r/cscareerquestionsuk

I’m interviewing with a tech company and this process has been going on since early August, and honestly I’m starting to feel like something isn’t right.

I had an initial screening on 7 August, a technical interview on 11 August which I passed, and then a behavioural interview with a senior manager on 20 August which I also passed.

After that, things got really confusing. The recruiter I was dealing with suddenly went on compassionate leave, which I didn’t know at the time, so I wasn’t getting any responses. In the meantime, I had calls from both the parent company and someone from the company I interviewed with asking about my skills because they apparently had a project they wanted to put me on. This was confusing because I hadn’t actually been told I had the job.

Eventually I was put in contact with another recruiter, who spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out where my application actually sat. I was then introduced to the project lead and had another interview on 21 September. I thought it went really well, and I was told afterwards that the feedback was positive and that the stakeholders would apparently want me on the project.

Since then, I’ve been repeatedly told that they’re just waiting for the final decision. Different explanations have been given each time — waiting for a senior manager to speak to someone, people being on annual leave, meetings needing to happen, etc.

This morning I finally asked quite directly whether I actually had an offer after investing so much time into the process. I was then told the original recruiter is back, they’re having meetings today and I should finally get an answer.

Instead, I just received a call saying they want to essentially swap me onto this project in place of someone else, but because the project is very particular about the required skills, they need me to have one more technical interview with the project team.

This is the part I’m struggling to understand.

I’ve already interviewed with someone from the project team, was told the feedback was positive, and was told the stakeholders wanted me on the project. So why do I now need another technical interview?

The senior manager who called me even said he completely understands if I don’t want to do another interview because the process has been so long, and that after this interview I’ll get a definite answer.

That comment has made me even more suspicious. Why would you say that unless you understood how ridiculous the process has become?

I know another candidate who was rejected after being ghosted for two weeks and only had two interviews, and another candidate who had three interviews and got an offer (different project, but one of the same interviewers).

I obviously haven’t been rejected, so I’m trying not to jump to conclusions. But part of me feels like this final interview could just be a way to find a reason to say I don’t have the right skills after all this time.

Am I being paranoid here, or does this sound like they’re setting me up to fail?

Would appreciate opinions from anyone who has worked in recruitment/hiring or been through something similar.

2 weeks to hear back.

First interview the week after

Second and third one week later

Result takes one more week

And then I have a 1 month notice.

End to end it takes 10-11 weeks to hire someone.

There has to be a better way.

I don’t.

It’s daily I see a post from a US or India dev who talks about bundling all this shit with Claude and Cursor and having agentic AI run entire workflows.

Meanwhile I’m still just using ChatGPT or Co Pilot as an advanced “Google” and predictive text in order to avoid tedious stuff, to review my ideas or to avoid trawling through Stack Overflow when I’m stuck.

Anybody have any (Plain English) insight on what people are actually doing with this stuff?

I joined a company a while ago - it's a UK company that was acquired by big US tech. The company is all in AI - at this point I think just about 100% of the code being merged is AI generated.

In terms of numbers I can see on internal metrics that PRs merged across the company are up by around 33% from the same point last year.

Now, first of all, as a headline figure I would say that's probably less than what CEOs and CTOs and managers are expecting the increase to be.

But let's also not forget some additional factors here:

1. Engineers are working more hours due to increased expectations and tighter deadlines
2. Incidents are increasing
3. Engineers are gaming PR metrics because there's been an increased focus on them (at my company)
4. AI generated code probably leads to more code churn
5. We're probably spending around $1000-2000 per engineer each month on tokens

And by the way - myself and all of the engineers who joined after the AI coding mandate can't even manually write code in the language we work in if we tried. You might blame us for this but we're under pressure to deliver and we don't have time to manually code to build up the skill of coding in an unfamiliar language. And this isn't just about the language - whatever expertise and knowledge that would have been built up by working on services the old way is no longer being built; I've made PRs to other team's repos and they really have no idea how to review the change - they're in a position where they have to just trust the review bot and give an LGTM review.

