career-advice

[fringe sphinx]

Yup, I get it. Uni & Exams are stressful. Set aside some time to: Talk to profs. Apply to internships. Talk to alumni.

[solid parcel]

Yes they are... My dissertation is kicking my ass at the moment. Managed to get a PoC together yesterday though, and the theory is sound!

[wooden granite]

If you are going to give GATE only, then prepare for that first and give it. Then on the side, look for internships. GATE is a hard test. Don't take it lightly

[crisp shoal]

What does everyone think about the market for web development in the future? Will it get harder to get a job?

[peak halo]

I think right now we're at a local minimum for ease of getting a developer job, and that at some point it will start getting easier again.

but it might be a few years. part of the solution will probably be for CS enrollment to go down, so that supply of CS juniors "catches down" with demand.

[stark tundra]

How much Python do I need to learn if I’m majoring in artificial intelligence and machine learning? I’ve heard Python is widely used in ML.

[modest bluff]

Start by learning python basics , then learn ml and ai using python

You can t go directly to ai and ml if you don t even know basics like variables , loops…etc

[peak halo]

you'll be using python probably exclusively, but that's not the hard part.

[spring ivy]

yeah but the only interview i have gotten is from a big tech firm.
The other job offer i got was paying me minimum wage and had very little job security + they fired me for not wanting to work illegally without CPT

i know people in jane street and big tech (targetting quant firms) who would disagree

apparently back in the day doing 150-300 or so problems well + studying up greenbook + redbook and a few more mathy things was sufficient for top quant SWE roles

Though despite doing well on OA, I got rejected from citadel, so its likely that due to AI they are looking at more indicators, previous top FAANG+/quant companies, referrals, top universities, GPA, etc. (ofc GPA/ top university likely matters less but i know people from harvard who did get virtual interview with citadel)
(tbf most companies are doing this cuz OA / virtual interviews cant be trusted anymore with AI, hence why google also moved to on site)

a bunch of my friends got internships at amazon by cheating through the OA and virtual interview, and they had no on sites, so they worked in the internship and all of them got a return offer

[fringe sphinx]

Just keep up the work... and keep applying, and networking, while chasing the dream

[crisp shoal]

Really? But i heard that many people are still looking for a job, and that many are getting into comp sci in college to get a job in this field. I hope it does ease though, since i plan on it being my second profession if Cloud Engineering doesn't work out.

[peak halo]

Right, it's very difficult to get a job right now. So one would expect that fewer people will enroll in CS for a while, since there are fewer jobs available

[worthy crag]

Cracked dev ❌
Crack dev ✅
https://youtu.be/FlROG-fqLR8?si=SsBD3KP9f5VN6WHU

[smoky quest]

yeah, we are remote and I have rejected many people trying to cheat, from junior to super super senior

[spring ivy]

yeah lol

[spring ivy]

clearly most still slip through

i saw this one tech comedy show.. where a guy says his dream is to go a beach in bali, and the comedian is like "you know u could just do that today", and the guy says "but my company doesn't give enough PTO" and the comedian says "you probably dont need too much money for bali, the conversion rate is pretty high, u could likely just go there and live off of all the money u have earned", and the guy keeps saying "oh but i dont get enough leaves" and stuff and it made me realise.. the retirement dream of retiring on a beach somewhere is likely fairly easy and we can do it soon..

[smoky quest]

That's a bold statement

and a meaningless discussion

[smoky quest]

Sure, people can sometimes develop tunnel vision.

But jumping to the conclusion it's fairly easy from a comedy show that had a made up situation is simplistic and very naive.
It's a lot whole messier in real life

[fringe sphinx]

I had a coworker who met a girl, moved to the south of France and kept working for us.... man, he lived the dream

[next plover]

Not where I work

[jagged gust]

Hi, I'm confused what to do currently or what to learn. Bit confused about career goals too. I have knowledge about Python, frameworks including django, flask and fast api, reactjs, nextjs, basic server deployment including use of serverless and ubuntu vps using nginx or apache2. Was learning ros and gazebo a bit.

My background is not a Computer Science one so, I self learn everything due to financial constraints also.

Have solo developed 2 - 3 ecommerce systems from scratch, 1 cms system and some basic websites, and a social media platform.

Confused what to do next.

Would love to get some guidance and mentorship

I get anxious sometimes and end up working and studying for 12 - 16 hrs a day then I feel hopeless sometimes what to do and how to progress.

[lament hearth]

We'll basically I've been coding since 9TH GRADE

I have worked with LANGCHAIN on a small level created CHROME EXTENSION in js but I never learned any stack now I'm confused what to choose as I want to build ai powered web apps or wrappers yk just some sprinkle RAG to it

[hidden shard]

You have? how old are you know? Just curious, because I started after 9th grade just before my 10th year started

[lament hearth]

Just turned 18

[hidden shard]

oh so not that long

[lament hearth]

Like I feel because I touched so much stuff that I couldn't go deep into one that was a mistake

[hidden shard]

I'm still truggling to settle with a language so i guess imma take your advice on staying consistent with one 😅, I do wanna ask, compard to your first year coding how good are you at python now?

[lament hearth]

Can I ask how old are you

[hidden shard]

turning 16 this year

[lament hearth]

Oh great bro

[lament hearth]

Pretty much solid did a lot of stuff like web scraping LANGCHAIN and data manipulation,cleaning pandas numpy

[fickle coyote]

hello

[fickle coyote]

me 2

[still moss]

hi everyone i need guidance

I want to get into data field (data engineering) but I doubt it can be replaced by AI

[peak halo]

Do you mean to say that you think data engineering can be replaced by ai?

[lament hearth]

bro you must be kidding.
Ai works on data there is a company that gets paid billion by just labeling data and segregating high quality training data for models.

[rugged flame]

What do you guys think about ai engineering as a career? Worth it?

[peak halo]

it requires about six years of university education, but it pays well.

note that software development where you just make API calls to existing AI services is not AI engineering.

[teal crystal]

Does anyone know where I can look for a Python related job(Jr. no experience in a company just a microdegree) preferably remote considering my whereabouts. Help is greatly appreciated.

[balmy mural]

LinkedIn, Indeed, other popular job boards from your country. Fully remote jobs are extremely competitive, and would normally still be targeted at people in the same country as the company

[teal crystal]

I've been through linkedin and indeed for a whole week its so dry. Or they require 5+ years of experience minimum.😢

[still moss]

Isnt etl elt processes are automated by AI ?

[still moss]

Good point

[scenic pulsar]

I've a question about a job offer where Python is one of the core languages required. It's about the salary. I don't mean to ask for numbers; only to understand if my thoughts and expectations are valid.
Can I do it here?

[near ocean]

Yes

[scenic pulsar]

ok

I saw this job offer description:
https://carberi.org/projects/junior-python-developer/2f7f5acb-c4f5-460a-a451-de5b0e5ae6cd
Salary is included from my understanding, but is it really the case? Assuming it is, do you think (based on the description) that it's above average, just enough for an entry-level position or even less than that?

In case the question is too vague, I'll talk a bit in numbers:
It says "$70000/year" on top. I know I won't be getting that much as a "newbie". Let's say $30000, resulting to $2500 if divided by twelve with a rough calculation and no details taken into account. Is that number realistic? What are the chances of it being less that... let's say $1500/month, if at all?

[peak halo]

70k sounds reasonable to me. why do you think they would lowball you to 30k, which is less than half?

[near ocean]

Its a junior position, why wouldnt you be getting 70k?

[peak halo]

I got two job offers when I was job hunting for junior positions in 2021. One of them was for 75k. (I took the other one, which was much better.)

keep in mind that this is a job listing. a job offer is when they're actually telling you "you can have this job"

[teal crystal]

damn 70k for a beginners job would be a dream come true 😂

[near ocean]

Juniors arent beginners

[teal crystal]

whats the difference

[peak halo]

one of the requirements is a bachelors degree in CS or similar, which is four years of studying relevant skills full-time.

[near ocean]

The difference is beginners are beginners and juniors probably have 3-5 years of schooling, school and personal projects and have done a leetcode or 200

[scenic pulsar]

70k sounds reasonable to me. why do you think they would lowball you to 30k, which is less than half?
Its a junior position, why wouldnt you be getting 70k?

Because I assume the high values aren't given as is and vary depending the experience and other factors. Plus I've never worked for a foreign country, with a foreign currency, so I don't know what's "reasonable" (European here btw).

depending the experience
Well you don't expect too much for an entry-level position I guess, but what if you have only a Bachelor's degree and almost no personal project to showcase your abilities?

[peak halo]

if you're located in Europe, and you don't have authorization to work for a US-based company, you can't get this job.

[teal crystal]

wish i knew the job market for programmers was so horrendous id never get into it 😭

[scenic pulsar]

Even if they talk about complete remote work? Once, I was asked to fill a W-8EN file or something when I applied to a non-European based job

[peak halo]

having this job is still considered "working in the US", and given the requirements, there's no way the employer can make a case that there isn't a US person available to do the job.

[scenic pulsar]

Then I think it's necessary to add that, they responded to my application about 12h ago and emailed me about taking a technical assessment, to see if we'll go further. Since my resume and personal details indicate that I an indeed a non-US citizen, why would they invite me to an assessment?

...although I noticed just now that they write "United States Remote" on top, next to the annual salary. Did I get excited for no reason? 🙁

[peak halo]

I would email them explaining your location and citizenship status, and ask under what mechanism they'd be able to hire you.

[scenic pulsar]

Alright, I'll see what I can do. Thanks!

Out of curiosity, I looked at some of the people who work there and a few of them live or graduated from European countries

[near ocean]

What does this mean?

If you're excited about Python and contributing to meaningful projects, apply today! (Word count: 512)
Are you sure its a real job?

[scenic pulsar]

I noticed it but didn't give it much attention. Now that you say it, though, I'm looking throughout the site for potential scam

[solid parcel]

I'm skeptical. They've been going since late 2022 yet their website looks awful, they're in the crypto space, and they seemingly have just over 100 users (121 to be precise). The vast majority of which seem very disengaged.

The entirety of their 'About' page is also just:

A simple funding system made with:

Python
Quart microframework
Postgres
Redis
We do not keep access logs or install tracking cookies.

Ah, actually that was specifically for their crowdfunding initiative, my mistake. Their actual website has a fair bit more substance

[scenic pulsar]

Another thing that worries me (if it wasn't already an obvious big red flag) is the following, after selecting to take the assessment

and it's not from Firo, the company that suppsoedly are willing to test me, but from carberi

[solid parcel]

Ha, yeah I would not be paying

[scenic pulsar]

@peak halo I guess I won't be emailing anyone. My worries were on spot with the rest of the members here. Pinging you in case you'd like to have a read

[peak halo]

yeah, if you have to pay for any part of the application process, that's a huge red flag that is on fire. sorry to hear.

[true harness]

"generate a short summary of this position and tell me the word count"

[scenic pulsar]

At least we got it early. Let's hope others don't fall for it

[peak halo]

the word count thing is a pretty sloppy mistake

[solid parcel]

Ahhhh, I reckon you're bang on, that's likely exactly what's going on there

[scenic pulsar]

I could excuse the word count if the... "organization" followed special rules and needed the information, despite it leaking. But the pay thing? I'm an idiot for not avoiding it on the spot but wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt
*Social network icons not working also indicate suspicious activity?
(going off-topic for the channel, my bad)

[solid parcel]

The salary itself is far from egregious. That's the one point I would not be getting caught up about. US salaries are generally much higher than in the EU, crypto companies skew much more toward remote than most others, and they often have a fair bit of VC funding behind them. It would be perfectly feasible for them to be paying $70,000 for a junior.

[odd spear]

should i join the military

[solid parcel]

Nobody will be able to give input without more context. You've gotta put some effort in...

[odd spear]

marines

[scenic pulsar]

😒

[solid parcel]

Jesus Christ 😂

I guess that was 20% more than you'd shared previously at least 🙃

[odd spear]

or navy

[near ocean]

.8ball should this person join the military

I think that means "give it a go and report back on your progress"

[solid parcel]

Given how the conversation so far is going, I reckon just a couple more crayons and he'll be fit for the marines

[true harness]

why do you want to

[odd spear]

cuz

[mortal wedge]

I think at this point I’ve had enough people impressed at my subject matter knowledge technical expertise that I shouldn’t take not hearing back on positions as an indictment of my subject matter knowledge and technical expertise, right? At that point it’s just an SNR problem.

[calm vigil]

Hello, I am in college for cybersec. Are there any aspects of Python I should learn?

[mortal wedge]

Python is useful for automating things like penetration testing, but honestly it’s not the best language for learning concepts or implementing cybersecurity stuff

[sleek dune]

Hey everyone is anyone running a open project?
Im a 17 year old trying to start my portfolio for my university CV
I have decent coding skills specially with Neural networks and patern recognition
And I am willing to learn any skill needed!

[spring ivy]

well as i said, most people cheated on their virtual interviews to get the amazon internship.. everyone thinks they are very good at catching this stuff.. but thats not really usually true
@next plover

[spring ivy]

ikr lol

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUi3TsCjmLF/?igsh=MzV4bWFzYTl2MDdx
most of the millennial/boomer advice boils down to this tbh

ouckahcs

2020 comp sci job market ahh advice

#computerscience #college #university #softwareengineer #computersciencemajor

Likes

389

Instagram

[mortal wedge]

I think it’s a combination of there genuinely being a lot of skilled people on the market and companies have no idea how to differentiate between applicants when many are bolstered by AI as well as not knowing how to handle the sheer volume of applicants

[solid parcel]

Turnover is also low. As a small indicative datapoint, the amount the average tenure has shot up at big tech the last few years is crazy. People are hanging on to the jobs they have!

[mortal wedge]

Yup. There’s a lot less postings out there regardless. People have gone from job hopping to job clinging

[summer sandal]

hi!, I´ll study system engineering, will I need to learn python?

[solid parcel]

It's a good one to know, though you'd want to supplement that with at least one systems language like Rust or Go.

[summer sandal]

i'll think abt it

and i'll study python also in order ti faining some experience

[smoky quest]

yeah, also to note the hiring pipeline for a faang is very different from other companies (including other startup/tech)

[ruby parrot]

does this channel works for interviews?

[peak halo]

Work in what sense?

[rapid holly]

There are more mediocres than competent ppl that's for sure

[upper mango]

shud i focus on python or C++ career pov?

im in an early stage, is it true if i start now ill have an adv?

[vast shoal]

If you don't know programming, using Python to learn programming fundamentals is more efficient than using C++. After you have solid programming fundamentals, picking up new languages is relatively quick and easy, so it's not really worth thinking too hard about "what language to focus on".

