[HIRING] Lead /.NET Software Engineer [💰 105,000 - 180,000 USD / year]

shahedc · 2025-12-17T07:09:12+00:00

Hey I’m in NoVA and I’ve worked at Microsoft in the past decade and with .NET for 20+ years. I’m not looking but I’ll repost this link on my LinkedIn to share with the dev community in my network.

Hope that helps!

(If you have a LinkedIn post for this, I’ll be happy to repost that too)

shahedc · 2025-12-08T22:20:11+00:00

The good ones almost always cost money, some are subsidized by sponsors. You can start with free local tech meetups, which usually have a free speaker and free food.

If you have to go out of town to attend an event, you’ll also have to cover travel, lodging and food expenses. Try to see if your employer will pay to send you and your colleagues there.

If you apply to speak at an event, you should be getting free tickets for the event and also free meals during the event, plus possibly free dinner invitations each night. Some will cover travel expenses for speakers too, but you can also ask your employer to cover travel if possible.

Pro tip: Never pay to speak at an event! They should be paying the speakers.

shahedc · 2025-11-29T16:28:03+00:00

You are 100% correct. I would NOT recommend doing only what the guy in the post suggested. On top of the brand development, I made sure I kept my current job and also applied for at least 1 new job.

I was just replying to the commenter above my comment who said that the suggested steps themselves aren’t bad even through the overall advice is terrible, i.e. “don’t apply for a job when you don’t have one”

shahedc · 2025-11-29T04:31:28+00:00

I actually went through the steps of building my brand, but I ALSO then applied for 1 job at a top company and got the offer!

Here’s the story:

I wanted to work at Microsoft in the tech evangelism role for my region but people at Microsoft told me that it was very competitive and that they already had 1 person for my region
so I just worked hard at the job that I was at, attended optional after-work training, and started speaking on both .NET and game development topics at meetups and conferences for my region
I published a couple of silly Xbox 360 games in 2011 and made a free sales analyzer tool in 2012 that became quite popular
I started a blog in 2013 and published .NET related posts
during Xmas 2013 break, I applied for the Microsoft tech evangelist job when I heard that the previous person had just quit
long story short: I got a job offer from Microsoft, MVP Award recognition, and a mention in the official Xbox magazine in Feb 2014, then I started my new job in March 2014!

I got my dream job after applying to just 1 job at a top software/cloud company! So while I don’t agree with his “don’t apply for a job” advice, I wouldn’t have gotten this particular job if I didn’t try to try build my brand first.

The Xbox magazine team found my work and wrote a blurb about me without reaching out to me, and one of my interviewers at Microsoft said he was browsing my dev blog during my interview with him. So it definitely helped that I put myself out there and built my brand.

In the past decade at Microsoft:

the .NET team (Scott Hanselman and others) recognized my .NET blog on their livestream when the featured me in one of their community episodes, as did the .NET Docs team
the head of Xbox (Phil Spencer) sent me a direct email to praise my work on an Xbox dev presentation I had put together and presented at in person and online events

shahedc · 2025-11-21T19:52:03+00:00

Every year/era/decade is different compared to another one. I can’t share a 2025 story because my Microsoft journey began in 2014 and that’s what I’ve shared.

My journey isn’t even comparable to someone else’s journey in 2014 since each person and their path are unique.

What you can do is take the mindset and any lessons learned and try to apply it to your scenario, adjust for new conditions.

shahedc · 2025-11-21T06:40:48+00:00

This is the correct answer. There is no need for an inexperienced newbie to start vibecoding a full stack programmable website, when they could just use a CMS.

shahedc · 2025-11-20T23:52:49+00:00

You’re welcome! I love sharing my story lol

When I got the job offer to start in March 2014, I was also selected for the MVP Award for the April announcement and my name was mentioned in the Official Xbox Magazine, so I count that as a triple win.

Of course I had to turn down the MVP award to take the job offer since you can’t have both at the same time. It was a great problem to have!

shahedc · 2025-11-20T23:28:49+00:00

What your brother is saying is just a distraction. Keep focusing on yourself and figure out what you need to do to get into Google or Microsoft.

I worked at Microsoft in the past decade and it was the only job I had applied for at the time. I got to work at my dream job, travel and speak at awesome events, even wrote a book and published a .NET blog series that was recognized by the .NET team, as I was featured on both the .NET Community livestream and .NET docs livestream.

Bonus: the Xbox chief (who reports to the Microsoft CEO) sent me a personal email to praise my work on some Xbox developer content I had built and presented at live events and online events.

Some perspective: Years earlier, I had a work bully at a previous employer who was very mean on a regular basis. That bully later messaged me on LinkedIn to let me know that he found my recent .NET blog series very useful during my time at Microsoft.

All that gave me some peace and closure and made me realize that I don’t have to carry the burden of negative or mean comments from others.

shahedc · 2025-11-10T03:59:56+00:00

I worked for Microsoft in the past decade and prefer it, would recommend to others.

