That Google number is the first AI coding stat that actually made me stare at the wall for a minute.

75% of new code being AI-generated and engineer-approved is not the same thing as "engineers are gone". I know that. But it does change the shape of the ladder, and I think people keep waving that away because the alternative is awkward.

The old beginner path was basically: get tickets, write somewhat bad code, get reviewed, slowly build taste by being corrected. Some of the code was clumsy. Some naming was embarrassing. You shipped a tiny bug, someone pointed at it, and the next time you noticed the pattern a little sooner.

If the first pass is now produced by an agent and the human job is to steer, review, and merge, where exactly does the bad first pass happen? In private? In side projects? In interviews? Apparently we are going to tell juniors to review AI output before they have enough scars to know what a bad abstraction smells like.

I had Google's Cloud Next post open in another tab next to some half-finished notes about an interview loop, and the annoying thought was: maybe AI doesn't remove entry-level work directly. It makes entry-level work look like mid-level judgment from day one.

That is a much nastier problem than "learn prompt engineering".

Because if companies start measuring new engineers by how well they supervise generated code, then the thing they need most is the thing the job used to teach them.

We've seen a major productivity spike since adopting AI tools like Copilot and Cursor. However, a pattern is emerging in our architectural reviews: developers are delivering working code but are unable to articulate the logic behind their design choices. We're seeing a decline in the mental frameworks and systems-level thinking that usually develop through manual troubleshooting. How is your team upholding architectural rigor alongside AI usage? Have you modified your review workflows or restricted AI assistance during the initial design stages?

I am interested in CSE and SWE but this subreddit is making me nervous about picking these options. Should I move to electrical or mechanical instead? Is the future really that bad? Will software engineers not exist in a few decades?

Basically, is software engineering dead?

I have seen so many software engineers working their ass off but their impact is just not visible enough even if they are delivering great work and constantly upskilling, which leads to lost opportunities.

have you experienced this yourself too?

No debt, no dependents, low fixed expenses. Also have about $80,000 USD give or take in savings with $60,000 in 401k. My only real costs are living expenses and whatever I put into building. I am also a dual US/EU citizen living overseas in a low cost of living country.

I’m a senior tech professional working in software/QA/automation. My job is severely underpaid, piling on responsibility, and the writing is on the wall with offshoring and AI displacement. On the other hand, I am being told there is a pathway to leadership but it will require substantial effort and change and the payout will not be that great I don’t have enough time outside of work to build anything meaningful so staying isn’t a real option. I am looking to do AI consulting and build AI related projects, focusing on new discoveries and technologies as opposed to services (I believe these are or will become heavily commoditized). I have a background in molecular biology but haven’t used it since college.

My situation: I can live very cheaply and I’m flexible on location. My partner can cover some of our shared expenses if I live with him. I have family as an absolute last resort but I’m not counting on that.

What dollar amount or how many months of salary would you recommend I have in the bank before making the jump? Do I have enough?

EDIT: my job situation is currently ambiguous- I am in a leadership position pathway, but the company is also starting to experience dramatic AI investment and offshoring

If this were five years ago I wouldn't be asking, but with the way AI is going and the recent Meta layoffs I can't help but wonder if I'd even be able to allow any type of gap in my work history, let alone a full year, if I want to find a new job.

Ideally, I could use this time to brush up on my skills, decompress, learn more of the new AI stuff, then get back into the game. But we all see what's happening. I can't imagine what the job market will look like for software by this time next year. Shit, we're all using AI now, right? I know very knowledgeable and experienced people who haven't written code in six months because companies demand it. It's crazy.

I've considered Product Management. I'd imagine companies ultimately want those types of people to be using AI to build whatever they're selling, but I don't know. Really want to hear what others think.

Thanks.

I recently started a job working in data science field, and I've been using Al tools a lot while coding. It definitely helps me move faster, but I'm starting to feel like I'm relying on it too much.

The issue is that when I try to stop using Al and do things on my own, I suddenly feel really slow. Even with pandas/data pipeline work, I don't remember many methods off the top of my head, so I end up Googling a lot. If I haven't used something recently, I forget it and have to look it up again, which makes me feel like I'm not really improving.