[lapis pier]

hey, everyone so i am an complete beginner and i wanna learn web scrapping what basics i would need to learn in order to web scrap

[hushed crane]

Guys I need serious advice on working part time to survive while job hunting at the same time.

Is it feasible and realistic to apply and learn and work at the same time?

[solid parcel]

100% feasible, albeit juggling work, study and applications would be a lot.The easiest time to land a new job is when you're already in one.

[hushed crane]

Yeah my dad got a job yesterday after just 1 interview (while still working on his current company). And I've been searching for 5 months and 0 offers.

[solid parcel]

Is it tech roles you're looking for? What's your background like? It's a rough time to be a junior

[hushed crane]

Engineering with 20 plus years lol

[solid parcel]

Ay, certainly not a junior, then 😁

[hushed crane]

I didnt read it correctly Yeah Km a jeniojr

[hushed crane]

I'm a new grad with 1 internship and personal projects and published papers, still no offer 😭

I'm applying for AI engineer FKA Python Backend and react native because my internship was mobile dev, and I've been building mobile apps mostly

[solid parcel]

By all means share your CV if you'd like any feedback on it. Are you landing interviews but not an offer, or struggling to land even a first round?

[hushed crane]

I got five interview offers for Python BE and I could only do 2 interviews due to circumtances

So my problem is... I could not pass interviews, my farthest was 3rd round (for python BE)

[solid parcel]

How many applications did you send out to land those 5 offers? Just trying to gauge where the likely weak spot is

[hushed crane]

Like 100ish

[solid parcel]

Cool, that conversion rate from applications to interviews is about where I'd expect for a junior dev in the current market. Actually a touch above... Which implies your CV is likely passable (though again by all means, share it if you'd like feedback).

It's heartening you've been able to progress to further interview rounds even if you haven't landed a role yet. Is there something in particular you think is holding you back? From what you've shared so far, frankly I think it might just be a matter of it being a numbers game at the moment, rather than there being any major issues with your approach or interview technique.

[hushed crane]

I passed all of the technical rounds (that I did) and failed on the final interview with leads rounds

I'm leaning towards either: there were better candidates or I'm not a fit due to my communication problem or both.

But they always say "we decided to go with other candidate"

[solid parcel]

What do you mean by 'my communication problem'? Is there something in particular you struggle with?

[hushed crane]

Medically diagnosed ASD

[steady violet]

5/100 is a really good ratio btw

Like that’s way better than most people I know

[hushed crane]

Yeah, I got my first interview before I graduated. But regardless I didn't get it 😂

[solid parcel]

You're in good company, a huge proportion of techies are neurodiverse.

Interviewing is a skill that can be learned like any other. Soft skills are something I often see engineers, and particularly juniors, underinvest in. If you're finding that's where you're falling short, it may be worth putting some time into developing that rather than focusing solely on the technical side (particularly given it sounds like you've got a good grasp on that already).

As a rule of thumb, I'd recommend thinking about the STAR technique when you're answering questions during interviews. It's also worth trying to map your answer back to the skills requested in the job spec as well as the company's values (particularly for the last round, which is often about culture fit). I also make a point of researching on sites like Glassdoor to get a sense of the questions the company most often asks, so I can be better prepared.

Plus, it's more than okay to pause to think for a moment prior to responding. I often take time to get my thoughts together and, depending on the question, might even make a few notes.

[steady violet]

If they’re online interviews I’d suggest recording them and watching them back to see if it’s your communication

[hushed crane]

I've read about the STAR technique from the harvard career website

[steady violet]

My communication isn’t the best either, I have my first in person interview this week too so I feel you

[hushed crane]

On my 2nd 1st round interview the interviewer said dont be nervous so I would imagine I was shrieking

[solid parcel]

It ranges from useful to outright essential - Amazon actually send out a pre-interview pack containing info on their leadership principles and the STAR technique, and explicitly expect you to frame your answers via those frameworks.

Looking back at your messages in this discord, you neglected to mention that the org you got to the final round with was a FAANG company, too! You'll be fine, bud

[hushed crane]

Yeah my last company that I applied to did that as well.

But looking at my classmates from uni, most of them are still not working full time as SWE or not working in CS related jobs..

Even the top of the class guys as well. Its looking grim up in here

[hushed crane]

Worst case scenario I'd drive uber which is fine by me tbh

[hushed crane]

It was a fluke I got interview there

[solid parcel]

Yeah, the market is rough. Getting a job ultimately boils down to get good, be visible, get a bit lucky

[solid parcel]

If you got through to the final round, that didn't happen by fluke.

[hushed crane]

I would like to think that they went with a candidate that are already residing in that area rather than spending relocation money on me. But yeah I will be fine regardless.

[solid parcel]

It's extremely common even for great candidates to take 2-3 attempts to break into FAANG. Progressing through the interview process with them at all is massively positive.

[steady violet]

Meh I don’t think the interviewer would care since it’s not their money

Could be a number of reasons tho, and they definitely won’t tell you why

[hushed crane]

They had to apply for my working visa which is extra hussle and extra work

[steady violet]

Oh that part yeah

[hearty island]

i’m wondering if i should even do a JD at this rate

i feel like i can make more money and save hella by just getting good at sql and adding a compliance cert or two on the resume

[solid parcel]

What's a JD in this context? Something diploma?

[hearty island]

juris doctorate - law school for 3 years

[nimble quartz]

Im new to python. I have watched some tutorials for a week now. I want to build something (very simple ofc) but i have no idea of what to build. Anyone got some tasks or ideas? I mainly want to spend a day or two. However more is totaly alrigth.

[turbid bobcat]

build a supermarket receipt reader, u give it an image of the receipt, and it.writes it into google sheets

instantly useful stuff

[nimble quartz]

Thanks. Only one question. I have just been doing python in onecomplier. Do i need to download something? Like how can i show a reciept?

[smoky quest]

That's something usually checked at the beginning so no one wastes time. So it's kinda weird to go through the interview to figure that out at the end.

[turbid bobcat]

ya u gotta download python, probly good to get some good learning resources, or asking around, or asking an AI or somethin

half the job is figuring out how to do things, so might as well get used to it now

[nimble quartz]

Alr tysm 🙂 Just search for a tutorial on how to download python ig 🙂

[mortal wedge]

Do you sometimes find yourself rambling on the deeply technical topics you have expertise in? It’s worth trying to see if you have obvious tells and unfortunately I have been given what I think is accurate advice in that we have to mask certain things.

[onyx blaze]

this literally just happened to me days ago

[mortal wedge]

I have to stop myself when I catch myself doing it, it's easy for me to fall into.

[onyx blaze]

I just wish I knew what their red flags are

[mortal wedge]

It's very unfortunate, but until you get to someone with deep technical expertise/subject matter expertise (and sometimes even with them) interviews in this current market are largely vibe-based. Which tends to weed out the neurodivergent.

[onyx blaze]

I don't think I'm neurodivergent

[mortal wedge]

I've tried to practice giving high level overviews of topics only and then offering to go deeper if they'd like, instead of immediately jumping it

Well, even if not neurodivergent, rambling can deefinitely cost points

[smoky quest]

At senior level, being able to clearly communicate ideas is important

[mortal wedge]

Well, while true, it does extend a bit beyond that. You still need to gauge the technical proficiency of your audience and deliver the info in a way that is digestible at that level without over/under shooting.

[smoky quest]

Rambling would be a sign the speaker does not have a clear idea of what is relevant or not and in what order it should be presented

[mortal wedge]

That's fair

[smoky quest]

Indeed. Being technically great is awesome, but other skills like communication and leadership will also become quite important as someone moves up the ladder

[mortal wedge]

For me I definitely get over-excited when I get the chance to geek out with someone of a similar level of technical competence/expertise. But you definitely have to know when that is or isn't appropriate.

[smoky quest]

Growing in seniority also means being able to tackle more and more ambiguous problems.
If someone is unable to organize their thoughts, prioritize what matters and communicate it to others, it means they will need baby sitting and won't be able to climb the ladder further

[smoky quest]

One way to do that is to give a taste of it and then checking in with the interviewer if they want to go deeper into it

[onyx blaze]

yeah I think I fell into that trap too

[mortal wedge]

Yeah, that's the model I try to force myself into. High level overview, offer a deeper dive if interested. Turned what was supposed to be a 15 minute convo into a 90 minute convo with someone that led to an interview with the CEO because he wanted to deep dive as well

But it's still something I'm trying to reinforce/adapt/learn.

(It's easy for me to do the "If I know it, of course everyone else knows it, and I bet they find it as interesting as I do!" paradigm)

[mystic whale]

In an interview, would you say it's more crucial to address the topic requested by the recruiter or to try to express as effectively as possible how you possess the necessary skills to solve the company's problems? For example, highlighting weaknesses in the company's systems and how you can contribute to solving them.

[hushed crane]

I can mask it very well, I got diagnosed at 22 soo I know how to act "normal". About the rambling, I don't think I went too far into the topics

[solid parcel]

100% on the ambiguity point. I find myself doing less and less deeply technical work, and spending more time finding the right people to talk to, working out what work needs done Vs what we can leave, and breaking down requirements so that more junior engineers can tackle implementation.

[solid parcel]

100% to answer the question asked by the interviewer. You can be thoughtful about how you present it and may in some cases be able to relate it to the org and their issues and/or values, but make sure you don't get so fixated on trying to sell yourself that you don't actually get at the crux of what the interviewer is asking.

[mystic whale]

All right, because these questions are also pre-selected to find the type of candidate they want, i understand, thanks.

[solid parcel]

Right, exactly. I'd suggest that a better approach to your original question would be thinking 'Given what I know about the position, what are the things the interviewer is most looking for in asking this?'

So as an example, if I were to ask an interviewee about a time they managed a major incident, if they start talking about diving into metrics and logs, while that's a reasonable approach, it would flag them to me as a more junior or inexperienced engineer.

By comparison, if a candidate were to say they'd initially look to identify impact, blast radius and risk of contagion, to pull in another colleague to head up comms while they take the lead on the investigation, and then to check recent changes, that would flag them as an engineer with a much more mature understanding of incident management.

It's worth taking a couple of moments to compose yourself and think through your answers before responding, else you can end up skipping over articulating things (perhaps because they seem blindly obvious!) and make yourself look less capable than you really are.

[mystic whale]

Yes, I realize that a large part of our field boils down to effective communication. Even as a beginner, it's clear that programming itself only represents 40% of the work; the rest consists of demonstrating how to handle problems in a way that the recruiter and your colleagues understand, to optimize workflow.

[solid parcel]

Honestly, 40% is an overestimate 😁 Latest data I've seen puts the figure at 10-20% (though yes, it tends to be higher the more junior the role)

[mystic whale]

Wow, I set the value higher because it reflects my perspective on the studies I still have ahead of me. Some people make it seem simple, while others overcomplicate it. I think I need to focus on the people who make the code seem simple, haha.

[solid parcel]

The best way to grow imo is to build an awareness of the why behind the code. Understanding the business case, how a team measures the value they're delivering, what the key metrics to move are... If you can build an understanding of how tech and business work together, and particularly if you can learn to communicate with people on both sides of the fence, that's a massive boon to a career.

It will also help you reason through problems more easily. E.g. in my incident management scenario, if you understand that user experience is the key value driver, it naturally follows that minimising the impact they're experiencing takes precedence over diving into root cause analysis.

[mystic whale]

Exactly, it's a way to buy time to solve the problem, while the client receives something to use until the main issue is resolved.

Alongside my studies, I have been striving to develop my public speaking skills, learning how to behave both with a client and with a company.

[solid parcel]

I pinged you a connection request on LinkedIn 🙂

[mystic whale]

Ah, thank you. Regarding career choices, I'm always torn between helping with open-source projects or solving specific code problems that someone might have, building a "reputation" in the field, or pursuing a stable career, constantly changing jobs from junior to senior.

[solid parcel]

Just gotta sleep now (I'm in the UK 🙂 ), I'll respond to this on my way to work tomorrow!

[mystic whale]

No problem, good night.

[mortal wedge]

Trying to figure out what to do to make yourself seem "stronger" is always a challenge. Hard to decide between like let's say.... interviewing vs skills practicing vs topic learning vs reputation building. They can all help. AS to what to focus on at any given time who knows, lol

[mystic whale]

Certainly, I always try to choose a path and follow it without regrets. The problem is that, at some point, money becomes scarce and something needs to be done as quickly as possible, and then the doubt returns.

[mortal wedge]

Yeah. It's an optimization problem with unclear constraints, inconsistent rules, and major consequences.

I think the best strategy in these times is to try to just stay employed, anywhere. When the recession hopefully passes those who have had employment during the time will have an advantage as well as.... well, you still need to survive. Many people are doing the opposite of job hopping right now, they're "job hugging"

[mystic whale]

It's always better to have a stable income to support yourself and, if you have time left over, study to improve your skills and thus advance in your career.

[mortal wedge]

I'm honestly not entirely convinced that improving your skills advances your career, but that may just be the cynic in me. I think social skills/people skills, office politics navigation is far more likely to lead to career success.

But this is also coming from someone who has strong technical expertise and has suffered in high office politics situations, so take that with a grain of salt

It's easy to focus on/complain about things where you are weak or do not have and it's easier to take things you do have for granted.

[turbid bobcat]

you're being way too humble

social skills are 100% important so we can work as a team right, but office politics? nah. imo navigating such things is not a skill that should be expected from us

[smoky quest]

it is expected as part of leadership if you want to have some impact beyond your team

[turbid bobcat]

I know it's inevitable and it scales with company size. is y I only do small companies now.

[smoky quest]

yeah, it's not for everyone and there are good and bad politics

[turbid bobcat]

I know what's real, and what's real is the cool stuff we get to sell to ppl. ultimately, that's what I'm in for.

[vast shoal]

What's "good politics"?

[smoky quest]

Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources.
There are many positive aspects to it when it comes to making decisions in groups

[vast shoal]

I mean, we're talking office politics here

right?

[smoky quest]

How is it any different?
For instance, that means considering that different teams may have different constraints, be measured against different metrics and may try to accomplish different goals while trying to support the same customer base and company at large

[turbid bobcat]

yea office politics has negative connotations even tho technically speaking the definition of politics recursive made is correct

[smoky quest]

Office politics in the negative fashion will typically involve someone prioritizing their personal gain(s)

[vast shoal]

If we sit down and discuss what the pros and cons of a question are, like how to allocate resources or what strategy to use, and we come to a seemingly rational decision based on objective facts, I guess that is politics in some sense, but it's not usually what I think most people would characterize as "office politics".

Not colloquially anyway.

