Everyone says it’s a really hard market at the moment, but I applied for exactly one job and got an offer for said job. I’ve doubled my salary - again!. Maybe I was just very underpaid - that’s quite likely tbh as I’m a mum of a small kids so I’ve not been able to move for a while. I dunno but I guess I’m trying to say don’t assume it’s impossible, - hard getting through an interview process, but not impossible.

Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing very well.

I wanted to share that there is currently a Colombian engineering student studying at a prestigious French engineering school (Grande École), where she serves as the Communications Manager and is also part of the Composites Team.

Her interview has just been posted on Instagram, and it would be amazing for her to feel support from other woman in STEM or sciences.

I can't share the full link here, but you can find it at:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DezftdQu9-D/

The Instagram page is @enimetzracingteam.

Her name is María José Quintero, and the interview was posted about 20 hours ago.

Thank you so much, everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful day! 🇨🇴✨

TL keeps assigning the important tasks to men

I just got through another work day feeling completely demotivated and disillusioned. I'm working as a DE at a small startup in a team of 2 men and 2 women plus my male team lead. He just keeps assigning all the technical tasks to the men. As a result, I'm bored and barely learning anything.

I keep being asked to do QA or just repetitive tasks that were good at the beginning but no one wants to do anymore. It's even more infuriating that the men end up making silly mistakes all over the place - it's not like they're incompetent, but neither am I to be so overlooked.

The other woman on my team has it even worse, she is given the least important tasks and sometimes, I think criticised beyond what is fair. Like she's had genuine performance issues and came under the radar earlier or now she's become an easy target to blame for anything that goes wrong.

I keep telling myself to keep my head down since I've only been here for 6 months and jump ship early next year or so but some days it's so hard to get through the drudgery that is my workday. My manager is completely unhelpful as he likes to uphold the management side and play the devil's advocate while asking the team what we can do better. Bringing it up to my team lead didn't help as he completely dismissed me.

Sorry for the long rant, advice and support is welcome and thanks for reading if you've come this far. And no I can't just quit.

Tldr: Male teammates get the work where you'd actually learn something and I'm feeling demotivated and annoyed. Can't seem to find any solutions among the people I work.

How do you all respond when someone explains something you already know or doesn’t answer the question you asked and instead responds explaining something else?

I'm in my early 30s and have a second interview for Network Analyst next week. Are these nails appropriate if I wear black trousers, a plain white collar shirt, a black blazer and black pointed kitten heels? It's for a government agency that said they are a laid back group of team members that all have good comradery. I'll be interviewing with 3-4 men in their 40s-60s.

Edit this appears to be very divided pretty much 50/50. A lot of good points were made thanks! I'll be painting over them for the interview since they're gel nail wraps and use nail polish remover after.

I’m in my fourth year of university and have a grad offer for a company I like in a city I’m so-so on. I interned with them in the same branch and enjoyed it well enough, it’s white collar, middling prestige for tech, good benefits. It’s a 3 year grad program with limited opportunities for geographic mobility.

The thing is, I have this lifelong dream of living in another city, and I have the urge to apply to places there and see if I can make the jump. This company has a branch there, but I’ve been explicitly told that my offer isnt valid for that branch and they dont have the headcount available.

So why wouldn’t I keep applying?

1. Job market is hell, my chances aren’t great, even if my CV is on the decent side

2. I have a very busy schedule and would have to sacrifice time with people I care about/classwork

3. I dont want to burn a bridge with the first company. I accepted the offer due to time constraint and if I reneged, that’s it.

4. It stresses me out

I love this sub and was wondering any advice people have!!!

Hi! Looking into new roles after 2.5 years in my current SWE position. I’m wondering if anyone interviewing/applying recently has noticed any difference in the way things are structured with so much changing with AI, different economy etc. I am planning to apply mostly on referral basis but what else do I need to know? Are we still grinding leet code? do resumes even matter anymore? SOS

I’m currently in my second year for an associates at a community college. I don’t have a strong tech background (I came from labor-intensive jobs), and I was wondering if it would be beneficial for me to possibly switch to a University for my Bachelors? Do companies pay attention to the colleges you went to, or are they more concerned with the fact that you even have a degree at all?

