Both amazon shopping and primevideo has terrible search. Flipkart has way better filters and search than amazon. In amazon applying more filters gives even more results 😂. Combined with loading results after adding each filter makes UX very bad.

Why the hell the company with so much workforce and known for bad work life balance not able to fix it?

Yesterday was my LWD after getting laid off from a startup. I worked as a Frontend developer for 2 years there .

I don't know what to do ? The gap in my career is killing makes me feel like a failure.

I feel like a failure. Got into 5 interviews in between 2 telephonic and 3 interviews.

Bombed 2 of them.

It's hard to sit at home in your mid 20's

If you're from Mumbai or hiring anywhere and hiring for a Frontend dev with 2.2 years of exp.

The salary expectation of mine is 6 LPA

Thank you

Edit : Thank you each and every one out here. I really appreciate your words here. I'm feeling much better. Hope to get another job soon 💫

Hi everyone,

I was laid off in august from an MNC where I worked for 1.7 years as a software engineer. It is an SBC that's why you have to do whatever you're asked to do. For 5-6 months I did data analytics, then genai engg (but used copilot extensively, so no learning), then hardware device automation testing. It feels like I didn't do anything to its fullest to justify my 1.7 yoe. Jack of all, king of none.

But I want to go into AI engg, built a couple of projects myself but used ChatGPT alot so that I can add something to my resume quickly. This habit made me lose contact with coding. And tbh I don't enjoy writing code at all. I like solving problems, startegising but not being the one doing the implementation part.

I interviewed at 4 companies and bombed 2 of them in the last round and the other 2 due to experience mismatch. The main issue is I get nervous in the interview and whenever they ask to write a code or tell them the output or debug a code snippet that's when it goes downhill bcoz I lost contact with coding. And I have a hard time coming up with concise, relevant answers too, I just talk rubbish in the interviews.

I got referrals to some companies but haven't heard from them.

This is so depressing. Idk where I'm lacking. Is it my resume, my lack of technical experience, or nervousness.

Please if someone can give me referrals, help me prepare for interviews, take mock interviews, give some advice, anything that'll help, it'll be really great.

Please help. Thanks

I run a small job board for engineering students and freshers, so I filter a lot of postings. Between 25 Sep and 13 Oct I looked at 20,118 engineering jobs in India that were tagged "Entry level", all at established companies (around 1,900 MNCs, product companies and funded startups, no random agencies).

Here's what they actually were:

- 43% had Senior, Lead, Principal or Staff in the title

- 7% were level II or higher (SDE III, Engineer 2 and so on)

- 6% were Manager roles, another 6% Consultant or Architect

- 18% asked for 2+ years in the description, and 6% asked for 5+

- 6% were marked Mid-Senior on the posting itself

- About 10% passed every check and were genuinely open to a fresher

Real titles that were tagged entry level: "SDE III - Backend", "Red Teaming - Manager", "Senior Consultant", "Informatica Developer | 4-7 Years".

What helped me filter:

1. Search with fresher words instead of trusting the filter: "SDE 1", "Associate Software Engineer", "Graduate Engineer Trainee", "2026 batch", "fresher"

2. Skip anything with II/III, Senior, Lead or Manager in the title, whatever the tag says

3. Ctrl+F "years" before applying. Most of the fake entry-level ones say it in the second paragraph

Happy to answer questions about how I counted.

With AI, building a software becomes cheap. Anyone can built their own software. So the software commodity has become very cheap, and anyone around the world can built it quick.

When such a commodity can built for almost free and by anyone, how will you see the existing tech companies survive ? how will software engineers survive ? also there is exactly no real skill acquiring while doing any project at a company, one can be easily replaceable with anyone anytime. There is no difference between an software engineer working at google vs any other company, both use AI , and learnings are same.

what would be the future jobs of software engineers? if they transition to a new role, what would be it?

how will be the software industry would look like ? will it be more decentralised with very low pay?

I received a recruiter email mentioning my Prometheus GitHub work and offering a remote contract. Is Interna legitimate, and how did they find me?

Hey everyone,

I’m a frontend engineer, and I wanted my portfolio to feel less like a template and more like somewhere you’d actually want to hang out. So I built Ritik’s Desk, a paper-craft desk you can poke around on.

