career-advice

[fiery cove]

First goes bank teller and so on, its a career

[near ocean]

No? Thats not how that works lol

Junior analyst is the first step

[drowsy atlas]

hi

[fiery cove]

Are you sure? Where did you get that info?

[near ocean]

Google, life experiences and general common sense

[whole flare]

1 am

[peak halo]

!clban 1357384844128288929 wang chuanfu

[inner wren]

:x: User is already permanently banned (#109226).

[quartz aspen]

Ah, the bot hit several channels and L3v hit it first in meta

[dense dawn]

What language should I learn after python and when?

[peak halo]

there isn't some natural progression from python to other languages. and just acquiring superficial knowledge of a bunch of programming languages isn't helpful or what hiring managers are looking for. they want you to know how to write the kind of programs that they need at their company.
what kind of programs do you want to write?

[fiery cove]

I think you know nothing about banking, only programming?

[near ocean]

Youre welcome to try it the reddit way

[dense dawn]

I wanna do web development, like to solve everyday problems

[peak halo]

then learn JavaScript

[dense dawn]

Okay...thanks

[sudden hazel]

or learn typescript

[solid parcel]

Given you're in a Python discord, I'd personally been assuming you would be looking for a career path in finance that would let you do some programming. Do you have a sense of where you'd actually be aiming to get to?

A more nuanced take than I and @near ocean expressed earlier would be that yes, starting as a bank teller can be a pathway to some careers in banking/finance but, depending on what you're targeting, may not be the optimal entrypoint.

[barren summit]

Where do you apply for jobs?

[solid parcel]

Primarily LinkedIn, Indeed, individual company job boards.

[barren summit]

Thanks, I’ve been trying these platforms. If you know of any openings or can connect me with someone, I’d really appreciate it.

[solid parcel]

In terms of finding roles,

A) Put time into polishing your LinkedIn profile, as getting inbound interest from recruiters can make a big difference.

B) I'd recommend checking out hiring.cafe

C) It can be worth setting alerts for companies you're interested in on their job boards. Many have an opinion where you'll get an email when a role is posted matching certain criteria. So for example, I have an alert for senior Google SRE roles in London.

[barren summit]

Thanks for the suggestions I’ve already spent time polishing my profile and applying through these channels.

[delicate grove]

so like what can i ask in here

[fiery cove]

I want to become an AI developer and I want to build system, I also love making video games or just business in general, so yeah, but its super hard to get a job as a beginner AI dev so im working on my own projects and I have no working experience

[peak halo]

are you pursuing a degree at a university that's related to AI? Otherwise, what non-AI career are you working towards?

[solid parcel]

You'd likely want to target an entry level dev role, then. Becoming a bank teller is very far from software engineering roles.

[round patrol]

Is it possible to get an intern/junior data analyst job with just self-made projects, and ibm/coursera certificates as a 17 year old?

[solid parcel]

Possible? Yes. Likely? No. The market is rough at the moment, albeit it's showing some tentative signs of improving (though we'll see if that lasts given recent geopolitical events!)

[fringe sphinx]

It's extremely hard, near impossible.

Even in years where job market is better.

[round patrol]

not even an intern job?

[peak halo]

interns are recruited pretty much exclusively from universities, even during good years.

it's not worth creating additional intern-hiring pipelines.

[viscid chasm]

I have already learned python, thinking of learning C++ and JavaScript

[open ivy]

I cannot find anyone with a years-long sustained passion building projects of meaningful complexity who still cannot get a job. Except maybe in art? Which suggests such a strategy will work, albeit it requires strong mental fortitude to keep going. Of course, a degree makes a lot of sense for many reasons and isn't mutually exclusive.

[round patrol]

i found some jobs looking for people with just a high school diploma or equivalent studies so i might have a chance

[open ivy]

IF you keep your personal projects at full-time for years AND build communities the odds are good. But a degree still will help a lot, provide social connection, and you can keep personal projects going part-time while getting a degree.

[solid parcel]

There'll be a degree of survivorship bias here. If people build for years and have no success, they may give up and therefore not be visible. Similarly, if someone is building but is ineffectual at prompting their work and capability, you'll necessarily not be aware of them.

[solid parcel]

No idea if this is possible where you are, but you could consider looking for degree apprenticeships.

[near ocean]

Yea this is almost entirely survivorship bias

[fiery cove]

I think I will - college

[open ivy]

Where are the sob-stories? I find countless stories of "1000+ applications and nothing woe is me" etc. But I rarely find sob stories about people who build a passion up, tackle meaningful projects, talk to others in thier field and find events, make a website etc, and still fail. Doing all this isn't easy, but it is worth the effort because it builds so many skills!

[round patrol]

Im not familiar with the whole HR system as im still very young but i heard that for remote intern/junior jobs proof of work usually beats a degree.Is that true or is it not?

[solid parcel]

That group are going far beyond just building projects, and are being methodical about building a community, network and personal brand. Agreed it builds a lot of skills.

[open ivy]

Yes which is a crucial detail. Sustaining all this is hard since it is full-time without pay, so it's easy to get lazy. That's why you see 1000+ applications sob stories: People say things to the effect of "that's all they know how to do" when there are so many ways to go about this (to the point where I will always be changing my strategy there are so many variables).

Note that I prefer a website-centric online presence to a LinkedIn-centric one. Modern website design with WASM and CSS is just so powerful and there are many low-cost and free hosting services out there. Embed demos, effects, etc and done right it can be unique without bieng over-the-top.

[solid parcel]

Oof, remote makes things even trickier. Those roles are much more in demand both because people value the flexibility and because they have a wider pool of potential candidates, given the lack of a geographical barrier.

[open ivy]

"wider pool of potential candidates" but also "wider pool of available positions". So that cancels out? Actually it doesn't and the reason that 10x the people for 10x the roles makes things harder for most applicants are nuanced, I made the statistical argument before a while back.

[solid parcel]

Agreed it doesn't cancel out

[round patrol]

so im doomed basically?

[fringe sphinx]

Not at all. A degree is the first filter for most jobs. Internships are for University students.

[solid parcel]

Certainly not doomed. Is there a specific reason you're wanting to not go the uni route?

[balmy mural]

Had a meeting with the company I counter offered. Seemed positive. Don't think or expect them to match the salary I asked in my counter, but it does sound like they'll up the base salary a bit, and we can review salary in 6 months instead of standard end of year. Will likely accept if they come up a bit from initial offer and review salary/performance in 6 months. I've decided I'm much more interested in this company/team than the other companies I'm interviewing with, so I want to go with them even though salary is probably a bit lower than the other options

[fringe sphinx]

Get a degree, or try to enter tech industry via a less direct means (ie; work for a local company, do help desk or support work, etc)

[south grail]

Hello, i am a student rn (gr 12) and looking to purse computer science and then specialization in cybersecurity. Any advice on any projects/internships/cources i can do to strengthen my portfolio for college application?

[solid parcel]

Well done for negotiating, it can be daunting!

[fringe sphinx]

I don't know your country, but in US, projects won't matter much for University applications. Volunteer and other more established extra curriculars do.

[open ivy]

For those of you who are putting in significant effort toward cold applications: You have to address the lack-of-feedback issue. This is the elephant in the room.

[south grail]

I am looking to apply in us/europe area. I have 72 hours in volunteering and its increaseing with around 2+ tons of paper recycled
what counts as extra curriculars?

[round patrol]

The reason Im leaning away from uni is opportunity cost. I'm 17 and Ive already built automated risk models that handle real-world financial data.If I spend 4 years in a lecture hall Im losing 4 years of high-level industry experience. Id rather spend that time working for a US startup as a contractor earning a NYC-level salary and building a network of actual engineers rather than just classmates.

[balmy mural]

See my previous message I responded to you. I had enough feedback in my applications that it wasn't an elephant in the room

[fringe sphinx]

I'd say anything that's an organized activity such as by your school or local organization would look like good experience. Or tutoring kids. Or stuff like that. Projects are good to do for fun, but ultimately: Uni's care about coursework and grades first of all

[south grail]

I also need a strong computer science portfolio dont i?

[fringe sphinx]

How long till you have to apply?

[south grail]

5-7 months

[fringe sphinx]

I only know US, and US universities don't expect a computer science portfolio.

[solid parcel]

In principle, I completely understand this. I didn't go to uni either, and got my start via an apprenticeship.

The tricky part is that the market is rough at the moment, particularly for juniors. You have a lot of capable engineers scrambling to land roles. When companies have a ton of applications, filtering out those who don't have a degree is an easy heuristic for them to use. If there's a large enough pool of applicants and they can improve the average quality even slightly by filtering on who has a degree, that unfortunately makes sense for them to do.

[south grail]

I got really good in 10th grade and also in 9th grade but in 11th i really messed stuff up and got a low 80% (a lot of reasons that i cant rlly explain here) so i need something to fill that up

[fringe sphinx]

My advice would be: take a summer University course or two. Or, something affiliated with a University.

[south grail]

I am doing harvard python course rn CS50P and will do british airways online internship and 3 level java course from harvard

[fringe sphinx]

I mean an actual accredited course.

[south grail]

they do give a certificate

[fringe sphinx]

Cs50p is fine for learning. It doesn't give you transfer credit nor would it really impress a Uni. So; it's a great idea, but not because of the cert

[solid parcel]

@round patrol If you're set on trying to break in without a degree, I'd be leaning hard into building your network. Find communities you can engage in, find mentors who can help you improve and may be able to help you out down the line by referring you for roles. Once you're in the interview process, you can sell yourself on your merits. It's getting a foot in the door (both in the interview process and in the industry) that's the hardest part.

[south grail]

I am planning to do projects on my own and learning how to make gui in python, projects like detecting phising emails

[fringe sphinx]

Your timeline is odd to me: a 12th grader in US would already have applied to Uni's, so keep in mind my advice assumes a US timeline

[fringe sphinx]

Yup, that's all great stuff and you should do that to learn programming. I'm just saying I don't think it'll significantly matter to any Uni app.

[round patrol]

I already have some connections in big companies like Henry Schein or SitusAMC and I got referred so I think thats a good starting step

[south grail]

I have not applied to any unis, i will in 5-7 months

So what would you suggest to add weight to my portfolio?

[round patrol]

But i most definetly need a senior mentor who can review my code and help me learn and get better day by day

[fringe sphinx]

Yup, so look at maximizing your summer. My kids all took summer University course courses as non-degree students to improve their applications.

Many Uni's run various pre-Uni programs for high school students

[solid parcel]

If you've got people willing to refer you, it absolutely is. If I were you, I'd also be eager to learn as much from them about their company interview process as possible. Find every edge you can get! Plus similarly, find out if there are any specific gaps you need to fill to be a credible candidate, or any key differentiators that would make you much more attractive as a hire.

[south grail]

Alright got it, thanks for the advice!

[round patrol]

I was thinking about doing Fiverr or Upwork just to get used to real world scenarios but i dont know if it would make me more attractive

[solid parcel]

I'd honestly advise against it. You'll get undercut by people in much lower cost of living locations, many of whom are actually pretty decent engineers, spend a ton of your time bidding for work rather than actually building, and likely be drowned out by a bunch of noise from prompt monkeys just using LLMs to tackle the work.

I'd prioritise building strong foundations and, if you want to contribute to a real project, consider contributing to an open source project you use.

Even better if it's one that one of your target companies uses a lot, and doubly so if engineers at that company maintain the project 🙂 Can be a good way to build a lot of skills, and develop your network and visibility at the same time.

@fringe sphinx IIRC you do data shenanigans, right? What would you recommend to @round patrol as projects to build?

[fringe sphinx]

I'd check out Kaggle and find some challenge to just experiment with

[round patrol]

Im pivoting towards Data Analytics with a heavy focus on Python and SQL. Instead of just theory Ive been focusing on the ETL pipeline side of things lately via FCC as I want to automate the whole data lifecycle.My current stack is Python (certified entry/associate), SQL for querying, and PowerBI for the final visualization.

[round patrol]

I've gotten my pandas cert from Kaggle should i check it out more thorough?

[fringe sphinx]

Kaggle has projects, datasets and competitions. Look for a competition or dataset and try to implement something

[fringe sphinx]

Like learning a sport, you get good by playing the game... not learning the rules

[round patrol]

yea i use kaggle datasets for personal projects

[solid parcel]

I'm unfortunately too far from data analysis to give guidance on what tools, skills or projects specifically are worth diving into, though others here (like BillyBobby!) will be better placed to input on that 🙂

[unique quest]

It's better to focus on one thing

[round patrol]

From what i learned those are the essentials

[solid parcel]

My domain is moreso cloud/DevOps/SRE

[round patrol]

yea i did them one by one

[round patrol]

could never do it honestly

[unique quest]

Right

[round patrol]

Are they not?

[solid parcel]

Out of curiosity, why not? 👀

[unique quest]

Really

[round patrol]

sounds too professional

[unique quest]

To become a master python

[solid parcel]

I just wrangle YAML and product owners 😁

[round patrol]

At first glance i started with cybersecurity it was the worst period of my life

[solid parcel]

Cyber is a rough place to start. A fair few people try and jump into it because it sounds exciting, but it's very challenging to get a grip on without a decent amount of foundational comp sci knowledge.

Plus even once you're in, a deflating number of cyber roles devolve into writing policies and managing compliance rather than anything fun 🙃

[round patrol]

At least i gained some knowledge in networking

[solid parcel]

Great to have. Networking (of both kinds) is pretty inescapable.

[round patrol]

Not anything crazy but i know the layers how the DNS system works TCP/IP packets and some Wireshark knowledge

[fringe sphinx]

Every job is different, so it's hard to call anything 'essential'. My vote is always for broad experience for new programmers. Variety over specialization.

[round patrol]

But am i on road with my current stack?

