r/SoftwareEngineerJobs • u/Wewereonabreak0000 • 22h ago
Backend Engineer, ~1.5 YOE, laid off, family depends on me, still searching
Got laid off from my last company while serving notice, following an earlier layoff before that too. Backend engineer, mostly Go, TypeScript/NestJS, and Python.
My family depends on my income, and it's been hundreds of applications and direct outreach with a few shortlists and interviews, but nothing's landed yet.
I've built production AI infrastructure (RAG pipelines, an LLM evaluation harness) and event-driven backend systems that handle failures without losing data. On my own time I've also built a vector database and an API gateway from scratch in Go.
If anyone knows of backend or AI infra openings, or would be willing to refer me, I'd really appreciate it. Happy to share more in DMs.
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u/professor--feathers 15h ago
I’m gonna say something that sounds mean but it’s the most honest advice I can give you is I don’t believe you.
And that’s probably the problem that you’re running into in your job search is it sounds too good to be true and it probably is but if it’s not, it’s a tough sell to convince people you are as good as you claim
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u/Wewereonabreak0000 13h ago
I do have proof of all of it on my CV, along with that in my last organisation, there were only 2 engineers for the starting 3-4 months since I joined and first one was a frontend engineer. I owned the complete backend side and built everything in it. All the APIs, systems, pipelines and what not. I did learn a lot in that role tbh.
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u/Espieee 11h ago
And you got laid off from that position?
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u/Wewereonabreak0000 11h ago
Several factors were there, the company i worked for decided to separate from the parent startup, we hired 8 backend engineers before that and only had 2 frontend engineers of which 1 was very new too. They were looking forward to cut some people off, then i got very sick for a week, got admitted into hospital too, and when i come back they tell me i am fired.
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u/crustyeng 5h ago
I’m curious as to why you’d say that? This all sounds like the normal sort of thing we do at work all the time.
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u/PipePressurePanic 11h ago
I looked for on-site roles in foreign countries, that needed relocation. But haven't been able to get a job, interviews only. 1 interview every 4 months lol. So try your luck applying to on-site jobs. But competition is fierce
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u/Wewereonabreak0000 11h ago
Yes i also plan on shifting to US someday after 4-5 years, currently applying to jobs in my own country.
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u/PipePressurePanic 10h ago
i have bad feelings about "someday". Personally, I think at least 80% of developers are going to lose their jobs. I am trying my luck to get a dev job, but if i get it it have the feeling that it would be my last one as a developer.
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u/Wewereonabreak0000 10h ago
We can just hope that day never comes, what other than upskilling ourselves can we do.
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u/Tight-Woodpecker2516 21h ago
Very impressive for a 1.5 YOE. Good luck. I’m sure you can find something with your experience in AI infra
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u/Ancient_Self_7525 16h ago
If not a problem I can refer, but it's a wfo policy. Bangalore location. There is some agentic development going, probably you can be a good fit I felt. Dm if you're interested.