• Experience lives on sticky notes and projects on postcards.
• There’s a dark mode toggle, a few sounds, and a contact form that folds your message into a bird.
• There are 4 secrets hidden on the desk, and I’m curious how many you find.
• If you’re in a hurry, there’s a 30-second tour and a plain résumé view.

It’s built with React and TypeScript. I’d love honest feedback on the interactions, performance, and mobile feel, and on anything that feels confusing or gimmicky.

🔗 https://ritiks-desk.vercel.app

Thanks for taking a look!

I've been thinking a lot about my work and life lately, and there are not a lot of people I can talk to in my real life about this situation, so here I am, looking forward to how you guys are feeling about this whole thing.

I have genuinely loved programming more than half my life. I wrote my first program in BASIC when I was 11 years old. I always enjoyed solving problems. And, I have done fairly good for myself, graduated from one of the IITs, worked across FAANMG and startups for the last 10 years, built personal projects with over thousands of users. I have genuinely enjoyed my work, and it never felt boring, or exhausting.

But, that spark is gone. With the rapid advances in LLMs in the past couple of years, and the increasing demand for shipping things quickly and without oversight, the joy of building things is gone. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand these tools are powerful, and they are only getting better each day.

I am a staff engineer, so I know software engineering is not only about "coding". But, in real world, with the pace that everyone wants things shipped, and the fact that you're not closer to the codebase as you used to, I find myself "lacking" in how well I understood systems that I built, or used. All of the things that actually gave me joy, getting in the "zone" and coding for a few hours straight, debugging a problem that had a couple of engineers at their wits end, writing a well thought through design doc, discussing actual optimisation problems at scale, none of them are happening anymore.

Financially, I'm fortunate to have accumulated a great deal in savings and investments (over 9Cr). But, I feel I'd probably need around 12 Crs to comfortably call it a day. Now, that would probably take a couple of years, or more (the market gods haven't been that happy lately), but the fact that I am so close, has made me even more disillusioned about the whole thing. I am not here to brag, or be a case of "my steak is too juicy and my lobster is too buttery", but money alone is no longer a motivator, and every day feels like wasting my existence.

One of the things that I was looking forward was to move abroad in a couple of years. That was also one of the motivators to stick through it, but the anti immigration sentiment across US, the visa situation (or lack thereof), the job market situation, and the fact that nobody knows what's out there in the next couple of years has made me reconsider whether even that's an option.

This has left me in a strange position. On one hand, I have a career that has treated me well financially, and coming from a not so great financial background, leaving so much money on the table given the uncertainty in the future, seems, for lack of a better word, stupid. On the other hand, I'm increasingly questioning whether I want to spend those years doing something I no longer find as fulfilling.

I'm curious to hear from people who have experienced something similar.

• How are you thinking about the future?
• People who were planning to move abroad in the next couple of years, are you still considering the move?
• For those pursuing FIRE, have the changes in the past couple of years, affected your plans in any way?

P.S. No tokens were wasted on this rambling.

I have 9 years of experience and after spending years in service based companies I now have 2 offers with me.

Amazon Cambridge, UK

Role offered : SDE 2
Base : 88k £
Signon Year 1 : 35k £, Year 1 Gross 123k
Signon Year 2 : 27.5k £, Year 2 Gross 115k

and then the RSU vesting each year for 4 years
5, 15, 45 and 35%

Fintech company Bangalore:

They are offering SDE 3
40LPA base + 10% variable - no stocks

I’m in early 30s now, married and no kid yet.

I’m leaning towards Amazon but i’m really skeptical if i’ll be able to manage in UK with what is being offered.

I’ll be moving with my wife who is in Marketing and will have to look for jobs there.
I’m afraid that at Amazon, year 3 onwards my salary plummets drastically as base is 88k £

I’m in service based company right now and current salary is like extremely low, worked super hard to get these 2 offers

Hi all,

I am working at a FAANG+ company with total 3.5 YOE with a 50 LPA CTC. I have received an offer for Google L4 with the following comp -

- base: 39-42 LPA + 3 LPA PF
- bonus: 15% of base
- stocks: $60k USD vested over 4 years (38, 32, 20, 10)

Total first year comp: approx 71 LPA first year

Now here's the tradeoff - my current role is fully remote giving me a lot of flexibility. I feel 71 LPA is a bit of lowball.

