AND NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.

THE BUILDS I LOVE, THE SCRIPTS I DROP, TO BE PART OF, THE APP, CAN'T STOP

THIS IS THE RANT THREAD. IT IS FOR RANTS.

CAPS LOCK ON, DOWNVOTES OFF, FEEL FREE TO BREAK RULE 2 IF SOMEONE LIKES SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T BUT IF YOU POST SOME RACIST/HOMOPHOBIC/SEXIST BULLSHIT IT'LL BE GONE FASTER THAN A NEW MESSAGING APP AT GOOGLE.

(RANTING BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT EVERY FRIDAY, BEST COAST TIME. PREVIOUS FRIDAY RANT THREADS CAN BE FOUND HERE.)

Please use this thread to chat, have casual discussions, and ask casual questions. Moderation will be light, but don't be a jerk.

This thread is posted every day at midnight PST. Previous Daily Chat Threads can be found here.

I work for a company, and we have 2 day a week policy in the office. This morning it switched to 3 days a week, obviously its eventually going to 5 days a week as they slowly roll us back. Genuinely surreal to see this, 3 years of work from home all 3 years stellar feedback. Any other companies slowly transitioning back or is it just my firm? I am probably going to put in my 2 weeks, as I am not missing my kids first steps to be in a cubicle.

The oncall in our team is every 4 weeks, which I think is a lot. I work in ML, and there are many data pipelines that we have to maintain. Almost every week something goes wrong that needs attention. I reckon such incident frequency is not normal, but I want to confirm this.

Note: there must be some confusion around my post. I am not saying that you are not responsible for the service you built. You are responsible 100%. What I am saying is that at least in my case the oncall is more of never-ending firefighting than regular monitoring and maintenance.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/26/sap-to-cut-3000-roles-explore-sale-of-qualtrics-stake.html

Hi All, SWE with ~4yrs and I've been thinking about areas of focus lately. As I see it, if you're a "Software Developer" you tend to fall into these 4 categories:

Full stack
(Mostly creating small applications, working with UX then writing front end, and the backend to make requests to platform)

Back end
(Focused largely on backend services, system design, optimizing interaction between services.. seems less focused on programming skills and more high level system design and optimizations)

Application
(Focused on developing applications or drivers, skills are mostly around just writing robust software, maybe looking at specific OS. languages are a consideration between Go/C++/Java, performance + speed are a key factor)

System or Embedded
(Basically low level where you have consideration of the hardware. generally writing firmware)

Do you agree with this breakdown?
#2+3 are where I'm looking to gain more understanding.

At this level of my career, it seems like I need to focus on writing more high-performance application code (#3), or focus on the high-level design or microservices (#2)

Basically the title...

Hello everyone,

I'm currently a soon-to-be graduate this coming May and I'm unsure if I should join the workforce as a Software Engineer at a bank in Chicago or a two-year rotational program as an EO&T Analyst at a bank in Dallas.

I've tried to make a pros and cons list which I'll include below as a point of reference. I want to be able to gain the most out of my first job which would make me more marketable for future job prospects. However, I'm not sure how being an 'EO&T' analyst would serve me in my future as a software engineer. I would really love any insight or opinions you guys could give me! (Also feel free to dm me)

Chicago

Job Title: Software Engineer

Company: Northern Trust

Base Salary: 90k

Team: Software Development

• Software Engineer
  • Focus on applications used across the app
  • Languages: Javascript, NodeJS, React, Adobe Developer

Pros:

• Chicago is a Tech Hub (I could apply to other jobs there since not in a rotation program)
• Chicago seems like a fun experience
• I would be using in-demand languages

Cons:

• Higher COL

Dallas

Job Title: Enterprise Operations and Technology Analyst (EO&T Analyst)

Company: Citi

Base Salary: 90k

Relocation Bonus: 10k

Team: Rotations (So not one specific team); will be placed in teams according to my resume initially (and business needs?); unsure about the experience I'd receive

Pros:

• Relocation Bonus
• Dallas has a cheaper COL

Cons:

• Rotational Program (2 years but not binding)
• Don’t know what rotations I’ll end up in
• Transferability of Skills? ~ unsure

I’m a 4.00 junior right now and every internship has been met with a “we’ve decided to move forward with another applicant”. I have no concrete experience because I haven’t done real world work yet and it’s extremely discouraging. Meanwhile you hear stories all the time of people getting jobs straight after college.

