CSCareerQuestions

As in, either at an early age or early in their career.
Because I'm 26 with about 3-4 years of experience (maybe 5 if I count my apprenticeship), and my company keeps reiterating how they promote based on skill and knowledge, and not based on age. I know that I fit the soft skill requirements for senior dev on the internal checklist. And I know that I could absolutely handle the 6-week project that potential Seniors are asked to do, because all of my experience is extremely specialized into the exact current field and position I work at.

So I'm playing with the idea of asking to become a senior next year, because I plan on leaving the company and the title would look good on my resume.

Does anyone around here have experience with doing something like that?

So I'm looking for an area of computers to do. I have always had an interests in networking, security, and servers so hopefully I get to deal with this stuff.

I'm also interested in something with good work life balance and nothing too stressful. Having good mobility would be great so I can travel the world.

Any ideas?

To preface, I know this is a community is for computer science careers, but I could really use your help here Lemmy! There isn't an active IT career questions community.

Background: I believe I'm making the highest for my department. I'm known as the go-to person for troubleshooting T1 and T2 issues and assist other IT technical teams when needed. Additionally, I have experience in programming and basic networking. It's hell here... I'm growing more and more insane day by day.

Living: The expenses are very high in my area VHCOL, but I'm a position where I don't rent and don't have to drive since I work remotely, which both save a ton of money. Money isn't a problem, given my current position, but it will be impactful in terms of future savings, retirement, and relationships if I had to spend on driving and eating out. Yes, I know I can make food and bring it to work.

Intentions: I wanted to transition as on-site IT Technician to gain the experience with working hands-on as opposed to working remotely. With this experience, I'm thinking this would help me a bit when trying to transition onto a Systems Admin/Engineering role in the future.

Me Venting: I know I shouldn't compare, but man I've seen so many folks who come work at helpdesk move onto System Admin roles when they have no idea how to use Active Directory or even know how to do basic network troubleshooting. Will those companies be okay?

Situation: I've got an offer at my current organization for on-site IT Technician but it would come with a pay cut and of course I would be spending more money and time out of my day driving. I definitely want the experience because I think it will further my growth, but I'm being told by everyone to not accept and I should never take a pay cut.

My Thoughts: Yes, I can stay working remotely, gather a billion IT certs, build some home labs at home, but will certs really get me to where I want to go? Wouldn't managers just hear that I don't have IT enterprise experience and shove me off for the next guy who has experience at an MSP? I'm a bit lost here. I am grateful for any advice you have to offer. Thank you

I have been laid off from my job for a couple of months now. (CS degree/ 4 years experience)

Please don’t just tell me to stick with iOS dev because I just cannot see myself doing it anymore. I literally only sticked with iOS dev because I thought that apps were going to be the future and that all companies needed apps, but it was the other way around, all companies need backend. Looking back a lot of my career decisions were driven by ignorance and Fomo

We view internships as a vital pipeline for talent and a source of new energy and ideas. The number of our intern goal, a nod to our 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver, is intentional. It represents our deep technical roots and our focus on building foundational infrastructure for the Internet. Now, we stand at the cusp of a new technological revolution: the age of AI.

I'm trying to join some... not entirely sure what they're called. Like those projects where a group of people all work on a single community project. I hear discord is a good place for stuff like that. And beginner hackathons too. Any advice would be super helpful. Edit: Open Source Projects is what I meant 😅

I know the market is ass rn, I've been looking for a job since I graduated in November of last year with no luck. Every application I get a response like "you are great, your skills are great, you meet every criteria but we found someone better". I recently decided to start replying to emails to ask why I wasn't picked (I reply only to emails that aren't from no-reply or if the say I can ask for feedback). So far I have not even received one reply. Am I wasting my time??? I feel like it's just from automated systems and they don't even look at it. Is everything literally a ghost job?? If you have ever asked for feedback have you gotten anything useful from it?

I got rejected a gazillion times in my career and I still get rejected left and right.

