career-advice

[spark cypress]

For the beautiful yearly salary of 60,000 euros per year

[terse stump]

When you factor in the differences in benefits it's not much worse I don't think

[hearty sierra]

Disappointing but not uncommon now.

Companies can ask for whatever they want, and the trend lately (at least in the software space) has been to ask for more experience for less compensation than what a junior dev would make. Meanwhile junior devs are having a real tough time entering the industry since no companies seem to want to hire and train them anymore.

So you have junior devs and mid level devs getting the short end of the stick. Couple that with employee turnover (and companies not being able to adequately fill those vacancies) and senior devs retiring, I just can't see the software industry headed in a healthy direction. But hopefully I'm wrong about that.

[terse stump]

It's 38% income tax and it's about $70k usd. But considering you won't bankrupt yourself on healthcare maybe it's more competetive in aggragate. So if you're healthy I guess you're SOL

But as peach said the market is screwed up rn

Also it's not an uncommon practice to have "F U" job postings which the company expects to never fill and only exist for other reasons

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-job-listing-ghost-jobs-cbs-news-explains/

[hearty sierra]

I recently had an experience when applying to a job where the company got me through the whole process and they said they were going to make a decision, before completely ghosting me and re-posting the same job listing on all the popular online job boards again. Makes me not even want to re-apply if this company is going to pull this nonsense. And something tells me this isn't an isolated company being shady.

All these companies seem to be searching for a "unicorn" candidate that ticks all the boxes of their job posting's desired experience field and when they don't find it they just re-post the listing as if the previous candidates never existed.

I really don't want to be negative about this kind of stuff but I've definitely had a lot of sub-par experiences like this lately on the job hunt.

[solid parcel]

YoE requirements are generally very loose

[acoustic wolf]

It bothers me because I spent a lot of time learning to code and HR people just do not understand what that means or looks like. I don't think I've ever had someone check out the projects I made. One woman didn't even read the resume. I'm only casually looking right now because I'm going back to school, but it has me a little wary of the future

[smoky quest]

In terms of career, a degree is the path of least resistance and with the most opportunities and compensation

It's also a mistake to assume only an HR person without any knowledge about your job will read your resume

[fiery cove]

How much you guys make without degree

[hearty sierra]

It's really hard to make anything without a degree in this field, especially with the job market the way it currently is.

[near ocean]

Less than they would with a degree, on average

[warm igloo]

I don't think so degree really plays a major role , its your skills & github which speaks

[hearty sierra]

A degree is usually always listed as required for most job listings, at least here in the US. For the few jobs that don't have a strict degree requirement, previous employment and skills can substitute for the degree yes. GitHub not so much, unless you have something really impressive you can show off on there (and if the employer actually cares enough to give it any of their attention at all).

[solid parcel]

No, but it is a reasonable take that the vast majority of people will not check out a project you've got on your CV. Which isn't to say building projects isn't still valuable- they're a good way to learn and give you something to put on your CV when you're starting out - but it is worth bearing in mind.

[fiery cove]

How about beginner software developer @near ocean @hearty sierra

[hearty sierra]

The market is currently in a position where beginner software devs are struggling to get hired, even with a degree. Without a degree you can try to get an internship if you're currently pursuing a degree. But if you're a beginner software developer without a degree and you're not currently pursuing one, it's going to be really hard to find any employer that will give you a chance.

Freelancing is also not a good option for beginner developers since you have to market yourself aggressively and there's tons of competition from more senior developers.

So really the cards are kind of stacked against beginner software developers trying to enter the industry at the moment. Shouldn't be the way it is but here we are.

[solid parcel]

• you can be hugely undercut by devs in parts of the world with a lower CoL

[fiery cove]

So how do i make money? What remote job should i study, i have no degree

[hearty sierra]

Remote jobs are also hard to come by and are harder to get in general. They have a lot of competition because everyone wants a remote job instead of being stuck in an office.

As for how you can make money without a degree: if you're talking about within the software space, there is no easy way. It's an uphill battle to get a software job especially now, and the lack of degree or certification of any kind makes the hill that much steeper. You could just hope that the positions you apply for don't have a degree requirement and an employer is willing to take a chance with you even though you have no previous professional experience, but it seems unlikely this would happen. Only thing I can think of is I've seen occasional job listings offering to train you in a certain software stack over a period of weeks then immediately place you in a position at a company, even if you don't have a degree. I highly doubt these jobs are very good though, especially in the long term.

[fiery cove]

I think im done then, i have 5 months to learn something and get a job, idk what to do now, I was studying for ai engineer for months but today i found out that employers only accept seniors

[hearty sierra]

Maybe you could get lucky and get an internship, but those positions usually require you to be in a degree program as well. Sorry, I wish I had better news for you.

[fiery cove]

What should i do then?

[quasi stump]

@hearty sierra can you do me a favor?

[vast shoal]

If you want to work as a developer, getting a degree is pretty much the only realistic option

[hearty sierra]

If you like what you've been studying then I would keep studying it. Maybe try to find an internship that doesn't require you to be in a degree program like I mentioned. But if after 5 months you can't find anything, I would try monetizing your other skills and getting a job in another industry. At least until you can scrape up some money to pursue a degree or certification of some kind.

[fiery cove]

I failed the whole school and didn’t finish the last grade, I literally cannot get a degree + its extremely expensive

[hearty sierra]

Sure, what is it?

[quasi stump]

I am looking for an opportunity and I want to find some job posts from real companies in Discord server. then where can i reach my goal?

[naive heart]

I think that while a degree is important, actual work experience is more important.

Of course, I also hold a degree and have nine years of experience.

Based on my 9 years of experience, clients place more value on actual work experience than on degrees.

[fiery cove]

How many projects you have?

[hearty sierra]

I wouldn't be looking for job postings in random Discord servers. If anything use job boards like Indeed and ZipRecruiter or job networking sites like LinkedIn. That's where I find the majority of the positions I apply for. Not sure if this answers your question.

[naive heart]

I do not have a project.

I am just a developer who produces perfect results tailored to the client's requirements.

[fiery cove]

How many you already made?

[naive heart]

I have experience working on many projects for many clients.

[fiery cove]

Ok

[quasi stump]

thanks for your favor. of course i know it but i just wanna make more chances and get an synchronous update from here discord.

[naive heart]

full stack and Sass project and blockchain project

[fiery cove]

Im so done

[hearty sierra]

Did you like what you were studying at all? If so keep learning and treat it as a hobby for now. Nothing wrong with that.

Programming was a hobby for me for a while before it became my career

[quasi stump]

absolutely right

[fiery cove]

Idk, i only like playing video games and watching YouTube, and editing videos, thats it, i learn that just to get a job, it is a little interesting (ai) but not like fire

[quasi stump]

then why are you gonna get a job so passionately?

[hearty sierra]

You could learn more about video editing and get hired by some content creators on YouTube to edit maybe.

[fiery cove]

No, its low pay and huge competition

[quasi stump]

I also like Blender 3D using python

[fiery cove]

I want IT, no degree, but salaries from 2k a month

[quasi stump]

and it's a good job opportunity

[fiery cove]

Idk guys. What should i do?

[viscid plaza]

hi guys where i can find professional cv examples ?

[hearty sierra]

You can find some through google searches, but I'd be careful because some of them aren't formatted to get through applicant tracking systems. This one looks okay though:

[viscid plaza]

isn't it necessary to add selfie ?

[hearty sierra]

No? At least not if you're job hunting in the US. If you include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your resume a potential employer can see a pic of you on there if they want to.

[fiery cove]

Thats cool

@hearty sierra did you get a job before degree or after?

[viscid plaza]

thank you i prefer to keep it clear, without additional designs

[hearty sierra]

While I was working toward my degree I had several internships. Then after my degree was complete I got my first full time position.

[fiery cove]

So it is possible for me to get an intership as ai dev?

[hearty sierra]

I learned the hard way that overdesigned resumes actually work against you since they don't make it through applicant tracking systems properly. So it's actually better for your resume to look somewhat plain.

[near ocean]

Juniors with degrees still outearn juniors without degrees on average

[hearty sierra]

Maybe? They are seemingly hiring a lot of people for AI stuff right now so they got to have internships out there as well.

[fiery cove]

What if my projects will be better?

[near ocean]

Ngl i've never seen anyone get hired on their projects alone

[fiery cove]

Cool thx! You cured my depression. So i will continue ai dev but even harder studying

[near ocean]

Meanwhile i have friends without even githubs getting paid bags of cash

[fiery cove]

How do they get hired?

[fiery cove]

How? Master degree maybe?

[near ocean]

Degrees and internships and doing well on the tech interview

[fiery cove]

What do they do?

[near ocean]

Software dev in finance

[hearty sierra]

I don't know about that, I just applied for a fintech job and it definitely won't be paying bags of cash if I get it. But I live in a slightly lower cost of living area.

[fiery cove]

Finance is the best niche

[near ocean]

Finance is the one other industry that pays as well as big tech for software

[fiery cove]

So should i do ai dev in finance or software dev in finance

[near ocean]

You should go get a degree first

[fiery cove]

I dont have money for it and i failed school

How am i going to get it

@near ocean not in US

[hearty sierra]

I guess that means you don't have a GED or high school diploma either. The vast majority of jobs that aren't things like manual labor will likely require that.

[near ocean]

Real talk my guy?
The set of people who land a software job and the set of people who cant even get into uni only tangentially overlap, and that overlap is made up of people who know exactly what theyre doing and are also extremely capable and simply chose to not go to higher schooling

Get your grades up and go to a college even if its not a top college
Youre not going to make it without a degree, everyone thinks they will and they end up serving people at starbucks

[icy pagoda]

nah here's 3 examples which proves you're wrong /s

[near ocean]

Name all 3 🤓☝️

[fiery cove]

Ok i will try maybe idk, can i fake it?

[near ocean]

Fake what, a degree?

[fiery cove]

Yeah

[near ocean]

My guy are you serious

[fiery cove]

Idk, is it illegal?

[near ocean]

What do you think

[fiery cove]

I think its not illegal, the employer just will lose trust if he finds out

[near ocean]

Its very illegal, its fraud
How old are you again?

There are plenty of jobs for young adults and teens

[fiery cove]

What are they?

I cant find ANY, each says 2+ years of experience, even dog walking

[near ocean]

Theyre not software jobs

Wait tables, be a cashier, work at a department store, etc

Problem solved

[fiery cove]

No, because im leaving to a super cheap country and i will need external remote income or i wont survive there

[near ocean]

You want a remote software job with no degree and not even a high school diploma? You realise this is impossible, right?

[fiery cove]

Then ai finance dev

Idk what else

@near ocean idk dude help me

[near ocean]

I did

[hearty sierra]

I would focus on getting your high school diploma first honestly. That should at least open up some more employment opportunities for you.

[fiery cove]

No, i hate school

Idk guys, i will just build my projects and we will see

[near ocean]

Youre not getting a good job without high school, stop wasting our time here

[fiery cove]

Ok

[next plover]

I did too you just gotta get through it

[near ocean]

Everyone hates school, its not an excuse

[next plover]

Some are more impacted than others

Most people don't hate school enough to almost fail high-school and risk grtting a job with a 2 year college degree

[fiery cove]

Whats the best Accreditation for high school, im looking for online self paced

[near ocean]

Just go to a high school near you

[fiery cove]

No. I hate that. I want self paced

[near ocean]

Jesus christ this guy is a child

[hearty sierra]

I mean...they said they're 17. So yeah they are.

[near ocean]

Not a child at 17

[proud glacier]

What university is going to agree to something like that?

[next plover]

This is just wrong based on any psychology you can find lmao

[fiery cove]

GED is my only chance of Finishing 2 full years in 5 months

[fiery cove]

We moved on

[fiery cove]

Will GED work you think?

[keen lintel]

Hi, I’m currently focusing on becoming a full stack developer but ...
Do you think this is a good career choice for freshers right now, or would switching to something like data science offer better opportunities?
Also what should I focus on to get a job faster in this field?

[near ocean]

Theyre welcome to keep acting like a 5 year old and see where that takes them

[hearty sierra]

It's hard to say what's better for junior devs right now since the industry is kind of in a slump at the moment. The reality is that junior devs aren't being hired nearly as often as they used to be. That being said I have seen more jobs for full stack developers than I have for data science, at least around where I live.

You should focus on getting internships if you're currently working on a degree since they're a fast track to employment after you graduate.

[keen lintel]

That makes sense thanks but
Since internships seem important as you said what would you recommend focusing on to actually stand out and get one? Like should I prioritize strong projects, DSA, or something else?

[fiery cove]

Should i get CS or finance degree?

@hearty sierra @near ocean

[hearty sierra]

Strong projects and knowing concepts like DSA or OOP help sure. Practicing for interviews also helps. Anything that will make a company realize that you are serious about your current studies.

[hearty sierra]

You should get your GED first before any of that. Focus on that for now.

[fiery cove]

Ok I will study now’s

[keen lintel]

Got it but i am confused
What kind of projects usually stand out to recruiters for internships is it better to build one strong full-stack project or multiple smaller ones done really well? Huh

[fiery cove]

Btw i saw people cry on youtube and tik tok that they got a degree and cant even find a job. Is that true?

Or i shouldn’t focus on those videos and focus on myself?

[hearty sierra]

Hard to say, they both could work as long as the smaller projects aren't too small. The smaller projects could demonstrate the diverse range of your knowledge, or the one large project could show off a specialization that a company is looking for.

[hearty sierra]

Yes. I have a degree and can't currently find a job.

[stiff citrus]

Hey everyone 👋
I’m Suhel, a CS student. I’m thinking of learning Flutter — is it worth it right now?
If yes, how should I start learning it effectively without wasting time? Would really appreciate a clear roadmap or any tips.