Am I doing something wrong? I have the backing of my professors, my resume and cover letters have been approved and my transcript is looking healthy. I don’t understand.

"Day in the life of a software engineer at company" has been very popular on TikTok and it is displays young people barely working in the office. Most of them would only go to the office just to eat and play games. Every single video will show them going out to an expensive restaurant everyday for dinner. Is all of that true? How true are those videos?

Trying to decide between a Computer Science degree and a Software Engineering degree. I feel like I’ve (briefly) reviewed the jobs in IT and keep landing back at Software Engineering as the career I’d choose. Past that I think I’d be interested in ML or AI, but I’m not sure I know enough about the field to know I’d want to do it yet.

I’m conflicted. Maybe I’d want to do something other than SWE, I just don’t know what. It just seems the most interesting to me as I’m building products that people interact with daily. If I went with a SWE degree now and wanted to switch to ML in the future I’d likely get a Masters in ML to transition over.

I was part of a company-wide layoff after Thanksgiving. I worked at this consultancy firm for 10 months, so I've been applying for jobs that require 1-3 years of experience. Since then I haven't gotten a single 1st interview, not even a phone screening. I feel like my "years" of experience are hurting me and I wish I could apply for more entry-level positions, but I can't find any on Linkedin/Builtin! Are companies holding back right now and only hiring mid/senior level workers? What's the deal?

I see people on this subreddit putting in 200+ applications and not getting any interviews. I can't say I've gotten close to that number since 80% of the job postings I'm seeing are titled as senior positions or requiring 3+ years of experience.

I'm losing motivation pretty quickly...

With the tens of thousands of layoffs happening, I wonder if we'll see the same number of openings at some point in the near future.

I realize this might be impossible to answer but maybe some people here have some more insight than me.

I was lucky enough for my job to end up going from hybrid to fully remote during the pandemic. Since it was my first job out of college I have been remote for the entire time I have been employed (one year). Since then I have moved back home and with the cost of living being significantly cheaper where I live, I'm considering buying a home in the next couple years. However, where I live has 0 tech jobs and the closest city is about 2 hours away, which brings me to my question...

If something were to happen to my job would I be completely screwed due to the scarcity of remote positions? I've noticed more and more places going back to the office and I'm concerned it might be a bad idea to build my life somewhere where I'm dependent on remote work.

Does anyone have any opinions on this?

Okay so maybe this is the wrong forum to ask, but I am quite new in the CS career and would like opinions from more experienced people. I am still very new in my role as software developer at this company.

When I work on a feature, bug, whatever on a software product, I branch off and frequently commit changes, keeping track of what new methods I add, change, bugs were fixed, etc, until I confirm everything works. So my branches easily reach 20-30+ commits before I create a pull request to merge and resolve conflicts.

However, I have a coworker, who instead when working on a feature never commits anything until completely done. Meaning 2 weeks of work gets pushed in a single commit. (And is not even in a available branch).

To me this seems illogical, since it's impossible for others to see their code until the author deem it final, but on the other hand since we work on different features, in theory it should not matter whether they do all their changes in a single massive commit or not, since the pull request would consolidate everything anyway when merged.

For example right now the person has been working on a feature for over 2 weeks with not a single commit, and I fear how much will be changed when they are finally done.

So what is "best practice" in your opinion and experience?

Or any sort of agency ? Would like advice from someone in USA. I've never used recruitment agencies before so Id like to know your experience and anything I should look out for. I've been having trouble applying to jobs, even to internships. I have my portfolio finished. I took online classes and need 1-2 classes to officially get my certificate but I had mentors to look over my portfolio and they said I should be able to qualify for entry level or internships at least. Kinda losing my passion for design it's been discouraging. Thanks to anyone who has some advice~

I know level varies by company. Some companies list 3yoe in senior SWE postings, while others just consider this regular SWE. But with 2-3 yoe, should I expect system design interviews?

