r/softwareengineer

Hello I need advice on what I can do to prevent this please.
Every afternoon I get a throbbing headache that varies in intensity from day to day. Sometimes I can feel it in my right eye. I’m thinking of starting to wear blue light glasses but not sure how much that will help. I’m already working with night mode on. I get about 6-8 hrs of sleep, but I don’t think that has an effect.

Interested to know how others tackle this and any practical advice. I generally work 10hrs minimum and reducing isn’t an option.

I recently launched a small project designed to solve a simple problem: letting everyday people transfer files directly between two computers with a cable without needing any network setup. The post got a lot of love and reached the top of the community, but the comment section had a handful of advanced users getting genuinely angry that the tool even exists.

Their whole argument came down to: "Why build this? SMB exists, you can just build a router out of a Raspberry Pi, or manually configure static IPs and network sharing policies."

It got me thinking about how disconnected some tech enthusiasts are from reality. The entire purpose of software engineering was always to solve problems and remove friction for human beings, not to force everyone to become a system administrator just to do a basic task.

Just because an advanced user knows how to manage IP subnets, firewall exceptions, and OS sharing permissions doesn't mean a regular person wants to waste 30 minutes figuring that out. Hiding complexity behind a clean, one-click interface is literally the foundation of good software.

It seems like in a lot of tech spaces, people equate complexity with value. If something is simple and convenient, they dismiss it. But the reality is that the people who find your tool useful will quietly use it and appreciate it, while the loud minority will write essays in the comments trying to show off how much they know.

If you are a developer building simple tools that make life easier for ordinary people, do not let the gatekeepers talk you down. Build for the people who value their time, not for the people who want to show off their homelabs.

Would love to hear how other developers deal with this kind of feedback when sharing their work.

After 40+ years software development (yes, I’m that old, starting with ASM) AI is like a breath of fresh air.

The drudgery of software development is over. I can go for a walk in the sun while AI grinds away and produces code that would take me hours. I can review the output and feel a satisfying sense of superiority as I find AI’s inevitable mistakes. I don’t need to mentor it, or worry if hurt it’s feelings being too “abrupt” or define my spec so closely it’s eyes water. It just does what I ask. More or less.

It’s so much fun.

When I moved from ASM to C and then C++ then other increasingly abstracting languages it was a similar relief. Automatic garbage collection!

I hope new developers can find this joy.

Use your CS or SE skills to develop new exciting stuff.

Vibecoding is for Product Managers looking for meaning in their life.

SE + AI > PM + Cursor

This is a hard truth that won’t go away.

Edit: this has been a fun discussion. My intention was to shine a little encouragement on a topic that seems to be worrying some of the amazing engineering talent out there.

I maybe an old, curmudgeonly fart, in your eyes. But there’s still an opportunity to make AI work for you.

Fundamentally, engineers of any flavour are problem solvers. AI was created by software engineers. Software engineers are the best people to use it.

Happy coding 😉

I'm graduating computer science this year from uni, and for the majority of it, I did not use AI at all. I learned a lot of things from different branches of computer science, so I felt okay applying to any jobs, but this year I got a part-time job at a small software development company. For the first couple of months I barely used any AI, I used it sometimes to check some of my code, but the majority of it I did myself (learning new frameworks and sorts). But now I'm almost a year into the job, I use Claude Code for everything, and it makes me feel kinda shitty. It feels like an inevitable change since, competitively, if you don't do this, your company will fall behind. Everyone is getting dozens of pull requests every hour because of this tool, but then again, I feel like my brain is "getting smoother" the more I use it. The most complex thing I have to do is usually understand the business behind what we're developing, and know how to make prompts as precise and clear as possible.

Of course, what I'm doing is more than just programming, but what's the point of telling the AI to do the things for me after studying these things many years? What's my job gonna look like in a year, or two, or ten? Am I going to keep telling AI to do things for me? I'm having a bit of a small crisis on this idea and I wanna know what people from different perspectives think about it.

