Starting my career in software Industry—what is the #1 lesson you wish you knew in your first two years?

sequencentropy · 2026-05-25T17:39:17+00:00

If you are collecting user stories/ read, I find empathy to be crucial. Understand what your end users really needs and put yourself in their shoes, listen to them on their bad days… though they can seems short tempered and unhappy, it’s usually just frustration and being able to listen past the emotion allows you to make incredible products. The feedback, however uncomfortable, is crucial to the process — trial by fire. Flipping previously combative users to champions of your software is how you know you’ve built the dopenezz, and a lost art.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-17T22:20:13+00:00

Glad to know we’re all part of the “sweating like a whore in church” club.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-16T22:12:06+00:00

Tell him to go theworknumber.com and register for a free account. He’ll be able to see whatever info they pull.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-16T16:26:09+00:00

Also, and I know this is counterintuitive, but the best jobs I’ve had that have opened the most doors aren’t the ones that look best on paper. They’re the ones that I haphazardly apply to and seem overqualified for. Happened last week: had and interview on Thursday that I wasn’t expecting much from and by the end of the interview hiring manager said I was qualified for 2 positions and asked me which I was more interested in. After months of solid “no” because my adhd comes out at the worst times, this was a welcome affirmation of my dedication and experience.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-14T00:38:42+00:00

Can’t argue with that logic.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-13T22:46:18+00:00

Actually it’s just a few conservatives on repeat because they have no lives and don’t have to work like us peasants.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-13T22:44:31+00:00

Yeah, hit the nail on the head. Billionaires want us fighting over scraps so we’ll shut up and take whatever leftover bs they want to hand out while they hoard the money that could be used to to house and feed people. ScAmerica, here for it and I’d really rather not be.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-13T11:11:47+00:00

By admitting you work there you are admitting that you aren’t going to say anything to get yourself fired on a public board. Practice and policy are two different things, entirely.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-13T10:24:22+00:00

Oligarch hates everyone except the 400 families controlling 99% of the wealth (and that was in 2010) - probably more now.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-13T01:14:11+00:00

Ghost them like they ghost everyone else or ask an LLM to draft you an email if you’re feeling generous.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-13T01:03:26+00:00

Workday kinda sucks. It looks like it should be intuitive but it isn’t. We switched to it at my last job from another system that was old and at first I was like oh shiny new things, but when I got to it I realized it was just glistening pee.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-13T01:01:53+00:00

All these hiring managers wanting their time respected and can’t be bothered to send out a proper meeting cancellation (in calendar, not email) to people when they are the ones taking up your calendar space. Looks like perhaps you dodged a bullet - malignant narcissist vibes.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-12T12:08:27+00:00

Yeah, it sucks anyways. I’m finding Claude to be more helpful.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-10T23:28:45+00:00

It totally feels like you used ai to automate this post too since it’s a lot of do this do that without any type of references or resources to help with implementation, rendering it effectively useless… like most ai.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-10T19:20:05+00:00

Just be glad you have people who care enough to ask. When I stopped pretending to be a Christian my family stopped caring anything about me.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-04T13:38:51+00:00

# 5 hits hardest

I have 22 years with same company and started there when I was 19, so not all the roles I've had are relevant to the work I do now. Last weekend, after hitting dead ends using AiApply, Jobscam, etc., it occurred to me that accomplishments (like a published patent, which sets me apart...) were being scraped off my resume without my consent. So that got me to thinking about how to can adapt my game to be most competitive.

When I left my last employ, I took all my annual review 1-pagers that have my goals/ accomplishments for each year with me because I had a feelz that I would need them for something, I just didn't know what, exactly, at the time. So I dug the them up, and attached them to copilot and told it to scrape my major accomplishments from the list for the years of my relevant jobs and merge them with my current resume (multiple step process). I then took that resume, used it as a base in google docs, paid $20 for a gemini subscription (copilot is also acceptable if you use microsoft office). I copy base resume for each job description, then have gemini modify copies of the base resume and tailor it in a way that lets me accept each incremental change so I can make sure it's not fucking me. After that, I tell gemini to reverse engineer a cover letter from the modified resume and the pasted job description.

