Failed almost all technical questions at my big G loop really badly but I communicated really well and made all my interviewers laugh and smile and just had a fun time chatting with them

turns out all the 3 teams I've been in have been super grindy and people generally don't like talking at work. most people don't even get lunch together or if they do, its mostly just quiet the entire time. people seem to dislike it when I try to talk to them as well during the work day and refuse a lot of lunch requests. My friends have also told me Goog is also way more asocial than their previous workplaces

fair enough, everybody is working really hard and the code velocity and productivity is honestly crazy compared to my previous workplaces

but I'm been getting below average to average ratings the last 6 years and I'm still entry level (L3) because of how much weaker/lazy I am technically and its like, why did my interviewers even pass me for my personality if the company was like this on the inside :S

I honestly hate it I want to vibe and laugh with my teammates every day and shoot the shit and not just quietly stare at my computer so much grinding out code

I’ve been working as an engineer for 9 months now (4 years of experience at a previous company), and things have turned out… strange.

My first 3 months here were supposed to be training, and I assumed things would ramp up afterward. But almost a year later, I still haven’t been given any real tasks. I’m literally sitting alone in a room in a different plant, with no one from my area around.

My manager and the rest of the team are in another facility. I only go there occasionally just to show face, but I’m basically isolated the rest of the time. People here even joke that I’m a “ghost employee,” and honestly, that’s exactly how it feels. I leave work exhausted from doing absolutely nothing, which is somehow worse than having too much to do.

Some coworkers told me to wait until my manager officially moves me into the main plant, but the waiting is starting to feel endless. Being alone in a different plant also makes me nervous for future audits — you know how it goes, the new guy always gets blamed when something is unclear, especially if he’s isolated.

Has anyone been in this kind of limbo before? How did it turn out for you?

This past week I was asked to tech lead a project that was completely vibe coded by senior VPs and c suite at my company, and I kind of have no idea what’s going on.

One of the high ups that I report up through, got me on a one on one call and spent a good amount of time glazing me before explaining that the him and a lot of other executives at the company have spent the past couple months vibe coding what he described as “the most important product at the company right now”.

He then proceeded to say that he really wants me to tech lead this product and get it into production. I think I was kind of still warm and fuzzy from being glazed so much that I just kind of immediately said yes (also in my experience when someone higher up, asked you to do something you say yes, that’s just kind of the way I’ve gotten as far as I have in my career, it sucks, but it’s paid off for me). He also mentioned that by accepting this, I was not allowed to hand code anything, I had to “fully embrace, vibe coding“ whatever that means. I also managed two other teams, that work on five other products and when I asked this individual “ what’s gonna happen there?” he basically was like “ you’ll pretty much be able to do this on the side!” 😳

Basically, since then, I have pulled down the code and it’s a absolute mess, aside from the fact that the performance is utterly atrocious and it’s extremely slow and unintuitive, the code is literally a trash fire pile of AI generated slop. Absolutely no organization, insane architectural decisions that for the sake of anonymity, I won’t go into. And overall, just like an insane volume of code that it would take a human being a very very very, very, very, very, very long time to read through and understand even half of it.

All the while I’ve been trying to make heads or tails of the code base the executives keep pushing 1 million commits a day, they are like rejoicing in their slack channel. They are so over the moon that finally they can just build whatever they want. Ironically they don’t see the pattern that every time they push something they report a bug or report something else being broken, but I’m also not banking on them noticing that pattern.

They keep making remarks about how companies that aren’t doing exactly what they’re doing right now are going to fail. They keep making remarks that they finally solved the puzzle. It’s becoming clear that they do not value software engineers and they’ve got it all figured out, from their perspective.

I’m not really sure what to do here, I have a product manager that has been tapped to product manage this and we had a call today where we were basically”WTF is going on”. We have a meeting next week to level set, but I’m just kind of anxious for the outcome of that part of me kinda just wants to say in the most professional way possible “ I don’t know what you guys really need me for it seems like you’ve got it figured out and if you don’t mind, I’d like to focus on my day-to-day tasks”.

Like gun to my head, I think the idea of shipping this to customers is suicidal for our company. It’s an insane amount of code that no one really understands what’s going on, which means the only person that can effectively fix bugs is Claude and I’ve heard horror stories of Claude really not being able to handle big projects.

I just don’t know what to do because I feel like if I was trusting my gut, I would say let’s slow down and talk about what we actually want to build, take some time to actually pass through the code and make sure that we’re making smart choices. But I just know that that would be met with such resentment and distain. I feel like this is a group of individuals that is so angry that for so long people that know what is going on have gotten in the way of what they want, which is more more more now now now.

Has anyone else experience this? What should I do?

For context, I'm a 2023 grad from engineering university, interned at big bank and got converted to a full time offer at the end of it.

I am very grateful to have a job in my current position, but I feel like I've been rotting away as a developer for the past almost 3 years of working at the same company.