[smoky quest]

I would rather not base entire discussions based on what some short sighted and inexperienced people might think about the workplace

It's simpler to base the discussions based on agreed upon concepts we can align on

[turbid bobcat]

ya I truly despise that lol

[smoky quest]

If you want to restrict it to only the negative office politics, sure, we can do that. But let's be clear upfront and be aware we would be missing some other interesting discussions

[smoky quest]

yeah, it's not great.
My overall point though is we should not throw the baby with the bathwater

[vast shoal]

Yes, whenever I hear "office politics", it's typically in the sense of someone prioritizing their own gain, status, prestige or ego over what's objectively best from a business perspective.

[smoky quest]

ok, cool

[smoky quest]

Lots of conflicts can arise from people not considering other teams' point of view, even assuming everyone has best intent
And having more opportunities to discuss, meet, consider and conciliate multiple teams' point of views can be crucial to developing leadership skills

[turbid bobcat]

I'm not against any of that. I don't find it to be controversial.

[smoky quest]

still tough

many people with decades of experience break their teeth on that

I don't believe we disagree on any on it

[turbid bobcat]

dealing and interacting with people has been the hardest thing I've done throughout my entire life

and it's not like I'm bad at it, I can actually be surprisingly good. but it drains me very very very fast. so I can totally imagine that it's hard yea.

[smoky quest]

If you are interested in growing beyond senior, don't let it stop you though.
It's a skill like any other

though it's more difficult since there isn't a unit test you can run over and over or you can't inspect people's brains

[turbid bobcat]

I don't think I will ever hold a leadership position at a mid to large sized company

I know myself, and I know that it would just burn me out within a year

startup founding sounds more doable even tho technically it's more work as far as I understand

a senior/staff position with a mentoring aspect to it also sounds a lot more doable for someone like me

[smoky quest]

(not legally)

[smoky quest]

A startup would require leadership as soon as you grow beyond 5-8 people (ie. a team)
So that means that either you will grow with it, or would expect to give away the leadership role at that point

[turbid bobcat]

yea my plan would be to give away the leadership role at some point

[smoky quest]

respect!
Giving that away can be very difficult

[turbid bobcat]

I will see if and when I get there

but a path is forming ahead of me finally, life is a mess but I can see it in the horizon now lol

[smoky quest]

well hopefully it works out!

[turbid bobcat]

thanks, it was a nice chat

I suffer, but I also always "win", so I'll be alright

[solid parcel]

Imo the issue here may be that you're coming at things back to front. If you're not clear on what you want to do, I'd recommend starting from where you want to get to, and then working backwards from there. Think about what matters to you. For example, for me, I enjoy being able to see the impact from my work, I hugely value the flexibility of hybrid/remote, I don't want to travel a ton, I prefer the stability of larger organisations compared to startups, and I want to earn meaningfully above the average tech salary in the UK, so I can have the lifestyle I want.

Based on the above, I'd be open to either IC or management roles given I can make my impact felt in either, lean toward roles where there's a measurable impact to the work I do (which implies both an organisation that is mature enough to define and measure key metrics, and biases me toward roles like SRE where measurement and improvement is core), leans me heavily away from technical sales and FDE roles as these often involve heavy travel, biases me toward big tech and finance (though away from certain orgs like AWS and Jump Trading that are mandating RTO). Additionally, there are some companies where my values are so antithetical to their own that I would never want to work for them, regardless of how good a fit they were overall (e.g. Palantir).

There's much more to it than the above, but hopefully that helps you get a sense of how you might want to go about narrowing down the roles and organisations you want to target.

If you don't have enough of a sense to even start breaking things down like that, I'd honestly just relax a bit and open yourself up to discovery being part of the journey. You're early enough in your career that virtually anything you do will help you learn foundational skills. So follow the fun, explore what's exciting you right now, and you've got plenty of time to pivot from there if you find it's not quite what you hoped.

[regal ermine]

I think the underlying assumption here is that the unit of value is Python itself.
It is not.

Languages do not command salaries. Decisions do.

AI does not eliminate the need for engineers. It compresses the time required to produce code. That shifts the constraint elsewhere. The constraint becomes problem framing, system design, trade offs and integration across domains.

Organisations that pay well are not paying for syntax. They are paying for judgement under constraint.

Python will continue to exist. So will other languages. The form of the role changes. The engineer becomes responsible for directing tools rather than manually producing every line. Productivity increases. Decision quality becomes more visible.

That is not a threat to competent engineers. It is a filter.

I wrote something related to authority and decision ownership here if useful:

https://www.crankthecode.com/posts/lead3

From an organisational perspective, AI should be treated as a productivity aid rather than an authority. Accountability does not move to the model. It remains with the engineer and with leadership.

The question is not whether Python developers disappear. The question is whether developers remain at the level of implementation or move toward system ownership.

Compensation follows the latter.

[solid parcel]

Both this post and the website read like AI generated fluff....

So many words to say so little of substance.

[regal ermine]

This website so callled fluff you note, is my lived experience of over 28y IT experience distilled; if you don't get along with it that's cool by me - you were unlikely to be my audience

[smoky quest]

Languages do not command salaries. Decisions do.

I like that phrasing

[regal ermine]

Thanks - perhaps you were my target audience in the first place

[turbid bobcat]

Refreshing to see a sane take on this issue

[near ocean]

Im not quite sure what that take is

[regal ermine]

The take is that tools, including AI, make producing code cheaper. The scarce skill becomes deciding what to build, how it fits into the system and which trade offs to accept. That judgement is what companies pay for.

[near ocean]

Producing code is how juniors learn, it used to be a junior/mid level dev task
If you pass it on to an LLM what happens to these devs?

[fleet iris]

are they skills or just experience

[turbid bobcat]

I personally don't know. I think there are many complicated questions to answer. But the economic incentives are what they are and they almost always win.

[regal ermine]

Juniors still learn by doing but “doing” becomes end to end change work: read, debug, test, integrate, deploy, observe. AI helps with draft code, not with understanding or accountability.

Judgement is a skill. Experience is how you train it.

[turbid bobcat]

I let AI generate all my code, but I do have to read and approve it.

[regal ermine]

We're getting a little off topic here but notably, you should always verify/review your AI generated code, if you use AI tools; never trust it blindly.

[fleet iris]

hm what if there are errors, do you let it debug

[near ocean]

copilot, make no mistakes

[turbid bobcat]

debatable if it's off topic, our profession is undergoing a lot of transformation, worth discussing in career channel imo

[turbid bobcat]

I do. I only intervene if I have to. I rarely have to.

[near ocean]

It's not "doing" at that point
If i asked you to read a book and write a summary, would you feel you learned the same as you would reviewing someone else's generated summary?

[regal ermine]

The difference is whether you engage critically. If you just accept the generated output, you learn very little. If you review it, trace the logic, test edge cases, and correct mistakes, you are still exercising the underlying skill.

Writing from scratch is one way to learn. Iterating, debugging, and validating is another. The learning comes from understanding why something works or fails, not from typing every character.

[turbid bobcat]

you have a good point. I think that if you're in a learning phase, hands-on coding while looking at a book or whatever else, makes sense

but if you're on the job and having to produce shareholder value, you gonna fall behind even the low skilled ppl using AI

[near ocean]

Yes you would, which is why AI is the death of the junior dev kinda sorta

[regal ermine]

The danger is not AI. The danger is disengagement.

[turbid bobcat]

it's a big problem I agree

[near ocean]

The danger is literally AI, not everyone has 20 years experience and some of us might not even get to work for that long depending on how this AI boom goes

It's also not really our call to make, its business majors making these high level decisions usually

It wasnt a tech lead or an engineering manager who pushed for AI anywhere I know, its impressionable business nerds who can barely turn their laptops on

[regal ermine]

I get the concern. Every major tooling shift feels existential at first. Historically the ladder doesn’t disappear, it changes. The baseline rises.

The people who learn how systems work, how to verify output and how to think about trade offs will still be valuable.

[near ocean]

These people are quite by definition not juniors

[turbid bobcat]

I will not work anywhere that rejects agentic coding without a very good reason.

[near ocean]

And at some point you will run out of these experts if you get rid of the pipeline that makes them

[fleet iris]

then there will be mass hiring?

[turbid bobcat]

maybe im super wrong on this, totally possible. but I know what I see, and the assymetry that a good dev is able to create with these tools is staggering

[regal ermine]

I agree the pipeline matters. If companies remove the learning path entirely, they will feel it later in quality and resilience.

The question is not whether we need a pipeline. It’s how that pipeline evolves when tools change.

That's a larger conversation but it's solvable.

[solid parcel]

Conceptually, I agree with this. In practice, I feel the chance of someone engaging deeply with the code is much lesser if it's been generated. There are so many small architectural decisions you make when writing code yourself that get bypassed if you're prompting.

[near ocean]

The pipeline evolves by dying, companies are not going to hire juniors anymore, they'll just tack on more agents onto some overworked senior who will just take it

The market for devs will shrink, im just hoping i manage to survive by the time vibe code fixers become a thing on linkedin 💸💸💸

[fleet iris]

damn software engineering is really stressful..

[regal ermine]

That’s a fair risk. If people treat AI as a black box, they will bypass those small decisions and lose depth.

The responsibility shifts to process: requiring explanation, review and architectural reasoning rather than just accepting output.

[regal ermine]

If companies stop investing in juniors entirely, they will concentrate knowledge in a shrinking senior layer. That reduces resilience and increases long term risk.

Historically, organisations optimise short term and then correct when fragility shows up.

[regal ermine]

That is likely caused by poor systems organisational design; it is not your fault you feel that way.

[solid parcel]

I honestly think it's odds on that we end up with more devs than now. The idea that having less engineers makes sense only really tracks if we assume we are currently extracting as much, or as close to as much value from software engineering as we can. If a) this is the case and b) LLMs make engineers more productive then yes, it follows that we could expect a decline in the number of software engineers.

If we are not at a ceiling in terms of value, and if LLMs truly can allow organisations to yield a higher return on their investment into engineering personnel, would it not follow that it makes sense to increase investment and hiring, in order to scale that return?

[mystic whale]

I agree with everything. Aligning personal goals with work goals is ideal for a promising future, and I admit that I still don't know what I want to do with my code. I have to think about how I can do something that improves people's lives as a whole.

Since I started in this field a year ago, I've been aiming to spend some time moving up the career ladder and, in the future, setting up a company so that I can have better financial stability and spend more time with my family (I'm not saying that setting up a company is easy, lol, but I believe that with good management, it can give me more freedom than a job), which is why I never imagined a specific job, and as you said, I'm still new to the field to have this vision of an ideal job.

And as someone also mentioned here in the chat, instead of focusing on code, it's better to find something I want to do, and only then involve programming in it.

[turbid bobcat]

if u look at the figures the trend looks clear to me. big tech has growing revenue with flattening headcount

and also the confidence they are placing on this. even stock market investors are nervous about the cappex they are putting on AI

[solid parcel]

We're right at the start of this, and given the data up till now is far from conclusive when it comes to LLMs and productivity gains, I would hesitate to attribute the changes in workforce to them.

[turbid bobcat]

I've heard this story, but the evidence just keeps growing

[icy pagoda]

the story of overhiring and cutting down with the excuse of AI? i think it still holds

[fleet iris]

when technology improves i expect to have more job opportunities..
but its the reverse now 😭

[turbid bobcat]

when did they overhire, 5 years ago during covid ?

[icy pagoda]

yep

[turbid bobcat]

so they are freezing hiring because of overhiring half a decade ago

[icy pagoda]

when the productivity of every employee increases, companies don't just cut down on employees and keep the total amount of work the same. their best action is often to tackle more problems

[turbid bobcat]

either that or junior level tasks got automated ?

[fleet iris]

in 10 years they will find a system where they can transplant senior devs experience into a AI machine..

[turbid bobcat]

idk I feel like this is a weak argument. covid is long gone. there's other factors like high interest rates and more automation of knowledge work

[solid parcel]

That's far from the only reason. They're also freeing up cash flow as they've been committing aggressively to AI investment. This is notably not the same thing as reducing headcount because of efficiencies in AI.

Might also be worth you looking into the tax changes a few years back in terms of tech company R&D.

[turbid bobcat]

I reckon cappex has an effect ya, but trimming headcount is far from the only way they have to get that cash, google just issued 100 year bonds for ex, and it's not like they don't have massive reserves either way

and as for tax laws, I'm actually looking at global headcount to smooth out the effect of variables local to the US

[fleet iris]

btw do you see promise in the recent AI development

[solid parcel]

Hugely. I've seen a sea change in sentiment as of December last year, too. The latest tooling is pretty phenomenal if you use it judiciously. One of my favourite usecases currently is throwing it at a repo and getting it to uncover how certain behaviour is implemented. I can stick it on that, and crack on with another task until it's done. Saves a fair bit of time. Ditto with spinning up PoCs. You often get pretty ugly code, but functional.

[onyx blaze]

a big problem is that the current AI architecture seems to be rapidly approaching a local maximum, and I'm not sure if anybody's working on an alternative

[solid parcel]

I suspect a lot of improvement can be eeked out via intelligent orchestration without requiring a step change in the models themselves. Context window is the main limiting factor I run into. Effective delegation of subtasks in order to preserve context window for the orchestrating agent can have a big impact. See the Stanford ARTEMIS preprint for an example 🙂

[dense kayak]

How I can get the tag snek plz?

[onyx blaze]

agentic workflows are just a workaround to extend the lifetime of the current architecture IMHO

(it does help, but also requires more resources)

[fleet iris]

ah i think i might have to work pretty hard to land a junior role then

[solid parcel]

100% agreed

[solid parcel]

Not necessarily vastly more, given you can hand subtasks off to substantially smaller models 🙂

[turbid bobcat]

how so? to me having the model make decisions, run commands, writing code, and even opening a browser to do E2E testing is pretty impressive stuff

like it looks more like reaching the limits of what a transformer can do, than augmenting it per say

I'd say inference time scaling fits more into that description

[solid parcel]

I think that's exactly what agron is saying. Stretching the limits of the current LLM architecture

[onyx blaze]

imagine if you had to think aloud for every single thing you do – that's how LLMs work

there's significant loss of accuracy from just that

the missing key elements are layered thinking and the formation of "mental models", and this is where agentic workflows come in

[tranquil idol]

go to setting and you will get it from there

[lime badge]

I need a little advice here. I've got 10 YOE and am finishing up an associates* (becuase I never graduated college) in Hong Kong, and i'm having trouble getting any responses to my applications. my family is telling me that I need to erase everything on my resume and approach as a literal fresh graduate because people think I'm "too expensive". I think this advice is bullshit because my experience is the most valuable thing I have at this point. agree/disagree?