Previously after you'd worked in a codebase for a while you'd have an immediate sense of where you'd need to make changes to add some new feature. Now every change is going to require some back and forth with AI to understand where to make the change first - and after you've made the change you probably forgot most of what knowledge came out of the clanker because you didn't really work for it.

When you take all the above into account I'm not sure that going all in on agentic engineering gives any benefit vs much more moderate usage.

And for the record I'm not claiming that AI isn't a great tool - the utility of it is undeniable. What I'm claiming is that 100% AI generated code, particularly in the context of a large/mid sized organisation is not giving clear benefits.

Also I find it quite interesting how AI usage is being driven top down. Traditionally it's been up to individual engineers to decide how they accomplish their tasks. Nobody was mandating what IDE I used. It's pretty clear that CEOs and CTOs are mandating usage because they are scared of being left behind rather than because AI is actually driving meaningful productivity gains. And just a few months ago Uber's COO even said as much with regards to AI productivity:

`Uber COO Andrew Macdonald stated that rising AI spending is getting "harder to justify" because there is no clear link between high token usage and real, useful product gains for consumers.`

I will stop here because you have brain rot from AI usage. Me too.

I am a 25 year old Namibian male looking for a role that's related to Big Data or Health Information Systems as I have graduated with degrees in both disciplines.

Unfortunately, the market for both of these are not seemingly strong in my country of origin.

So I would like to know if there are any international opportunities I can grasp on to because being unemployed for this long is absolutely demoralizing.

This is about AI, but not in the way that you think.

Been working full time out of uni for just over a year now. Big company, working on a big AI product. I was promised software engineering - after all I was a software engineer by name. But piece but piece that facade has fallen away, until now at the one year mark I feel that I have fallen behind in terms of skill and knowledge relative to my peers.

Let me explain. My team works on the prompt. Yes, the prompt. We don’t engineer. Sure, (if we’re lucky) we write code that decides how the prompt gets built. In what order the words appear. But that’s it. At the end of the day, all of the work I’ve done in the past year has amounted to ‘the prompt
looks a bit different now.’ It’s a joke. A year of
my career - the first year, no less - wasted. i feel like bit by bit the promise of interesting work has fallen away beneath me to reveal a void of empty drudgery, to last for years and years more if I stay here.

Obviously the answer is to change jobs. But I dread the question - ‘what is the most difficult technical question you’ve solved?’ Because I truly, honestly, do not have a good answer. I spend all day solving problems, but not deep technical ones, no no, not at all. Instead I chase people on Slack, rummaging for requirements, navigating the bureaucratic shitshow that is the internals of my company. I am more of a product manager than an engineer at this point. And so I spend a day, busy, and I look back at it with nothing to show. I am wasting away here. I am realising now, I am not an engineer. It feels fraudulent to put that title on my resume. And the ‘engineering’ that we do is, yes of course, outsourced to the latest LLM Github Copilot has to offer. There is no thinking here.

All this is to say, I am lost. I know what I have going for me. It is a big name to put on a CV. And I work on a massive enterprise product. But it is the nature of the work, and thus the nature of my employed identity, which feels borderline fraudulent. I am scared I am becoming irrelevant. I am scared that in an interview, I will be found out. It is probably not too late to change course, and I would love any advice on what that might entail. Anything would be dandy.

Yours,

A frustrated and burnt out junior SWE

Hi all, looking for some advice here.

Graduated in summer with a 1st in a comp sci degree. I did better than I expected. I then applied for a masters in advanced comp sci at a top 6 Russell group uni and got accepted. I did it because I didn’t quite feel ready to work, stupid I know.

Now, 2 weeks in, I’m really regretting this. My weak point has always been maths, and the course is very maths heavy. I told myself I could grit my teeth and learn the required math skills, and I’m trying but it’s just too much. Especially considering I’m having to do this catch up at the same time as the modules.

There is work I literally cannot complete at all because I don’t have the required knowledge. I know this is my fault for underestimating the amount required.

