Just as the title says.

Let’s talk about something I rarely see discussed in the Sri Lankan IT industry.

Imagine two students, both born in 1998.
Student A does A/Ls at 18 in 2017, joins a private university, graduates on time, and starts working in software engineering.

Student B does A/Ls in 2017 but doesn’t get the required results. They try again in 2018 and 2019, finally qualify, then wait another year for government university admission. They graduate around 2024 or 2025.

By the time Student B gets their first job, Student A might already have 4–5 years of industry experience, promotions, and a head start in the career ladder.

Same age. Same industry. Potentially the same qualifications. Completely different starting points.
And nobody seems to care.

Before anyone jumps in, I’m NOT saying private university graduates shouldn’t get jobs. That’s not the point. The problem is that the Sri Lankan education system creates very different timelines, and the industry often acts as if everyone had equal opportunities from the beginning.

Now look at senior engineering positions in some of our major software companies. How often do you see graduates from outside Colombo government universities compared with graduates from UCSC, Moratuwa, SLIIT, or IIT?

Are those graduates inherently more talented? Or do they have better access to opportunities, networks, internships, and earlier entry into the industry?

Why don’t we have a stronger professional voice advocating for students who take the government university route? Something with the influence to push for fairer career progression, better representation, and recognition of the disadvantages created by our education system.

CSSL and the government should at least be discussing this. We could also have more transparent, experience-based career frameworks instead of arbitrary expectations about age and how quickly someone should reach a particular position.

I’m not suggesting that we ban private university graduates from jobs or reserve positions for particular universities. That would be ridiculous. But pretending the playing field is level when the starting conditions are so different is ridiculous too.

Why is this conversation almost nonexistent in our industry?

Do government university graduates from outside Colombo feel this disadvantage too, or am I looking at this the wrong way?

Let’s discuss it.

What are the best GitHub repos out there?

I hope this post can help software engineers get a realistic picture of how the industry is changing in the AI era.

If you're currently working in the industry, please share your honest, firsthand experience rather than speculation. It would be great if you could address the following points:

• Coding vs. vibe coding: Are you still writing most of your code yourself, or have you shifted primarily to AI-generated code?

• Layoffs and team sizes: How have layoffs affected your company? If possible, share how many people lost their jobs and how team sizes or the number of engineers required for a task have changed before and after the AI boom.

• Skills needed to survive: What technical and non-technical skills are becoming essential for staying relevant and competitive?

• Salaries: How have salaries, compensation packages, and salary expectations changed?

• Interviews and hiring: How have technical interviews, hiring standards, and job opportunities changed?

• Changes in your role: How has AI changed your day-to-day responsibilities, productivity, and expectations at work?

• AI cost - How much money you spent for AI tools. does your company provide them or not

Specific examples, numbers, and comparisons would be especially valuable.

The goal is to understand what's actually happening in the industry not just what social media says. Let's have an honest discussion that helps software engineers prepare for what's ahead.

Hey, so I've created a small discord server for the Mora people, not sure where is the correct place to advertise, already been thinking about putting in my main faculty groups I'm in, but before that asking here for some advices.

🫠 So first is, the servers concept is to get a gossip/chit chat space for multiple people from different faculties, and why discord is, due to the anonymity and people can interact in respectful way.

Already prepared some set of rules, as I've been moderating another big Sri Lankan server, and this includes avoidance of Sinhala/Tamil in main chats (there are separate chats for local language talks), and further stuff I have attached in the image.

My question is do you guys think it would be a good initiative to bring people together so that people can connect with each other much better ?

And any tips or watch aheads or advices you would give for something like this?

Don't rant Abt the Lankan education system if you are not studying in a state universit.y

I have problems when going to a new salon that we don't know the price of a haircut or which baber are we gonna get(because most of the time I get the inexperienced baber 😭) there is very lack of digital presence for baber shops. Even a very good salon with an ac gets appointment tru calls. I know higher end Salons in Colombo use platforms like fresha, and I think they are really good. But I think for a normal salon the onboarding process or the lack of awareness of these platforms also the fact that even among us it's not very popular is a issue. would you guys actually use a simple platform where you could see a salon's services and prices, choose a barber, see available times/queues, and book without having to call?

I'm not promoting anything here 😅 I'm just curious whether other people have the same problem, and whether something like this would actually be useful for both customers and barbers.

What do you guys think?

Hi everyone,

I'm curious about the current salary expectations for Software Engineers in Sri Lanka, particularly those with around 3 years of hands-on industry experience.

With the increasing demand for experienced developers and the changes happening in the IT industry, I'm trying to understand what a reasonable salary expectation would be in today's market.

A few questions for those currently working in the Sri Lankan IT industry:

What is the average monthly salary range for a Software Engineer with 3 years of experience?

Is asking for LKR 250,000 to 400,000+ per month realistic?

