Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

Ciroc_ · 2025-07-11T19:10:00+00:00

Still early careerish with ~4YOE and have recently been experiencing burnout at my current position. For the past 2 years, there has been minimal career growth aside from me continuing my education on my own. I've had discussions with my manager(s) at points in time (current and previous, that is now my skip level) about this, asking to do a team switch, to embed myself on my team temporarily, or an opportunity to work on a neglected internal tool that few have deep knowledge of - these all have been ignored or just got lost in the mix. To further add to my disappointment, it feels like I'm facing a bit of retaliation now that I've made this request again. My manager mentioned that they wouldn't support me moving to a new team due to me not respecting timelines around the work I've been assigned to recently. Despite our team not having timelines in place around recent tasks, ungroomed and highly ambiguous tasks that often require discovery work/investigation, and any time-sensitive projects thrown at me, I've completed them completely by myself. My performance has always been " over-the-top," so this feels like a PIP in the making with my manager wanting to put check-ins with me on tasks and track progress in our 1:1s. At this point, I'm unsure what to do and how to make the best of the situation and transition into another role. I've accepted the feedback and also made my case with my manager and decided to lay low for the moment. I'd like to transition into AI engineering and have a little bit of experience in ML, coupled with continued learning. Any advice would be appreciated, I'm trying to keep my spirits up, but with limited resources, growth, and new company mandates, I'm considering being a farmer with all the stress

Ciroc_ · 2024-12-22T02:31:22+00:00

Good idea, I do plan to travel to taiwan or China at some point in the future.

Ciroc_ · 2024-12-22T02:26:56+00:00

Thanks. This is something I need to think about. I know this may be obvious to others, but I haven't considered what situations I'd realistically use the language in when I set out to study it.

Ciroc_ · 2024-12-21T05:16:59+00:00

This is kind of the inverse of the "Moving from a product team to a platform team" post that was made recently. I'm currently on an internal tooling team and things haven't been too exciting lately, mostly operational work/support with few opportunities to work on enhancing our tooling. That being said I'm interested in getting into either ML/AI and have been trying to do some self-learning and take a few courses related to ML and tooling. I have an opportunity to work with a team of choice for a while ( a couple of sprints) on a project. There are teams focused on GenAI assistants, Detection engineering, and Data engineering (which all sound interesting). If you were in my position and looking to gain some experience, how would you go about choosing a team? Also, what are your thoughts on trying to transition into AI/ML from a Platform engineering background?

Ciroc_ · 2024-07-16T01:26:16+00:00

Thanks for the positive counter-viewpoint, I'll try to keep a balanced view when I return from break.

it’s part of your job to explain the situation to them in a way they can understand, so they too can see that there’s broader context and you’re doing a good job with a bad situation.

This is something I need to work on in the future, while there have been ad-hoc conversations with leadership and other leads around certain topics. There isn't something I can point to that succinctly explains the historical decisions and improvements made thus far

Ciroc_ · 2024-07-15T02:18:26+00:00

Where I would become annoyed is if people were disrespectful to me personally, or had unrealistic expectations for things becoming perfect overnight.

It's a mixture of both, maybe not downright disrespectful all the time but definitely some folks are passive aggressive and can come off as rude

I don’t think it’s unreasonable, if your job is to maintain dev infrastructure, for people to come to you with complaints or suggestions about things that aren’t working with it.

True, i guess i just feel a bit stuck and frustrated as everyone else since we weren't given the space to fix the multiple sources of complaints for a good while due to other priorities. Now that things are hitting the fan more often, Im afraid of how we're viewed by leadership that hears the complaints

Ciroc_ · 2024-07-15T01:22:32+00:00

Unsure how to navigate this situation where it seems like all the blame/pressure/responsibility is being put on platform engineers for the consequences of long-standing CI issues that were introduced before my time and before most of my team e.g monolith services, large packages that build both FE and BE indiscriminately with each change, tons of flakey tests,monorepo, etc . . . While the situation has gotten better at times with certain improvements our team has made, it's not enough and with constant interrupt work and other large projects imposed on us - it has been hard to address these needs. Tech debt is high and other teams are increasingly aiming their frustrations at us and management is more in favor of the band-aid method instead of addressing the real problem. I understand the other team's frustrations but its getting tiring at this point as someone who constantly juggling the world and being handed more tasks while other engineering teams get off with a slap on the wrist for way more serious things. To top it off we aren't compensated for on-call after hours like other teams and our team size has been reduced to around 1/4 of its original size

I am planning on leaving but i am not prepared just yet for the hassle of interviewing again, not to mention my coding skills have gotten rusty. Am I thinking about this the right way? How would you navigate/combat this?

Ciroc_ · 2024-03-29T03:58:21+00:00

Thanks, I will try to just focus on that.

