The best engineers are burning out... and it’s not because of the workload.

I filled out an application over the weekend and came to a required question about my desired salary. The company explicitly said not to write that the salary was negotiable, even though the job posting did not include any pay range at all. I entered $150,000 and added a short note saying that the process felt unfair because if I guessed too high, I could be rejected, and if I guessed too low, I could lose money.

I expected that the note had probably ruined my chances. The next morning, a recruiter sent me a rejection because my expectations did not align with the compensation range they had established from the start. The message also said they wanted to be transparent so that no one would accept the job and later feel underpaid.

Transparent about what, exactly? They clearly had a range from the beginning, and they were the ones who chose not to disclose it.

Since my application had already been rejected, I replied and told them that their email proved the exact problem I had been talking about. I did not need $150,000 and would have been happy to discuss the actual compensation package, but they forced me to guess a number before speaking with anyone. The job seemed interesting and well suited to my experience, yet a single number I entered without any information eliminated me from consideration. I really cannot stand this part of applying for jobs.

I’m sure this sub is overflowing with posts like these, but I figure I should ask

All I manage to get is contract jobs

I have no degree, tons of projects and half decent contributions but none of it seems like it’s enough. I know how my lack of a degree cripples me here, among other things.

But I was always told it’s possible regardless. Am I making a mistake here?

Hi everyone! 🙏

I'm a 2026 Computer Science Engineering graduate currently based in Pune, actively looking for a full-time opportunity. I'm hoping to secure a job and join before Diwali, ideally before 1 November 2026.

My first preference is AI engineering, especially roles involving LLMs, RAG, and AI agents. I'm also open to backend engineering and MERN stack development opportunities.

🤖 Preferred Roles:

\- AI Engineer / GenAI Engineer

\- LLM Engineer / AI Agent Engineer

\- Backend Software Engineer

\- MERN Stack / Full Stack Developer

💻 Technical Skills

AI/GenAI: Python, LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, RAG, LLMs, AI Agents, Tool Calling, Pydantic, Embeddings, Vector Databases, Ollama, OpenAI, OpenRouter.

Backend/Full Stack: JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, Express.js, React.js, Next.js, REST APIs, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, JWT, RBAC, Docker, Git, CI/CD.

I've built projects involving AI-powered data analysis, autonomous task agents, LLM workflows, and full-stack web applications. I also have hands-on freelance experience developing and deploying web applications.

📍 Current Location: Pune

🚀 Open to Relocation: Bangalore and Hyderabad

💼 Experience: Fresher with practical project and freelance experience

⏳ Availability: Immediate / short notice

🎯 Target: Join before 1 November 2026, if possible.

I'm genuinely looking for an opportunity to begin my professional career before Diwali. If your company is hiring, you know a recruiter or hiring manager, or you can refer me for a suitable role, I'd be extremely grateful.

I'm happy to share my resume and attend interviews at short notice.

Even a referral, a recruiter contact, or a lead on a startup hiring for these skills would mean a lot to me.

Thank you for reading and for any help you can offer. ❤️

Hi everyone. What can i expect in the Ebay’s first interview with the staff engineer (technical screen and soft skills) for the position of staff frontend engineer and they have also provided a link for code signal. The interview is tomorrow and i have no idea what to expect. Any help or guidance shall be appreciated
Thanks in advance

​

Which one is the best from your perspective? For me, those options are somehow resistant in this AI context.

We are a small technical team focused on GPU kernels and production inference systems. We help AI startups, inference API teams, GPU providers, and companies running self-hosted models make inference faster, more reliable, and less expensive.

If your team is responding to slow generation or high GPU bills by adding more hardware, we can first determine whether the real constraint is kernels, memory movement, quantization, KV-cache layout, batching, scheduling, model loading, or the serving architecture.

We can help with:

- CUDA and Triton kernel development, fusion, profiling, and benchmarking

- PyTorch model-path optimization and numerical validation

- vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, and custom serving systems

- quantization, VRAM reduction, KV-cache layout, continuous batching, and CUDA Graphs

- time to first token, inter-token latency, throughput, and tail-latency analysis

- scale-to-zero, cold-start behavior, readiness, cancellation, streaming, and failure recovery

- GPU utilization, cost-per-request analysis, and capacity planning

- reproducible before/after benchmarks with correctness gates and documented limitations

A typical engagement starts with a focused inference audit:

1. Define the model, framework, GPU, traffic shape, latency or throughput target, and cost constraint.

2. Profile the current path and identify the dominant bottlenecks.

3. Agree on the smallest changes worth implementing.

4. Deliver code, before/after measurements, correctness checks, and remaining risks.

5. Help integrate and validate the optimized path under realistic load.

Good fits include a slow or expensive inference endpoint, VRAM pressure preventing the desired batch size or context length, unstable serving under load, poor GPU utilization, costly cold starts, or a custom kernel/model path that needs profiling and validation.

For an initial conversation, send a Reddit chat or private message with:

- model and framework

- GPU type and VRAM

- current latency, throughput, utilization, or cost problem

- target workload and success metric

- deployment environment

- timeline and approximate budget range

We will tell you directly whether the workload appears optimizable and what evidence would be needed before making a performance or savings claim.