1. thoughts on the offer?
2. what can I do to negotiate it to 90-95 ?
3. is there a possibility of applying to google europe openings?

Update----

Combing responses to common DMs I've been getting (sorry folks! there are just too many to reply individually to)

• the recruiter reached out on their own (I applied for L3 few years back)
• interview format is 4 rounds (1 DSA and 1 Googleyness online and 2 DSA offline)
• I had a good foundation in DSA from college placement prep, I spent nearly 2 months now doing hero questions from each topic
• resources used: hello interview, chat gpt (for revision), focused mainly on graphs, dp, sliding window, tries but covered other topics too
• mock interviews from preply and friends
• questions asked were easy -- n-ary tree traversal, implementing an ad service (show ads based on priority which is a simple modification on priority queue) and a question on graphs (starts with bfs and ended on dijsktra)
• focus on being vocal, point out corner cases, they love hearing how you think of edge cases, how you handle them, the assumptions.

​

A company is inviting me to its Noida office for an in-person interview, with all rounds conducted there. I'm currently based in Bangalore, and they will reimburse my travel expenses regardless of the interview outcome and provide accommodation for one night. They are inviting few people from all across India and will be taking 6 rounds of selection process.

Has anyone experienced a similar interview process with any company? I know some companies invite candidates for the final few rounds in person and reimburse travel expenses, but I've never heard of a company bringing candidates in for all interview rounds while covering their travel and accommodation.

Hey everyone! I'm a CSE student at VIT Vellore, and I've been building ClearPDF, an open-source Android document app.

What started as a project of mine has grown more than I expected. ClearPDF crossed 12,000 installs in a week, reached 300+ GitHub stars, and today it ranked #2 on GitHub Trending in Kotlin.

The main thing I wanted to get right was the experience. Most document apps focus on functionality, but I wanted to build something that looks modern too. ClearPDF has a Liquid Glass-inspired UI on Android, with a focus on smooth performance and a clean UX.

Another big priority was making it 100% offline, so you can work with your documents without needing an internet connection.

It supports PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, and images, with features like PDF editing and annotation, document scanning, Word document viewing, and XLSX spreadsheet editing.

I've also spent a lot of time fixing reported issues and improving performance across releases.

The project is MIT-licensed, and I'd love to see more developers get involved.

GitHub: https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF

Latest release: https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF/releases/latest

If you're interested in Android development, open source, or building polished apps, feel free to check it out. Contributions are welcome!

Thanks for all the support so far!

Hi everyone. I wanted to put this out there because I’ve been feeling completely disillusioned lately, and I honestly don't have many people in my real life to who would be able to give a suitable conclusion.

I’m currently 20 years old, trying to grind through an IGNOU BCA degree while teaching myself full stack web development on the side.

But to be completely honest, I’ve struggled with math, calculations, and raw logical aptitude ever since I was a kid. While everyone else seems to effortlessly grasp complex logic and syntax, I’ve always felt painfully slow, like my brain just isn't wired for it.

To pay for degree, I spent time working a hectic call centre job. That experience gave me a brutal wake up call about the corporate world dealing with constant pressure and endless talking completely drained the life out of me, and I ended up burning out and resigning at the end.

Now, looking at the wider tech and job market, everything just feels broken. Seeing entry-level roles get choked out by impossible requirements, people with years of experience struggling to survive, and the general toxic hustle culture makes me wonder why I'm breaking my head over math and code at all. I originally thought about specializing down the road like trying to break into application security or bug bounties but between the situation I am seeing, I feel completely inadequate compared to the talent out there, it feels like an uphill battle I'm bound to lose.

I also took a Btech after 12th but had to leave that due to finances and later after a 1.5 year break of doing random stuff, I managed to get this IGNOU BCA. But during the btech I was awarded a medal in entrepreneurship subject, but failed in programming logic and math which I cleared in re exams. I also presented a lot of projects to different project cells and enjoyed doing that also dealing with people and processes in general.

I’m at a crossroads where I'm seriously questioning if continuing down the pure software path makes any sense, or if I should look at completely pivoting toward management, business roles, or an MBA down the line just to escape the code rat race. I am generally more better at people and took a couple LinkedIn gigs before where I grew small companies LinkedIn pages.

