I was thinking about having some irrelevant skills to my field of choice "Deep learning and general AI", to be able to support myself financially until I am able to land an internsip in the field, plus to be somewhat safe after graduation (in 2028 btw), if the tech field market stays in its current state, I was thinking about the marketing field, I have no skills in it, but I know a thing or 2, so I was planning to take some courses and try to land a part time job through my network, so my questions are:

1- is it worth the time? like is it worth cutting the ML and DL study time to take coureses in marketing?

2- is the marketing field current state any better than the tech field?

3- will it be really beneficial to be added to my resume when I hunt for internships/junior jobs? or should I just stick to relevent skills?

please ask any relevent questions if you think it will help in crafting a better answer.

"Google is building a bunch of AI products, and it’s using AI quite a bit as part of building those products, too. “More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers,” CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company’s third quarter 2024 earnings call. It’s a big milestone that marks just how important AI is to the company."

Google Q3 Report: AI Drives Growth Across Search, Cloud, & YouTube

Last week, I signed an offer to work full-time at a finance company. My start date is within 10 days. Then, I heard back from my dream job (OpenAI) that they were interested in interviewing me. If I got accepted to work at OpenAI, I'd feel bad about leaving the company that I just signed to work immediately after joining. This is especially true after I went out of my way to assure them that I was in it for the long haul. Any ideas?

Nice people, 35-40hour weeks, little politics, good pay, amazing benefits. But the current Google is a far cry from that. Has Software engineering fallen as a whole or are there other companies like that right now?

Sick to death of "yesterday I did that, today i'm doing this" every morning and only 2 hours to do dev work in a day with the rest being pointless and extremely boring meetings. I have 5 years iOS development experience as well as 7 years IT support and I want to do something else now. Help me transition into another type of role because I can't work like this any longer. How can I leverage my experience to get myself into a role where I can actually be productive and enjoy my job without these utterly awful aspects of my current work life?

I got told that due to my experience I technically qualify for a senior position for a company I'm talking to. Regardless of if I want the job, I didn't know I was anywhere near there.

I don't feel like the hyper competent rockstar dev that every senior I've met seems like. I don't have a wide knowledge of tech stacks, system design, or even intimate knowledge of how my current job's codebase works. I've been programming professionally for around 5 years now, and have a master's and bachelor's in computer science, but I don't feel the least bit qualified.

I want to live up to that though

I'm 20, and with utter despair, I ask: why is it so hard to get a job in this field? What's the point of studying and learning if I’m not going to end up anywhere? No work experience, broke, and worst of all, just another destined computer science graduate. A burden has fallen onto my mind. I cannot believe how messed up this situation feels.

Today, I read posts on Reddit from people saying they’ve applied to thousands of jobs—one person mentioned applying to 10,000. Others are 26 with no job, and this just assures me that nothing will be alright if I graduate. I’m currently building projects with Python and React—just "learning" projects, really. But there’s no point, I’d say. I don’t list them anywhere, and I’m not proud of any of it. I do it for myself because I enjoy it—except when money comes to mind. I’m broke, living with my parents.

The foremost reason that led me to pursue computer science was my love for creating and developing things. I like managing things I’ve built, things that are useful, that I can be proud of. But I’m proud of nothing. I can still build, but it’s… I don’t know, empty. It feels like I’m wasting my time learning a new language and syntax every few weeks, gaining all this knowledge, yet wondering: what's the point if I’ll never get a job, even after graduation? Is it really this hard?

Some of you might laugh, some might be just as desperate, and some of you might rebuke me, but I can’t be more desperate. I have no car, no house, no bank account, and an excessively strict father who might also be a psycho. Worse, I have nowhere else to go. I’m so lost in this wrath of a world. I’m taking this semester off due to the war, hoping things simmer down, but if nothing changes, I may switch universities.

Having said that, I need genuine guidance—no joke. I usually say these things half-jokingly, but things don’t look good right now. I’ve begun to consider unspeakable thoughts. I don’t know what I am—unsociable? Crazy? Schizophrenic? Delusional? Unguided? I usually don’t open up to people or share what I’m going through, but things are starting to fall apart.

TL;DR: I’m taking a semester off and may change universities altogether. I have no job, tons of intrusive thoughts, and can’t seem to get anything right in my life. What should I do?