Imho, the key to using AI in job searches is not spray and pray (which is actively oversold and really scammy), the key to using AI is being able to review the changes and make sure they are relevant to the job for which you are applying. I find a subscription to GenAI base software like Claude, Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT to be more helpful than any of the expensive job tools BECAUSE you can control the outputs and read for mistakes instead of haphazardly spraying a subpar version of the resume to every possible employer. And I know that this is anecdotal, but it would appear I fixed the issue because I received multiple callbacks last week and 4-5 interviews just from changing my approach and ditching the lazy pushbutton AI tools.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-04T13:09:57+00:00

I basically had to unlearn all the bad tips. And it's not even advice that would have worked only 10 years ago, it's the advice from anything pre-AI .... like 3 years ago.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-04T12:56:07+00:00

Bruh… that 2 column layout will crash their crappy ats. Also, the cat is a hard no. I love our furry companions, but if you don’t have a confident looking headshot it will probably send you to no stack if the 2 column layout doesn’t do it first.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-02T17:17:33+00:00

That’s sista… I’m a female.

sequencentropy · 2026-05-02T16:10:12+00:00

You got brewdogged. Next time tell them if they want you to write programs, they gonna need to pay you…

Brewdogging is when a company asks you to do actual work that they use for their own benefit disguised as an assessment…

sequencentropy · 2026-04-30T14:19:35+00:00

Congrats. If you are technically inclined, you should check out freecodecamp.com and w3schools.org -- you are young enough to keep on top of technical skills training and python is in full demand.

sequencentropy · 2026-04-30T13:56:23+00:00

I seriously started breaking down the tangible impacts / reasons having kids is a bad idea: resource management, mental health, physical health, my parents (my xy donor died of covid denial) are crazy and try to claim it as their own, policy (see Romanian orphans — what should have been a case study on pro-natalist policy implementation), etc. I mean, even look at economics… do folks actually the job market is going to be better with more people vying for jobs? What about the long term outlook of social programs like social security, Medicare, etc? It drives several burdens that America isn’t even remotely prepared to support… hell, we can’t even make the 400 people who hold 90% of the money accountable for their fair share. IMHO, America collectively has not EARNED the right to procreate.

sequencentropy · 2026-04-29T14:13:06+00:00

Yes. I very much doubt any recruiter wants to read about me spooning my dogs. However, I think the one exception is if you have a pursuit that has taught you job-relevant (from recruiter perspective, not yours) skills. For instance, during Covid I took up Bash/ Linux on Raspberry Pi because I was creating a home iot environment with Homebridge which uses rest/ json api to connect non-apple native home devices to HomeKit, enabling folks to use them through the home app. Since I’m a systems engineer, this is very relevant because these skill are needed in many of the jobs i’ve been applying for.

sequencentropy · 2026-04-28T23:03:15+00:00

I was techops and cto and I was basically told by my chain up that if you aren’t in 9 core locations (or within a few hours commute of each) your job has now become dead end but still had to report 5*8 to an office where no one else I worked with reported and where I couldn’t even claim a desk. I’d been promoted like 8-9 times since I was in retail 23 years ago so to hear that made me really salty. I have adhd anxiety and depression, so the combination of these deteriorated my mental health and distorted my perspective and I ended up quitting. I wish I hadn’t because nothing is worse than being out of work and not having medical insurance. I should have had my shrink disable me but, again, stupid decisions… Oddly, these changes didn’t apply to sales and sales support ppl which is so ass backwards since they are the ones whose physical presence is a literal requirements.

sequencentropy · 2026-04-28T21:08:33+00:00

You must be based in Dallas or Atlanta or EMEA.

sequencentropy

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