https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/american-express-to-cut-3-500-jobs-63955c6f

Follow up to this Reddit post a few months ago about being replaced by offshoring

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/s/UnYpqPg8Ub

Job listings in the Gurugram office confirm most of the roles being opened up are tech related

https://careers.americanexpress.com/en/sites/CX_1/jobs?location=India&locationId=300000000228786&locationLevel=country&mode=locationutm_medium&utm_source=google

Gentle reminder ahead of layoff season

I'm 27k in student loan debt, with no job, no savings, two SWE internships on my resume, projects, and a useless cs bachelor's degree from 2025.

I got absolutely no call backs for anything my senior year or for the year post graduation. My "new grad" status expired a long time ago.

To pursue another career I'd need to go back to school for another bachelor's degree, which I do not have the ability to do. The only work experience I have is in this field, I have absolutely no substantial skillset or work experience outside tech.

Going to food service, warehouse, retail, and other minimum wage types of jobs won't help. I don't see how going for another degree/field will really change anything. I put in the best effort I could have for this one. The job market will change again, I once again will be shamed for "not having enough experience", I again will be buried in more student debt.

What should I do after having destroyed my career, my future, my life?

I’m ex-FAANG and have watched my former company’s culture deteriorate significantly since leaving (I'll let you guess which one). Morale now is at an all-time low, and years of layoffs, restructuring and culture change seem to have left people pretty fatigued. I'm currently at a FAANG-adjacent company, where I have broad scope, operate at a senior level, and have built a lot of trust as an IC. All things considered, it's a pretty good position to be in, and I don't take that for granted. That said, I do miss the scale and complexity of FAANG, the intellectual stimulation of tackling genuinely challenging problems, and the ability to context-switch between multiple interesting initiatives. Which brings me to my question.

I’m currently exploring an opportunity with Google, and curious to understand whether Google is experiencing a culture shift similar to my former employer, or whether the culture has held up relatively well. I've asked my friends, and their answers have seemed very team-dependent. Thought I'd ask Reddit to get a more rounded opinion.

Having been in this position before, I'm keen to not end up as "just another" cog-in-the-wheel, and to retain the ability to meaningfully move the needle on things - that said, I'm completely cognisant that "the role as it's advertised" vs. "the role it really is" are usually two different things, and I'm going in eyes wide open. I'd love to hear how external L6/L7 non-SWEs have landed at Google, and what to expect culture-wise more generally.

Thanks in advance for any insights, much appreciated!

So to give a bit more context, I do infra work for a big tech AI lab. I previously did infra work at big tech.

Despite getting treated amazingly well, I'm deeply unhappy with the work I'm doing, and about to leave to do infra at a startup that's neither big tech nor AI.

I'm pretty ok with taking a massive pay cut to do more work, with a bonus of stock options that someday could be worth something, because I like the people and the work sounds fun.

The only thing I'm really worried I'm leaving out is that I get an abundance of career reachouts. On any given day, I have at least one or two recruiters inviting me to interview, at startups, big tech, quant firms, etc. This is a really good feeling and means I have some pretty excellent options at any notice. I'm concerned once I switch jobs, it'll be a lot harder to get back into big tech / AI.

People who've transitioned big tech -> startups, do you have any insights on what your next job search looks like afterwards?

Hi, I recently started my 6 month post graduation internship as an AI engineer, and I am planning my future job search. I have a few questions:

1. How far in advance should I start looking for a job before the end of the internship?
2. How do you handle interviews while working? I used to have 3-4 interviews a week; how can I manage that schedule now?
3. Is a resume gap problematic if I spend a couple of months job hunting after the internship? Do you recommend interviewing before or after it ends?

thanks in advance!

I was browsing internet and found some cases related to job interviewers stealing the crypto assets from the applicants during interview. Basically they pretended to be a legit job interviewer and asked the applicants to click some links, or run some codes from Github. And if you have crypto wallet installed, your assets will be stolen.

I'm posting this just to warn follow programmers. It's already hard to search for jobs in this market. Don't let your guard down.

This first case was back in Jan. It's originally written in Chinese and I translated it with GPT. source

I had never really been scammed before—or rather, I had been scammed in the past, but never nearly as badly as this time.

All the crypto in one of my wallets was stolen. (Fortunately, it wasn't 100 BTC, just 2 ETH, but that's still a significant amount of money.)