[next plover]

Plenty of people in cybersecurity who say this know absolutely nothing about the field so it's very dependent on the person, and the market they are in

[hearty sierra]

Yes to this as well. Don't focus on internalizing others experiences from social media. Instead focus on yourself and grow day by day.

[keen lintel]

Got it
You mean for someone trying to get their first internship would it be safer to focus on a few solid and well-rounded projects instead of one big specialized one?hmm

[fiery cove]

Ok thx

[hearty sierra]

Like I said, you could take either route. If a big project is impressive and shows specialization it should get their attention, but you're banking on that they even want that specialization. But if you flex that you know a whole bunch of different skills with several smaller projects, one of those skills is more likely to align with something a company is currently looking for.

[acoustic wolf]

One time I contacted one of the lead developers of a place, he set me up with an interview. HR rejected me, I contacted them again and he set it straight. Then I was rejected on a first round and second round, and then just stopped trying. To clarify, the guy said he wanted to hire me, but HR was preventing it intentionally. The woman said she didn't even read my resume.

[keen lintel]

Okay i got it ! Thanks for guidance i really appreciate it

[dull belfry]

At entry-level position are the expectations higher now

[next plover]

Yeah

[pale blade]

The market is awful for juniors in general right now, I graduated in 2025 and it took about 2000 applications before I got something lol

[hearty sierra]

Not sure if it's worth it as far as jobs go, but if it's worth it to you I say learn it. The flutter docs website seems to have a roadmap you can follow to build your first flutter app, which involves learning the Dart programming language as well: https://docs.flutter.dev/learn/pathway

[hollow tartan]

@dull belfry so those 5 responded, u only managed to get 1 interview?

[dull belfry]

Yeah from a startup

[hollow tartan]

do u mind sharing ur resume ? U can exclude all personal details and stuff, I just wanna see what am I up to.

I feel like the projects done by me are just shit

[dull belfry]

I think i have already shared it here

Try searching with my username in this channel

[hollow tartan]

okie. btw where u from ?

[dull belfry]

India

[hollow tartan]

ah thats more competitive

[hollow tartan]

@dull belfry what if you have already applied to everything?

[fiery cove]

Thats crazy, how did you win it?

[pale blade]

I eventually got a job in the government, which was a long process. I'm not a developer but I'll be able to move into that role most likely

[fiery cove]

How did you impress the government?

[upbeat tendon]

في عرب

[pale blade]

I applied to an entry level job and interviewed like 6 months later lol that was basically it

[tidal temple]

Hi everyone! Hope you are doing well.
As a senior software engineer, currently I am working AI and Full Stack fields.
In this fields, I am seeking a new opportunity.
I would love to connect with someone who working on own or Team projects (AI/ML, LLM, TTS, N8N, AI agent, AI assistant, Workflow automation, GenerationAI, Chatbot, Full-Stack, Mobile, Web3) as CEO, CTO, Co-founder, PM or developer.
And also, welcome startup or ongoing company that needs senior developer.
If you are interested in, Please drop to me or ping. would love to sharing my CV and portfolio.

[limber terrace]

Hello everyone,
My name is Om and I am 20 years old. I am from India and I have recently started learning Python programming from home. I am a complete beginner but I am very serious about becoming a software developer in the future.

I joined this server to learn, get guidance, and connect with people who are also learning programming or already experienced developers. If anyone has advice for a beginner, resources, or a roadmap, please guide me.

Thank you.

[trim crypt]

!learn recommended resources 👇

[inner wren]

Go-to beginner resources

Here are the top free resources we recommend for people who are new to programming:

• Automate the Boring Stuff — an online book (also available to purchase as a physical book)
• Harvard’s CS50P course — video lectures (slides and notes provided) with exercises
• Python Programming MOOC 2026 course — text-based lessons with exercises
• Corey Schafer's YouTube playlist

For a full, curated list of educational resources we recommend, please see our resources page!

[smoky quest]

This usually happens when there is a red flag about you and they didn't want to take the liability to tell you

[smoky quest]

The amount of time the hiring team will spend on you is a function of how far you are in that hiring pipeline.
If you are reviewing thousands of resume, no time to open up your portfolio/repos. If you are in the final stages, why not? Though you should never expect and rely upon them to do so.
Thus the value of your projects is not the produced code since it won't be reused anyway, but the learning that you can put put on your resume and the ability to talk about it.

[dry kestrel]

Hi, im Festim. Am 14 years old from Albania and I don't know much about python. Only know that it can create stuff by coding,

Can someone explain what it can do and what it can't do?
Thank you!

[remote skiff]

is there any beginner section here to help out the beginner ?

[next plover]

#python-discussion

[dry kestrel]

My bad, I'm just new

[median cosmos]

hey guys so where can i download python on laptop??

[acoustic wolf]

I'm pretty sure the problem was their HR. Like I said I've been a programmer in a professional setting before, no issues.

[peak halo]

people answered this in #python-discussion. don't ask the same question in more than one place, to prevent duplication of effort.

[median cosmos]

Sorry

[eager trellis]

@lyric scarab no protect necessary

[lyric scarab]

so i'd just be saying "trust me i'm good at coding?"

[lyric scarab]

i feel like i should give them smth

[eager trellis]

no, you wouldn't be coding

you'll be shadowing an employee. I think you're thinking of an internship

[lyric scarab]

ah okay

[sour tartan]

@lyric scarab idk if you are looking for an internship. In many internships you would be writing code.

[lyric scarab]

ah i doubt they'd let a 16 year old touch their codebase
it can be an internship or shadowing they call it "work expeireince" but like it's up to the company

[sour tartan]

ok, i don't know what they conventions are there.

do you have a question?

[lyric scarab]

i don't understand what u mean by dat

[sour tartan]

i don't know what your countries expectations are for this work experience.

[lyric scarab]

again it's really up to the company like the school doesn't give a fuck if ur working in macdonalds serving chips or working in a hospital doing surgery
but i think i would prefer an intership cos the work expeirience is two weeks and i doubt it'd be much craic following a lad for 2 weeks

[sour tartan]

it's hard to picture getting actual experience in two weeks

(in software)

[lyric scarab]

well that's all we get lol but it's not meant to be like smth u put on ur cv it's just to help u decide what u wanna do for fifth year and beyond

[sour tartan]

is there someone at school you can talk to about this? Lay out your goals and ask for advice about how to realistically use the two weeks?

[lyric scarab]

now i already kinda know what i wanna do for my future but i just wanna have a look at like cybersecurity cos i just wanna see what they're doing all day like r they coding or what

[lyric scarab]

well it's four but you're only allowed to do two weeks in the same job and yes i could but that's a last resort

[sour tartan]

why is talking to someone at school a last resort? Is that what you meant?

[lyric scarab]

that would require booking an appointment with the guidance counsellers which for a start they don't know anything about cs

[sour tartan]

you should book an appointment. they may not know about cs, but they know about the work experience requirement.

[lyric scarab]

ig i could ask the computer science teacher when he gets back from kenya

[sour tartan]

i think it will be very very hard to find a tech company to let you be there for two weeks, especially a cybersecurity firm.

[lyric scarab]

yeah see that's what i was thinking too that's why i asked in the first place

[lyric scarab]

yeah i might do this and then if i have to i'll go to the guidance counsellers but i don't have the best relationship with her (there's only one idk why i used plural)

[magic fiber]

is anybody free to help me with understanding something my friend coded it i just need help

[lyric scarab]

@sour tartan what do you do

[sour tartan]

you should ask in #python-discussion

[sour tartan]

i work for a large tech company

[magic fiber]

thanks

[lyric scarab]

no but like what roles

[sour tartan]

i'm a software engineer, mostly writing tools for other software developers.

[lyric scarab]

wait is there a difference between sw engineer and dev

[sour tartan]

no, not sure why i used two different words

[smoky quest]

How can you be sure? Neither HR nor your friend have shared the reason with you or your friend was not in the loop. Without the real reason, it's pure speculation.
I understand it's easier and comforting to default to blaming HR/company for not seeing the obvious talent in the candidate when the reason is uncertain, but that's an ego trap. It's healthier and more effective to take the rejection as ambiguous with some possible explanations. Not having a clear answer is not great but that's okay

HR is there to support the company, not making the company worse. They have no incentive to reject good candidates. That said, it's always safer to reject a potentially good candidate than having to deal with a candidate who turns out problematic.

It might feel unfair and arbitrary to you, but there must be a reason. I have seen cases where the "friend" didn't actually want the candidate and HR was willing to take the blame for it. However I do not know you nor your friend, there is no point speculating about your specific situation and I can only speak as a rule of thumb

I will also challenge a common trope of blaming someone for not hiring a candidate or generally speaking, "not getting it". Rather than blaming the other party, it can be interesting and useful to flip the problem and challenge yourself:

What have I said or done to make them think/do/behave as such?

They might have done something wrong, but you can always control what you do

[smoky quest]

In some countries, software engineer is a protected label and only people who have undergone a specific education and training can call themselves as such.

[open ivy]

Words in general don't mean all that much, or at least the meaning is less clear than what it says on the tin. I wish I had a better way to see past a glitzy description.

[smoky quest]

they kinda do though

[open ivy]

You are just better at extracting the meaning than me. I guess the job descriptions themselves at least give me an idea.

Is an "accountant" going to work with spreadsheets? Or do they have Python DataFrames? Do they answer phone calls? What judgements do they make that aren't just following rules and protocols? Do they do taxes?

[smoky quest]

Do you have an example related to software engineering?

[still condor]

!cleanban @spring verge giveaway scam

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @spring verge permanently.

[open ivy]

Here are requirements for a random "Software Engineer" role I found that seem generic:

*Build and scale AI-powered tools using LLMs, modern data infrastructure, and cutting-edge web technologies.
*Own product features end-to-end, working across large-scale data pipelines and intuitive web applications.
*Collaborate directly with customers—from emerging biotechs to major pharma firms—to solve real-world coordination and decision-making challenges.
*Rapidly prototype, iterate, and ship solutions that unify and analyze critical datasets to optimize drug development decisions.
*Enhance decision-support systems relied upon by industry professionals to accelerate therapies to market.

This biology is a fit for me but the other parts don't seem all that unique. Based on this they will be making products to help analyze data and point out potential drug candidates. But beyond the biology side, it isn't clear what the key challenges are. Is it making good web applications? The AI models themselves? Data analysis? Working with people? A bit of all of this?

Lots of software dev jobs involve analyzing data with AI, web development, and some level of customer deals, because lots of companies have data and lots of people use AI.

[smoky quest]

It says you are to Build and scale AI-powered tools, not models, not analysis.

You should expect to always work with people

[open ivy]

So I won't be digging into the weights and biases and trying to improve the model or figure out why it isn't accurate for certain classes of molecules etc?

[smoky quest]

only if it is at the service of Build and scale AI-powered tools. I assume digging into the weights and biases wouldn't rank that high for this mission

[open ivy]

Good point. So the job doesn't fit me particularly well (I would still do a decent job, but they don't know that). Now, if they did focus more on dissecting AI then it would be a strong fit given it's also biological. Because algorithm design is a core focus of my projects. But the word "first principles" seem a bit cliche?

[smoky quest]

Companies seldom need to "dissect AI"

[open ivy]

What about algorythim design such as physics simulation etc?

[smoky quest]

I would not consider first principle as cliche. It puts the emphasis on the theoretical and abstract thinking skills

[smoky quest]

That comes down to which companies need to build their own physics simulation

It's a mean to an end, not an end in itself

[open ivy]

This is a difference I will keep in mind between my portfolio and my future work.

Right now I do things because I want to accomplish things, and the "means" can be the end. But for a job I will be doing things that have to serve a purpose for the company (and will pick a company for which it's business model is about helping customers, which is true for most smaller and medium companies).

It will require a change in approach but doesn't seem that hard.

[smoky quest]

Companies won't hire someone to "dissect AI" for sport. They will pay someone because they need someone with these skills to accomplish something. Maybe that's because a company wants to develop better tools about interpretability and explainability of results, maybe it's a security actor which wants to find flaws they can exploit, maybe it's a lawyer firm that wants to prove copyrighted work was used in the training, etc.
If they didn't have the need, they would not pay someone to do it

[open ivy]

Yes so the question is how to show that my portfolio is indeed building skills that can be used in industry. I have several ideas but you are probably better at this skill.

[steady mirage]

@open ivy @smoky quest

someone hack me what i do

[peak halo]

Change your discord password

[fiery cove]

Wow yeah, thats long

They test dedication i guess

[fleet iris]

i would like advice on how to become a better engineer, Just make normal projects? is there some area where i want to specialize or practice. i just write my projects based on how i feel at that moment

i don't plan or design

[icy pagoda]

an uncertain stance goes both ways "maybe the HR is incompetent, maybe I am incompetent".

I'd expect them to give their best shot anyways so the "maybe I am incompetent" line of reasoning is useless without feedback. If there was something obvious they could self reflect to improve on, I'd expect people to already know it regardless of this

"maybe the HR is incompetent" doesn't hurt here/is easier to cope with and is often a general trend in plenty of companies which leads to this being "sure"

[smoky quest]

If there was something obvious they could self reflect to improve on, I'd expect people to already know it regardless of this

Unfortunately, it is not that obvious to many.