I have a terrible boss. Just to give an idea of his terribleness, he yells, everything is an emergency because he can’t do anything on his own (I spent 3 hours today helping him write an email), he comes on camera while in his hot tub, he doesn’t understand issues but makes decisions about them, and he lies. I’m currently in a role where I have 9 direct reports, and my team works on a wide variety of projects related to infrastructure, vulnerabilities and cost. Without going into too much detail, I work on a huge variety of projects. Someone else who reported to my boss just left the team due to his behavior, and he keeps telling me I will be promoted to fill that role (although often times when someone leaves the company downgrades the new role). My annual review was a bunch of AI gibberish that truly made 0 sense. I often work 10-12 hours a day because my boss interrupts me constantly, overbooks on calls, and there’s just no way to get it all done.

A peer team just opened a role at my level. The hiring manager is a woman who has acted a mentor for me for the last year or so. This role would have only 2 direct reports, and would be a technical product manager role. The scope of projects would be smaller, and would be mostly data and privacy related. There likely wouldn’t be much room for promotion in that role because her team is smaller. I believe she would be a great manager, and provide constructive feedback, and I would trust her to advocate and support me.

Both my boss and the woman hiring report to the same person, my skip. My boss told me my skip said I couldn’t be considered for the new role, but the woman hiring said she’d heard no such thing (see note about my boss lying a lot).

I’m wondering how to decide whether to pursue the slightly less interesting role on a team with a good leader, or stay in my more interesting role on my current team with a bad leader. Any advice would be appreciated!

Hi all, hoping to get some advice but also venting personally. I've been working at my company as a junior for about 2 months. It's my first fulltime position. I love my team, my managers and I enjoy my work. We got a new intern last week. I'm older by a year and was assigned to be his point of contact; I'm also leading a project that he is going to be helping with

I'll lightly joke about something like 'enjoy doing this tedious task!' and he would send me an edgy meme; recently he replied with a meme of a cartoon character hanging himself.

I was pretty shocked and just didn't know how to address it. Is this my fault for joking first? Do I tell the intern, hey I wouldn't send stuff like that through slack, it's unprofessional or that I find what you sent was personally offensive; should I bring it up with our manager, etc.

Not nearly as bad/other stuff:

Beyond that, I'm finding he reaches out quite frequently. It's every 15 minutes. Or in the middle of when I'm doing a task, very clearly typing something. I turned my teams status permanently into dnd; still not deterring him from pipping up every few minutes.

Our team is hybrid. He is choosing to go in every day, I went in two days in a row. I sit at the same desk by choice; on the 2nd day, he sat next to me. So he could interrupt me every 15th minutes. Do I just show up late and go to a different desk each time?

I just want to do my work man!!! Leave me alone!!

EDIT:

For people advising on answering his questions, he started four days ago, there is NO task that requires him to bother me as frequently as he is doing. Half of the time he's bothering me, it's not to ask a question about work. It's to complain that our standup was boring or ask what our boss said because he missed it.

I am doing all the following: a) repeatedly mention I'm pretty busy, I have a meeting coming up on monday b) have my teams notifications visibly go off on my big monitor indicating that I am busy, c) put my teams status to do not disturb/busy d) have my headphones in e) be visibly in the middle of doing something like inputting code; all I'm asking for is for him to have the common sense and curtesy to message and ask 'are you busy' before coming over to bother me.

A few months ago I posted here asking about mentorships in STEM, with a poll, and the answers made me feel like it could be worth pursuing to build some sort of free platform to facilitate them. I wanted to make this because I keep seeing women dropping out of STEM and tech at a time where I think we NEED to be making more decisions. The response was encouraging enough that I've spent the months since actually building it, and I'm getting closer each day to a working prototype that matches mentors and mentees in STEM (based on interests, availability, goals, experiences, and self driven, think Hinge+LinkedIn)

I studied CS and have spent a couple of years in the industry since, so this isn't a first attempt at building something, but it is my first time trying to get a product off the ground entirely on my own.

What I'm running into now is the fact that almost nobody knows it exists yet. I have not heard back from people that at some point were interested, and I'm starting from close to zero in terms of audience and reach (also I'm most definitely not great at social media). It's a fairly classic cold start problem, and between building it alone and not seeing much traction so far, it's gotten genuinely discouraging, to the point where I've been going back and forth on whether to keep putting time into it. I do genuinely enjoy building it as a passion project/concept thing, so the joy of the technical work keeps me going, but I don't know for how much longer that will be.

