r/careerquestions

I never thought I would ask strangers online for help, but honestly, I don't know what else to do right now.

I recently graduated in Cybersecurity and have been applying for jobs, but I'm barely getting any responses. I also need to start earning to pay my bills, and unfortunately, where I live, there aren't really any part time jobs or other opportunities available.

This situation has been affecting me mentally too. I'm struggling with depression and I'm honestly exhausted. I have tried my best to figure things out on my own, but right now I feel completely lost.

I'm looking for someone working in Cybersecurity, IT, SOC, Networking, Cloud, or a related field who might be willing to mentor me or simply look at my situation and give me some honest advice.

I want to know what skills I'm missing, what jobs I should realistically apply for, what I should improve on my resume, and what I should focus on learning.

I want to make it clear that I'm serious about this. I'm not joking or looking for shortcuts. I'm ready to work hard, learn, improve, and put in the time. I just need someone experienced to help me figure out the right direction.

I consider myself good at planning and strategy, but right now I need some guidance from someone who has been through this.

I know this is not the usual kind of post, and honestly I'm embarrassed to even ask. I don't expect anyone to give me a job. I just really need some guidance from someone who has been through this.

If anyone is willing to help, even a short conversation would mean a lot to me.

Thank you for reading.

So i am a sybaf mu idol student and thats why i have free time (because of online education) and i am thinking of building my company once i graduate. So please suggest me what kind of course (short ones) should i take or what kind of study should i do to become ceo?

I’m 19, am currently facing 2 dui charges with a previous juvenile conviction. The plea bargain for one is 1st intent and the other is undecided and im sure a felony is not out of option for me. With troubling habits being said, I am seeking a career path solely focused on a high salary. I’ve researched software development, engineering, finance, and doctorate degrees. However, medical field seems to have a strict policy against criminals. Finance is not a typical career in the rural area I’m from in Indiana. I’ve heard engineering is very troubling and I’m unsure if my brain can calculate all that math and science to real world scenarios. So far, it’s looking to me that software development or trades is my best bet. I understand all these professions will lead to stable living and entry level salaries are not the peak. Debating if it’s worth the time and money to seek one of these careers considering I can just work an industrial job requiring a high school diploma with nearly the same entry level salary. I don’t wanna sell myself short nor waste my time considering my pending criminal record. I am most likely facing jail time in the future so my plan is a short trade certification until then. Hyper fixating and primarily focused on a very good source of income with correct budgeting,saving, and investing as my entire future depends on money. Don’t want to spend money for a degree that will lead to something less if that makes sense. Any advice?

It’s been so long since I’ve been out of work now. I’ve built full-stack projects and completed 2 tech internships. Too much noise is there on the internet and I just don't know what to do. I’ve got some time to study, and I’d genuinely love to know what I should study to increase my chances of getting placed with a decent offer. I’d really appreciate it if you could recommend some resources that you’ve referred to.

Thanks!

I’m 25 years old and currently unemployed. I want to build a career and get a job as soon as possible, but I’m confused about which course/skill I should learn.What job is there in SAP MM ?

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I graduated in 2020, and since then I’ve been working in different unorganized sectors. I’m currently earning around ₹25,000/month, and honestly, I’m getting tired of being stuck in this situation.

Now I want to seriously transition into a tech role and aim for at least ₹50,000/month.

Over the past few months, I’ve been building personal full-stack projects and have hands-on experience with:

- JavaScript

- React

- Node.js

- Express.js

- PostgreSQL

- Prisma

- MongoDB

- Docker

- Basic AWS EC2

I know that having personal projects is different from having professional software-development experience, so I’m not expecting an easy path.

My plan now is to grind seriously for interviews and improve whatever I’m lacking.

For people who have been in a similar situation or have experience hiring junior developers:

What would you honestly suggest I focus on to make this transition?

Should I focus more on DSA, system design, projects, backend fundamentals, deployment/DevOps, or something else?

Also, is targeting ₹50k/month realistic with my background, or should I set a different initial target?

I’d really appreciate honest advice, even if it’s harsh. I’d rather know what I need to improve than keep working for ₹25k with no clear growth.

I’m 21M and recently started my career in an IT company. It’s been only a short time, but I’ve already started feeling like I don’t want to live this kind of work life for the rest of my career.

