u/skidmark_zuckerberg

Long story short, I got laid off a month ago and I’ve decided to reevaluate things, and part of that includes finishing my degree.

Based on what I have left to finish my degree, I could be done via an accelerated program in about 6 months, so end of this year. Fortunately money is not an issue, savings is solid and my wife works in a very stable career, so not worried on that front.

It sorta seems like now is as good a time as any. I simply don’t have the mental bandwidth to work a full time job and focus on school. It’s one or the other for me, otherwise I will burn out quickly. It’s what’s prevented me from finishing my degree all these years.

Currently I have 8 YOE and my last role was Senior. I’ve never had a gap in my employment history, so this is what leads me to ask. I’m worried that it will be viewed negatively, but on the other hand, I think most would appreciate what I was doing during said employment gap.

If you’re a hiring manager or in position to hire, would someone with a 6-8 month gap in the history raise any red flags if the reason for the gap was to focus on completing their degree? I’ll also be working on a couple side project to keep my skills sharp.

Also I know some might think that with experience, getting a degree may be pointless (what I used to think), but it’s become important to me and it also seems to be an easy filter for jobs during down times when there are literally hundreds of applicants for a job.

The kicker is the salary: $38/hr.... I had to double read the email after I saw the rate. Obviously going to ignore it, but I was so shocked to see it I had to share. It's a 2 year remote contract, and requires 7+ years of experience in Full Stack development, with a slew of technologies listed, including DevOps related responsibilities. I mean it reads entirely like a Senior Full Stack role, but emphasizes using Cursor.

This was a random email sent to me from Ampcus Inc., dunno how they even got my email. Upon further research, they seem like a "legit" recruiting agency.

I am completely shocked there would be such a role called this. From my experience, things like Cursor or Claude Code are simply tools.. how can they be job titles? It seems like a sneaky way to lower salary expectations. Your responsibilities will be the typical software engineering duties, and they expect you to be knowledgeable and experienced, but since you're using Cursor, you can be paid less. How does this make any sense?

As mentioned, the pay was listed at $38/hr, which comes out to ~$79k per year. Is this where our industry is headed? It seems that since we don't have to code as much, all of the other highly technical experience we have related to software is all of a sudden irrelevant?

This isn't my only data point for lower salaries as well, just has been the lowest I've seen. I have been interviewing for ~1.5 months, and the $160-$180k pay band is now coming in at $130-$150k, for the same Senior roles. My last role was $182k and it doesn't seem like I can even get close to that again in 2026. I have talked to recruiters who asked me my salary expectations, they mostly always go 'well the company is looking at a lower max salary, but we can see".

I’ve got to finish a couple Gen Ed classes on Sophia and I’ll have almost all of the Gen Ed requirements for the BS SWE completed before I start. Based these classes directly on the partners.wgu.edu transfer pathway for Sophia specifically to ensure I’m not wasting time on classes that won’t transfer. Spoke to the admissions counselor and he told me those were updated in February so are up to date and accurate.

Currently I have 8 YOE as an SWE, just no degree and wanting it to check a box essentially. I’ve looked through the courses and they should all be pretty straightforward for me.

Is it possible to finish in 3-6 months? Currently on a sabbatical after a lay off and just taking my time to strengthen my resume before trying to jump back into full time work. Figured a BS would help out a bit in the current world of ATS filtering. I and can spend 8 hours a day doing the class work until it’s done. I know if you don’t have any prior experience, it would take longer - but with experience, I’m wondering if others who were in a similar position, were able to knock it out relatively quickly?

Basically the title. I am a Senior Engineer and have 8 YOE under my belt. Have worked at 3 companies with my last role lasting 4.5 years before private equity screwed us and decided to lay half of us off.

I have a pretty solid tech stack that isn’t archaic and pretty modern by most standards. However I lack a degree (didn’t finish) and although I have had a few interviews in the past month, I’m noticing a lot more jobs putting a CS or equivalent degree as a hard requirement. Especially jobs local to me.

I get a lot of auto rejections, even when my resume matches 99% to the job description. Before, even with 3.5 YOE, I could apply to 10 jobs, and get 6-8 interviews with a 60-70% offer rate after.

These days that’s almost down to zero interviews out of 200 cold applications. Admittedly I have had 5 interviews in the past 1.5 months, but all were from recruiters. Rejected after 3 rounds with one, made it to the final round in another before they decided to close the position, one of them just ghosted me after 3 rounds, and the other two are still in progress. So I’m finding some traction, but I think it could be better especially from the cold application to places I really would want to work at.

With that being said; I’m currently comfortable financially due to my wife and I saving up a decent “war chest” and with my wife working she covers us indefinitely. No kids either so our responsibility basically boils down to just go to work and don’t die.

I bring that up because I’m thinking about biting the bullet and finishing my degree. If anything just to check a box at this point. I know I have gotten interviews but I’m starting to feel that with how saturated the market has gotten, having a degree at least gets you through some of the filters. And it may open some doors to work in other areas that are not directly web related.

Am I being stupid here or is it the smart thing to do considering it is a possibility for me?

