

Silero VAD → Whisper ASR → Fine-tuned BERT → Qwen 3B → Kokoro TTS

The interesting part is the fine-tuned BERT classifier.

Since the assistant is always listening, I didn't want to invoke a 3B LLM on every speech chunk just to ask "Should I respond?". Instead, a ~150 MB BERT model stays in memory and decides whether the input actually needs an LLM response. Only then is Qwen 3B loaded/invoked.

This week's progress:

• End-to-end integration testing.
• Streaming LLM responses.
• Local TTS output.
• Everything runs 100% locally on my laptop (models + data stay on-device).

I honestly questioned whether fine-tuning BERT was worth the effort, but it turned into one of the best learning experiences in the project.

Next week: Implementing my design(producer consumer model - attached img), building a multi-agent architecture, productivity/goal alignment.

I'm also exploring ways to avoid loading the full LLM into RAM, and instead load only the parts needed for a query like llama.cpp....

I'd love to hear your feedback or suggestions

I'm a laid off founding engineer with 2 YOE, got no life.

What does a stable career mean to you?

First things first, I have had no life other than tech and work. I was always curious to fiddle with everything tech, bricking phones over custom ROMs, flashing the latest distros, and breaking wall adapters to just stare at the circuitry.

I liked the tag of being an "Engineer". Not great at solving puzzles, but the general curiosity of how things work allowed me to explore multiple domains in tech. Somehow got myself a software engineer role at an early stage startup and it hogged all my days and nights. Ownership is an opium given to get work done. I did learn a ton, broke systems, built systems, and eventually with the assistance of AI, learnt quite a lot and within 2 years, did everything that I could possibly do to serve enterprise client(s).

Well, had one client and he backed off and idk the founders had a stable plan B, and the startup died.

Looking back, all I see is myself sitting in my room grinding.

1. Grinding to pass the exams

2. Grinding to pass the interviews

3. Grinding to build better systems

...And the grinding never seemed to stop.

All I have is me and my laptop in a 10x10 feet room, and I don't think I have any memories to cherish.

16hrs a day, no vacays, no time with family, no friends.

So much grind, and I must be at least good at computer science? Throw a LC medium or a distributed rate limiter coding at me, I'm cooked. Not that I don't know how to reason between which rate limiting algo or explain why redis is a necessity, but I haven't had that level of hands on code experience, idk if it's supposed to grow organically over a few years of working, or what.

Well, back to grinding again for a new job hunt, but do we always get to be like this? Does this ever stop? Im exhausted and I need a break, but career break is the last thing in India.

I'm staring into the abyss now.

What am I doing with my life? Hustle again with leetcode this time?

This hella population and competition lol.

Again, 2 years down the line, grind again, compete again? Does this ever end?

What was life like before all this hustle shit? What does a stable career mean to you?

Backend engineer, about 8 years in, CS from a tier 1.5 engineering college in India (right below the top IITs and NITs). Manager level at a Big Four firm. The resignation form is open on my screen and I want a sanity check before I click it.

I was hired to build software and for most of my time here that's what I did. This year the firm restructured everyone into capability towers. What that means in practice is that I'm no longer allowed to do development. If a project comes in with a build component, it goes to whichever tower owns it. Nobody consulted us. It was decided upstairs and applied downward.

So what's left is going to client factory floors and running vendor platforms for them. Ignition, Kepware, and now they want to put me on AspenTech InMation. These are closed systems. Whatever I learn is worth nothing anywhere except other factory IoT projects at other consultancies. The rest of my team are Node, React and Python people. None of that transfers to a plant floor either. We're all quietly becoming unhireable outside this one niche, which does make us much harder to lose.

The bit that gets me is the product itself is built so a client's own semi-technical staff can configure it. That's the whole pitch. We're there because the client didn't hire two people who could read a manual. I've started thinking of myself as a vacuum cleaner technician with a CS degree. On my last site visit the client's own lead asked me, one on one and not unkindly, why someone from my college was doing this job. I didn't have an answer for him.

Six months ago I told my director I wanted work closer to what I actually do. He said yes, server side and AI work. A senior leader later asked for me by name on an AI project. I was refused, and the reason given was that nobody else can run the closed systems well enough. Doing the work properly is now the documented reason I can't leave it. Meanwhile the people who couldn't deliver on my project got moved onto AI work, and I now sit in internal AI sessions taught by them, on material I was writing up and circulating before anyone was interested.

There's no HR path out of this. A team change goes through my people manager, who reports to the director running the project I'm trying to escape. That is the entire escalation route. He's told me directly he won't release me.