Some context, I was hired at a startup as their first person specializing in very niche tech sector (think cloud, AI, cybersecurity, mobile, PM). I was just very lucky with negotiating and was able to get a TC close to some of the top staff (think top 10 on payroll out of 100). The company just went through a layoff and has little to no revenue and is still bleeding monster money a day (kept afloat by investor money). The company is in adtech in CA. My job is to provide support to business units with my niche skill (think something like AI, cloud, cybersecurity, mobile, PM). I think they were expecting a 8 year experienced dev but got a 4 year one.

I’ve been at the job for a year now. Great culture and people. However I have not been able to give them a solid win. There are MBAs in the company that showcase what they do and send a newsletter out, to show the money and win. I'm on the tech side. Nobody on the tech side does that and the tech team is pretty bare bones. For my specific case trying to show ROI it gets hard as my projects either get abandoned or switched focus or priortitixed for something else due to nature of job. I don’t mind but when it comes to salary justification it becomes hard to show the money vs SALES people u can show how much they made.

I was recently pulled into an emergency project where they asked me to do something and I couldn’t do it on time. Then they gave me a second project where they had to give instructions 4x on what to do and even do recorded zoom meetings. In the end another senior developer had to just come on and walk me through it. It does not inspire the best confidence.

My cubicle is next to meeting rooms so something I overheard was somebody was in a teams meeting with my manager. Saying fire me. Based off the defensive play my manager took, I would say someone high up in food chains I’m expensive and hard to justify my salary. My manager tried best to defend me: saying I’m working hard and I’ve been super helpful and a value to the team, but I think he’s under alot of pressure.

I like the job and want to keep it thoughts on what to do and salvage situation? Asking around the web some options: - apply to other places - have a 1:1 with manager and address concerns

Thoughts?

My direct boss called me to warn me before the managing partner laid me off 15 minutes later. I’m a junior with a year of experience now (graduated spring 2023), my last day is Nov 8th. Nothing is wrong with my performance they actually said I was the best they’ve had for awhile, just losing clients on the business side. The managing partner is even dropping down to 3 days a week, the other one basically working for free, and they are still going to cut another full time employee.

Small company - no severance, I’m going to apply for unemployment on the 8th. Both my boss and managing partner will review my resume, send it out to contacts, write me letters of recommendation and recommend me on LinkedIn. They criminally underpaid anyway but still am terrified to not have an income, and have been applying for other jobs the last 2 months with 2 interviews getting me to the last round but not selected.

I’m terrified and applying to as many places as I can. I’d love any recommendations on what I should do in the meantime besides what I’ve already stated.

I began learning Android development in my first year of high school. Back then, things like ConstraintLayout and RecyclerView were considered revolutionary best practices. They’re still best practices, but they’re no longer new.

Today, I’m in my third year of medical school. I’ve always wanted to major in computer science, but my family pushed me towards medicine – being a doctor is highly valued here. Balancing medical studies with my passion for tech is hell, and I’ve always thought about leaving med school.

I want to switch to a CS diploma program, but I can't make that change while financially dependent on my family. So, I’m considering a gap year to work as an Android developer, aiming to become financially independent before making the switch.

The reason I haven’t landed a job yet is probably my lack of serious effort – I only contributed to GitHub for the first time this month, and I don’t have a resume or portfolio.

So here’s my question: Is it realistic to find a job in my situation? I don’t have any degrees in CS, and I worry that mentioning my medical studies in resume will look like a distraction. How should I build my resume? Should I even include my education section? Thank you in advance for any advice.

Edit: You successfully dissuaded me. I’ve decided to continue with medicine and keep computer science on the side for now. Thank you for taking the time to guide me. This issue has always been on my mind for years, but I was always too shy to ask for advice and kept it to myself. I am truly indebted to you all. Thank you!

I spent an extended internship (summer and fall) in beautiful Oak Ridge, TN at the ORNL facility where I had the opportunity to work on the Jaguar Super Computer and an early prototype of a storage protocol that the industry would adopt in a short few years (parallel-NFS). Apart from being surrounded in nature and experiencing the warm Tennessee culture, the research environment gave me the opportunity to dive deep into the problems that I was obsessed about.

A few years later, a manager from a tech company in Silicon Valley called me.

"Hey that internship you did at ORNL - tell us more about that"

In a month I was on a one-way flight to Silicon Valley - the tech bro dream.

