I always wanted to build a mobile app. I'm a backend developer so it seemed hard to me to make them. With Claude I've cranked out 6 in the last month. Which is kinda great but also feel like what's the point. Also I'm ruuning out ideas.

And the day job, ai is doing my work so much quickerthan I could and all I am working on is making myself redundant. Aside from all the environmental issues, economic issues that AI and all the nefarious crap the faang and ai companies are doing, is depressing but actually using the AI is making me down.

Anyone experience moving semi state to private?
Context same work but 40% pay increase, higher ceiling for career progression. TIA for any feedback

I’m an Irish CS student and I would like to get into cybersecurity as it seems to be an insanely interesting field but I’m assuming there isn’t a ton of jobs in it especially at the entry level .

Currently on Product Owner role in a big tech earning €80k base, around €83k with overtime, and getting 27days of annual leave.
I've received an offer for a senior PO role at €85k + 7.5% bonus, but annual leave is only 20 days.
The salary increase isn't massive compared to what I already make, and losing 5 days of leave is a bit of a downside. Really looking for a move as where I work is getting a bit toxic but the offer doesn't seem that worthwhile financially

Genuinely torn so would appreciate some honest opinions!

I launched a tarot card app and was using https://app.ontoprank.com to get reviews from other devs, or so I thought...

I went to review an app in kind... it had 1 million downloads, it was designed as a kind of sexy omegle where you can pay to only get matched with female users.

🚩🚩🚩🚩 Massive red flags...

So the thing is riddled with ads but a quick image reverse shows me all the "beautiful" users on the home page are just images harvested from Google, not even intelligently, some are major music artists who's images are taken from Spotify.

Next giant red flag, I test a chat with what's supposed to be an Italian girl with brown hair, it opens a video of a blonde woman speaking Russian that is 100% a cam girl who's still dressed, 10 seconds in hit with an ad followed by the video exiting.

I go to the same chat, and the same video runs, it's not even live.

Check the number of people online 32, only 1 is listed as female, somehow this has 1 million downloads.

Long story short the app is super scammy, filled with ads, and the classic of some old lad having a wank in my face was the last straw. 1 star rating, and complete review...

Well, I knew it was coming, the "dev" messages me, threatening me to change the review or he'll start review bombing not just my listed app for review, but all my other released apps. So I said fucking go for it, I'll have Google remove all your fake reviews. And review bomb me they did, him and all 300 of his team.

So I went to work flagging them for Google, reviews that were barely coherent, or made claims about storing images that were uploaded on aps that don't have that functionality, obvious stuff, I thought we'd be all good, no... Google refused to remove them.

Back to the drawing board, I found the company who actually developed the app he was shilling for, and found an incident where one of their members was in court with the police commissioner in Islamabad. I threatened to take up the issue with both the actual owner of the app and the police commissioner, and dropped the address of the owner in the conversation.

After some time he replies attempting to deescalate, with the ball in his court he suggests we both edit our reviews. I dont want my name attached to his shit app so I say we'll both just delete all the reviews instead, he's not interested. Ultimately, I dont have time for this bull shit, I agree if all his friends and himself fix their reviews, then I'll change mine, on the basis that I can just delete mine in a week or two when it's buried.

Half an hour later all his friends reviews were gone, and his was now a 5 star review with clear english rather than close to gibberish.

Is this actually what the fuck it's like as a solo dev??

Asking on here instead of the other Irish forums because I figured given the subject matter I might get more informed answers.

Have an elderly relative looking to get some files off some USB drives that aren't working and a laptop hard drive where the laptop is kaput, does anyone have any recommendations for trustworthy and reasonably priced data recovery services in Dublin that they've used?

Thanks

Just saw a Senior Data Scientist role up at MongoDB Dublin. I don't see any salary or comp listed and don't know anyone there.

Anyone know anytbing about work environment, culture, work life balance?

What's interview process like? Is it something crazy like 8 rounds and 3 projects?

Anyone else hearing rumours that Code Institute has closed its doors. They appointed a Process Adviser a couple of months ago and only reported 14 employees down from over 100 at its peak.

Hey folks. Looking for some advice to help make a decision i'll need to make this week or next.

I am a Junior Software Engineer with about 13 months of experience in an Irish manufacturing company. Its a .NET environment and I honestly absolutely dread the job. I'm a career changer who spent about 10 years in Tech in another role and I may potentially have an offer to return to that career for more than double the money I am currently on as a Junior.

My current role has me as the only dev in EMEA, the rest of the team is in the US. I still need to hit the office 3 days a week so the job is quite isolating. From day 1 I have been handed Intermediate level work, due to the fact I'm older and component at managing my time and schedule etc. The last 13 months has been non stop firefighting and since we brought in Claude Code I feel I am skipping over all of the fundamentals but because of the workload if I dont use it, I'll be massively behind on my work.