Hello all, just have some questions on Sophia. I have zero college credits and need to get some general ed classes done. On the partners.wgu.edu site, I found the Sophia transfer pathway for my targeted degree and can see the exact Sophia courses that will transfer for the General Ed portion of the degree.

I have already applied to WGU yesterday evening, but have not spoken to a counselor yet. I am not enrolled however. Can I just put off enrollment and spend the next month or so knocking out the ~7 general education courses on Sophia? I want to make it as cheap as possible, and not prolong any more time than needed at WGU.

Is this a solid strategy? I figure if I knock these out, when I do enroll, I can start immediately and not have to first do general ed courses in WGU.

I applied to this role about 3 weeks ago and someone just reached out. The role is Software Engineering II and is UI focused with React being the primary thing. I have backend experience primarily with Node and Java/Spring Boot, but this does not seem like a full stack role. I am okay with that, and am very comfortable in the UI with React, but I am unsure what to expect out of the interview process.

Does anyone currently work in a similar position as this and can tell me a little more on what to expect during the technical, or just in general about the process? Also I worked at a SaaS company a few years back that was in the finance space, and the work was very much 'get ticket, do ticket'. There was a lot of being told what to do. Is this a similar type of environment? Especially for SWE II? I am coming from a Senior Engineer background. I think SWE II means more mid level, but it's different depending on the company.

I’ve been on the market about a month and have had around four interviews. One I got rejected after the second round (DSA shit), one I made it to the final round and did well but they paused hiring, and two are still in progress waiting to be scheduled. All of them have been 3 to 4 rounds with a mix of behavioral and technical.

I had a random interview today from a recruiter who reached out earlier this week. It was a full stack TypeScript role with React and Node, which is right in my wheelhouse since I lean frontend and have used React since the class component days. They sent me a Coderbyte assessment earlier this week with both React and Node. I passed it with time to spare.

The interview itself was 30 minutes and pretty rough. While I was trying to walk through my experience, one interviewer kept interrupting and drilling into deeper questions before I could even finish a thought. It is already tough to condense 8 years into 30 minutes, and even harder when you cannot get past anything without being nerd sniped to death. I focused mostly on my last 4 years and tried to explain my work and impact, but he kept trying to catch me with deep React and Node questions. I can answer most of those, so whatever, hit me with em. It's relevant to the role at least.

Then near the end he mentioned they have some microservices in Ruby on Rails and started asking me RoR questions. I have zero experience with Ruby or Rails and it is not anywhere on my resume. I have worked with Spring Boot and Node, but never touched RoR, so I could not go into specifics.

What stands out to me the most was they asked me about AI, which I actually know well. I talked about agentic workflows, how I prep a codebase using a policy first approach, and even walked through a RAG feature I worked on, including the specifics of the chunking strategy and overall flow of how it worked. No follow ups at all, just a quick “sounds interesting” and they moved on. Meanwhile everything else they pushed super deep on, so it felt like they asked about AI without really understanding it themselves.

By the end they definitely got me on the RoR stuff. I was annoyed but closed it out by saying I do not know Rails, but I could ramp up quickly if needed. I also asked if the job description was accurate since it never mentioned RoR, and he just said yes. Then we wrapped it up with some niceties.

I really don't understand the interview process at all in 2026. Early on in my career I always thought that if I could just get some decent experience under my belt, interviews would become more focused on that experience and the impact I had. Instead they are technical gauntlets where they are just trying to weed you out, instead of actually finding a good fit for the role. It feels like playing the lottery in these interviews now. It's so exhausting and makes me hate this industry. My wife is totally dumbfounded by how much interview prep I need to do as someone with experience. I know I can't be the only one here that is thinking this. And it makes me wonder if at some point, there needs to be a massive reevaluation of how software jobs are interviewed for, even more so now considering AI.

I was laid off a month ago from my senior software engineering role after 4.5 years. At first I was worried about all the what ifs, but I already had a few interviews with a couple more lined up. Recruiters are reaching out pretty regularly too after I refreshed my LinkedIn and had a technical resume writer redo my resume. Luckily in my last role I spent a lot of time with AI assisted workflows and also contributing to a large AI based feature, so that’s why I think I’m getting some sort of traction right now. Regardless, my initial worries about the market have been stymied for now.

Not trying to brag, just sharing context. On top of that, my wife still works, and we’re in a good spot financially. We could get by on her income alone, and we have about 2.5 years of runway in savings if needed.

My last job was fully remote, but those roles seem harder to find now. I’m open to hybrid or onsite, but I prefer remote. So far only one interview was remote, and that role is on pause for now per the recruiter I’m working with. Maybe will reopen in another month or two. Realistically, finding another full time remote role could take 4 to 6 months, maybe longer. I’m aware they are more competitive and harder to get overall. Most of the remote roles I’ve been presented with were contracts, and I don’t do contract work, only FT, so they were declined. My wife tells me to take a break and to enjoy some time off before inevitably I’m back on the horse, but I don’t feel comfortable being unemployed, even with the financial cushion.