[fringe sphinx]

Yes, what you learned is a great start.

[round patrol]

Thank you so much for the response

[vital wyvern]

Fantastic take.

Cybersecurity suffers from misaligned expectations and reality.

[solid parcel]

And deflatingly, it often doesn't even compensate you hugely well for said reality, at least compared to other specialisms in engineering! The burden of being a cost centre, eh? 😌

[severe inlet]

man should I follow python bro code 12 hours course or the Harvard one

[vital wyvern]

I dunno, I've never really had an issue with compensation in security work unless you're trying to target certain very niche roles.

My biggest "wtf" when it comes to security comp right now is that if I wanted to move to xAI/M$, they'd be paying me the same salary in an area that has double the cost of living.

[solid parcel]

The comp can be good, but it's always felt to me that relative to the depth of knowledge required, it often falls short compared to engineers with comparable depth in another domain.

[solid parcel]

Eesh...

[vital wyvern]

Recently got solicited from some bigger names based on some public work that I did and it was a 50% pay cut for me to relocate with cost of living factored in. Like-- I want to take those jobs, but not at the pay you're offering.

[vital wyvern]

I mean-- it kind of depends right? I'm not going to state public numbers but we pay our analysts (what I think is...) a decent amount, and we expect work that's pretty comisserate with that wage.

Maybe I'm jaded, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that INVOICE FATTURA.js is bad and anything that it did on the host after it ran is bad; delete a handful of files and reboot the host and you're golden.

When you start levying product expectations on your analyst core, then it becomes problematic.

[solid parcel]

Perhaps I just have grandiose expectations 😆

[vital wyvern]

I have a pretty cynical take on SOC work. It's a stepping stone, expecting career-level salaries out of the role is not... a good idea.
DFIR is one that kinda baffles me as well. Digital Forensics at your local PD pays like $50-60k, but has a far more technical skillset than general analyst work.

I work in enterprise IR now, and my salary feels a little high for my role, but I also have product expectations of me. (Novel research + tool creation). So I think it's offset well.

Our business unit is tied to revenue though; we can point to tangible sales points that we impacted and say "We made you $30M this year," or whatever, so it's a little different than traditional IR work.

[solid parcel]

Agreed re. SOC. Earlier on in my career, I had a choice between taking a SOC role or a sysadmin position. I opted for the latter because the SOC role would have been with such a small org I had no confidence they wouldn't fold in a few months.

[vital wyvern]

Wise decision.

[solid parcel]

Ah nice, so you're actually a profit centre! Much nicer place to be

[solid parcel]

It worked out decently, all things considered 😁

[vital wyvern]

I mean not by scope of work but by meticulous documentation/admin work. 😆

We're a cost center with some admin wizardry to point to specific instances where our marketing exports/research/engagements have netted positive sales.

[solid parcel]

I'm actually doing my dissertation for a Cybersecurity Master's at the moment. I've built a tool that parses and combines Terraform plan output with a BloodHound scan of Azure environments. You can then ingest that composite scan into Bloodhound, use their bog standard privilege escalation detection queries, and determine ahead of deployment if the planned infrastructure changes would introduce privilege escalation pathways

[vital wyvern]

That sounds... incredibly handy.

We're migrating to Azure from AWS right now, would probably find a use for that at an enterprise global security org lol

[solid parcel]

It works! I'm pretty pleased with it. There are caveats in that it can't detect runtime things like PIM or conditional access, but then again, neither can AzureHound. And by scanning the live environment, it allows you to account for resources that are managed outside of Terraform state, too. Given BloodHound uses OpenGraph, the approach could in theory be extended to other clouds or onprem, too.

So far, I haven't found any nodes or edges that BloodHound/AzureHound can model that my tool can't, nor can I think of any scenario in which one would exist

[vital wyvern]

As is tradition, I'm sure some will arise on public release-- overall that sounds neat though. Be interested to read up on it if you have any blogs and whatnot.

[solid parcel]

Not sure how feasible productionisation would be, though. Scan and ingestion times may be prohibitively long against a real environment rather than a toy one.

[solid parcel]

I may get something published once I'm no longer in the midst of the dissertation! Somewhat swamped between that and starting a new job at the moment, haha. Busy tying up loose ends for my current role

[round patrol]

I found CS50P very good so i would check that out

[vital wyvern]

I'm toying with the idea of going for my MS in Cybersecurity, still kinda just passively toying with it though. I have aspirations that are probably more geared towards security systems architecture rather than analyst/research work for the rest of my days.

[solid parcel]

Agreed CS50P is great

[fringe sphinx]

Masters is a good idea in general, just taking one course a semester until done while working.

[vital wyvern]

Yeah that's kinda where my heads at-- SANS MSISE gets me some relevant certs, renews all my existing certs, and generally checks that box all while I just plug away at the day to day.

[solid parcel]

Tbh I'm going for mine primarily to unlock opportunities to work abroad. I'm currently in the UK. I'd been debating moving to the US, though that plan is on hold given the current state of affairs over there 😅

I got into the industry via an apprenticeship so don't have a bachelor's, and having a degree makes it much easier to migrate.

[vital wyvern]

Ah best of luck with that, I kind of wince when I look at UK wages in security.

I think if I was just changing careers, I probably would've went the vCISO route at some MSSP/EDR company.

[solid parcel]

Ha, yeah... I feel the same way looking at DevOps salaries 😆 I'd be on 50-100% more over in the US

[solid parcel]

Interesting, sounds like that would be a fair departure from your current role

[vital wyvern]

Yeah, not sure I'd go that route now. Most of my day-to-day is research/development on agentic AI for IR, or solving problems like... ingesting data at scale for EDR systems.

[fringe sphinx]

I don't love the online masters I see some friends doing, they're very textbook and work oriented... whereas my experience was largely analytical and discussion focused. A lot of reading, writing and discussion

[solid parcel]

Ah, I did actually find one edge that the BloodHound documentation said they'd implemented, which they hadn't. Planning to raise a PR to fix that when I get a sec

[fringe sphinx]

So, consider whether in person vs online are options

[solid parcel]

Yeah I've not been convinced by the course quality of mine, tbh. The piece of paper will be helpful and I'm proud of the dissertation I'm putting together, but I can't say I rate the rest of it.

[vital wyvern]

Yeah I mean-- I guess the jury's out. In person Master's would be wonderful, but I'm unlikely to make much progress towards that in my current geo at a place I think would be "worthwhile".

And I physically cannot relocate due to some life dynamics. 😅

[solid parcel]

Even finding the time to do one in person would be a nightmare while working full time, imo

[vital wyvern]

I have a little one screamsprinting around the house at all hours too, and all the obligations that come with that.

[fringe sphinx]

That's part of why I didn't finish my PhD

[solid parcel]

Ha, yeah that would not help matters

[vital wyvern]

Yeah, I definitely... underrated the level of changes to my general routine that children would impose lol.

I get off work, go do errands, and get back home by 9PM-10PM. By then, I'm exhausted and the idea of doing any crazy personal research/development is rough.

[fringe sphinx]

The online ones are much more forgiving for that.

I think they're mostly async

[vital wyvern]

SANS is at least. I did their BS program. Wasn't terrible, though not wildly impactful towards my general day to day. If anything it was a decent door opener.

Makes for a good conversation starter in interviews.

[fringe sphinx]

And congratulations, if I missed it 🙂

[vital wyvern]

Thanks! For clarity, he's my girlfriend's son, we moved in together... damn, almost a year ago now.

[solid parcel]

I've liked the few bits of SANS content I've got my hands on, albeit they like you to sell your left kidney for the privilege

Flipping expensive

[vital wyvern]

I did the whole military -> school thing. So my SANS degree was free, which is one of the rare points where I think it was incredibly worthwhile.

[solid parcel]

Ahhh, gotcha

[mortal wedge]

So do you guys think any company will be sending out job offers today, lol

[round patrol]

Can you check my code when I finish it? I really need someone to take a look at it.

[elder meteor]

Yo

[solid parcel]

Happy to if I've got a sec, though a) my headspace is a bit limited at the moment (reviewing code needs a different kind of focus than just talking here), and b) Frankly, I've barely had to write any python the past few months. Work has been lots of architecture and tooling decisions rather than hands on engineering!

[round patrol]

ill dm you when im done and if you have the time feel free to tell me if theres anything bad in it or you would do something in a different way

[cursive coral]

There an advisor or something I can talk to please?

[peak halo]

yep, just ask your question.

[solid parcel]

What on earth does any of your LinkedIn bio mean?

SOVEREIGNNEXUS LLC: THE ARCHITECTURE OF WRITTEN TRUTH

BUSINESS BIO
SovereignNexus LLC is a premier agentic infrastructure firm founded by Architect David Niedzwiecki Jr. We specialize in high-fidelity AI security, B2B digital salvage, and high-frequency agentic workflows for the 2026-2028 cycle.

Operating on the 1=1=1 axiom of functional equivalence, we ensure that every digital action is anchored in physical
reality and verifiable truth. Based in Vanceboro, North Carolina, we bridge the gap between human intent and machine execution with absolute precision.

[young hatch]

Out of curiosity: Would an employer care as much about someone having a degree if that person has a lot of other positive traits (past experience, open source contributions, a good portfolio, etc)? I'm hoping to go for a degree myself, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask.

[hearty sierra]

Depends on the employer. For some the degree is an absolute requirement, others may be fine substituting past or demonstrated experience for it. However I would say there are more employers looking for someone with a degree than someone without one, only because that requirement makes it easier to screen through potential candidates.

[young hatch]

Yeah, that makes sense, thank you.

[solid parcel]

Generally, a degree matters most in landing an interview at all. Past that point, landing a role is generally a combination of being professionally and socially competent. I wouldn't usually expect open source contributions or your portfolio to have a meaningful impact by themselves, but the skills you develop from them, and your ability to present them effectively, might.

[young hatch]

What do you mean by "professionally and socially competent"? Is that along the lines of being able to work with others and in a professional environment?

[solid parcel]

1. Have relevant skills and experience (you don't need to know everything, and I'd advise against applying for jobs where you already have everything they're asking for as it often means there's less scope to learn and grow)

2. Be able to communicate effectively, have sufficient maturity to handle difficult situations and disagreements, don't be a dick.

[young hatch]

Seems reasonable to expect

[solid parcel]

You will be amazed how far just having a decent attitude and work ethic can take you

[smoky quest]

That's assuming these other positive traits are comparable to a degree. That's a tall order

[acoustic kestrel]

sexxxxxxxxxxxxx

[smoky quest]

<@&831776746206265384> troll

[acoustic kestrel]

i don no

[young hatch]

That's a fair point, I guess a degree does represent a lot of structured and formal learning backed by a trusted institution.

[smoky quest]

yes. Ignoring that is confusing the metric for the goal.
You don't have the skills because you hold the degree. You hold the degree as a proof of the skills you have acquired

And that means, you also have awesome projects you have done along the way, great internships, and subjects you would not have studied or known they exist otherwise

All of that built during 4-5 years. People trying to skip degrees, aren't the type of people willing to spend that same amount of time and effort. They want a quick job in 6months

[next plover]

Usually*

[young hatch]

Yeah, that all makes sense

[solid parcel]

I agree with the thrust of this, though it's also an overgeneralisation

[next plover]

I had a guy who watched Minecraft hardcore in every class 🥴

[smoky quest]

I am pretty sure he does not have the same career than my intern who was contributing to textbooks or the other who published papers

Your education is what you make of it. The more you invest, the more you get out of it

[next plover]

Most people dont do any of that

[smoky quest]

Most people don't know how to code

[next plover]

Not sure what your point was but yeah

[smoky quest]

Judging the success by the dumbest of people is not going to help make you better

[fast fossil]

contributing to textbooks sounds darn rad, even more impressive than publishing papers methinks, hopefully it wasn't just fixing typos and little mistakes though, lol

[carmine pier]

I am 2 days in learning python and its my first coding language. Is it a right move, as i picked ICT as my strand and i have 2 months of vacation.

[icy pagoda]

yep

[balmy mural]

I reached the final interview for one of the jobs I'm applying for. Turns out it's 5 back to back in person interviews with 5 different people from the company. I feel like that's an absolutely insane interview process

[solid parcel]

Did you not already land an offer in the past few days?

The kind of loop you're describing is pretty common for FAANG, though annoyingly some companies with much lower engineering capability and compensation ape the process seemingly just because FAANG do it.

[lilac yoke]

Done that before, certainly no fond memories... Good luck!

[balmy mural]

I countered, had a meeting yesterday and am expecting a new offer today. If they can improve on the initial offer, I'm taking it. If not, I keep interviewing with other companies.
I stopped applying to new jobs when I got the initial offer, but kept other active interviews going

It's not FAANG at all. It's a VC company with a tech team of 1 person currently. They're expanding their internal tech team a bit to build more internal tools

Compensation is quite high though

[lilac yoke]

are the 5 interviews with different people going to be the tech guy in different hats?

[tender nymph]

Hi, I am currently an incoming freshman aspiring to major in Data Science. As of right now I'm working on building my fundamentals on Excel before proceeding into any programming languages.

I've stumbled into taking courses that I see online and I'm currently enrolled for the IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate on coursera and I plan to take on more courses over summer.