So, I’m considering dropping out, or deferring for a year (although I don’t know if they will let me do this, it states that only do deferrals for extenuating circumstances, which mine is not). If I did leave the course, I’d get a part time job, spend a few months polishing my skills and start applying for software dev roles.

If anyone has any advice or their own experiences, please let me know. Thanks ppl

Apologies for the long post, but I'd really appreciate any advice as I'm really stuck on what to do and don't have very long to decide, unless I want to accrue a load of debt.

So I'm 19, and I finished my A-levels last year (A* A* A in maths, graphic communication, computer science respectively) and took a gap year following that. For my NEA project in CS, I made a game, spending lots of my free time working on it and looking at learning resources without the teacher's help (also my CS teacher was useless), since it was something I genuinely enjoyed. Ever since then, I've been working on developing my own projects during my gap year, and I'm currently developing my first commercial game that I'll be releasing to steam later this year, all being well.

My real passion lies in game development, specifically solo dev as I like all the independence and multi-discipline work that comes with it, but I also have an etsy business where I sell crochet patterns as it's something that I enjoy doing aswell, and have built it up to the point of making around £100-150 every month of passive income (no external marketing, no new patterns, just leaving it be). All this to say, I am more interested in self-employment and working on my own projects and businesses than pursuing computer science at an academic level.

However, because there's no telling of whether any of my own games or anything will do well, I decided last minute that I'd go to university (of warwick) to do a computer science degree. I've always viewed this as a sort of backup option, as I had planned to do the degree alongside working on my own stuff in my free time, however, I'm beginning to reconsider whether it's even worth continuing the degree or not.

I've only finished the first week so far, so I'm aware that everything is still new and lots of people have doubts during the first few weeks, but I just can't help but feel as though I've rushed the decision to do a degree and that it doesn't align with what I want to do. It's not even homesickness or anything as I don't actually mind taking care of myself and living alone etc., it's just that I'm feeling a lot of regret about getting into so much debt for something that I view as a "backup" and don't feel completely committed to, as all I can think about it working on my game and almost viewing university work as an obstacle to what I want to do, which I'm aware it probably shouldn't be if you're gonna do a degree on it.

I feel like the option I'd prefer would be to drop out, work on my own projects/businesses whilst applying for apprenticeships, then do an apprenticeship (digital/IT probably) while working on my own stuff in my free time. Because that way, I'll have no debt, would be making money *whilst* getting experience, and would have a more clear routine without having to worry about whether I studied enough for the next exam and stuff like that, like I feel like going back to studying just isn't really for me right now.

The reason I'm hesitant about just waiting a few months before making this decision is because if I withdraw from the degree within the first 2 weeks, I don't have to pay any of the tuition fees and would only pay the rent for the days I stayed, so I'd only have to pay a few hundred which I'm fine with as I have a few thousand in savings from my etsy. If I were to stay however, then later decide that it isn't for me, I'd end up having to pay a lot of tuition fees plus more rent and other fees, that it would make dropping out much more of a financial committment compared to if I were to do it now.

Another thing is that because I'm only 19, I feel like I have my whole life to get a degree if I really wanted to, and getting one now when I'm feeling unsure about it and have other plans just doesn't seem like the best option for me. Like if I decided in the future that I'd wanna do a degree, then I can go ahead and do one once I'm a few years older, if I really wanted/needed to, and would likely have enough money/income then to pay for it without accruing tens of thousands of debt.

Also I have my worries about AI, and I fear that if I continue with this CS degree, then by the time I graduate, who knows what the state of AI would be and how much harder it might be to get a job. I mean it already seems almost impossible to get a job as a CS graduate right now, and that could very well be worse in a few years when I'd graduate, especially if I didn't manage to get internships or anything, as there are far too many applicants right now and not enough roles.

So I feel like working on my own projects/businesses a bit and betting on myself, and doing an apprenticeship if it doesn't work out, or in the meantime, would be a better option that avoids the debt, makes money and gives me experience that can be used to get other jobs (or I just continue in the same job).