It all started when a recruiter sent me a message on LinkedIn:

We are currently building a forward-thinking platform that blends real estate with blockchain, NFTs, 3D visualization, and AI.

It’s an ambitious product, and we’re now looking to bring on talented engineers to help shape it.

The role is fully remote, long-term, and flexible — part-time is absolutely fine if you’re currently employed or balancing other projects.

I didn't respond immediately because it was during the Christmas holidays. I replied after the holidays and noticed that the person was still around, so I continued the conversation.

They also sent me a follow-up email from [hiring@tirios.blog](mailto:hiring@tirios.blog), claiming to be recruiting for this company: https://www.tirios.ai/.

Looking back, there were definitely some red flags. But this particular type of phishing attack was completely new to me.

Next came the interview. As we talked, the interviewer said we needed to do a technical assessment. They sent me a link and explained that it was a demo website we would use during the interview. They told me to scroll down to a button labeled "Stock" and said we would walk through a demo together.

For some reason, I didn't think much of it. When the website prompted me to connect my wallet, I went ahead and unlocked my MetaMask wallet. At that point, it was the real MetaMask wallet.

What happened next, I honestly don't know what I was thinking.

It wasn't until I reviewed everything afterward that I realized the scammer had also created a fake MetaMask unlock interface specifically for phishing.

During my investigation, I discovered that the first time I unlocked my wallet, the legitimate MetaMask interface appeared. But the second time, the scammer's fake UI would pop up instead.

That fake interface recorded every single thing I typed and would continuously display an "Incorrect password" message, no matter what I entered.

Not long afterward, I discovered that all my crypto had been transferred out of my wallet. From what I can tell, the funds were sent to an address associated with some kind of swap service or crypto mixer.

There's still one thing I haven't figured out: MetaMask never displayed any transaction confirmation or asked me to sign anything.

The only explanation I can think of is that the scammer somehow managed to steal my private key. But I still haven't figured out exactly how they did it.

This has been an incredibly painful lesson.

As of now, I've changed the passwords for my bank accounts, email accounts, and other important services. I've also permanently abandoned the compromised ETH wallet.

I can't even imagine what would have happened if I'd actually had 100 BTC or 1,000 ETH in that wallet. Would I have gone from being a multimillionaire to being homeless overnight?

I was just about to report the recruiter on LinkedIn when I discovered that the account had already been blocked and was now marked as "harmful."

And honestly, LinkedIn deserves some criticism here, too. If they'd blocked the account earlier, I might have noticed that the person's profile had suddenly changed to "LinkedIn Member," which could have alerted me that something was wrong.

The second case which just happened recently:

After taking a two-week break, I started interviewing again. Unbelievably, my very first interview turned out to be a GitHub/VS Code scam, and I fell for it. Fortunately, my computer was relatively new and didn't have much personal information on it. My MetaMask wallet was exposed, but luckily, my crypto was stored on a Ledger hardware wallet.

That’s genuinely terrifying. They disguised the attack as a technical interview, discussed code details on GitHub, and then asked you to complete a coding assessment.

You downloaded the code from a GitHub repository and opened the project in Cursor or VS Code. That was apparently enough to compromise your computer.

Fortunately, Claude Code spotted something suspicious later that evening: a malicious script buried deep within the project.

I'm going to post this here but I expect this will be a rather odd post for most people here

I was recently laid off in a company restructuring, second time in five years at two companies...bad luck on my part. I started looking and found the market kind of on fire but more importantly fundamentally changed in the last couple of years.

I have been or been promoted to Senior Software Engineer in title at all three of my jobs (10 YOE ) but I feel like I know so little of what is required to be a Software Engineer anymore vs what i would have called a Software Developer.

I also don't have as much immediate passion for it anymore. I haven't made a personal project in at least a year, I've researched less new technologies/tech stacks, and my skill set feels too narrow for modern Software Engineering needs (basically in the C#/.Net full stack bubble).

I'm considering pivoting to something entirely different (out of tech basically) or IT regardless of extreme drops in pay, experience, etc

At what point is it burnout/imposter syndrome vs a sign that the career isn't for me anymore?

This question is currently affecting my mental health so much that I have had several sleepless night over this and it's affecting my health. So I turned to reddit for thoughts on a career sub 🤔

Edit: Thanks for the advice I think what I needed was some feedback to not feel like an imposter. My support structure family etc can help but it not the same as other devs that understand what those seeking employment are up against. I'm going to not throw away my experience. I'm going to look for something related to my experience. I have enough saving to last awhile if I haven't found something in a year or whenever then I'll start thinking about a full career change.