I don’t know what am i doing with my life at this point, it feels like i am just a labour with the tools.
Would i be able to code without ai tools tomorrow ?
A big no for me

Is it same for everyone ?
Like what happens if the company doesn’t sponsor AI Tools how would i justify high salaries then ?

Imposter syndrome is kicking in hard to me
I face issues in reading and understanding code still after what almost 3 years if experience

I feel i cant design systems.
How do i work on these aspects or move away from tech industry completely

I don’t know if i would want to be working as a software developer post 5-7 years
But what after that ?

It kinda feels that it might happen to me only about the stories that i have heard about people riding cabs after layoffs and not able to find a new job.

Any advise or suggestion
I am kinda stuck at this point in life
I am 25 right now
Recently switched as an early engineer in a consumer based startup with 30+ as base
But still cant think what would happen post 5-7 years

Any thoughts or suggestions would help.

Hi guys, I’m a 24yo Master’s student in Computer Engineering, starting my last year.
I have a question for SWEs working at companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.
If you were in my situation, what would you focus on to actually be ready for the job?
I know the usual answer is “build side projects”, but what should I focus on inside those projects? What skills, technologies or problems make a project feel closer to real SWE work instead of just another CRUD app?
If you had one year before graduating, what would you spend your time learning/building to be prepared for the real job?

I just realised that I haven't properly used my IDE editor in the past few months.
The agent writes, I read the diff and say yes or tell it where it went wrong. That's the job it has become now. Autocomplete, refactor menu, multi-cursor, and all the stuff I actually picked my editor for are now untouched.
But the part that actually gets me isn't the editor, it's that none of this exists the second I close my laptop. My whole dev world just shuts down. I can't approve a diff, can't glance at a build failing, nothing, unless the laptop is open in front of me. For a job that's basically become "read this and say yes or no," that felt like a dumb constraint to still have.
Yeah, I tried some things like SSH-ing in from my phone, hooking up Telegram for notifications but felt it's not optimized for proper SDE workflows.
If you found something that actually works for this, would love to hear.

