r/cscareers

I'm in europe, in Italy and Germany is very hard to get fired, but not impossible.

Given the current climate, which companies are stable, and do not fire people ramdomly with the excuse of AI?

I've been a software engineer for a few years. Worked in bigtech, good salary, stable job, the whole thing. Then my position got cut and I had one of those forced moments of clarity that I think a lot of people in tech are having right now.

I could update my LinkedIn, apply to 200 jobs, and land somewhere similar in 2-3 months. Or I could actually figure out if I could build something on my own.

I chose the second one. Probably naive. Still figuring it out. But I want to share what I've found so far because I think there's something here that a lot of engineers are sitting right next to without realizing it.

My instinct as a engineer was to think about SaaS. Build a product, charge subscriptions, scale it. The dream everyone talks about. But the more I sat with it the more I realized I'd be spending 12 months building something in a vacuum, competing with funded startups from day one, and probably running out of motivation before I ever got a single paying user.

So I started asking a different question. Not "what can I build" but "who is already in pain and has money to solve it."

That reframe changed everything.

What I kept coming back to was professional services firms. Lawyers, accountants, consultants. I kept landing here for one simple reason, these are businesses where time is literally the product. A lawyer billing $300/hr losing an hour a day to something inefficient isn't just annoyed. They're losing $6,000 a month (assuming 20 work days per month). Per person.

And the thing eating their time more than almost anything else is documents. Every firm I looked into was drowning in them. Contracts, case law, regulatory guidelines, internal memos. Hundreds of PDFs that someone has to manually search through every single time a client asks a question.

As a developer I knew immediately what that problem was. It's a retrieval problem. It's solvable. And nobody had pointed modern AI tooling at it in a way that actually fit how these firms work.

What I'm actually building is a research assistant that lives inside a firm's own document library. You type a question in plain English. The system searches every document they have and returns an answer with exact citations in under a minute.

The part I think makes it actually useful for lawyers specifically, not just another ChatGPT wrapper, is how it handles authority and conflict. A Supreme Court ruling carries more weight than a legal commentary and the system knows that. When two sources contradict each other it shows both positions instead of pretending there's one clean answer. Lawyers think in terms of precedent and conflicting interpretations. The tool has to think that way too or they won't trust it.

I also built an annotation layer where senior lawyers can leave notes on documents that become part of what the system knows going forward. Outdated ruling, firm-specific interpretation, internal policy that overrides a guideline, they just flag it and the system learns it permanently.

I don't have a client yet. I want to be straight about that.

What I do have is a working system, a clear picture of who needs it, and a couple weeks of conversations with law firms that keep confirming the problem is exactly as real as I thought it was.

Every single person I've talked to has answered the question "how long does your team spend searching through documents every day" without hesitating. Nobody has said it isn't a problem. That tells me something.

I'll post an update when something happens, good or bad. AMA!

Also, wish me luck! And if you're at a firm that deals with this and you think I'm missing something about how lawyers actually work, I genuinely want to hear it. Still learning.

I’m a 22 year old AI engineer, and recently I realized something kinda painful.

My technical skills are honestly pretty good for my age, and I worked on projects that I’m proud of.

But I know people with weaker technical skills who still get better opportunities than I because they communicate better and present themselves better.

And honestly, it opened my eyes a lot.

I feel like my communication skills are holding me back hard, especially when talking about myself, explaining ideas, networking, and interviews, etc.

For people in tech:

How important was communication in your career compared to technical skills?

And how did you improve it? Any Books, Videos, or podcasts? Anything that can help me with that

Because right now I feel like I focused too much on becoming technically good and ignored the “human” side completely.

[supprimé]

Hi guys!!! I know this is a lot but it wld mean a lot if u all cld help, I've been going back and forth.

I’m trying to decide between two college paths and would genuinely love advice from people in tech, CS, product, recruiting, or anyone who’s been through something similar.

Option 1: Attend The University of Texas at Austin in-state and pursue a double major in Informatics (Data Science track) + Mathematics. I’d pair this with a LOT of side projects, internships, hackathons, startups/apps, networking, etc. The upside is that it’s much cheaper, close to home, and would probably give me more time/flexibility to build things outside of class. Prestigious school, but not CS degree. Intenral CS transfer is hard and it might be hard to break in or be taken seriously without CS degree. ($120K)

Option 2: Attend University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign out-of-state for CS + Economics. Obviously the CS major name carries weight and UIUC is prestigious, but it’s significantly more expensive and farther from home. ($280K)

My long-term goal (as of right now) is ideally product management at companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, etc. I’d also be open to SWE, technical PM, AI/ML roles, startups, or honestly anything impactful in tech.