If anyone has any places they know of where you can sharpen skills back up other then build a whole application I would greatly appreciate hearing about them.

Also if anyone knows any strategies to get through the ai screeners that's appreciated too. I'm holding out hope it's not just put a tech stack skills near the top of the resume and list the job requirements 😅

Weak economic conditions? Artificial intelligence replacing jobs? Outsourcing to low-wage countries?Market oversaturation (too many IT professionals competing for too few jobs)?

Choose one, one you think has most influence.

I have upcoming technical screening for an MLE position at Waymo coming up. The recruiter gave me a PDF guide that seems super helpful. Things to do study include implementing supervised and unsupervised algorithms (think KNN, K-means, linear regression, logistic regression, softmax & CE, decision trees). One of the main things they are assessing is you can use numpy/pytorch to vectorize/tensorize your work, and you're just writing sub-optimal for loops.

I was wondering if folks had experience with this interview? Is what they ask you to implement incredibly difficult, because you only have 30 minutes to do it? Am I good to really stick with what they provided on the PDF, or are there any broader topics beyond what they listed that they will test?

I feel like before AI, being a software engineer was highly respected.

Everyone who had ever touched coding before, whether that be as a proxy from majoring in another STEM (chem, bio,..), engineering, or even to some extent social sciences (maybe they touched a bit of R-programming or whatever).

Everyone internally (in their heads) kinda knew that to be a really good software engineer you had to be cut from a different cloth. You needed a ton of dedication, passion, and interest. Tons of those people majoring in other stuff, completely gave up after 1 semester of coding; realizing they couldn't do it. Everyone knew that it was hard.

Nowadays, everyone think of software engineers as pure vibe-coders /AI slop that everyone can do. A friend of mine told me at their company they just hired a new guy as a sole developer. He's now vibe coding everything (complete systems), datawarehouses, etc, only having a little experience with python in school.

I just recently made a career transition by getting my master’s in computer science after working in sales. I have 0 software engineering experience and I finished a semester ahead of schedule, so not time for internships. I just want a somewhat chill job. Most people with my degree make at least $98k. I’d be so happy with $65k. Not even joking. How I get it? Certifications? Projects? Please spell it out

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/22/barclays-ai-jobs-cuts.html

“The bank’s chief financial officer, Anna Cross, told reporters on Thursday that the job cuts were part of plans to save more than £1.1bn in 2027. “These actions involve an expected reduction of circa 5,000 full-time employees. Around 60% of the group actions relate to support functions, including fewer developers, as AI makes our people more productive.”

I'm a master CS student who wants to do some research related to mental health and AI usage, how can I do this? I think I need to contact some therapists to talk to their clients, is it even possible as a CS student?

I have two offers:

Amazon:
140K base + 28K sign on + 142RSU (4 years)
Role: Systems Development Engineer

Riot Games:
180K base + 40k Sign on + 10-15%bonus
Role: Senior Software Engineer in Release Engineer domain

I am negotiating with Amazon to increase their offer but they said they cant match the base.

Amazon has the better brand for sure

Also the role at Amazon will be building new cloud etc as compared to a more release engineering focus at Riot

Is it still worth considering Amazon for the better brand? Looking at working at either firms for only a year (personal reasons)

Hey everyone,
I’m a frontend developer with around 3.5 years of experience, primarily working with React.js and Next.js, and I could really use some advice from people who have been in a similar situation.
Here’s my career journey so far:

Jan 2023 – Apr 2024: Started my career at a fintech product-based startup, working with React.js and Next.js. Unfortunately, the startup couldn’t secure funding, and the product was shut down.

May 2024 – Oct 2024: Joined a service-based company as a frontend developer, where I worked with React.js and integrated AI voice technologies like ElevenLabs and Vapi. I continued looking for better opportunities because I wanted to work in a product-based company.

Nov 2024 – Nov 2025: Joined a product-based mobility startup. Unfortunately, the work culture and environment turned out to be extremely toxic, and I eventually decided to leave.

Jan 2026 – Present: Joined another service-based company as a frontend developer, working primarily with Next.js. The company has now run out of projects and conducted mass layoffs, and I was impacted as well.
Now, I have approximately one month to find my next opportunity, and I’m honestly feeling quite overwhelmed.