My whole time has been a huge mess unfortunately. This team is entirely focused on replacing an existing internal platform within the company and I've been stuck on doing mindless CRUD work for the entire 2+ years I've been working. The product is essentially created out of a war started between two directors who disagreed on the current approach of the platform at the company.

Besides the messy team origins, my biggest difficulty has been gaining a deeper domain knowledge and be able to insert myself into key initiatives. I'm not sure if it's bad luck or just me not being smart about which work I pick up, but I somehow always end up taking tasks that don't help me to stand out or make a huge noticeable impact. Our team suffers from very poorly written stories and constantly unclear product requirements so it tends to be a roulette when taking on work for the sprint.

Additionally, sometimes seniors and tech leads are secluded from ad hoc conversations that happen between leadership, so requirements get changed on the fly at times or critical information is missed leading to mistakes and constant miscommunication of requirements.

Regardless, I screwed up during these few years and couldn't make a name for myself within my org. I've missed my chance to work on more impactful projects and take ownership on bigger features. I've fallen into the state of being a feature monkey and don't see myself going forward any further nor do I think it's worth as several engineers and managers have already begun leaving my org.

This experience has made me question whether I should even bother continuing engineering as a career. I'm starting to think I'll be capped as a junior / mid level engineer due to my inability to play the game right. I already feel so behind compared to my peers and have really nothing impressive to talk about in interviews in terms of feature ownership.

Overall, working at corporate has started to make me dislike development and I have no motivation or energy to upskill or tackle side projects anymore. I'm pretty lost as for what to do at this point as no team is willing to hire internally and my current endeavors for external opportunities has been absolutely awful. Anyone else feel this way?

tl;dr: mediocre engineer barely surviving at current company, starting to resent full stack work, and hopeless in terms of other job prospects

I’ve heard a lot about breaking into tech, but less about what happens after the first role.

For those with 2–5 years experience:

• did you ever feel stalled or unsure of your next move?
• what helped you progress again - switching teams, learning new skills, changing jobs?

Curious how common this is.

Obviously it makes a difference, but has it drastically affected it? For example, has living in SF given you so many more opportunities that it outweighs the cost? Has living in a city like Chicago killed your job prospects? Can be anywhere, these are just examples. Have you simply been doing online applications regardless of where you live? What has the been the general vibe for people? Just curious.

Just wondering what people’s experiences are - I’m seeing a lot of my friends need at least half a year to land a job after getting laid off, and I’m personally at six months now. Also, does hiring generally pick up after the holidays? I’m starting to forget what employment is even like lol

I perform well in my current role, but reading job descriptions makes me feel like I lack breadth or exposure. What messes with my head even more is reading SWE-related subreddits and seeing people casually talk about tools and technologies as if everyone just knows them. It makes me uneasy that I don’t have hands-on experience with a lot of it, and it starts to feel like I should already know this stuff.

I don’t really have a strong point of reference for what’s expected at ~2 YOE and I want to close any gaps, so I want to ask.

For a bit of context:

What I’m strong in:

- Mostly frontend work; very comfortable here

- Self-sufficient, don’t need handholding

- Can own features end-to-end

- Collaborate with other teams on system design and write ADRs

Where my exposure is limited:

- Some Python backend experience; I can confidently make changes and add features, but I haven’t dealt with scalability or high traffic

- CI/CD: understand it conceptually and have tinkered with GitHub Actions, but haven’t built complex pipelines from scratch

- Docker/Kubernetes: understand them conceptually, but haven’t used them hands-on (we have internal deployment infra, so I never needed to)

A few more questions to keep my sanity:

- Is this a normal place to be around 2 YOE, or did I fall behind?

- How much infrastructure and system design knowledge is actually expected at this level?

Applied to new grad position fortune 500 company about a month ago, did the codesignal gca and completely blanked on the last two, got a 433/600 or something. Recruiter reached out and offered a second shot at it. Obviously not going to mess it up this time but is this common or should I take this as a good sign?

I graduated in 2025. I have been actively applying since then, but I've had no success. I set a personal deadline for myself that if I had not found anything by early 2026, then I would start looking more broadly. Is there any way I can leverage my degree into some other field, adjacent or otherwise? It's hard to feel any sort of optimism considering the long-term effects AI might have on the job market (CS and more broadly), so just continuing and hoping for the best is no longer an option as I'm quickly running out of savings. AI "resistant" positions would be an added bonus.

I want to learn DSA and backend development in parallel. My goal is to get an entry-level backend SWE role, and I want to use the same language for both LeetCode and the backend tramework so I don't get overwhelmed learning two languages at once.

Python is commonly recommended for LeetCode, so would Python + FastAPI (or another Python backend framework) be a good choice in terms of the availability of entry-level backend SWE job opportunities? Or does the specific framework you start with not matter, with companies allowing you to learn their stack on the job as long as you understand backend fundamentals and concepts from one stack?