A few questions:

* Does not majoring in CS close doors at top tech companies like FAANG if I still build strong technical/project experience?
* Would you genuinely advise me to go to UIUC despite the ~$160k price difference?
* How realistic is it to break into big tech from Informatics + Math versus a traditional CS degree?
* Is having more time to build projects and network potentially more valuable than the “CS” label itself?
* If you were in my shoes, which path would you choose and why?

Would especially love input from:

* people in FAANG/big tech
* PMs or SWEs
* recruiters
* students who chose between prestige/major/cost
* people who succeeded without a CS degree

Thanks :)

I’m currently in my 8th semester at a Tier-2 college and already placed in a service-based company.
I’ve completed Striver’s sheet.

My goal is to eventually switch to a good company.
Should I continue grinding LeetCode and start competitive programming on Codeforces, or focus more on development/projects now?

Suggestions are welcome.

Not talking about new grads or people who’ve been job hopping every 2 years and staying sharp. I mean the engineers who landed a solid role around 2017–2019, put their head down, shipped real products for 5–7 years, and then got caught in the post-boom layoffs.
These people built actual systems. They’ve debugged production outages at 2am, mentored junior devs, navigated legacy codebases that would make most people quit on day one. And now they’re sitting across from a 25-year-old asking them to implement a segment tree under time pressure on a shared screen.
A few things have genuinely changed since the last time a lot of these folks interviewed:
The bar shifted. A senior engineer who interviewed at Google in both 2021 and 2024 noted that LeetCode Hard problems — which he assumed were never asked — have now become the norm. That’s not a small jump.
The volume is brutal. At least 127,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off in 2025 alone, and a lot of them are strong engineers flooding the same application pools.
The format itself has gotten more adversarial. System design rounds that used to be reserved for senior engineers now start at mid-level, and senior candidates are getting Staff-level scope questions. The goalposts moved on everyone while some people weren’t looking.
And the kicker is — engineers who have built incredible real-world applications are struggling to clear interviews because they haven’t looked at graph theory in a decade. That’s not a skills gap. That’s a preparation gap for a very specific performance.
I’ve seen people with 20 years of experience describe spending sleepless nights grinding LeetCode just to get 5 rejections in 4 months. Not because they’re bad engineers. Because the interview is essentially a separate skill from the job.
So genuinely curious — for those of you who’ve been through this:
• How big of a gap did you feel between what you knew and what was being tested?
• Did your years of real-world experience actually help you at any point in the process, or did it feel irrelevant?
• What did you actually have to do to get back in interview shape?
• And honestly — did landing eventually feel worth it, or did the process change how you see the industry?
No judgment either way. Just feel like this story doesn’t get told enough compared to the new grad struggle.

Hey everyone,

I have been applying to all sorts of CS/Tech internships the past three months but I have never gotten a single interview. I also attend a school whose whole schtick is getting internships and giving you an easier chance in landing one as a CS major but no luck.

I understand the job market currently is bad but I am also hearing about new job openings. Every time I go on LinkedIn I see people getting internships. Can anyone give me some advice on how to land these internships or at the very least get my foot in the door?

I have currently been working on projects that use AI/LLM, AWS, Python, C++, React, in order to make my resume look better.

I greatly appreciate any advice.

Hey!!
I am 2024 Btech passout.

I am seriously so done with constant job search even if i am admitted due to something, all i can think of job job jobbbbbbb.

It's been 2 yrs gap (i worked in between tried different domains, internships, even got job but got ghosted idk due to some project issue)

At this point my anxiety and depression is on peak seriously.
My body is screaming for help it's so messed up.
I am justtt so soooo exhausted of having same thoughtsssss.

I feel like l am good for nothing seriously.
But the solution of most of my issues is a JOB.

I am unable to cope up..
I tried QA, Hr, BDA in non tech.
Bcoz after trying into coding i felt like it’s not for me.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I had a year left. With the current job market, it was a good decision. I've just been at a warehouse part time ever since moving packages around. Sad.