I did my B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering with a specialisation in AI/ML.
But after 4 years of engineering, I can literally say that I have almost no engineering fundamentals.
I know the terms. I know what React is, Next.js, APIs, databases, backend, frontend, deployments etc.
But if you ask me to properly explain the fundamentals or code something from scratch without AI, I probably can’t.
What I somehow developed instead was the ability to have a vision.
I can imagine how a product should work, what the flow should be, what the user should see, how different parts should connect and how the whole system should come together.
Then AI came in.
I started vibe coding and building through AI, and suddenly I could actually turn those visions into real things.
The irony is that I am a computer science graduate who doesn’t properly know the fundamentals of React or Next.js, but I have shipped around 10 custom React websites.
And not just websites.
I have built web apps, AI automations, internal dashboards, ERPs, tools, complex databases, queries, workflows, custom designs and basically complete systems from front to back.
But if you ask me what exactly is happening inside the code at a deep level, I honestly don’t know.
I just know how to direct it.
For example, I can have 4 agents working on something.
One creates the PRD.
One audits the PRD.
One develops based on it.
Another audits the development.
With this kind of setup, I genuinely feel like I can build almost anything a business needs.
Sales dashboards, lead management systems, outreach systems, content systems, internal software, automation, ERPs, debugging tools, custom workflows etc.
I started with just trying to build a website and now this thing has become kind of uncontrollable.
I just keep building.
I also started a solo studio where I am trying to document and validate whatever I build, either for clients or for myself.
But now I have no idea where this actually goes.
I know I could probably find another client who needs a website.
I started by charging around 45k for a website and eventually took it to around 1.5L.
But even that has started feeling monotonous.
So how do I actually grow from here?
How much further can I take website projects?
Should I even reach out to another website client or am I just repeating the same thing?
Should I start reaching out to global clients?
Maybe bigger businesses, bigger projects and better pricing.
But then that creates another problem.
I don’t have sales skills.
I don’t really know positioning or outreach.
I am not great at presentation.
And that’s where the self doubt becomes pretty bad sometimes.
I look at myself and think:
I don’t know the technical fundamentals.
I don’t have sales skills.
I don’t have great presentation skills.
So what exactly have I done with my career?
But then there’s another side of me saying that I have actually shipped things.
Real things that businesses can use.
I can take an idea and somehow get the entire thing built end to end.
So I feel stuck between two completely different thoughts.
One side of me thinks I have found an incredibly powerful way of working and I should double down on it.
The other side thinks I have skipped too many important things and eventually all of this is going to catch up with me.
I have somehow proved to myself that even without knowing engineering fundamentals, I can ship real products using AI.
But what do I actually do with that ability?
What should I learn now?
What problems should I solve?
Should I pick a niche?
Should I continue building the studio?
Should I work with businesses and build AI systems for them?
Should I build products?
Should I target global clients?
Or should I stop for a while and actually go back and learn engineering fundamentals properly?
There are just too many things in my head.
I don’t really have a mentor either, so my default response whenever I’m confused is just to build something else.
And now I have projects, experiments, repos and ideas stacking up everywhere, but there is no clear direction or predictable revenue coming out of any of it.
That’s where I feel stuck.
I don’t want to spend the next few years becoming extremely good at building things nobody actually needs.
Normal development also already feels very monotonous to me.
What I genuinely enjoy is understanding a problem, imagining the entire system, figuring out how things should work, directing AI and agents, and somehow getting the complete thing shipped.
So for people here who have experience in engineering, startups, business, product, consulting or freelancing:
If you were in my position today, what would you do?
Would you keep selling websites and scale that?
Would you go after global clients?
Would you move towards higher value systems and automation for businesses?
Would you learn engineering fundamentals first?
Would you focus heavily on sales and communication?
And most importantly, what would you focus on for the next 2 to 3 years to turn this ability to build into an actual career and business?
I would genuinely appreciate advice from people who are further down this road than I am.

It was only a matter of time, but with the popularity of AI coding tools, someone on our team went over everyone's heads and "vibe coded" our entire platform by himself on a few weeks which barely functions but looks nice - then essentially implied, "hey, why keep all these guys when you can just give me a promotion and let me vibe code your full stack".

When our team confronted him about this, he said, "no offence, but you either get with the times, or get left behind".

Now our deadlines have shrunk drastically and we're taking on an impossible number of projects. Our company essentially has an unlimited token limit on a popular AI service and essentially has given us no choice but to either vibe code our projects from here on out to get them out the door, or find another job.

Just curious to see if other people have encountered similar shifts at their job and if things are turning out okay.

Hey everyone,

I’m fairly new to GitHub and trying to understand what the standard git workflow actually looks like in practice.

When building a project from scratch, what is considered the best practice for making commits?

• Should I just upload the entire project in one go when everything is finished?
• Should I force myself to make a commit at the end of every single day?
• Or should commits strictly track specific working features/milestones?

For those working in industry or reviewing student/junior portfolios, what does a clean, believable commit history look like, and what are the major red flags to avoid?

Any tips on commit frequency, structuring commit messages, and good Git hygiene would be massively appreciated!

I was solo dev maintaining 3 internal apps codebases for last 5 years and since 1.5yr heavy invested in agentic coding. Today company decided I am no longer needed because they have some senior web dev who will be taking over my projects.

I dont know what to do. I am 28yo and the current tech market and future prediction about AI seems like it not worth it to stay in tech.

Does anyone else feel that software engineers are becoming a human glue between the tickets and an AI agent now?

A recent incident made me think this way. I got a ticket assigned which said "search is broken sometimes." I knew why it happened because when a customer's org name has special chars like apostrophe, it was not handled properly. I debugged it live with support team a week back. None of that was in the ticket. So I typed it all out for the agent, waited for it to generate code, did a quick skim of the fix, made the agent commit and push and also made it to write a summary back into the ticket because the actual PR description was not descriptive.