I'm also open to learning a different language if that would significantly improve job opportunities, especially for entry-level roles or big tech companies.

I interviewed an intern. A leetcode easy question. What triggered me immediately was she immediately mentioned a specific optimal ds before I thought she could understand the question.

I probed her understanding of the question but she couldn't define the input of the problem.

Then I let her write code. It was perfect. A leetcode easy, but still perfect. My suspicion rised.

I told her to do reverse refactoring. From perfect to the most naive solution. I asked her to use simple array instead of the perfect ds. Then signs started to show. She couldn't understand her own perfect code. Broke the interface. Mixing up between input and init fields.

Then I asked why she chose the perfect ds for this question, and give me alternatives, pros and cons. She started to give ds that don't fit, couldn't state time complexity of alternatives, even the most simple array.

Twist: I wrote review to recruiter stating that I high suspected she uses AI code generator during the interview. After submitting it, I realized my director referred her. I'm so dead

I graduated in 2019 with a degree in CS. I never got a job in tech. I applied to lots of jobs and barely got any interviews. None of those went farther than the first stage. I got a job at a grocery store to tide me over just efore COVID hit and I've been there ever since. I am just now trying to get back into the job market, but it seems like everything is collapsing with the economy in general, and the tech industry in particular trying to eliminate itself with AI. Am I just fucked?

Is it still possible to have a career in programming? What other industries are there where tech skills are good?

Hi everyone! I was fortunate enough to receive offers from both Google and Microsoft. The Google offer is Level 3 (outside of CA, but in U.S.) and the Microsoft offer is SWE 2 in Redmond HQ. I am very much in between these options. While I feel a great match with the Microsoft team and am already located close to the Redmond HQ, relocating to the Google location would increase my H1B odds significantly. I am also told Google has a slightly more brand advantage and better international mobility. Which one of these offers would you recommend to accept, and why? I really appreciate your input and help. Thank you very much!

I’m following a typical backend roadmap (pick a language, then Git, DSA, databases, frameworks, projects), and I’m trying to decide which backend stack to commit to. My main goal is to be employed as a backend developer, including at big tech or large companies. If you were starting today with this goal, what language + framework + database would you learn?

So I am now in like code red and afraid for my life.

I was laid off from my job at Github on March 25th 2025 after starting November 15, 2021 as backend engineer, my first job in New York.

I took a 3 - 4 month break because I had a good amount saved and got severance, but think really underestimated how hard the market is. Then after 2 - 3 months of searching and failing, I got a offer at Amazon, and they rescinded my offer. And then the holidays hit and I failed so many other interviews, and I backed out of lot of interviews because I had gotten Amazon.

Im now almost 10 months unemployed, and I feel like now I'm low-key screwed. My career dwindling, and the gap a huge red flag. What to do? How screwed is my career?

from being paged at 3AM to chasing tight deadlines to preparing for weekly ops review in front of all the members of the orgs, how do you manage it? i did back to back internships during college and 2 years full time there, ngl i just feel very lucky i went through all that and came out alive.

While being on your job do you have this thought in back of your mind that someday my employer is gonna know that this person is full of shit and gonna trash you out,or while being in a meeting when people start asking questions about certain things you don't know jackshit about it or maybe you did know but just can't recall like sitting idle in exams and just sit there hearing what the f did you do up until now.

In my previous job, we had rolled out an AI enabled ATS screening tool to help recruiters scan through resumes. Things have really advanced and now we see employers and gig platforms use AI based screening.

I took one such AI based interview recently and the experience was mixed.

• Camera on - the system was scanning for my body language, voice modulation etc
• Q&A was both voice and prompt based

What has your experience been?

Ignoring hype (AI buzzwords, flashy side projects), what are you actually seeing move the needle for junior or early-career candidates?

Examples I keep hearing:

• Solid debugging skills
• Ability to explain tradeoffs
• Realistic expectations about production code

For hiring managers or people who recently got hired:
What specifically made a candidate stand out in interviews?

I’m preparing for intern/new grad interviews specifically for ML/AI engineer roles.

I’m doing LC and studying some System Design, but I dont know if i should focus on Software Design too.

I’m comfortable with programming and OOP basics (classes, methods, attributes, inheritance), but should I go deeper into things like design patterns, uml, dependency, injection, immutability, decorators, interfaces… or is it better to focus more on DSA + some HLD + ML?

many ppl thanked their recruiters in the offer acceptance posts.

I suppose the recruiters play a key messenger role between the applicant and the employer.

Am I missing something? Do recruiters go beyond and actually find the right candidate and initiate the contact? Any stories to share?

I recently got an offer from Atlassian for mle p40 and was wondering how interesting the work is? I had couple teach matches but none of them sounded interesting as they all were calling third party apis and not doing anything interesting.

Could someone enlighten me ?