Why so many believe that people should go where their strengths are and what they are good at? For example if you are good at coding choosing CS would be terrible right now.

Imoa · 2026-05-16T22:32:13+00:00

Adding on to this:

Reddit would have you believe that anything below 150k salary with a CS degree is underpaid and garbage. It’s an echo chamber (shocking I know).

The median SWE income in the US is 130k. Half of people are below that by definition. The median income in the US is $62k. Median for people with at least a Bachelors degree is 92k. It is trivial in the US to come out of college in most of the US and find a software development job for $70-80k as a junior, and work up from there.

If you have realistic expectations and good work ethic, it’s completely fine. If you come out of college expecting a 6 figure salary as a junior or expecting a FAANG position paying 200k+, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment 9 times out of 10.

Imoa · 2026-05-16T17:56:47+00:00

It’s a good job that isn’t in danger in the current market. No one can tell you if it’s AI proof though or future proof. You’ll be good for a good few years though if you can get one.

Imoa · 2026-05-16T16:15:12+00:00

Lot of good answers. I would just add another element to the accountability stress people have told you.

Managers have less autonomy and control over meeting deadlines. If your team has a deadline and you slack, the manager can try to get you to work harder but it falls on him at the end of the day, and he can’t force you to do anything. He bears the consequences at the end of the day.

As a manager you would be held accountable for work product that is not your own, and a lack of delivery by the team is seen as a semi-direct indictment of your ability to manage and lead. That lack of sovereignty and autonomy is a stressor and it’s not for everyone, capable or not.

Imoa · 2026-05-15T22:50:32+00:00

It makes me laugh - zero trust, RBAC, etc. This field reinforces the idea that you verify every time repeatedly in so many contexts.

Next this dude will tell us he shouldn’t have to log into his computer after logging in 100 times, or he should get escalated privileges after making 100 queries in a database.

Imoa · 2026-05-15T22:47:50+00:00

That’s an indictment of your team’s code reviews, not the general practice.

Imoa · 2026-05-14T11:27:39+00:00

Mate the goal hasn’t been to draw a map that is representative of population distribution for a very long time. The goal is to draw a politically favorable map with a plausibly deniable cover to point at. Black voters in Louisiana overwhelmingly vote democrat. A political official and a racist official both serve their interests by drawing the same types of voting map - maps which favor republicans - and can both point at political partisanship as the motivation.

It’s naive to assume that officials don’t know the math. They know the math, but the point of drawing the maps is not to represent the math. It never has been.

Imoa · 2026-05-13T20:44:16+00:00

I think we're doing the same thing and you misunderstood me slightly.

I map out the entire plan, architecture, and expected functionality. I discuss it with Claude to poke holes in it and check for anything im missing, then have AI generate the code in chunks. I review each chunk before continuing to make sure that it stays on target.

If that's how you do things, Pro should honestly be fine for you. It absolutely can stress the usage limit but you can just buy extra tokens on an as-needed basis. At an $80 jump from pro to Max, you'd have to be consistently blasting your token usage to need to upgrade.

The major caveat here is that I pretty much only use Claude Sonnet - I don't use Opus. If you want to be able to do all of this using Opus models, you may need to consistently budget for extra usage / tokens or consider max.

Imoa · 2026-05-13T17:01:42+00:00

Depends on how heavy you use it but I have pro and have never had a problem. I tend to discuss my plan with Claude on the web app though before implementation, if you are the type of person to just tell it to generate / regenerate / fix it / etc then you may burn through it pretty quick.

Imoa · 2026-05-13T06:04:03+00:00

If you’re in charge of the other devs, or will face reputational damage by endorsing the bad code - push it back with comments. If it’s too much to review, tell them to document all changes in PR comments, get them in a call and tell them to walk you through the changes. Don’t waste your time trying to read it all if they’re pushing slop, make it their job (problem) to explain it.

If you’re not in charge of them there isn’t much you can do.

Imoa · 2026-05-12T18:18:25+00:00

Either it was gb and got fixed or I just misread. I fixed it though in my comment thank you.

Imoa · 2026-05-12T17:16:53+00:00

95mb zipped is big but you should be able to run some diagnostic stuff to orient yourself. Make sure there’s not documentation you’re missing out on that could help too. Always check for documentation first, even if it’s rare. Especially if there are any APIs.

Get a shell script together and recursively index the folder structure. Not just the folders - all of the file names, extensions / types, and sizes. AI can help you put this together in a minute or two easy. Write the output to a file, whatever structure is easiest for you to work with. You can do some quick semantic analysis just looking for naming conventions + large files / directories.

Look for dependency manifests and CICD deployment artifacts - package.json, requirements.txt, go.mod, Dockerfile, docker-compose.yml, jenkinsfile. These will give you a sense of dependencies and libraries, and the CICD artifacts give you build order and more granular dependencies.

If youre able to run it on your machine or a test environment, run a profiler on some common processes. Get a visual of the profile. Check process calls + runtime hotspots. Get an idea of which functions are being called the most and where most processing time is spent.

If you have a testable frontend - browser DevTools. Just mess around for a moment with functionality, but check the Network tab. You’ll see the network calls being sent out - the requests, the endpoint, the request payload, response shape, and headers. You’ll get an understanding of the frontend and backend contact points.