However the moment I express my lack of interest advanced in the position, I get bombarded by emails and requests for meeting..

This happened to me twice:

1. A few years ago. I passed all the stages, the position included relocation, I missed one thing in my negotiation: the taxes in the new place are really high. I emailed them explaining my position, not interested anymore because of taxes.. Then I start getting requests to set up meetings, and attempt to get me to explain to answer a long list of questions.. I tried to be nice and helpful but it seems people lost their temper already (started getting "unprofessional" emails)

2. More recently, I passed the first few stages, the last stage seemed too frustrating and slow so I gave up. All of the sudden, things changed again and everyone is trying to understand more in detail...

Why are we expected to eat rejections and not take it personally but they can't take their own advice?

My current job is ok but it's not exaclty wwhat I want to do long term. I'm not good at programming, but I do want to work on it. In the mean time I'd like to go into cybersecurity, however I'm not sure where to start and if it would be a waste of my bachelros in C.S.

Improving work-life balance

My situation is: I've started working for the current employer in 2022 and they pay more than decent money. I was moved to a new project at the end of 2024, it combines every negative stereotype of an inefficient government/corporate system under the sun that just barely ships and I disliked it from the start. The change happened unexpectedly and coincided with exhausting events in my personal life. I really feel worn down. At the same time there's current market situation combined with my skill gaps. Many years of my Java career was in strange and niche stuff, only recently I've moved to web development with some limited frontend experience. There's only so much I can learn in the space of microservices, Kubernetes etc. on my own, but, again, poor work-life balance leaves me with little time and energy for self-development. The decent pay is also a strong factor as I plan to build a house. Chicken and egg kind of problem

Summary: landed in a bad project -> it contributes to poor work-life balance -> limited time and energy for learning stuff to find a better project.

I've came up with an idea to propose reducing my hours to work 4-day weeks and asked for a rise at the same time. both were rejected due to the business arrangement with the client, as I expected. They really don't want me to leave, which I know as it takes 2-3 months of paperwork to even join the project and then about 6 months to reach some kind of productive level. At the same they don't have much to offer me but encouragement to stay and some good words.

I never even hinted at wanting to change a job, but I am actively applying. At this time I have one pending application waiting to schedule a technical interview. I don't rate my chances to be accepted too high, but if that happened I would feel bad about leaving after this discussion.

Summary:

• if I stay:
  • I keep the decent pay
  • decent job security, replacing anyone here is costly and there are literally years of work already contracted
  • still have to figure out work-life balance
  • still lagging behind in skills
• if I leave:
  • possibly only for lower pay, but my initial offer was actually higher
  • almost guaranteed lower job security
  • unpredictable working conditions and work-life balance
  • typical transition stress no matter what happens
  • opportunity to reduce the skill gap
  • just plain guilt in relation to the people at my current project, I'm not a cold-hearted businessman

I'll be thankful for any advice or ideas to improve my situation at the lowest cost.

I got laid off in March as a software engineer 2 and since then I've hardly applied to many jobs, of the few I've applied to I got a handful of interviews which I couldn't even clear the first round of Leetcode test. I can barely solve 1 or 2 LC questions a day, and I've tried to read system design for a while but can't find any interest in it. Even if I solve the interview questions we'll I've been rejected, everything feels so pointless. I just want to play video games and watch movies till these darks days pass and there's another boon in tech hiring. But with AI it feels like many jobs won't ever come back. Should I consider changing careers or moving to another country. I don't think I have any real passion or talent for programming, but it's the only skill I have right now. I don't know what level of panic I should be feeling right now. I don't have any close friends or supportive family to talk to about any of this.