Since SWE is getting really cooked and the job market for software jobs everywhere insanely competitive and saturated

What other types of jobs can a CS degree get you as a fresh grad?

Maybe something mixed in business + tech?

A CS degree must be very versatile in opening many other job opportunities not related to code or SWE no?

Would like your advice

Hi all, I just got laid off due to "changing technological climate" after 1 year working full-time with Fully Meets Expectations on my first review, doing extra side-projects, working ~12 hour days using Cursor and ClaudeCode. I am a SWE with 10+ years experience in fullstack C#, React/Next, SQL stack.

My story for some context...

In January, our CEO decided that he would implement ClaudeCode Agents across our CI pipeline (Agent takes Jira ticket, implements it, creates PR, uses another Agent to CodeReview, then finally pipes it to us to do a final approval).

He deployed a similar workflow with QA Agents (playwright agents provide a report, dev agent takes the report and implements changes, QA Agent runs again, repeat until all tests pass)

This was all implemented within 4-6 months by our CEO just vibe-coding (he has some dev background) it.

We had a department-wide "AI hackathon" event where, in groups of 2, we were asked to fix 2 bugs and implement 1 feature in one day, then give a 10min demo on our expereience.

Some did well, some less so. (My team scored the best)

A week later, me and a couple of other devs were laid off.

tl;dr: Laid off after our CEO replaced half the dev pipeline with Claude agents in 6 months, anyone else seeing this? And I am just wondering for those out there searching for a job, how has interviewing changed?

https://therepo.dev/shared/u9q75q1wiw This video has made me pretty worried about where things are/things are going. I timestamped some of the parts I thought were most concerning, hoping I could get your thoughts.

* Take-home projects being used as free consulting work
* Layoffs due to thinking 1 person can do the job of 8 agents (my situation)YouTube Link
* "Competitive Wages", paying as little as possible

Hi everyone!

I just signed my contract for my first ever junior dev role. I wanted to share as it might be useful for you.

This isn’t really a “hacks to get a career in CS”, it’s mostly a story of how I got in because I went in a very roundabout route.

About me: I worked for 10 years in customer support. I also have a degree in music where I did a little bit of Max programming, which got me interested in CS.

One year and one month ago I didn’t even know what a pointer is, but I decided to try my luck with my local 42 school (not a bootcamp, but a free alternative to uni in some European/Asian countries. Mostly C and C++, but now they replaced C++ with Python ). I have to say, the education there was in my opinion top notch, and it’s free!

I don’t wanna shill too much, but the community there is amazing. I kept sitting besides the smartest people in the room and I really tried to suck as much knowledge from them as I could and it definitely helped a lot!

At the start of my studies i got an offer from a local cybersecurity company as a tech support agent. Pay was iffy, but hey, role in IT! I took it, and started doing 70h weeks, 40 at work, 30 at school. It was hell. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I ate badly, had no social life, but I really liked coding, specially low level stuff. For school, I built my own shell, and my own webserver. This is very important: I did not use AI at all. I really struggled until I got it, and I can credit that decision with getting the correct education.

Two months ago I became tired with my role. I had to do a lot of networking, a lot of configuring cybersecurity devices… and all I wanted was to code. Otherwise, I was trying my best, and learning a lot on the job. I was terrible, to be honest, but I tried really hard and I think they were happy with my performance, it was just not for me.

So I used the school’s connection with partners to find a student job to switch instead.

I finally found one and got an offer. It was testing engineering, and I thought shit, things are turning out great! I would take a pay cut, but I’m actually gonna work in development, even if it’s not the most exciting thing for me, as I really wanted to work on low level stuff.

I went back to my current employer. I explain them why I’m leaving, and they take it well. I keep doing my best at work anyways, trying to squeeze some knowledge.

Two weeks ago I get approached by a recruiter from my current employer, just 2 weeks shy of completing my notice period. He says “hey, we got a software engineer role that we are open to taking a junior for”. I kinda shrug it off; I’m not even done with school yet (although I’m close!) but I go to the interview. They ask about threads, about multi-process applications. I’m confident with C at this point, and the job is in C++, so I was honest and said hey, I’m not that good at OOP, but I know multithreading! I know low level stuff! I did pretty good in the interview, but I was sure they were not gonna take me… I don’t even have an internship!

