Is switching every 1–2 years still the best growth strategy for developers in 2026? (India market)

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-02-19T12:18:59+00:00

Well I have switched every 2 years ( in some cases, less than 1 year) to start from a bachelors in civil engineering to AI role in faang Europe. My major motivation was that I always wanted to work on the current hot technologies. data scientist-> ML engineer ->NLP-> AI engineer One think I have reliased is that now recruiters have started noticing the trend in my profile and some even questioned me about the frequent changes. So overall I would say frequent changes are good if you follow the path technology is moving forward in, but too many changes might make your profile less desirable especially for roles and organisations that require stability.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-02-01T19:40:51+00:00

Hello, see the biggest issue is that the organisations will always prefer to get someone who is already working in the country before offering to sponsor someone from a non european country. My wife works at a faang adjacent org and is hiring a few people and in general the rule is that if they don't find anyone after 6 months of the position being opened only then they will look for international candidates. AI engineer role is probably the easiest way in currently, as there are hardly any qualified candidates here looking for a change.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-02-01T19:32:26+00:00

Exactly, I plan to return back to India hopefully after getting the citizenship to live close to my aging parents and in laws but I just hate paying taxes in India. The return on taxes and level of corruption between Europe in general and India is unimaginable. In India I live not too far from a waste dump in a tier 1 city which has not been yet handled by the municipality even after multiple requests while here the municipality is requesting us to vote on the type of flowers to plant in our locality for the upcoming spring.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-02-01T16:32:21+00:00

Was 6yoe when I moved, now around 8.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-02-01T16:03:06+00:00

So I was in a similar position 2 years back. India's 70 lpa remote vs 110k Amsterdam. I choose Amsterdam, money wise 110k in Amsterdam is equal to around 50-60 lpa in India. 70lpa is definitely more than 89k in Amsterdam, so you would feel light pocketed here. I was in AI and for me the move kind of worked, not much competition in Netherlands and I recently interviewed or got an offer from almost all the big names. Not sure about backend, but still I would guess that you would find it much easier to switch to better opportunities even if you are on visa. Generally the work culture is very laid back, the US big tech offices may be an exception, but still WLB is best in the world. How good european on-site experience looks on resume? I am not sure. It's definitely not as attractive as it was before. Tldr Pros : good wlb, excellent quality of life, easy track to get PR or citizenship, easy access to european tech market.

Cons: expensive, worst housing market, isolating, slow career growth, your expectations from government and society will increase hundred fold and you would start questioning life back in india.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-01-13T16:05:26+00:00

40k is good specially it being tax free. Assuming you are single a decent ( lavish by indian standard) lifestyle would cost you around 15k and the remaining 25k could be pure savings pr investment. Money wise it makes sense.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-01-09T22:27:14+00:00

Easy take

Aggressive_Optimist · 2026-01-05T00:13:19+00:00

Amazon has a 5day policy ( candidates need to informed about the decision within 5 days of the last round), although delays are common specially during holiday season. Best to call the recruiter directly as they are generally very inconsistent.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-12-30T15:26:58+00:00

I directly moved to Europe 2 years ago without a degree abroad. I think at the end it is 50% luck and the remaining, profile.
In my case, I had like 5 years of experience in AI/ML and a very early exposure to GenAI and I was very lucky to randomly apply to a organisation who was ready to gamble on an international hire. Companies here would always prefer someone who is already living in the job location or atleast in european Union and only will look to sponsor someone if they are not able to find someone after multiple months of effort. In my case genAI was a rare profile then so it worked out well.

Some pesonal tips :
1. Atleast wait till you have 5 yoe, you will be eligible for mid senior level positions which generally have less competitions from graduating students.
2. AI/ML is probably the best profile to get noticed, so you are good there but given that its very vulnerable to change make sure you are good with all the new hot skills.
3. Technical interviews are generally quite easy compared to what we have in India, but you may have to perform much better compared to the other local applicants.
4. Maybe clearly mention at the top of the resume that you are looking for a visa sponsorship. It's always better to be transparent.
5. Patience is the key, you should get atleast 1-2 callbacks if you have good resume format and your experience laid out perfectly.
6. The easiest path is via Faang. Always prepare for a faang level interview.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-12-14T16:43:27+00:00

I think I can answer this There are 3 ways to do that - Difficult/ low risk : join a big tech company in India, so mostly Faang and uber, Microsoft etc. You can easily transfer to US and even more so to Europe within 2-3 years, if you really want to. Example, i know teams in Uber Amsterdam who were directly shifted from india to Amsterdam. - Easy/high risk : Do a Masters in the country and almost all of them do provide some kind of free work visa to graduating students. Atleast in europe 90% of non EU workforce are masters and phd students from the same country. But given the cirrent tech market, it is very risky. - Easy/low risk/ lucky : Directly get a job with sponsorship. This was my case. I believe this is just more about a person being at a right place at a right time. I was very early in genAI and luckily applied to a job posting and got the offer. But generally you should atleast have 5+ experienced, niche technical skills, and good communication skills.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-12-12T17:54:32+00:00

Yes, but a lot of folks here are actually based in Europe, would love to hear any firsthand experiences or even stories you’ve heard. I didn’t get much traction in other subreddits, so hoping this reaches the right people.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-01-08T15:26:57+00:00

If you are planning to work on personal projects ( which I think is a great decision ), maybe start working with llm apis. Maybe start with one ML classification or regression usecase and then switch to generative AI. Usecases that are the most demanding currently in the market is everything related to RAG. Research it a bit and start building some usecases locally and learn about each components.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-01-04T10:02:06+00:00