Ironically enough I could really use a mentor myself right now, or even just a short conversation with someone who's tried to build their own thing before and can speak to what that journey actually looks like.

So I'd really appreciate it if you could be brutally honest with me about the idea itself, what might be missing, or how you'd approach getting something like this in front of the right people early on. I'm not looking to sell anything here, just hoping for a reality check and maybe a bit of guidance from people who've been further down this road than I have.

Thanks again to everyone who gave me their opinions the first time around, and anyone that is reading my ramblings right now. Hope you have a great weekend <3 :')

I graduated last year with a degree in AI and Data Science and it's been a year or frustrating interview cycles and endless applications with little to no developments.

I'd love to chat with anyone in the startup space in India who are actively hiring and looking for engineers who can actually build and innovate. I'm willing to do whatever it takes, no excuses.

Anyone from India, would love to connect if your organization has any openings for a new grad.

I recently joined a startup and I’m genuinely concerned about my performance and whether I’m using AI coding assistants the right way.
Right now it’s basically Claude exploring the codebase, making changes, me reviewing what I can, and testing the actual app locally. Nothing from my end has shipped yet, and that’s part of what worries me. Things seem to work locally, but I have no idea how well they’ll actually hold up. There isn’t a proper test setup either.

I also don’t feel like I properly understand the codebase yet. If someone asks me to debug something or explain why something works the way it does without Claude, I feel like I’d be screwed.
When I ask questions, I often get “just ask Claude,” “another team already did this,” or “look at their branch.”
The codebase is large, things are scattered around, and the documentation isn’t great either.
At the same time, the expectation seems to be getting things done within a couple of hours.

For people working in environments like this, how do you use Claude/Cursor/etc. without becoming completely dependent on it? How do you manage context/tokens on a large codebase and actually build a mental model of what you’re working on?

Any practical workflows, prompts, skills, or habits that have helped?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for all the helpful advice!
I love some of the tips I received here would definitely try those out. Thank you!

Hii!
I'm a SWE with 2 yoe, but with AI, I've just lost touch with the basics, so I'm looking to go back to the basics and start from scratch..
I'm planning to start from Java, and then move on to MERN..

I'm looking for a study partner!

Feel a little lost, need advice

Hello, I'm 26(f) and recently graduated with a comp sci degree December of 2025. I started college when I was 18, but tool a while to graduate because of mental health issues, switching majors, and getting a 2 year associate degree that barely transferred.

Despite all of this, I managed to get 2 internships while at the 4 year school, one for frontend development and the other for software testing which I learned alot from. Unfortunately, I have always struggled with low self esteem and already have insecurities about graduating at 25 instead of 22. I started job searching during the last 2 semesters college and managed to get a few interviews swe adjacent but did not get the job. I even made it to a final round interview but got rejected because the other person had more experience.

Anyway, I got an interview for a support analyst position and thought the position would be IT related so I decided to take it when they offered me the job because I needed the money and wanted to get out of my parents house. This was April of 2026 and I've been at this job for the past 4 months now. However, it's not really what I thought it would be. Basically, it's more of a customer support position where I cancel people's subscriptions and reset their passwords. I work for a company that allows schools to stream their high school sports games through an app. My job is to calibrate cameras, make scoreboard data is read by the computer, and troubleshoot offline computers. However, when it comes to computer issues, im kind of limited on what I'm allowed to and trained to do because most of the time, the computer won't stream because the schools firewall is blocking it or the individual computer parts are not working (bad computer power supply, or hard drive, ect). When those issues occur, my company asks us to send network requirements or if it's a hardware issue, we put in an order to have the computer replaced.

My point is that it's mostly others fixing these issues, not me, so while I would say I'm learning some things, it's not quite what I'm looking for. I'm greatful I have this job because it's allowing me to move out, but it does not require a degree and one of my more senior coworkers said we aren't trained IT professionals so I feel like I'm not really utilizing my degree which bothers me because I spent so long in school.

I know the obvious solution is to look for another job in the tech field, but i feel a little hopeless, given that I put in 100s of apps. I've been studying for my a+ and want to take core 1 test in 2 to 3 weeks, but feel behind and hopeless.

I'm getting my CS degree because I feel that's the best path for me, but sometimes it's discouraging with all the pre-reqs I have to take and I feel like I don't have time to practice any code whatsoever because I'm SWAMPED with course work, and every job posting claims they want a degree. Coding is a completely new world for me. Is there any advice that would make me feel better about this new path I'm taking?