[smoky quest]

Try to go over each bullet and be in a position where you can state:
"I am obviously the best candidate for this requirement given X on my resume at line Y"

[smoky quest]

Also note that even in the case of coping, it is unhealthy and counter productive since it prevents you from entertaining plausible scenario and ways to present yourself better next time

[icy pagoda]

knowing their own incompetence isn't obvious to many, but if a rejection without feedback allows them to identify something new, they should have been able to do it while applying too

[smoky quest]

So you are saying that if they know, then they know. And if they don't know, then they don't know

[icy pagoda]

yeah, a no-feedback rejection doesn't unlock anything new with a "maybe I am incompetent" line of thinking

[smoky quest]

You are right, and that's my point: it doesn't mean HR is incompetent, the same way it doesn't mean they were incompetent either.
Sometimes you don't have answers and that's okay. HR or their friend or their manager might have had very valid reason, but we don't have enough information to establish a conclusion

Though in concrete terms, I would suggest to make a list of the top 3 plausible explanations but to not overthink them either

[smoky quest]

It's healthier and more effective to take the rejection as ambiguous with some possible explanations. Not having a clear answer is not great but that's okay

[icy pagoda]

yeah i guess, deluding yourself to overconfidence is not healthy. in [this case](#career-advice message), i just see it more like a coping belief which doesn't hurt/by extension not really unhealthy. you couldn't have done better by thinking much about the alternative

just work on the flaws you already know exist and it'll work out

[smoky quest]

I have seen many valid alternatives.

But again, I don't want to make it about that specific person

it's not helpful nor fruitful

Plus there is a correlation between people who want to listen to this type of feedback and people who succeed

It's like the say: you can take a donkey to the river, but you can't make it drink

[smoky quest]

also I have observed that juniors will have a tunnel vision and focus on purely specific leetcode skills, at the cost of other relevant skills. Not being introspective and asking yourself what went wrong would not help

It's like everything: do a post mortem and review it, but don't obsess over it

[fiery cove]

@hearty sierra @near ocean I guess the only solution for me is to finish high school and then finish university or college idk which one is better and alongside with that try to become the best of my kind (ai finance dev) to get selected among other beginners

[hearty sierra]

Yes I'd say finishing high school and then working on a degree are a good set of steps to take in your situation.

[fiery cove]

Alongside with studying and improving my projects and showcasing then on youtube for example

[hearty sierra]

I don't think you really need to showcase them on youtube, as a potential employer isn't going to sit down and watch a youtube video. I think open-sourcing the code, making the repo look professional with markdown and documentation, then writing up a project summary on your resume and linking your github on there would be a better option.

[smoky quest]

The more you invest in your career, the more you get out of it

[fiery cove]

Thank you guys!

How about participating in competitions, does it help? @hearty sierra @smoky quest

[smoky quest]

Imagine your car is broken. You are looking for a mechanic to fix your car.
Do you care about the competitions your mechanic has participated to?

[fiery cove]

No

I want him to fix my car with as much quality as possible, ha can take his time

[hearty sierra]

Couldn't tell you, I've never participated in any. But I can't see employers looking for that unless you're going for some cybersec job and you won hacking competitions or something

[smoky quest]

so you are saying it doesn't matter

[fiery cove]

Oh ok, so only for cybersecurity got it, which pays more cybersecurity or finance?

[fiery cove]

Yes

[hearty sierra]

It's hard to say which pays more. Pay depends not just on the industry but also on things like cost of living and years of experience. I encourage you not to focus so much on what industry pays more but instead to really ask yourself what field you're interested in and pursue that.

[fiery cove]

Im interested in ai because its universal, cybersecurity is more like a hobby

Thank you @hearty sierra !

[hearty sierra]

Of course.

[acoustic wolf]

"There must be a reason" that is literally not true lmao

[remote girder]

Hey there, im pretty new to coding (i actually know nothing) but next year i will learn about coding, but i wanna try and learn it myself, but how can i?

[remote girder]

through school btw

[pale blade]

Bureaucracy is always a pain to deal with

[solid parcel]

It's the main pain point for me... Half my time is spent trying to wrangle our enterprise architects into approving tools for use.

[pale blade]

The government is always slow, but our hiring process is typically 9-12 months long so it's especially bad

[hearty island]

guys, how do you deal with unproductive coworkers who do not pull their weight on a team?

do you raise your concerns with the manager?
do you take a step back and let em sink?
do you hustle and make their responsibilities yours?

[wooden marten]

hey developers,i am in my freshman yr and i started to learn python and its libraries.i wanted to ask few questions.like after learning single concept like if i learned oops today so should i try to build something with it or just the assignments i am doing with lectures is fine and building project when its right time(like after learning a lot and you get an idea)

[peak halo]

You won't learn OOP in one day, but I strongly recommend practicing on your own, in addition to coursework. You'll learn a lot that way.

[mortal wedge]

I tried the hustling, it doesn't end well.

Taking a step back and letting them sink might work, just be careful they don't find a way to take you down with them.

Don't raise concerns with manager unless it directly impacts your work. And even then, come prepared with receipts and stick to factual statements you can prove as opposed to opinions and try to frame it less as a complaint but as a "what can we do to improve the project" or something

[smoky quest]

Can you expand on your reasoning?

[smoky quest]

How does that impact you?

[hearty island]

bc they don’t do anything i have to do all their work for them

and it was my responsibility to train them but they refuse to take any initiative to learn or show any care

[next plover]

Tell your manager

[true harness]

CYA

[mortal wedge]

And depending on what your manager says, be fully prepared to start looking for another job. Otherwise it's a ticking timebomb that might explode in your face.

Because sometimes you don't get the opportunity to defend yourself before you're let go

[true harness]

think about what you can do, not about what they are not doing. take some accountability

[mortal wedge]

At a previous job, a coworker convinced our boss(es) that I was to blame for a major screwup on his part and that he could do my job better.

They let me go without giving me a chance to defend myself.

I did get some measure of satisfaction that a few weeks later they posted an opening of my old job for higher pay that was open for like 6-9 months lol.

[solid parcel]

I've been in this position recently. I'd recommend raising it with your manager, albeit diplomatically. I put it across as me struggling to know how to manage them. I was finding them abrasive, argumentative, unwilling to take direction, similarly unwilling to self-direct. Happily, I found other senior engineers had raised similar issues about this colleague, so none of what I was saying came as a surprise to my manager.

Initially, a lot of people lean toward working harder to make up for the person not pulling their weight. If behaviour continues to go unaddressed, that can have a really toxic impact on team culture. Bad behaviour gets enabled and embedded rather than being challenged.

[next plover]

What situation would reporting this cause them to be terminated

Im very lucky with the team I work in but I can't imagine getting fired as the productive one

No degree is rough in this market

[mortal wedge]

I've seen bosses go full on defending the other coworker, especially if they're a brown-noser.

Some companies will choose to minimize risk and let go of both employees.

Not saying this is common or a norm, but it's a possibility

[next plover]

You're not even getting past the automated resume check with that sorry

[mortal wedge]

Honestly I'm going after a masters just to stay competitive

[solid parcel]

It certainly can happen. One of the issues with the colleague I mentioned was that he'd agree to something in calls with me, and then message me afterwards making it sound like I was putting unreasonable expectations on him, not supporting, etc. It felt very manipulative, and to a less engaged manager than my boss could well have resulted in me looking like the issue

[next plover]

Are you good though?

[mortal wedge]

The least painful suggestion would be to find the quickeset/cheapest degree you can and hope people don't realize it's a quick/cheap degree.

[next plover]

Do you have a resume?

[mortal wedge]

Do you have a portfolio of projects that someone can review?

[next plover]

Your resume doesn't reflect that

[mortal wedge]

Getting cybersec in NA will be rough if you can't also get a security clearance

(I don't know whether or not you can)

[next plover]

It'd hard enough for people with degrees

[mortal wedge]

Yeah

[next plover]

Although they aren't great most of the time in my experience

[mortal wedge]

We're dancing around it, but the core problem here is that tech is in a bad place right now and degrees are an easy differentiator (so lack of one is an easy disqualifier)

[solid parcel]

Very easy rough heuristic to filter on, exactly

[next plover]

Idk a degree means nothing to me if I'm judging your skill in security I know masters who can't define a DMZ

[mortal wedge]

I agree, but I've also spoken to many who claim to be just as educated as someone with a degree who just..... isn't

[next plover]

Ngl a masters in security is a red flag for me

[mortal wedge]

Not saying it's impossible. I'm somewhat proof of it that the majority of my comp sci education came from outside of my degree, but... I also did have an engineering degree.

[solid parcel]

Them not being able to do that is notable specifically because you'd expect better than that, which in turn highlights where having a degree is an easy heuristic for recruiters to filter against. If on average candidates with a degree are a higher calibre than those without, that makes it a useful data point.

[hexed jewel]

i still haven't passed all of my subjects and im worried af

i do have a job now

[peak halo]

Everyone agrees that skills are what actually matter, but it would be incredibly expensive and kind of impossible to do a proper skills assessment on every applicant. Requiring a degree externalizes the skill assessments to a university.

[next plover]

I know

[solid parcel]

Social proof. Imperfect, but better than nothing

[hexed jewel]

even if i pass university, my grades are still shit

[mortal wedge]

For what it's worth, outside of your first job, your gpa won't matter

[next plover]

No

[mortal wedge]

For better or worse the gate is do you have a stem degree or do you not

[hexed jewel]

this is my first job but its still an internship its not full-time

[mortal wedge]

Hey, internships are great!

[next plover]

Yeah unfortunately

[hexed jewel]

but i had to relocate to a new city and the company is paying the rent and everything

[mortal wedge]

There are masters courses with performance based admissions

[hexed jewel]

ur trolling

[next plover]

I just went to community college for 2 years

[mortal wedge]

That's how I got into my masters. My undergrad grades were bad, but I knew that I knew my stuff. So I breezed through their performance based admission requirement.

[fringe sphinx]

Well, fix that first. Creating a professional resume is in your control

[next plover]

Also network

[mortal wedge]

But just to be clear, I breezed through the performance based admission after taking courses separately and also working in the industry for 5 years

[next plover]

But you gotta be really good to get into security these days the competition is insane

[fringe sphinx]

Well, a poorly written resume plus no degree is worse than a proper resume with no degree

[mortal wedge]

If your goal is to get a tech job in the states right now and you don't have a degree... your chances are very poor

[fringe sphinx]

Also, the industry is larger than just SWE jobs. Look at all adjacent jobs, even if it's support or operations or whatever

[hexed jewel]

ive had this conversation with myself before, the only role thats adjacent to SWE and I would enjoy is product management

[mortal wedge]

Competition in tech is insane right now. While it's much more difficult it used to be plausible to be able to get work in tech without a degree if you really hustled

[fringe sphinx]

For the first job, any job is good. Testing, support, whatever

[next plover]

Not to mention entry level security != entry level tech

[hexed jewel]

im a SWE intern

im worried that i will get fired

[next plover]

Ain't nobody firing interns unless you're truly horrible

[hexed jewel]

my company is very small we have 6 employees

[mortal wedge]

The US right now requires citizenship for full security clearance and cybersec in the states is hard to be competitive if you can't get one

[next plover]

Not all sec jobs require clearance

[next plover]

Thats the last thing I'd be worried about for now

[hexed jewel]

and ive been feeling like i dont know anything, this was my first week and all ive done is use AI to complete my tasks, i still have backlog of tasks i couldn't finish because they require brains

[mortal wedge]

Fair, but no degree, going into cybersec, no citizenship....

yeah

[mortal wedge]

fwiw based on what I see in linkedin that seems to be all anyone is doing 😵‍💫

[next plover]

I helped take down production in our fortune 500 my first 3 months in

[solid parcel]

In a new role it typically takes even an established engineer a few months to start becoming properly productive. I wouldn't sweat it too much

[mortal wedge]

Yes, leadership in the US is highly hypocritical, but unfortunately pointing out that hypicrocy doesn't help get a job

Unless you have all the money and resources they do

[next plover]

Your best bet is getting a job anywhere in any field and slowly working into tech through shadows

[mortal wedge]

I don't know about the EU markets. I know US tech is hurting particularly hard, but I am not sure tech anywhere else is doing particularly hot.

[next plover]

Its very unlikely you'll get a job in IT at all right now unfortunately

[mortal wedge]

Oh, it's uh.... not sure how to say this but probably going to be worse here

[next plover]

I didn't say anything about location

[mortal wedge]

Just for context, there are recent stanford college graduates who can't find work in tech and people who have been laid off from Meta and Amazon who are looking for work for more thna a year

[solid parcel]

It's theoretically possible to land a role for a European org without a degree. In practice though, I'm seeing a fair few good engineers struggling to land roles, even when they're looking at hybrid/onsite positions.

So having no degree and being outside the EU adds a whole bunch of other complications.

[next plover]

Yea

Or just do mobile security bug bounties and make a few million

[mortal wedge]

The traditional avenues probably won't work for you too well.

[next plover]

Do bug bounties

Youre youtube seems to show you have RE experience and app exploitation

Lmao

[mortal wedge]

Freelancing sort of works but it's a similar problem. Lots of people who aren't able to secure fulltime employment so are willing to work for pretty cheap. Hard to sustain yourself

[next plover]

Black hat isn't an addiction you can't just relapse lol

[mortal wedge]

I think they're giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were joking as opposed to stating in advance your intent to commit a crime on a company's server that they have shown willingness to reveal records to government requesting data

[solid parcel]

To be blunt, your message just comes across as edgy and naïve.

[next plover]

Apple will pay hundreds of thousands for 0days

Mobile appsec is underappreciated and will pay well from Google and Apple

[mortal wedge]

I think I'm gonna stick to med tech. My cousin keeps trying to pull me into cybersec

[next plover]

So lock in and learn it

[next plover]

Its getting worse every day

But I love it 🥴

Ok keep making excuses and lmk when you get a job

[mortal wedge]

You joke, but honestly, that's another way to be a distinguisher in interviews. Rock in and know as much if not more than the people interviewing you.