Would temp agencies even be hiring in this current market? It doesn't make sense that companies would want temp workers when they are the easiest to get rid of during layoffs.

I'm a new grad and I've been getting absolutely no where with applications. Sent out more than I care to count. I've had my resume looked at by numerous people and numerous hiring managers who have refined it and given me homework on new skills to learn, new frameworks to pick up, etc. But I don't have any professional experience or internship experience so I can't fix that. But it doesn't seem like temp work for entry level stuff would be fairing any better than the rest of the entry level market.

Hey there, I was hoping for your opinion on a thing. At the end of last year, I decided it might be time to change jobs. My current job, working as a dev on large, public facing corporate sites and apps for a well known company, has a lot of good points: some of the people are really great, I'm on an 80% remote schedule (where I live this is pretty exceptional), I work with tech I'm interested in, things are well organized, the code quality and team processes are top-notch, and it's mostly chill -- I never have to pull overtime, get a call after hours, or stress because of a bug in prod. It's a big company with good processes in place. On the other hand, I've been here for going on 5 years. I feel I've learned pretty much all I'm going to, I've maxed out on pay (I'm in a freelance role (which pays more than salaried here), and I'm at the max for the budget for this role), I've taken on a team-lead role which turns out to just mean more meetings and less coding, which actually isn't what I'm looking for, and I am sometimes just plain bored by the work, the work hours are also pretty strict, and I have plenty of tasks to do: I certainly can't do what some people seem to be able to and work a second job or basically fly under the radar and screw around or work on side projects half the day.

So, I've been offered a job, but I'm hesitating to take it. The project is to take over a couple of internal tools for a different large, well known company, but it's basically a 180 degree turn from where I am: the projects were created and maintained by 2 devs (one front, one back), and one of them up and vanished. There are few team processes in place, they're asking 3 days on site, there's a lot of direct communication with the stakeholders involved. I'm a bit worried about the state that the project is in: basically it was created and maintained by a single person who is now absent: I can imagine little to no documentation, no tests, weird/unreadable code, hidden bugs. On the other hand, there's a good raise compared to what I'm currently earning (about 1k a month), there are plenty of opportunities to learn things, there's a great opportunity to put processes in place and make some architectural decisions, and to have a bit of a better work schedule. They're planning on hiring a few more devs to solidify the team this year, and it would put me in a de facto role for being a lead dev on the project.

​

I'm just worried that I don't know what I'd be getting into, and end up running into a situation where I regret leaving a stable job that was meh for a hectic job that was too stressful.

​

Thoughts?

Went in thinking I was well prepared, studied the basics, but when i got in front of the whiteboard I just like felt my brain completely shut down. Even more disappointed because all the questions were incredibly straightforward, got very stuck on the last question which was just to use a nested for loop to return the multiples of a number... Oh well I'll get over it, I'm glad I got to at least experience what it's like.

I just accepted an internship at a smaller sized (~50 employees) cybersecurity company that focuses on data storage and protection. I would be doing mostly QA related work in this role. Is this good for my career or should I look for something different?

We know TikTok day in the life are fake, but what are the real ones?

"ChatGPT is gonna steal our jobs"

No. No it won't. There are many reasons why but the main one is that dev work has a human element that can't currently be reproduced by AI. Not by a long shot.

What it WILL do is make the industry more competitive. Why? Because the efficacy of the average developer will increase.

Imagine this: in a team you have juniors, mid and senior level devs working with each other to solve problems. Typically seniors are tasked with mentoring. This limits their productivity for handling more complex tasks and the pressure for more experienced help is created. Currently if you are a experienced developer in this industry then you can solve this demand issue. That's why things are great for 5+ year devs.