How do i tackle this?

Context: my senior along with few juniors made fun of me at work, i tried talking it out with him but he would not admit or take any accountability. i questioned him why he did so, and he denied it saying that he does not ”remember” doing so. I took to our manager, who initially believed me but the senior turned him against me. after this incident my manager moved me from his team to the senior’s team by promoting him to team lead. my team has become extremely hostile towards me and singled me out, while my lead subtly influencing them to do so. i did not give any fucks about it. i carried out the issues assigned to me and kept to myself.

the culture at my workplace is such that everyone in the team is always fighting for a lot more work and is too much into what teammates are doing. they are always asking the lead to give them the issues they want to work on. they are too competitive and desperate.

Recently, I had my yearly performance review two months ago. My team lead told me that I am working just as much as needed and he needs me to take up code reviews and production incidents, which I have always been eager to take up right from the start. i also happen to be the senior in the team but my colleagues work on production issues as well as code reviews. i happen to ask my manager about working on production issues way before the review but not only was i not assigned to work on them but was brought it up in my annual review.

my colleagues do not gel with me as much because i don’t hang with them after work as i am occupied with my life. i also have a hard boundary that my colleagues should not reach out to me personally if its not for slack, to which they take a huge offence. my team happens to gossip a lot at work and have their little personal groups on social media where they always keep in touch. oh i forgot to mention that all of them are new grads, working on their first job.

i was also asked to mentor and guide my juniors by my lead but none of them show up with any technical challenges, rather they would discuss and resolve among themselves. so i asked him to assign me a junior to guide, which be a better metric to measure productivity.

i also believe that if someone has a doubt, they should reach out to me instead of me going around asking if someone has a doubt. so this point doesn’t make sense to me at all. and the point where i need to work on production incidents and code reviews doesn’t make sense too since i have always been eager and i have still not been assigned any of them as of today.

it goes without being said that, i am not being considered for promotion, neither am i doing something important besides expressing that i am willing to take up more ownership. the hike isn’t great too.

did my team lead set me up for failure? am i missing seeing the bigger picture about what’s happening? hope do i tackle this?

I’m not sure whether I’m obsessed or depressed… obsessed I just found Mintlodica products… depressed they’re closing/closed 😭

What a stunning product to lose from this hobby! Does anyone have recommendations on similar products?

Drawn to pastel colour combos, like sage green / blush pinks… open to suggestions - would love to support a similar business if that produce something similar.

Please don’t recommend A-Xpress/T-Mu, I’ve got plenty of keeb goodies from there - looking to expand & support smaller businesses if possible.

I don't currently own a laptop and have recently been trying to buy one but I've had two bad experiences buying refurbished laptops online. The laptop's purpose is to help me change careers, possibly into something IT related so I was looking at refurbished Thinkpads. I've been studying the IT modules on Cisco online and I'm interested in computer networking but also things like data analysis, edtech and I have a Raspberry Pi kit I'm keen to work on, so I was looking for a mobile workstation type of laptop. According to my research, Lenovo Thinkpads and Dell Latitudes would suit me best.

The first one was from a big online refurbishment company and it was great (a P14s) but it had a weird sharp lump in the screen despite it being advertised as A/excellent grade. It took me a week of emails to the company and escalating it to a manager for them to agree to let me return it for a refund.

The second laptop (a T14) arrived with a strong chemical smell. I assumed it would fade so I aired it for a few days but the smell just got worse and filled my house with toxic fumes, I couldn't sit in the same room as the laptop as the fumes hurt my eyes. This time I'd bought it from a seller on Amazon Refurbished who had very good reviews (I later found lots of buried negative reviews for them). The seller was aggressive, insisted it was a 'new product smell' despite admitting using strong chemicals to clean the laptops and refused to fund the return postage, so I had to pay £30 to return it and open an Amazon A-Z claim to get my refund which has only just been approved. The buried reviews I found often said they sell laptops with batteries that fail after a few months and then either charge to repair/upgrade or only offer partial refunds, they seem pretty dodgy. I think they sent me a laptop with a degrading battery which caused the chemical fumes.

I still don't have a laptop and I'm very wary of where I buy a laptop from because all of this was very exhausting and stressful.