Now the ticket says I fixed it but I didn't really except context feeding. Is this just me who feels like this or does more people feels like we are moving towards a paid context-transfer between tickets and agents nowadays ?

Hi everyone. I wanted to hear your thoughts on something that's bothering me during the past months.

I'm a junior dev and working for like 2 years.

For the past year my company started drastically using AI, to the point where it needs to be on the autocomplete mode all day because the only important thing is to ship the end product fastest way possible.

At the beginning I had really strong base and skills for a junior dev, and I was really happy that I'm improving and learning stuff while working my job.

1 year later - my base became shaky and I can't really point the number of things learned that should be learned during the last year.

On the other side - I've always liked to make side projects and try to ship them and make money off them. And the past year showed me how faster I can move with AI.

So here am I now - shaky bases, big dreams, using all of my free time to "build" something that will make money and not fully understanding how it works.

I wanted to cut off AI for my personal projects and learn, but I somehow can't resist to use it when I know that currently is the era of the "idea guy".

So the loop is: work gor the whole day with AI, then on side projects the same way - no new knowledge, because every minute spent not building something that goes with the speed of the market is one minute lost.

I even started being ashamed because even tho I work for that long I probably can't point out some core concepts because I haven't used them for that long...

Am I the only one?

Come on - hate, roast, whatever. Just tell me what do you think, cause I feel that many juniors feel this way cause they were not experienced enough to let ai do their work, yet influenced so fast because that's what the market wants and needs.

I have programming experience and basic to mid level SQL/database knowledge, but I feel like I need to strengthen my fundamentals and build more confidence for interviews.

I especially want to understand concepts well enough to relate them to the work I already do, rather than just memorizing interview answers.

For software developer roles, where should I start—DSA/LeetCode, programming concepts, SQL/databases, system design, or projects?

Would appreciate a practical roadmap or resources to start studying and preparing.

I'm doing a Msci Conputer science (software engineering) course and I have around a £1000 budget, what laptop should I get? I'm thinking of buying a Macbook Air m5

What is the difference between Software Engineering and Full-Stack Development?

I’m currently a React/Next.js developer, but I feel like web development is becoming increasingly saturated, with a lot of developers competing for relatively few positions.

I have plenty of time to learn new skills, and I want to move beyond being “just a Next.js developer.” I’m looking for a career path that is more future-proof, has stronger long-term career opportunities, and potentially offers better salaries.

I’m willing to invest a lot of time into learning and becoming genuinely good at whatever path I choose. I just need some guidance on what direction would be worth pursuing.

I’ve heard that Software Engineering is a broader and stronger career path than simply focusing on web development, but I’m not completely sure what that actually means in practice.

For someone who already has experience with React/Next.js, what would be the best direction to take?

this is kind of a 2 in 1 question but i just wanna ask everything at once, thanks for your time.

I’ve been working as a hybrid mobile app developer for 5+ years (I wouldn’t really call myself a software engineer), and lately I feel like I’m losing my direction a bit.

2020–2024 was honestly a great journey. I loved development, was constantly learning, and even participated in competitive programming almost daily. Back in 2024, I started preparing to move into backend development. I built a production-level backend app and was hoping to land a full-time backend role in 2025.

But somewhere along the way, I lost the focus. My backend preparation basically stopped. The other day, I suddenly realized I couldn’t even remember how bubble sort works. That honestly scared me more than it probably should have.

For some context, I’m from a developing country and currently work remotely. This is my only job now. But even in 2024, I was juggling a full-time job, a part-time job, and at least one client project. For the last year, I’ve basically done nothing besides my current job.

And I think AI has made this feeling much worse.