Next day recruiter calls me and tells me I got the job. What the hell? How?

So i rescind my contract with the other company. I’m starting to work in the engineering team on June. I’ll be working on low level stuff. It’s the dream, it shifted my timeline by years at this point. I’m aggressively preparing, doing lots and lots of C++ stuff, reading books, asking lots of questions even if I don’t work there yet.

I worked hard, sure, but guys, this is luck mostly. If I wouldn’t have taken the boring job at tech support, I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity. I need to make this distinction because I feel too many people believe that there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. The market is fucked, it’s a lot of luck in this and I know a lot of people are doing A LOT.

What I can say is that passion helps. Going to school after a hard day at work made sense to me because I was enamored with systems, with learning. I wasn’t really thinking much about the market when I signed up for this (bro I got a music degree, of course I don’t think these things through lol), so the only real advice I can give is to not get into this only for the money if you don’t really feel inherent fascination by this, because, as I said, market is shit.

I’ve been a software engineer for about 8 years but hate it and don’t find it enjoyable. What are some alternate career paths I can take?

Hey folks,

Joining JPMorgan Chase mid-June as a Software Engineer II in CCB (Consumer & Community Banking) in a GenAI/Agentic AI role. ~4.7 years of experience in AI/ML and GenAI/LLMs.

My hiring manager mentioned the role involves building apps using agentic frameworks within CCB. Would love to hear from anyone working in the same LOB before I join.

A few simple questions:

1. How good are projects, tech stack and culture and WLB in CCB.
2. How much ownership does an SW II typically get?

Not looking for anything confidential just want to understand what I'm walking into so I can prepare well.

Thanks in advance. WOuld appreciate ur help so much.

Hey folks, I got an interview last week for the SDET role based in NJ.. I was extremely excited and nervous because 3 leaders and a director was next to me watching and I struggled. Even though I had an idea of what collections and how I can itirate but to be honest, I totally panicked and did not perform well.. technical interview was the last step of the hiring process

Its been 3-4 business days and I sent a follow up to HR asking any feedback that can help me and also when to hear back for the final decision. They havent replied yet but I was wondering if you had similar experience with Verisk. Any feedback from you guys will help me a lot keeping my mind clear.

This was a dream job so I am so excited to hear back. Even if it is a rejection, I would prefer a reply rather than ghosting. HR really seems to be nice so hoping to get a decision from them soon(I hope)!

I’m looking for some advice on how to reset my path and land an entry-level CS role. I feel like I ruined my resume and being a first-gen college grad with no real tech network, I could use an outside perspective.

I graduated from the University of Michigan last spring with a Bacholer's in Computer Science. In college, I had 2 small internships. One as a Project lead for a non profit, where we designed a software for another non profit. One as a "Power BI" intern, where I worked with maufacturing data to create PowerBI dashboards.

I started applying to full time postitions around early 2025. Because I didn't have many CS peers, I had no idea how important LeetCode/DSA was. Every time I managed to land an a potenital job, I bombed the technical portion.

Right as I graduated, my father got major health issues. I had to move home and prioritize my family and support them. To support my girlfriend (currently in school) and I, I took an IT Help Desk job because it was easy and availible.

A year has passed, family health is stable, and I am ready to push for a better career. My current IT job is stabl, but it is moving me into IT, which I don't want do.

I have a solid programming foundation from my CS degree However, I have a 1-year gap of "no professional coding."

How do I frame a year at an IT Help Desk followed by a CS degree to data recruiters?

Should I spend my time on LeetCode, certificates, applying, or a personal portfolio project?

Appreciate any brutally honest feedback or steps if you were me. Thanks

Title says it all. I said i wish i could dissappear after discussing issues at work with copilot. It gave me the suicide hotline.

How much of this does management know

applying on linkedin is genuinely insane. you click easy apply, it sends your resume into the void, you never hear back. you don't know if 5 people applied or 5000. you don't know if the role is even still open. the recruiter "viewed your profile" 3 weeks ago and then nothing.

i'd rather just have a comment section for every job posting. like let me see who else applied, if anyone heard back, if it's a ghost listing. that's it. that's all i want.

so i made one. https://www.joblessclub.org/discover