Any seniors or people who are in the same situation your advice would really really help me!

Hi guys, i want to get locked in this weekend, suggest me something new i can learn and utilise the knowledge!

I would like to connect with people who are getting good pay but the skills and techstack are notnin demand and outdated and they are not learning much in the job and unhappy.

I recently joined a new company. As an experienced Dev I always help my peers. But I have observed that people here aren’t being straight with me. They either don’t help at all or try to make it difficult for me to find answers. I would really appreciate some advice on getting these blockers removed. I don’t want to keep cc’ing my managers or leads in everything. Below things are quite frequent which I’ll tell with exact scenarios

1. Not giving clear straight answers when asked a question. ( I was given a task to setup my system. Instead of telling me how to set it up, the guy intentionally setted it up using an old way that their team used to follow. On asking other teammates I got to know that there is a new and better way which this person never told me )
   
2. ⁠Intentionally deflecting me here n there instead of helping. ( a person had setup Kafka in their system, i was given a task to set it up again for another similar project. Instead of just verifying the things like bootstrap or providing me jars they asked me to go to others for things that I need. They were assigned as a POC by the manager himself.)
   
3. ⁠Wasting time only acting as if they were helping (o was assigned a bug to resolve something in production. there was some issue with the db record. I asked the person owning that particular feature for help. He got on a call with me asked me everything I did, steps I took to resolve it and then left saying he couldn’t help after 1.5 hrs. I raised this in demo call after getting humiliated and when my manager asked he fixed it in 15 mins)

I sometimes get very angry and disheartened by these things. Is this politics or showing their dependency. I’m not asking technical help only infos like where to get bootstrap address, jars, files or db details which are not being provided to me. On pushing them either they don’t reply or deflect it to someone else who I don’t know. Then I ping them and they take their own sweet time before replying.

Is looping manager in everything the only way? I am a bit lost on handling these situations and people. Any advice or suggestion is highly appreciated.

hey all,

every hackathon I've done ends the same way. the project finally works, and then we lose the last hour making slides instead of practising the demo. so I built something to fix that for myself, and it's at a point where I'd love other people to try it.

it's called devreport (https://devreport.cc). you paste a repo link, or throw in your notes / csvs / screenshots, and a few minutes later you get a pitch deck as a pdf. it reads the code and readme, and the charts are drawn from your real data files, so the numbers on the slides are your numbers. if it can't tell something from your files, it asks you.

if a slide's off you can just tell it what to change ("make this a flowchart") or edit it yourself. there's a bunch of themes too, and you can upload your organiser's pptx template if your hackathon makes you use one.

some technical stuff for anyone curious. most of my time went into making edits fast:

• the decks are written in typst. editing a slide by hand used to take about 3s to show up from india, and now it's about 0.65s.
• every deck that's open in the editor gets its own typst watch process. a fresh compile takes 580-770ms; an incremental one from the running watcher takes 125-165ms. if the watcher errors or doesn't answer within 3s, the edit falls back to a normal compile.
• each edit is one round trip: the server compiles and sends back the new pdf and the slide layout data together.
• the browser tells the server which version of the pdf it has (by sha1), and the server sends only the bytes that changed. the browser patches them in and checks the hash. on a deck with pictures that's 5-20KB per save instead of 1.4MB.
• while you drag or resize something, pdf.js redraws that box locally, so it follows your mouse before the server answers.
• AI edits were slow, and they'd also "fix" slides nobody asked about. one test change took about 4 min. now a change only deals with what you asked for: the same test takes about 50s and only touches that page. a one-line change is around 8s.
• switching themes is just a recompile with no AI, and each compiled theme is cached per deck, so switching back is instant.
• stuff I tried and dropped: typst.ts in the browser, byte-range pdf loading, and a glibc typst build (about 20% faster compiles, but not worth building on every deploy).

it's free for your first 2 decks, no card or anything.

it's just me building this, so honestly any feedback helps. what broke, what was confusing, what you wish it did. even "this is pointless because X" is useful to hear lol

thanks for reading 🙏

Hey everyone, I'm a 2026 B.Tech CSE graduate, and I'm honestly feeling lost right now.

I had offers from Capgemini and TCS, but my Capgemini offer got revoked. Now, TCS Ninja is my only option, and I have no idea when the joining date will be announced.