[regal ermine]

I would not erase 10 years of experience. That is your leverage, not your liability.

If you’re not getting responses, it’s usually positioning, not “too expensive” signalling. Employers filter for relevance and clarity before they filter for salary.

A few practical checks:

• Is your CV clearly aligned to the roles you’re applying for?

• Does it show impact, not just responsibilities?

• Does it look like a senior engineer profile, or an unfocused generalist?

Approaching as a fresh graduate would reset your market positioning and salary expectations. That’s a step backward unless you’re intentionally pivoting.

The goal isn’t to hide experience. It’s to present it sharply.

Weird, my hyphens show up as bullets - I did that by accident

[dense kayak]

Thanks you

[tranquil idol]

welcome

[solid parcel]

100% agree. Approaching things as a new grad would be daft. By all means, post your CV here for feedback. How many applications have you sent out and what has your response rate been like? There's an element of it just being a numbers game.

[solid parcel]

+1 for needing to show impact and alignment

[regal ermine]

I would not, myself, want to turn this thread into a CV clinic

[solid parcel]

It's done pretty regularly

[onyx blaze]

perhaps this could be moved into a help thread?

not sure if that's appropriate

[regal ermine]

oh really? Fair enough then

[solid parcel]

Albeit a lot of the advice is repetitive and frequently aligns with the points you raised, lol. Those, length, and formatting are the most recurrent issues.

[lime badge]

i have to count but its definitely less than 50

is it ok to post the cv here? or how about my LInkedin?

[solid parcel]

People do pretty frequently. Generally recommended to remove identifying information before you do, but up to you (I frankly don't bother with that, I'd be easy enough to find just from the content of mine anyway).

[solid parcel]

It may just be a matter of you needing to send more applications out. 50 is unfortunately not many in the current environment.

[regal ermine]

I agree if you want an individual contributor role; (something like a pure Python Dev or team lead role) 50 is too small an application count.

Notably, placing your CV/resume on technical job boards (once well structured and aligned as per my previous comments above) might get you some recruiter responses.

This would be via email/telephone, as well as your direct applications; and perhaps that's exactly what you're after.

@lime badge

[solid parcel]

Might be that you need to share an image of it. I just saw you try to share it (as a pdf?), and suspect a bot bonked you

[solid parcel]

I also find I get a fair bit of outreach on LinkedIn, just by passively existing on there. Worth putting time into getting a halfway decent profile set up on there

[regal ermine]

Once you get traction, the typical format is as follows:

1. Call/email from recruiter
2. 1st stage exploratory interview; this might just be a phone call
3. Direct in interview interactive technical test or take home technical test with interactive technical competence queries in a video remote call
4. Meeting with more senior stakeholders in company; web video call or in person
5. Maybe and really depends; check for whether you have 2 heads final chat; remote or otherwise.

[regal ermine]

I do also but only from recruiters really since I have so many connections with them.

LinkedIn has become more social than transactional. I’ve found it lower signal.

[onyx blaze]

LinkedIn = AI Slop Central

[solid parcel]

Yeah a lot of the posts drive me up the wall, but having job opportunities keep coming my way is valuable enough to keep me on there 😁

[regal ermine]

TBF though AI is actually a useful tool. It's judicious, careful and wise use of AI that is the important factor.

[onyx blaze]

Yes – I hope I didn't give the wrong impression

[regal ermine]

not at all - I think we're broadly aligned

[onyx blaze]

I use AI daily in my programming work to search for information and help with code editing tasks

[solid parcel]

The search is a huge benefit imo.

[lime badge]

what constitutes a "technical job board" in this case?

[lime badge]

I used to get messages all the time, now it's a once-in-a-while thing

[regal ermine]

OK so what I use is as follows:

1. cwjobs
2. monster is now obsolete unfortunately.
3. cv-library
4. topjobs
5. also consider indeed and reed

[lime badge]

my resume's 3 pages long but this is the first page

[solid parcel]

Largely reflective of the market at the moment.

[lime badge]

all UK-centric i see. you think they'd hire foreign devs as remote?

[solid parcel]

I'd recommend checking out hiring.cafe for job searching, too.

[balmy mural]

Why did you jump from a senior position to an intern position? And why are the first 2 bullets for your 2nd and 3rd job identical?

[lime badge]

i'm in school

the internship was required. didn't notice the bullet points

[regal ermine]

From my perspective, your CV shows solid implementation skills but it currently reads more mid-level than senior. The title “Senior Software Engineer” isn’t yet strongly supported by evidence of architectural ownership, leadership, or system-level decision-making.

Senior resumes typically show responsibility for design choices, trade-offs, scalability and business impact - not just features implemented.

Most of your bullets describe technologies integrated rather than outcomes achieved. I’d strongly recommend adding metrics and impact: what improved, by how much, at what scale and why it mattered to the business. Even approximate numbers (performance gains, cost reductions, processing coverage, user growth) dramatically increase credibility and signal seniority.

Your skills section is broad but tightening your positioning would make you stronger. You seem particularly strong in Python backend, AI integrations, document processing and RAG-style systems; that’s a compelling niche. Reducing stack noise and leaning into that narrative will make your profile sharper and more intentional.

Finally, consider adding clearer signals of ownership and leadership: mentoring, defining architecture, collaborating with product, driving technical direction, or handling production concerns (CI/CD, observability, scaling, reliability). Senior-level CVs communicate scope and responsibility as much as technical capability.

[lime badge]

senior is the title i was given, so that's what I go with

[regal ermine]

I'm not knocking that - keep your titles. However, from my perspective I don't actually care what job titles are when hiring, even mine; I care about what responsibilities I or the hiree has and whether they are aligned with the authority they or I need to execute decisions.

[balmy mural]

No idea what other opinions might be on this, but could consider putting the internship as a bullet under your education somewhere. It's just one month, and gives a pretty weird impression going from senior to that and being on your first page. Someone would have to get to your education section, see you were in school, and connect the dots for it to make more sense. I also don't think think it carries a lot of weight compared to more senior positions that should take up that space on your first page

[lime badge]

ok that's a good point

[solid parcel]

The summary is far fluffier than it could be. How many YoE? What scale have you been working at? What impact have you had?

I'd be tempted to remove the internship altogether. Jumping from full positions to an internship feels like a step backwards. 3 pages is longer than it needs to be. As a rule of thumb most of first page will get ready, some of the second, and the third might as well not exist.

[lime badge]

ok. so would you say 1 page max to get the job done?

[balmy mural]

I think 10YoE was mentioned in chat earlier. It justifies more than 1 page, but agreed that you should probably cut some fluff to get it down to 2

[lime badge]

ok 2 pages. do I even need the summary? I've seen arguments on both sides of that question

I put it there because someone said it helps, but I'm honestly 50/50 on it

[balmy mural]

I feel summaries are only necessary if they carry any other important information. For example, I do have a summary currently just providing clarity on my work authorization, since it's not a standard work or skilled migrant visa

[lime badge]

AH HAH that's a good idea! i need that right now because I'm on a special program for a visa myself. I usually put that stuff in my cover letter but the summary's a much better place I think

[solid parcel]

I like it as a quick way to tailor a CV. One line showing the work you do, YoE, industries you work in, scale of operations. I'd follow that with the 2-3 most relevant accomplishments across your career, for the specific role you're applying for. It's an easy way to tailor your CV quickly.

E.g. my first line is 5+ years in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and reliability engineering across enterprise financial services (Lloyds Banking Group: 60,000+ employees, £19B+ revenue), retail technology, and local government

[lime badge]

all good stuff, thank you.

ok here's a thought - Java seems to be more popular here in hong kong, and I wouldn't mind switching to it. would that be worth noting in the summary? or is that more of a cover letter thing

[balmy mural]

I think cover letter and talking in interviews about being willing to learn a new tech stack. That said, having a solid Java project showcasing some Java experience also isn't bad

[lime badge]

I think i'll have one at the end of the semester tbh. we're doing jakarta EE stuff right now

[solid parcel]

Imo the summary is your first opportunity to sell yourself. I don't think you really want your opening gambit to be 'I don't have experience in something you're specifically saying is crucial to have, but please keep reading because I learn quick'.

[lime badge]

that sounds good. cover letter and interview it is then

would it be fine if I removed the oldest job entries from my resume in order to get it to 2 pages? or should I just do the whole "tailor your resume to the application" thing, which tbh is a ton of work

[regal ermine]

I actually recommend focusing on your recent experience (most recent first), making each role bulleted where possible and marking older career stuff that might be somewhat obsolete in a section titled: Earlier career (selected):

Then you can have two pages...

1. FRONT PAGE; use colour and side panels if you can for presentational scoring. The FRONT PAGE is your SALES PITCH.

2. Second page: Career history only.

Sub notes: Ensure that throughout the CV/resume you stick to one consistent style - so yes to Oxford commas or no but you swap about (for example). Ensure all spelling and grammar is spot on.

Personally I never tailor my resume to an application - it's far too much work.

I have a high signal, low noise CV and cover letter; then sit back and wait for calls / emails etc; you do need to place your CV/cover letter online in various locations well though.

[solid parcel]

Recommending colour and side panels is contrary to the vast, vast majority of recommendations I see, including from recruiters.

[regal ermine]

That's a matter of personal taste

While you may not have colour and side panels; presentation does matter

[solid parcel]

It's the vastly prevailing opinion of professional recruiters. I don't think it's particularly advisable to recommend something so contrary to what most recruiters recommend and to act like both viewpoints have equal weight or support.

[regal ermine]

I can accept your point. However I have done it on my own CV and will not be adjusting my position on that

[stoic eagle]

Hey guys

[jovial jolt]

Hello 👋 I have a question, I want to go in some kind of career that deals with coding(any language) that pay over 90k any suggestions

[peak halo]

salaries are very location-dependent. I assume you're talking about 90k USD. is that right?

[blissful oracle]

Hi there!! I wanted to ask you whether I should study math or code right now?

:)_ _

[peak halo]

everyone I know with a degree in math is a programmer. but the job market for programmers isn't great right now.

[blissful oracle]

Long term or short term?

[peak halo]

up to you. it's your question.

[blissful oracle]

Thats where it gets so difficult lol optimal answer would be "do both"

[jovial jolt]

Yes 90k usd to 90k+

[blissful oracle]

I'm curious if you personally use any tools like obsidian?

[peak halo]

overhiring during the covid rebound, high interest rates, a certain dick tater threatening tariffs every 20 minutes.

[peak halo]

you're the one asking for advice. the more information you give, the better the answers you can get.

[peak halo]

what metro area do you live in?

[jovial jolt]

Michigan

[peak halo]

do you have a degree in computer science or similar? there's pretty much no way you can get your foot in the door without one.

[jovial jolt]

Im moving on to college so im just wondering for I could know what classes to take

[peak halo]

Definitely not. at least not DS/AI. you can't lump DS/AI and "coding" together.

[blissful oracle]

Long term is to just study the human brain where/how thoughts come from what improvements can be made learning from data, dynamic vs static environment etc also how to make applications that could make our lives easier from that knowledge...

short term is to just get a ok paying job such that I can eat good food + for my computer maintenance + for gym lol

[peak halo]

sounds like you need to study neuroscience. writing code to help you analyze data will be the easy part.

[blissful oracle]

I think I could apply for internships but my pet projects + personal research would get sacrificed..

[peak halo]

yes, but you can't get jobs in AI/DS without at least a bachelors degree. if you can't get one, it's not worth trying.

[blissful oracle]

Oh yeah currently I'm enrolled in an software engineering program after 2 years I'll be graduating

[peak halo]

sorry I don't have better news. DS/AI is very academic.

[peak halo]

if you want to study how thoughts work, neuroscience is the important part. the data analysis is a deep second. so you'll probably need to go to grad school for neuroscience.

[jovial jolt]

Im moving on to college im interested in coding and just wanted to know what kind of coding jobs are good and pay +90k USD

[peak halo]

I don't think you'll be able to get a job in software engineering unless you go back to school, either.

[peak halo]

look on glassdoor for your area.

[jovial jolt]

Oh ty didn't know that web existed

[blissful oracle]

Doesn't the US (and any other country) prefer their own ppl over others?

[peak halo]

I'm not sure what that has to do with glassdoor.

[blissful oracle]

Unless you got something that others don't ofc

No I mean they said USD so I got confused
But you can convert currency ye

[peak halo]

I'm talking to like three people right now, so I need help maintaining continuity with each thread.

[peak halo]

yes, and they live in Michigan, which is part of the US.

[true harness]

do you have a GED? err, you are in the US, right?

[peak halo]

That might work. You might consider going into a trade.

[peak halo]

they're in Europe

in the US, a GED is the equivalent of a high school diploma.

construction, plumbing, electrician.
those are skilled labor jobs with a lower barrier to entry.

it sounds like you don't like it. what is it?

[blissful oracle]

rn I don't think I like anything more than math...

So you going back to college?

[lime badge]

i've also gotten advice that my resume needs to be parseable by AI / ATSes. i found out waaay to late that the PDFs i used to send didn't have any searchable text in them

[solid parcel]

PDFs are usually absolutely fine, and the vast majority of the talk about needing CVs to be AI-friendly is conjecture rather than something impactful, I wouldn't worry about it. Talk to a few recruiters and they'll tell you just how basic most ATS systems are. They get slightly mythologised.

[blissful oracle]

Gosh that's exhausting
Do you really have that many expenses?

[still swallow]

Hello 👋👋👋

[blissful oracle]

Oh ur in EU

That's per day?

[solid parcel]

Per day would be brilliant

[blissful oracle]

I'm curious how much time would school actually consume...

I thought EU generally requires more education than US?

[pine sleet]

depends on major

[blissful oracle]

I think they're supposed to go in hs

Working with continue cycle shift it's really hard to follow high school, I'll lose many school days

[pine sleet]

i see

[blissful oracle]

When do you even sleep 💀

[nocturne harbor]

!clban 1293650689796472892 you've been told not to post this before

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @dull temple permanently.

[peak halo]

you can make a post about this in #1468524576479641744 if it's open-source in python

[regal ermine]

Biggest point - though I didn't study it in detail - it's grammatically OFF in the title. Welcome to Visit Ethiopia doesn't make sense - change to You are welcome or similar

or just Welcome to Ethiopia

If your audience is English speakers then you'll want it proof read by one.

[peak halo]

this is the career discussion/advice channel. feedback about a website is off-topic.

[regal ermine]

Slightly adjacent to the individual contributor focus here - but I’ve just finished rebuilding my personal site around technical decision ownership.