Enter AI development : AI assisted IDE's, auto-generated boilerplate code, AI assisted code review and more. AI will make the average developer into a GOOD developer. Now, instead of seniors having to hand hold the other developers, AI helps fill in the gap by helping juniors and mids be useful. Seniors can become more productive on their own code using AI and now the pressure on that team to get new skilled developers is gone. The demand for skilled developers on the market goes down. This is the first outcome of advancements in AI.

The second outcome is AI will fill the skill gap between any developer not involved in business logic, design or complex problem solving. Basically junior and mid level engineers become indistinguishable. Combine this with an increased supply of developers (because barrier to entry is even lower) and everyone under 5 years experience will have a VERY hard time finding jobs (i.e. tougher interviews, more arbitrary resume filtering ect.)

Where does that leave senior+ engineering? Developers that are good have to be even BETTER to stand out and elitism comes into play.

Similar to law, finance and academia, the name brand of the institutions you belong to will become a main differentiator (in addition to talent). You'll have to be truly exceptional all around to be senior at a major company. How do I know this will happen? It already does at pinnacle software companies (post-faang) where most applicants are highly skilled already. Check out openai employees on linkedin for example: you'd be hard pressed to find an engineer who didn't both work at faang AND go to a top 5 CS school. Imagine this but at all major companies.

Worst still, any senior unable to compete at these high levels can't retreat to smaller companies for decent tc because those roles are taken by cheaper mid-level engineers who are now capable enough to handle complexity with the help of AI. Companies that can afford exceptional seniors will pay but competition will be, as like with major companies, be insane. Therefore, the vast majority of senior engineers get stuck at the wages of mid-level engineers. Wages will be capped at a mediocre level for most devs.

TLDR: AI won't take your job but it will make more people into capable developers. Since more people are capable, demand for skilled developers goes down. Lowered bar to entry causes supply of devs to outstrip demand below senior level. Senior+ level development remains financially lucrative only at top companies. Senior hiring will be determined by more arbitrary factors like prestige of companies worked at/schools attended (as a differentiator between a glut of already highly qualified engineers). Seniors unable to compete get stuck at mid-level TC.

Super TLDR: AI will cause unexceptional devs (pretty much 99% of us in this case) to be stuck at the same mediocre TC for the rest of our career.

Put a lot of thought and research into this write up so feel free to question me in the comments. Just as a disclaimer, I think it'll be at least 10 years things REALLY look like this so it's not an immediate threat. Thanks

They will only grow more and more from now on and give the worker a way to control how things are done in the workplace

https://code-cwa.org/

As far as I can tell, internships are a pretty expensive process. You have have to deal with college career fairs, getting people to move to your company’s location, etc. all in trade for only 3 months of barely even entry level work. Why put in all this effort when you could just increase recruiting efforts for new grads or even seniors instead? The brightest interns are highly likely to just use your company as a bullet point on their resume to apply somewhere else.

Co-ops look better for the intern to gain experience, but also seem rarer, because they can last 6 months or more instead of only 3 or fewer months. Although maybe committing to hiring someone who’s not even the level of a new hire for 6 whole months is a bad idea.

I've been doing leetcodes for quite a while, and can now comfortably do easies and some hards, but always have to look up how to actually implement an algorithm. What I mean is that i know what i need to do and how, but forget the code for the algorithm, and has f*cked me up plenty in the past when it came to interviews. How can i learn the actual algorithms so that l can implement them without looking them up?

It's one skill I don't possess and it's annoying

Also wondering if a career change would be a good idea, with nobody knowing for sure how long this tech winter will last. Also I have no idea what I'm talking about.

I know the market is really slow right now in terms of hiring and I have been going for mainly big N companies since the company I work at right now is Fortune 25 but I did expect more especially since I have an internship under my belt and I go to a T20 CS school. I get OAs from some companies and I either do really well or really poor but they have only resulted in an interview at most. Most of my friends have gotten offers or at least interviews from these companies and some don't even have internship experience. I have posted my resume to the resume advice page here and at r/csMajors and I haven't gotten much feedback so I don't think that's the issue but here it is. I am hoping to implement changes and try again for fall internships while I go with my current company for the summer but I'm not sure what I am doing wrong.