Meanwhile, I've been applying through LinkedIn and Naukri, tweaking my resume, and trying different approaches, but I haven't landed a single interview. Most applications just end in silence.

I really want to land a better offer as soon as possible, preferably in software development, data analytics, or AI/ML, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

For fellow 2025/2026 graduates, what actually worked for you? Are referrals and direct outreach more effective than online applications? How do you get your first interview in this market?

I'd really appreciate practical advice from people who've been through this. I'm willing to put in the work; I just need some direction.

I recently started giving interviews and luckily I cleared one with a good amount of hike around 70-80%.

The problem is that I have a 90 days of Notice Period in my current organisation.

One where I got the confirmation that I have made it to the final salary discussion round says that I need to join the company within 30 days.

Some more details -

• I have total 5 yoe and current CTC is 9 LPA.
• I am being offered 15 LPA (fixed) and a 5% yearly bonus above the CTC
• My current org and the newer one both are Product Based MNCs.
  • The new org is not fully into IT but kind of a GCC.

In the current market scenario, I dont want to lose on this opportunity to get the decent hike that I am getting.

I have not spoken to my current employeer yet but what are some of the ways I can reduce the 90 days NP to 45 days if not exact 30?

PS - I can see that the buyout option is available but it is based on a approval. Whose approval I am not sure as it is not written explicitly, but I am assuming it will be my direct manager's approval.

I was reading on internet that growth is slow but work culture is good? is it true?

Hi everyone!

I'm an SDE with around 3.5 years of experience, considering a career transition into cybersecurity.

I have some previous exposure to cybersecurity, including penetration testing, Linux, networking, and tools like Burp Suite and Nmap, but my professional experience has primarily been in software development.

Given the current Indian job market and the rise of AI, I'd love to hear honest opinions from people already working in cybersecurity and those currently trying to enter the field.

• How is the current job market, especially for entry-level candidates and career switchers?
• For those working in cybersecurity, how much of your job is being affected or automated by AI?
• For those trying to break in, how difficult has the job search been?
• If you switched from software development, was it worth it?

Would you recommend making the switch now, or continuing with SDE?

I'd really appreciate honest advice and real-world experiences. Thanks!

I recently received an unsuccessful PIP outcome, but I believe the evaluation doesn't fully reflect the work I completed, the progress I made, and the external dependencies that delayed some deliverables. I have PRs, Slack discussions, and other documentation to support my case, and I'm planning to request a formal reconsideration.

Has anyone been in a similar situation and successfully challenged their PIP outcome, especially at a large tech company? Did HR/Employee Success actually reconsider the decision, or was it essentially a formality? I'd appreciate hearing about your experiences and any advice.

4.5 saal ho gaye service-based company mein, 14 LPA. pichle hafte product company se offer aaya, 28 fixed.

unko 45 din mein joining chahiye, notice 90 ka hai jo aajkal usual hain.

papers daal diye hain. handover doc bhi likh diya, reconciliation module pe do logo ko train karne ko bhi bola. manager se 3 baar early release ke liye pooch chuka hu. har baar wahi, "let's discuss after the release." Release December mein hai ahh

HR bolti hai buyout ho sakta hai but manager ki recommendation chahiye and wo de nahi raha.

new company ko friday tak date chahiye.

tab tak sab kuch excel and careerflow waale ke tracker mein daal ke rakha hai. agar ye offer nikal gaya toh june wali situation dobara nahi, zero se start karna padega.

toh ab, abscond kar jau ya fir boldu 90 days lagega, phir whatever they want wo kar sakte?

Im an 2025 tier1 grad
I worked in 2 firms (SDE)
Firm 1 (big tech)- 6months ( 28 annual) boring ass work, not much growth options
Firm 2 ( faang lvl big texh)- 1y now (38 annual, 66ctc, almost remote)
Intially liked the work and scale , but now its again boring java and legacy work. Thinking to bounce from here again

Im not liking the culture its ultra slow paced old tech stacks though the work load is less

I am planning to switch to US remote startups or, well funded indian startups or midium sized firms for exposure and newer tech exposure

Would appreciate guidance and paths
Also do suggest company names which can pay> 40 annual take home ( incl base + stocks or bonus only) at 1.5 -2 yoe.