But I'm lowk unsure where to proceed after, should and if I proceed with said certificates, should I move onto programming languages like python? If so, where could I learn it reliably? I'm interested in making my own portfolio but I don't know where to start

[balmy mural]

Ah, 2 tech people I guess, they recently hired an AI engineer. 1 interview is with the original tech guy, 1 interview is with the original tech guy + AI engineer.
The other 3 interviews are with some of their managing partners, a general partner, and the chief accounting officer

Oh, 4 interviews with partners. So it's 6 back to back interviews actually

[fiery cove]

@hearty sierra @near ocean Do degrees really that matter? Don’t employers put a filter on all applications to Master degree in related field and 3-5+ years of experience when searching for a new employee ? If competition is high, salaries must be low so even seniors will accept anything. It got me thinking: How the hell are they going to choose me if I have a regular bachelor degree and 0 work experience? Also, why degree matters so much? I get it - “dude has an education so I blindly trust him” that’s what the employer thinks, but don’t devs who have excellent projects in many fields value more than a guy with a degree which has no proof that he can do the task compared to the guy who can do anything but without superior education? So no degree = no job basically, thats like a “Verified” icon on your username on X (twitter) or Youtube. So its basically impossible to get a job in IT/online without a degree.

So my only chance is applying to Startups & modern tech companies

[fleet iris]

I think you can get the job without the degree if you have the right connections and skills

[fiery cove]

Ok but where do I get the connections?

[fleet iris]

I have this feeling that all this need for a degree is only applicable for the first job

[fleet iris]

You have to make them even idk maybe LinkedIn or someone working in tech field already

[fiery cove]

Alright, thx

[fiery cove]

Because after you get experience and can get hired?

[fleet iris]

I think so i heard people talking like that

[hearty sierra]

It's not impossible to get a job in tech without a relevant degree, it's just really, really hard. Especially now.

[smoky quest]

Degrees are the path of least resistance and with the most opportunities and compensation.
As such, degrees absolutely matter. It's not like spending 4-5 years full time learning about CS, working on projects, studying topics they didn't know existed and getting great internships, are done for no reason.

The market is also not confined to a single job type. There are many types of jobs. Some are more advanced than others and some will require more education than others.

So the question will be less about whether or not you need a degree, but how do you plan to compare and stand out with your competition. If most of your competition has degree, studied it for 4-5 years in school, has awesome projects and great internships, then what's your plan to stand out?
Each job ad receives thousands of applications. So to be selected for interviews, you need to be in the top 10-20 among thousands of people.

[fiery cove]

My chances of starting a successful business is much higher than getting a job, I guess

Where do I get money for university?

[hearty sierra]

Possibly. Around 50% of businesses fail within 5 years, so you have a 50-50 shot at that. Meanwhile landing a job now feels like much lower odds.

[fiery cove]

(I am not starting a business because I have no idea how)

[hearty sierra]

Working, family, scholarships

[balmy mural]

They came up with salary slightly, and matched everything else I asked for, including a first review and salary adjustment after 6 months instead of end of next year (their standard is for someone to join within first quarter of current year to do their first review in that year) 😄

[fiery cove]

https://tenor.com/view/bob-i-may-not-have-a-brain-gentlemen-monster-vs-alien-i-have-an-idea-gif-3241268455232627291

Bachelor in Finance & Management (English) – CBS University (private). Tuition: ~€5,970/year

Need TOEFL and high school education. Working on it

[warped hamlet]

hey guys

[fiery cove]

@hearty sierra You are such a great guy, you explain me how jobs work in a few days, that my parents or school couldn’t explain how it all works and how serious it is for years. Thank you so much! I now have a clear direction in life! @near ocean thank you to being harsh and real with me.

[gray rock]

hi

[stark jolt]

Hlo

[west flower]

Heyy

[tender nymph]

Bump on this huhu

[dense seal]

Hi guys

I’m currently a half time Phyton scripter this is my first time for hire I have projects I can show you and I am for hire if you want to hire me or have problems you can ask me

[mortal wedge]

This is a channel for discussing career advice, but we don't ask for or offer jobs here

[hearty sierra]

See server rule 9. 👇

[inner wren]

Rules

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

[novel mural]

hiii pls i need a job freelance

sorry

okay then give me advice on how to get a job

[urban hazel]

!rule 9

[inner wren]

Rules

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

[vast shoal]

In software, the easiest and most reliable way of getting a job is to go to uni and get a degree in an appropriate field

In addition to that, doing your own projects and getting good internships helps a lot too

[pearl lodge]

I am still at university but is it possible to apply full-time engineering job oversea and being approved will likely drop out, assume I have hands on experience?

[vapid jay]

I don't know much python but I was tasked to work on a proxy debugging tool using pyside6. The initial scaffolding for the tool was done using AI and I was asked to build on top of it.

I seriously don't understand what's happening at the low level and I am just relying on claude and codex to get things done. I don't know how to overcome this. The codebase is overwhelming and I am the only one working on this

[vast shoal]

It will be much much harder. Why not complete your degree?

And "hands on experience" has to be actual professional working experience or it basically doesn't count.

What you do in the evenings for fun counts for very little.

[pearl lodge]

degree doesn't mean experience, sooner step into field better to excel

[vast shoal]

Degree means you get interviews and don't get automatically filtered out when you apply for jobs.

Doesn't matter how good you are if you never even get to talk to a human.

[dense seal]

!rule 9

[inner wren]

Rules

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

[dense seal]

!rule 7

[inner wren]

Rules

7. Keep discussions relevant to the channel topic. Each channel's description tells you the topic.

[drowsy oxide]

Hi everyone i am an student on opt visa i am just confused what are the better resources that can get me a job because i need one immediately

[hushed crane]

You can't get a job kmmediately

[drowsy oxide]

But how

[peak halo]

the job market is very competitive right now and no one is getting entry-level programming jobs "immediately".

[drowsy oxide]

So what should i do any better way to gain experience

[hushed crane]

Internship

[drowsy oxide]

How to apply to any internship

[hushed crane]

Job listings

[peak halo]

you're studying CS at a university, right? do they have career fairs?

[steep agate]

is it really a bad idea to study programming when I'm stupid at math?

[vast shoal]

No. And being stupid at math is rarely an innate trait or due to a lack of talent.

Traditional education is notoriously bad at teaching math to anyone.

[steep agate]

Idk but this afternoon I'm try to solve a simple problem in CSES and can't solve it . The elder student who is teaching me ,he asked how many math score did I got after the exam? I'm feel very shame

[vast shoal]

Not being able to solve a problem right now, and being unable to learn math are different things.

[wet valve]

is embedded programming for me? i never had experience with cs before except little codes with lua. i want to cdoe with physicals objects and electricals devices alot. i am good at math to my knowledge and do i need to excel in ohysics for it?

[steep agate]

Isn't it show how good you're when you solve a problem (Like solve a mth problem)

[steep agate]

depend what job you want to study

[vast shoal]

I mean, it shows that you know something, but it doesn't mean you can't learn.

Try learning math through 3Blue1Brown's "Essence of" series or Khan Academy

They are a lot better than traditional school classes imo

[vast shoal]

You don't need to excel at it, you just need to learn some basics

[steep agate]

hmmm lemme try

[proud glacier]

CSES is a programming olympiad, is that right?

[vast shoal]

Electronics and electromagnetism primarily

[steep agate]

Idk but I'm now practice for olympic programming competition(City level) and he told me to use CSES to practice ,so yeah maybe it's programming olympiad

[proud glacier]

those problems are not very representative of real-world programming. so don't judge your competence at programming purely through contest-style problems.

[vast shoal]

Programming competition problems are typically very difficult, and extremely different from the kinds of problems you solve when you work as a professional developer

[steep agate]

he told me to learn basic cpp again

[vast shoal]

They are not at all representative of normal programming

[steep agate]

ik ,but it's the short way that can help me join in microcontroller class in uni

I might get free 1 pts in national exam

that can give me a chance

[pearl lodge]

what happens if I don't get paid for years after graduation by oversea recruiters?

[vast shoal]

I'm not sure what you're asking.

[trim crypt]

did you get a job by oversea recruiters? And they didn't pay you after you got that job?

[pearl lodge]

there is no guarantee I will start working after getting degree?

[pearl lodge]

No, assume I waited 4 years to finalize my CV but couldn't find a job at least oversea

[vast shoal]

There's no guarantee for anything ever. But you have the greatest chances of getting a job in software if you have a degree.

[peak halo]

Nothing is guaranteed. The unemployment rate for new CS grads is about 7%.

and the unemployment rate for programming job seekers who don't have a CS degree will always be much higher.

[trim crypt]

what do you mean waited 4 years to finalize your CV? I assume you meant that you were doing your degree for 4 years. In which case, you don't have to worry about it. Just focus on your studies, do well in your exams, be serious with your final year projects, and when you graduate, that degree can help you land a job. Its not guaranteed but you have a better chance than those who don't have a degree.

For now, just focus on your studies. You can worry about getting a job afterwards.

[pearl lodge]

sorry, but I am self-educated. I don't learn everything i need at school because education is terrible where I live. I don't see any other option either will get into crypto to make money, or barely finish school with 2.5 GPA that will tag on my CV.

[trim crypt]

you were saying you were getting a degree?

[steep agate]

Degree in IT now is the most simple thing that u need to have a work bro

After that's your year exp then how flexible you are in working

[trim crypt]

Open a help thread in #1035199133436354600 if you need a code review

[pearl lodge]

I am currently studying but not because it's important for me but because it's just a way it's.

[trim crypt]

are you currently studying for a degree now?

Right, so just focus on it. Do really well in your studies and hand in your assignments early or on-time. You can worry about a job after that. OK @pearl lodge ?

[pearl lodge]

okay, okay

[peak halo]

!warn 1134336284257681538 your message was removed for seeking employment, which is not allowed.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied warning to @twilit elm.

[outer cliff]

hey guys i was thinking about participating in open source contribution can anyone give me best repo to start with i know python basics and a little bit of data analytics in python

[steady violet]

you should make your own project, youd learn more than doing open source since youre a beginner

[outer cliff]

https://github.com/Aryan-202

here is my github i am just a beginner i tried many things can you check weather am i capable of doing open source projects?

i tried giving my prs in sympy, requestly etc but i wont stand out where am i wrong @steady violet

[vast shoal]

I think the best way to get into open source contribution is to just do your own projects and use libraries for those projects, and you might eventually find yourself running into a bug in one of those libraries, or you might discover that it lacks a feature you wish it had, and then you can try to contribute to those projects by fixing that bug or creating that feature.

Because at that point, since you're a knowledgeable user of that library, it's natural for you to contribute to that project.

[outer cliff]

thanks for the idea @vast shoal i will work on my ongoing projects and see what i can contribute according to my capabilities

[peak halo]

@gentle bloom you can't engage in self promotion or job seeking here, so I removed your message.

[daring mango]

no problem.
How can i help u ?

[peak halo]

@pearl lodge maybe open a help thread and @daring mango can help you there. Note that you can't arrange an exchange of money here.

This is the career discussion channel. Please talk about your project in a different channel. Maybe follow my suggestion about the help thread.

[edgy mesa]

I have two resumes , can someone take a look at both to see which one is better

[smoky quest]

don't ask to ask

[mortal wedge]

If you share them then people will probably comment/help

[edgy mesa]

Resume 1

Resume 2

Personally I like the second one, it helped me landing my first job

Which one do you guys think is better

[graceful flame]

hello everyone

[mortal wedge]

There's going to be disagreements on what to name sections and what order to put them in.

That being said, I do like some of the formatting changes you've made in the second. The technical skills are much better formatted compared to resume 1. I personally don't really bother listing soft skills unless you're really trying to fill a page.

If you are cold applying online a lot, you do want to make sure your sections are clearly labeled with a word the ATS knows is connected to a section.

I stick with

Summary
Skills
Experience
Education

for that purpose.

[graceful flame]

just confused about which role to choose in python devlopment can anyone help?

[mortal wedge]

That said, having two columns like that can mess with some ATS parsing. I think it's fine if you're used to handing it in in person but a little riskier when applying (when you apply to some positions that let you "autofill" from your resume you can get a preview of how an ATS might parse your resume)

I think your recent position is strong, with how you've worded it.

The only thing I'd maybe think about is if you want the older stuff on there since it doesn't seem super relevant to what you're going for? But I understand if you need it to fill space. But you don't have to enter in your entire work history. It seems like you could do a one pager with your most recent position and skills. But some others may suggest two page is stronger

[smoky quest]

<@&831776746206265384> recruitment

[nocturne harbor]

!warn 1457416059312144472 Recruiting is not allowed

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied warning to @viscid relic.

[idle kelp]

[edgy mesa]

It's older stuff but it's still my experience you get what I mean, So far what I'm getting at is deleting soft skills porton, and perhaps my old non career jobs from my resume. this will leave me witth summary, one relevent job, tech skills/proj, edu and I have a reference at the bottom of my sheet.

[warped hamlet]

hey i have building something

i need a team

maybe its startup

[solid parcel]

What a brilliantly compelling elevator pitch 🙃

[warped hamlet]

thank you, i have been practicing

😘😘

[severe inlet]

as a person studying in grade 12 and has learned python and numpy has interest in ai , Neural networks , LLM ,s have learned basics numpy what's my next move

[warped hamlet]

Learn pandas first, then jump into machine learning with scikit-learn. After that go for deep learning - PyTorch or TensorFlow. Build small projects along the way, don't just watch tutorials

[still condor]

!warn @graceful summit Make sure to read our rules and the channel description. We do not allow looking for work on this server.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied warning to @graceful summit.

[peak halo]

it's more important to learn concepts than to memorize features of libraries.
do not use tensorflow as it is outdated.
you will not be able to get a job in AI without at least a bachelors degree in CS or similar.

[severe inlet]

the wat should I do😭

[peak halo]

what do you mean? I just told you what to do

[icy pagoda]

if you mean an alternative library by "what should I do", then pytorch is kinda the standard

[mortal wedge]

Just to piggyback onto @peak halo, usually the degree requirements are even higher than a bachelors. A lot of the postings I'm seeing are asking for PhDs and masters degrees at a minimum.

(For AI heavy jobs)

[peak halo]

yeah. I'm one of the only people in my department who doesn't have a masters. and sometimes I'm in meetings where I'm the only person without a PhD (I'm the least important person in those meetings).