[merry ledge]

good afternoon.
I am seeking some advice on what to do about a job.
I will be graduating with a CS degree and a Cybersecurity Cert this spring and I have no job lined up. I have cold applied and got auto rejected at over 200 places and I am out of places to even apply. Haven't gotten a single interview.
My main issue is, as an introvert I spent my effort learning computer science rather than making linkedin connections. I am well above average in every metric other than social game.
My resume contains 2 years worth of ongoing internship experience (still ongoing until graduation).
Several personal projects that go well beyond the scope of anything class related (stuff like todo apps, netflix remakes, and calculators). I would rather not post the resume because the projects are extremely dox-able but Ive had it looked over by advisors and AI and they both say its fine after I made a few revisions.

My job requirements are an engineer salary, almost any city, not a frontend development role and not my current company, I hope thats not too farfetched. Preferably a large company that isn't going to fail within a few years.

I clearly need to increase my social game and make connections but its been difficult. DMing people randomly on linkedin pretending to be interested in their work for a referral feels scummy. My college has limited events but despite it being a large well known college, reputable companies never show up to things like hackathons or career events.

I am a bit pessimistic (sorry for that), any advice is appreciated.

[summer roost]

My resume contains 2 years worth of ongoing internship experience (still ongoing until graduation).
So you're currently employed in an internship, but the company you're interning with hasn't offered you a job?

[merry ledge]

they did but i really dont want to take it
i will genuinly hate my life if I do

[normal burrow]

@merry ledge why not?

[solid parcel]

If you're being auto-rejected and haven't had a single interview out of 200 applications, my gut is that you're misattributing your results to under-investment socially. It seems far more likely that your CV is letting you down. Feel free to share it for input.

[merry ledge]

i dont make CVS. They take a long time when I am spam applying and the effort gets wasted.

[solid parcel]

How are you applying without a CV?

[merry ledge]

A resume

[summer roost]

"resume", then, not "CV"

the point stands: if your skills are above average but not one of 200 places has wanted to interview you, your resume is doing a bad job of selling you

[merry ledge]

hmm

[solid parcel]

Ah, I was using the words interchangeably. They're used to mean much the same thing in the UK, I forget that in the US CV is generally used to mean something more comprehensive.

[merry ledge]

so you're saying cold apps should have worked by now

and my resume must be the issue if they ahvent

[solid parcel]

Yes. On average, even in the current market, I'd expect you to have landed 4-10 interviews out of 200 applications as a junior, assuming the roles you were applying to were a reasonable match for your skillset.

[merry ledge]

as a junior?

[solid parcel]

Can't say for sure, but with the information you've given so far it certainly seems like the most likely cause, yes

[solid parcel]

Yes, relevant because the market is particularly tough for juniors currently. I'm saying even with that being the case, your current conversion rate from applications to interviews is lower than I'd expect.

[summer roost]

I'd say that almost every junior gets jobs through either previous internships or cold applications. People fresh out of college don't have networks that they can rely on to land them a job, usually.

[merry ledge]

im confused by the terminology junior

[summer roost]

someone who hasn't been doing the job for years

[merry ledge]

ok. I will have to try to get another college advisor to review the resume

[solid parcel]

Or feel free to throw it here. Most resumes fall into the same broad categories of mistakes so it doesn't take long to give some high level feedback on one.

[merry ledge]

I would have to censor most of it including the projects

[summer roost]

might want to make sure that whoever is reviewing your resume is familiar with the industry. So at least someone in the CS department

[summer roost]

you've shared it with 200 companies already 🙃

[merry ledge]

those companies arent on discord

[solid parcel]

Godlygeek, I'm curious... Do you get people trying to poach you constantly? I'd frankly be surprised if you didn't, given the industry you're in and the tooling you've developed

[summer roost]

not really. less than you might expect tbh. Maybe 1 or 2 cold emails a month, but nothing crazy

[merry ledge]

what do you consider a cold email

[solid parcel]

Interesting, perhaps just indicative of the industry itself being fairly small relative to a lot of tech?

[solid parcel]

Am unsolicited email from someone I don't know, especially one containing an ask of me

[merry ledge]

I get those too but im sure his are different than mine

[summer roost]

and perhaps my co-maintainer Pablo did a better job of branding the projects as his than I did as branding them mine 😄 Certainly he's been the one who's given most of the conference talks about them and done most of the PR campaign

[solid parcel]

Ha, time to start sticking your name all over every major release 😆 Feature development slows to a crawl, meanwhile ASCII art of your face pops up all over the repo, and the readme mysteriously contains your CV all of a sudden.

[summer roost]

I do think I could sell my work on these tools extremely well if I did start applying for jobs, though. I'm not too concerned about not getting many poaching attempts 🙂

[solid parcel]

Absolutely, I feel the grassroots adoption of your tools largely speaks for itself. Very impressive to achieve!

[merry ledge]

do resume parsers work for you guys? none of them get my information correct which could be contributing to the auto rejection.

[summer roost]

huh. yes, they should work pretty well... what are they getting wrong for you? What format is your resume in?

[smoky quest]

how does your resume look like?
Feel free to post here an anonymized version

[solid parcel]

Not usually 100% correct, but also not far off it. If you're finding the results are completely wrong, it does suggest you might have something exotic and janky going on with the formatting

[summer roost]

they tend to not do well with two column layouts. If you're using multiple columns, you probably want to stop doing that

[smoky quest]

layout wise, it's fine. As long as the PDF is text and not picture when you send it.
Content wise, as you pointed out, it's way too redacted for me to provide meaningful feedback

[merry ledge]

yeah I can highlight the text, not sure why the parsers suck

[solid parcel]

You say 'from hours to minutes'. It's good that you've quantified at all, but can you do better? E.g. Might the speed up be better expressed as a % or as a multiple rather than in the slightest woolly terms it's in now?

If you can be explicit about impact, it's useful.

[merry ledge]

any percentage would be so oversimplified it would be a lie

i can put it on there but if I am in an interview and they ask how I measured the percent I wouldn't be able to explain it

[solid parcel]

Valid. Do you have any way to quantify the last bulletpoint from your most recent role? E.g. How much did you increase code coverage by (albeit as I'm sure you know this is a somewhat questionable measure!)? Was there a measurable reduction in the number of regressions reaching production? How about a reduction in toil thanks to a lessened need for manual testing?

It's okay to guesstimate as long as you're not outright inventing.

[merry ledge]

what is the unit for code coverage

if I say 50% that could mean 5 unit tests or 500

[solid parcel]

Ha, this is a surprisingly loaded question. The answer is more complicated than you might expect as there are a few different approaches to measuring code coverage, and frankly the whole concept rightly gets critiqued a fair bit, too.

Most commonly, it looks at what proportion of lines were executed at least once. Branch and path coverage are two more granular approaches, though I'm too sleepy to explain them now 😁

[regal ermine]

I have written a structural piece on how AI changes junior pipelines and how organisations tend to respond.
It reflects recurring themes I see discussed here and elsewhere.

https://www.crankthecode.com/posts/lead18

[merry ledge]

what unit do hiring managers expect it quantified in?

[summer roost]

you can specify the unit for code coverage. "Reduced uncovered (lines|branches|functions) by ..."

[merry ledge]

I have no idea what percentage it would be. The repos are huge.
I am so sorry.

[summer roost]

Think of a resume like a full-page ad in a magazine, or something like that. A resume is an advertisement for your services. The reason to be specific is that it makes the advertising more effective. "Sped things up" is a lot less impressive than "Sped things things up by 99%", or whatever. If it's something you can't measure, well, so be it. But being specific when you can is gonna make for punchier advertising

[solid parcel]

A) It's fine to guesstimate within reason

B) Code coverage was just one example of how you could quantify impact. If you've got no way of reasonably guesstimating your impact in those terms (or if the metric would merely be unremarkable if you've been working on a huge codebase), that's fine. There are many other ways to express your impact.

C) Don't get too caught up on what I'm saying. It's common for juniors to have fewer quantifiable instances of impact that they can highlight.

[blissful oracle]

Most ideas on resume are usually past work that already completed anyway

But you seem a bit odd.. it's possible that your ideas are much better than a less skilled individual and so they could try copying them and having social skills end up getting your job...

Especially if you have shared detailed implementation or novel approaches

_ _
Usually those ideas don't come across to everyones mind..

[merry ledge]

"Improved code branch coverage by about 60% across 8 projects and added several hunded unit tests. "

that line is better?

[summer roost]

it is, but - when you say "Improved code branch coverage by about 60%", does that mean that the number of uncovered branches went from X to 0.4X? Or that the number of covered branches went from X to 1.6X? Or something else?

[merry ledge]

They told me they wanted 90-100% branch coverage. I wrote enough unit tests to achieve that. I do not know the amount of tests or the starting coverage.

[regal ermine]

Percentage increase alone does not say much.

What matters is whether the additional coverage meaningfully reduced regression risk or improved confidence in change.

Coverage of trivial code is easy. Coverage of behaviour is harder and more valuable.

[summer roost]

do you know what the final percentage of covered branches was at the end of your work?

[merry ledge]

workday just failed to parse even a single line correctly. Workday is the company that all of these apps use.

[merry ledge]

I brought 7 repos to 90% coverage

[summer roost]

Then it's perfectly reasonable to go with something like "Added hundreds of tests across 7 different repos to bring them each above 90% branch coverage."

[summer roost]

hm. That's definitely not great. What file format are you using for the resume?

[merry ledge]

pdf

[solid parcel]

Even better if they can link the increased coverage to a reduction in regressions or something similar 🙂

[summer roost]

how are you authoring the pdf? LaTeX? Or save as PDF from a word processor? Or using Adobe's tools? Or what?

[merry ledge]

it thinks my job title is "Parallel Compiler"

[merry ledge]

I made it in canva and exorted as pdf

[solid parcel]

I'd be tempted to try Word. Generally speaking I have no issues using pdf CVs, but if you're consistently having issues, it's worth trying to find an alternative to your current approach imo.

[merry ledge]

I will certainly try that. Anything to make these miserable applications go faster.

[summer roost]

if you want more control over the layout, LaTeX (or a wysiwyg LaTeX editor like overleaf) might be an option as well. But yeah, if you're testing with a resume parser and it's failing to extract any useful info from your resume, that definitely seems like a big part of your problem

[merry ledge]

another issue I consistently have is workday never saving my account. I make an account submit a app. Then when I go to the next app and attempt to sign in the account doesn't exist. Workday has no support that I can contact about this. Resetting password doesn't send the email.

i made another account 4 minutes ago

[summer roost]

that also doesn't seem great 😅

I wonder if the accounts are being flagged for fraud or spam or something?

[solid parcel]

Often you need to make different accounts for different orgs on Workday. It's a common frustration for people

[pine sleet]

workday has a separate account for each app

its kinda cooked

[merry ledge]

They should hire me I could fix that for them

[pine sleet]

workday is one of the worst human inventions of all time

[merry ledge]

only topped by zscaler

[peak halo]

My company was using both for a while.

[vapid violet]

I have 12 workday accounts in my password manager

[merry ledge]

Bloomberg was in the description... the parser is incredibly bad. It skipped over the company name, the title, and then picked a word in the description.

anyway, thanks for the help guys I rewrote the resume in word, added a bunch of analytics into my resume and I will keep cold applyingh

[wary prawn]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Ghanshyam Sen, I am Sr. web developer from India, I have 6+ years of experience in the web dev and API development work on many domain like Job portal, Health system, webinar system, Resume & Cover letter builder and SaaS modules.

My primary skill is PHP with Javascript, Nodejs, React.Js also work in Next.Js and Next.Js.

But recently I am looking for job in PHP but in the market AI boom and very hard to find job in PHP because of most org and companies not choose PHP and I want to big org so I started learn Python, complete the Python basic understand OOP concept make small module related bank project I am learning from You Tube & Gemini AI.

So I want know how what I choose next in python continues learn and crack SDE role in good org and abroad jobs because I choose for SDE role not for only web development.

Warm Regard,
Ghanshyam Sen

[long maple]

How do I get started on my tests for actuarial science?

[lime badge]

so over the course of my career I've done backend web dev (i.e. building REST APIs and stuff), frontend web dev with Angular/React, and as part of schoolwork I've done some Android dev. I also know my way around postgresql. should I start calling myself a full-stack developer as opposed to just a "software engineer"?

[smoky quest]

Sure

There is no role police

[lime badge]

i think with a little bit of work I'll even have samples of each

[smoky quest]

Though on your resume, I would keep the titles you got for the role as given by the company

[wind plinth]

Please don’t just write “Full Stack :P” on your resume

[tawdry solstice]

@smoky quest Im working like 3 months in another country, and go home about 1 week, and in that 1 week I can not get a degree haha

[smoky quest]

Sure. However your competition is likely to have spent the 4-5 years and the work to get that degree.
It will be difficult for you to be competitive with 100 days comparing to that

[tawdry solstice]

Yeah, youre right, I was not thinking about that

But maybe I can work like a freelancer in the beginning hmm ?

Or I can find some job to be Junior developer, I mean this is more likely to happen

[azure heart]

this is all possible but as recursive_error points out, the difficulty is the competition

That's why making projects is so important. If you're competing against people with a degree, then you have to outshine them with examples of your work

[tawdry solstice]

Is somebody from EU, what is the payment for junior python developrr

[tawdry solstice]

Yeah, I know that. I mean its early to think about employment because Im still on beginner lvl, I need to pass 2 or 3 lessons, than Im going to lvl up to intermediate

[little obsidian]

are people still hiring python backend fresher, or are they taking full stack including frontend like react with python to get hired

[little obsidian]

yeah who the person created and scaled lmfao,

i applied 200 application on it hands on , and not even one reverted back tf.

[azure heart]

Sure, but it's important to remain realistic about what jobs it can lead to if that's your main reason for learning programming. Someone self-taught it not going to be employable in a year when your competition is full time students who have been learning for 4+ years

[smoky quest]

Sure, companies are hiring backend junior for backend jobs. Not all jobs require frontend

[hushed crane]

I have never came across a pure python BE role

[smoky quest]

And that's great!

However, let's look at it from the point of view of a company:

• For each job ad, they receive thousands of application
• They only need to hire one person for a given role and they will want the best person
• Spending 1h on each of the thousand candidates would mean spending 125 work days (1000 / 8). As such, they can't talk to everyone

This means they will look at the applications and call back only the top 20 people. It should be enough to have a great candidate.
This means also that you need to stand out and be better than thousands of other people.