Tech is extremely competitive right now. There's no easy/guaranteed track

[next plover]

I studied for hours every day after my job for a year before I landed my job

[hexed jewel]

its difficult to do that when your interviewer just refuses to accept that they might be wrong

[next plover]

I'm saying I'm giving you advice and you're blowing it off because it's "too hard" to learn exploitation

[mortal wedge]

Yeah... that's a problem. Somewhat mitigated by panel interviews by more technical people. So not a guaranteed strategy, but if you get the right kind of interviewer, it works well

[hexed jewel]

i hate when i get asked subjective questions that dont have a single answer

[next plover]

Yes go learn it

[mortal wedge]

For context, while unemployed, most days I'm starting around 10 to noon and ending at midnight. Both cramming material, doing my masters work, preparing for interviews, staying up to date with industry trends/tech.....

It's going to be work.

[next plover]

I'm learning it just fine

Cybersecurity is hard so just get into it and do what other people aren't willing to

[mortal wedge]

I do my best to try to turn those into a conversation. "Here's how I think through this" and try to engage the questioner to break out of that pattern of someone asking a smug question and if you don't answer it their way its wrong but the actual answer is more nuanced

I've found the more senior you get the more they ask you like.... design questions, behavioral questions, process questions. They still ask the questions that are more straightforward basic questions, but at some point that's a much lower focus

[smoky quest]

Sounds like you should bring it up to your manager.
I would frame things around what you observe and their impact rather than a judgement of value.

[vital wyvern]

Explain this take lol

[smoky quest]

wat

[next plover]

In my anecdotal experience they have more time in college than projects and self learning which is pretty important unless it's specifically a research area theyre getting into

[smoky quest]

Do you have an example of question you were asked?

[vital wyvern]

I don’t think a MS in cybersecurity is a red flag. The majority of CISO’s and vCISOs should probably spend more time in school working on GRC than solving real world engagements.

[hexed jewel]

smth like: what is faster react or jquery

[smoky quest]

They don't apply for the same jobs.
A masters is not for people who just focus on tools. It's for more advanced positions

[next plover]

Thats like 1% of people though I'm talking like SOC analysts it's a bit odd to me

[smoky quest]

What makes it subjective?

[next plover]

Yeah id agree with that and rems point about higher level leadership

[hexed jewel]

im sure u can achieve acceptable performance with both approaches

there is no clear winner in terms of perf

[vital wyvern]

I mean if you have an MS and you’re targeting analyst jobs you’re probably not… meeting what your education was designed for.

[hexed jewel]

the global mutable state hell trade-off is not worth it

[smoky quest]

why not?

If I ask you which one of these 2 horses is faster, isn't there anything you can do?

[hexed jewel]

react and jquery aren't both horses

[next plover]

yeah which would be said red flag, ive seen this exact thing happen for a position in my team

[smoky quest]

So you are telling me that you cannot measure their performance?

[hearty island]

there’s nothing i can do, i’ve tried my hardest to convince them to take some initiative

[next plover]

it would be a good example to explain when one is faster and one is slower than the other, it shows knowledge and your thought process behind both tools

[hearty island]

i hope they manage without me once i’m gone

even my manager notices they’re not putting in any effort or caring, it’s out of my hands by now

[smoky quest]

to be clear, these questions can highlight how the candidate think and how they might approach ambiguous problems, which will happen more and more as you grow

[hexed jewel]

yes i quickly fall in the trap of answering based on my personal opinions

[next plover]

write business critical code in haskell and watch them burn when you get canned

[smoky quest]

There are two parts to the answer:

• Scoping the question. What performance are we even talking about? Speed of development? Speed of rendering? Where do these libraries perform a similar job or are different?
• Based on your experience or not. If you have experience, you can highlight it. If you don't have it, you could describe how you would get that answer (ex: establish a benchmark)

[next plover]

interviews are equally for determining knowledge and your approach to an issue

[hearty island]

it’s not even that, i’ve simply built the entire documentation of how we do everything on my team. they are hopeless without me if she continues what she’s doing

i don’t know why i care, if i do well enough on my interviews i won’t need to

[vital wyvern]

Just not enough CISO jobs to go around— could just be future proofing too.

[next plover]

fair

[hexed jewel]

should i try to do a good job or try to optimize experience for my resume

[dreamy pulsar]

Yo @hexed jewel

[near ocean]

Should you try to do a good job? What kind of question is that

And what kind of answer are you looking for? "No you should try to be terrible at your job and get fired eventually"?

[mortal wedge]

At the very least you should generally do at least a good enough job so you don’t get fired

That being said, it is a strategy to try to take on more responsibilities /projects just for the sake of getting that experience so you can talk about it when applying elsewhere, lol

[smoky quest]

don't confuse the metric for the goal

[spring ivy]

Anyone has any tips or anyone who has broken into quant who would be willing to part some advice?

[tropic timber]

Is middle school-ish a good time to start learning to code if i want to have a job in the software and coding fields

[proud glacier]

sure. try it out and see how it feels to you. there's plenty of time and no immediate pressure.

[tropic timber]

What are some good apps or stuff to use that you'd recc?

[proud glacier]

!learn

[inner wren]

Go-to beginner resources

Here are the top free resources we recommend for people who are new to programming:

• Automate the Boring Stuff — an online book (also available to purchase as a physical book)
• Harvard’s CS50P course — video lectures (slides and notes provided) with exercises
• Python Programming MOOC 2026 course — text-based lessons with exercises
• Corey Schafer's YouTube playlist

For a full, curated list of educational resources we recommend, please see our resources page!

[tropic timber]

Oh ty bru

[elfin hound]

can anybody give some resources for learning django

[static galleon]

Is learning python important now that IA is helping a lot in coding ?

[wooden skiff]

Sure it's important to know how things going , it's like you use your calculator without knowing what are the numbers , AI isn't accurate and coding is like 50% of the work , there are other stuff you do in your career

[fleet iris]

Have you got a grade like 4/10 for any subject in university
Will it affect job opportunities am really overthinking rn

[hearty sierra]

Yes. You need to understand any code you generate with AI and what it's doing.

[hearty sierra]

Are the companies offering these job opportunities going to have access to your full academic transcripts? If not, then I say no unless it significantly lowers your overall GPA, which you usually have on your resume when aiming for internships and junior developer positions.

[wooden skiff]

bro you need understand , that grades aren't important as projects and understanding what you are doing , companies won't even see your grades they just want to see what you have done and if are just relying on academics education then you are not doing enough , working on yourself and educating yourself with areas that out of your education is important I know one friend who got hired as a web dev for just knowing Angular and they didn't teach it on class and he made more money than anyone here I assume , so rely on what interests you not what college wants you to do , pick your independent path and work on it , most importantly follow your path not college's path

[fleet iris]

Alright, i was genuinely worried because i messed up the assignments to get such a low grade
Ig it does not matter and i should focus on other stuff

[wooden skiff]

you also should not fail

[fleet iris]

My current cgpa is 6.75 i just want to maintain above 7

Am in my final year

[hearty sierra]

I guess GPAs work different where you are. Here in the US a 4.0 or higher GPA is the goal.

[solemn ibex]

I’m a student from South India looking for someone to practice English speaking with.
I’ve reached a stage where I can understand English perfectly (I learned a lot from movies and subtitles), but I’m really struggling to speak. I find it hard to build sentences or find the right words instantly during a conversation.
I’m looking for someone who is fluent or very good at speaking to have casual voice chats with. It doesn’t matter what your gender is, I just want to practice and get more confident.
If you have some free time and don’t mind helping an intermediate learner, please DM me!

[wooden skiff]

I assume here isn't a perfect channel to ask for that and also that's not an English server

[deft jay]

ig im late started python at 15 although i know the basics

see kids coding at 6

[vast shoal]

I had a classmate at uni who was 35, and she went on to have a perfectly normal SWE career

[solid parcel]

You're overthinking, I didn't even know what Git was until I was 23 🙃

[hexed jewel]

yep this is exactly what im asking, i can choose to overengineer my tasks so it appears as if im killing it

[narrow ferry]

Alright what are your thoughts on jobs for software programming that only requires someone to be good at python

[trim crypt]

Not enough. Employers seek specific candidates who can deliver solutions. Not just "be good" at a specific language.

[narrow ferry]

Yeah who are also good at computer science(field)

[stable vector]

@misty citrus hijde bhag kiya rha h gavar sala

[trim crypt]

!rule English pls and tq

[inner wren]

Rules

4. Use English to the best of your ability. Be polite if someone speaks English imperfectly.

[astral robin]

Türk lazım

[peak halo]

Hello, it's required to speak English here.

[sage moss]

Hellow everyone

can someone advice me what i do after completing basics of python like functions , Loops and OOPs

[vast shoal]

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, the path is simply to keep building projects of gradually increasing size and complexity in areas that genuinely interest you (web, automation, data, games, etc.), picking up new libraries and technologies as you need them. You become a good programmer by writing code, not by collecting tutorials. If you’re unsure what to build next, come here and ask, we’re happy to suggest and discuss project ideas.

[sage moss]

i made some programs like bank.py and expense tracker something 200 - 300 lines of code i know its small but good for me i think

[vast shoal]

It's good to start small and work your way up, yeah

[sage moss]

thanks bro

[heady dirge]

Hi, I've been learning py for around 6 months now, but I've only built 2 small projects. (calculator, vey simple to-do). In this time I've also started on HTML and web design. Should I try to make a larger project with a UI and some more complicated logic? If so could you give me some ideas? I'm not against it but also don't want to get too ambitious and give out.

[vast shoal]

You can always give it a go. It's not the end of the world if you give up either, as long as you learn something. If it turns out to be too hard, maybe you can think of a new project idea that's easier, but still more challenging than the projects you already did. You won't know anything if you don't try, though.

!kin

[inner wren]

Kindling Projects

The Kindling projects page contains a list of projects and ideas programmers can tackle to build their skills and knowledge.

[vast shoal]

^ Here are a lot of project ideas

[unique quest]

Hello

I need advice too learn python better

I learnt loop while loop variable string try expect function compression list tupl condition input output

How much do I need to master the basics?

[hoary jewel]

Hi, I am currently a data analyst and would like to transition into a more data focused career such as data engineering. In my 3 years as a data analyst I have been working with EDI, and data integrations utilizing pentaho. I have barely worked as a data analyst and have requested for a title change but have not received it. By chance is there anyone who has experienced something similar and could maybe help direct me into the right direction?

I have been practicing my SQL and learning python, although I am not great at it yet and still feel like a very beginner. I would like some advice/wisdom that I can apply into my career goals. Thank you so much in advance!

[desert eagle]

Hello, I am a beginner scripter that has been learning to code for about 5 to 6 months, I am looking for a place where I can do commisions or overall small tasks to earn money or just to learn and gain experience, if theres any site, discord server or just a community overall would be nice if you could give me a name.

[fringe sphinx]

Data engineering can mean a lot of things. There's a nice book on it that I'd suggest reading to get a feel for it: Fundamentals of Data Engineering

[fringe sphinx]

There's a lot of different stacks people might use, and it's probably not worth focusing on any single single stack just from a matter of preparation. But, one useful skill is taking a single analysis task and implementing it as a 'pipeline' of discrete steps

[trim crypt]

I... need to start looking for a new job. Can anyone critique my resume please? (The eyes emoji cover my contact details)

its a two-pager. I wanted to fit it all in 1 page but not sure how..

[peak halo]

is it normal to have two-page resumes in Brunei? In north american and europe, you just present as much relevant information about yourself as can fit in one page.

but your resume has a lot of white space, so I guess it doesn't matter if it's submitted digitally

[trim crypt]

I've been on the hiring side and everyone seems to submit multipage. Rarely see a one pager. two-pages are kinda common. But I'm also hoping to apply for remote work here and there in neighboring countries

[peak halo]

I feel like you're far enough along in your career that you don't need to mention any personal projects. is there a reason you didn't decide to itemize more things you did for work projects under the "experience" section?

like, what job that you apply to will it matter that you submitted a game to a game jam?

(I could not submit a game with 3d assets to a game jam. it's cool that you did.)

[trim crypt]

My current work at the moment is just to maintain 1 system. Its a big system but that's pretty much it? Maybe I'll add more details to it I guess

[trim crypt]

No idea. Maybe something with some frontfacing interaction to educate the public about a product or gamifying user experience... probably. Like some customer relationship support related task. So many possibilities, I assume.

[trim crypt]

Thanks. It was my first time doing 3D in python. I've only done it on Unity heh

[peak halo]

@trim crypt responses acknowledged.
I'm pretty tired and any additional thoughts I have will probably be half-baked (though I stand by what I've said far), and I wouldn't want to waste your time with that.

[trim crypt]

Thank you. I appreciate your time

[mighty spire]

Is there really a point where you stop showing projects? Arent they the real way to see the arquitecture skills and practise of a hire, which is suposedly really important to seniors

[chrome cedar]

I try to keep my entire resume at most 2 pages, if my career work is so big that I can't fit it + keywords for the languages/frameworks/tools/services that I have experience with, personal projects would have to go

[peak halo]

I think there's a point where personal projects seem amateurish.

[smoky quest]

in terms of number of projects or something else?

