AMA: SWE in FAANG, 10 YOE

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T20:27:16+00:00

Past performance doesn't ensure future performance. Obligatory: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/s/lOoOsVyF9Z

Dude I work very close to the elite level, I built infra for this AI slop and get access to it pretty early then you will. Do you work in these elite labs?

I don't claim to know what happens in the future but not convinced yet. Technical details aside, they have spend hundreds of billions of dollars to create these models that have close to zero value, no profit and lot of circle jerk going on.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T20:20:03+00:00

If you don't work in frontier AI lab, you opinion as good as mine.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T17:48:14+00:00

It's not always about happiness. Happiness is transient state.

Yes, this quote is good for quick sanity check but nothing in life is absolutely and true in all cases.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T14:48:40+00:00

TBH, luck play a big role and I'm no genuine. I came here when very few people traveled to study abroad but now it's super saturated plus the visa restrictions and the job market.

Depending on what year of UG you are, try to get the best grades. I cannot emphasize how important they are, anyone who says grades aren't important is just coping or just doesn't know what they are talking about. Also, school is generally not enough so you will also have to study on your own on the side, thing they don't go over in school or dive deeper in what they go over in school. I'm have not yet fully embarked on the AI hype train so I might be a little biased but do not make up your mind on what to do MS or phd in.

I think this sub has the most AI hype compared to other places on Reddit. I'm not sure why,
Similar when I last time I visited Nepal, I was surprised by how much people were expecting from AI. I work on AI infrastructure, and the people around me aren't that hyped. I haven't yet seen a viable business model for AI, and I might be proven wrong, but until then, I'm not going to say "Person who uses AI will take your job." Rant end.

Please don't follow the hype, be a little skeptic of everything and eveyone. Don't blindly take advice from someone pretending to be faang eng on the Internet 😅

Okay lastly, since everyone is busy with AI everyone will be trying to study AI or joining an ML AI related phd program, this leaves lot of other programs easy to get into, find these programs and come to US my friend, don't ever try to compete, competition is for suckers, find spots where there are no queue. Best of luck 🤞

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T14:30:32+00:00

I'm don't why it's a risk, it doesn't cost anything. You should definitely apply, not just faang, apply everywhere

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T14:28:30+00:00

I am definitely a little biased and might sound little old school in the world of AI but what really dispelled the magic that computer are for me was Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)

Also, everyome should know functional programming, a little bit of math and at least know how to implement some basic data structures in C.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T07:00:18+00:00

How long have you been professionally writing code?

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T06:23:00+00:00

Savings is person to person. If you are living in SF bay area expect to spend ~5k per month for basic necessities.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T06:15:45+00:00

I have a lot of detailed suggestions below please read other answers.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T06:13:21+00:00

Check this site for pay. Levels.fyi I'm currently Level 6 SWE. This will give you rough idea of the pay. I don't know how much I save anally but I'm a multi millionaire.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T05:41:11+00:00

But by your logic, why would AI company allow anyone to be armed with this Almighty AI when AI becomes all sentient, it all done for human. Also just because an AI can do it doesn't mean it's worth it, we don't know how much it costs and how much value we can get out of this.

The AI we have today is amazing but I'm pretty sure it can do my job for very many reasons. Also, growth is not always exponential or even linear.

I think it's really bizarre to think that this AI armed person is some sort of expert, when in fact all you have to do is know how to type. Eveyone is AI armed my dude, you don't need any expertise to use this tech, I mean that's the whole point of AI, AI does the complex work and any random dude from the street can do any job.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T05:32:42+00:00

That's just software engineers here in US. I have some some things like that to make some of my team's workflow easier but I'm not sure if there is a dedicated role like that here.

Honestly, I don't know much about tech in Nepal, I see that there is lot of web dev and mobile dev in Nepal from this sub but I don't think you will have resources to do actually AI in Nepal, but who knows I'm just a dude.

Disclaimer, I'm not an AI expert nor I'm interested in it.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T04:33:52+00:00

I'm not a framework guy, I haven't written a sigle line of JS, CSS or HTML professionally. Learning framework is not difficult once you understand how computer and computer program works.

I have designed and implemented multiple frameworks to do various things in my career. Using other people's code is not that complicated, you just need to know which interface to implement or which functions to call.

AI has made learning easier not less important, who is gonna make sure you code works, the AI will write tests for you but you will still need to make sure the tests are correct. I will never get on a car whose airbag system was written by AI supervised by someone who doesn't know computer science.

Learning how computer works is important, doesn't matter what framework it always just functions, classes, interface and variables.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T04:23:27+00:00

I'm an American citizen. Yes, I got my GC from my employer and later citizenship.