You may say you want to look into freelancing rather than a job, but then you face the problem of competition from other cheap countries and the goal become a race to the bottom

[smoky quest]

If it helps, I have done exactly that across multiple companies and so have folks in my network. So they do exist 🙂

And by that, I mean hiring people

[balmy mural]

Varies a lot by country. You can check out salary ranges on glassdoor for whatever specific country you're looking at

[balmy mural]

I'm actively job hunting at the moment. I've come across a few pure python backend roles

[hushed crane]

In my area it's called AI Engineering lol

Semantics aside, most BE I have came across are Go and Java

[balmy mural]

It's very depended by country. I'm looking for jobs in the Netherlands, .NET and Java are the main languages here

And in South Africa, it's an even split between Java, .NET and Python

[hushed crane]

And NodeJS, if they use Django, its usually for fullstack

[solid parcel]

Woo, just had confirmation I've been invited to a formal interview for the SRE role. 🎉

Not surprised given it's an internal one, but still nice to get certainty

Just a half hour conversation to start, and then, assuming that goes well, a 1 hour interview another day looking at role fit and culture alignment

[woven widget]

It nearly always comes down to a degree in the Netherlands. It's tough doing a career change. Still going to need a bachelors it seems

[balmy mural]

Lots of jobs I've seen don't specifically require a degree, it's just listed as a nice to have. Luckily I do have a degree and a few years of work experience

[wicked glacier]

Hey!

[woven widget]

True, not specifically, but once you get to 2nd/3rd round, it will make the difference.

[balmy mural]

I'd imagine 2nd or 3rd rounds is where it no longer matters as much? Only started looking recently, so I've not reached a 2nd or 3rd round anywhere, but most of the companies do list their recruitments steps. It's mostly along the lines of:

• 1st conversation with HR/Recruiter. Just to confirm you are somewhat a match to the role, dive a bit into what you're looking for, talk about what the company does
• Online/takehome assessment
• 2nd conversation with a technical team, looking at your assessment, talking about it, talking other technical stuff
• 3rd conversation is more of a culture fit conversation

I'd imagine if you're not filtered out for lack of degree in step 1, it won't be a reason to filter you out at a later step. Unless they're weighing you and someone else equally and decide the degree is a tie breaker

[pliant reef]

Hey yall I’m curious what’s yall thoughts on vibe coding like what’s the overall feel and usefulness of it? I’m brand new to programming and a buddy of mine told me it’s smoother to learn Python at the same time as vibe coding should I jump into both together or focus on one first before mixing them? Any tips on how they complement each other ??

[vast shoal]

Using LLMs and tools like Copilot is generally not advisable for beginners because they remove exactly the friction that drives learning. Early on, beginners lack the experience needed to judge whether generated code is correct, idiomatic, secure, or even appropriate for the problem, which makes it easy to internalize bad patterns without realizing it. These tools also strongly encourage overreliance: instead of practicing decomposition, debugging, and reasoning from first principles, beginners may default to prompting until something "works", bypassing the mental effort that builds real understanding. As a result, progress can look fast on the surface while fundamental problem-solving skills and conceptual grounding develop much more slowly, making it harder to work independently later.

[balmy mural]

You should avoid using LLMs to learn until your fundamentals are strong enough to know when it's hallucinating.

[woven widget]

This is what I assume tends to happen

[pliant reef]

Thanks for breaking that down totally get it relying on Copilot early can hide gaps and bake in bad habits so I’ll use it sparingly and focus on core problem solving what’s the most efficient way to build solid foundations while still leveraging tools without becoming dependent?

[pliant reef]

Interesting

[vast shoal]

If you're going to use it at all, I'd use it exclusively to have it elaborate on concepts that you don't fully understand from whatever source material you're learning from. I. e., avoid having it generate code for you, only have it explain concepts to you. But even that can be risky, because the explanations can be wrong or outdated, and you won't know when that happens.

[woven widget]

I find it is useful for is when you have no clue how to do something and get something going no matter how bad. Then run it back line for line to understand how it worked and re-build it yourself from scratch. Sometimes you just need to see someone running to figure how to run, rather then start crawling and hope you will make it.

[vast shoal]

Do it sparingly, and focus on mainly learning from reliable sources instead.

[woven widget]

That is to say, I rather having something awful barely working, than something pristine that merely looks good.

[vast shoal]

The point is not to offload mental effort, because mental effort is what makes you learn.

[pliant reef]

So what’s a roadmap I can stick to without this tools

[woven widget]

Indeed. But too much mental load and we will not want to pursue the challenge. We need to believe we can, first. Once we believe we can, only hard work remains.

[vast shoal]

Just learn the fundamentals first, then do projects.

Let your interests guide you.

Beyond the basics, learn what you need when you need it.

You can discuss what projects to do and what technologies you need in this server for example.

[dreamy pond]

Hi

[pliant reef]

Got it thanks for clarifying! I’ll definitely tap into the server for project ideas and tech stack advice. Appreciate the help!

[slender oriole]

hey guys I'm doing python for some scientific programming and algorithms, I did many free courses and still not understanding what to do and how to do and how to apply it in real application. maths like linear calculus, differential equations

[pliant reef]

Also last question
Is there another language that’s super easy to learn for a total beginner and which language is most in demand right now? I’ve heard Python’s syntax feels like plain English and JavaScript gives instant visual feedback but I’m curious if you’d recommend something else Also from what you’ve seen are Python and JavaScript still the top picks for jobs or are there other languages (like Go, Rust, Kotlin, etc.) that employers are hunting for? Would love your perspective! 🙏✨

[vast shoal]

Ok, so, what's important to learn are the fundamental principles of programming, and they are not language-specific. Once you have a good handle on those, picking up new languages is comparatively quick and easy. So it's not really worth thinking too hard about which languages are in demand, because you're not locking yourself out of one language just because you're learning in another. It's more productive to think about which languages make learning easier, and I would say Python is a good language to learn programming in. That being said, it's still not going to be easy, because learning programming is not easy, and it won't be no matter what language you choose. But Python is powerful, it has a straightforward syntax, it's very popular and widely used, so there are lots of good learning resources and communities dedicated to it. So it's a good choice.

[dreamy pond]

Man could you please change your username to something else, it's getting repeated in my head like OCD

[solid parcel]

100% agreed that a degree is primarily useful for avoiding getting filtered out. Once you're at interview, it's usually largely irrelevant.

[pliant reef]

Mmm that adds a new angle I’ll consider it carefully you might be on to something

[pulsar nymph]

i am doing engneering in cs core data science just started did c++ complete oops and learning dsa also know a bit of html and css created some website in vs code wanna learn something get me job quickly i know i have learn python in future so i am here didn't know what to do now. i am financially bad right now need job asap anypath?

[peak halo]

So you're pursuing a degree in CS at an engineering school right now?

[pulsar nymph]

yep! wanna get ahead i have some free time right now

[peak halo]

As far as getting a job "quickly", I think the best you can do is to get an internship for this summer. I would check with the career center for your university to see if there are any positions

[pulsar nymph]

so should i prepare for gsoc?

[peak halo]

Maybe? Like I said, talk to the career center about what internship positions are still open for this summer.

[pulsar nymph]

thanks that helps a lot but usually i am from tier 3 clg didn't have that good intern but i will try. btw i am thinking to learn web dev is that good or should i start something else. i mean what i heard from internet web = job. and else need i don't know they say they will teach u when u clear dsa base interview

[snow zinc]

I feel so weird and confused rn. Im trying to be a data analyst and hopefully land a job when my uni is over, about 4-5 months is left

Currently doing the google data analyst course from coursera, learning excel, sql, R and Power BI.

What should i focus on rn

[steady violet]

python

[snow zinc]

after R yes lmao

[calm lynx]

Hey guys 👋
Could someone access my resume? What should I remove/add/change? Thank you in advance 🙏

[fast fossil]

you worked two full-time jobs at the same time?

[finite goblet]

Hello all could someone tell how is the scope for computer networking like IT fields which have good scope in recent times even with advancement of AI if you could also list some jobs so I could get an idea of which domain i can focus on for a career as I have basic knowledge in programming and computer networks

[calm lynx]

Part time

[fast fossil]

and before that? presumably you held more positions before, right? you mention 2 YoE

[smoky quest]

it would help to make it explicit.
Multiple employments would be an extreme red flag

[smoky quest]

• Your resume mentions 2 years of experience but your experience does not back it up
• Too many numbers without contexts. They should serve as illustration of your skills through your impact, not justification

[hybrid sail]

Since this discord doesn't allow job postings - is there another discord for python developers that does?

[peak halo]

why not just use a regular job posting service?

[hybrid sail]

i have posts up on indeed, wellfound, and linkedin, but this time around, not getting any good candidates. I'm about to post on python.org

[mortal wedge]

It's pretty wild that I'm hearing from a lot of recruiters they can't find good candidates or that all candidates look the same. I think it's a signal to noise ratio issue. I've applied to roles where I'm an exceptional candidate and haven't heard anything back.

I've also come across some wild takes on linkedin that it's a red flag if an engineer claims to be a senior engineer but hasn't given any conference talks or doesn't have a blog (or a robust personal github)

If I had to guess, hiring pipelines are not suited for the increased volume of all the layoffs in tech (high volume) as well as the AI usage to tailor resumes (decreased ability to differentiate) between applicants leading to either arbitrary ways to limit the applicant pool or just walking away with the take that there are no valid/good applicants.

[solid parcel]

agreed on signal to noise

[mortal wedge]

That's the only logical explanation I can think of. Candidates are struggling so hard to get noticed, there's so much laid off talent, but recruiters keep claiming everyone is the same and nobody is qualified. (Then try to sell their secret "hacks" to find the "real" applicants like looking for conference talks or whatever, but that's obviously filtering that is going to weed out a lot of qualified talent)

That specific post became a battleground. I usually don't chime in with contrary opinions, but I did point out how his resume red flags/hacks were all likely to weed out good candidates Surprised to find a lot of job seekers far less polite than I was, lol. But also a lot of recruiters chiming in on his side as well.

[smoky quest]

Everyone think they are exceptional 🙂

[mortal wedge]

I think that's a cop out. There are roles out there where people are applying to stuff they have 10+ years of experience in and are even accepting level/comp drops. Those are exceptional candidates. The claim that there are no qualified candidates just doesn't hold water.

[blissful oracle]

I mean there are obviously more bad devs than good devs no one argues with that!!

_ _
And that might be the reason why nowadays we hear a lot that j*b market is fu**ed?

-# And bad as in (inexperienced/ignorant etc)

[mortal wedge]

Sure, but if recruiters are consistently saying everyone looks the same then that's a systemic problem, perhaps that resumes are no longer a strong enough differentiator between applicants (if buttressed by AI or for whatever other reason)

The job market being screwed up has a lot of factors. Chiefly though there are less roles available than job seekers and tech is roughly twice as bad as other sectors right now.

[blissful oracle]

Idk if you're actually spending a percentage of your life making good systems ....
How much time then do you have left to make connections post stuff on LinkedIn spam your resumes everywhere you can etc...?

[smoky quest]

am not sure to see the link with candidates thinking they are exceptional

[smoky quest]

you can model things are a gaussian

you can still have people on extreme sides, but exceptional is a strong word

[mortal wedge]

Fine. Let's not get hung up on the word "exceptional". There are candidates that are obviously well qualified for positions on paper. If recruiters are consistently saying that all candidates look the same, but none are qualified, then that still points to a system/funnel problem over specific applicants.

[blissful oracle]

Lol

[blissful oracle]

It's possible that someone with 10+ years of experience is not exceptional...
while also possible that someone with < 2 years of experience is exceptional?

[smoky quest]

many things can go wrong on either or both sides

[smoky quest]

it's all relative and context specific

[smoky quest]

also I tend to view it more like relationships than a pure judgement. Sometimes you can have 2 great people that are just not meant for each others or not looking for the same thing

[blissful oracle]

I thought that word meant "unusually good"

[smoky quest]

let's assume a gaussian curve and that you talk to 1000 candidates. You are bound to find a few candidates on the top side (ex: above 95 %-tile)

and when you are talking about such small differences, they can be quite nuanced or along different dimensions

[blissful oracle]

True

[smoky quest]

and now

if you have 10 years of experience, you surely have been part of the recruitment of more than a single engineer

[blissful oracle]

The outliers 🗣️

[smoky quest]

which means you have had to deal with multiple thousands of people

[barren lotus]

how often do working professionals check linkedin

[smoky quest]

depends if they are looking for a job

[barren lotus]

if not

[mortal wedge]

I think it depends on how public facing their role is, if they aren't job seeking

[blissful oracle]

depends on the working professional yes

[smoky quest]

if not, then it depends on your yapping

[barren lotus]

i see

[mortal wedge]

A VP of Engineering is probably going to have a more active linkedin precense than a data analyst

[smoky quest]

most engineers aren't looking into building their influencer brand and so will just tune it out

[barren lotus]

right

[mortal wedge]

Some recruiters are using it to "validate" applicants though which is... frustrating and inane

[barren lotus]

hmm alright thanks

[blissful oracle]

Is this a good or a bad thing?

[smoky quest]

I would prioritize real connections over bling bling

You are more likely to get called back by a previous coworker who enjoyed working with you than someone who read your post about what the death of your dog taught you about sales

[blissful oracle]

Lmfao 😭

[smoky quest]

So befriend your coworkers and add them to your network now. You never know when they will think about you

[mortal wedge]

We're in a period where resumes are no longer serving as the differentiator they once were, when they can be buttressed by AI. So applicants need to be distinctive in other ways, and some recruiters are using social media precense as a distinction.

[barren lotus]

do people call their old coworkers...?

[blissful oracle]

It depends bro.. if they like you

[mortal wedge]

Some companies need work references, so you do sort of have to reach out

[barren lotus]

interesting

[smoky quest]

all of them. The old, youngs and in between

The senior engineer you know today might be a hiring manager in 2 years

the junior engineer who joined might become a staff in 8 years

[barren lotus]

in my experience, not much help though, lol, aside from serving as referral

[blissful oracle]

@smoky quest do you think sometimes correcting people can be considered as nit picking or toxic behavior?

[smoky quest]

sometimes it can

I would suggest to think about the impact

[mortal wedge]

It's sort of disgusting how well networking has been panning out for me, recently.

I applied only to roles where I was a unicorn for last month as a sort of litmus test, got one interview.

Been leaning on networking much more this month going after roles where I'm not a unicorn, I've had 7 interviews this week.

[smoky quest]

does it make them look foolish? Are they off by an order of magnitude?

[mortal wedge]

I will say that it's important to be aware of office politics in corporate settings. Making the wrong person look bad could cost you your job.

