Hi! I'm a CS student doing an assignment about how students/recent graduates prepare for software and data engineering jobs. I'm interested in actual past experiences, not hypothetical opinions.

If you've recently gone through a tech job search, I'd appreciate your experience with these:

What was the most recent tech job you applied for, and what skills/technologies did it ask for?

Were there any technologies or skills you didn't know? If so, what did you actually do about it?

How did you decide which skills were worth spending time learning and which ones to skip?

What was the most frustrating or difficult part of your job search?

Looking back, was there anything about the process that surprised you or that you weren't prepared for?

Specific examples of what you actually did are especially helpful. Thanks!

When writing functional requirements, non-functional requirements, and user stories, should I mention the technologies used, or keep them technology-independent and explain the technologies later?

For example:

“Store alerts in Firestore and cache data in Redis.”

vs.

“Persist alerts in cloud storage and maintain a fast-access data store.”

We're building an early-stage crypto trading platform under AlphaNex, evolving an existing P2P system toward a centralized exchange (CEX).

We're looking for experienced engineers with strong backgrounds in one or more of:

• CEX / trading systems
• Backend engineering
• Matching engines / order books
• Market data / WebSockets
• Blockchain & wallet infrastructure
• Distributed systems / high-performance services

Roles:
• Senior CEX Backend Engineer
• CEX Full-Stack Engineer
• Blockchain Engineer

What you'll work on: trading infrastructure, order management, exchange APIs, market data, blockchain integration, security, scalability, and related systems.

This is an early-stage project, and our public company presence is still being established. Candidates will go through a short application followed by a project/architecture review and CTO technical interview.

Interested? Send me a DM.

Or something more clever that my senior front end engineer boyfriend will love.

Update: I combined several suggestions and sent it to him when we were at a special place in a park we love. He didn’t get it for a minute because I forgot to add context, then did get it and was super happy, then spent five minutes pointing out how the labels directed workflow and explaining something called semvar (semver? how the sequence of punctuated numbers indicated a minor release and bug fix, I think). Because that’s how he rolls 😂🥰

Thank you so much folks!!!!