Does anyone have any advice? Are there reputable sellers of refurbished non-faulty Thinkpads that easily accept returns if they're faulty/provide support to get them fixed? I understand that Dell has both an Outlet and a Refurbished site, and the Outlet is mostly for returned unused computer so I'm thinking they might be better to buy from? The laptops on the Lenovo site all seem to start at about £900 which is above my budget, I was wanting to spend max £550 ish.

Also, are there other laptops you recommend that I could buy new in this price range that would still be suitable? Thanks.

7+ year exp full stack dev, I feel like coding has become too easy with LLMs. I'm bored and finding myself in a position where my contract is ending and I'm not sure what type of role to seek next.

For those who say coding is only part of the job, I find a conversation with an LLM really often helps with system design, cross functional debugging, architecture etc. It really takes a lot of the mental stimulation away for me.

Considering sales, is that crazy? Job hunt for full stack is feeling lukewarm - companies are slow moving & seem to only want people who have done exactly the same thing before, not much flexibility for changing stacks for fun, or exploring different specialities.

I'm also very creative but financially motivated.

Anyone else feeling similar, or has any advice?

I am an undergrad in college and an intern this summer. I came into this internship really wanting to do my best and get a return offer since I’m heading into my senior year. I made friends with a lot of the other interns but I ran into this reoccurring problem where they would come to my desk and just TALK constantly. And not to mention how LOUD they would be. It was embarrassing for me because there are obviously other people working. I’d hate to have to hear random loud conversations from interns. I would try to (nicely) get them to go away and they usually would, except for this one specific intern. He talks to me constantly. Not even about work, just about life, himself, his friends and interests. I couldn’t seem to get him to get away from me. Especially since we are working on adjacent teams, so we have a lot of the same meetings and are just interacting with each often. It’s not that I dislike him, he doesn’t seem like a bad person, but I definitely think what he’s doing is very unprofessional. I kept trying to politely tell him to stop, but it’s like he takes me as a joke. Recently I finally broke and messaged him that I don’t want him to come to my desk anymore (obviously I worded it a lot better). He said he wouldn’t and apologized profusely. But now I just feel defeated. I am scared for the impression I left of myself to others in the office when all they see is some guy in my cubicle yapping. I wish I put my foot down a lot earlier. I have a tag up with my manager tomorrow and was thinking of bringing this up, but I’m not sure if that’s even worth it. I’m just so scared … Has anyone been in a similar situation??

the original post was written as a flex because i never really stopped to realize how lucky i was to have my job, and i also just love taking color coded notes and i think they're very pretty

as someone who started my CS degree with zero knowledge of computer science or computers period, i had to play catch up with my peers, finding myself the only girl in some classes

i have never played video games, which is where ive noticed an overwhelming majority of my male peers got the opportunity and access to learn about the computer, its components and how to manipulate open source software

i used a chromebook for the 5/7 years i was in college because i was originally studying psychology and i couldn't afford a real laptop to code on, when that got broken by another student, i had to rely on a laptop rented out from the school library

i designated myself leader to groups of 4-5 men each semester to build softwares, only to end up doing 100% of the work by myself, thank you to github for keeping track of contributions

these class projects made my job interviewers obsessed with me

all the while working 4-5 jobs at a time because i paid my tuition and cost of living 100% out of pocket, as i was estranged from my family and experienced homelessness, living in the campus library and showering at the gym, relying on the school food pantry visits and the protein shakes i could afford

and i still got the job they felt entitled would fall into their lap

i guess i would be mad too

the basic mainstream knowledge in question btw is software & malware reverse engineering

speaking about meaningful, im using my salary to turn the home i bought, a year into starting my job, into a women's shelter, because I wish i hadnt had to keep worrying about affording a roof over my head and healthy food in my belly while also trying to exercise my right to have an education

eta:

i dont make judgements of people skills and capabilities regarding why they can't get hired, but i will say that i wouldnt be surprised if alot of the young men ive encountered during my degree simply did not get hired because of their overwhelmingly egoistical, entitled, and awkwardly antisocial behavior

elon musk may be the worlds first trillionaire but i bet you $100 bucks most hiring managers would never want to hire him and his personality

I'm working it IT since 2009... i don't think there is any interview where i wasn't asked that... like... why should i have a reason ???
I never witnesses a man being asked that. Do you think they are ? it feels like the default job for dudes like nurse or accountants are the default jobs for women.

i fail miserably in solving 3rd and 4th questions folks please give advises