[blissful oracle]

I wouldn't wanna work in that environment anyway lol

[smoky quest]

oh for the foolish part, I was more thinking in terms of preventing them making a fool of themselves by giving them that feedback.
But yes, rule of thumb is:

• Praise in public
• Criticize in private

[barren lotus]

every office has its own politics

[blissful oracle]

My question wasn't really related to work or office

[barren lotus]

where there are humans there are politics

[mortal wedge]

People generally take criticism poorly. It's best to save criticism for people who have explicitly asked for it, your future is tied up in the project/you're already invested, you have a strong relationship with, etc.

[blissful oracle]

Thankgod I've found people I enjoy working with so I'm free from that bs

But I was talking generally yes ...

[mortal wedge]

People generally don't like being corrected for a variety of reasons. Valid or not.

[blissful oracle]

words of wisdom

[blissful oracle]

Took me really a while to learn this 😭

And yes it caused lots of problems for me

[mortal wedge]

Especially in a corporate setting where.... there's a lot of posturing. It's part of your job/well being to brag and generally the people you're bragging to don't have the full context or background to understand your accomplishments, so a lot of it is based off of your confidence and how you present it. So critique can be seen as an existential threat.

I'm not saying that isn't also present in non-corporate or academic environments, but I've seen it the worst in corporate ones.

But generally speaking, it can be unwise to give unsolicited advice if you are not directly involved in whatever you are chiming in about

[smoky quest]

depends how you go about it. It can also go very well and be appreciated.
But depends on how you approach it, your relationship, etc.

[mortal wedge]

And just to say it, I personally hate this. I don't want to work with someone who just agrees with everything I say, I want to work with someone who can actually bring something to the table and is willing to challenge existing assumptions, as long as they are engaging in good faith.

But you have to make concessions when going from like... academia to corporate. You may luck out and get a boss from time to time that values frank and direct assessments, but I don't think that's the common situation. (But I do think that's why people will often follow good bosses to other companies, a good boss is pretty awesome to have)

[daring spindle]

I need joob

[lapis dawn]

at this point I'd let a company take advantage of me if it means getting experience

[hushed crane]

New grad?

[lapis dawn]

yes im cooked

[hushed crane]

Same here lmao

None of my friends got a job in tech after graduating, all of the employed classmates of mine got their job before graduating, through internship etc

Even the top GPA guys are still unemployed 🙂

[peak halo]

I'm sorry you all are experiencing this

[lapis dawn]

it's joever.......

[hushed crane]

Ignore the chatgpt 3 goes public, its prolly because a whole bunch of reasons

[lapis dawn]

If I started school at the age of 6 months I would've stood a chance....

[cerulean anvil]

yo guys

any tips on how I get started on lerning to code

or am i asking in the wrong thread

[peak halo]

It's just late in North America and Europe

!res

[inner wren]

Resources

The Resources page on our website contains a list of hand-selected learning resources that we regularly recommend to both beginners and experts.

[wary prawn]

thats true words

[mortal wedge]

I'm so sorry. It's rough for many in the tech market, but I know being a senior I don't have it as rough as recent grads do. AI has really taken a hatchet to entry level tech roles.

While I can't offer concrete practical advice, the best I can say is please don't take it as a reflection on you or your capabilities.

Actually, I'm not sure I necessarily recommend this, but I do know a group of students from Yale that started their own company and got a venture capital firm to acquire them. But I think it was less that they were Yale and more that they had a really solid/good idea.

[lime trellis]

Has anyone worked with building like a chatgpt wrapper ? ( Prompt engineering)

I could really use some help/advice on a personal project 🥹 👉 👈

[hushed crane]

I'm reinventing the idea in my mind of what being employed is.

I don't have to be employed to survive. That being said, I am currently building a mobile app and I plan to publish it, not sure what the pricing would look like, what matters is that I keep building and building.

I've read books about it and I don't have anything else to do career wise except building my own apps and keep applying and applying.

[mortal wedge]

This probably isn't the best channel for it, but if you ask in a more topical channel or open up a help topic you can ping me and I'll see what I can do

[lime trellis]

Thank you I will create one 👍

[mortal wedge]

Honestly, that's a great idea! I wish you all the success with your app. Having a functioning app is definitely something you can leverage both to find other work or it might take off and be something in and of itself

[turbid bobcat]

https://youtu.be/oFtjKbXKqbg

this dude is very successful at doing what you describe

[hushed crane]

Its outreach and quantity over quality

[turbid bobcat]

wdym?

[hushed crane]

The business model is not selling apps itself but building the apps is

The process of the building

[turbid bobcat]

I don't understand.

I just shared the video cuz he might be saying stuff worth absorbing given your stated goals

[hushed crane]

I'm just telling you

I've came across one of the streamers that does vibe coding streams with multiple terminals open, meanwhile they are just dancing like a clown.

I saw his clips posted by digital marketer accounts on X and they all had the same caption regarding those clips.

So a big chance it was a manufactured rise to popularity, because all of these X accounts are posting him and then the replies are the most banal things

[dreamy pond]

Hi, yesterday night wasn't really pleasant for me, I got scolded by my dad for working out on python day & night & that I should focus more on degree, after 2 years at the start of 4th semester, I realized i won't be able to clear the backlogs + obtaining the B.com degree is nearly impossible (I won't specify the reason, it's very personal), he says it's not possible to get a job without BCA or B.Tech degree ? which completely sounds odd to me, how do I convince my "Typical Indian dad" to make a career in coding python ? if anyone's from India they would know exactly what situation I'm facing :/

[turbid bobcat]

are you talking about pieter levels? he practically the poster child for dev who escaped traditional employment by building stuff for fun and then selling it

like, he's the dude that made levels.fyi

[hushed crane]

No not him, I'm talking about other person

[mortal wedge]

Same advice you were given earlier. Prioritize your degree. You'll need it to be competitive when looking for a job.

[dreamy pond]

Can I do a online degree or from an online university ? (sorry i asked I shouldn't have asked the same question in #python-discussion)

@mortal wedge

[mortal wedge]

It's more that the same advice will be true, regardless of asking it here or there

[turbid bobcat]

who? xd

[azure heart]

That will give you some upper edge over having no degree at all

You need to be as impressive (or more) than full time college graduates. If you think taking an online degree from an online university will get you there, you can go for it

[turbid bobcat]

if local is not an option, can't u apply for degree in some foreign uni?

for example, my understanding is that india and UK tend to have agreements that facilitate the movement of people, so u might find institutional programs that help with it, maybe even scholarships and such

[dreamy pond]

it's not that easy

[turbid bobcat]

ya I kno, just brainstorming

UK in particular is very expensive, but maybe there's some other ally of india with strong ties in trading and etcs

I personally wouldn't discriminate against an online degree and care more about what the person can do

[smoky quest]

be it for good or bad reasons, some people might

[azure heart]

It's not that easy when a lot of applications are fed through a filter

[turbid bobcat]

i agree w your points, both add nuance to my statement

[dreamy pond]

My whole confidence was tied to improving skill, I was 100% sure i would get a job, but now when you informed me without degree it's going to be very difficult for me, I don't feel that energetic vibe anymore while coding :/

what do i do ?

[smoky quest]

One could argue that if that hurdle is enough to kill your motivation, you weren't that motivated in the first place.
Alternatively, one could argue that then you should work towards a proper degree

[dreamy pond]

I did coding day & night & i loved what i was doing

:/

[smoky quest]

So why would some competition deflate your motivation?

even if that is people who have worked on it day and night for 4-5 years, have worked on awesome projects and have great internships?

Just outdo them

[turbid bobcat]

on the flip side, once u get those first couple of jobs it's no longer that much of an issue

I get interviews without an education section on my resume

[blissful oracle]

????

[hushed crane]

Does this put me on an advantage?

[near ocean]

No hopefully

[balmy mural]

In theory, it's voluntary, anonymous data that's collected to monitor diversity and ensure fair hiring practices

[hushed crane]

My dad got DEI hired at boeing at some point

[balmy mural]

DEI initiatives aren't supposed to hire anyone because of a certain background. It's supposed to even out the playing field regardless of someone's background. Good example I found online:

One tech company I know of came to recognize that some people on the autistic spectrum were AMAZING programmers, but the hiring managers/HR/recruiters weren’t good at recognizing this. Autistic folks might not interview well, for example. So they made a training program for those hiring managers to teach them how to be better managers of autistic employees. This was seen as a good business decision, NOT a charity case. That internal training program would be considered “DEI”.

[blissful oracle]

I know a bunch of people on this server who love nothing more than programming, and they don't even care if they're doing it for money!

_ _
so gl competing with them if you only showed up for (money + status) ig..

[vapid jay]

What do you guys think bout ML - LLMs/MLOps?
Like what's your points on these, also is there anything which is more worthy after 5- 10 year?

You think

This topic Can be worthy

[peak halo]

I think MLOps is a good place to be. And even when the AI hype subsides, the skills will be largely transferable to Ops in general.

[peak halo]

job titles are not used consistently, but at least in theory, they are not the same, because an ML engineer needs to actually understand how ML works mathematically and perform model training and development.

whereas MLOps is about deploying models.

on paper, my job is mainly about model training, but I do both.

[clear cairn]

hu

[astral ermine]

Do you deploy beyond batch/offline patterns?

I'm still looking for good resources on other deployment patterns

[peak halo]

idk, I just figure it out as I go

[vapid violet]

Is this information even connected to your application? In the US that would be illegal would it not? I always answer "perfer not to answer" because I cant be bother to actually think about what the question is asking.

[pine sleet]

Those are supposed to never negatively impact your application

[peak halo]

on the contrary, in the US they're required to ask to track the company's compliance with equal opportunity employment.

the answers are never to be passed on to those who make decisions about the application.

[vapid violet]

Yes required to track separately.

[next plover]

I try to stay vague about my (physical) disability, as much as I wish I could trust where I work I don't wanna be at the top of a layoff list for "unrelated reasons"

[vapid jay]

Thanks stelercus

What's your part in the team?

[peak halo]

depends on the project. every new project is another wonderful secret.

[sand patio]

we really aren't a place for you to find a job

[true scaffold]

is there a general chat in here

[sand patio]

we have three offtopic channels yeah

!offtopic

[inner wren]

Off-topic channels

There are three off-topic channels:

• #ot0-psvm’s-eternal-disapproval
• #ot1-perplexing-regexing
• #ot2-never-nester’s-nightmare

Use any of the three, it doesn't matter.
The channel names change every night at midnight UTC and are often fun meta references to jokes or conversations that happened on the server.

See our off-topic etiquette page for more guidance on how the channels should be used.

[mortal wedge]

I think even if the LLM hype subsides, ML/Deep learning will always be relevant for analyzing data. And most companies could benefit from some sort of data analysis initiative, whether they can afford it or not

[mortal wedge]

I'll be a cynic for a moment though. Policies are not physics, a company that should not do a thing doesn't necessarily mean that a company won't do the thing.

Personally, I've heard enough anecdotal evidence that as long as I'm not needing any sort of assistance I'll just lie =/

[vast shoal]

I have a lot of trouble picturing people just losing interest in LLMs and stopping using them.

They may stop trying to replace entire humans with them, but I very much doubt they're gonna go away.

[mortal wedge]

That's a fair point and what I was driving at, albiet probably explained more poorly since I've been up all night with anxiety over the two interviews I had today O_O

[peak halo]

I said "the answers are never to be passed", not "the answers are never passed". I'm saying what the policy is, not necessarily what happens.

[smoky quest]

also not a thing worth being sued about

[mortal wedge]

How could someone prove they used the info against them and what regulatory body is enforcing this and do they have the resources to pursue this are all factors that come into play in practice.

[peak halo]

what regulatory body is enforcing this
I wouldn't be surprised if the regulatory body in question has been completely hollowed out.

[mortal wedge]

Yeah

[smoky quest]

they sue the company and have lawyers engage

[mortal wedge]

Especially if the penalty is a monetary fine, corporations are happy to treat regulatory practices as a cost benefit analysis. What are the odds of getting caught, how much does it benefit us to cut corners, etc.

[smoky quest]

It does not benefit a company in anyway to discriminate based on these questions

that's just not how it works

[mortal wedge]

I think your take is extremely naive, so we'll just agree to disagree

[smoky quest]

I understand job search can be exhausting, but this is just plain conspiracy theory fed by the exhaustion

This is unhealthy and not worth worrying about it

[radiant vortex]

Just to add to the conversation regarding DEI, in the UK many companies participate in a "Disability Confident" scheme that guarantees an interview if minimum criteria are met

Personally I've always been open about being neurodivergent and it's never gone against my application (that I'm aware of), sometimes it evens helps as the company asks if they need to make any reasonable adjustments (which iirc is law under the equality act 2010)

[solid parcel]

Some like my company have started saying they guarantee they'll interview a proportional number of neurodiverse candidates rather than guaranteeing an interview for anyone neurodiverse who meets the minimum criteria

[next plover]

It's hard to find someone deep in offsec who's neurotypical in my experience lol

Even just where I work most IT people are in some form neurodivergant

[regal ermine]

I have no issue with neuro-divergence (full disclosure, I am myself) - however, I do have an issue when you're giving interviews to people specifically because they are divergent rather than in a meritocratic manner.

[wild grail]

Hey guys , I got this job and the role is release and incident management. Like developers raise tickets for migrations , user request access .... and the job is to check the ticket info , impact on apis , then migrate in aws. And there 3 to 4 prod changes. But most of the work is like manual and filling details and using tools .

Any advice would be helpful

[bleak quarry]

Hi everyone, I’m currently looking to improve my Python skills. My primary focus is on machine learning, deep learning, and problem-solving. Do you have any recommendations for resources or courses that can help me achieve this?

[peak halo]

a degree with coursework that's relevant to AI is a must-have for jobs in that space. are you already purusing one, and want additional material?

[tiny hedge]

Hi everyone!

I’m a final-year CS student aiming to become a good backend developer. After receiving honest feedback from community seniors, I realized my previous version felt like "skill collecting" without showing how I actually solve engineering problems. I’ve completely refactored it.

I would appreciate a review to see if this version successfully bridges that gap, and any areas of improvement in my skill set. Thank you! (This is only a super resume that will be shortened based on the job description).

Link to my resume: https://www.overleaf.com/read/ywgkdsvbxhdq#4d90fdHi (.pdf file not allowed)

[peak halo]

please hide your phone number

also, is this the "super resume" idea that I think I mentioned to you, where you comment out less relevant lines for each submission until you get down to one page? because it needs to be one page.

[tiny hedge]

yes

[peak halo]

great. I'd also compress the vertical white space in the "core skills" section. lines there are further apart than in the rest, wasting space.

[tiny hedge]

I’ve compressed the vertical spacing in the Skills section to 3pt.

[bleak quarry]

Actually, I’m going to be a student in the majority of AI Engineering (Currently, i’m grade 12). So, I feel like it will be easier if I prepare about coding at the beginning.