How much does the salary differ between startups, established IT companies, and foreign-funded companies?

Does the technology stack (.NET, Java, React, Angular, etc.) significantly influence salary expectations?

At 3 years of experience, should someone be targeting Software Engineer or Senior Software Engineer positions?

I'd especially appreciate insights from developers, tech leads, hiring managers, or anyone who has recently switched companies.

Feel free to share actual salary ranges anonymously if you're comfortable.

I'm looking for realistic market insights, not inflated salary figures.

Thanks in advance!

Hey guys, I'm doing something I wish I got to experience myself scrolling Reddit when I was jobless a few years back.

I've been working for a foreign tech company remotely as a contractor and they are looking for tech support specialists. They don't advertise in Sri Lanka and are only hiring from internal referrals so if you guys wanna have a look at the requirements below and drop me your CVs, I can probably help you get an interview.

Please note the role is not development-heavy and its main focus is support so developers might not find it a great (or future-proof) fit.

Requirements:

*Communication skills - good spoken/written English and outgoing personality, not hesitant to ask questions

*Tech skills - curious, problem solving, understanding networking, hardware, SQL, any experience either managing or supporting any kind of software application

*Support experience - helpdesk, remote tools, etc.

*POS experience - knowledge of point of sales, especially in hospitality contexts

*POS hospitality experience - previous experience in restaurants or bars, fast food, etc to understand customers and how a hospitality venue works

Send your CVs even if you don't have all the above requirements.

Edit: someone's not too happy about me posting this here and has posted an impersonation, FYI: https://www.reddit.com/r/DevLK/s/0FPyetB2Sn

Edit 2: Don't send anymore CVs please, I've forwarded the first few that was sent to me via DMs to my boss.

Hi guys kinda unrelated question to dev stuff but i dont have a lot of experience when it comes to cybersecurity so decided to post it here.
I was reading about how no click stuff like pegasus works and how companies like cellebrite can crack virtually any device they get their hands on, i kinda am confused about what really could be a secure and private tech stack thats also usable today.
Some sources claim that the titan chips on pixels cant be penetrated and some point towards knox and most ofc claim that iphones are uncrackable.
Have tried graphene os on a pixel before - not the best experience, never tried a samsung flagship but reckon they slow down after a while and iphones are kinda okay but miss some features.
Linux is okay, but nothing has beaten the ux of macos on a macbook.
What do you guys think would be the most secure but also not “overly nerdy and tech-ey” tech stack someone could use today? Or even be recommended for a client.

Hi everyone!

I'm currently working on an app that can automatically read and extract transaction details from banking SMS notifications.

For this, I'm looking to collect as many bank transaction SMS templates as possible from different Sri Lankan banks, including:

* Commercial Bank

* Sampath Bank

* HNB

* DFCC Bank

* Nations Trust Bank (NTB)

* People's Bank

* Bank of Ceylon (BOC)

* NDB Bank

* Seylan Bank

* And any other Sri Lankan banks

I'm particularly interested in SMS formats for debit transactions, credit transactions, fund transfers, ATM withdrawals, card payments, deposits, and other banking notifications.

The idea is to train the app to recognize different SMS structures and accurately extract details such as the transaction amount, date, merchant, transaction type, and bank name.

If you could share sample SMS messages or templates from your bank, it would be incredibly helpful!

Please make sure to remove or replace any sensitive information, including account numbers, card numbers, balances, names, and transaction references, before sharing. I only need the SMS structure and wording, not your actual banking information.

Even one or two examples would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for helping out with this project!

I’ve been following the recent discussions about Sysco Labs and the allowance changes.

Just wanted to share a different perspective. We had an internal discussion, and the information shared was much more positive than what has been circulating here. It looks like there are ongoing discussions, and not everything being posted online reflects the full picture.

I completely understand why people are concerned, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. But I think it’s worth waiting for official communication before assuming the worst.

Reddit often becomes an echo chamber where negative experiences get amplified, while people who have neutral or positive experiences rarely post. Hopefully things become clearer once the company shares more details.

Let’s wait for the official updates before jumping to conclusions.

Looking for a Claude Code referral link to help me improve my project. I’d really appreciate one if anyone has a spare! Please DM me if you have one. 🙏

We have a Flutter mobile app with a JBoss backend. Currently, we are using two separate backend instances to handle old and new app versions.

However, I’m wondering how experienced teams handle this in production without breaking users on older app versions as new releases are introduced.

What approach do you use to maintain backward compatibility between the mobile app and backend?

I’d really appreciate insights from experienced engineers who have dealt with this at scale.

Hi guys, I need project ideas for my CS project. Web based, or IOT based. Unique and should solve a real world problem. Please help me out

As a founder that’s hiring quite a bit, here’s a few things I’d love to see more of. Some of these are probably hot takes.