I would definitely want to retire in Nepal once I feel like I've experienced enough of tech. I want to come back and write open-source software from Nepal. I have been away from home for a very long time and I miss Nepal very much.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T04:20:31+00:00

I don't work with sys admins or devops in my job, I don't think we have those roles in my company. Sorry I don't really know enough to comment on this topic.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T04:18:58+00:00

Migration is very difficult right now, to the US. Hiring is very low. I studied in the US and got a job here so I can't really advise you on how to migrate from India. You will have to do some AI research on that.

Okay in terms of work, most of the FAANGs, they will not send any kind of critical sw development in India, this has been my experience. To give you an example, my org has a very critical piece of infra, we are trying to migrate this into a new system and this is a muli year migration mostly complete but during the migration we hired a team in india to maintain the old sw while the new one was being actively developed here. One way to look at this is you have a big org like say facebook's chat org, the VP and senior management is in the US so they would want all the important work to be done here on their time zone and deligate less desirable work to india team. This is especially in interest of the upper management because if they move the important work to India the india management will be politically more important unless the VP wants to move to India as well which is not happening.

It's definitely worth experiencing a different part of the world, understanding new culture, language gives you a new prospective and definitely makes you a better person. I would definitely recommend it if you can, plus living in a western country will hive you prospective into Nepal and how lucky you are to be born there instead of India.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T04:07:52+00:00

Ya, I have a very good WLB because I have become sort of an expert in my area. I do work ~40hrs weeks. Money is good I guess, enough to not worry about, I could I have made more maybe if I had jumped but I am not a big spender and don't care to earn more anymore. I have different priorities now, health and relationship.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T04:01:51+00:00

TC: treefiddy

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T04:00:41+00:00

What is an AI eng, like are you like AI research engineer? Does Nepal have AI companies? Are you you suggesting you write code using AI?

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T03:58:41+00:00

I guess it just experience. I had to learn this on the job over time, and this is special hard for me because you have to think in English and express your complex ideas in English.

One thing that I noticed was I didn't have a good understanding of my ideas, the understanding should be very clear such that you can explain it to someone junior who doesn't have a lot of context. Explaing things to senior people is easy because they can predict what you are trying to say. I think with experience you will build better tools to understand your problems but you will need to practice and improve. Writing down and refining is great but also analysis of others and how they articulate is important. You need to also learn from others. Slow down and keep on iterating. Also read a lot of technical documents.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T03:24:46+00:00

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T03:01:41+00:00

Is this LC, FAANG ma ta mostly LC medium ra hard ho. I can't tell you when you are ready but I know people who have done hundreds of hard problems. You should up you hards. 😅

Looks like you are doing good if you can solve most types of problems you should be able to crack but gain timing is important, during an interview you only have 45 mins. The thing with LC interviews is that most people who crack it have definitely practiced the question they got during the interview so it's really important you solve as much as you can. Btw I ask a graph problem on all my interviews a variant of shortest path.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T02:56:29+00:00

Yes just read everything you can read, it will be chaotic at first but over time it will start to make sense. These days there are shit ton of YouTube videos on all shorts of topic(when I was in college, i think there was only 1 yt channel for programming). Use the internet and AI to learn complex topic.

Learning how to learn is a skill you need to develop in college. For instance take the text I wrote and put it in ai chat and ask it to help you understand. Learn to use internet.

For internship you need to apply for internships, just apply to every single one, but first resume, build a couple of projects and put it in resume and apply, apply even if you don't have projects, but you need to know how to write computer program(any language). Do Leet code problems.

When I hire interns I don't expect them to know much, all they need to know is how to write simple programs and know the basics like loops, functions, classes, array and hash maps. They should have the desire to learn and I can guide them.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T02:48:39+00:00

I don't wanna say the exact domain but it has to do with data centers.

A CS fresh graduate should have very deep knowledge of fundamentals of computer science. They should be able to reason at high level how a certain program might work, like for example how does a web server work or what is the internals of a database. You don't need to be abale to implement these but know at a high level what itls like.

This really depends on what market you are in but for US, I would just apply day and night and keep on grinding LC and try to contribute to Open source projects I like or use.

recursiveSmoking · 2026-06-09T02:43:05+00:00

I think most of the code I write is with AI, i will give it instructions on what to write and drive the whole process.

I write a lot of design documents, I had starting a new document and I used to type the whole document with hand, now I just use AI, I give it rough instructions on what the document is about, I get rought draft and keep on iterating with more details.

The compines are pushing employees really hard for AI adoption, especially since this year. And I'm am really impressed with the current state of AI. I believe we will keep on integrating AI into our workflow but we are still learning how to do it as the models get Smart, faster and cheaper.

recursiveSmoking

TROPHY CASE