I’m now thinking of preparing for government exams alongside my IT job. I’ve already filled out forms for SSC CGL, GPSC and GSSSB exams, but honestly, I don’t know much about how to start or which exams/jobs I should realistically target.

I’d really appreciate some advice from people who have gone through this:

1. What government jobs/exams should I target as a B.Tech graduate in Gujarat?

2. What are some good books, YouTube channels, websites or other resources for preparation?

3. How should I start preparing while working a full-time IT job?

Any advice, personal experiences, or things you wish you knew before starting would be really helpful. Thanks!

Hi so i recently saw some guy ask is it worth going uni for a CS degree and it dawned on me that through these years of doing Software Engineering i’ve seen complaints about the job market and also the competition increasing drastically.

Should i learn an additional skill such as SQL to increase my resume or is there ‘easier’ ways to be more attractive in the job market as i will be finishing uni next year?

Appreciate any replies!

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hii, i am a graduating student, and i am starting to find and solidify my career path so that it would be easier for me to find jobs and be accepted once i graduate. so now, i plan to build and improve my portfolio. but i am stuck whether i will pursue project management career path in the IT field or AI automation engineer. i need ur insights regarding fresh-grad accessibility, salary, and long-term potential

Hi so i am currently sitting for my placments and interview and all and it will get over by next month, i wanted to know how can i actually become better swe esp like infra and large scale systems kinda stuff after these months before i actually join some company. Have basic familiarity with python backend stack. But i want to maximise my learning and ownership in these few months, OSS is something i should be doing but i am not sure which ones to look at?Or maybe look for some internship for couple of months!

Should i rather utilise this time to rather get deeper into dbms internals, distibuted system papers ?There are good resources for this online but I miss the experience section in my resume to be honest!

Hey guys, I apologize in advance but this is going to be long.

I initially came to college with the intent of furthering my knowledge in computer science. I had already planned I wished to do something related to software development because I enjoyed coding in high school. I initially graduated high school with four internships (not to brag—I definitely could’ve leveraged them better, but I’m introverted). Three were in software development and the last was in financial management.

That financial management internship, along with a program I did in high school, made me want to pursue CS + Business. My long-term goal was and still is to build a financial literacy app for minorities and low-income households that could use technology to help break the cycle of poverty.
Unfortunately, college didn’t exactly go according to plan. I dealt with a lot of issues in my CS department, including racism/discrimination, and by junior year I was burnt out and couldn’t afford to keep going down that path. I ended up switching to Philosophy while continuing to code because I genuinely enjoy it.

I worked three jobs over the summer to afford my senior year, but now I’m struggling to find a job. The problem is that I’m kind of stuck in an awkward middle ground: I don’t have all the core CS knowledge employers expect, but I also don’t have the background or articulation you’d expect from someone pursuing philosophy/AI ethics.

I’m finishing my Philosophy degree now, and I’m trying to figure out what the hell I should actually do with my career. I want something I’m genuinely interested in, has room for growth, pays well enough to eventually help my family financially, and ideally lets me combine technology, business, ethics, or some combination of the three.

What would you do in my position?

I graduated about a year ago with a B.S. in Information Systems & Technology, Cybersecurity, and I still haven’t landed an IT/cybersecurity job. I’ve applied to entry-level roles, including help desk/IT support, but haven’t had much luck.

I currently have no professional IT experience and no certifications. I was hoping to get some certifications/training through the Air Force National Guard, since I’m pursuing a cyber/IT position. I’ve passed the required exams and am currently waiting on a psychology consultation, but the process has been taking a long time and I’m no longer sure how it’s going to turn out.

I also applied to my school’s MSIST Cybersecurity master’s program because I was honestly panicking about my career. I got accepted, but then realized I’d have to take out roughly $30-35k in loans to complete it. I panicked and deferred my classes until next semester.

Now I’m not sure whether I should undo that decision and start the master’s, or stay deferred and focus on getting experience.

My thinking is:

Master’s:
B.S. + M.S. + hopefully Security+ while applying for jobs, but I’d take on ~$30-35k of debt and could potentially still graduate without professional experience.

No master’s for now:
Focus on Security+, projects/labs, networking, and applying heavily for entry-level IT jobs. Hopefully get experience first, then reconsider the master’s later (possibly with employer tuition assistance).

