r/FullStack

I am a Senior Fullstack Developer with 7 years of experience across React, TypeScript, Java and Kotlin, currently working at Sopra Steria in Oslo on national-scale government platforms. On paper my profile looks strong — enterprise experience, cloud infrastructure, security systems, multiple industries.

Yet I have been job hunting for a while now and the rejections keep coming. Some roles I feel genuinely qualified for, others I take a shot at knowing there are gaps, but the pattern is the same, either silence or a polite no. I know the market is tough right now but it is hard not to take it personally after a while.

I have been seriously considering going the one person company route and hunting for contracts instead. The appeal is obvious — more autonomy, better rates, and you are selling a service rather than competing in a crowded applicant pool. But networking has been slower than I expected and LinkedIn outreach feels like shouting into a void most of the time. If anyone has cracked the contract hunting game I would genuinely love to hear how.

The other thing on my mind is building a product. I like the idea of owning something from the ground up, solving a real problem, being the one making the decisions. The problem is I cannot land on an idea I actually believe in enough to commit to. Everything I think of either already exists or feels too niche to be viable. Anyone been through this paralysis and come out the other side?

And finally, Python. I have been putting it off for years because Java and Kotlin have served me well, but the AI obsession is real and everything interesting in that space seems to run on Python. Is Python backend experience actually moving the needle for anyone in terms of job prospects or is it just hype?

Open to any honest thoughts, especially from people who have been in a similar spot.

Currently, I am learning web development, and I know AI is coding almost every line of code now. So my question is: since I am currently learning, should I learn without AI, or should I learn with AI? If I code myself, I will understand the syntax and concepts better. But if I use AI too much, I think I will become lazy because of the token limits, and I will mostly just analyze or debug the code.

I just want to know, do people who work in front end or full stack development actually use AI at work? Surely it would speed things up.

I have 20+ years of experience across SaaS, startups, aerospace, architecture, backend, frontend, cloud, AI workflows, management, hands-on coding — basically the whole stack. But lately it feels almost impossible to even get seen.

Every job on LinkedIn seems to have 300–1000 applicants within less than a day. A lot of listings feel fake, paused internally, or already filled before posting.

Where are people actually applying these days?

• LinkedIn?
• Recruiters?
• Networking?
• Smaller job boards?
• Direct company websites?
• Discord/Slack communities?

At this point I honestly wonder if I need to change careers entirely or if this market is just broken for software engineers right now.

Curious how others are navigating this.

Devops or MERN which one is best for future at the age of 20 I'm confused from where I start

I'm new to web dev and recently learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but before I make this somewhat ambitious project, I'm asking;

• What do I need, or what challenges should I expect in making this project?
• Is this achievable in my current skillset, or do I need to dig deeper into learning the API before starting this project?

Since my goal is to make a responsive web app for my phone that connects to my pc LLM backend (Lm studio, Llama.cpp, Ollama in my case), in that way, I can access my LLM from anywhere through my phone/other devices without bringing my pc.

Hey guys,

I’m currently a front-end React developer with around 3-4 years of experience.

I originally started programming with C# and .NET, so I do have some backend experience, but it’s pretty vague at this point. At work I’m mainly focused on the frontend, and only occasionally touch the .NET API for smaller fixes to finish tasks.

Lately I’ve been wanting to become more of a full-stack developer using Node.js instead of .NET, since Node interests me a lot more.

The problem is that most Node.js courses start completely from scratch, which doesn’t really work for me because I already have programming experience. I’m looking for something more intermediate/advanced or at least more practical.

I know project-based learning is usually the recommended approach, but I’m struggling with creating a proper roadmap for myself - what projects to build, what concepts to focus on first, and how to progress from “I can build an API” to actually becoming a solid Node.js backend developer.

For people who already made a similar transition:

\- What helped you the most?
\- What kind of projects would you recommend?
\- What topics should I focus on beyond basic CRUD APIs?
\- Any courses/resources that are better suited for experienced developers instead of beginners?

Would really appreciate any advice!

Can someone tell what's Best to do

Full stack ( Mern vs python vs java )

Ai ml

Python full stack + aiml

Full stack+ devops

DSA

Data analytics

Oops dbms networking

What exactly to do

What exactly should one do ?

There's just too much confusion

Hello, I want to be a full-stack web developer. My third year is starting after 2 months. I thought I knew HTML, CSS, Python, and C++, but after going through the internet, I got to know that I don't know even a single important thing that will lead me to an internship or placement, and now I don't know what to do. I feel stuck because my placements will be starting from next year, and I don't know where to start or what to study. I also feel like I have wasted my last 2 years on unnecessary things. As I got to know about The Odin Project, it will take at least 12 months if I start now. I searched multiple things, and now some say this will make you placement-ready, while some say this video will. I have a 2-month summer leave for now. Can someone tell me what I should study, what I should do in these 2 months and after that, and from where I should study, which will lead me to an internship or placement?