[shadow shard]

do somebody know the best video (s) were u switch to no know python at professional

[solid parcel]

!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!

[solid parcel]

CS50P is a good starting place if you're looking for videos.

[shadow shard]

i think i'll use the first one

[shadow shard]

ty

[crimson scarab]

hi guys, should I learn backend frontend or fullstack, and why

[merry ledge]

19 days since i accepted IBM offer and I am yet to know what job I accepted

[merry ledge]

backend or fullstack because frontend is outsourced, oversaturated, and being replaced with AI

[merry ledge]

I sent a follow up email and the recruitor told me nothing and that I would be contacted soon but I havent been contacted

[near ocean]

More follow ups

Recruiter jobs are literally just "email"

[merry ledge]

i should send another?

[near ocean]

When was the last one

[merry ledge]

i dont want to be too pushy
the last one was mar 17. All i have is a start date and a city no address, no background check confirmation, or even a job description

[near ocean]

Yes definitely another one, maybe mark it up as important or whatever your client allows

[merry ledge]

what does mark it up as important mean

[crimson scarab]

thank you, in that case I may aswell do backend. Do you know any good jobs that involve backend python development and algorithms and stuff

[near ocean]

Some clients let you mark an email as "important"

[merry ledge]

why do i need to do that? he responded to the last one

[merry ledge]

python isnt really a backend language, jobs exist but they are scarce

[crimson scarab]

what so like c++ and sql then?

I'm just learning python to grasp coding basics as it's the most beginner friendly language

thanks for the help tho, saved me alot of hassle

[merry ledge]

you can go search for job postings that are interesting to you and see what languages they require

[wide harness]

what do yall think? im a high school student

[near ocean]

yes highly skilled engineers are more likely to be employed and paid better
yes luck is important and nepotism always helps
im not sure you can say whats more important, its not like you can just decide one day to be lucky or get a family/friend in a position to get you hired

[vast shoal]

I don't think skill alone is enough to get a job. You need to be able to market yourself in one way or another. And just to be clear, being a skilled engineer involves having good social skills.

[near ocean]

i dont think any of those points are controversial or unpopular tbh

but also that doesnt mean youre a highly skilled engineer as a high school student and you should not think of dropping out of or not attending uni because you think you are

[vast shoal]

Yeah, there are no skilled engineers in high school.

[wide harness]

i meannnn yes but like how important are these things?
are there surveys that say something like
"84% of employers agree that they " really need higher skilled engineers and they are willing to pay higher salaries to get them into their company and skill is the most important criteria their interviewers look for and if you have it then we'll definitely hire you"

ifykwim

maybe graphical data that shows people earning more than 350,000$ ever for a year in the us have tendency to be unemployed in the future for more than 2 months 100 times lesser than people earning the average income

I JUST NEED GOOD DATA SOMEONE HELP ME

[near ocean]

but whats the point of asking? are you going to suddenly become luckier if the data shows that luck is the main factor?
or are you suddenly going to become a 100x engineer

obviously skill is important, luck is also important, theres no reason to quantify them

[wide harness]

its gonna help me know what are the skills needed for the situation and how rewarded i would be if i can do it, it would help me know if i should aim for this path or a different one, i can only choose one so i have to make it count

[near ocean]

there is no specific skill that would make you a 1% engineer or give you luck

[wide harness]

im just deciding what career path would be the best one to take for me by observing them, idk what youre saying

[proud glacier]

"84% of employers agree that they " really need higher skilled engineers and they are willing to pay higher salaries to get them into their company and skill is the most important criteria their interviewers look for and if you have it then we'll definitely hire you"
I'm skeptical about how much real info a survey like this would actually tell you. talk is cheap.
maybe graphical data that shows people earning more than 350,000$ ever for a year in the us have tendency to be unemployed in the future for more than 2 months 100 times lesser than people earning the average income
like what, without this data you're not sure if earning a high income is advantageous enough for you?

[wide harness]

how did you make the text darken and go to the right
how do i do that

[proud glacier]

Markdown quote syntax

> quote

quote

[wide harness]

thanks

like what, without this data you're not sure if earning a high income is advantageous enough for you?
if the data says like i mentioned, it would mean high skilled employees are almost always in need and you wouldnt need to worry about luck or nepotism if youre a high skilled person, oh btw by high skilled i didnt mean having a high skill degree necessarily, but being very good at your job in a job that being good in matters, if i had data like this it would help me decide what career i should follow, now ofcourse im also gonna compare it to data for other occupations

I'm skeptical about how much real info a survey like this would actually tell you. talk is cheap.
atleast to some extent data on things like this should definitely exist
@proud glacier

[solid parcel]

The most widely available and researched proxies for capability that I'm aware of are YoE and level of education

Both of which are relatively flawed, but may nonetheless form a reasonable starting point given the kind of data it sounds like you're wanting.

[solid parcel]

Anecdotally, I do think tech is a pretty meritocratic field.

[honest quiver]

So, I was offered a tech lead position at my current job but there is not a raise that is going to occur until a few months down the line? don't like that I am going from a SWE II to SWE senior a few months down the line. It feels like getting more responsibilities but not getting compensated for the "responsibility" should I take it? what are some pros and cons I should consider?

[solid parcel]

Odd for them to be looking to promote you, but not increase your comp until months later. Do you know what their reasoning/justification is behind that?

[honest quiver]

The justification is that HR needs to approve it and they need to speak too managers above the current SW management team.

[solid parcel]

I'd be pressing to have them do that now. From what you've said, that sounds like they don't yet have the budget approved, which risks the pay rise never materialising

[vast cave]

When you guys apply for jobs for knowing Python, what are you tested on or what are you expected to do? Know the concepts from A-Z? Memorize the entire syntax? How can I know if I'm ready for a job

[honest quiver]

Yeah, I was going to show up and say only way I can take on the responsibility of leading the tech is if day one of role change I am a senior. I do have a few days too ponder on it. Only pros I can see is it looks good on my resume but not excited without being compensated.

[tiny plover]

Lemon

[honest quiver]

Depends on what roles you are applying for. If you are a younger engineer I would focus on DSA and Algos. Sprinkle in some design. For a more senior I would boost up SW Design.... Only way to know if your ready is by just applying and learning from interviews.

[vast cave]

That's nice to know. What if I'm applying for a general intern dev role?

[honest quiver]

some DSA knowledge

[vast cave]

That's it? Wow lol

Time to focus on DSA then, thank you : D

[smoky quest]

Are you a student?

[wide harness]

try signing a contract with them thatll make it so that they eventually have to pay you the money you missed out for the months where you were being paid like a SWE II while you were a SWE senior, also it doesnt have to be an instant payment

[vast cave]

Yeah

[smoky quest]

That transactional viewpoint is counter productive. It exemplifies the penny wise, pounds foolish
You are not being promoted because you can do the job of senior swe. You are being promoted because you are already operating at the level of a senior swe.

If you reject that promotion, it means:

• You won't be handling the responsibilities of a senior swe and thus not growing
• If you change job, it will be more difficult to justify you are a senior since you haven't handled the responsibilities of a senior swe. Or at the very least, you would start from lower point
• You still won't get paid higher
• You refusing the promotion means your manager might promote someone else or find someone else to handle these responsibilities for the foreseable future

Accepting that promotion means you will face more challenges and growth.
And from the company perspective, not paying you until date X is an organizational debt. The longer it stays that way, the more risk they take of you leaving the company for a better position somewhere else

So while you can certainly try to negotiate some equity or backpay, I would not let it get in the way of your career

[smoky quest]

focus less on the language and focus more on the role then.
Programming languages are just tools, not an end in themselves. What matters is if you can build space rockets, not how you handle a screw driver

[smoky quest]

Also your manager might have missed some nuanced behind that.
It's best prepare promo 6-12months in advance. So you can get all the training and opportunities you need so the promo becomes a non-issue. As such, it's frequent to check with someone if they are interested in the role, without necessarily promising it given all the unknowns.

So there can be quite a few concrete scenario coming out of this question

[solid parcel]

Conversely, companies often dangle titles as a means of extracting additional work without an accompanying increase in pay. There are options between an outright refusal, and laying down like a doormat.

[smoky quest]

Unfortunately, there aren't often that many options in between

There is also tons of nuance behind that "dangling". Often things might fall apart for unrelated reasons, and the dangling is not done on purpose, it just didn't happen.
That's why they often talk about plans and what they are trying to make it happen, but not everything is under someone's control

There are certainly some toxic people, but seeing everything under the lens of exploiting people is toxic and unhealthy in itself

[near ocean]

Can try to negotiate a bonus or a guaranteed pay review in x months

You should take the title change regardless and if the money promise in writing doesnt follow, start looking for another job but this time as a senior dev

[solid parcel]

I'd agree with that, but while things can fall apart for innocuous reasons, self-advocacy and learning how and when to push back and manage upwards are important skills to learn.

[smoky quest]

This is better to discuss it on a case by case basis tbh

[honest quiver]

I think I will attempt too talk to the manager if there is a form of backpay that can occur after a review cycle. In writing. I do a lot of senior tasks already and sortof am sharing responsibilities of technical lead with another engineer that doesn't ahve intrest in inherting that role.

[solid parcel]

Very reasonable approach imo.

[open ivy]

My "average" one-on-one social interactions for networking are (roughly):

70% silence.
25% me talking.
5% the other person talking.

So on one hand, I see why people say I "talk too much" since 25% is much more than 5%. On the other hand, any more silence feels very unnatural 70% is already fairly high. Do you think I am splitting the difference wisely?

[dapper eagle]

I think knowing how to do your specific job // having several related projects on your resume

[smoky quest]

I am going to say this with the utmost caring intentions:

• Your distribution does not represent a normal interaction. You need a sound external source of feedback, be it a trusted friend, coach or health professional

[open ivy]

Are you just better at finding talkative people than me? Maybe once I follow your advice to ask around for events where they "talk shop" it will balance itself out.

Off topic, go to #game-development

[smoky quest]

No. It's not me having higher than average skills.
The problem is you are describing below than average social skills for yourself

[open ivy]

Your skills may be better than you think, since lots of people complain about not meeting like-minded people it's not a rare problem.

[smoky quest]

Regardless, even 50% of silence would be abnormal

You can't improve what you can't measure. That's why I am recommending external source of feedback

It does not make you a bad person. It just means you need some help to understand where and how to improve

[misty hornet]

Yes, thank you very much, and sorry, I'll delete my message; I put it in the right place.

[open ivy]

Common mistake don't feel bad.

[wide harness]

what do people do in networking events, how important are they

[peak halo]

are you asking about social events within a company?

[open ivy]

Most networking I do isn't "networking events" and many conversations I have are not in 1 on 1. My primary goal is to be useful to others in some way, and a secondary goal is that others should at least give a little bit back.

I am still skeptical that getting to people to talk in 1 on 1 conversations is all that easy in 2026. You are fighting the extreme amount of effort put into making doom scrolling addictive. In addition to the fact we all have cool niche fields to explore but which are different from person to person.

[mighty spire]

I havent felt like that, if you like that, after all most conventions have a pretty reasonable scope so wveryone can be on kind of a simillar page

[mortal wedge]

To touch on earlier conversation topics, if hiring practices are anything to go by it's not guaranteed at all that a company will be able to find the highest skilled applicant amongst those applying. Being a top engineer with skill can be a key differentiator, but regardless you need a way to be able to demonstrate that.

You have to understand, too, that like.... a top 1/5/10/25/50% engineer is going to look pretty similar to someone without any knowledge at all. They're going to go with the person who is able to best demonstrate their knowledge, which doesn't always wind up being the person with the most.

While they are kind of related, being able to interview well or perform the job are mostly separate skills

[smoky quest]

It's pretty close to the secretary problem

[smoky quest]

If your interview process can make the distinction between the top 1 and 50 or even to 1 and 5, you have far bigger problems

[open ivy]

Getting to know someone to the point where they can give you time to describe your own projects seems to help, because that allows a deeper look than an interview would (which is a contrived interaction anyway).

Interview skills are still important even if interviews are a bit artificial, so don't neglect them completly.

[sudden vault]

If I learn python what will be the advantages and how can I earn money?

[peak halo]

If you've just started learning python, you're probably a few years away from earning any money from doing it. There's no market for people to code things simple enough that you can learn how to do it in a few weeks or even months.

But pretty much any programming job can potentially involve python to one extent or another. It's very versatile.

[sudden vault]

Tysm sir

[sudden vault]

Sir I am currently learning html , css and js I am new to it I find problems doing coding

Pls do this favor for me and tell me

[languid pasture]

I didn't knew that big people like Directors talk? I always thought they want to look tough

[vast shoal]

Talking is how they direct people.

[peak halo]

how would that make us look tough?
regardless, I'm more concerned with helping people than optics.

[languid cargo]

got question

starting from scratch , and i dont know from where to start

[terse cloud]

if starting with python you can ask the other channel

which is #python-discussion

[smoky quest]

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

[round patrol]

either a degree or start learning autodidact

[languid pasture]

Its just that feeling, I always thought big people don't talk they only watch.

[dull belfry]

is any field like security,devops,ML any better competition wise? i mean easier to get into
compared to SDE

[next plover]

Security is pretty competitive

[dull belfry]

ok i will try for SDE itself then, but it feels like they are demanding a lot for SDE roles. domain knowledge and projects can be ok. but how am i supposed to be an expert at algorithms and datastructures..

[next plover]

What is SDE?

