r/cscareerquestions

It's 2AM and I'm sitting here reading linkedlin profile of my ex-classmates

every single one has FAANG experience and at least half have multiple teams reporting to them, they are the people who are deciding who to hire/fire, they can peace out tommorow and live like kings for rest of their lives

I'm still just an IC who still need my job at a shit company getting paid poverty level wages because my mental health can't handle heavy workload at a real tech company. i always thought i had more time to ramp up to a better job but that window seem to have closed because of AI.

fml

CS grad student who was all doom and gloom. I have been underemployed for the last 1-2 years roughly.

Finally got a job through sheer good luck (personal connections)

I'm now doing data analysis fully remote for about $70k/year.

I know I know, this subreddit probably considers that impoverished. To me, it is the cushiest job I've ever had writing lots of Python and pandas scripts to help a non-technical marketing team.

Prior to this job I only had about 1 yoe in CS.

I have seen it over and over again. If someone is a “buddy” of the hiring team they have a leg up over everyone else regardless of skill Also more and more teams are completely homogeneous… you will not get hired unless you are from the same background as the hiring team and the leaders

Personally at my company there was a team hiring and the manager was saying they could not find the right candidate. Then a few weeks later hired someone who literally had the same name as them which is foreign name and not that popular in the US and that team literally had 3 people with the same name.

So please don’t feel so bad if not selected cause I have seen it happen over and over again and it’s not something any of us can help.

I have an outstanding offer at the moment to work for NGC as an associate SWE in ground systems in VA. I’m currently doing some startup work (one with my friends but we’re growing steadily with funding and getting ready for seed round hopefully soon, and doing robotics at a stealth), but I find both unreliable and currently making less together than I would for ngc, which I’m chasing the name to set my career up.

My primary gripe is if the location is worth the compromise for the name and work I’d get to do? I would be moving from the Bay, so it’s a really big jump. I would not see myself staying in VA long term.

Something also pushing me is the current state of the market, where it feels like this would be my only option. What kind of criteria should I evaluate as more important, especially in what feels like a critically poor time for job hunting?

At my company, we’re (fortunately) lagging quite a bit behind when it comes to AI adoption.

Aside from a monthly token limit, we haven't been given any guidance on how or why to use them, so everyone just does whatever they feel like.

Today I received an MR for an old project where I’d requested a fix (which I expected to take fewer than 100 lines of code...a lot fewer onestly); instead, it included a new "skills" file, 34 modified or created files, 2,195 added lines, and 392 deleted lines.

WTF am I even supposed to do?

Honestly, I’m pretty pissed off, but I also wonder if *I’m* the one who’s fallen behind.

Should I just ask Copilot to do the code review for me? /s

My 2026 job search so far

Got laid off in may 2026

Thought I’d share my job search experience since I’ve seen a lot of people here going through something similar.

I applied to around 1000 jobs. Got responses from about 30, and around 11 companies actually turned into proper interview processes.

Here’s where things stand:
1 offer

2 still in progress

3 finished final loop but wasn’t selected

2 cleared all the rounds, but the positions were put on hold

6 rejected after the hiring manager / second round

12 rejected at the recruiter or early stage(couple of positions went on hold mid interview, two of the recruiters were laid off and my application got lost in mid interview, couple of them rejected even after clearing initial assessments)

The most frustrating part has honestly been getting pretty far into the process and then having the position put on hold. In two cases, I cleared all the rounds and then the company basically paused the position.

The interview formats were all over the place. Some focused heavily on coding and CS fundamentals, some on system design, and some went deep into my previous experience.

One thing I’ve learned from this is that getting to the final round doesn’t necessarily mean you’re close to an offer. A lot can still happen after that.
Still trying to keep going.

All my application were cold applications.

Created a master copy, then everyday I would apply 20-30 companies with tailored resume using AI. Rest I would apply using that said master resume.

Things I observed most recruiters are hard to please now. They are brining an ai note taking and pre set questions and using ai note taker to analyze and assess your answer. I had to change how I answer in order to trick the AI note taker earlier I used to talk like a 5 year old explaining my work to recruiter now I am making few points using technologies mentioned in job description and throwing jargon so AI note taker can highlight that in notes to hiring Manager, most recruiter have stopped thinking once the AI is added.

Talk about AI, if you used co-pilot mention about mcp servers, plugins it has became hiring manager wet dream now. Create couple of stories on how you automated workflows, agents in your projects.