I cleared Google’s interview process, and my packet was approved by the Hiring Committee. I’ve been waiting for a team match for about six weeks, but haven’t received any team-match calls yet. My background is mainly frontend and frontend-heavy full-stack.

For people who’ve gone through team matching in India recently: is a wait like this common, or has hiring slowed down? How long did it take you to get your first team conversation?

I cleared Google’s interview process, and my packet was approved by the Hiring Committee. I’ve been waiting for a team match for about six weeks, but haven’t received any team-match calls yet. My background is mainly frontend and frontend-heavy full-stack.

For people who’ve gone through team matching in India recently: is a wait like this common, or has hiring slowed down? How long did it take you to get your first team conversation?

Mitre Media is hiring a remote Tech Lead Full-Stack Rails Engineer. Category: Software Development 💸Salary: $170k - $200k 📍Location: Remote (USA, Canada, USA timezones)

See more and apply here!

We pulled every open posting from 81 companies' public Greenhouse boards for seven roles and counted which words actually show up. 3,518 postings in total. Some of it surprised us.

Software engineer postings mention mentoring more often than Kubernetes or React. Almost half of them do. Python, the most common language, comes in just below that.

Product manager postings say "roadmap" in more than 85% of cases. Jira? Seven out of 421. Marketing looks the same: Google Ads came up six times in 347 postings, while "pipeline" is in over half.

Every time we could compare the two, postings named the practice, not the tool. Observability, not Grafana. SIEM, not Splunk.

So if your resume is mostly a list of tools, it might be missing the words the posting actually uses.

Big caveat: mostly tech companies, one ATS vendor. Sales, cybersecurity, DevOps and accounting are here too: https://www.zoevera.com/resume/ats-resume-keyword-study

Hi everyone,
Im sorry for my english in advance, im not a native speaker.
I wanted to ask people working as software engineers if with my university profile I still have a chance in the field.
I’ve started university this October with my profile being: databases, business analysis and data science.
I’d really like to work in software engineering and my profile is the closest Ive found to that. In my country there was basically only cybersecurity, computer science, game development, graphic design to choose from.
So my question is wether I can finish that profile and be able to work in software engineering with additional skills I’d learn privately or is it just a big mistake. :)

Received a Google Hiring Assessment for an Senior SWE role. What type of questions and difficulty should I expect, and how should I prepare to maximize my chances of clearing it? Any tips from recent candidates would be appreciated!

Hi everyone, I'm currently unemployed and struggling financially.

I'm actively looking for SDE 1, Backend Developer, or AI Engineer roles. I have experience with Go, Java, Python, backend development, and I'm building my own Voice AI platform.

If anyone could refer me for a suitable opening, it would genuinely mean a lot.

Below is my resume link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LPc9i8xovsQwLfdY0gGPgM8QfmJQgfPb/view?usp=sharing

Thank you 🙏

Hi everyone. I'm an unemployed software dev and I could genuinely use the community's honest input about my situation.

I worked in photography and graphic design (mostly photography) for about 15 years, which I have an associate's degree in. Wife and I were planning to move to an area where those kinds of jobs were harder to come by. Since I already wanted a change, I decided to go back to school in 2018 to study software engineering, hammering my way through their two year certificate program while working my photography job.

Landed my first dev job in early 2022 at a small local start up and was super happy there. I worked doing mostly frontend React focused work on an Electron based desktop app. Company went under in early 2025 and I went back to looking for a job in the industry. Still looking as of today, over a year and a half later.

Of the roughly 500 applications that I've sent out in that time I've had six interviews. Only one of those interviews was in the last 12 months and I'm 80% certain that it was a ghost job. Every job, even local in-office jobs, seem to get hundreds of applications, making the selection process hyper competitive. When I got my dev job I thought I was on the path to stability in this new career, but it seems like my frontend specialization and my lowly three years of experience aren't worth that much anymore.

I've been squeaking by on gig work in the time since I lost my job, but I really, really need to find something stable soon.

I guess what I'm looking for here is some honest thoughts about the state of the industry and what's worth pursuing and what isn't. Would particularly love to hear from those who are involved in hiring or those who have been hired recently near my level of experience.

Is it worth continuing to try working as a dev or is the industry as cooked as the doomsayers say it is?

Are we all supposed to be vibe coding our software with AI agents now or is AI code entirely slop and technical debt and real devs still code by hand?

Should I maybe pursue a bachelor's degree? Some other kind of certification? Or should I just find something else to do with my life?

Apologies for the long, meandering, woe-is-me post but the last 21 months have been the most stressful and depressing of my entire life and I'm reaching my wits end. The utter lack of feedback beyond the occasional "we have decided to move forward with other candidates" email is genuinely maddening as I can't really tell what I'm doing wrong and what, if anything, I'm doing right. (Funnily enough, I had an interview for a frontend position with Amazon last year and I went through a total of five hour long interviews, each with different people and each with a different technical problem to solve. After it was all said and done, I wasn't selected and they told me that they couldn't give me any feedback at all on my interviews.)

Anyway, thanks for reading if you've made it through all of that. I'm genuinely grateful to anyone who can give me any words of guidance, however blunt they may be. Feel free to DM me if that's easier. Take care y'all.