[crisp stream]

as you do more change reviews and handle incidents, you'll learn more about what kind of things cause issues
try to automate looking for those things so you (and the team) save on time

[wild grail]

Oh yeah thanks a lot for your response first of all.....and yes the manager was talking bout automating .... but I have a doubt . How can a company securely automate their work and save time .

[wild grail]

But the issues are handled by either infra or SRE team . We just Tage those teams after migration .

[blissful oracle]

Y'all is it worth achieving your goals

[vast shoal]

Not necessarily

Like, maybe your goal isn't actually something all that great to strive for and/or achieve.

Maybe it just seems nice on paper.

Or maybe it's not worth the cost.

[blissful oracle]

I think it's worth setting them high at least

[vast shoal]

It depends, I guess

[blissful oracle]

Ye but yolo

[vast shoal]

Exactly because yolo

It's worth putting some thought into it

You don't get a do-over

[smoky quest]

It's always a trade off

[smoky quest]

Nice!

Main things for me would be:

• Move your skills to the end as they give the wrong impression
• Keep it one page

Looking at your skills, it made it look like you are focusing too much on specific tools (libraries, languages), when engineers are primarily hired for solving problems (at least, the highly paid ones) rather than spitting code. As such, I was lamenting over the lack of more abstracted concepts in your list of skills (ex: something related to distributed systems, encryption, compilers, etc.)
But your projects are really cool and do highlight far more breadth and depth than your skill list might demonstrate.

though take it with a grain of salt as I don't hire in Pakistan and things might be slightly different over there

[tiny hedge]

Thanks for your time. Sure i will move the Skill section to the end. I’m currently treating this as a super resume containing all my experience, and when applying for specific roles, i’ll minimize it to a single page and remove irrelevant details to keep it focused.

[tiny hedge]

Regarding the skills, should I add a dedicated 'Concepts' category to highlight things like Distributed Systems, Cryptography, and Concurrency Patterns?

[smoky quest]

Sure

[tiny hedge]

Even for the local software houses here, I think your advice holds.

[mortal wedge]

Whether they can do so safely and securely is a different question than if they're going to attempt it, regardless.

[smoky quest]

There are a few aspects relevant to your new role:

• There are industry standard/best practices. See the DORA report for instance
• You can't improve what you can't measure. As you ramp up, you will notice inefficiencies that can be improved upon. But it does imply you do have measurements across the SDLC and different steps
• Incident management should include post mortems and iterative improvements

[mortal wedge]

I recommend keeping skills sections at the beginning and making sure they're labeled as skills. They help recruiters without deep understanding of technical concepts identify at a glance if you're relevant to the role. I'd leave conceptual topics either in a summary or in your resume bullets.

And even senior professionals with 5- 10 years on the market have to make the decision between 1 or 2 pages. Anyone with less YOE should keep it to 1 page, certainly.

[mortal wedge]

What sort of commute would you guys be willing to consider for a really good career advancing job?

I’m being headhunted for a position with a number I’m finding it hard to turn down in this economy but it’s hybrid and with an hour commute outside of commuting hours so…

[astral ermine]

If it's hybrid, maybe after a month or two they'd be more open to less days in office

[near ocean]

An hour each way? Thats kinda the minimum here in london

[analog lion]

So, I'm sure this has been brought up before but, what do you tell employers who think they don't need you because of AI coding tools? Last year I could confidently say, "yes the tools exist, but they make so many mistakes, you need a coder there to figure it where they went wrong and fix the bugs". However, the tools are constantly getting better. I'm asking because I was in an interview for a position to help a team of analysts by creating tools to help them do their job, and one of the interviewers, who is an analyst on the team, brought how he was able to vibe-code a solution for himself, and I found it difficult to explain why it was necessary to have someone with coding experience on the team. I essentially countered with, I could take the data you analyze and throw it at an AI and have it draw conclusions, but it wouldn't be as good if an analyst did it themselves, but a little more eloquently. lol

[smoky quest]

<@&831776746206265384> ads

[smoky quest]

There are two main aspects that are somewhat related:

• It's better to see them as augmentation tools rather than replacement
• How do you know the produced code/results are correct? How do you know your analysis has solid numbers and not made up? You would need someone who can understand what is going on

[azure heart]

!cleanban 1388163777496612954 seems like you're just here to advertise

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @sly ibex permanently.

[tiny hedge]

I'll try to fit the conceptual topics into the Summary. if they don't fit well there, I’ll keep them under Skills.
I'm getting confused about where the skill section should be positioned in the resume. Google says The skills section should be placed near the top, following the summary, or at the bottom, near education, depending on experience level. I have almost a YOE.

[wild grail]

Could you please teach me what your explaining here Please 🙂 🤌

[wild grail]

No I mean if they have to automate the process they are doing , like they would have to create their own tool?

[balmy mural]

Currently my threshold is 1 hour one way (2 hours total), but only for roles that are in office 1-3 times per week. This is via public transport though. If I had to drive, I'd cut that down a bit

[smoky quest]

Sure, as soon as:

• You describe what part is confusing you
• What have you tried to do to understand and what you have found

[wild grail]

Measurable is improvable. But um so your telling me to analyze the incidents and make reports?

[smoky quest]

I would suggest to read https://sre.google/books/

[wild grail]

Oh thank you 👍✨️

[turbid bobcat]

depending on your method of transportation that 1h can easily become 1h30min or more

for ex for trains: get delayed, you might miss them, you also have to prep your routine around their schedule, etc etc etc

meaning 1h would be the best case scenario in this ex, not a median

[smoky quest]

also https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912
It's old but still valuable

oh and there is also https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134032802

[smoky quest]

And in terms of explaining Measurable is improvable, it's as simple as this: how can you improve something if you can't measure it?
Imagine you are trying to improve the speed of your project. How can you improve it if you don't know how fast it goes?
That means being able to decompose your project in different parts and seeing what part is slow so that you can improve the problematic one. Otherwise you are bound to randomly try things but you won't have any success and may actually make things worse

[wild grail]

Oh yeah I understand thankyou

[grizzled gate]

im thinking to study information technology in university , what language should i learn first in the meantime and what laptop spec that is suitable for my study.

[carmine hatch]

lemon

[nova berry]

Hello guys

Do you know any remote desktop software

Which is advanced

[peak halo]

this is the career advice/discussion channel. try asking in one of the off-topic channels.

[nova berry]

Where is that channel

[peak halo]

there's three of them. look at the channel list and scroll down until you see it.

[nova berry]

Oh tnx

[crisp stream]

try Fiverr or Upwork
definitely not here (see #rules)

[winged relic]

Okay I appreciate it

[naive sigil]

What path would you recommend that offers the highest likelihood of being hired as a software developer? I’m currently considering enrolling in some computer science courses at CSU, but I’m curious whether there are other routes I should also be exploring.

[next plover]

Learn "AI"?

As in prompting or getting a masters in it

I mean you can definitely find a development job that's not AI, not everyone can get a masters in that field

It's like saying go into neurosurgery if you want to get a job in Healthcare

Sure

[slate anchor]

discord.gift/SCfuPyKpeNDJSDcq3G4ynDbG

im not sure

Fastest hand of the west apparently

I don’t think discord would allow that and it’s not a full link

[peak halo]

Usually selfbots snipe free nitro

[slate anchor]

eh, idc

it’s only $10

[minor beacon]

Hi everyone 👋
I’m starting my journey to become an AI/ML engineer and will be moving to Bangalore soon.
What skills or projects helped you get your first AI job?

[formal knot]

Hi,
I'm currently a student in game development, but I feel like I'm not build for that
I don't have much ideas, I think it's really underpaid for the work, and mostly I think that I actually have no real interest in making games.

I'm about to move to another school, when I could perfom a CS degree followed by a master.
Do you have any recommendations (books, online courses, projects, anything) to make myself stand up ?
I've already started CSAPP btw

[surreal lark]

DE4476 1534 2356 3818 00
VK
Baden Württemberg
Caillou Elias Elbers

[slate anchor]

w server icon change

[vapid violet]

I am currently in my 2nd year of uni and will soon be registering for the first semester of my third year. I have a few options.
I could go for a masters in a tech field (most likely coursework based not research based). This would be a 4+1 masters
I could go for a double major (likely cybersecurity)
I could add a second minor (likely cybersecurity), I already have a mathematics minor
I could just graduate early.

My goal is to work at a software company or a company that develops software for internal use
I currently do not have any internship experience.
Putting aside what I want to do, what is the thing that will help me land a job and have good flexibility early in my career?

[versed portal]

F''k i get uneasy when nvidia represents says do not invest a education in software programming 💀

[peak halo]

NVIDIA is probably the company that's profiting the most from the AI boom, so they're motivated to hype AI as much as possible, so that people keep buying their hardware

[icy pagoda]

watch all their job ads require education (with masters preferred) as a baseline

[minor beacon]

Hi everyone 👋
I’m starting my journey to become an AI/ML engineer and will be moving to Bangalore soon.
What skills or projects helped you get your first AI job?

[deep hornet]

@manu I want to talk to you

[manic totem]

guys hi

[sturdy cloak]

well i still didnt get my first job but if you to focus on working in ML you to start by ML and understanding the theoretical knowledge

[sonic pilot]

Yee

[flat abyss]

hello guys i want to become ai/ml engineer can anyone give me roadmap?

[peak halo]

a degree in something like computer science with coursework that's related to AI/ML is a must-have.

[vapid violet]

My external research is ruling out double major and second minor. So now it is just between getting a masters and graduating early

[next plover]

i would not recommend any cybersecurity degree

it will be useless unless you plan on putting lots of effort into that area outside of school, and it looks like you are going into SWE so its generally non applicable to anything youd need to know

(and they suck im ngl)

[glacial heart]

I have been taught these things in college:
-C
-Assembly
-Python
And for a job vacancy I was asked for these skills:
-Embedded C programming and Linux programming

I have no idea about linux programming and I have a very shallow idea about C programming.
Any opinions/advices welcome

[next plover]

Embedded C is very different from normal programming , its a special field and you have to know a lot about memory and system internals

[glacial heart]

I can revise C tho

[next plover]

can you confidently tell me the difference between the stack and heap?

[glacial heart]

Nope

[next plover]

I would pass on this job or now

you need a very deep knowledge of C and operating systems for embedded programming

[glacial heart]

But this job is meant for ece people but we were not taught these stuff

[next plover]

ece?

[glacial heart]

Electronic and communication engineering

[next plover]

generally you should be spending some of your free time furthering your knowledge . school gets you a piece of paper, what you learn is completely on you (both in and outside of class)

[glacial heart]

Hmm

[next plover]

from my experience in cybersecurity you will have a very rough time getting a job without dedicating lots of your free time to self learning. partially because the degrees kinda suck and partially because its an insanely deep field

[glacial heart]

may I ask how would one learn linux programming

[turbid bobcat]

cyber security has low exposure to automation

worth considering in the pros/cons matrix

[next plover]

I would start with C and move into some kernel stuff from there

but dare I say C takes year(s) to actually get good at especially to the point of linux development

[vapid violet]

What do you mean by this?

[glacial heart]

Ik python basic stuff, would that make it easier for me to learn C

[turbid bobcat]

I mean that cyber sec is not gonna be handed to LLMs any time soon due to its critical nature and need for accountability

[next plover]

as far as the logic yes, but you have to learn lots of CS fundamentals like heap, stacks, and most functions you write yourself they are not in a stdlib

pointers as well which is hard for lots of people

[glacial heart]

Hmm

[next plover]

i would not say embedded programming is anywhere near an entry level position though

[turbid bobcat]

was my first job tho. as fun as it was, I pivoted cuz I wanted exposure to making products, not just scheduling lights inside of cars

[wraith rune]

People who mostly program at home, what monitor do you use? I am thinking of getting a 34 inch or a 49 inch but I was wondering which was better for the gamers and programmers here

[hallow cape]

ooh, pointers

[peak halo]

try asking in one of the off-topic channels

[hallow cape]

making me drool

[wraith rune]

Alright thanks

[flint hearth]

Im not so into this, but isnt it the other way around? I have a friend who will follow the cibersecurity path and what I understood from what he said is that the cibersecurity field is unlikely to get replaced since they in fact want a SOMEONE to take accountability for any issue

[turbid bobcat]

ya thats exactly what im saying

[flint hearth]

yea I just realized I read it wrong mb

[turbid bobcat]

no worries

[hazy dew]

I'm 47 years old and looking to get into a job where I can be Dev. How hard will it be for me as I am learning python now?

[azure heart]

Realistically, next to impossible

[regal axle]

Answering this isn’t simple. A few questions. Do you have a degree? In what? Is schooling an option? Where do you live? What capacity of “dev” do you want? IE software engineer or guy who does a job and happens to also code?

[azure heart]

If python is your first language and you're self learning, you're competing for a job against full time CS grads who have spent years learning

[regal axle]

Sure. But depending on their expectations, it can be alright. If they want to compete for the same jobs as CS grads … yea, really challenging

[astral ermine]

CS grads these days are applying for everything

[azure heart]

Yeah, it's still a great skill to learn and can help pad out a resume when applying to jobs where python can be used, but it's extremely unlikely to land a full fledged "dev" position

Even experienced devs are struggling right now

@knotty pecan We don't allow advertising on this server. Your post has been removed

[hazy dew]

Okay, well have coded in qbasic and some in c/c++. I have an associate degree in applied science for computer animation. I thought about taking a boot camp or something to get some certifications.

[azure heart]

You might consider tech art in the animation industry!

Most DCC software is written in C++ and allows for plugins, as well as scripting tools/processes with python

Houdini and Maya are 2 of the main ones used and Tech Artists are (usually) fairly high in demand in tv/film/games (although the industry is in a bit of a slump)

[hazy dew]

Well, thanks for your time...seems I may have some options to think about now.

[fierce sail]

Can I become a python programmer if I learn python

[peak halo]

what is a python programmer if not someone who knows and programs in python?

you pretty much can't get a job as a programmer without a degree, though.

[sonic pilot]

@icy berry yo here

[icy berry]

im here

[sonic pilot]

So at your job they just give you a problem and your supposed to figure out how to do it

[icy berry]

yes, that is my normal day

[fierce sail]

https://tenor.com/view/velikimisliteli-gif-7638381209157953953

[sonic pilot]

Do you use AI a lot of mainly Google and docs to figure out how to do something

[icy berry]

no, AI can help me solve hard problems

its to stupid

only simple and beginner problems can AI help out with

[sonic pilot]

Mmhm soo

[sharp breach]

Anyone pursuing BCA here?

[sonic pilot]

What do you use

[near ocean]

Good old brains