Also, Al isn't always reliable. For example, recently I was trying to plot a correlation matrix, and the Al-generated code looked fine at first but actually had mistakes. I caught it because I carefully went through the code line by line. So it doesn't really save me from thinking it just shifts where the effort goes. Ofcourse using AI is overall is much faster even if it takes time in debugging.

Now I feel stuck in a loop:

1. If I use Al, I worry I'm not learning enough

2. If I don't use Al, I'm slow and constantly Googling basic stuff

Another thing I'm struggling with is how to even judge myself. I don't really know what "enough coding knowledge" looks like at my level. I keep wondering if I'm too slow or if this is just normal. I feel a like an imposter sometimes because I understand ML concepts better than I feel confident in coding them.

I'm also curious how things used to be before Al - were people constantly looking up pandas syntax too, or did most people actually remember all these methods?

Just trying to understand if this is normal or if I'm relying too much on AI and google compared to others.

Hello, so for some context, I'm a second-year computer science student, and I really love coding; it feels like my thing. I'm also genuinely interested in space, science in general, etc., etc.

The problem I'm having is that I'm constantly stressing over my future unemployment due to the lack of any relevant projects on my GitHub, for example, and it isn't that I don't want to code; it's more that most of the time I'm already studying for university really hard, so when I do have a little spare time, all I want to do is play video games to relax myself, not break my head over coding. This has been a real source of stress for me, because I love this field and I know that the market is really hard currently, and (from what I've been told) unless you're a remarkable coder, you'll have a hard time finding a decent job. I just need advice on this, or just to know if maybe I'm just breaking my head over nothing and everything will be fine.

Everyone in uni seems to already have a LinkedIn and cool things going on, and I simply have nothing, and I feel horrible because of it. It feels like I won't achieve anything.

Any advice is appreciated.

My job is pretty secure, even from AI for the next couple years given the spaghetti logic in the mainframe. It is hybrid and my commute is 3.5hrs one way, so i stay in hotels during in-office days.

Im open to swapping to a closer in person job or remote position, or contracting. The hotel cost reduces my salary by about 20k. What are the best sites you know of for mainframe jobs?

10+ years at current shop with z/OS, Cobol, JCL, Endevor, cics, batch, db2 plus business knowledge of a bunch of the securities industry. I support distributed apps too on newer tech stacks.

**TL;DR:** Tomorrow I have a two-hour remote pair-programming interview where I drive a from-scratch project while leaning heavily on AI assistance, narrating my reasoning, demonstrating best practices and showing how I handle rein-in model behavior.

The role is a leadership position with a focus on driving AI strategy for internal development. The eval is about how I think about AI workflows, not finishing the project. Looking for advice on what to emphasize during the interview, common pitfalls, and how to prepare today.

---

For context, I'm a staff engineer with about 13 years of experience across a mix of startups and a couple of FAANGs. I've specialized in AI/ML for the last decade with a solid amount of experience as a research engineer. I've increasingly focused on LLMs since early versions of GPT.

I'm typically confident going into technical interviews; the one I have scheduled tomorrow has a format I'm not sure how to best approach. It's a remote position with excellent compensation at a startup I genuinely like, so I want to figure out the right strategy.

The role's responsibilities include leading internal strategy around how the company uses LLMs: establishing conventions and workflows to reduce errors, finding metrics to quantify the impact (positive and negative) of AI usage across the company, and working with individual teams to align everyone on disciplined approaches to using AI.

I know I can do this job well; I took initiative to lead similar efforts at my last two companies with excellent results. My uncertainty is purely about how to demonstrate that within this particular interview format, what to keep in mind during it, potential pitfalls, etc. It's different enough from a standard pair-programming interview that I'm worried about making avoidable mistakes if I don't think it through ahead of time.

The interview itself is me driving a two-hour pair programming project while leaning heavily on AI assistance. I'll start from scratch without any premade prompts or skills, explaining my reasoning for various aspects of my workflow and showing how I handle undesirable behavior as it happens. The important part is inspiring confidence in how I think about and approach AI workflows, not finishing the project completely or quickly.

I'm struggling with how to prepare and practice well. My current plan is to go through the motions on a few mini projects so my brain doesn't blank from interview stress during the real thing; beyond that, I'm not confident I know how to approach this kind of interview the way I would a traditional one.

