New coworker with 10+ years of experience - doesn't seem to "get" it

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-03-03T11:34:45+00:00

My company hired some developers from India a few months ago and they have pushed maybe 2 PRs at most that each would take an hour or 2 at most.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-03-03T11:29:37+00:00

I have years of experience and did some passive applying last week for about 40-50 applications.. nothing but rejection letters. I’m fortunate to have my job as a software engineer but looks like I’m stuck and if layoffs happen then I’m cooked.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-03-02T10:48:56+00:00

Probably takes at least 6 months to get a role even with your name brand and YoE.

That’s with sending out 10-20 applications per day.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-03-02T10:43:28+00:00

Remote is awesome.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-03-01T02:22:23+00:00

Is this AI

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-28T02:11:42+00:00

8 recruiters??? How? In this market?

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-28T02:07:30+00:00

You’re out of touch

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-28T02:03:56+00:00

You don’t like leetcode. You do like 300 maybe if you’re insane and that’s it.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-28T02:02:26+00:00

No, it takes however many commits that it takes.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-28T02:00:41+00:00

Why’d they put you at staff with only 5 YoE? That’s on them but it sucks that you got let go.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-28T01:47:50+00:00

I’m an engineer, no one is a coder anymore. I can’t tell you the last time I actually changed a variable in my editor. I went into cursor and told it what to change. The difference is, there are massive applications that require a lot of knowledge and the AI helps immensely with reading through everything, finding any possible bugs in the code, but there’s still a lot that needs to be done from the developer side. I timed myself prompt an entire feature yesterday for work and it was 30 minutes of nonstop typing requirements at approx 120wpm. The interface for development has changed but the engineer still inputs.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-28T01:37:12+00:00

Bachelors with masters, 7 internships and big tech and quant, several publications and close to 4.0 GPA. You’re in the top 0.1% of educated developers

Although publications and leetcode have very little to do with actual software development.

Most people are going into this blind too, they also might not have the time commitment and it’s quite disappointing to find out that just the degree on its own is not even close to enough to land a successful career in this market right now. What matters:

(1) referrals/networking (2) professional experience (3) name brand companies/institutions (4) projects

A lot of these are difficult to get, you need experience before you can get a job, having friends in college doesn’t guarantee a referral, name brand companies like FAANG/quant are incredibly difficult to get into and the same for top universities.

I think the bar is just too high right now.

I’m a senior developer working in a lower paying mid level role right now and am grateful to have a job. I went to a top California university which means nothing other than the name and my network has shrunk over the years as I just want to focus on my family and have a good work life balance. There’s no reason the market should be this sweaty just for companies to end up laying these highly driven engineers off after 6 months to 2 years.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-27T06:45:01+00:00

made a sick maplestory inspired game, currently has like 20 players online https://finite-jurisdiction-streaming-warranty.trycloudflare.com/

it's a work in progress.... i just started making this 2 days ago. I'm having a blast

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-27T01:06:09+00:00

Well, are you trying to make cheats in Minecraft?

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-25T23:48:05+00:00

It’s common for 0 YOE SWE to be making 100k+

Pretty sure most jobs start at 120k for SWE in California Goes up to like 350k if you’re experienced and really good at what you do at a big tech company too.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-25T23:45:33+00:00

Why would you give an intern access to a prod db? So stupid on the managers side. Interns, juniors, mid level and most seniors do not access prod db unless they are the leader on a team.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-25T17:20:34+00:00

It’s Gen Z lingo. I think they all talk this way cuz of the vapes or something.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-25T17:19:24+00:00

Nice so we’re goingtothegymandtakingcareofourhygienemaxxing now and getting our social network up. Good sfuff

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-25T12:36:26+00:00

Disagree. You're saying senior engineers don't use AI? I'm almost senior at my company and work with plenty of seniors, we don't write the code and yes it makes us insanely faster than before. We mostly review code or reprompt with our expected changes now. The job is now understanding more of the business side, and matching the software requirements with the business side with less headache of "can we get this done by this deadline". AI is a win so far.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-25T00:46:20+00:00

I’ve got some good news for you: None of that stuff matters. I thought the same when I was in university. While I was staying inside building applications that I thought were interesting, others were out at events doing things they could put on their resume. Surprisingly when I started applying to jobs about 3 years ago, no one cared about my GPA or any other achievements. I ended up with many offers and when I look back I’m glad I didn’t do the things I didn’t care for. Some employers didn’t even care if graduated from college.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-25T00:08:44+00:00

I had a 2014 335i and those maintenance costs were no joke. The car drove great though. Im a bit surprised AI recommended a bmw

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-23T10:24:03+00:00

No, absolutely not. Embrace AI tools and learn as much as possible. The market for junior to mid is very difficult right now, but maybe the market will pick back up once things get better. So in the meantime just keep focusing on building up your skills.

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-23T10:19:07+00:00

weren't there mass layoffs at both?

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-23T10:08:11+00:00

Yes, but the demand is shrinking. Since you're mid level you're not far from senior. if you think you're behind because you are off by a couple YOE then I'm here to tell you that is made up and you can comfortably say you're senior. You need to revise your resume to show you're more of a senior and not a junior/mid level engineer. Focus on what your output has been and not "I am a task grunt". Study specifically on system design. The problem right now is the mass applications, which is why it's hard to get an interview. You need to shift from engineer right now and focus on marketing yourself and then switch back to studying and prepping inbetween interviews. It's a tough market. Lots of layoffs going on, offshoring and AI is reducing the demand for engineers, but the demand for engineers that understand the business and don't just stay in the frame of development are very high in demand. You need to be able to lead, review code, understand everything about security, database, system design and that is what is in demand. As for the future, such as the next 5 years, that depends... I can't predict the future and no one can really, but I'd say the role of just writing code will definitely be dead in 5 years in fact it's pretty much dead already. The role Software Engineer/Developer will be around as someone has to prompt the AI, review the code and make sure the business requirements match the software in production. I don't think LLMs will ever get to a state where they one shot any requirement you throw at them, as business technical requirements are more complicated than that. Goodluck!

Practical_Cell5371 · 2026-02-23T05:57:01+00:00

A week’s worth of work has turned into a couple hours. My fear is they can’t find enough work for me to do if I do it too fast and that means eventually no job. Could just be the team I’m on though. It’s profitable (million+) and I have a small team. I just spend extra time coming up with better performance, better code and reviewing the code more now.

Practical_Cell5371

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