[mighty spire]

No i mean as in if you want to hire a somewhat important programer that will lead desing desitions, you want to check their arquitecture skills, so to do that i would check their github to see the desitions they took in their projects and evaluate if they are good, since in most roles you dont really have a say in how the system is built and organized so they dont really highligth that part

[smoky quest]

You don't have time for that.
Each job ad receives thousands of applications

Your resume can have 1-3 projects, but more than that would be too much

[mighty spire]

Yeah i know but for finalist of important jobs like the ones i mention they do sometimes check projects. That is what i heard at least

[smoky quest]

sure, they can check, but not guaranteed

[mighty spire]

Well yeah, still i feel like it does show trougth the long Interview proceses as well with the chats, but that is more abstract. Still you do have a point

[smoky quest]

I mean, it's a bonus, not a requirement.
And anything beyond 3 projects would basically signal you don't understand what is the job about since you canNOT communicate your value

[mighty spire]

I dont know it depends but they have to be explained pretty briefly when they are that many. Still i would need more expirience to get deeper into this conversation

To be honest this started as a shouldnt this be an important metric since the hires have more independence with it which allows to see some important skills, specially when coupled with the extra resources they should put into recruting team leaders or people that will decide project structure at a large level

[smoky quest]

I am not sure to follow

[mighty spire]

When you make desitions on how to handle the domain you have to set large scale desitions based on busisness insigth, like how many parameters should this have, how flexible should it be, how should file structure work, how do we balance the structure with efficiecy, conviniece, ease of coding and flexibility, etc, and i feel like the skill to make the rigth desitions in that domain can really be evaluated for person x when you see a large project with a clear scope, where the desition are explicit and made by that person x. If not you can just see how it works and if it does well you asume they took good desition or are at least good at coding

[mighty spire]

And when i hire someone who i know will use those skills for me i would want to be sure that he is really good at it because if not it is a huge cost

Still the issue with what i said is that this started as a question based on that idea, but it is an idea like this should happen due to x and y, but i lack a lot of expirience to really have a strong say outside of the ideal model

[smoky quest]

Thanks for the detailed answer!

But let's take a step back: if you are hiring an experienced engineer, there is a reason and a need. You define that need and devise an interview flow that assess for it.
So in that context, the skills required for success are set up in the interviews. Especially if you want a fair process that assess everyone based on the same criteria and assessment.
It doesn't mean projects are useless, but they are extra to it. They are still great to establish nerd/street creds

Also remember this is more like a relationship. You may be an awesome engineer, but the wrong person for that company

Sometimes, two great people aren't meant for each others because their needs aren't compatible, and that's okay

so yes, projects are definitely helpful!

though don't put more than 1-3 on your resume

[mighty spire]

Okay, as well with the rest it kind of makes more sence in the end, they asses your projects in the interview

[smoky quest]

imagine you are hiring a backend engineer. You don't need more than 3 projects to demonstrate your skills

more than that would wander in non-backend engineer or irrelevant projects

which then shows me that you don't understand what is the company hiring for

[smoky quest]

There is this famous quote:

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
― Mark Twain

[mighty spire]

Yeah kind of true, i actually wanted a second project for my cv and wih both my main one and the second i feel pretty confident in the fact that they cover all the bases

[smoky quest]

exactly!

[ocean moat]

hi

[desert eagle]

Hello, I am a beginner scripter that has been learning to code for about 5 to 6 months, I am looking for a place where I can do commisions or overall small tasks to earn money or just to learn and gain experience, if theres any site, discord server or just a community overall would be nice if you could give me a name.

[smoky quest]

upwork, fiverrrr, etc.

[desert eagle]

Oh thanks alot

[nimble pelican]

Is there anyone in need of a structured big data for test. All i need is your data columns and i will populating logical test datasets for you at a cost. DM me

[analog sun]

Hello, please refresh your understanding of the server rules 6 and 9 regarding advertising and paid work. Neither are allowed.

!rule 6 9

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

9. Do not offer or ask for paid work of any kind.

[fleet iris]

any graduates here from CS engineering
do you think you are confident to solve real word problems after graduating from college.
the thing is that even after completing university i don't feel being able to solve realworld problems
i mean if i want to solve some problem i woud need to research like a lot on it

i am starting to doubt what is the importance of the degree if you are just going to research the problem and learn from it
why do we go to degree, can't we directly solve those real problems without going to degree

it just feels like i am going to university just to pass some exams

[narrow ferry]

Can i get into cybersecurity with a bachelors of computer science?

[near ocean]

Yes

[proud glacier]

Some mix of "learning the research skills and background knowledge to be able to tackle new problems effectively" and "signaling your skills to employers"

[proud glacier]

No course is going to make it so that you never have to research problems again, so it's not really useful to use that as a metric to judge any given kind of education

[next plover]

you're better off than most cybersecurity degrees

[narrow ferry]

so im better off with a comp sci bachelors than a cbersecurtiy bachelors?

[next plover]

as far as what you learn yeah

[narrow ferry]

and any other certificates i should have?

[next plover]

sec+ is good, net+ if you arent good with networks but id just learn the contents no need to get the actual cert really

[narrow ferry]

what is comptia +

[next plover]

its a series of certs from comptia

[narrow ferry]

ah i see

also what do i need to know for cybersecurity other than python

[narrow ferry]

which are all youd recommend me to get

[next plover]

sec+ is a good start, from there it depends on your focus

[narrow ferry]

cybersecurity jobs

[next plover]

thats a huge range of jobs

[narrow ferry]

whats the traditional route for cybersecurity

[next plover]

Usually some experience in helpdesk or a similar entry level IT role -> blue team or policy/compliance

[narrow ferry]

SOC analyst?

[abstract kite]

I am 16 rn what should I do focus on school or skills

[trim crypt]

Can you do both?

[abstract kite]

I mean yeah

[trim crypt]

Then do it. During school time, lock-in and do school stuff. Get social. Stay with friends. After school, get skills. Learn to cook, learn to sew, learn to plumb, whatever. Just take your time at it. 16 is very young

[abstract kite]

My short term goal is only to get financially independent and move out like on rent or smt just away from my parents

[trim crypt]

idk what problems you have at home, but 16 is too young to be independent enough to handle a bunch of things. Consider putting up with them until you're of legal age enough to drive and get a job at least.

[vernal widget]

sure, its nice to hear words of appreciation but its not really end of the world imo

are they providing everything for u ? are they stoping you from studying ? do they not want a good future for you ?

also since you are from india , im not sure 93% is "excellent" depending on what exam it is
like for JEE i have heard for top colleges you need like 99.50+ or something

[abstract kite]

Yes,no, yeah they do

[vernal widget]

so then they just want whats good for you but they have a hard time showing appreciation imo

maybe they dont explicitly say "very good job" but im sure there are gestures that convey the message / feelings

[abstract kite]

It’s not like I want appreciation I just don’t want demotivation

[vernal widget]

have blind faith in yourself and what people say wont matter that much

[trim crypt]

They're probably having some other problems that you are not aware of. Adults have bigger problems while at the same time want to continue to provide for the family. They may not want to tell you what problems they have that is not showing their appreciation to you but they do need to be reminded that you are still their child. Ask them if they think that you did good. They'll probably get the hint. Otherwise, be blatantly honest with them. They'll understand.

[urban hazel]

can yall suggest me a career?

[vernal widget]

and as for the motivation part
just think of what your life will be if you studied and got to do what you really like
vs
think of what it will be if you didnt study 🤷

[urban hazel]

im 15 right now but I do these things :

• web dev (a lot.)
• python dev (i know python very well but idont use it for real projects)
• js/ python malware analysis
• bug bounties

[vernal widget]

also , i dont really believe motivation is a great thing . Consistant hardwork imo beats motivation. Motivation is temporary , short bursts and can go away

[abstract kite]

I guess but talking with my parents I don’t think that’s my thing now

[trim crypt]

I don't know what you mean by "my thing". Your thing right now is that you want family supporting you in your endeavors and that little emotional support from your folks will come a long way.

If you have to sit down and talk to them on a serious family session or something, do it. Let them know how you feel. Let them acknowledge what you're thinking of how they're behaving towards you and how its affecting you. They'll come around. Trust me.

[trim crypt]

Out of all that, what do you really like to do?

[abstract kite]

I guess I’ll give that a shot

[urban hazel]

i really love malare analysis and bug bounties if i do it for a short time but i dont want to be doing it full time. maybe web dev on the long run?

[abstract kite]

But as soon as i complete my python what should i head for

[urban hazel]

but sometimes in malware analysis and bug bounties, you work for hours and theres really nothing so it all becomes pointless

[trim crypt]

Only you can answer that tbh. I thought I liked and wanted to commit to web dev when I was 19. Then I found out that I suck at UI/UX. Then I tried Backend dev and thats where I shine the most.

So if you like web dev and think you can do that the best of your abilities, go for it. 💯 full effort.

[urban hazel]

Maybe suggest me some careers related to web dev

[urban hazel]

Oh im good at deseigning (i hope so) and there are tools like stitch where i can refine my ideas

[trim crypt]

Don't worry about it. Just focus on school and finish python and a few basic projects to it. Once you finish either, come back and ask again.

[vernal widget]

python currently is a distraction for you imo
focus on your exam and getting into a great college. You will have LOTS of time to learn all these things during your college

[urban hazel]

made a lot of websites. maybe can show u some in dms. lmk if interested

[abstract kite]

Okie👍

[abstract kite]

I mean I have 3 whole school years rn and i can definitely take 1-2 hours out for learning it

[vernal widget]

you may not want to hear this "study hard" advice because of all the social media you are watching but its the best advice for u

[vernal widget]

yeah sure , you can do it as a hobby that u do in ur free time if u want

just dont replace studying with python

[urban hazel]

i sarted leraning progrmming at an age of 10 and it didnt relaly distract me

[abstract kite]

Okie

[vernal widget]

1. they are not 10
2. they have an extremely hard examination coming up that will decide the course of their career
   so yes it is a distraction for them in their current situation

[urban hazel]

ahh alrigiht

[vernal widget]

but again as i said already
nothing stops you from doing it in your free time for fun as a hobby

[abstract kite]

Alright thanks for your guidance

[severe inlet]

To learn numpy python after the brocode tutorial of numpy what should I do next

[trim crypt]

Is there a reason that you're learning numpy? What are you aiming to achieve?

[severe inlet]

trying to get into ai I am a a school student last year and I wanna learn how to build models and basically how to go about ai in future I searched and found python numpy is an essential for it so I started learning it

[trim crypt]

https://kaggle.com/learn is a good start

[severe inlet]

will surely look into it! Thanks

[vast shoal]

!rule paid

[inner wren]

Rules

9. Do not offer or ask for paid work of any kind.

[hexed jewel]

how do you work on technologies that you either don't have experience in, or you don't find interesting or enjoyable?

[solid parcel]

In the long term, I'm strategic about how I can position myself to do more of the types of work I enjoy. As an example, I'll shortly be starting a new SRE role. This was a very intentional decision as, in a couple of years from now, I'm planning to target an L5 Google SRE SE position and there are some things I need that I don't get exposure to in my current role.

In the short term, I'm vocal to my team about where my skillset lies and the work I want to lead. That alone has a substantial impact on what I get to do.

[hexed jewel]

stop with the slop 😭

[solid parcel]

Mate that's 100% written by me, it's not AI

[hexed jewel]

i mean its just idk unnecessarily verbose

cant seem to understand ur point

ig what i mean is pick jobs u like? (thats not an option honestly)
or, tell ur team what ur good at, and what you like, okay thats fair

[solid parcel]

1. Ask your team to let you work on the things you want to do.
2. Think about where you want to be in a few years, and be intentional about getting there. You need to actively manage your career.

Better?

[hexed jewel]

yes! thanks

[solid parcel]

Currently writing dissertation stuff, so I can see why I'm tending towards verbosity 😂

[hexed jewel]

i absolutely dislike the way academics write

[whole flare]

amen

[mortal wedge]

There's a couple ways.

I sort of had an "easy" way. I worked for a startup that didn't pay super well, but I had a lot of flexibility in how I accomplished tasks and if I wanted to do X or Y there generally was not someone already doing that so they were happy to let me try it out.

Otherwise.... you work your full time job and then work on personal projects in your free time on top of it.

[mortal wedge]

I sometimes start talking in "linkedin speak" when I've been on the platform too long. I hate it, lol. "When I bought a coffee this morning, something struck me. This was a routine everyday interaction, but what if I used it to communicate value and form a b2b connection? So I told the barista that I would be interested in procuring a delivery of caffiene injection systems to better calibrate my focus and performance. She looked right back at me confused. I then pivoted to offering my services to her. She looked back at me as if she didn't know what I was talking about. Then suddenly, everything clicked. She laughed and said "whatever you say, sir" and I realized that I formed the kind of connection critical to b2b sales.

How did a routine moment transform into a career pivoting moment for you?

#coffeelife #tipping4coffee #b2bsales

[peak halo]

when people use a lot of linkedinspeak to describe what they do, I assume they don't actually do anything.

[solid parcel]

A lot of Agile coaches just felt a cold chill in the air 😆

[peak halo]

is an agile coach different from a project manager?

[peak halo]

also if someone uses the word "facilitate" at any point to describe what they do,

[solid parcel]

In theory, they help teams remove blockers and improve velocity.

In practise, they tend to range from ineffectual to downright obstructive. Process bureaucrats who never stop to ask if there's actually value to be gained from all the ceremony they're working to introduce.

[peak halo]

sure, but what I don't get is why that would be a separate role from the project manager.

[next plover]

i have a family member who does agile, not sure they know how to use a computer

[solid parcel]

A PM owns delivery, an agile coach owns process. They're not responsible for something concrete in the same way a PM is. There's a very strong argument to be made that agile coaches usually add no value.

[near ocean]

Sounds like a bunch of made up words for people who fell for the agile scheme

[hexed jewel]

why do we need methodologies to work, why cant we just work

[solid parcel]

The tricky part is working out which processes are necessary, and which are just box ticking exercises that add no value.

Understanding dependencies and blockers does become important when you've got a large, complex organisation.

[smoky quest]

why cant we just work

Sure, how do you do that? Let's say you want to build a discord clone. How many teams do you need? What kind of teams? What type of engineers do you put in each team? Who works on what? And do they need to hand some work to each others?