I’m worried about both possibilities. If I don’t do the master’s, there’s no guarantee I’ll actually get a job since I haven’t been able to for a year already. But if I do it, there’s no guarantee it’ll help me get one either, and I’ll take on significant debt.

If you were in my position, what would you do? Is a master’s worth pursuing before getting professional IT experience, or should I focus on getting experience/certs first?

Hello everyone , i am currently 3rd year cs student and over the last year i ve been building multiple web projects and did an internship as full stack, I use mainly express react and docker for containers , postgress and mongo and since the development market is harsh i am planning to learn devops but i ve heard that devops is not for freshers i want to know if with the knowledge i have in full stack , is it worth it to sacrifice the next 5 4 months on learning devops in order to get an internship in this field??

Hey everyone,

I am looking to start a career in IT. My main goals are to reach a very great pay scale while avoiding a highly stressful work environment.

I have been looking into fields like Network Engineering, Cybersecurity, and Cloud Engineering. Network Engineering stands out to me because it seems like it can be stable and less frantic once the infrastructure is properly set up, while still offering excellent compensation.

Hi everyone,

I'm about one year into my professional career, and I'm at a point where I want to be more intentional about the skills and certifications I invest my time in.

Over the past year, I've had the opportunity to work across both AI/ML and Microservices teams. On the Al side, I've worked with areas such as LLMs, fine-tuning, guardrails, SLMs, transfer learning, and reinforcement learning. On the development side, I'm working with Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, and Postman.

Going forward, I'd like to move more strongly toward A Engineering / GenAl + Cloud, while still building on my backend and distributed-systems experience.

I keep hearing recommendations around AWS, Azure, GCP, cloud certifications, Al certifications, MLOps, Kubernetes, etc. - but honestly, there are so many options that it's difficult to figure out which ones actually have career and salary impact versus simply adding another certificate to the résumé.

For people who have already gone through this stage of their career:

- Which certifications would you genuinely recommend for someone with my background?

- Should I prioritize AWS/Azure/GCP, or focus more deeply on Al/ML + MLOps?

- Which certifications or skills are currently valuable for moving toward Al Engineer / ML Engineer / GenAl

Engineer roles?

- Are there any paid courses or platforms you would strongly recommend if they provide practical, industry-relevant learning?

Hi

I currently work in a small IT team where I have a lot of responsibilities (largely first line but occasionally leading large projects and making system changes including complex troubleshooting) I have been there for 2 years. No pay rises and no training. I made the decision to leave and I received two offers one from an MSP and one from a much larger Internal team both supporting far more users. Both are entry level jobs but the indecision between these two roles sent me spiralling mentally out of control to the point I stopped eating and sleeping. I chose the Internal team role in the end largely due to slightly more pay and the supposed lack of stress (as I keep seeing MSPs are like drinking from a fire hose and I don’t cope well under pressure for long periods of time). It was mentioned in the interview with the internal team that I would be taking a step back so to speak I assume they meant admin rights because of the systems mentioned on my cv. The MSP never mentioned that i would have issues and assured me they could get me to second line quickly, gave me a clear path and would give me training however did mention it would be busy. They also mentioned they wouldn’t hold me back from progression something the Internal team couldn’t guarantee. The Internal team mentioned it incorporates some second line knowledge but this is not reflected in the job spec.

The internal team offered me the position extremely quickly (ie 5 mins after the interview) which makes me think that I am overqualified. Whereas the MSP did not and hired multiple people alongside me.
Has anyone else made this decision early in their career and if so what did you do and did it hold you back the way they said it would?

It is also worth noting that the MSP was a team of all men whereas the internal team is mixed so as a woman in IT, it feels slightly more comfortable.

Let's assume a boy of age 16 currently studying in 12th grade doing studies in Science Stream. The subjects are Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology. What should the boy choose for the upcoming career after 12th. Let's say Medical entrance and Engineering entrance is way too difficult for the boy to clear but he can get a good grade in 12th Science so what should the boy should do to get a good career. And what it should be? IT, Banking, Finance, Healthcare what industry or the subject or degree should that boy be choosing for the life.

im frontend developer but im eager to learn everything in software stack and i have multiple source of information i have the book of Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions and i have opportunity to take aws certificates in cloud and ai in same time i want to enter the backend field but i dont know how to have idea where to start or start with what any one can give me a piece of advice?