Anyway, sorry about the long read, I just really need some advice as I'm not sure what to do at the moment, and am worried that dropping out might be the wrong call even if it's what is constantly in my mind right now.

TLDR: Should I drop out of a computer science degree at university after the first couple of weeks, to work on my own projects/businesses and/or get an apprenticeship instead?

I’m currently at a large-ish (public) tech company as a platform engineer with 5+ YOE on roughly £120k base + £15k bonus + ~£55k/year in RSUs. I have a decent team, friends at work, and a comfortable hybrid setup.

The work itself is fine, nothing super shiny or exciting, but I’m not exactly bored. There’s a fair amount of tech debt and things that I don’t enjoy, but there’s still some learning/growth.

I’m currently considering an offer from a US-based startup that’s in the infrastructure-as-a-service space. They are offering me £145k base + £10k sign-on bonus (after some negotiation), on top of stock options. The work is much closer to what I’m genuinely excited about - distributed systems, databases, Kubernetes operators, etc. Basically the deep kind of engineering challenges that’s a platform engineer’s wet dreams. It could also open up a bunch of doors in the future.

The downside is that I’d be giving up a significant amount of liquid RSUs for stock option uncertainty, going fully remote, and having less of a community at work.

I’m considering negotiating higher but I’m not sure I’ll get anything more.

Any advice on whether I should consider this move, or stay where I am and wait for better opportunities?

Keen to hear from people who’ve made similar decisions.

Getting really tired of renewing my certs every 2-3 years.

I've got experience across AWS, Azure, Databricks, Snowflake etc and have certs for a couple of them. I really cannot be bothered to renew them. Given that I have several years of experience, do certs make a difference at senior level? I'm not targeting consultancies.

Hi, I currently work as an AI Test Analyst. I really wanna move into dev or actual engineering.

I created an updated CV. I would appreciate it if anyone wants to have a look.

If you have any questions, please message me :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qQmkh9MTdxMu55QpTHqmSHu2WLn2AF_e/view?usp=sharing

In which companies in London are you currently getting 600k-1M GBP per year? Looking for the next step from my current role.
What is the TC breakdown in your case? How much is paper money, if any?

Thanks.

Hello! Met an interesting person in London yesterday, had a great chat, but unfortunately did not exchange contacts. It was in the pub Clachan in Soho, around 11pm. Tall guy in his late 40s, mentioned he was originally from Turkey, has lived in the UK for around 10 years, has spent 27 years with the same company (apparently a big corporate, i think i catched Mobile UK) after joining straight from university, and is now a COO. I unfortunately didn't catch his name. Does this career path sound familiar to anyone? Would appreciate any help :)

I’m getting increasingly worried that traditional UX/Product Design has hit a ceiling, both in terms of hiring and salary, and I’m trying to figure out what adjacent career move would give me the best financial upside without throwing away 7 years of experience.

Did anyone made or is planning to do similar pivot to something else in tech?

I don't know if anyone feels the same. Every job has like 1000 + applicants when looking at job postings I keep thinking what is special about me or sets me apart and I really can't think of anything.

Quick look was around £400 for the first year and around £250 /year the succeeding not to mention if you need to spend for CPD (Continuing Professional Development). I already have 10yrs if experience and im looking to move up the ladder. Thanks

I’m on a UK Student visa completed course officially and have a short-term contractor role. The contract uses a standard “Individual/Sole Trader” template, but the company completed HMRC CEST and issued an SDS stating “Employed for tax purposes” and inside IR35. Tax/NI will be deducted before payment.
The company confirmed in writing that the sole-trader wording is just their standard contractor template.

Would this arrangement be considered self-employment/business activity for Student visa purposes?

Has anyone heard back after giving the assessment?

Layoffs on the way.

It appears that layoffs may be on the horizon in my current organisation.

I am currently on a Skilled Worker Visa (SWV) and have already completed more than three years with my employer. My performance has been strong, and as far as I know, everything has been going well.

Given the uncertainty, I would appreciate some advice on the options available to me and any steps I should be taking now to protect my position and immigration.

Thanks in advance for your guidance.