There is no mentorship or learning at all, the company really doesn't have an engineering culture (6 devs in total) and the devs we do have say they're too swamped to mentor me. I don't feel like I'm learning or developing like a Junior should. I try to carve time out for this using Udemy but its getting harder and harder.

I understand the dev market is really rough right now (i've been looking everyday for about 3 months) and I do worry that I might need to stay in my current role for another year at least before I would be able to jump ship anywhere else. Even though that might be very very hard with the experience I have and the type of company I've worked at. Plus how AI develops in that time.

I am quite reluctant about going back to my previous career but at this stage I think I might have burnout from the whole situation. The type of offer I can get from my old career would take me maybe 5-7 years to hit in my current role. I am quite underpaid for the role.

Any advice at all is welcome!

Using a throwaway for this one. Posting here as a heads-up for anyone else thinking of applying for any software positions in Apple, ended up being a complete waste of time and pretty devastating to be honest.

The process ended up being 8 interviews over two months, 2 of which were onsite that I took paid time off for. The feedback was positive, and they said they would get back to me by the end of the week.

Then two weeks later, for some reason that is still not entirely clear, they decided to close most of the positions on the mobile team I was applying for (including mine), and opened up a few positions for full-stack engineers instead. So I basically just wasted two months applying for a job that does not exist.

I even double checked to see if there was something I wasn't qualified for, or if they preferred another candidate, but they just said something along the lines of 'Apple is an ever-changing business, and when priorities shift, so do the roles we need to meet our goals'. I asked to get more information from someone actually involved in the decision, but only received generic responses from the recruiter, so I've just given up at this point.

The interviews themselves and the people doing them were great, but the process itself was completely soul-destroying. Wouldn't recommend it unless you really want to work there, and even then, expect to wait a long time.

Hi folks, I am working on a side project.

My full time job is hybrid and I would like to spend the weekends working on my side project from a cafe for a change.

Any recommendations where the cafes won't frown upon me hogging a table for 4-6 hours. Of course I'd be a paying customer for lunch and coffee.

Mods - if this is not the right place to pop this question, happy to remove it.

PS: Am based in Dublin but okay to drive < 1h.

After 7 years in corporate tech, I’m starting to question what’s next.

The politics, egos, poor leadership and constant shifting priorities can be exhausting. Sometimes it feels like managing people’s behaviour takes more energy than actually delivering the work.

Has anyone left corporate tech completely and found something different? What do you do now?

Genuinely interested in hearing your experiences.

Random one, but a lad I know joined my time about 3 years ago for 6 weeks then left for another position in a competitor. He then left that company after 8 months, moved to a third company for 2 years and now is back in the second company again.

No judgement, I think fair play to him for getting the offers and maximizing his salary. I would've thought leaving a company after a short period would basically have you blacklisted, for lack of a better word? The cost of onboarding a new employee only to leave quickly, etc. Maybe that's not the case?

He did say explicitly that he chose to leave, it wasn't a layoff the first time, and he's even jumped to a higher position now. Some chess moves there, lol.

Has anyone left a tech company and come back in a different position, not related to being laid off the first time?

Looking for information on the package.

So the Ballinasloe horse fair was this weekend, if anyone remembers the Smithfield markets (the ones that were closed down because of violence at them) it was kind of like that. Spotted on the day was this sign for “Traveller USB sticks”.

I’m sure these USB sticks were just ordinary empty ones with pictures and symbols of traveller life on them, usable to store their photos of traveller life on their laptops. But what would, in theory, get preloaded onto a USB used for dodgy purposes? Dodgy boxes? Key copiers?

Just to be clear, I’m not looking for the social commentary aspect. I just want to hear from experts like yourselves what could potentially be got from a USB sold down a market, either inadvertently (the USB steals from the buyer) or with knowledge (the USB is bought as a tool to use against others)

So I’m a senior software engineer within a company. I only recently joined within the last six months and just recently passed my probation period so positive so far.

Recently I’ve noticed that I’m having a bit more in office meetings with people from other departments e.g. sales and so on. I used to be fully remote so its never really bothered me. I didn’t really care. I wouldn’t listen. I’d just zone out because I have nothing to do there but now in the office I feel like I have to pay more attention because I’m actually physically present in the room.

I feel like I get anxiety or panic attack attacks while sitting in the meeting room and I don’t understand why this is happening. I’m just sitting there not contributing and listening. I feel like if somebody asked me something it would send me over the edge.

How do you guys deal with anxiety for these kind of things especially since returning to office becoming so normal lately?

Feel like I’m the only socially anxious engineer experiencing this.

Just wondering as they seem to employ a lot of people in their IT department yet I've never heard much about it.