[mortal wedge]

I definitely want to stick with the IC track. No interest in managerial tracks whatsoever

[lilac yoke]

when you are working with a handful of people you can do whatever you want, but that doesn't scale

[small shadow]

Is AI engineering a good career?

[smoky quest]

sure

[mortal wedge]

It depends on what you mean. Can you expand what you're interested in doing with AI?

And what you mean by good

[ripe steeple]

I'm thinking of entering cybersecurity they say it's on of the careers that ai can't fully take over

[peak halo]

That's pretty much all the coding jobs.

fully take over is a very high bar.

And I only added "pretty much" because I don't want to be wrong if I think of such a job later, but I don't think there is one.

[ripe steeple]

Including web development with ai generation code finding errors and doing the julib of five people at once

Job*

[peak halo]

Writing code isn't the entire job of being a programmer.

You already need to know about programming to write a coherent prompt for those AIs.

[ripe steeple]

So technically your saying is i was to get one programmer a laptop to code with ai he couldn't do the work of like 3 other people because it has been done before

[peak halo]

You're saying "the work of n other devs" like it's quantifiable.

The quality and accuracy of these models' output improves the more specifically the user specifies what they want the output to be like, and that requires knowledge of the concepts that the user would be applying if they wrote the code themselves. If you don't believe this, you are not informed.

[ripe steeple]

I design the website give it to chatgpt ask i told write a crystal clear promt for me to give to copilot it writes it i input it it give me what I want ai talks to ai

[peak halo]

Do you think you could implement the entirety of Amazon's production system with one prompt?

[mighty spire]

There are thing to do with ia, but at a ceirtain point it cannot handle larger tasks withougth a nice prompth

[ripe steeple]

The thing about being a programmer is thinking outside the box you've picture what u want to create in ur head u design it use canvas wire frame or any other designing app give it to an ai to write the promt for you change a few thing like tell it what it should do and all that the give it to copilot my teacher always told me that even after you give a perfect prompt you are still going to do some coding/editing that how I did YouTube in 3 months not completely tho

[mighty spire]

For example the website requires a prety detailed promt but it works if it is simple, now if it requires a complex ui you have to think the whole system, the ia doesnt do it. It serves more as a tool that fullfils your ideas

[peak halo]

It seems that you're admitting that AI can't fully do the job of a programmer?

[ripe steeple]

Chatgpt writes prompt in was that are obvious clear and easy to understand kind of like essays at 🏫

[ripe steeple]

But I cuts the need for beginners

[vapid violet]

How does chatGPT know what prompt to write

[ripe steeple]

Chatgpt turn this design into a prompt to give to vs code copilot

[peak halo]

Your initial concern was that some types of programmer jobs would be fully replaced, and that's the specific claim that I'm disputing.

[mighty spire]

Well that is actually kind of true, the thing is that good desings require knoleage, for beggining stages of reasearch i do something simillar and it works quite nicely. For example i laid out a bunch of hipothesis and asked it to verify by googling experiments, it is simillar to that, it confirms and makes the work to verify from the insigth or thougth

[ripe steeple]

I was talking about beginners srry about the misunderstanding

[mortal wedge]

Right now we're still early stages in what AI's adoption in society will look like, long term. In early stages of new technology there is often an explosion in adoption, no sane usage policies, no regulation, and misunderstanding of the capabilities. Take Uber for instance. Uber was not defined as a taxi company, even if it de facto is, so was quickly able to wipe out all the other taxi companies and dominate the market.

Over time the regulation caught up, they still had to follow the regulatory burden on taxi companies, and now their profit region is much smaller.

We're still in the "shock" period of the technology being in the market. Unfortunately, in this shock period, many jobs are being replaced/cut and entry level is being hit the hardest. Nobody knows how things will look long term, though. But some legislation has been proposed enacted to keep AI out of certain high risk sectors (specifically LLM-based generative AI), AI needing consent to train on data, AI needing to pay for access, pushback against data centers.... everything is still very much in flux and I don't know where things will land.

That being said, while I do think things in entry level tech will improve over time, I have no idea how much they'll improve and what timeframe we're looking at for things to "balance out". But in the analogy/comparison to Uber, this is around the time Uber launched and had massive growth before regulation reigned them in

[open ivy]

If a lot of talented people are being rejected you will eventually see a "rhyme with Jazz". Which means that you will see more and more disruptive innovation coming from the socially rejected margins of society. Much like Jazz revolutionizing music.

I am starting to see this in maker spaces. You find a lot of neat ideas and people in these places which are typically in neighborhoods with graffiti and barred windows.

As I generally say, AI does not replace devs, even many juniors. We have a situation where people who have valuable skills cannot get their app past the HR filters. That's a big problem and is why we will see rhymes with Jazz if industry doesn't find a way to fix it.

[mortal wedge]

Yeah. And just to clarify my point, I’m not talking about whether they truly replace workers, just what companies are doing right now. Some are paying for it and some have changed course. But we will see

[narrow ferry]

Hello how long does it take to master type script after mastering (javascript vanilla)

[hearty sierra]

Not sure the Python Discord is the right place for this question honestly. You may want to ask this in a server dedicated to web dev and/or javascript/typescript for a proper response.

Or I guess you can also ask about it in one of the off-topic channels here.

[fiery cove]

@hearty sierra I forgot to ask - do employers look at your nationality when hiring and all that stuff, my question is: why did they hire you and not some indian who learned coding and has the same skills as you?

[fiery cove]

And do employers accept college degrees? Computer science or construction

[hearty sierra]

Employers (at least in the US) aren't supposed to make discriminatory decisions in the ways that they hire candidates, like hiring based solely on nationality. Doing so leaves them open to possible legal action. That being said, that's not to say that these things still don't go on behind the scenes anyway.

[hearty sierra]

What do you mean "accept" degrees? They will look at whatever degrees you have to show, but if the degree isn't relevant to the job you're applying for its not worth it to even tell them you have that degree in the first place.

[trim crypt]

yea they do. why wouldn't they?

[vale nimbus]

sure even better not to say about degrees if not a good fit for a job

[fiery cove]

What is the best field to go in right now for long term career with cheap education (college) in such trash tech market?

(I am studying coding, websites and game dev but just for fun)

I am thinking about property flipping and negotiating for long term career, but it needs a lot of money just to buy a house and fix it 200k+ so its not an option

[hearty sierra]

I don't have enough information about how all the other job markets are doing to advise you on this. You'll need to do your own research to figure this out, unless anyone else here has any worthwhile insights.

[hearty sierra]

Maybe a less risky alternative would be becoming a real estate agent

[fiery cove]

Sounds good!

[fiery cove]

Thats actually a really great suggestion, because I enjoy investing and stuff and advising

[muted scroll]

hi everyone

[abstract kite]

Should I try to crack IIT like I am 10th standard rn so i have 3 years for preparing for IIT

[next plover]

Do you like it?

[urban hazel]

hm its overhyped imo

like almost every indian parent want their child to go to IIT even though theres like a total of 15k seats in entire india

1.3 million students try for it every year ^

even my parents are kinda "expecting" me to go to IIT. they are like "you are defo going to IIT, no other option"

[proud glacier]

well, even if you don't get into IIT, the more you prepare the better tier of university you can get into. if not IITs, the NITs or some other central institutes are very good.

[urban hazel]

point is, instead of skill based admission to universities, you gotta clear jee mains and advanced to get into computer science group in IIT. it just wastes a lot of time and i dont feel its effective. education isnt really practical here 😭

[proud glacier]

skill-based like what? they should admit people to the CS program based on how good they already are at CS?

[urban hazel]

for instance, im being forced to prepare a lot for JEE in physics, chemistry all that even though i want to take computer group

[urban hazel]

Maybe have Computer science centred exams for computer group instead of picking up JEE toppers?

[proud glacier]

you should look at IIIT-H's admission process, it might appeal to you

[urban hazel]

my parents' mindsets are concrete that i need to get into IIT

[proud glacier]

meh, everyone says that until results day.

life continues whether you get into it or not.

[urban hazel]

man lowkey they are like "you will be able to get a good job only if I get into IIT"

[near ocean]

This is the case everywhere in the world

[urban hazel]

ts so annoying when you are being forced to study useless shit

I tried talking to them about foreign studies but they are rigid on getting me to IIT

[proud glacier]

I used to agree with that (certainly it would have made my life a lot easier)
nowadays I'm less sure. the institute's job is to teach CS, is it great for the admissions process to be based on who is already great at CS itself? maths, physics, and chem are more "fundamental", and certainly access to education for those is more widespread.
besides, such a view doesn't scale for anything besides CS. you can't do civil engineering as a hobby the same way you can do CS.

[proud glacier]

so they say. but you know (and deep down they know) that you can still succeed regardless.

[urban hazel]

hm yes

so what do you suggest?? I want to get into NUS singapore or some other nice universities because theres like only 2000 seats for computer science in IIT and theres a million students competing for it

[proud glacier]

first, realize that there are other good universities for CS besides the IITs.

[urban hazel]

I have realized this but my parents havent yet 🥀

and theres an uncle of mine who went to IIT and got a job in google so i get huge pressure from my parents "IF your uncle can do it why cant you? Are you that dumb?"

[proud glacier]

the thing is that in any case your path is the same: focus on studying your HS subjects well.

that is true whether you want to go to an IIT, an NIT, a IIIT, the IISc, or some foreign university

[urban hazel]

alright

[proud glacier]

so even if you feel like it is useless (I don't think they are), your best choice is to study maths and science anyway

[urban hazel]

Can you suggest me some really good universities for computer science? I want to become an entrepreuner / create my own security firm

I dont know hindi btw even though am from india.. So i cant study in IIIT hyderabad like you

[proud glacier]

now what if despite all that you don't get into IIT (and instead, let us be hopeful here) get into another good university? will they disown you, kick you out? (probably) no. hopefully they will continue to support you because after all you are their child. but in any event it is not the end of the world.

[proud glacier]

1. I don't study in IIIT Hyd (very close to it though 😆)
2. you don't need Hindi

[urban hazel]

oh my bad saw university of hyderabad and assumed

[proud glacier]

the University of Hyderabad is a central university. it's located right next to IIIT Hyderabad.

[urban hazel]

alright

[proud glacier]

but yeah, in any case you don't need Hindi. I don't know why you think you would

[urban hazel]

dont they speak hindi in hyderabad?

[proud glacier]

quick question, where are you from?

[proud glacier]

the native languages in Hyderabad are Telugu and Urdu. but people in the city understand Hindi and mostly understand English.
your university's medium of teaching will be purely English.

[urban hazel]

hint : a lil bit below ur state and it has the name of a language

[proud glacier]

you're from TN and don't know that they speak Telugu in Telangana?

[urban hazel]

I went to hyderabad only once. everyone there spoke hindi

urdu or hindi idk. since i know how to speak basic hindi i kinda managed well

they spoke telugu a lot too not like only hindi. i just knew basic hindi and managed but everyone there seemed to know hindi

[proud glacier]

you can get by with English as well.

[urban hazel]

ah alright. i mostly visited local places so ppl there didnt know english well

[abstract kite]

I mean yeah I like maths physics and chem, even though I dont get in IIT my focus would be on doing the best there as I am not assuming I will get there but trying always has 2 ends

[viral coyote]

Hello, should I major in cybersecurity?

[peak halo]

are you interested in cybersecurity?

[viral coyote]

100%

[woven peak]

same here! I am a full-stack web developer now

[peak halo]

then why not?

[viral coyote]

AI

[peak halo]

AI is making the software world less secure.

[woven peak]

exactly

[viral coyote]

But it also improves security by alot

[peak halo]

That is the opposite of what I am saying.

[viral coyote]

Exactly, AI isnt in any team it helps both sides it just depends on who uses it best

[peak halo]

when you're running an AI-based system, there are a whole bunch of new security concerns, many of which probably haven't been discovered.

[viral coyote]

Plus some of the the fun of cybersecurity is gonna go cuz coding is gonna be automated

[viral coyote]

Well.. true but security has already been maxed out, hmac for example is a impossible 256bit randomiser (that uses multiple servers and seeds working together) uncrackable without billions of years, all the energy on earth and the strongest Quantum computers on earth

Offence in cybersecurity is all about getting the insider info to crack that, AI may or may not do that but it can do the opposite as good

Its basically battle of which side has more water

[solid parcel]

Hahahaha, 'maxed out' is a very optimistic stance. We'll see how long that holds up 🙃

[viral coyote]

True ig security can scale infinitely but thats not the point, not ai nor people can crack that without insider info as I already said earlier

For example a 512bit,1024but,2048bit etc code can exist

2^2048 is 2048 bit if you know maths thats immensely large

[solid parcel]

I suspect cyber and reliability engineers are both going to be in very high demand the next few years.

The amendment I'd make to your analogy is that one side has a swell of water, and the other is building a dam. The relationship is asymmetric. The attackers only have to break through that dam once, while the defenders have to successfully stop breaches every single time.

[viral coyote]

Thanks for you advice ill definitely take it into deep consideration.

[vast shoal]

It sounds like you're equating security with encryption. Security has thousands of other dimensions.

[open ivy]

Interesting Reddit post I read about freelancing:

"do not ever work for free because once you do it once, people will take advantage of that and put on a $0 price tag on you and your work from that point on."

I have heard a similar thing about Door dash where if you accept a low pay they mark you as desperate and keep exploiting you.

So "free trial demo" worked for games on CDs but doesn't work for humans.

(Similar idea for doing overtime beyond a sustainable long-term pace with the occasional sprint).

(For a portfolio, you work for free for yourself which is fine, as is two people getting togehter and making a silly Pygame game for the fun of it).