I used to see money as a byproduct of my passion for coding. Now I’m struggling to remember the last time I felt genuinely excited about building something meaningful. So much of my daily work is becoming “ask AI, review the output, fix things, move on.”

I’m also getting increasingly worried about the future. Should I continue investing in software development and adapt to the AI era, or should I consider moving toward something adjacent like IoT, data engineering/science, etc.?

Financially, this uncertainty feels much more threatening than it used to.

So I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have been in a similar situation. What would you do if you were in my position?

Any advice, roadmap, or even just your thoughts on where software careers are heading would be greatly appreciated.

This is maybe a bit of a different post than the rest concerning AI/LLM usage, but I think this is important to get different perspectives, as things are not black or white in my eyes.

For context I am employed at a very big consulting firm working on a very big client. Both companies express interest in AI, with the client being very careful around AI, as we work a lot with personal data, so data security and data privacy compliance is strictly necessary.

Starting last year, we were given access to Github Copilot after many considerations by the leadership. Our CIO is very pro-AI, generally a cool person who likes to push tech, so he was the pushing force behind adopting LLMs to improve our productivity. A few months later we were switched to Claude Code, presumably because most of the company used their models most frequently. It has now been almost a year and things are... interesting.

What no one tells decision-makers is that while LLMs increase productivity on specific tasks, they bring with themselves a boatload of other efforts. Since they require context to operate, and we were lacking such due to the structure of our department, we needed to introduce a better, structured documentation process, enforce more specific coding guidelines and overall improve the way we are handling tickets. All of this takes a lot of time and now months in we are still improving.

This has been very good for the team, as where before we were lacking documentation, now we are backfilling the holes. Where before best practices were ignored, now they are enforced. Documentation is auto-written, but the rules are statically enforced (as it should be).

We have a clearly defined (imo) division between what the AI does and what we are supposed to do. You can't truly depend on system prompts for every task, as this was a) burning tokens b) prone to context errors.

There is the negative side that now it seems we are taking a lot more in terms of ticket load. Where before some estimation was a week is now a couple of days at most, meaning big projects are not being spaced out as much. Pre-LLMs what was 1-2 big projects per quarter is now what it feels like 4-6 projects per quarter. This includes major things like refactoring legacy code, changing and adding business processes, etc. We are "saving" people hours by automating a lot more things, but the 40h we spend each weeks feel like a lot more compared to before.

Another major effort has been to review the LLM code, even with code-review bots, PMD, business rules, coding guidelines and all of that, with the repo we have, more context is needed. While this can be improved, better documented and all of that can be tasked to Claude subagents to be done, architecturally we are dealing with a very complex structure, so still a human has to take their time to verify whether what Claude thinks is the workflow is the actual workflow. We as developers now need to have even more business context in general, as now our tickets are spanning over multiple project domains compared to before.

The increase in handled tickets also leads somehow to even more tickets and most of us have their capacities exhausted even with using code assistants. Not to mention that I am now positively under the impression that AI prompting is an actual skill as i've seen how different outputs are when asked in the "correct" way. Understanding how LLMs work and how statistics work does help produce good results and companies who only focus on "vibecoding everything" with no regard of this are going to have fun times ahead. AI prompting != vibecoding and debating for using AI feels like the microservices vs monoliths or scrum vs waterfall debates. In the end of the day, AI is a tool, tools can be misused, even multitools are not suited for each job, and people who don't understand that will make the wrong choice more often than not. So if anyone at the top pushes for total AI use, i think it is important for staff to push back and lead a discussion rather than complete discourse. That being said, sometimes you argue with a wall, so in that case use AI smartly and push for AI usage guidelines.

All of this is not to say I am complaining, in fact i am okay with our approach where we don't entirely rely on vibecoding to achieve results. It is just that the nature of the problems we are handling has shifted. Things that were not considered important some time ago now prove to be a central part in adopting LLMs, even if some day we decide to go back, i recon we are just going to have to drop efficiency to compromise for keeping up with documentation and correctness.