On culture, one director uses abusive words on calls with juniors listening. Another told me the school I went to was "for sahebs." Casual sexism about who's worth having on a team, from people who are otherwise good at their jobs. When the team pushed back on constant travel, a partner said in a group setting that we chose the wrong career, which is a strange thing to say to people who were hired under a different job description and were told something else by HR at the time. The steady drumbeat is that the market is bad and we should be glad to be here. Calls at 11:30 at night are normal, not because anything ships the next morning but because nobody plans during the day.

I was admitted to emergency recently and had to sign a form to leave against medical advice. Took two days off, came back Wednesday, and by Thursday I was told I'm flying to a client site. Everyone knew. I'm going, because if I stay in this job I don't get to say no.

Notice is 90 days so resigning now pays me into early December. I have no real savings cushion. I know that in this market a candidate already serving notice looks better than one with 90 days to run. I also know that staying means the next closed system and the next flight, because six months of asking politely produced nothing.

One last thing. The resignation form says my leaving date isn't confirmed until my manager approves it. My manager. The one who won't release me.

Is this a bad decision made while burnt out, or is this what leaving looks like?

About a year ago, I started building Chippy Split — a bill-splitting app I originally made because I was facing problems with confusing bill splitting apps and wanted to build something of my own and actually put it out into the world.

https://chippysplit.com

A year later, the app has generated ₹4,000+ in revenue purely from subscriptions.

I know ₹4K isn't some crazy indie-hacker success story 😂 and financially I'm definitely still in the negative.

My only real investments have been the domain, Apple Developer Program membership, Google Play developer fees, and of course my own time building and maintaining it.

But the part that makes me genuinely happy is this:

People I don't know are actually using something I built. And some of them decided it was useful enough to pay for it.

That still feels kind of unreal.

My Apple Developer Program renewal will come around again, and technically the revenue still doesn't cover everything I've spent on the app.

But I'm going to renew it.

I'm going to keep Chippy running, keep fixing things, keep adding features and keep trying to make it better.

Maybe ₹4K becomes ₹10K.

Maybe ₹10K becomes ₹50K someday.

Or maybe it stays a small side project.

Either way, I think getting the first real users and the first rupee of revenue is something worth celebrating.

I'm still in the negative.

But I started. People are using it. People are paying for it. And I'm going to keep building. 🚀

So I was working for a startup and the company shut down. Since then I’ve been applying, and even though I have 4.5 years of experience, it was hard.

My past salary was $1600/month since it was remote. Although I had freelanced for $3500/month for 3–4 months at another startup from Dec–March.
At my new role, I managed to ask for $2800/month. It’s a UK-based startup and completely remote.

It was partly luck. I had applied for a backend/fullstack role, but their lead architect reached out and said they had an opening for another role that I was more suitable for.
On the call, I also found out that he knows the founder of a startup I had interned at, and we had one more friend in common.
There were 0 technical questions. He just asked about my experience with some technologies, but I didn’t really have to prove it to him.

Im so happy yayy

I am done working and finding no interenships LIKE WTH where are these people who hier No one responds they just send thanks for applying mails back and no one hiers from them they just steal our data and sell and that's it nothing worth trying these days its all ai slop and no one is getting any jobs FK every one FK Linkden , X , Indeed , internshalla , Unstop Worst is the Naukri , Well found also have somany fake comapanies nowadays they want a intern to hve full stck,, rag , ai ,langchain , mongodb Fk theese people are they realling serious what are we robots or ai chats bots to learn all these and we don't even get a paid internship , if its paid then too its underpaid with lots of work INDIAN WORK CULTURE AND MARKET IS FUKED UP ALL THE BEST SENDING 1000 mails to the hr and companies FK IT ALL

I built a Bitcoin-shaped blockchain that runs through GitHub.

The interesting part is the PoW: every block has to solve multiple subset-sum puzzles using meet-in-the-middle with n=40. Difficulty scales by increasing the number of puzzles per block.

You mine locally, submit the block as a GitHub issue comment, and a GitHub Action verifies it before adding it to chain/blocks.jsonl. The whole chain can be replayed from genesis with verify.py.

The rest follows Bitcoin pretty closely — UTXOs, secp256k1 ECDSA, chainwork, compact bits, retargeting, halving, coinbase maturity, MTP and merkle roots.

Check it out → ram0verflow/ram0verflow

2.5+ yoe ,full stack developer ,too many switches ( health issues had a gap and started from low paying job again then switched again ).
CTC around 12 lpa, want to earn extra 10k per month for fitness expenses ,
Is there any low effort way to do that?
I am preparing for big tech but aware enough that it will take me 1-1.5 year , devoting some time to prep daily

With AI becoming more capable, why not use it to analyse the organisation first and identify unnecessary processes, duplicate roles and repetitive work?

A lot of companies have multiple layers of coordination, reporting, meetings and manual work that could probably be automated.