I don’t really know how to slow down. Part of me wants to hold out for the right remote role and use the time to upskill and prep. Another part of me doesn’t want to be job hunting, and talking to recruiters all summer and potentially into the fall. It’s already exhausting, and I’m only a month in. Literally the only time I chill out is the weekend. I guess I’m treating the job search and interview prep like a full time gig. But I really need to take a week or two off. There’s just a huge sense of fomo if I do. My last job was also mentally draining so I have 4.5 years of that built up as well. I took time off but clearly not enough.

Does anyone that finds themselves in a similar situation have any advice? Some perspective? I’m not desperate for a job, otherwise I guess what I’m doing would be totally valid. I just want to relax for a bit and I don’t feel like it’s okay to do it. I’m afraid I’m going to burn out and then find myself right back in another role with no break at all to reset myself. I always felt with a good financial cushion a layoff would be a nice break, even if finding a new job was going to be hard. But I never expected to feel bad about being unemployed or feeling bad for intentionally choosing to extend that unemployment by being overly selective and taking some time to myself.

This may seem odd considering I already have work experience, but I am self taught at the end of the day with no degree to speak of on my resume. My entry into this career was pure luck and I got in before the 'craze'. There was just less competition and I was willing to work my first job for peanuts. Made a couple job changes, and found myself making a decent salary eventually.

But I recently realized that while I like Frontend Engineering, it's limited me in the type of Software jobs I can apply for. If I look locally, there are tons of Software Engineering roles, but the market for pure Frontend / Web related roles is not as vast. I typically shoot for remote roles, but with how competitive remote can be, I want to know that regardless of remote work, I can find a decent job locally no matter what.

I also just want to understand Software Engineering on a deeper level, and give myself a chance at working in Software outside of just Frontend development. Is the Software Engineering BS a good degree to accomplish this, or am I better of doing the CS Degree? I think with my experience, there will likely be concepts that I already know, so I am hoping to breeze through some of that, and spend more time learning the things I do not.

It’s not that I don’t know these concepts, but it’s just so difficult to quickly build a mental model in my head, reason about it and then design it completely on the fly in front of a panel of people on a call. On top of needing to think out loud and field questions while in the process. And every sys design interview is so different. Some interviewers don’t talk much, others do, some ask super deep hardball questions that they likely don’t know the answer to themselves, others want you to lay everything out upfront, and others want you to iterate with them the entire time.

It just sucks. I don’t work like this at all. If you said “I need you to design X so we can deliver feature Y” on the job, then I’d go away, spend time getting my thoughts down, researching potential solutions while weighing the current codebase architecture against the future of what will be needed. From there I’d iterate on my solution and perfect it. Even discussing these things with other coworkers on the job is no problem. It’s just being grilled on an interview is so different.

I just can’t handle needing to think technically and keep a list of things in my working memory, while being questioned and also explaining my thinking, all on the fly. It’s just so unnatural for me and so against how I work daily. Technicals are one thing, but systems design is so extremely broad and you have to think about everything, even if it’s not required to go deep in every aspect of it.

Idk just venting. I know it’s just a practice thing, but it’s just so mentally exhausting to prep non stop for interviews. We gotta be evaluated I get that part of it, so it’s just the name of the game. But it’s funny how hard the interviews are and how inferior they make you feel. I just wish there was just a standardized way to test engineers these days. I’m someone who has never had a bad performance review in any job, I communicate well with others, and really do go above and beyond for not just the codebase but for others too. But regardless of that, I have to prove myself in a myriad of non standardized ways over and over again just to get the next role. Just overall super exhausting. Mehhhh.

I did 3 interview rounds with this company. 1st was a technical, 2nd was more conversational, and the 3rd round was essentially a loose system design discussion. I got the vibe from this place that they do not have a very strong engineering culture. They are in the health insurance space and could not answer (at least the 2 people interviewing me in the 3rd round) basic questions I had around HIPPA compliance and other details about how their system works, like why they stuff PII in query parameters for one. They were showing me a couple of their applications so I had a chance to have a look and asked questions based on what I saw.

That was red flag number 1, but towards the end, the director of technology (idk his exact position) asked before I got off the call if I had a portfolio to look at. I just flat out told him all of my Github activity is behind private organizations and I do not worry about working on side projects in my spare time. Mind you this is after lengthy discussions about my past experience, passing a technical and seemingly passing this last round as well. I feel like this is another red flag -- I've never been asked for a portfolio, and having interviewed a couple people in my time, I could give a shit less about someone's personal portfolio, especially if we spent multiple interviews discussing experience and doing technical assessments. I think it's a poor way to judge a developer and sorta shows me they have no idea how to assess candidates.

This was for a Senior Frontend Engineer role, but my past experience is more full stack. I've never once considered keeping a Github active for a portfolio. All of my mental energy is expended at work, solving real problems at larger scales than any pet project I'd have. I do have a few side projects local, but those are just sandbox projects where I try to apply new concepts when I want to learn something quickly. Anyway, I have major reservations about accepting any potential offer from this place with the above considered. Are people really expecting a portfolio now? Am I wrong to assume they have a poor engineering culture on top of it?