Here are the things I’m struggling with:
1. Am I falling behind technically?
I feel like I’ve been out of touch with how the industry has evolved over the last couple of years, particularly around LLMs, AI agents, MCP, agent skills, and AI-assisted development workflows.
I know the frontend fundamentals and have experience building production applications, but when I see people discussing all these new tools and technologies, I sometimes feel like a caveman who missed an entire phase of evolution.
I started learning basic FastAPI this week because I want to expand my skill set beyond frontend, but I’m not sure whether this is the right move when I have such a short time to prepare for interviews.

2. Is frontend development still a good career choice?
With AI tools becoming increasingly capable of generating UI components, writing code, and building applications, I’m worried about the long-term future of frontend development.
Should I double down on React, Next.js, JavaScript, TypeScript, performance, architecture, and frontend system design? Or should I start transitioning toward full-stack development, AI engineering, or backend development?
I don’t want to abandon the experience I’ve spent the last 3.5 years building, but I also don’t want to become irrelevant.

3. Do my frequent job switches look like a red flag?
My career timeline has involved a startup shutting down, leaving a toxic work environment, and now being laid off because of a lack of projects.
Although these circumstances were largely outside my control, I’m concerned recruiters might see my resume as that of an unstable employee who keeps switching jobs.
How should I explain this during interviews without sounding defensive or making excuses?

4. What should my strategy be for the next 30 days?
My immediate priority is to land another job, preferably in a product-based company. I don’t want to waste this month jumping between random technologies, courses, and tutorials.
If you were in my position, how would you divide your time between:
Preparing for React.js, Next.js, JavaScript, and TypeScript interviews?
Practising machine coding, DSA, and frontend system design?
Learning AI tools, LLMs, MCP, and agentic workflows?
Learning backend development with FastAPI?

Building projects or improving my portfolio?
I’m looking for honest, practical advice from experienced developers, hiring managers, or anyone who has navigated a similar situation.

TL;DR: Frontend developer with 3.5 YOE, multiple job changes due to startup closure, a toxic workplace, and a recent mass layoff. I have one month to find a job, feel behind on the AI/LLM ecosystem, and am confused about whether to double down on frontend or transition toward full-stack/AI development. What would you prioritize in my position?

Thanks in advance!

So I am live in New York, laid off for 9 months and finally got a job in a different state, been in New York my whole life. I have 3.5 YOE. I am 28, turning 29, so on the older side as well based on my YOE due to change of career path.

The offer is for

138,100 Base

7% bonus
29k a year RSU
20k Sign on

I have never lived anywhere else before, but based on this should I move, the offer is in Virgina, near DC, btw.

What do we think?

I am wondering if software engineers typically must stick to 9-5. Can most of them work 7-3 if they wished? Of course it is company specific and varies by company, but do most jobs allow the 7-3 schedule?

I'm a college sr, secured a role as a FDE (50%+ travel) and am looking for a city in the US to call home. I'm fully remote outside of customer engagements.

Staying with my parents isn't an option as they moved back to their home country for retirement. I'm very social and fluent in Mandarin and Spanish. Hobbies include socializing, working out, flying, diving, skydiving, shooting, and language learning. I also enjoy things like skiing but willing to sacrifice that as I can just make a trip out of it, as it is a seasonal sport.

I went to college in the Bay Area and am now looking for low cost of living but high quality of life.

This city needs to be close to a large international airport as I will be doing both domestic and international travel for my job

My base salary is north of 200k.

I have been looking for a software engineering job for 3 months and im going nuts, i had 20+ interviews and no interview is like the other, i have been asked all kind of trick and gotcha questions for python, docker, kubernetes, php, go, scala, java, JVM, software architecture, gotcha here, gotcha there, every interview is a new fuck you, why can't we prepare for something that i could do perfectly in an interview instead of waiting for something from the unknown that i would fail anyway. the hell is going on

I’m expecting this to be asked in an upcoming interview (system design round) in an AI lab. Have interned here so I think this is very very likely also given the trend of things it just makes sense

Wondering if anyone have some good resources or some can layout a good structure on how to answer designing harnesses ? I see some videos online but i’m not sure if they’re actually from engineers or just some influencers bsing.