[dull belfry]

general software development/engineering roles

[next plover]

I see

There are plenty of books online for DSA which are great

[dull belfry]

i am focussing on backend dev (web) right now and the competition in my country for those roles are so high.
planing to keep making projects and improve my resume for like 1-2 years and keep applying.

hope that market will get less competitive and i get a job by then.
if not i just wasted (4 years of college and 2 more years for nothing)

[smoky quest]

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

[dull belfry]

i almost completed my degree. now have to build my skills

[smoky quest]

It's a trade off between breadth and depth. The less depth, the more pool of potential applicants. the more depth, the less number of jobs and tougher to get there

[dull belfry]

btw how can degree helpe me. my college is not a big one and has very less opportunitites for me

[smoky quest]

projects and internships can give you an edge

[smoky quest]

Believe it or not, what makes someone good is not the paper of the diploma they hold in their hand. There is no magic power to that.
The value is in the learning they have acquired along the way

[dull belfry]

yes i am doing projects. all my projects are basic. my resume is this #career-advice message

internships.. idk i never seem to get them. and i am hoping after i compelte my degree i would get more opportunities for internships

[smoky quest]

As someone reading resumes, this can be summed up to "I integrate APIs and did nothing interesting"

You would be competing with bootcamps and self taught, which I can hire for a fraction of the price of someone with a degree

[dull belfry]

yes idk what should i make. i always end up in basic projects

but in that project i did use celery and task queue

[smoky quest]

Take your classes and turn them up to 11.
So make a query engine for a database, a distributed algorithm (vector clock, paxos, zanzibar, etc.) or gait detection based on ML/data

Or your own compiler

[smoky quest]

yeah, you don't need to study 4-5 years for a degree to use celery

[dull belfry]

oh so something ambitious which i have to learn

[smoky quest]

I mean, this are projects you would see in students who graduate from their degree. That is not especially ambitious

[dull belfry]

but would that be relevant to web dev/backend web jobs am applying

[smoky quest]

why are you trying to compete with self taught engineers?

[dull belfry]

ah i seem to get it now. i should make use of the exposure i got from my degree

[smoky quest]

absolutely! Aim high and go higher!

[dull belfry]

i will try, but that would mean revisiting some concepts too. thanks for the advise.

[smoky quest]

revisiting concepts can only make you a better engineer!

And remember we are here to help if you get stuck

[icy stream]

I've only been learning Visual Studio for one day and I've created an HTML website. My website has a button, and now I want to know how to insert malicious code into it.

[smoky quest]

We don't help with malicious code

[tired gazelle]

Advance python knowledge with libraries. Knowledge of maths and stats.
Projects like Ml pipelines, applied deep learning like image classification or chatbots

[icy stream]

ok

i want learn python and visual code

[tired gazelle]

are you going from Delhi?

[noble linden]

in a Button?

[icy stream]

yes

[noble linden]

from a input its possible. But a button, i never heard of it

[icy stream]

can u teach me,

[noble linden]

I never tried. But you should learn about Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and DOM-based (XSS)

These are the base techniques

[icy stream]

thanks

[noble linden]

AND never try such things on real websites. Only learn these to make your website more secure

[icy stream]

If I want to test for malware on a virtual machine, where should I download a virtual machine from?

[noble linden]

Which OS you are using?

[icy stream]

window

[icy stream]

I have a friend who installed something on my computer that made my screen turn blue. I want revenge.

[unique quest]

I want anyone explaining class

[smoky quest]

<@&831776746206265384> repeatedly asking about writing malware despite being reminded of our rules

[noble linden]

i think he just deleted system32 folder.

[noble linden]

Learn to use try, except and then change your name

[noble linden]

On Linux i use Qemu. But for Windows, i have no idea

[bitter grove]

after like knowing the basics what do you do again?

[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.

If I'm guessing what you're asking correctly.

[bitter grove]

whats that one called like transporting data

[vast shoal]

Not sure what you mean

[bitter grove]

one part of data engineering like building pipes for data

i just wanna pursue that

does he run out after like two answers or something?

[icy stream]

I want to see where the basic commands are.

for visual code

[elder meteor]

Oop in python?

[balmy mural]

!rule 6 9

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

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

[ember iris]

#❓｜how-to-get-help

[vast shoal]

No, I'm just not a data engineer, so I have no expertise to answer your question.

[austere swan]

what is pyweek and how to make money from it in a week ?

[proud glacier]

PyWeek (https://pyweek.org/) is a game programming challenge that a lot of people on this server participate in. It's not really a moneymaking scheme.

[austere swan]

ohh then it has no use

[sharp goblet]

Hey guys, I am starting to learn python, I am a complete beginner, can anyone share the roadmap and guide me please

[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]

Start by learning the fundamentals (syntax, control flow, functions, data structures, basic OOP) through a solid introductory course (choose from one of the above) while actively doing exercises and small practical projects alongside it. 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.

[sharp goblet]

Thank you, will follow this and get back here when there's a doubts

[fleet iris]

how do i level up my programming knowledge. i mean ik am spending less time to code. due to uni. and i find myself struggling hard to solve problems during projects.
most often i use some ai tools instead of trying to solve it myself

i have to force myself to read the docs. it takes like so much time for me to understand the docs

the main problem is that. idk what should i do. for example i am relying so much on AI.
i really wish i could code something from the ground up

[peak halo]

most often i use some ai tools instead of trying to solve it myself
just completely stop using AI for the time being. each time you do that, you're basically weakening the part of your brain that you would have used to actually solve the problem.

think of it like a muscle. over time, you'll get better at solving these kinds of problems. and you'll get better at approaching new kinds of problems.
using AI is like making a robot go to the gym for you, and expecting that you will get stronger.

[fleet iris]

exactly i understand how the code works and can even reimplement it. the issue comes when i face a similar problem.
but how would i approach it then. what should i do when i encounter this problem

[peak halo]

if you can write a solution to one problem, but you can't write a solution to a similar problem, it's likely that you don't understand the first solution as well as you think you do.

[fleet iris]

i am lacking critical thinking

[peak halo]

something you can try next time is opening a thread in #1035199133436354600 and ask for guidance working through the problem mentally, without letting anyone write any code for you.

[peak halo]

it's just something you develop over time. there isn't like, something you can read that will make you better at programmatic thinking.

[fleet iris]

alright i used to do that before

[solid parcel]

Absolutely this. AI removes friction. Working through that friction is where learning and growth comes from.

[fleet iris]

one of my problem as i said is i don't know where should i look. for example i wanted to make a longterm fun learning project where i play with graphics. i found this library called tcod.
i mainly start using AI when i become curious of how things work. i do that very often in everyday life too. so it become a goto for me to reach to AI when am stuck on something

completely avoiding it during coding is the only way ig

[solid parcel]

It's reasonable to use when you already know how to do something well, but yeah steering clear when you're learning is a good idea. Using AI is far more passive than doing the coding yourself. You're not engaging as deeply as the concepts, won't retain as much and are less likely to spot gaps in your knowledge.

[smoky quest]

That's where structured learning are useful. Because they already put a lot of thought into it and have structured their material so the right information is introduced gradually and at the right time.
Without that structured, you are bound to get lost in some random weed because you don't know yet what is relevant or not to you.

So pick a resource like a course or class, practice a lot without AI and only then go from there

[gentle nest]

I have just released my first bit of python software, but where the hell and how do i advertise it ahha

[smoky quest]

where your prospective customers hang out

[gentle nest]

thats a good idea

[sacred gale]

what sorta projects tend to get the most value to employers

[peak halo]

depends on what kinds of things they hire people to do. what do you want to do?

[sacred gale]

cybersecurity, python has a huge ecosystem for tooling in it

[solid parcel]

Reading 'production ready' practically makes me twitch nowadays, it's a phrase AI seems to absolutely love. Close to half the junior portfolios I see have it in first few lines of their Github READMEs. If you lean heavily on AI to write for you, it's worth being aware of just how generic it can result in you sounding.

[peak halo]

!clban 1422285151760551976 it seems like you're only here to self promote (I asked you to stop before and your next message was you doing it again)

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @gentle bloom permanently.

[amber radish]

hi everyone

[viral rock]

y0

[fallow yacht]

Career option with python + commerce?

[graceful summit]

I am looking for a backend engineer expertise in C/C++, C#, Python, GO and Rust etc

[vast shoal]

Please note that recruitment is not permitted on this server

[bitter grove]

if i wanted to become backend dev what would i do

[peak halo]

even in good times, a degree in a relevant field like CS is needed to get your foot in the door. this is especially true now, as the job market is pretty bad.
While you're pursuing that degree, you can get involved in a web development club, and then apply for internships related to web development.

[tender dagger]

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a professional internship in Python. The company won't be offering any compensation, but this is a career transition I'm making, since I've spent about three years working with Laravel—two years at a company and one year as a freelancer.
I have some experience with Python, so I'm not a complete beginner; I just want to get a feel for the professional environment.

[vast shoal]

Do you have a question?

[tender dagger]

I didn't understand

[peak halo]

you're looking for an unpaid internship? you can't do that here. you'll have to go to a hiring website.

[tender dagger]

If not, please post in another section—I asked where I could do that, and they told me that

[peak halo]

If someone told you that you can ask for jobs or internships anywhere in this server, they were wrong.

[tender dagger]

Okay, do you know which website I could use to make this kind of proposal and get a response?

[peak halo]

LinkedIn

[tender dagger]

Well

[split epoch]

i want to know basics

anyone can help me and tell me?

[near ocean]

this is #career-advice , try #python-discussion

[split epoch]

ok

[pearl lodge]

career discussion one post example -> should I consider going to college and work 9 to 5 with average salary or shift my direction to crypto and stock exchange so I can gain more freedom. *seriously

[lilac yoke]

college and crypto is not mutually exclusive, you'll be better off studying economics, finance or buisness before doing "crypto and stock exchange"

[pearl lodge]

Agree to disagree, you can teach finance to physicist but you can't teach financier a physics, you don't need to pursue 4year license

[wanton birch]

Sadly allowing those things on here will turn this into a dead channel spam for the most part

[pearl lodge]

If you do want to learn sth new you don't need to get specific major just having technical background will help you excel in pretty much everything

[wanton birch]

You mean to say Armageddon got it wrong? It’d have been easier to teach astronauts drilling instead of teaching drilling people how to be astronauts in record time?

[hazy harbor]

Hi everyone, i have somewhat of an issue atm, so I graduated with a bachelor in computer science/informatics engineering and landed a job at a consulting company and started working in railway software, which was using somewhat of a proprietary no code framework, fast forward one year and a new project is assigned where I have to orchestrate and build a test framework for a embedded system, in python (language that I am more comfortable with). Rather sooner than later, i started feeling like a fraud, not being able to write 2 lines of code without having some type of assistance (AI, stack overflow, team lead, etc). Anyways, fast forward to a few months ago and I enrolled in a data science masters (which i am currently taking) and land a job as a Data scientist. And I still feel like I am a complete fraud, I am able to understand what the code does (atleast more than 50% of the times) and I am able to understand architectures, and what not. But again when it comes for me to write some type of code from scratch I just can’t.
I have considered in taking the cs50P course or something like that, but feeling really lost and anxious.

How do I leave this black hole?

[open ivy]

Keep setting aside a little time each day to try to understand the things you don't understand. It takes time

[hazy harbor]

Thats the thing, i dont really have a hard time understanding what others do, I have a hard time doing things myself and writing actual code

[near ocean]

you can teach anyone anything

[pearl lodge]

you can't teach fish how to fly?

[near ocean]

ngl that sentence is cringe

[lilac yoke]

seems like you've got everything figured out then

[mortal wedge]

Flying fish was an interesting example, because this exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish

[pearl lodge]

I'm kidding:)

[whole flare]

erm, ackshually, I have an elytra, so I can fly.

[open ivy]

Maybe reality is between the extremes of "unlearnable skill" and "anyone can learn anything"?

So most people can learn the basics but we all have to find out what we are really natrually good it within any given problem domain?

[solid parcel]

Oh boy, when you say crypto and stock exchange, are you talking about day trading?

[pearl lodge]

I'm going to take a sleep, have a good night

[mortal wedge]

Human brains have a near infinite capacity to learn, but it still takes time to learn, our aptitude with different learning methods will differ, and then in practice our recall and application will determine our ultimate proficiency

It's my opinion that one of the best things you can do for yourself is figure out how you best learn and then optimize it.

[gloomy hazel]

is there here any faang employee

[south cape]

What is this

[gloomy hazel]

man worked in amazon and google

[mortal wedge]

faang employees have talked about their work here before, yes

[south cape]

Im not even above 18 gng

[gloomy hazel]

can you share it here

[mortal wedge]

Share what, exactly?

[gloomy hazel]

there talks , the people you mentioned of?

[mortal wedge]

You should be able to search for it, I'm not going to link you to old conversations.

What you you looking to do precisely?

[icy pagoda]

i have a feeling those accounts will get DMed if they are linked

[iron olive]

how can i be ai + cybersecurity engineer #career-advice

[oak epoch]

i have a question would it be okay if i dont learn C and start learning java script?

[regal axle]

Go to school. Get degree. Maybe get even higher degree, depending.
Participate in many local hackathons and other such events. Build your network.
Use network to express interest in jobs and try to get employeed through the people you know.

[oak epoch]

and whats the difference betwwen C and C# and C++

[regal axle]

Depends what you want to do. But yes.
Many devs never touch C. But it can be good to learn a low level language even if you never use it. It helps you understand programming better

[oak epoch]

bro https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn?messages=success[0]%3Dflash.signin-success in this website there is java script and why not java what should i learn as a beigeneer

[regal axle]

C is a low level language where you have more control over the system.
C++ is C but has more features. Sometimes to its own detriment. (More doesn’t always mean better)
C# is a completely different language. It’s similar to Java. (Not JavaScript).

[oak epoch]

what should i learn ?

[regal axle]

What do you want to make?