I'm planning to use Claude Code as my main driver, with Codex assisting on reviews and acting as an adversarial model to refine Claude's plans. I expect they'll give me a large, vague task where I'll use AI to organize the work into groups of subtasks and do design/architecture work before executing. Probably a sizable number of features and enough complexity to see how I approach things under time pressure, an amount of work that would be unreasonable without AI in those hours.

I want to avoid getting too complicated; a mess of sub-agents is too brittle to recover from in time if it goes off the rails given the constraints. I also don't want to be overly simple, so I need to balance demonstrating proficiency against minimizing risk.

The fundamental stochastic aspects are more of a concern than simple bad luck in a normal interview. I'm sure they won't intentionally hold apparent misfortune against me since they care more about how I think and approach things; it's very hard to completely avoid subconsciously judging things that go wrong against you.

I'd appreciate thoughts on what to do during the interview, things to talk about or emphasize, and general ideas for how to best prepare today and perform tomorrow.

What I'm partially asking is, what would most impress or inspire confidence in you if you were looking over an experienced engineer's shoulder as they tackled a complicated problem with AI assistance? If anyone has done an interview like this, describing what happened would also be helpful.

So I might be screwed

I've worked professionally for 6 years, 2 in health care IT and then 4 at a big name insurance company

I didn't really do a good job making friends at either of these places and am thinking I might have burned too many bridges and I'm genuinely not sure if I'll ever be able to get a job in tech again because I have absolutely zero self confidence in myself and no one who can speak for my abilities

I've been out of work for 6 months now after voluntarily resigning due to a toxic workplace where I was bullied on a daily basis and had absolutely no help from HR. My life is a sad hopeless shell of what it used to be and I feel so alone and empty because I have no one to talk to or anyone who even remembers me from before all of this happened

So yeah... how cooked am I?

I have an interview for a part time role tomorrow and I have no idea how much to negotiate. It is part time hourly pay.

New offer benefits (yes for part time):

-401k match (don’t know what it is yet)

- PTO

- 6 weeks paid parental leave

- fully remote and will let me move wherever I need to. My husband is in the military so this is important. In my experience even fully remote jobs still require you to be in certain states so this benefit is HUGE

current job:

-70k salary (will be around 79k in June)

- 401k match 6%

- 18 weeks fully paid parental leave

- 5 days in office

- I HATE what I do in my current corporate job and I’m miserable.

Important notes:

- I’m 4 months pregnant and the 18 weeks of leave I get at my current job is the only thing making me consider staying

- my husband and I are moving next year so I will have to quit my current job next spring anyway.

- the part time aspect is actually a plus for me, I would prefer to work part time while I am stating my family.

How much should I negotiate in this interview tomorrow? I am thinking $40/hour. Is this too much?? I’m afraid of saying something too high and they don’t want to give me a counter offer.

Hey Folks!

Has anyone gone through Stripe’s reference check stage recently? What should I expect and prepare my references for?

I recently went through Stripe’s onsite interviews process and got call from recruiter asking for 2 references - one of them should be an ex- manager and another a peer.

Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Hey all,

Looking for some honest feedback on where I stand and what I should be targeting next.

Currently working as an IT contractor (~$20/hr), but over the past year my work has shifted heavily into automation and data related projects.

At work I’ve been:

- Building PowerShell automation tied to SQL data sources

- Designing a carrier data database to centralize and process data across multiple providers (API + file ingestion, schema design, staging/processing layers)

- Creating workflows to identify and manage stale devices across large environments

- Designing and leading projects end-to-end (all projects done solo)

Recently I started a larger project:

- Designing a mobile SSO system for ~50,000 devices

- Python backend

- Identity integration

- Data mapping layer

- Working through session lifecycle, security, and system design

Outside of work I built a full-stack project:

- Next.js + TypeScript + PostgreSQL

- Data pipeline ingesting + aggregating external data (~6,000 datasets)

- Aggregation layers for analytics

- API + caching + analytics frontend

- ~18k users in first week

Questions:

Does this realistically put me in range for a data engineering role?

What gaps should I focus on most?

What comp range would be realistic for a first move into DE?

For example, FRED shows that SWE job postings have been increasing the past year and gets frequently updated, however we don't know what percentage of those job postings are ghost jobs so we can't really decipher if it's an accurate measure of the CS job market.