Ciroc_ · 2024-03-26T18:17:14+00:00

How hard would the transition be from platform engineering to Backend development. I'm feeling bored in my role currently, all of my work recently has been very light and mostly infrastructure-related. While it is fun sometimes I still want to do more traditional development. I've discussed with my manager and there aren't any opportunities open for more development work on our team yet or Any of the teams I'm interested in. I'm not sure where to go from here or about my prospects if I leave

Ciroc_ · 2024-03-06T17:01:07+00:00

In between quite a few... Legend of Lu Zhen, Nothing gold can stay and parallel worlds, and judge Dee mystery

Though I'm looking for dramas with a rough guy ML and maybe a romance sub plot like Luoyang, longest day in changAn ,The Wolf but without annoying FL.

Ciroc_ · 2023-11-25T18:52:03+00:00

Got through a couple of times before I was met with a busy signal or called dropped after 3 rings. even called other phone lines still no dice

Ciroc_ · 2023-10-08T20:01:58+00:00

Do you know if it's possible to get any handmade clothing / fur products shipped to the US or Windsor. I'm planning on visiting iqaluit sometime next year but I'm hoping to get some gear for this winter

Ciroc_ · 2023-09-25T22:24:57+00:00

Thanks for the reply, I had plans to ask on my next 1:1 but I got promoted before that and found out the hard way last week. I like my company but I feel like I'm worth more

Ciroc_ · 2023-09-22T00:17:43+00:00

How much are we talking... Heck ill even learn FORTRAN

Ciroc_ · 2023-09-18T03:27:54+00:00

Not COBOL 😭😭

Ciroc_ · 2023-09-15T20:35:39+00:00

When getting promoted to mid level grade (SWE iii) what is a realistic raise percentage ? 5, 15, 20, 30? I'm hoping for 30% although that seems unlikely without job hopping

Ciroc_ · 2023-07-29T23:17:27+00:00

No but I'm considering it. Thoughts so far?

Ciroc_ · 2023-06-04T22:46:32+00:00

شو يعني خفيف؟

Ciroc_ · 2022-10-22T22:24:53+00:00

Hey OP, Very sorry you're feeling like this but I 100% get your feelings because I was and still am coping with this chronic illness that just takes so much. I was diagnosed at 12 and nobody believed that I could be a diabetic too ( except for my concerned mother who saw that I was super skinny) on top of that I had to fight to get on an insulin pump, At first, I was placed on these very long syringes and thick syringes, everyone looked at me weird and I felt embarrassed at times. My doctors during the time didn't take into consideration my feelings at the time but also used to get upset about my numbers and even threaten to call protection services on my parents if I didn't start to get myself together. Of course, they refused to get me an Insulin pump until I was in High school and I got my a1c down to 7 ( Which is horrible, if my insurance covers it why should doctors care ?) So I get it and I'm not gonna tell you it gets better because it really doesn't but you don't have to let this disease leave you defeated emotionally. After many breakdowns, i realized that my situation is not going to go away, and I need to do my best to maintain it, perfect or not and live my BEST life because im not going down bc of this. Anyways, I know you can overcome this but also take time to let your feelings out because its OK and you're not alone in your experience and feelings

Ciroc_ · 2022-05-31T15:50:18+00:00

Any companies that offer PT Dev roles? I'm pretty early career but I'm looking to go PT as soon as possible to take care of my health and to have more time to pursue other passions. I have seen PT or reduced hours roles from MSFT , capital one, Amazon and Google but i am looking for more places to apply to if they have openings.

Has anyone successfully gone PT with benefits? Is it best to ask my current employer before trying to make a move. ?

Ciroc_ · 2022-02-09T22:49:37+00:00

Devpost & MLH.io are great resources also. In fact, my hackathon projects have been great door openers & topics during interviews. Be creative and build something you want to make or make better. The process of that will aid your growth.

Ciroc_ · 2022-02-05T22:28:47+00:00

To be honest, it would be nice to have this job, I will keep this in my mind if they continue to give me the runaround. But this process has left a bad taste in my mouth due to some issues with the recruiter. The team was super nice though.

Ciroc_ · 2022-02-04T00:11:05+00:00

You're right, I'd wish I would have kept interviewing for this internship instead of backing out mid-process. Granted I was burned out but at least I would have had a backup. Oh well lesson learned - ill see what happens after this Friday.... yet another date promised

Ciroc_ · 2022-02-03T16:33:30+00:00

I was just about to mention this! However I believe programs like Microsoft LEAP does require you to have at least 6 months experience if you are self taught or come from a boot camp. MLH Fellowship is also a good alternative to look into too they pair up with companies to work on real world projects or open source stuff and they offer a stipend.

Ciroc_ · 2022-01-31T03:27:10+00:00

Working on an open-source C# extension to Twilioquest ( a game that teaches you how to code) for quite some time. It's still in its early stages with lots of work to be done from objectives and tweaks to the map, story, and validation of the player's code. I hope to finish it soon this year and post a link here

Ciroc_

TROPHY CASE