I'm curious if it's just me or not. I'm an SE with 10+ years of experience, mostly in full-stack with a wide variety of languages and stacks, and my last title was at the "staff" level. I'm almost 40 years old; not sure if age discrimination is much of a thing (my interviewers have been mostly around my age or younger). I've been looking for a job for months. I've been applying to just about every job posting where my skills match on LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter (mostly just the Easy Apply option lately, so I can send more applications out). I've even been applying to positions that just require 2+ years of experience; I'd take any job (except defense or big tech). I've probably sent something like 400 applications out at this point. I've gotten a few interviews, and think I did OK, but I guess not good enough since I was still rejected. Is this normal?

The last time I was looking for a job (2021), I only sent 20 applications out, and landed a job on my first interview. I also tried Upwork for a couple weeks, but wasn't able to land any contracts. I think everyone there is either looking for very cheap devs in the developing world or rockstars with tons of contracting experience and large portfolios.

I'm a 25 yo British guy. I landed my first job as a dev in 2022 for a consultancy with a 1 year international placement, it was good but a few months after returning, the whole cohort was laid off due to corporate politics between the offices in the two countries. After 7 months of searching, I got my second job working for a small pensions fintech startup, it was fine but I didn't find it all that fulfilling. After 9 months of working there, the CEO pulled me into a meeting and said they'd made a mistake hiring me and they needed a more senior developer who could help steer the company from a business perspective too, so I was once again laid off.

That was in January, since then I've had 2 interviews, both of which have gone nowhere. The vibe of every position that's matched my CV has basically been the same sort of work- pretty mundane web dev roles and I can see myself being pulled into a cycle of mundane work then being laid off. I've wanted to be a developer for as long as I can remember, I started writing code when I was 12, studied CS throughout school so I could go to uni and do it for my degree - but now, I feel so disillusioned with the whole industry, where do I go from here? Does it get better? How do I find a job that actually feels fulfilling?

Sorry for the ramble, it's 4am and I just happened to stumble across this community while scrolling. Thought it might be worth an ask.

TLDR; been laid off twice in about 2 and a half years, feeling pretty disillusioned with everything, where do I go from here?

I know this seems like a very obvious question. But I mean with regards to job searches. Even internships seem to require a variety of skills these days. I'm interested in both web development and just recently have considered data analysis. Should I work on tutorials and personal projects for a single skill or framework at a time? Or make small projects across a wide variety of things so I can put those skills on my resume?

Hi, I recently got laid off from my current role, and I don't have a lot of time left to find another job. Find jobs that fit my work experience and applying to them takes a lot of time away from prepping for interviews. So I was thinking of hiring some 3rd party company that applies for jobs on your behalf based on the criteria you provide them. However, I am not familiar with these types of company and don't know which ones are legit and which are just taking your money and wasting it and giving back nothing in return. If anyone knows of a company that they think is legit and doesn't cost way too much, that would be helpful. I've read about some that also customize your resume to fit the role before applying, although I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. I live in the US and would prefer US based company but if there's a legit non US company, I am open to looking into them as well.

Does being in Hawaii automatically disqualify me from 95% of tech jobs?

Has anyone successfully found a job using LinkedIn's 'Easy Apply' options?

applied internally to a role thatd be a nice pay pump. its a data role with a strong emphasis on python and sql skills. i studied my ass off on data concepts anticipating questions like "how would you start solving xyz problem" or "how would you find business insights on zyx" and the first question is "whats the difference between a dict and a list in python?" or hell, even a leetcode-like question. i like to think im decent at USING python and sql, but not having used them in a current role in ~2 years, these google-search-esque questions threw me off guard. i fumbled making up answers for a few but some i straight up had to say i have no fkn clue. so todays been a bit of a demeaning experience! has anyone else ever had an interview where they asked questions like that?

edit: thanks to yall for being supportive, this is the kindest comment section ive had. im still recovering from the embarrassment of these guys thinking I probably lied about having these skills lol. part of my difficulty is that ive been on a rotation program at work and have spent almost the last year on a cyber analyst position and it didnt hit me how much I forgot to code! so now I'm applying to some cyber roles too, wish me luck!!