[oak epoch]

can we come in dms (personal chat) cool down is pissing me off @regal axle

[regal axle]

It kinda doesn’t matter. At a certain point in programming, languages are just an implementation detail. It becomes much easier to pick up a new language once you get familiar enough with programming

[oak epoch]

i am a beginner

[regal axle]

Let’s stick to this channel. I don’t do DMs

[regal axle]

Ok. But why do you want to learn to code?

[oak epoch]

okay sir just tell me what should i learn atm 🙏

[oak epoch]

i wanna be a software devloper and i wanna be like my unc and brother my unc is senior reviewer in pepsico and my brother makes AAA games

like thats my motivation ik im cringe 😭 🙏

[regal axle]

Those are all different things. Either way, you need to go to college and get a degree. It’s the easiest path forward.
If you want to learn games, go make a game. Find a game engine you want to use and learn the language it uses.
If you want to be a general software engineer, start learning any language and making random things.

I can’t just tell you what to do. But if I really really must,,,,

!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!

[oak epoch]

i am doing https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cs50-introduction-computer-science this course

but in starting they are doing C which is kinda diffcult

[regal axle]

Programming isn’t easy at first. Just stick with it.
That course is a good place to start

[solid parcel]

Great place to start 🙂 There's also a CS50 Python (linked in the resources Joshie shared).

Totally normal to be finding things hard when you're starting out, don't worry about it. CS50 is hard. It's foundational knowledge, but they move quickly and there's a lot to absorb. I highly recommend taking your time on the practical assessments, as they'll really help you embed what you're learning.

[oak epoch]

so iil grind hard i guess

[oak epoch]

but first i should do this course then phython or what ? and where i can practice like all i do is they do in the video

[solid parcel]

Started with CS50 makes sense, and then moving on to CS50 Python 🙂

You can find the problem sets to complete here

https://cs50.harvard.edu/x/

[snow zinc]

Any guide or video y'all will reccomend for learning python focused for data analyst?

[next plover]

C is only as hard as you make it, you can make a reasonable program and never touch pointers or heap allocation (it won't be optimized but that's not a goal for beginners anyways)

[solid parcel]

Imo it's less a matter of the language being hard, and more it being challenging to grasp all the new concepts as a beginner. And given he's working to build up a mental model, he will want to be working with pointers. The core reason so many courses start with C is because it's a low level language so you're hands on with a lot of what the language is doing instead of having things like memory allocation abstracted away as you do in languages like Python. If you avoid that friction, you also circumvent a lot of the intended learning.

[next plover]

Thats very true, I found stricter typing systems were very difficult coming from learning typing from python

[urban hazel]

can someone gimme tips to monetize my apps without losing users/ gaining lots of users for free??

i built a really high quality color grader but its having 0 users. its based ona lgorithm so its technically 0 cost for me. can i have some tips?

like tips on where to find customerbase all that..

[south cape]

Hey guys i promised myself i will learn a new skill this year and that is python. I have been scripting lua but do you guys have any tips?

[trim crypt]

do you know of anyone who has a problem or struggling with doing color grading on their own?

[trim crypt]

!learn from one of the recommended resource below 👇

[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!

[urban hazel]

personally? no one. but generally speaking, most video shooters / youtubers / nature vloggers will love to have free, super easy color grading especailly for videos

[south cape]

Thank you!

[urban hazel]

maybe i can show u a quick demo ini dms? or is posting images allowed here?

[trim crypt]

You'll have to start networking... Find someone who is struggling with it.

[urban hazel]

dang thats the problem. i dont know how to..

[next plover]

Real question, is it vibecoded?

[urban hazel]

i used ai to help with ui but the algorithm itself isnt

[next plover]

Thats a benefit then, make sure the ui doesn't look obviously vibe coded as it's a major turn off (gradients everywhere, slow ass animations, space themed backdrop ect)

[trim crypt]

I assume this color grader thing is for editing video. Surely something like that should be in existing video editors but if the video editor app that they use doesn't have it, maybe port your color grader as an extension to it. So people who finds the extension store or asset store to the software they use, found your color grader, they can just install it and start using it. The extension store in itself is a marketing tool/platform. You can try that.

[urban hazel]

right one is color graded, left one is shot by my 1000$ cam. Mine is completely free...

[urban hazel]

https://lumina-grade.vercel.app/

you guys can take a look at here maybe?

the ui isnt that bad..

https://lumina-grade.vercel.app/main_working.mp4

[trim crypt]

Consider porting it to the photo editor app extension store or video editor extension store. That way it can get some exposure through its existing users

And I just realized that this is the career channel.

[urban hazel]

i dont kno any apps like that. it might just be easier for me to do good marketing and gain users rather than making a port

[urban hazel]

yeah i have been adviced before to come here for getting advice relatedd to marketing / promotion.

[trim crypt]

Ask yourself or ask someone. If they were editing photos or videos, what do they use? Then build towards that.

[urban hazel]

lightroom or photoshop or even canva for photo editing but they dont support extensions that good do they?

maybe il search for video vlogging communties in discord and maybe connect with ppl there to know about issues in color grading then suggest my tool as a solution. not too blatantly, only if they have issues

[proud glacier]

don't standard video/image editors already come with color grading tools? is yours clearly superior to them? (that can be true, just asking if you've looked into that already)

[split epoch]

!resorses

!resources

[inner wren]

Resources

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

[snow zinc]

Are there any data analyst here? What did you do for landing your first job?

[urban hazel]

mine is better yeah. no they dont come with automatic color grading tools u gotta manually do it

[sleek flare]

any one who can guide me to become a GEN AI ENG

[peak halo]

you already asked this in another channel. don't spam and cause duplicated effort.

[broken bane]

im 10th grade now, but i wanna ask if it's good to be a software engineer? i got math as my ultimate advantage, im currently learning python and it's pretty fine ( learning on 2 dimensional array )

[solid parcel]

You get paid well to solve interesting problems, have a ton of career paths you can follow into different specialties, have much more flexibility to work remote or hybrid than in most other careers, and have a very high ceiling both in terms of impact on the world and compensation for your work. I'd certainly recommend it 🙂

[next plover]

Although remote work is dwindling post covid

[solid parcel]

Moreso returning closer to the prior baseline. Even so, the incidence of remote and hybrid (particularly the latter) is higher than pre 2019

[next plover]

Yeah definitely

[balmy mural]

With the exception of 1 job, everything I applied to recently was 2-3 days in office per week, which I think is a healthy balance

[near ocean]

is it though? or is that just what the majority have been convinced of

[next plover]

Mine went from 2 to 3 last fall

4 is definitely coming

[peak halo]

Unless all the people you work with work at the same office, going to the office is pointless, because everything still has to be structured around the possibility that someone is never there.

[next plover]

Its really stupid to come into the office to join a teams call every 30 minutes

[peak halo]

Even though I work at the main location for my company, I'm not on a single project where everyone works there, so every meeting has to be a Teams call.

[finite goblet]

Hii all Iam a recent graduate with major is cs and electronics but Iam mostly into cs,so I just want to know what is scope of networking jobs in cs field despite advanced AI?

[gleaming cobalt]

Hello guys, I'm new here and I really would be like to get answer, what things should I know to become Python Backend Developer, and better to say how to send applications, so the people will answer on them?

[peak halo]

the job market is currently very competitive. do you have, or are you working towards, a degree in something like CS?

[glass silo]

Hello people, I want to ask if a master's degree from a T1 institute would increase any chances of being an applied scientist/research engineer. I am kinda aware that I'd need A* papers; which I'd be trying for during my master's. I have a year to spare, I'm employed and can manage time during the year to prepare for an institute. Any less than a year would be tight. I messed up my graduation a bit and my only attempt to write a journal paper failed. Also, would i be too old after I get my master's degree? I'm 21 now, and can finish the degree by 24. I can't apply unfortunately this year.

[peak halo]

a masters is usually the minimum degree needed for a research position. I got one with only a bachelors, but I did research as an undergrad (including a paper) and just got lucky along a few fronts.
I finished my bachelors at age 26 and it's fine.

[gleaming cobalt]

I'm still in high school I was thinking about learning skills, create some projects and after that tryna find real projects through fiverr like freelancing services

[peak halo]

I wouldn't bother trying to freelance because the market for low-skill projects is saturated. In this case, I'm defining "low-skill" as anything that doesn't require several years of professional experience.

[glass silo]

Thanks for responding, I thought I would be thrown away as it's not a python/related post.

I'm currently employed at a startup that does AI Engineering and some bit of post training. What if I continued from here and switched roles, will I be able to land RE?

[gleaming cobalt]

Then what to do? Learning skills creating projects. And tryna find real projects and working for free or find new relations with people?

[glass silo]

I'm actually worried about this, the place where I work at, the "problems" it tries to solve land in the low skill territory. Another reason I'm worrying about this

[peak halo]

focus on doing well in school so that you can get into a university, and in the meantime, just learn about things that interest you and enjoy your life.

[gleaming cobalt]

https://tenor.com/view/estas-muerto-gif-10303465291285402256

[peak halo]

I would think that if you have a masters degree and published papers about AI research, and professional experience at a startup, you'd be a competitive applicant for research positions.

[peak halo]

I do not understand the relevance of this gif.

[finite goblet]

U lucky still make yourself perfectionist at the skill and instead of working as freelancer u could build or solve real problem

[gleaming cobalt]

I dunno, I'm already wanna get into programming. I have plan to enrol on the course in Czech Respublic, I'm from Ukraine. So right now I have a lot of free time around 5 hours a day. And this time I wanna spend on smt useful, which is gonna help me in future. Maybe in uni or somewhere else.

Okay, I understood that right now I should focus on getting knowledge rather then job

[glass silo]

Thanks for your suggestions

[drifting minnow]

Is there an article that covers on the whole journey of having an actual career in python ?

[peak halo]

Each person's path is unique. Why do you ask?

[wide harness]

i know about a cs roadmap that can help, it contains more and "unnecessary for alot of people" information too though

https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

[smoky quest]

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

[safe geode]

Where yall go to find people paying people to fix projects or design systems for thire projects?

[next plover]

Usually an employer

[lilac yoke]

claude pro max

[solid parcel]

FYI Carol, you linked to the Linkedin homepage rather to any specific profile

[broken bane]

Huge thanks

[fringe sphinx]

We don't allow advertising here. Dm modmail if you have any questions

[lime loom]

how is the job market? i'm shifting to CS from Accounting, and everyone i've shared this decision with has been telling me that AI will have taken all jobs in the market by the time I graduate with my degree

[peak halo]

how many of those people actually know anything about the tech industry?

[lime loom]

most of them are currently taking CS / have shifted away from CS and opted to cybersec/engineering majors

[peak halo]

cybersecurity and software engineering are part of CS.

[lime loom]

i don't fully believe them though, people said the same thing about accountants decades ago yet when i entered accounting for my first year accountants are still highly demanded even now with AI

[peak halo]

at least as it pertains to jobs purportedly being taken by AI

[lime loom]

i think the best thing CS juniors can do is to upskill

[peak halo]

tech professionals always need to be upskilling

[lime loom]

that's true

thank you 🙏

[lucid copper]

Thanks. It's OK, I see I couldn't post here.

[lucid copper]

Thanks for letting me know. I am aware now. Sorry about that

[daring mango]

Is there anyone looking for an AI and Full stack developer ?

[trim crypt]

This is a #career-advice channel. Not a job board.

[short current]

1. SOFTWARE ARCHITECT
   Glassdoor: $229,305
   ZipRecruiter: $174,017
   Payscale: $149,623
   Salary.com: $155,000
   Levels.fyi: $247,000
   BLS: No direct listing

2. FIRMWARE ENGINEER
   Glassdoor: $168,233
   Payscale: $92,522
   Indeed: $141,282
   BLS: $132,267

3. EMBEDDED SYSTEMS ENGINEER
   Glassdoor: $157,293
   ZipRecruiter: $137,274
   Payscale: $90,303
   Salary.com: $91,204
   BLS: $132,267

4. SOFTWARE ENGINEER
   Glassdoor: $149,070
   ZipRecruiter: $147,524
   Payscale: $97,804
   Indeed: $131,467
   Salary.com: $104,193
   BLS: $130,000

5. COMPILER ENGINEER
   Glassdoor: $135,717

6. API DEVELOPER
   Glassdoor: $132,276

7. MOBILE DEVELOPER
   Glassdoor: $130,292
   ZipRecruiter: $110,482
   Payscale: $94,484
   Indeed: $130,819
   Salary.com: $105,988

8. FRONTEND DEVELOPER
   Glassdoor: $122,669
   ZipRecruiter: $110,412
   Payscale: $80,737
   Indeed: $103,686
   BLS: $84,960

9. FULL-STACK DEVELOPER
   Glassdoor: $118,785
   ZipRecruiter: $115,406
   Payscale: $81,978
   Indeed: $134,121
   Salary.com: $69,455

10. BACKEND DEVELOPER
    Glassdoor: $118,265
    ZipRecruiter: $100,678
    Payscale: $100,921
    Indeed: $157,790
    Salary.com: $136,499

11. SYSTEMS PROGRAMMER
    No salary data found on any platform

12. SDK DEVELOPER
    No salary data found on any platform

13. ENGINE DEVELOPER
    No salary data found on any platform

14. LOW-LEVEL DEVELOPER
    No salary data found on any platform

15. DESKTOP APPLICATION DEVELOPER
    No salary data found on any platform

16. WEB DEVELOPER
    Glassdoor: $100,400
    Indeed: $83,359
    BLS: $84,960

17. GAME DEVELOPER
    Glassdoor: $96,909
    ZipRecruiter: $108,471
    Payscale: $75,693
    Salary.com: $116,722

18. OPEN SOURCE MAINTAINER
    No salary data found on any platform

Does anybody agree i am trying to rank them based on salary this is all software computer science

[peak halo]

I don't think job titles are used consistently enough for any of this to have any meaning.

