r/cscareers

SWE, 6 YOE. Im 26 years old now. This is the first time im admitting this to myself.

I got into SWE because I love building, programming, and collaborating with other programmers. Started coding in middle school. I didnt do it for money, I had no idea how much it paid until I started looking for colleges, but it was definitely a bonus.

I put up with having to grind LeetCode every time I needed a new job, the stress of on call, working late, workplace politics, etc because knowing that I was making a living off of something I loved and building cool things made it worth it.

Now with Claude, that drive is just gone. All I do is talk to Claude. It's not fulfilling anymore, and all the downsides of being a SWE and the other responsibilities just dont make it worth it for me personally. I know SWE isn't all about code, but coding is what made the job fulfilling. I ignored this feeling for about 2 years, but now its undeniable.

Very unfortunate but thats life, I guess. Looking forward to whatever this next chapter brings, whatever I choose to do!

Edit: Just clarifying a few things.

(1) I dont hate AI. I love it actually I think its very helpful. I just dont want it to be the central point of my engineering career instead of actually coding. The goal isn't to run away from using AI at work, its just to find something Im happy doing despite AI being a big part of it.

(2) I would never quit my job without having something lined up, and I dont mind a pay cut at all. Im very grateful for my job all things considered. :) Just being honest with myself about it.

I’m a hs senior and I really want to do cs but Reddit is making me think about medicine. Is it genuinely this impossible to break into cs?

I’ll try to keep things brief but basically I feel like I need help and don’t know where to look for it. I first started coding in 2015 and found I really enjoyed it because I was making small games at the time. It combined the creativity of painting with the problem solving of a puzzle. I loved it. But these days I work for a chip manufacturing company as a software engineer and my boss requires that I use Claude to code. Because of this I feel like most creativity and problem solving has been completely eradicated from my daily tasks. Sure I have to think a little about architecture and design to make sure Claude doesn’t go off rails but I feel like I am over all pretty disengaged with my job these days and like my critical thinking skills and ability to connect and break down problems is beginning to atrophy. We have been fully reliant on Claude to write software for about 8 months know and I don’t think I could go back at this point. The new rate of development expected of us now alone is difficult to compete with but even if that wasn’t a factor I would just be so much worse at my job now. All these things combined just have me feeling like more of a meat vessel used to guide the real thinking and I hate it. I miss struggling over a problem and mulling over code to land on the most efficient architecture and thinking about proper abstraction. I miss the pride I felt when I knew I wrote good code. It makes me feel like it’s time for a career change but I don’t know where I would start or even if I’ll be safe from the cognitive off loading as it seems every job expects some sort of AI usage at this point.

Lmk if you all have any thoughts or suggestions or even if you are feeling the same way.

Hey, I wanted to tell my story. I'm a native Floridian (US state of Florida), and I got a Bachelor of Science in Computer Scence degree in December 2015 from the best university in my home state, the University of Florida. I got good grades in my Computer Science classes. After I graduated, I aced the coding interview, including the LeetCode style questions, the behavioral interview, and the system architecture/design interview. I got multiple offers and I pit them against each other so they would bid up on my salary, and ultimately I accepted an offer for $150,000 a year (not including vesting stock) for a junior (SDE I - L4) position at Amazon AWS in Northern Virginia in year 2016.

Within my first month of working there, I noticed a problem. They expected me to learn the codebase over time, and I wasn't learning it at all. I knew I had no sense of direction, navigation, or location when walking or driving around, but I didn't realize this would lead to me not being able to learn my way around a codebase. It was a disability, a disability that they never tested for, and it made me unable to learn the codebase. I didn't realize this sooner because in my CS classes like Data Structures & Algorithms, I wasn't thrown into a large codebase that I didn't design and write. For two years I worked there at Amazon AWS, and for those two years I relied on my senior/mentor engineer to tell me, for every single coding task, where (which file, which class) in the codebase the code change needed to be made. I made no progress over time. Eventually, after two years of working there, my manager gave me a "mandatory resignation", which I accepted. After that I wound up on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) for brain-related, mostly psychiatric reasons, but I am thankful for Amazon for having paid me for long enough to qualify for SSDI and get the long-term government payout. I have been on SSDI ever since.

TL;DR - If you have no sense of direction, navigation, or location, you can't be a senior software engineer, even if you ace the CS degree and the coding interview.

p.s. I didn't know which flair to pick, but a flair was mandatory, so I just picked "US Job Market". Sorry if it's the wrong flair or if I am posting in the wrong subreddit.

I’m trying to decide between two offers. I was unemployed for a while and finally struck two offers at the same time. One is as a “consultant” (or contract) with a staffing agency called Actalent to work for Amazon (their client). Base is 140k. The other is a direct hire to work for BAE Systems for 10k less. Given this current market, what would you go for? The Amazon offer sounds a little shaky, especially with their work culture and constant layoffs, AND it’s through a third party. Benefits are meh. The defense company sounds cushier and chiller with better benefits overall with every other Friday off. The team I interviewed was much warmer and inviting vs. Amazon. Both SWE positions with similar responsibilities.

I'm a software developer having 4 years of experience and unfortunately I having nearly about year of gap so I am so confused about what to do to land a decent job.

Two months into the job search after my undergrad, and I don't know what I am doing wrong. I am networking on LinkedIn, using referrals, applying with tailored resumes in ATS-parsable formats, Harvard bullets, and keywords. I see people who are way less skilled than me get good jobs at reputable companies, and it almost feels like I have no place in tech anymore. If there is anyone who would want to help me (with a lack of better words) get a job, I would absolutely welcome that. I appreciate any and all help and guidance!
Thank you so much!
PS: I can add my resume in if anyone wants to give me feedback or something