I’ve been noticing a lot of projects using complex architectures very early, even before validating the actual product. Where do you personally draw the line between scalable engineering and unnecessary complexity?

I’m a non-technical founder building a marketplace/platform startup. Right now I’m working on connecting the backend to the frontend and getting the platform ready for pre-live testing.

I’m building it with AI assistance. To be clear:

I’m not pretending to be a developer. The AI is doing most of the coding, while I act more like a product owner / architect / “site manager”, defining the flows, checking the output, testing, adjusting the UX, and trying to make the product real enough to validate. But of course I have been learning while doing.

This made me wonder:

At what stage would a CTO or technical co-founder actually prefer to join?

Would a CTO rather join when there is only a concept, wireframes, business plan, and a clear product vision?

Or would they prefer that the founder has already built a rough working MVP / pre-live version, even if the code was created mostly with AI and may need refactoring?

My concern is that I might be making a future CTO’s job harder by building too much before they join. Maybe they would rather define the technical architecture from scratch.

On the other hand, I also feel that having something functional could make the opportunity more concrete: user flows exist, product decisions are tested, the business model is clearer, and the CTO would not be joining just an idea.

So my questions are:

Would you see an AI-built MVP from a non-technical founder as an asset or a liability?

At what point would you want to join as CTO? What should I document now to make it easier for a future CTO to understand or take over? Are there specific things I should avoid building before getting technical leadership involved?

Is it better to build toward a pre-live test, or stop earlier and wait for a technical co-founder?

I’m trying to be realistic about my own limitations while still moving the project forward.

Any guidance from CTOs, technical co-founders, startup engineers, or founders who have been through this would be appreciated.

Seniors with extensive experience, in your early days, how did you build web projects in the absence of AI tools? How much time do you spend thinking about solutions of simple or moderate difficulty problems?

Sometimes i feel that traditional learning methods are more useful, cuz you have to spend time searching and learning, work hard until you find solutions، but the information sticks in memory.

Now, when you get stuck, you ask AI tools and get a quick answer, or sometimes even a solution to the problem, but when you encounter the same problem later on, you find yourself unable to remember how to solve it, so you have to ask the AI again, and it never sticks in your memory.

Personally, I started learning programming using JavaScript months ago, I'm trying to build some projects, I'd prefer to have a real mentor to guide and help me, but I didn't get one, so I used AI as a mentor. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm learning because it makes the process too quick for me. I don't feel stuck and forced to search, to achieve some proficiency in learning, is there any beginner here who is like me?

Hello, I'm new to this. Curious how everyone here approaches building a webiste end-to-end. From the moment you have an idea -> planning - > coding -> testing ->deployment, what does your process actually look like? Please drop your stack, tools , and/or any lessons learned. Trying to steal some good habits :>

hey startup engineers, I'm a student currently doing research on how your positions manage or handle issues when developers in your community complain about a broken implementation or setup? 

With all the new coding agents we all know that devs are just making agents read docs and relying on it to properly implement things based on those docs.

So now I have two questions:

1. How do you currently find out when a developer's integration is broken?
2. If agents are now generating most integration code, has that changed anything for your team?

Would love to hear with anyone who is facing this issue especially if your product is a API or SDK

I was building an IDE to fix real mess and issues I was myself facing and one of them was to build extension for vscode, vscode forks, jetbrain, novim and zed, so I thought why not building an extension protocol that fix this issue!

Hello all, I am a web developer in the Middle East with a bachelor's in Computer Science and a specialty in building websites. I was approached recently by an anonymous fashion brand that is being established and they want me to develop a headless storefront with a custom (React/Vite) frontend and a Shopify backend (handled via API). From what it seems they also want me to help set up their Shopify in whatever areas relevant to my expertise (so excl. logistics, operation, etc). I have my fair share of experience with web development as an employee but this is my first time dabbling in freelance and this is definitely a project I am capable of, but my question comes down to pricing. I have no idea where to value myself or my labour. Does anyone have an idea or an estimate of how much companies are charging for this kind of work and how much I should charge as a solo freelancer? Thank you.

Feels like every developer goes through phases where they strongly believe something, then real-world experience completely changes their perspective

I'm really confused about which backend technology I should start learning to become a full stack developer. I thought of Nodejs + Nest js but my working sector is banking. So should I go with java spring boot. But considering my experience java spring boot is vast and will take much time to study. Do we have opportunities for Nest js and angular full stack developer

You spend hours suffering, questioning your life choices, then suddenly fix the issue and feel like the smartest person alive for 5 minutes 😭