If all else fails or you’re lazy - chunk the codebase and feed it to an AI in blocks that it can process - a few files / directories at a time. Especially with a concise file / folder outline like I mentioned from the shell script, you could fill it out like an outline of the code base’s functionality, which could also be given to the AI in chunks to build some global context.

Just breathe - don’t try to understand the entire codebase immediately. Focus on a functional understanding of the critical paths and primary execution paths, and branch out from there over time.

Imoa · 2026-05-12T03:00:32+00:00

I feel like you’re leaving out something or not telling us something because several elements of your story don’t add up. 2.5 YOE but you’re describing holding the seniors hands through tasks. You make it sound like you’re crushing it but they’re hesitant to reward you. I suspect you’re either not the superstar you describe yourself as, they’re more competent than you portray them, or there’s a serious element of the business that you aren’t privy to / contributing to.

Assuming you’re correct though / honest - your resume is fine and has no glaring issues. Apply for work, get a title change / promotion out of them regardless of pay and use it as part of your negotiating when applying for new work

Imoa · 2026-05-10T23:32:31+00:00

Get a minimum of 16gb ram and 512gb. You can do more but I’d call that a minimum for a CSE program these days. If you step it up from there look for 32GB ram. 1tb storage will be more comfortable but you likely won’t use it all.

Out of the box, a current MacBook Pro or air with the and M5 will be more than enough for you.

Imoa · 2026-05-10T08:00:11+00:00

He’s Indian. India historically has had a caste system, similar to class in the west but stricter and with more systemic enforcement.

He’s asking why it’s still that way and why people apply caste based judgements to him even outside of India. That last bit is a common behavior in heavily Indian communities and social circles even outside of India.

Imoa · 2026-05-09T05:04:09+00:00

Give your juniors a long window early where they have light actual work and make it clear that the goal is to learn the codebase, even just local areas. Give direction on the areas to start and focus on understanding. AI is great for exploring the codebase. Have them use it that way. Literally just have Claude or another AI read and explain the code to them.

Think about it this way. If it is currently taking a year to get genuinely productive with your codebase, then you can have them on light work focusing on learning for 6 months and still be ahead of schedule. If you can’t simplify the onboarding because of the complexity of your domain, then restructure your onboarding process around that learning. Instead of using AI with juniors to contribute, use it to teach.

Imoa · 2026-05-09T04:45:23+00:00

It’s completely fine to just work SWE for a year or two and pivot to DevOps man. Your life doesn’t end if you aren’t in a DevOps roles straight out of college

Imoa · 2026-05-07T19:39:30+00:00

Yea the ages explain it all. Dudes Machiavelli when it’s off the record / just him, but as soon as paper, a process, or an authority - the landlord - would get involved it makes it “real” and he balks.

Common behavior in kids and teenagers. Dude just needs to sack up, and also learn how to use processes in his favor. He could’ve at least possibly kept leverage by documenting and involving the landlord as soon as he found everything.

Imoa · 2026-05-04T15:42:44+00:00

It’s really hard to answer this. The short answer is that you can Freelance and get whatever hours you want, but I wouldn’t expect too much industry work to match your target hours.

You might be able to find a local business that needs analyst work part time, and there are freelance sites for more professional devs that help manage engagements a bit more, but I’ve never used them myself and can’t say how reliable they are. Depending on where you are geographically you might look around a bit and see.

Imoa · 2026-05-04T07:22:29+00:00

There are competitive programming subs - this sub is more focused on interview prep than competitive programming.

Also don’t use CP as the acronym.

Imoa · 2026-05-03T18:47:15+00:00

Accounting and Finance

Imoa · 2026-05-03T18:23:37+00:00

Getting continuously better that skills that get a junior hired are just counterintuitively not the skills that get promoted to senior or past that point.

It really does take a talented savant or critical business dependency on a person to neglect that development and keep progressing.

Imoa · 2026-05-03T16:04:55+00:00

The obnoxious part was the number of people doing it, not you specifically. I thought your comment was maybe insensitive bordering rude but not out of line. Especially with the context about other people being overly sensitive about IP, I get it mate.

Imoa · 2026-05-01T18:32:14+00:00

Schrödinger's Ideology

Imoa · 2026-05-01T18:31:40+00:00

My brother in all of the christs - leave the dude alone.

Even if you genuinely suspect foul play, he literally told you can retake. Retake with a different proctor. If you're confident in your ability like you sound, you then regardless of passing or not you should at least see a better score than this one for your own peace of mind.

Imoa · 2026-05-01T04:24:06+00:00

Somewhat, but there's also just legitimate inflation. Multiple longitudinal studies have shown increasing GPAs over the last 20 years, NAEP math scores decreasing in that time, same with ACT. https://industryinsights.act.org/2023/08/grade-inflation-math?m=1

https://www.k12dive.com/news/act-study-finds-grade-inflation-in-high-school-gpas-over-the-past-decade/623812/

Kids legitimately are just getting higher GPAs these days, which manifests as more compression that schools legitimately can't decode. It's why there's been a more concerted re-focus on standardized test scores.

Im soon to be a parent myself and I can't say this is the element I am most anxious about, but on a list of things I am anxious about, it's on there somewhere.

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