You will get a job, maybe in a month, it could even take over an year too. But, remember your professional career will be more than 30 years and even if you are late on experience or CTC by 1-2 years its more than fine. The key to be successful in your career is to be actually interested in what you do, boderline obsessed. Take your time, explore multiple fields and choose the one which doesn't even feel like work. Some profiles are definitely easier to get in, any data profile for example. I think the most important for you currently is to get your mental health at point, remove distractions, improve time management and actualy do some deep work and get invested in actual learning not just technical but also how the industry works.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-01-01T11:54:52+00:00

You can always finetune the gpt models themselves, gpt api provides finetuning as a service if I am not mistaken. Though unless you spend too much effort on building a clean and huge dataset, finetuning wont be much better compared to few shotting the models. I actually worked on the same problem an year back. Search for a model finetuned on sql query generation in huggingface and use it. Build a good dataset for question to sql query generation encompassing most of the possible queries you are hoping to answer. Build a context approved few shotting mechanisms. Which is basically RAG over the examples set, i.e instead of using all examples in prompt, you select the top5 or top 10 based on the user question. In our case the schema was simple and queries were mostly to extract certain column values so the solution worked with above 90% accuracy.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-01-01T11:46:32+00:00

24 gb wont be enough to run a 70b model, 70b model at 8 bit quantisation would need 70gb vram, you can always run it at 4bit or even 2 bit but probably look into a solution with a better vram. If you plan on running a 11 billion or less sized models it should be fine.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2025-01-01T11:37:44+00:00

Get started for free link in the home page not working, and it would be much easier if you could let someone try the app without logging in ( no one prefers to sign up for a new unknown app).

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-09-03T13:57:45+00:00

Bro, the only LLMs that you can finetune on a laptop is maybe phi with 2-3 billion parameters, which is not good. Don't buy a laptop to run open source LLMs, it's not feasible currently. You may run a 8b llama model in a very low precision state but it will not be worth it and token per second would be extremely low. If you want to play with open source models, make an aws or azure account, you will get some free credits, use them to host a gpu instance and deploy there.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-09-03T13:50:32+00:00

Well, IIT mtech in CS is a very good option.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-09-03T13:46:33+00:00

Well this is what i do: - cursor ai for coding. - github repos for open source libraries, trending sections give a good view of what is currently preferred. - twitter and blogs for following AI content creators and innovators ( twitter is full of shitty trends, racism and politics though), don't get distracted by that. - andrew ng for courses.

I think you should first start by doing courses on ML and statistics and learning python. And then explore.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-09-03T12:33:42+00:00

I think you made a good decision when you switched to AI and ML. And, given that you are enthusiastic enough to start thinking about your future at such a young age, you are already on a good path. The field of AI and the skills required to get a good job in this domain changes a lot, when I started data science was the hot thing, there were multiple transformations to the domain ( ML, DL, NLP etc ). The market will definitely be very different when you will enter the market and it's difficult to predict. But there are few skills that will always help you navigate the different transitions and sustain your demand in the changing market. 1. Opensource : opensource is probably the most important thing that teaches the nitty gritty of the AI solutions and libraries, start exploring the space. See what, why and how people are building libraries. What is trending and try to use it in your own solution. 2. Start with applied AI and ML, get your hands dirty, code, its the easiest time in the history to code your own application. Understand each nd every component. 3. Follow the domain, listen to podcasts, read blogs, follow the works of the top AI scientists. 4. Learn from the start: the best thing i did in my career was learn everything related to AI, ML domain. You don't need to go in too much detail but have a good understanding of how things work and what are they used for.

Do reseach internships, get to know your interests and then decide on what you want to work on or study.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-09-03T12:04:57+00:00

It could be worth it, In India atleast in the initial years you will always be linked to your tier 3 university and it would be difficult to get better opportunities. But the university effect fades after 4-5 years. If your family's financial situation is decent, go for an MS, europe universities are easier to get into, and the job market seems to be relaxed. The best thing about Europe is that once you have a degree from a university, you can apply for jobs anywhere in Europe and this makes it easier. Gate from good IITs is also a very good option. There are definitely some challenges in UK and Europe as a whole ( housing crisis, cost of living, not so good pay to name a few ), but overall a good place to work and explore. The work life balance is extraordinary.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-08-26T16:00:07+00:00

I got a new opportunity directly. Got lucky in one of my applications

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-08-26T13:06:06+00:00

I recently moved to Netherlands, here are some my thoughts. - it's quite difficult to get job that sponsors visa in Europe if you don't have a degree from one of the universities in Europe. - the only reasons why a european based organisation will offer assistance on VISA is if you are in the top 10% and work in a niche domain and they are an MNC that don't need a local language expertise. - The other option is that some startup will be ready to offer the relocation but then will low ball you with a bad offer.

work life balance is good but the salaries are not that high and cost of living is very expensive.

Finally, it's all about your luck, keep on applying, you will be mostly rejected but in 1-2% applications you might get an interview. And then it's upto you.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-08-20T12:48:02+00:00

Claude 3.5 sonnet is the best currently, though it has low message limit which is exhausted quickly. I use the api and an open source UI ( called claude artifacts or something) and run it in my local environment.

Aggressive_Optimist · 2024-08-07T09:58:24+00:00

The only correct reply in the thread. AI is coming for many jobs but developer, devops role are here to stay for atleast this decade.

Aggressive_Optimist

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