[viscid chasm]

cybersecurity or AI, I really want to learn cybersecurity so bad

[open ivy]

I would bank on cybersecurity. For AI the code is the weights in the tensors which is a Turing-complete universal function approximator (aside from the finite layer depth). But it's the Ultimate spaghetti code! "Where is the subroutine specific to making a cat vs a dog?" even compiled non-AI machine code would be far more easy to find such code.

But the main reason I think cybersec is good for you? "I really want to learn cybersecurity so bad".

[viral coyote]

True but it is mainly what people are in most demand of

[whole flare]

What is stopping you from learning cybersecurity anyway?

[solid parcel]

No reason the two can't go hand in hand. AI is introducing a whole raft of novel security risks, as well as reteaching some best practises we've already learned.

[solid parcel]

Working on encryption itself is a very particular niche in cybersecurity. Generally you'll simply be leveraging existing encryption tooling and putting policies in place (e.g Sentinel) to ensure your dev and infra teams can't deploy resources without appropriate encryption.

[vast shoal]

Not really. Cybersecurity professionals need to have a wide range of skills. Encryption is just one small aspect of the job.

It's like saying knowing how to use a hammer is what people are in most demand of in carpentry.

[open ivy]

This is a good analogy. I am just concerned that there are plenty of people who have or could quickly learn job skills who cannot get past the ATS systems.

If no recruiter is willing to test you, or talk to you, does it matter how skilled you are?

[smoky quest]

Are you really skilled if you aren't communicating your value?

[open ivy]

If I find people who want to talk about technical stuff then I have a good chance.

But these people aren't that common, as there are many technical events where they are sick and tired of tech work they did all day so they talk about the cool things their high salaries can buy instead.

You are better at meeting them than me, to the point you actually have to throttle these discussions back. I am nowhere near that point but I am slowly improving.

Also, when sending job applications out there is very, very little human interaction whatsoever (for those of you who are making that a heavy part of your search strategy).

[smoky quest]

Getting a recruiter to call you back means that you have communicated the value you can bring to them clearly enough. It means they read your resume and it demonstrates how you can solve their problem better than the other candidates.
It's not about talking about technical stuff.

[open ivy]

On a job application it's hard to beat AI. Unless they are making the applications require more creative problem solving these days, which in my expirence AI still struggles with.

[pale blade]

I think his initial point was that it's very difficult to get a person to even glance at your resume, instead of being tossed out by arbitrary ATS filters

[smoky quest]

There is no AI to beat. Only the demonstration of how you are the best candidate for the job

You can be the best python dev in the world, but it's useless if you cannot put it into relation with why your customers should care about your skills

[pale blade]

Just walk in and give the CEO a firm handshake and tell him you got python on your resume fr

[open ivy]

How do job applications tease out well-polished AI slop from actual humans? I need a back-and-forth conversation to actually do so.

[solid parcel]

Technical events heavily self select for people who want to talk shop. There are tons of groups where people do just that.

To be honest, your characterisation of them makes me wonder if you've actually been to any.

[solid parcel]

Right, which is why an initial phone screening is very commonly the first step if they're interested in you based on your CV

[open ivy]

Makerspaces have been my biggest success, although the people there tend to be somewhat distantly connected to the economy, many are unemplyed etc so the business connection isn't immediate.

But you are right that my searching could be improved. Can you find an event in the SF Bay Area I can go to within the next week where you think they would actually "talk shop"? There are so many events I cannot search through them all.

[open ivy]

Getting even to that point with cold applications is very hard for a lot of people, because AI is getting very good at the non-human-interaction app parts.

[smoky quest]

There is no benefit for people in the know to describe it here publicly

[open ivy]

Job applications being a black box, as you say, is one reason I am not doing them. Too little feedback. Too many other things to do and go to (even though I am worse at finding events than you are, I am getting better and it is still worthwhile for me to do so).

BUT if there was a way I could procure this information then maybe I could try a few. Because I have been bot-claimed before and I could improve my own Turing test...

[smoky quest]

Sure. That's entirely up to you

[solid parcel]

I'm not going to spend time looking, but if you're in the Bay Area, you'd be hard pressed to find a more techy place. There will 100% be regular meetups. I see them all the time in London for SRE, DevOps, Cloud and so on

[open ivy]

What are some examples of events you had sucess with in your area? I can find similar events on my own in the SF bay area as you say.

[smoky quest]

Go on meetup.com.
In the bay area, there are so many tech events that you could probably be fed every evening

[solid parcel]

Just bog standard meetups, conferences, hackathons and so on. A fair few conferences are paid, but there are tons of free community organised events on all the time.

As @smoky quest says, easy to find on meetup.com

Here's an example of one happening today, local to me.

https://www.meetup.com/london-devops/events/313924901/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events

[open ivy]

I see, so it seems like I search for keywords like "dev ops" and shy away from generic "tech meetup", based on my limited training data.

Makes me wonder how common "AI meetup" means "let's dig into the weights and figure out what the hell is going on"?

[solid parcel]

I'd honestly just get yourself along to a meetup or two that align reasonably with your interests, find the organisers and get chatting to them. They may well be able to point you toward other groups you might enjoy, local communities tend to have a lot of crossover. That'll likely be more productive than trying to deduce exactly which ones to target from the outside.

[open ivy]

Hmm, this seems to be "networking [to find good meetups]" is better than "cold searching [to find good meetups]" like I believe it is to find jobs. So it makes sense and honeslty I wasn't really doing this.

There is a sensitivity about asking about other events when you are at an event. On a Discord server about gaming I asked around for ones about tech (which isn't even gaming related so not in competition) and they got mad because of the rule against advertising other servers they had. You probably are 10x better than me at navigating this but I should still do it just it will take me longer.

[solid parcel]

I'd just couch it in terms of you wanting to get more involved with your local tech community, and therefore wanting to try on a few different events for size to find the ones you vibe best with

[open ivy]

That plan works, although leave it to me to stumble in the execution lol. I will still do it, but I need more patience.

[solid parcel]

You'll get better the more you do, and you're far from alone in tech if you find the social side of things challenging 😁

[open ivy]

I have been but boy can it feel slow, as it takes months to notice a change. So much randomness...

[viral coyote]

Well everything needs encryption from the payloads sent from different servers to the confidential non technical business information.

[proud glacier]

<@&831776746206265384>

[summer roost]

@naive heart It seems like you're just on this server to advertise. We don't allow advertising here. You will either need to change how you interact with this server, or you will need to leave.

[naive heart]

sorry

[summer roost]

See rules 6 and 9 in particular.

[mortal wedge]

What do you guys think about 1 page vs 2 page resumes?

I think I'm at a point in my career where I'm at this awkward place of I can't fully fill 2 pages with relevant information, but I'm cutting more and more to fit to 1 page.

[acoustic wolf]

If HR openly admits they're not reading resumes, they very clearly do not have a reason

[solid parcel]

I regularly hear people vigorously arguing for both sides of that debate. The actual recruiters I know are much less opinionated on it and seem fine with either, as long as the CVs are well formatted and suitably signal dense.

As far as the data goes, supposedly c. 70% of what you have on page 1 gets read compared to c. 30% for page 2. So if you opt for a 2 page CV, it may be worth structuring it with that in mind.

[fringe sphinx]

2 page is not end of world, since page 1 is what you want them to read. Page 2 is just 'yah, I had other jobs).

[mortal wedge]

The only conclusive data I've seen is that three and four page resumes are an anti signal and will decrease your odds of being called in for an interview

[fringe sphinx]

I prefer a solid 1 page that I'll read, and the 2nd page is for the actual 'what else did this person do'

[mortal wedge]

Yeah, I'd love some earlier roles that were less relevant and my educational exploits to be punted to the second page. But it also feels really weird to have like.... only half of the second page filled out or first third or whatever

I agree though, second page would be to make sure it's there to check if they want to see education and the first page will be the main dish

Also, I would definitely enjoy the lowered cognitive burden of obsessing over how I'm gonna fit stuff on one page

[solid parcel]

I opt for a short summary at the top of page 1. Oneliner giving YoE, role, industry and scale, followed by bullets of my 3 most relevant accomplishments. It makes it quick to tweak my CV for different roles, and avoids burying compelling bulletpoints where they might get missed.

[mortal wedge]

Yeah, short summaries are statistically significant additions in getting interviews

It's also cognitively easier to tailor a summary than tailor the whole resume

[solid parcel]

Interesting, I've seen them recommended but haven't come across any actual data supporting them.

[mortal wedge]

Let me pull up the data. I don't agree with all the findings of its study (primarily because I don't think they did proper methodologies on the 1 to 2 page resume section) but let me grab it

[mortal wedge]

https://huntr.co/research/2025-annual-job-search-trends-report

Again, don't agree with all their methodologies for every finding, but some are pretty clear cut and straight forward.

like tailoring your resume results in a higher interview rate, median time of one week from final interview to offer extension, etc

My biggest problem with the resume question is that while 2 page resumes have higher chance of getting interviews, that's going to be skewed by the inclusion of entry level folks who are all 1 pagers.

And yeah, I've seen trends over the years, but this recent market is too divergent from previous trends so I try to go off of data rather than vibes

Also, I'm not saying they're being disingenuous or anything, they freely share this:

Experience-Level Distribution in Resumes
Entry-level: 39.9%
Senior-level: 32.42%
Mid-level: 21.79%
Unspecified: 5.88%
Implication: Behaviors such as resume length or section usage may tilt toward early-career norms.

[solid parcel]

Interesting, thanks for the share, I had a read.

[mortal wedge]

Yeah, I officially hate this 1/2 page thing. At the moment I comfortably have high value 1.25 pages, lol

Which I'm pretty sure is the worst of both worlds

[solid parcel]

Yeah mine is about a page and a half currently. I try and stop it becoming too unwieldy 😆

[mortal wedge]

Maybe I just need to sit down and commit to more fleshed out bullet points. Maybe get inspiration from my early career when I was stretching stuff to meet the page

[solid parcel]

All things going well, I don't expect to need to polish it for a bit, either. I'll be starting my SRE role next month, and if all goes to plan it'll be a couple of years before my next jump (hopefully to Google!)

[mortal wedge]

Best of luck to you!

Honestly, after this chunk of unemployment in this hellish job market, I think I want to just.... revise my resume every few months

I don't trust this market/economy/society anymore

[solid parcel]

My litmus test is asking myself 'so what?' about each bulletpoint. Imo each bullet should map either directly to a business outcome, or at least demonstrate some core technical or leadership skill the role requires. Ideally the former, but not everything realistically maps cleanly to business impact.

[mortal wedge]

Haha, nice. Yeah, I've long since gotten rid of all the bullets I can't defend

or that aren't meaningful

But I'll need to add some borderline cases back I think

[solid parcel]

It'll be a couple of years hard graft, I reckon it'll take 1,000+ hours to be comfortably prepared for each of the interview rounds 😅

[mortal wedge]

Haha, I feel you. My last big interview I spent a week looking through their press releases, looking through the fda filings, then reviewing/practicing all the tech/topics that might be relevant

the prep interviews are taking now is kinda insane, but.... well, it's competitive. To be competitive you have to perform extremely well

I'll squeeze the spacing between paragraphs to be 0.75 lines that will get me comfortably back to one page >.>

[solid parcel]

Linux internals and the coding rounds are going to be the killers.

Troubleshooting is close enough to my day job that there's not that much I need to cover additionally for it, 'Googliness' (i.e. culture fit and leadership principles) will be something I can map stories from the next couple of years to, as the role will have sufficient scope and cross-teak impact to highlight my capability there.

But the depth and breath of Linux knowledge you need is disgusting, and for most of my career I've been operating with a lot of lovely abstractions. Then on the coding side of things, I've simply not had a need to write much application code throughout my career.. It's primarily been Terraform, pipeline, scripts and so on. Certainly addressable, but there's a gulf between where I am now and Google L5 😁

[mortal wedge]

Yeah, I get that. But hey, practice practice practice

[solid parcel]

Heh, yeah the plan is to turn my attention to this stuff full throttle once my dissertation is done.

[smoky quest]

Sure. If HR hears from someone they trust to not hire that candidate, then they don't need to look at the resume.

Not reading a resume does not imply they didn't have a reason. They can have a reason to not read a resume and reject.

[rancid lodge]

hi who can help me in visual studio code idk how to run a file

[acoustic wolf]

The actual manager of the software developers wanted to hire me, and told HR several times to do so. I'm pretty sure he knows more about programming than some random office woman. Why are you pretending like HR is never incompetent?

[smoky quest]

I am only arguing you don't have enough information to establish that fact

[acoustic wolf]

The manager of the software developers wanted to hire me. After being autorejected by HR, he pushed me through them two more times, just for me to have some HR woman say "tee hee didn't read the resume btw" What more do you need?

[smoky quest]

The reason for the (auto)rejection(s)

If there is a snafu in the process, how incompetent must the manager be to drop a candidate multiple times

[acoustic wolf]

It was HR doing that, not the manager.

[smoky quest]

The manager is accountable for the hiring in their team

[acoustic wolf]

Not HR

[smoky quest]

If a candidate is good, they have many ways to make it happen

So to me, it sounds super fishy and someone is not telling you the whole story

[acoustic wolf]

The guy in charge of the software developers is not part of HR, I want to point that out again

[smoky quest]

Indeed. And they have many avenues to push for promising candidates

[acoustic wolf]

Apparently not, or he wouldn't waste the effort and complain about it not going through. HR is universally incompetent, if you're HR yourself or something I'm sorry but it really shows

[smoky quest]

It makes an easy scapegoat for candidates without getting them mad at their friends/eng

[rancid lodge]

guys

[smoky quest]

and yes, it's very frequent to avoid telling the real reason to candidates as they do take it way too personally

[acoustic wolf]

I agree, HR is incompetent

[smoky quest]

Whatever helps candidate sleep at night and avoid troubles for the company

[peak halo]

this is the career discussion channel and your question isn't about that.