Hello all! I've been a Software Developer for almost 15 years now, and after staying at my last few companies for only 2 years each, I'm starting to think about the possibility of becoming a freelancer/contractor. I'm looking for more flexibility in my work and getting out of parts of the corporate culture that I have grown to dislike.

I'm in a good place financially, and so I'm looking to see if it's a possibility. I speak English and German fluently, and have primarily a background in webservice and FE development, though I can also do quite a bit of Rust and have dabbled in Android apps a bit. I also have some experience with medical software. I think my biggest issues right now are business model development / pricing and finding customers.

Does anyone know of any good resources? I find quite a bit online, but a lot seems geared towards being self-employed generally, and not to the software industry itself. I'd be looking for either good websites or books, or general starting points for research.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice!

I have been a software engineer of off highway farm equipment for most of my life. I have like 15 years of it. I have just lost the ability to care about it anymore.

I have explored all the things that interest me and now it seems like everything is just turning the crank to completion. A very boring/slow turning with deadline pressure. I am doing less development and more code reviews because I have become a more senor developer.

My position in the company is pretty good and I could probably ride it out until I die or the company picks up on the fact that my output has dropped due to the lack of caring. But that eats at my soul and it isn't fair to my coworkers.

If money wasn't an issue, I would jump to game development but I hear that doesn't pay well or treat their employees well either. I suppose I could start my own company...

I have a wife and we plan to have one kid if that is possible for us.

Burnout is a possibility, but if that is what this is, I am not sure what to do about it.

So here is what I think my options are. I am open to other suggestions:

1. Stay where I am.
2. Pivot hard to management where I am.
3. Try to find a new job within Embedded Systems
4. Try to do Game Development.
5. Drop everything, become a philosopher like Diogenes of Sinope

Thanks for your consideration.

So I'm getting my associates this semester, technically under compsci. Can't really do much with an associates though, and I need a job in the mean time, so I've been studying CompTIA certs (A+, NET+, and soon I'll be taking a course for Sec+).

Except, I don't really know where to go from there. Like, sure I get my associates, then these certificates, and start my bachelor's, except I'm lost in the sauce about anything after that. If I'm honest, I don't even really know what I could do or what options are available to me with a CS degree. My relevant skills so far are basically none; I mean I grew up around computers and I've installed Linux mint on my daily laptop, but it's not like I know how to do much other than surface level or just above surface level stuff. I don't even really know how to code.

I guess, I'm just kinda lost. I don't really know what to do and I'd like some answers but don't even know where to start looking for them. Does anyone have any advice?

I know this is a really vague question, I'm hoping for some open discussion

For some background, I currently have 2.5 years of professional work experience, and I work for a large defense contractor doing devops.

My approach to ethicality so far was basically, I need to start somewhere before I can be picky. I got hired at a large defense contractor out of college, and now that I've hit the 2 year mark for work experience, I have some flexibility in my next job when I decide to do that.

If money wasn't a problem, I'd love to use my degree to do good for the world, or at least work for an industry I don't think is evil. And truthfully, even the lower end of CS jobs still pay better than the higher end of many other degrees.

But right now I'm looking at job offers, and it seems like if I move to a tech, medical, or financial company, I could likely see a salary increase of 30-50%, which would be huge for me as I'm young and have debts to pay off (though much less than others, I'm pretty privileged).

At the same time, if I took a tech job working for my city, I found a position that I am perfectly qualified for but it's a 10% cut from my current salary which I already believe to be a bit too low.

Just curious to see how everyone else has made these decisions. It's very tempting to follow the money and take the highest paying job, but I'd love to work somewhere I'm genuinely proud of.

Im kinda broke and I want to make some money but just can't find any ways. I live in a remote area so there are no jobs. I don't mean making thousands of dollars but a few just to buy a new Cod or some Nikes. I ain't doing any gay shit or sending my pictures!

Have deep experience in 3 different job fields and, in 2 years, learn 5 languages.