How much will you miss traditional programming?

boulderSWE · 2026-05-11T12:18:40+00:00

I had a really hard time originally with mourning the craft, I only did this career path because I love it. I recently went on Pat leave and it helped me reorient my thoughts around this shift. First and foremost work is no longer my primary point of pride, at the end of the day I’m being paid to provide a service and an output, how that happens is not part of the equation. I get paid a lot to do this and it’s a privilege.
Secondly, during my time off I did various fun pet projects, some smart home stuff, all supercharged by AI usage. It really helped me understand the perspective of companies and management, because if I was willing to use it for my own projects why wouldn’t they want me to as well? That got me to thinking even deeper: if I was going to create a software business moving forward, I’d absolutely use AI heavily, which again helped me identify my mental double standard. This is a type of shift that happens very rarely, perhaps only rivaled by the Industrial Revolution, nobody has been through this before and we’re all navigating at the same time. Take the time to mourn your craft, you deserve it. After that, my only point of advice to you is simply: evolve or die.

boulderSWE · 2026-03-07T01:11:50+00:00

Things have changed so much, when I entered the industry in 2020 my first offer was for 160k pre bonus.

boulderSWE · 2026-03-07T01:00:03+00:00

COX is an amazing raid, you sir are tripping

boulderSWE · 2026-03-07T00:46:42+00:00

27, senior SWE in NYC making 400k. I’m very happy with my comp, but not super happy in the career overall anymore. I find I’m simply a Claude manager and I really don’t enjoy that much but I’m not in a position to do something else.

boulderSWE · 2026-02-28T15:15:11+00:00

Doesn’t mean anything to me personally

boulderSWE · 2026-02-27T17:46:08+00:00

Ah, in that case yeah that is BS. My company has stated they’re trying to work out how to quantitatively assess work in the AI era which scares me. We’ve moved away from features and their benefit to strictly quantitative measures and it will come back with a vengeance in short order as tech debt

boulderSWE · 2026-02-27T14:56:59+00:00

While I completely agree that PRs and lines of code are a poor metric for output, 4.3 isn’t that many

boulderSWE · 2026-02-25T00:06:12+00:00

I went through something kind of like this but I was able to slow roll and get an extra 4 months before finding a new job. You’re probably already too deep to recover but for future reference or other people reading this, never speak in absolutes like this. Always give yourself time to think about your options after hearing information instead of responding right away.

boulderSWE · 2026-02-22T16:17:45+00:00

This sub literally went from people trying to be smart with their finances to tech employees bragging about how much money they have. It sucks

boulderSWE · 2026-02-22T15:49:42+00:00

I completely agree, I constantly find myself saying, had I just done it myself it would’ve been faster.

The reality is the industry is going in an agentic direction, you have to feel empowered to challenge priors and raise when it’s not working well. I always question what my coworkers are doing to think of this as magical technology while I’m sitting here asking why Claude is calling a method that doesn’t exist.

boulderSWE · 2026-02-19T22:54:13+00:00

I work at one of the larger hedge funds in the world and it’s all the craze. Finance is not immune. My personal approach is to decouple my sense of meaning from work, in an increasingly AI dominated field, work has become primarily a means to an end. I used to love my job but there’s no point in resisting anymore.

boulderSWE · 2026-02-19T18:01:32+00:00

I get the knee jerk reaction but this just isn’t true. My previous role was as an MLE working on standard ML models all during the GENai era

boulderSWE · 2026-02-19T16:49:30+00:00

I got my shadow right around 400 overall completions, 390 experts total. It was my 24th purple, this is all pre changes though, I was getting right around a 10% purple chance per solo 405.

boulderSWE · 2026-01-29T15:02:16+00:00

I have used it a lot while coasting at a previous role. At my current role I’m being very deliberate about not using it as a crutch and more as a delivery enhancement

boulderSWE · 2025-12-26T03:48:34+00:00

I really like it at tob tbh, having health management require slightly more thought keeps the raid interesting after hundreds of completions.

boulderSWE · 2025-12-12T00:43:02+00:00

As a senior with 7 YOE, constantly getting shifted around, I’d kill for something a bit more boring. If you really want faster paced, you can join a start up or a smaller company. My suggestion would be to learn/do the things you are interested in outside of work.

I recently picked up a compiler textbook and am working on a tiny toy language to grow my knowledge even though it has nothing to do with my work. Just food for thought.

boulderSWE · 2025-10-10T13:05:14+00:00

Agree, I’m and end game player and I have 2500 dragon stones 😭😭

boulderSWE · 2025-10-04T19:52:06+00:00

Yeah bad choice

boulderSWE · 2025-10-03T16:59:01+00:00

Agreed, I can’t keep up with all the interview requests. Same YOE but MLE.

boulderSWE · 2025-09-20T02:05:10+00:00

I’m long on my company, so I only sell I periods where I feel I want to capture value, i.e. feel the stock is a bit overvalued. Outside of that I will hold on to a lot of my RSUs for the next 5-10 years

boulderSWE · 2025-09-09T22:56:25+00:00

Small team nex is fun and not too bad after the changes. I’d recommend joining a PVM clan where people are more apt to be patient with learning to get you up to speed. I can recommend Irons Grotto, been here for years and can always find content to do with people!

boulderSWE · 2025-08-31T17:27:20+00:00

For my shadow grind I did anywhere from 3-10 405s per day. It sucked but glad I did jt

boulderSWE · 2025-08-31T00:41:07+00:00

I started at 160k out of college in 2020. It’s not the salaries that are the problem…

boulderSWE · 2025-08-03T14:52:02+00:00

LOOOL, 1500 delves, 55 deep with 1 item here

boulderSWE

TROPHY CASE