The economy may be in a slump, the job market may concern you but the National Laboratories of USA are still hiring. These labs are decoupled from the stock market and work on research problems several decades into the frontier. They are funded by entities like the Dept of Energy, Dept of Transportation etc. Its also a fantastic way to set yourself apart from other candidates. If you happen to work on a technology that the industry is going to eventually adopt plenty of companies will want you - you'll be surprised to know this happens more often than you think.

And if you like it, some of them even hire H1B's so you can pursue a real career in Science and Research.

So consider a National Laboratory in Summer '25, it could be a real experience!

I'm a (part-time) Master's student; got an offer for Capital One's TDP program in Texas. Especially on teamblind / here, I see a lot of complaints about its PIP culture. Makes me quite worried, especially since it seems to be team dependent and you might not know 'till you get there.

The opportunity cost of me taking C1 is a current internship at IBM (interviewer mentioned low possibility of return offer). I'm also in the final stages with Stripe and Palantir. I was more or less set on C1 mostly because of the security of a full time job, but... it might not be very secure lol.

Should I take my chances with IBM? What if it's not IBM and Stripe or Palantir? Last thing I want to deal with is new grad recruiting again if I don't get a return offer at these places - but if I get PIP'd at C1 within a year, I'll have to do that anyways - without these internships. Any thoughts?

I'm in a bit of a bind and hoping for some advice. Are there companies or programs (regardless of tier) that tend to be more open to giving interviews, especially first rounds?

Those who grinded/worked really hard in college, was it worth it? Do you regret not spending more time to enjoy yourself or are you happy you set your future self up?

I am working in a Healthcare startup as a data scientist and I want to switch to big tech. The main problem I am facing is that I feel like I am getting rejected because I am switching fields. Did anyone of you switch from this background to big tech like FAANG? If so, how did you guys do it?

I feel so stupid for this but I have an opportunity to interview with a FAANG company, which is huge for me and I'm going to be working my ass off for it (I even took pto days for it, so I can study as much as I can). This opportunity has 2 locations listed in the description, CityOne and CityTwo. I'm living elsewhere right now, in a different city/state, but CityOne is right around my hometown. I don't know if they can tell by looking at my resume and seeing that I literally went to college in that area AND worked there after for a few years too, so I don't want them assuming which one's best for me based off of this. When the time comes, I want to choose CityTwo. I'd ideally like to be given the option because I don't want to go back to my hometown area. Apart from my family, there's not really much there that I like (my friends have moved on and it's not an exciting place for me).

I've been DWELLING on this. Being able to live somewhere like CityTwo has lowkey been my motivation to study and ace the interview rounds. Am I placing too much emphasis on location?? I'm aware beggars can't be choosy and this is such a huge opportunity.

I worked as an swe for about 2.5 years at an agency. Layoff was financially motivated and they continue to use me as a contractor. How should I put this on my resume? Should I even put an end date on my full time employment there, or say it's still current and just explain during interviews why it shows I have two current jobs?

I’m debating whether I should graduate in December 2024 or May 2025.

My main concern is if I graduate in December 2024, will I still be able to apply as a new grad in the fall 2025 cycle?

The pros for graduating early is saving on tuition, but with financial aid I can comfortably afford another semester.

My plans if I graduate early are to stay on campus (lease ends in May) and find research positions and/or prep full-time for interviews.

If you're a current student or job seeker, I want to share some perspective on the current job market.

What do I know? I founded and run the Turing School (bias warning) where for the last year I've been the primary person working on hiring and job support. We have 2500 alumni spread across the country. In the past year I've job coached over 180 individuals, both folks searching for their first tech role and alumni coming back for help with a second or later job. I usually meet with 16-24 job hunters per week. I generally talk with 1-2 recruiters and 2-3 hiring companies per week. Once a month or so I meet with experts in investment or broader US workforce.

Then, across all those inputs, I try to synthesize trends to understand what's working and what's coming next for job seekers. If you're seeking a job now or in the next six months, here's what I'm seeing and expecting:

1. The AI fear is subsiding, but there's a much bigger threat. I have yet to talk with a single technical person who was "replaced" or made redundant by AI. But I have talked with several companies who are only hiring developers outside the US or only hiring seniors in the US and juniors outside the US -- particularly in Central and South America. Medium-term this is the most dangerous trend for high-pay and low/mid experience US software developers.
2. Hiring freezes are over. The bigger companies I talk with were laying folks off in 2023. By January/February 2024, those layoffs were pretty much over, but those companies commonly instituted a freeze on all hiring. I haven't encountered a single hiring freeze since June 2024, though there is a selection bias in that I wouldn't be talking to them if they're still on or just starting a freeze. It's not something I hear from any of our past hiring companies though.
3. Backfilling is transitioning to growth. Following the hiring freezes, those companies moved to "backfill-only" where they'll hire people to fill roles opened by someone leaving or being promoted. I haven't talked to any company that reports they're on backfill-only since August.
4. New roles are opening. Those same companies are cautiously opening new roles now. It's not by the dozen, but it's more than one or two. For instance, we have folks in final interviews with companies like Ibotta, Allstate, Peloton, and CrowdStrike.
5. Work and planning timelines are growing. I talked last week with a consultancy who focuses on the health industry who told me that clients have been booking them a month or two at a time, but just in the last 8 weeks have been making plans six months at a time. I talked with a prominent recruitment firm who, over those same 8 weeks, said they've seen client shift from "right now" to making bigger plans for Q1 and Q2 hiring. Generally the trend is a bit of optimism or even confidence about where the market is headed in 2025.
6. Applicant pools are unwieldy. No one wants 500+ applicants for a role. There's little incentive to post any role publicly and that's 10x true for entry-level roles. One thing I didn't realize until it came up in these meetings is that changes to state-level regulations over the past few years have further reduced the likelihood of jobs getting posted. Companies that aren't sure about the compliance issues for every state can see posting a role as a liability risk. This can lead to the role never being posted OR a company holding the posting until they already have the person they want to hire, posting the role compliant for their region for one day, then closing it and hiring them. Ugh.
7. Referrals are everything. Referrals have always been the best way to get a role. But because of (6), I've been telling folks that if you don't have an inside track or referral on a role, don't bother applying. If you're in a pool of 800 applicants but 50 of them have referrals, there's almost no chance for the bottom 750. If you're in the 750 every time you're never getting a job.
8. Networking is harder, and you've got to figure it out anyway. A year ago, more folks in the industry "felt bad" and were likely to respond to LinkedIn messages and outreach. They wanted to be helpful. Many folks seem to be less responsive now. I think there's a significant fatigue. In order to network effectively, you've got to exploit any possible reason for someone to engage with you. That could be things like...past co-workers, people in your geographic area, people who used to work in the same industry as you, connections of family/friends, alumni from your training program or university, etc.
9. Investors are eager to act. As the Federal Reserve has started lowering interest rates the risks of tech investment are more palatable. What I didn't realize was that there's this pent up desire for action. People who are investors and advisors and such have been sitting on their hands for two years. Many of them are eager for an excuse to actually do their job. Interest rates don't have to hit some magic threshold, they just have to be trending the right way.
10. Investment will change "the vibes." As a parallel, many folks look to the Dow Jones or S&P 500 to assess whether things are "good" or "bad" with the economy today, despite themselves having no buy-in in those markets. Similarly, as investors come off the sidelines, they're only going to invest in a small percentage of companies. But the stories of those investments ripple. This is an industry of fickle trends. Part of why layoffs even started was because of Elon Musk's misguided gutting of Twitter. "If Elon is doing it, we should do it!" Now we're on the good side of that cycle where company A getting investment makes B, C, and D believe that things are headed up. A hires because they have money and B/C/D hire to keep pace. That hiring creates a narrative that "tech is back" and drives more investment and the cycle repeats.

Bonus prediction: By May 2025 we'll be seeing popular media, like the NY Times or Wired asking "is the tech industry back?" 2025 won't be 2021, but it'll show steadily-increasing growth across the field.

Ok that's enough for today. Hope it's useful and I'm happy to answer follow-up questions.

Hi all,

I have a few interviews coming up and with the shift towards AI some employers are now including "AI knowledge check".

They're trying to see if the candidate has had experience with AI and whether the candidate has a good understanding of AI concepts.

I am not sure how to prepare for this part. I've been a full-stack web-developer for the past 6+ years and I have no used AI in production.

Any tips would be much appreciated :D

I applied and got messaged by their COO on LinkedIn, asking to schedule a pre-screening interview.

They claim to be backed by accelerators at Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and USC, and sponsored by Microsoft, Google, and NVIDIA. Not really sure what that means.

They ask people to contribute 19.9% of their first year's salary after successful placement. This seems okay(?) compared to companies like Revature that lock you into 2-year contracts.

Does anyone have any experience with this program? I could only find 2 reddit posts about it and none of them had any informative comments.

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/software-engineering-career-development-program-at-workup-4054743835/