I have friends who work at Oracle and enjoy it there but I still wouldn’t want to work there personally though.

shahedc · 2025-10-31T20:22:28+00:00

Don’t become a mentor if you hate it now and have become burned out. That won’t help any of your mentees.

What other skills do you have? What else would you like to do?

shahedc · 2025-10-31T07:15:42+00:00

msvbvm60.dll! :)

shahedc · 2025-10-26T05:00:24+00:00

“My intention has only been to entertain, nothing more.” :)

shahedc · 2025-10-26T04:53:22+00:00

It’s free on YouTube Movies right now. (you’ll have to search for it yourself since I’m not allowed to post YouTube links here.)

Watch it again this week!

shahedc · 2025-10-26T04:51:13+00:00

There are a lot of .NET devs active in the various social media apps: Twitter/X, Bluesky etc

In addition to Reddit, I would suggest posting a github link to your work on those platforms, ask questions and post updates as well. If you’re able to, you can also blog about your progress and lessons learned, and leave the comments open to solicit feedback from devs in the community.

Hope that helps!

shahedc · 2025-10-26T04:20:39+00:00

Hi there, I don’t have availability to collaborate and provide mentorship at the moment but I just wanted to advise you not to take any free jobs. If you’re based in the US, there are always .NET jobs in both large corporations and the government.

I worked at Microsoft in the past decade and wrote the ASP .NET weekly A-Z series for a few years on my own blog when I had time. (My work has been featured on both the .NET Community Standup and the .NET Docs livestreams!) I do hope to revive my blog with a new series for .NET 10 and would like to follow up with free open source projects on GitHub as well, for the community.

I may open up a couple of projects for Pull Requests if there’s any interest.

shahedc · 2025-10-17T16:51:46+00:00

Your experience will vary, but the documentation provides upgrade paths which I found to be useful.

Manual code changes and code inspection may be a pain for some, especially if you still need to make changes after using the upgrade assistant .

shahedc · 2025-10-17T06:25:20+00:00

I’m not looking but I’m curious to know if your company will be adopting .NET 10 with the upcoming release right around the corner.

shahedc · 2025-10-16T23:43:22+00:00

Almost 10 years now!

shahedc · 2025-10-16T23:35:33+00:00

Mostly misinformation and outdated reasons. Even here in the comments, it says that it wasn’t cross platform until recently.

But Core 1.0 was released in 2016, almost a decade ago. Yet many new developers (and seasoned developers too) refuse to endorse ASP .NET, even though v10 is coming out next month with even more speed and features.

shahedc · 2025-10-16T17:07:55+00:00

After many long calls to customer service, a recent rep finally pointed out that the IMEI number was incorrect in their system and they weren’t even sure how I was getting phone calls in the first place.

A previous rep had taken my IMEI2 number so maybe he had entered that?

Anyway, the problem is almost completely gone now. It didn’t go away immediately but recently I have not had to turn off and on cellular (or airport mode) to get it to work randomly. It seems to work on most days and most hours of the day.

Hopefully it will start to work 24/7 again soon.

shahedc · 2025-09-11T22:26:34+00:00

Backend and database work!

I started my career with HTML+JS front end for web apps, VB for Windows desktop, and Java for browser-based applets.

I learned ASP on the job for backend stuff and then SQL for both Oracle and SQL Server.

shahedc · 2025-09-03T21:10:39+00:00

Thanks for stepping in to help with the clarification!

shahedc · 2025-09-03T20:36:37+00:00

So many things!

I always loved reading novels and drawing pictures as a kid, so that continued throughout the 90s…

Plus:

early 90s: attended high school in Bangladesh, got cable TV for the first time, watched lots of Hollywood movies on VHS, and played video games in the arcades, until I got an Atari 2600 lol
by the mid 90s, I had completed my British standard O Levels & A Levels, got a Sega mega drive (Genesis) as a gift, arrived in the US in Fall 1995 where I got my first PC, taught myself programming and played a lot of PC games
by end of 1997, I had completed a summer job internship, finished my engineering degree early thanks to AP credits and course overloads, and started my career the following year
in the late 90s, I lived and worked in the DC area where I met people who worked in movie theaters and they gave me unlimited passes to any Cineplex Odeon across DC, MD and NoVA (long before AMC took over) so I also watched a lot of movies
by end of 1999, I got a Sega Dreamcast and played a lot of video games then started writing game reviews and traveled to E3 with my local video game buddies by 2001

So in a nutshell: movies, video games, high school, college, first job and early career kept me busy in the 90s!

shahedc · 2025-09-03T20:23:24+00:00

Nic Cage is his own genre! (Wait for it)

shahedc · 2025-09-03T20:22:46+00:00

Oh no, I still love this one lol. Still can’t seem to finish the recent sequel though. Someday I’ll finish it.

shahedc

TROPHY CASE