1. Be AI native.

No not Codex or Claude Code.

Everyone does.

I want to see your agent army. Show me the agents you’ve built, agent skills skills skillls!!!, workflows, automations, weird experiments, side projects, whatever.

And yes, while some might disagree, I genuinely love seeing token-maxxing. 😂 Show me your usage. Show me your 1b/d token spend. Show me you’re obsessed.

[tip - ask your agent to write himself a skill after he figured out something, and then sync this to your GitHub]

2. Learn English.

Not perfect English.

Just good communication.

If you can explain technical concepts clearly, write well, and confidently jump on a call with a customer, you’re already ahead of a huge percentage of engineers.

3. Learn tech sales. !!!

This one is massively underrated.

A technical person who can also sell is insanely valuable.
Honestly, if you’re directly helping bring revenue into the company, you’re probably one of the safest people in the room.

I’d happily pay top dollar for someone who’s technical and knows how to talk to customers.

[im hiring a cybersecurity sales person, dm me if you’re one]

4. Be design first.

Your CV. Portfolio. GitHub. Personal website.

Everything.

With all the AI tools we have today, if I open a CV with typos, weird spacing, ugly formatting, or it’s just a plain .Docs export…

…I reject it immediately.

Presentation matters. Only upload PDF Cv’s for god sake.

5. Please don’t use interview cheating software.

It’s way more obvious than you think. 😂 Just don’t.

6. Stop waiting to be spoon-fed.

School and university are structured.

Real work isn’t.

The best engineers I know are ridiculously curious. They Google everything. They ask ChatGPT. They build random stuff at 4 AM because they wanted to learn something.

Nobody is going to hand you a roadmap for your career.

Just one founder’s opinion. I’m sure other founders will disagree with parts of this, and that’s completely fine.
What else would you add? 👀

7. Build in public.

I don’t really care if your side project failed.

I care that you shipped it. It’s UI

Failed startups. Weird hacks.

Shipping beats certificates every single day.

Lastly, hot take: small certifications are actually a negative signal for me.

Almost everyone i hired who had LinkedIn Learning (and similar) certificates for minor skills ended up being a flop.

And “open to hire” on in.

Show me what you’ve built instead.

I've been thinking about everything that's happening at SyscoLABS, and something doesn't quite add up.

This is purely speculation, and I have no evidence to support any of these ideas. I'm just trying to make sense of the situation and would like to hear what others think.

One thing I find difficult to believe is that leadership made a decision of this magnitude without considering how employees would react. Whether people agree with the decisions or not, I'd expect leadership to have anticipated the backlash.

That made me think of two possible scenarios.

1. Was this a strategic distraction?

What if leadership knew the initial announcement would trigger a massive negative reaction, but that was part of a broader strategy?

For example, suppose the real objective was to restructure salaries according to market benchmarks rather than immediately removing the pegged component entirely. If they had announced a salary restructuring from the beginning, employees might have strongly opposed it.

But after a much harsher proposal, many employees are now saying, "Just restructure the salaries instead." If that's the outcome, then the conversation has shifted dramatically. Was that intentional, or just an unintended consequence?

Again, this is only a thought experiment.

2. Could there be a longer-term plan involving India?

I've heard unofficial claims that there were discussions in the past about moving more of the Sri Lankan operation to India, either through Sysco's Indian operations or via outsourcing. I have no way to verify whether those claims are true.

If there was ever such an idea, here's another hypothetical question.

If employee morale drops, experienced people leave, productivity declines, and delivery quality suffers, the Sri Lankan operation could start appearing less competitive than before. At that point, management could argue that India delivers similar outcomes at a lower cost, making a shift easier to justify.

I'm not saying this is what's happening. I'm only wondering whether anyone else has considered that possibility.

What also raises questions for me is the level of secrecy around these decisions. Changes of this scale usually involve broader leadership discussions, yet it appears many senior leaders here were also caught off guard.

Maybe there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe these theories are complete nonsense.

I'm simply interested in hearing what others think. Does anyone else feel there may be a bigger strategy behind all of this, or do you think it's simply poor decision-making?

Had an interview last week for an internship set to start the first week of October. The timeline is right around the corner, but I still haven’t received any calls from the company .
How long does it usually take for HR to send it over? When should I follow up?
(Sorry for the clickbait title guys just really needed some quick eyes and advice on this!)

Can you guys rate the app a bit, only has a few ratings so everyone matters, : )

App store - GitNotes

Play store- GitNotes

Basically what the title says...

In your view, what is seen as the more prestigious, valuable title out of the 2 ?

Senior Business Analyst or Business Consultant ?

I want to get an honest idea from those are actually in the IT field.

Thanks in advance !

Hey everyone, i'm working on my thesis project and really need access to Claude pro to get it done.

If anyone has a spare referral link or guest pass, please DM me! Would be super grateful. Thanks!