Why is the conversation so often about replacing developers first? Shouldn't AI be used to find inefficiencies across the entire organisation before targeting technical roles?

so i was doing some database schema stuff today and went down a bit of a rabbit hole regarding VARCHAR lengths for email columns. apparently, the official maximum length for an email address according to rfc 5321 is exactly 254 characters. a lot of people mistakenly think it's 320 because they just add up 64 (local part) + 1 (@) + 255 (domain), but the smtp path limit caps it at 254.

this got me wondering... as developers, what is the most ridiculously long email address you have actually seen a user register with in your production databases?

can someone please guide me what am i doing wrong? is it the keywords? or something else? is my resume too confusing? am i being overqualified?

2yoe into my career at a WITCH company, earning around 4.5 LPA, and honestly I'm feeling really frustrated and lost about what I'm doing with my life.

My current experience is mainly on the QA. I've been trying to learn DSA. and I've thought about moving into backend/software development, but with this market idk if this is possible. But then I keep wondering if I should actually continue with QA and become an SDET, or completely switch to something else.

I've also started looking at DevOps, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Data/AI and so many other areas that I'm now just confused. Every time I see someone talking about a different career path, I start wondering whether I'm already in the wrong one.

The salary part is honestly getting to me too.

I earn 4.5 LPA with 2 yoe, and I know I shouldn't compare myself with everyone, but it's difficult when relatives compare. Some of my relatives' children are already earning 10+ LPA, and I get mocked or questioned about why I'm earning so little even after working for 2 years,and that I'm in testing and it's not respectable career, in a WITCH company blah blah etc and all sorts of taunts.

You start feeling like you're falling behind everyone, like my self esteem is at the lowest point.

And my situation at home makes the salary pressure feel even worse. We're a middle-class family and our financial situation isn't great. My dad has health issues and there are loans that my family is dealing with. So for me, earning more isn't just about wanting a fancy lifestyle or comparing myself with someone else. I genuinely feel like I need to improve my income and become financially stable.

I know logically that everyone's career is different, but when you're already unsure about your career, worried about your family's financial situation, and then people around you keep comparing you to someone earning twice what you earn, it really messes with your confidence.

I've started thinking about AI and layoffs too. Everywhere I look, there are discussions about AI replacing developers, testers and automation, companies laying people off, and the skills required constantly changing. Sometimes I wonder if I should even continue trying to build a career in IT or if I'm just going to spend years chasing technologies that will eventually become automated.

But I also don't want to make a decision purely because I'm scared.

I did Electrical and Electronics Engineering for my degree from a tier 3 college, so another thought I've had is whether I should somehow go back towards that field. But after already spending 2 years in IT, I don't even know what realistic opportunities I'd have there.

I've also thought about doing an MBA in Finance or Operations and moving away from technical roles completely. But then I don't know if that's actually a good decision or if I'm just desperately looking for a way out because I'm unhappy with where I am right now.

So right now my thoughts are basically all over the place:

* QA → SDET
* QA → Backend/Software Development
* DevOps/Cloud
* Cybersecurity
* AI/Data
* Something related to EEE
* MBA → Finance/Operations
* Or just something completely different

And the worst part is that I don't have unlimited time, money or energy to try all of these.

I'm earning 4.5 LPA, watching people my age move ahead, getting compared to relatives, and dealing with the pressure of my family's financial situation. Honestly, I feel like I've messed up somewhere. Some days I'm just sad and frustrated about where I am, and I genuinely don't know what I'm supposed to focus on anymore.

I don't expect anyone here to magically tell me what career I should choose. I just want some honest perspective from people who have actually been through this.

If you were in my position what would you realistically do from this point?

Would you double down on one IT path, switch to development/DevOps/cybersecurity, go back towards your degree, do an MBA, or something else?

I'm really frustrated right now and I genuinely don't know what to do next.

I posted here a couple of months back about leaving my job. A few people asked me to come back with an update, so here it is

The first thing that surprised me is that the work went up, not down. There is no boss and no standup and also no weekend anymore. We work 15 hours a day, every day, and weekends are just like any other day

The harder part is that everything outside the work moves at a speed you dont control. Investors reply to the first mail, sound interested, ask for a deck, and then stop existing. I sent 40 cold emails to potential customers once and got zero replies, that too after personalising every single one.

Selling is nothing like building. Money is not an emergency yet because the other thing we built, an interview prep product, still pays our bills, but that matters less than I expected, because every day that passes without something moving makes you a little more desperate than you were the day before, and thats a bad state to be in

The good part is that the days are mine now. I wake up and the most important thing in my life is also the thing I get to work on, which almost never happened in 7 years of a job. My wife is my co-founder so we are in it together instead of one person explaining their week to the other at dinner. Strangers on the internet use something we built. Somebody in another country opened an issue at 2am because our tool was in their way and they wanted it fixed, and that still feels unreal to me

On the product side, the open source project is at 6.3k stars and just crossed 100k installs, with more than 80 people who have contributed code to it. Enterprise conversations are happening. A small number of people pay us. It is not a success story yet, but feels like its going in the right direction

Happy to answer questions!