[acoustic wolf]

You spend 5 more hours on Discord and let me know when you've figured it out

[smoky quest]

Personal attacks is the home of the weak

[acoustic wolf]

No, Discord is

[smoky quest]

That signal the ends of this discussion

[acoustic wolf]

Learn to spell also

[peak halo]

@acoustic wolf personal attacks are not appropriate. let it go.

[acoustic wolf]

Just because his personal attacks were passive aggressive and oblique doesn't mean they weren't there

[peak halo]

I'll look into it. In the meantime, please disengage.

[smoky quest]

I am not being oblique about stating you got rejected and could not handle it. That has been rather direct. There is nothing attacking you or being personal about it.
We have plenty of people coming here every day with terrible resumes or having failed interviews.
And that's okay! We are here to help.

[smoky quest]

As a non native speaker, I am working on it!
But do you really need to try to make people feel bad about it?

[peak halo]

let's all disengage.

[acoustic wolf]

it's always the weakest people ruining programming

[peak halo]

!mute 382734083471704074 "1 day" how many times do I have to say "let it go" and "disengage"?

To repeat for the record: personal attacks are not appropriate.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied timeout to @acoustic wolf until <t:1775089472:f> (1 day).

[mortal wedge]

Geez. Another tech giant announces layoffs, Oracle

Another AI related restructuring move

Hey, if there's a lot of overlap between like... 3 different masters programs, does having 3 different masters programs actually like look better or do you just look foolish?

Maybe 2 is the optimal amount

[vapid violet]

Wonder the same thing about undergraduate degrees.

[mortal wedge]

I don't want to come across too scattered or too academic

What undergrad degrees are you considering?

[vapid violet]

Software engineering + something else. As of right now that plan is to just graduate in 3 years tho

[mortal wedge]

I think SWE + something else that is like... a specific field you'd want to do SWE in is still a strong signal

[vapid violet]

something else would likely be cybersecurity

[mortal wedge]

Seems like a good combo of breadth and depth

[vapid violet]

It might depend on if I hear back from the internship I interviewed for this week. I am not super confident about getting a job with no prior experience in this market. If I dont get the internship I might stay in school longer

[fringe sphinx]

Oracle is more like an inevitability. They're old big tech and struggled to maintain relevancy in past 10 years: they made good revenue but really lost the plot.

[mortal wedge]

Hopefully that's the case. Would love a reason not to feel queasy tonight 😂

[fringe sphinx]

I wouldn't worry bc of Oracle. They really have sucked for a long time

[mortal wedge]

It could also be that they're just suffering and needed to do layoffs and are "jumping on" the AI bandwagon just as their reason

since it will hit better than "we suck"

[open ivy]

They announce layoffs but they don't announce hirings as loudly.

[mortal wedge]

I mean, sure, but there's net job losses every quarter

[open ivy]

Data? I would like to see numbers.

Remember that we should include programming jobs outside of tech.

[fringe sphinx]

There really is a long story about Oracle, including their AI datacenter buildout and investment. They've been grasping at straws

[mortal wedge]

I only have data for the general job market, not tech specific

[fringe sphinx]

It's really unlike the other ones

[mortal wedge]

But I'm pretty sure tech is doing worse than other sectors

I've also only looked at the US market because I'm selfish >.>

[lavish furnace]

Guys

[open ivy]

General job market including demand for plumbers and call center operators and bus drivers?

Or do you mean software engineers? And what about jobs that aren't called "software engineering" but require similar skills?

[left blade]

wrong server sorry yall

[mortal wedge]

Here's what I could find that's the most relevant now that BLS is putting out data again.

Not tech specific, it's US specific, and not quite as bleak as negative jobs per quarter but close enough to 0 per month:

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/FED-RATE-AUTOMATED/JOBS-MONTHLY-LIVE/lbpgjzxgdvq/

[lavish furnace]

Helloo

[mortal wedge]

Like accounting for noise/randomness, that's net 0 jobs and if tech is doing worse than others then tech is losing jobs

[lavish furnace]

Are you helper?

[mortal wedge]

Yes

[fringe sphinx]

Net new jobs is weird to begin with, since it's relative to job postings on public job sites

[vapid violet]

Is BLS a credible source atm?

[lavish furnace]

So helpp me

[mortal wedge]

I'm assuming these are the corrected values, so not purely going off of that but the later corrected values

[fringe sphinx]

You have to look at the underlying definition of the data series for BLS

[mortal wedge]

I know the initial data recently has been overinflated and overly optimistic

[mortal wedge]

I don't know anymore, lol. But I don't have a better data source

[lavish furnace]

.....

[mortal wedge]

I don't know what you need help with, you haven't asked anything

[lavish furnace]

Help me in learning Python i am new 🫠

[fringe sphinx]

Don't know what data series Reuters used for that chart, so it's hard to comment. Is there a primary link to that?

[mortal wedge]

This channel is for #career-advice . #python-discussion is where you can go for python help/discussion

[lavish furnace]

Thanks

[mortal wedge]

I just grabbed what popped up on my search engine, haha. Not sure which series they used.

I'm trying to look, but I keep getting articles when snooping around on the site directly

Looks like it was their JOLTS report

https://www.bls.gov/jlt/

tldr: the market sucks

US Tech market seems to be trending down about 5k jobs per month, over the last year. But at least it's not as bad as federal government jobs?

[fleet reef]

What’re the federal numbers?

[peak halo]

No

[fleet reef]

That bad?
Just don’t even look?

[dusk meadow]

Will learning python right now benefit me later on if I want to end up being an automation engineer?

[steady violet]

yeah probably

[open ivy]

If all jobs are crappy then there is no need to run away from tech.

A real test of not being lazy is to be able to maintain, and finish, portfolio projects even without deadlines or pay. The ability to push forward in the absence of peer pressure is really a test of willpower.

[mortal wedge]

For me it's not so much about running away from tech as just the acknowledgement that industry hoppers are doing even worse right now. Because there's a squeeze to some degree on all sectors, those sectors are going to prefer people with some experience to none, even if you have stuff that's transferrable.

So I've just sort of committed to gunning for the top

and hope that in doing so I'll wind up in a strong enough position where I won't have to deal with long stretches of unemployment anymore

[fringe sphinx]

I think that's a wise strategy. Generally, employment numbers are incredibly tough to analyze. It's definitely not a good time, but trying to predict future or assign causes is really hard.

[mortal wedge]

Yeah. Honestly I wouldn't bother analyzing numbers, but the current market diverges too strongly from previous norms and going off of pure vibes is just depressing.

[fringe sphinx]

Maybe I'm delusional but; this doesn't feel that different to prior downturns. It's doom and gloom for different reasons, but it also is a period of slow investment and austerity which is traditionally followed by periods of growth and boom.

Sure, there's many things different, and it sucks to hit the market right in the middle of it, but growth follows decline

[mortal wedge]

Heh. Guess I've taken the opposite approach/viewpoint. Tried to abandon most of what I know about how markets work and claw back an understanding from review of recent data/trends.

[brazen island]

Yes and no right? Part of it is indeed a decrease is investment that will bounce back, but a second part is that we suddenly have more output/person. For the latter point it could go either way, either teams will just be smaller or the same sized teams do more.

[vast shoal]

I've heard from several sources that demand for SWEs keeps going up as well. I guess maybe it doesn't match the supply, which would be why it doesn't feel like it's getting easier to find jobs, but maybe eventually demand will overtake supply and things will turn around.

[mortal wedge]

I do agree that a lot of the pain in the current job market is the supply shock or whatever you want to call it.

[brazen island]

Depends on where etc. Where I’m from (Western Europe) demand was always much higher than supply.

Stopped being the case in 2022 due to geopolitics (businesses slowed down investments and hiring) and now a competitor decided to lay off half of their SWEs. I’ve never heard of lay offs here.

[vast shoal]

Yeah, I mean, SWE hires are going up since the dip that started in 2022.

The dip is recovering. Still not even close to back at the same level though.

[brazen island]

I’m actually quite optimistic. I’m noticing that GenAI means people want to build more. Yes, non-engineers can do a lot but you still certainly need a SWE for “the last mile”. Things will rebound over time

[vast shoal]

I listened to an interview with Andrej Karpathy the other day and he had a similar opinion. Like, GenAI means it becomes cheaper to create software, which means building software becomes a more available option to more businesses, since it was previously incredibly expensive, and then they need more people to build it.

Like, he thought there was a pool of untapped demand that was restricted by cost.

if I understand correctly

[solid parcel]

The market has been ringing alarm bells about Oracle's debt levels, so while the firings may be related to AI, I suspect it's a matter of needing to free up free cash flow for investment rather than being able to do the same amount with fewer engineers.

[vapid jay]

Hey bro I've come from the discussion chat.
Can you please help me more in telling me where to start python and also learning python today from zero in the age of Ai where people are crying and selling their courses of Ai Agents without coding, is it worth it ?

[vast shoal]

!learn

[inner wren]

Go-to beginner resources

Here are the top free resources we recommend for people who are new to programming:

• Automate the Boring Stuff — an online book (also available to purchase as a physical book)
• Harvard’s CS50P course — video lectures (slides and notes provided) with exercises
• Python Programming MOOC 2026 course — text-based lessons with exercises
• Corey Schafer's YouTube playlist

For a full, curated list of educational resources we recommend, please see our resources page!

[vast shoal]

AI tools like LLMs are best understood as productivity tools for programmers rather than replacements: they automate boilerplate and speed up work, but they don’t remove the need for humans to design systems, reason about requirements, debug complex behavior, or take responsibility for outcomes. This is unlikely to change because this is due to structural limitations in current AI architectures rather than a simple scaling problem. The job market feels rough right now, but that’s largely due to a COVID-era hiring boom followed by subsequent layoffs post-COVID, plus higher interest rates reducing company expansion and hiring overall. The former is a temporary factor and the latter is cyclical, rather than permanent. On top of that, computer science became extremely popular and lucrative for years, leading to a temporary oversupply of juniors. Historically this tends to self-correct as fewer people enter the field when it looks "overcrowded," which eventually restores demand. So overall, programming jobs are unlikely to disappear for the foreseeable future and the job market will probably continue to go both up and down.

[vapid jay]

Thanks for your reply.
I'll start learning asap!

[sterile igloo]

Hey

[brazen island]

Yup, we’re building A LOT now at work, and a lot of these things would not have been cost effective pre GenAI.

They fall into the category of things using (generally) use (Gen)AI to optimise highly specific things that SaaS can’t do.

[balmy mural]

When was the last time you've done cold job applications?
I've been actively job hunting for a 2 months and that's not been my experience. Most don't give feedback if rejected before an interview, but then I assume it's just because my CV didn't match the job well enough. I get enough rejections with feedback that it doesn't seem like a "black box".

I apply to jobs where I self evaluate my fit to be at least a 6/10 (maybe 5/10 if the company/job is interesting and I still want to give it a shot). Here's my stats:

23 applications
|-4 rejections with more specific feedback
|-12 generic rejections / ghosted
|-7 first interviews
  |-1 rejection with feedback
  |-1 awaiting response
  |-5 second round interviews / assessments
    |-2 rejections with feedback
    |-1 awaiting response
    |-1 third/final interview scheduled
    |-1 offer (I countered, awaiting response)

I'm perfectly happy with getting to a first interview with 30% of the applications I send out

[fiery cove]

@hearty sierra @near ocean do you know if its hard to get a full time as a bank teller (the starter job at the bank) with high school education and studying finance in college?

[balmy mural]

Full time bank teller job will likely clash with your college classes unless you have evening classes

[fiery cove]

I don’t think that will be the problem, I will be able to skip some classes or choose evening classes only?

[near ocean]

Could you? I couldn't pick classes in uni myself like that, you got a schedule given to you and that was it

Bank teller should be a relatively "easy" job for young people with no experience
My mom started out as a bank teller but that was in the 80s i think

She had to fit her schedule around the job tho and that schedule did not include university classes

[solid parcel]

As you should be, that's a very good rate! Clearly doing something right 🙂

[hearty sierra]

I wouldn't focus on getting a full-time position while studying at college unless its an internship. If you're looking for an internship though a bank teller position shouldn't be too hard to get, although I don't keep up with the current state of the finance industry so take my advice with a grain of salt.

[near ocean]

A bank teller job has little to do with finance

I had fellow students that had to work full time jobs as cashiers and such in uni

[fiery cove]

Ok then i will get a part time job somewhere while studying and after college become a bank teller

[solid parcel]

I think you're missing part of what they're trying to say to you. If your goal is to get into finance, bank teller is not a position that is likely to get you there.

[hearty sierra]

Your plans for the future seem to be in a constant state of flux based on your messages within the last few days. Instead of alternating between different career paths every day and constantly altering your course, I would instead take a few weeks to really think deeply about all of your possible career paths. Then after you've taken ample time to consider all the options available to you, you can then choose one career path that makes the most sense to you and pursue it.

[fiery cove]

That’s exactly what I am doing right now

[fiery cove]

What is then?

[gusty thorn]

hello guys is theres someone who make customize discord bot service??

[hearty sierra]

I'm assuming you're asking for paid work since most people wouldn't do this for free. In that case please check rule 9 of this discord server.

[near ocean]

Probably a financial analyst of some type, you'd need a finance or economics degree and/or be fully or partially ACA/ACCA/something similar certified

FYI this is probably the second hardest professional certification to get, its 3 years long -ish, tons of reading and studying and a bunch of exams and all of this is while youre working a full time job

[near ocean]

Actually the degree part is optional, my sister did this with a law degree and my mom did it without any degree

[gusty thorn]

ohhh really mb i dont really know about bot coding hayst and about coding im trying to make but it is so hard to leard without knowledge of coding itself