[short current]

You're right

My salary would earn depends far more on the specific company, skills, experience level, and location than on whatever job title the role happens to carry.

[balmy mural]

My previous job was fully remote. I went to the office once every 2-3 months. Apparently they went fully remote with COVID and stayed that way. Funnily enough, they switched back to 1 day in the office per week by popular vote during my last month there.
My partner also increased the days they go to the office from 1 to 2 since I moved in with them, since I'm able to look after our dog during the day now, and they really enjoy going to the office. (They're also a software engineer)

[vast shoal]

"by popular demand" feels weird to me. Cause I mean, nothing's stopping you from going in, so the popular demand is to force other people to go in?

[proud glacier]

<@&831776746206265384>

[still condor]

!cleanban @flat hinge TradingView scam

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied ban to @flat hinge permanently.

[south cape]

[near ocean]

Im not inclined to believe anyone who says they enjoy going to an office for work, especially so when theyre on a hybrid schedule

My experience doing that so far has been 1h commutes each way to sit in a not even half empty building with maybe 1 or 2 of my 9 teammates and getting on teams calls to talk to the rest of them

[vast shoal]

Some people at my work seem to genuinely enjoy meeting with each other and socializing, despite the commute. Definitely not worth it for me, though.

[near ocean]

Who are they meeting when its 1 or 2 days in office
Its colleague roulette whether you meet someone in the office

[still condor]

you can gossip about the colleagues who are not in the office

[balmy mural]

No, it wasn't a forced down mandate at all or similar. 2 people no longer live in the city, so they couldn't come into the office anyway.
It was just that if it wasn't formally put on the table and discussed, as a team we wouldn't really have known what other days the rest of the team does go to the office, can't really have a room booked for the team, would sit all scattered since most of the office is free seats. Now it was consistently that most of the team will be in the office on Mondays, and we'll have a room booked for the team on that day

[vast shoal]

So it's like a scheduled but not mandatory office day?

Like a suggestion

[balmy mural]

Yea, someone asked our team lead right at the start if this was a mandate being pushed from higher ups and he said no, just a suggestion he was bringing to the table. No one was opposed to it

[balmy mural]

Why not? Personally, I'm looking forward to actual face to face interaction again at my new job. My partner is also very happy with being able to go to the office 2x per week instead of 1x per week again

I'm also going to have an 80 minute commute each way for this job. Luckily by public transport and not driving myself. Driving myself would suck

[vast shoal]

An 80 minute commute either by public transport or driving sounds like hell to me

I'll have a 40-50-ish minute commute for my new job and that's bad enough

[balmy mural]

Yea, I'm not too happy about the commute. But I'm also trying to get my foot in the door in a new country. Decided that I'm more excited about this team/product than the other 3 interviews that were ongoing

[vast shoal]

Mm, yeah, if you moved to a new country it's probably a good idea to take every opportunity you can get to get to know people

[balmy mural]

If it turns out the commute really sucks a lot, I could start job hunting again. Took me 2 months to land this job, got to a first interview in 30% of the applications I sent out. So I'm confident that I'll be able to get something else that's closer without too much of a struggle

[vapid jay]

Hey guys. Currently I am trying to build a proxy debugging tool at work using pyside6 and python. Although it might sound impressive to put on my resume, I don't understand much of what the code base does.

I just know how the tool is supposed to work and I use Claude to generate the prompts for Codex to get it done. So far I was able to implement quite a lot of features through this approach but I don't think I am learning anything. I try to read the codebase but it's already very complex.

I don't know how to grow in terms of career if things go like this. I only have 6 months of experience in tech.

[fringe sphinx]

If you don't understand what the code does, then you're missing the entire point of why we do projects.

Put down Claude and learn to program.

[proud glacier]

I use Claude to generate the prompts for Codex
🥴

[vapid jay]

I feel so stupid 😭. But I had to do this or else I wouldn't have my job.

[vapid jay]

It's not that I am not trying to learn. My employer wants to get the job done and asks for progress on a weekly basis.

I couldn't spend all the time learning everything from scratch.

[fringe sphinx]

Either you're learning or not learning.

If I were your employer, I wouldn't want code that my developer didn't understand.

At the very least, start learning the code.

[vapid jay]

I understand. Thank you for your advice.

[near ocean]

Where is the face to face interaction when everyone is hybrid
You'd have to schedule days where youre all in the office and then its basically a mandate

What about people who dont live near the office? For example, half my team cant show up in person, so even in office we still have to hop on teams meetings

I think some of us have been scammed into liking or putting up with this RTO thing

[proud glacier]

This is somewhat irrelevant, but I'm just confused as to why you need both Claude and Codex involved just to filter your prompts through one of them. Just prompting one of them directly should be enough (and way less expensive), no?

[balmy mural]

Will have to let you know how that goes once I start my new job next week. Because I don't know since I've been fully remote for all but 1 month in the past 3 years.

If some people actually like going to the office, they're not being scammed into it 😂

[near ocean]

I would probably like going to the office if it wasnt mandatory and i didnt have to travel for an hour

[serene bronze]

you have an idea of what the core of the service does.
you have the gist of where the data to extrapolate comes from
you have the gist of the remote client's responsibility, that is to read or manipulate the data for whatever feature interaction you may have.
it's just a debugging observability layer that you're building an API/client for, and you're hooking into the surface of whatever is being debugged.

So, you'd want to learn the OSI model, and centralizing the data being observed (if not centralized, then the client can be responsible, for owning the source of truth, but if you want to centralize in a cloud service, you can).

Also, look into LSPs

[next plover]

Id be so much more complient if they treated us like adults and not middle schoolers tracking attendance

They can't even track attendance right i got in trouble to taking PTO and obviously I'm not going into the office then

[near ocean]

You will scan the card!

[pallid dirge]

Hi everyone,
I could really use some advice from experienced software developers/Programmers. I’m currently finishing my bachelor’s degree and working as a student alongside my studies. I want to shift my focus more towards software development, but so far I’ve only been getting rejections despite the experience I’ve gained.
Would anyone be willing to give me some constructive feedback on my CV? I feel like I might be missing something, and I’d really appreciate any help or honest input

[runic tendon]

I think the space became more competitive with AI.

[pallid dirge]

I understand. However I am just applying as a working student, not a part/full time developer

[bronze lynx]

Guys can someone tell me what kind of AI related projects can I work on and mention on my resume that will draw attention to companies?

[shadow cove]

Is an Ai engineer a good career choice?

[bright steppe]

No, become a plumber, AI will take all our jobs away..

[shadow cove]

😂😂

[open ivy]

Yes, there is always money in collecting on other people's technical debt.

AI is the ultimate spaghetti code. It is far less understandable and far less efficient than a dedicated algorythim. But it is the easy way out of you have access to huge amounts of training data.

Figuring out what AI does and impelemting it using actual, understandable code will be so useful.

[shadow cove]

Thanks appreciate

[open ivy]

As an example, physically based rending used to be "expensive". But now videogames on consumer hardware simulate shadows and soft lighting to high fidelity in 60 fps.

With traditional algorithms and careful optimization. AI isn't as good as things like designing a novel method for something. It is better at making an app with the same building blocks that thousands of apps were already built with.

[ivory elbow]

Had a non-technical employee where I work tell a senior to just use the proprietary llm integration even more in response to juniors getting fundamentally wrong info out of it

I think they only see that it produces a lot but fail to understand the role of a programmer is to produce correct, performant and secure abstractions and not a bare minimum piece of junk and how juniors are mostly human capital you foster to that end rather than code production machines.

She then stated we could use it to generate slides but she never addresses how layers of non-deterministic possibly incorrect processes and information inevitably compounds into a horrible product or incorrect result.

I recognize a lot of this is capitalist greed and the desire to believe another person's profession isn't real but atp it's easier and more profitable for me to just agree with them because they'll never financially reward me if I say we need more deterministic safeguards like integration tests, moving to languages with better type systems, better libraries, so on.

[peak halo]

better type system

[ivory elbow]

Well step 1 swap to typescript

[vast shoal]

Sounds like a pathologic organization to me.

[ivory elbow]

She sounded like a cultist bro

I wasn't even being anti-AI or anything I just said hey let's not have juniors learn a proprietary library with AI their first week because it'll tell them wrong shit

[peak halo]

what is this non-technical person's role?

[ivory elbow]

PM for the AI project lmao
It's also a proprietary API integrating a few things but it just generates .claude files so I'm p sure they're getting scammed hard

I think they're actually just stupid and this corporation has so much vendor lock-in they can't fail quickly

[peak halo]

the PM for an AI project is non-technical?

[ivory elbow]

Yes dude

I'm starting to realize if you want to do anything meaningful it has to be OSS or at a very specific type of company or a startup

[open ivy]

AI has temporarily cut back on the need for traditional Algorythim design. Why do generative art (one of my portfolio projects) when AI art takes way less programming effort? Ditto for many other things.

But once the need arises to understand what it is doing, then cleaning up all the mess will be a good job role.

[vast shoal]

Well, to be fair, I've had several non-technical PMs for previous software projects and they've all been good. But they're good because they recognize what they can and can't speak authoritatively on.

[ivory elbow]

Yeah this lady is just insane

Luckily I swapped teams recently but I had been in that role for 3 years and she was telling me about it instead of listening to my concerns

[open ivy]

Just go for anything actually designing algorithms from first principles and/or chewing through how AI actually works. Even if at big companies.

[ivory elbow]

I think these non-technical AI types can't take criticism or concerns on it because once that's gone they really have no relevant skillset with which to make a living

[ivory elbow]

This was my role and why I said I'm not as optimistic about AI

[open ivy]

Some do have a relevant skill set. Vibe coding an app is easy. Vibe coding an app which humans will use is very hard and is a business problem not a technical one.

[ivory elbow]

Now I work in cloud engineering doing deployments and again I said AI is really quite shit here

[ivory elbow]

Once you work in banking everything is a technical problem because a floating point error is expensive

Once you realize the goal of hiring a junior is really to develop human capital who can produce correct and useful things AI starts to not actually be that amazing

[open ivy]

AI seems more useful in the cloud because there are huge amounts of arbitrary design decisions and products and a large quantity of pairwise interactions. But there aren't as many first-principles to go by.

[ivory elbow]

Are you going to set a firewall rule or subnet via AI lol

Like VPN config or set your autoscaling rules via AI so you get a million dollar bill because a vibe coder fraud got his hands on it

The job isn't to generate slop it's to produce correct automated workflows which is basically the opposite of what LLMs do

You already need to know how to do it anyway

Similarly rarely AI code is semantic HTML or implements accessibility though it was already rare

After 4 years I think the industry is saturated with frauds and the average tenure at most places of employment is not sufficient to tie compensation to what is produced in a role

Tbf this is the fault of employers for not producing a good incentive structure

[open ivy]

Maybe we are both right? The cloud can have things just refuse to work for a subtle reason that is very hard to find, usually security related. AI is good there since it knows the quirks.

But the overall architecture it seems better to adapt an architecture that already exists in successful apps than to just ask AI for the whole thing.

[ivory elbow]

I think the problem here is the assumption that AI saves much if any time writing a terraform file or similar

If you were good at development you were already using abstractions that significantly cut down on code required such as fastapi or swagger doc or grpc codegen, angular components, so on

[open ivy]

There are so many tools that AI could point me to the right tool but then I would need to learn it?

[ivory elbow]

You can use it to double check at the end but in many industries i.e. finance your job is to be correct not pump out code

In fact it's almost a contraindication of a developer's skill to submit extremely large PRs because it implies they aren't using abstractions to reduce code duplication

An illiterate guy can generate however many lines and produce a sort of working example but the job of a dev was never to actually produce code but to produce a good, maintainable, performant, correct product

You might get it all working but if the security is fucked you're not competent

and I've kind of given up on explaining this to non-technical people atp

[mighty spire]

No, if it was your job to be correct you'd be using lean or something like that, there is obiously a balance

[ivory elbow]

I mean do you want your debit card to move fast and break things or the blood bank your mother is using?

Well anyway that's besides the point, what I'm getting at here is that non-technical people are suggesting juniors where I work get trained on proprietary systems via AI with tells them wrong info that will basically fuck something up one day. In response to this concern they talk about creating training with AI. A truly deranged woman.

[open ivy]

I found that harder to do in the cloud than for scientific computing tasks.

In the cloud I was trying to doing that, making a Boto3 python build up and teardown script for a small app. Boto3 had an advantage that no terraform was needed and it handled more edge cases but it was a mess so I had to build abstractions. Still wasn't pretty.

With scientific computing it feels way more elegant and yes you are right doing more with less lines of code is very satisfying.

[ivory elbow]

Not really about satisfying it's basically less liability

Your life is going to be hell after a couple years if you're not building good abstractions, but I think the industry has moved in a direction where average employee tenure is so low no one really cares, and it's the fault of employers for facilitating an average 1-2 year tenure by not providing raises in compensation

So capitalism and particularly the American tech sector converge on taking credit and responsibility for success while avoiding any and all accountability because social credit is too fungible and the curation of it is not properly rewarded

In short it is basically irrational to be good at your job rather than curating the perception of being good at your job according to whatever strange metrics management thinks up

[open ivy]

100% agree. I see this with big-ticket products (like Microsoft office) behaving buggy. Like we have had word processors for 30+ years why can't they make them lean and efficient?

Man when they release the source to Factorio it will be a gold mine! Elegance at its peak.

[ivory elbow]

Well microsoft doesn't give a fuck because they're a vendor lock-in hellscape not a functioning capitalist entity

Your job at microsoft is to extract value from captive audiences and to build more captive audiences via azure, not provide value really, only the perception of value

[open ivy]

One reason videogames are inspirational for so many things. Because if they aren't fun they don't get played. Although the code can still be a mess inside.