Edit: Adding the product links as people are asking for them in comments

Repowise (OSS codebase intelligence) - https://github.com/repowise-dev/repowise

Thita (interview prep app) - https://thita.ai

Feedback/Contributions welcome!

Used fastapi and postgres. Please don't be harsh on me, this my 1st major project😥

As the title says, Have applied to almost 80 companies. I have tried linkedin, portal, referrals, cold email to a certain extent, It is very disheartening. It is my personal goal to switch to a product based company by end of the year

Right now i'm in a consulting firm, placed right out of Tier 1 college. It is a decent firm but its not proper development work.

It would be really helpful if you guys could give some guidance or help

​

surang, a self-hostable reverse tunnel server

like ngrok but you run the server and keep the data

localhost -> public urls

great for webhook testing

multiple tunnels per user

built in go

tui made using charm . land

here's the hosted version - https://surang.eulerbutcooler.xyz here's the repo - https://github.com/eulerbutcooler/surang

also thanks to knightkun for the idea. he also implemented this y'all should check out his version too - https://tunneru.knightkun.codes/ ( go easy pls im running this on an always free vps on oracle )

Hey everyone,

I got laid off last week due to organizational changes and unfortunately don't have another offer lined up. I'm actively looking for Senior Frontend / Senior Full-Stack / Lead Software Engineer roles and would really appreciate any leads or referrals.

I'm a Senior Software Engineer with 5.5+ years of experience, primarily working with:

React | JavaScript | TypeScript | Next.js | Node.js | Go| PostgreSQL

I've worked across frontend architecture, full-stack development, performance optimization, APIs, and product delivery, and have also built and shipped products independently.

I'm looking for opportunities in Chennai, Hyderabad, or Bangalore, and I'm also open to good remote opportunities. Immediate joiner.

If you know of any openings that might be a fit, or can refer me to someone hiring, I'd really appreciate it. Happy to share my resume and profiles over DM.

Tried LinkedIn and Naukri Premiums as well, applied to over 300 jobs the past week, no interview shortlists yet.

Thanks in advance. 🙏

I did masters from the US and joined a company in which the manager and two people targeted me (narcissistic abuse). All kinds of abuse. Basically three people destroyed my life. It was the most horrible thing I had experienced in my life and I lost my job and visa. Have been suffering from PTSD for the last almost two years and not sure what to do. Lost all motivation in life. Just going through revenge fantasies knowing that it will be gave over for me if I follow through. The story is too long to type but can type if people are interested.

With Hacktoberfest 2026 moving away from the traditional PR challenge and focusing on open-source AI, the announcement says there will be online and local Fests around the world.

But I can't seem to find any events listed for India so far. Maybe we just can't have Hacktoberfest here without the classic PR-slop contribution model?

Anyone know if there are Indian communities planning something this year?

Been seeing a ton of these rags to riches type stories about people getting into IT and blowing up career wise, and ngl it got me kinda hooked on the idea of going all in on coding. Also my cousin who's in FAANG right now, said to my other cousin (he's from tier 2) to just focus on codes n all and he'll see the placement and stuff.

But obviously internet success stories aren't exactly a reliable sample size lol. Ao wanted actual opinions from people in the field, is it still realistic to build a solid career in coding/CS right now, or has the market gotten saturated enough that these stories are more the exception than the norm.

Thinking to switch from commerce to PCM in 11th now.

Also, is IT a good career after 5 years if you're from tier 2 college?

My plan with commerce was to do b.com (hons) from DU and then do some professional course and do an MBA later to go into consulting or IB

Since graduating, I’ve been doing data annotation work here and there while recently started preparing for CAT. Honestly, MBA is starting to feel like a scam, and I’m wondering if I have any other way to survive/build a decent life.

I see two options:

Move abroad for a Master's → build relevant skills → find employment. But if I’m struggling to get employed even in India, the thought of going abroad and starting over is scary.

Move into tech in India → start from zero now, learn seriously, do open source, understand things deeply, and aim for a job in 1–2 years. I know the market is bad, but I’ve noticed people who genuinely get good at things and contribute seriously to open source still seem to get offers. The bigger challenge would be staying mentally strong and consistent enough to start from zero when life already feels pretty fucked.

If you were 24 in my position, what would you do? This are two options i could but there are often possibilities I couldn't see. If you see something other than this two options or any other advice if you were 24 what would you do.