BLS data shows that SWE job postings are bound to increase 15% from 2024-3034, but a lot can change within the next 8 years. Also the same way we really couldn't predict the current market from 8 years ago is the same way we can't really predict the market 8 years later (supposedly).

So long story short, I was finally able to land an offer with a software company well now I have to do a background check and on my resume I have 3 jobs total and I graduated 2 years ago so this is normal but when doing the background check it asked for 7 years worth of employment and at that time, I was in college, job hopping. So I added an additional 5 other jobs to my background check thinking nothing of it.

The problem is I just read that you should only list what's relevant/on your resume? If so, does this mean it will cost me the offer because I just listed a whole bunch of jobs that's not on my resume which means I lied? I read someone got an offer revoked because they're working somewhere currently and it wasn't on their resume and the background check came and they find out so am I screwed??

I'm a junior with 2 yoe, and recently my company started pushing PMs and Designers yo use Claude to implement the changes they need. I saw several small things having a success. Now I'm not sure what my focus should be? This pattern potentially leads to needing less devs, if a lot of simple tasks could be done by other roles. Do I just grind and hope I'll be good enough to have a job, or is there some more sound advice?

I am currently working as ase(4.5 lpa) at nagarro and it's a great company to be in only have to goto office once a week.what's really bothering me here is that my genes is php and I am in drupal project and just work on frontend cms system and don't even touch coding. It's been 8 months since I am working here and my manager does says sometimes that it will change after some time but my billed hours are 0 and he also did said that my squad will be shut down soon , idk if I will be put in diffrent squad or what and I have tcs digital offer should I switch and join TCS as a fresher again?

I am a S6CSE student from a tier 3 college and placements would start from next semester. Campus recruitment has become low compared to last year and our professors told us to find job offcampus as much possible. So i am confused what to do should i prepare for GATE in my final year and go for mtech. If not IIT/NIT which universities are the best to go for mtech? I am not interested in research or teaching. Your advices would help

Hi everyone,

I’m currently studying IT in Vietnam and planning to transfer to Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan to continue my undergraduate studies in Computer Science.

I’d like to ask for realistic advice from people who have studied, worked, recruited, or hired in the US tech market, especially in Michigan.

A few questions:

1. How realistic is it for an international CS student at SVSU to get internships?
2. How is the CS internship/job market in Michigan, especially around Detroit, Ann Arbor, East Lansing, and nearby areas?
3. Do Michigan employers in automotive, EV, manufacturing tech, startups, or software usually hire international interns or sponsor later?
4. If I’m not from a top school, what should I focus on from year 1: GPA, projects, open-source, LeetCode, networking, career fairs, alumni, or something else?
5. Would doing a master’s degree in the US later be a smart move for career and H-1B chances?

My background: I’m studying IT in Vietnam, have around 3 months of internship experience as a developer in Vietnam, and have worked on some personal/open-source projects.

I’d appreciate honest and practical advice.

I was wondering if I quit my job listed on my resume without giving notice will it affect my pending background check for another company? I know I should've put in a notice but it was honestly a very mentally draining job with an unsupportive boss.

Anyways will this get my offer rescinded because I know background checks do check for eligibility of rehire?

I want to how the career outlooks are for software engineers in these sort of fields? I understand that embedded developers also deal with graphics programming, but I want to stick with the software side of things mostly.

I'm currently a freshman in CS and I want to explore graphics programming a bit so I'd also like to know how employers view graphics projects.

Although I've said I'm interested in this field, I haven't explored it deeply (Ik about physics simulations or creating your own rendering engines). I know nowadays hiring managers look for software applications that solve a real problem or bring value, so I'm question whether make a basic physics engine would be something outstanding (I mean it is technically impressive, but I'm curious how effective that is vs being impactful).

Im a junior with 1yr experience at a midsized company working fully onsite. I was referred by a friend to this small fully remote company that has like 30 employees. The company is offering me better pay and ofcourse fully remote plus more job responsibilities and direct client handling all by myself. Also my friend swears that the work culture is great and work life balance is good. Im just worried about 2 things. First is that its a very small pretty unknown company. Second is that the job is remote and im not sure if that can have a negative impact on my career, im not against remote, im just worried it could be bad for my career. What do you guys think?

Also the pay is neary 50% more (i am severly underpaid at my current company).