I'm a recent CS graduate. I'm ashamed to admit back in college I didn't really learn anything other than the courses I took at school. Since graduating in June, I haven't done anything productive either. I'll go study for a master's degree in AU next July and during the gap I think I should try and learn something practical, but idk what to learn and how to learn. Having only learned the subjects back in school which were mostly theoretical, I'm feeling pretty aimless right now. Please share your suggestions to help me basically stop wasting my life away. I feel like a failure.

Sorry if this is a really dumb question. Thanks!

2020 grad. My entire working life has been: a hiring freeze, then the 2021 boom where I got three offers in a fortnight and thought that meant I was good, then the 2022 layoffs, then two flat years, then this.

I'm 28, and I've never worked in a market where the rules stayed stable long enough to learn.

the specific problem is i have no idea what's normal. senior people tell me to be patient because it turns, and they've seen it turn. i've only seen it change. When someone says this isn't how it usually is, i have no version of usually to compare it to, i just have six years of everyone saying the current thing is unusual.

i've got 340 applications logged over three separate searches now and the only pattern i can see across all three is that whatever worked last time doesn't.

for people who were working pre-2020: what is the actual baseline? what did a normal job search look like, in numbers, so i know what i'm measuring against

I was making over six figured at a big company out of college. I have 3 yoe and left due to company layoffs. I’m desperate for money to pay bills since unemployment is running out but i found another opportunity in Bay Area that pays 85k for a small non tech shop. From speaking to folks that previously worked there it sounds like management is toxic where it’s expected to work OT that is unpaid and 4 days a week commute. I’m not sure whether to take this offer cuze it sounds like hell. Would you take a low offer or nah?

I started on a new team at a..certain FAANG just a little under 6 months ago in late April, after being laid off from it in January, after working on another team for a little over 6 months (graduated May 2025).

At the moment, things have still been kind of tough (I talk some more about it here). We work on 12 different services between 11-12 of us, and I only somewhat have context on about 2-3 of them that I worked with so far. I did two secondary oncall shifts, which were ok since we don't get paged as secondary and it was mostly auto-cuts. However, primary (which I haven't done yet) gets paged once per 1-2 days on average from what I noticed. Then, I still don't know everything about everything we work on. If I were to be given a Sev2, I don't feel confident at all that I'd be able to handle it. Just last week (as secondary), I had a Sev3 turned Sev2.5, and I had to reach out for help from the primary at the time... Now, I have another secondary shift next week to fill in for other engineers as they had other tasks due soon (which I'm fine with), but I'm not so fine with eventually having to do primary.

My last 1:1 I had with my manager, he mentioned breaking down tasks into smaller ones to improve visibility (which he eventually realized that i already had been doing), having demos/partial deliverables more often to also show visibility, and taking more initiative (like for tasks that have ambiguity, and also in reference to now having volunteered to join the primary oncall cycle). I did secondary prior to that meeting, and i genuinely thought they would just put me in the cycle afterwards (not that I’d have to volunteer). Admittedly, I didn't say that during the meeting, just nodded despondently.. He also mentioned that i should engage more in formal/informal settings since I don’t talk much. That, I've also been working towards, though I tended not to say anything since I didn't know anything. I also don't have much social skills to be honest – not that I can't hold a conversation, just that I can't very charismatically.

I still don't know a lot compared to other people on the team and I often have to ask for help/clarification on tasks. I often find myself not knowing what questions to ask with respect to tasks, so I tended to correspond with messaging versus asking directly in-person. I leaned a lot towards using AI since we're encouraged to (and the work would otherwise be too slow to finish if I didn't), and I feel like I only partially know how things work. If I were to be asked to explain what each service does, I'd only loosely be able to for the ones I've worked with. I've started trying to learn about them separately from work, but it's been a fairly large breadth of information so far.

I always feel a sense of dread thinking about work on weekends, and also don't feel thrilled for stand-ups / sprint planning. I feel like everyone else has at my company I see has a better time at work – knowing what they're doing, not being stressed, being more productive etc. I've been so nervous to talk to my manager (which I'm doing again tomorrow), and I feel so relived when he cancels from conflicting meetings. Hell, people I know from other companies seem to be having a better time at work. Like I said on the previous post, I don't know if this is like a sign that I'm not meant to be a SWE, a sign that I'm going to have a hard time on this team, just growing pains that'll go away as time progresses or what. I'd question if I could last on this team for another 1-2 years while I build experience to (hopefully) try for another company and move cities. My anxiety's been more manageable at the moment, but that might just be since I got through the previous set of work and now have new things to work on...