[ivory elbow]

That's cuz everything in our society has gone from being a product for consumers to an idea sold to investors

Again it is not the perfect market idealized Adam Smith capitalism but rather a game of creating hostage situations via network effect and vendor lock-in

[open ivy]

Yes this is true. Social media makes it crystal clear. What Facebook or X or whatever features do I have today that help me connect with others that I didn't have in 2008? Besides faster internet not much.

[ivory elbow]

When you realize AI is an idea sold to greedy investors who hate workers it begins to make sense why they push features consumers do not want, or why Windows always gets worse as a product, because there is no incentive for windows to be a good product

[ivory elbow]

Yeah social media again has huge externalized costs by radicalizing people to optimize for engagement

[open ivy]

Too bad because as a database AI is useful. Why do I need to look up how to draw a dashed line in Matplotlib? That's fun for college freshman not for seasoned people wanting to think at higher abstractions.

Maybe FOSS AI combined with a large dose of intreprability and optimization will save us?

[ivory elbow]

AI is great as natural language processing to perform fuzzy searches

But if you say that you get labelled a luddite by cultists who think the job of a human is to produce 95% correct stuff when in fact the job of anyone studying CS is to produce automated systems that lead to 99.9999% correct stuff

Imagine if the cyclic redunancy checks to fix bits flipped by magnetic fields at the CPU level just randomly failed 1/10 times

You've gone from actually solving problems for humanity to strapping more and more layers of slightly incorrect stuff on top of eachother until social media for instance is basically entirely false and horrible for any human to interact with

If you go on X you're getting brainwashed by some botfarm, if you go on fortnite they have bots posing as players to make you feel good, counter strike is selling gambling to your kid, so on

The tech is not the problem per se but the lack of mechanisms to suitably punish and reward contributing to the material wealth of a country rather than abstract forms of predation like FOMO/gambling/tribalism/vices and that pre-exists AI but it accelerates all of these delusions of an overfinancialized economy that will collapse similar to the current state of the UK

[open ivy]

The job of humans is also to produce code that is faster, more flexible, more readable, and tackles novel problems. For physics simulations some error is acceptable particularly in game physics. But the code is still brilliant.

AI doesn't do this.

[ivory elbow]

Yeah I was about to say that

[smoky quest]

why not?

[ivory elbow]

I think there's a form of intellectual labor laundering taking place with LLM products atm

Not inherent to the tech but rather the tech facilitates it very well, for instance OpenAI internally discussed a monetization model like harvesting a percentage of the revenue of products created with it

So AI will produce 98% of code and in reality only save 20% of the time, sometimes takes more time to untangle, but the incompetent non-technical individuals around you don't understand that your job is to produce something that does not become exponentially worse as the code base or requirements creep or that satisfies all use cases rather than half working for one

[smoky quest]

Not all use cases require you to keep the code around

[ivory elbow]

It takes 8 hours with AI but 10 hours without it (optimistic) and then a non-technical person views the AI as having done 98% of work and psychological class warfares you into not believing in your own labor

[open ivy]

One problem, which IS relevant to career searching, is there is so much focus on making apps. Thus is a problem for technical people since making an app is (due to more powerful tooling) increasingly a business challenge instead of a tech one.

If you want to get a technical career I always say "algorythim design" is good of course there are other options like drug design and robotics etc

But please, I tell everyone, don't focus on app development unless they want to solve a business problem. Then they should hang out in a business and marketing Discord.

[ivory elbow]

Consider a case several days ago of someone coming in here asking if he could vibe code his statistics code, if he doesn't actually understand or audit what he's producing he's going to produce false data and gradually harm everyone exposed to his research directly and indirectly

Again the fundamental issue is a lack of incentive structures in the form of punishments and rewards for correctness which predates LLMs

[smoky quest]

Does that imply that it applies to every possible cases in which one would use AI?

[ivory elbow]

That's not what I'm getting at, and I think society is the problem, human psychology is the issue, not the tech

But the economy is fundamentally concerned with human psychology and what people believe. You cannot time the market. So it's far easier to be a grifter and take advantage of idiots than to fix them, again, a societal issue.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184289296/harvard-professor-dishonesty-francesca-gino

[smoky quest]

Ah so you do agree that you shouldn't always keep the code around or having proved correctness

[ivory elbow]

Really depends what you're working on but for instance I've written code for blood banks

We live in a society where you make a lot more money haphazardly getting teenage girls to kill themselves or become anorexic by working at Meta than you do working on anything of material value to society

[open ivy]

The problem in my opinion is that AI combines an illusion of intelligence with a huge knowledge base. So people can ask it "how to draw a star shape in JavaScript" and it works. And just assume it will always work. Then when something isn't easy to test, or they don't bother to write tests, it can fail.

[ivory elbow]

It is what it is

[smoky quest]

okay, let me try to make it more explicit: all your arguments are broad generalization extrapolated from very specific examples

[ivory elbow]

I mean go look at the state of social media atm it's dead internet

[vast shoal]

I also think there's quite a big difference between vibe coding something and using AI to produce code in general.

[open ivy]

Using AI means threading the needle and not falling for its "smooth talk". But still using it as a database if nothing else as it works well there with care.

[smoky quest]

That's a non sequitur

[ivory elbow]

yeah it can be used in a supplementary fashion

[vast shoal]

If you're carefully reviewing and understanding the output, it's not really vibe coding.

[ivory elbow]

But I think a lot of the people who are overly optimistic don't understand the distinction between a system that can have formal proofs and an LLM

[smoky quest]

And how is it always a problem?

[ivory elbow]

Because the avearge person is incredibly stupid, greedy, and immoral

[smoky quest]

and how is it a problem?

[ivory elbow]

You live in a society of young men shown nazi propaganda by the youtube algorithm to begin, because an automated algorithmic system decided it was optimal for engagement

[open ivy]

It's a problem to varying extents in various situations.

It's enough of a problem to be aware of it. We have to treat a tool that responds in natural language differently than other tools we use.

[ivory elbow]

I think the problem is basically algorithmic content aggregation that has a meaningful impact on people's mental state, it's not LLMs itself

[smoky quest]

That's just imposing your very personal values and morale onto others.

[ivory elbow]

For instance closed source algorithms for Engagement Optimized Matchmaking within games is manipulative and non-obvious

For instance a large portion of American voters are not very educated, quite old, many approaching the state of being senile, yet still vote, and are plugged into social media algorithms

So you have to live in the world in which I can achieve far more spinning up an x botfarm than I ever could making actual arguments or helping the world or running for office

Not tech's problem but a societal issue of incentive structures, education, so on

[smoky quest]

that existed far before LLM/Genai

[ivory elbow]

I know but I think the abstract problem here is algorithmic content aggregation designed to influence thought and not LLMs, they just accelerate it

Then the other problem is that long time preference is not rewarded by our current economic and social systems, every business venture is an exit scam if it becomes public

[smoky quest]

how is it a problem?

[open ivy]

I was talking about practical problems. Such as AI hallucinating a security vulnerability and then an explanation that sounds smart but is wrong. The natural language aspect can make us overestimate it's accuracy.

[smoky quest]

All of these are corner cases though

[ivory elbow]

AI hallucinating is an inherent part of the statistical process

[smoky quest]

It does not have to be 100% correct all the time, nor does it matter in some use cases

[vast shoal]

While I agree algorithmically orchestrated content is a problem, I don't quite see how that relates to LLMs.

[ivory elbow]

LLMs are the algorithmically orchestrated content generation of text itself rather than human made content

Again the more and more we use statistical processes rather than deterministic proveable abstractions the farther we stray from actually correct content

[vast shoal]

Ok, when I hear "algorithmically orchestrated content" I think more like recommendation algorithms like on Youtube, Instagram or Tiktok.

[ivory elbow]

So in the end I mean the solution to all this is going to be a social credit score system & the refusal to use any platform without biometric verification

Human made and verified content will always be outpaced by generated garbage that may or may not reflect reality, as I said it accelerates trends, and those trends were very present in social media, I suppose you could say it it is another form of Foucault's examples of how institutions domesticate society but in a far more literal manner

We've seen China and Russia ban American social media and those were very good decisions

Now of course China and Russia will just domesticate and brainwash their working class against their own interests in many ways but it was rational of the ruling class there to take that step

[open ivy]

Are they? AI gives me crappy Numpy code quite frequently, writing for-loops instead of much faster and cleaner vectorized code.

So it doesn't seem rare that it takes one down the wrong path.

[ivory elbow]

It's similar tech with recommendation algorithms

Like yes the implementation is on a different type but the recommendation algorithm that youtube historically used is not fundamentally different from LLMs

Which is basically how Youtube ended up routinely recommending channels from incel culture, varg vikernes, political extremism to users because anger is the emotion which gets the most engagement

That had externalized costs that are unknowable

[vast shoal]

Yeah, I'm familiar with that. But LLMs aren't exactly designed to optimize for engagement in the same way.

[ivory elbow]

For instance the idea an LLM could ever be a therapist has been pushed a bit by large players in the market, again, the damage is unknowable

[ivory elbow]

They're designed to regress to the mean

[vast shoal]

Though I guess they have been trained to be "likeable"

Maybe we should move this to OT, this doesn't seem like an appropriate topic for this channel.

[ivory elbow]

Anyway again the problem is not the statistical process but the advertisement of it as something that can supplant actual knowledge

[open ivy]

Using an algorithm serves the purposes of those who control said algorthim. And social media has done a very good job at that.

Now, if you had an algorithm designed to match people with jobs maybe that would work better. Sadly, LinkedIn cares more about the illusion that it is helping us rather than that it actually helps us.

[ivory elbow]

ya it converges on providing the perception of value independent of value itself

Which is not solveable and you just realize the only way to actually fix this is not education but to accelerate the problem by participating

[ivory elbow]

In healthcare I see healthcare insurance companies using AI models to deny treatment

Goes back to the use of AI and abstraction in general as an accountability sink by which you can skirt the law and social norms because the average person is too dumb to catch on and the punishments are not severe enough to disincentivize the behavior

[open ivy]

How do you differentiate good vs bad uses of AI? Because industry is huge and there are still good guys somewhere. They just make less noise.

[ivory elbow]

I think web3 has a lot of good usecases and it's sort of like how the dot com bubble was full of scams & investor hype but ended up being useful tech

Like decentralized networks & social credit token systems & protocols to allow for that are all very useful ideals that will mature into good things much like LLMs, we're just at the griftiest part of the tech hype cycle

Evolution of profit focused private equity -> IPO enshittification products into open network protocols with systems to facilitate and incentivize low trust or zero trust exchanges of value are good ideas we'll keep using

[open ivy]

It does feel like this. I mean if you look at big major software products people use it doesn't feel like things are improving. The Facebook feed is so clogged with random low value stuff including AI slop.

[ivory elbow]

Ya it'll be how the market converges cuz enshittification is the only that can happen when you get invested in a singular system i.e. Windows vendor lock-in

[ivory elbow]

Well yeah and facebook is at the final stage of enshittification

A loss leader product can only lose funds if they become profitable later which often means making the product worse through various means of value extraction (i.e. ads)

[open ivy]

FOSS may break the lock in. Blender forced Maya and related products to offer more services for free for non commercial use and keep new features going.

[ivory elbow]

What these big tech corporations do is basically try to launder their success before they fail entirely, Facebook for instance has saturated its market and is now in decline as users leave so they acquire whatsapp, instagram, etc.

[ivory elbow]

That's my point humanity converges towards socialized open source protocols for infrastructure, i.e. Mastodon or tor or whatever

The final step of that process is to create a decentralized low or zero trust incentive structure which is basically what web3 was supposed to become but it wasn't the time for it

Bitcoin in particularl was a very bad model in comparison to monero

Software is a uniquely good industry to rapidly develop ideas and design them for vendor lock-in and network effect to maintain a monopoly, Peter Thiel has pretty good presentations regarding it

I'll shut up I think the answer is just leave before IPO if you have an issue with bad products

[smoky quest]

They are!
Sometimes, you just want to prototype something and throw away the code.
If you see bad patterns, you can enforce them.
The world is bigger than we can imagine

[ivory elbow]

@open ivy excellent lecture even if I don't like the guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k

[smoky quest]

and live in the future

[ivory elbow]

I respect Thiel because he openly says what he's doing at least

I think he's just good at capitalism and people are mad about that which I get

[solid parcel]

I mean there's also the whole pseudo-philosophical antichrist/techno-feudalism/accelerationist side to things...

He's not exactly a good guy

[near ocean]

Dont forget the connection to renowned pedophile jeff epstein

[solid parcel]

Ha, yeah it's not exactly hard to find evidence of Thiel blatantly being a pretty awful human being

[ivory elbow]

society rewards it

[near ocean]

Not really, its just corruption and degeneracy

[ivory elbow]

if ur institutions systemically incentivize and reward that you need new ones if you don't like that behavior

I agree with you

[near ocean]

Institutions dont reward paying pedophiles or getting paid by them
Not until recently anyway

[ivory elbow]

American ones do bro

[smoky quest]

this is getting quite far from #career-advice

[next plover]

How are you defining "society "

[near ocean]

The only career advice thiel might be able to offer any insight in is maybe how to be a scummy degenerate asshole, you really shouldnt take that guy seriously on the topic of careers

[smoky quest]

In terms of startup/VCs, he does make some interesting points.
I would recommend his 0 to 1 book

[fringe sphinx]

I believe his advice can be summed up: making money is a lot easier when you have made a lot of money.

[near ocean]

He's not even a tech person, he's an investment nerd

[mighty spire]

Pretty based to be honest

[fringe sphinx]

Fair. He stays in his lane in zero to one, at least.

[near ocean]

idk, is this what it means to go from 0 to 1?

With financial support from friends and family, he raised $1 million toward the establishment of Thiel Capital Management and embarked on his venture capital career.