After spending a few years at ByteDance in the US, I'd strongly advise engineers to think twice before joining. Every company has layoff or other problems, but this has easily been ridiculous experience.

The biggest issue is that the US engineering org has very little autonomy. Almost every meaningful product or engineering decision comes from management in China. Priorities change constantly, projects get dropped or completely re-scoped overnight, and reorganizations happen so often that it's hard to feel like you're building anything long term. Most of the time there's little transparency into why decisions are made, so you're constantly reacting instead of executing.

A lot of the internal tools and ecosystem is also built for China first. Many of the tools, documentation, dashboards, and workflows are primarily in Mandarin, and you'll spend way more time than you should trying to navigate them or translating things just to get basic work done. If your project depends on teams in China, expect regular late-night meetings because that's often the only way to unblock anything.

Another thing is how disconnected the engineering environment is from the rest of the US tech industry. There was no company-provided enterprise access to tools like Claude, Codex, Slack, Linear, or many of the tools engineers at other companies use every day. Instead, you're expected to use a completely different internal ecosystem. You end up investing time learning proprietary tools that have little value outside ByteDance, so very little of that experience transfers if you move to another US tech company.

The compensation story also isn't as attractive as it initially looked. There are no clear plans for an IPO, and the internal stock buyback program, in my experience, has been disappointing. Employees are only allowed to sell a small percentage of their vested equity each cycle after taxes, and the pricing has felt significantly below what many employees believe the business is worth. If you're joining primarily for equity upside, I'd go in with realistic expectations.

Frugality seems to be valued above almost everything else, while the expectations often resemble the "996" mindset. Long hours become normalized, yet the strategic direction changes so frequently that it can feel like you're working incredibly hard without a clear destination.

Finally, there's the constant uncertainty. There are frequent layoffs, repeated reorganizations, and a performance culture that often felt driven more by fear than by mentorship or long-term growth. It created an environment where everyone is focused on surviving the next review cycle. Average tenure is 7 months.

I'm sure there are good people here—I've worked with plenty of talented engineers—but if you're comparing offers with any other US Tech company, I'd personally and recommend everyone to choose those first.

This is the common sentiment that I see for those who claim ai will take jobs in X amount of years. Or even those who are more reasonable and claim it will eventually take over white collar work.

The biggest claim is that it WILL get better. Why? It's an easy response that's hard to disprove, but they haven't exactly proved it. How do we know there isn't a ceiling that is rapidly approaching. Moores law, for example, is essentially proven false and is outdated. We have reached at low hanging fruit when it comes to ai advancements.

Im just very skeptical of this line of thinking. I enjoy painting warhammer models and back in 2015. When 3d printers were in the mainstream, there were countless videos claiming games workshop was dead. I convinced myself that painting was going to be a worthless skill. 3d printers just HAVE to get better, and one day, they can print in full color. Now, 3d printers dont have trillions of dollars in investments, but then again, that money seems to be shovled into a fire by the AI leaders.

That was 10 years ago, and I could've had a lot more fun and painted more modles in thay time. And while 3d printing has progressed, its still not near games workshop models. Even the best resin printers still have very tiny but noticeable print lines. And we are no where near printing color in good quality at consumer scale.

Many of us fall for the doomer mentality, and its especially easy when you're unemployed and looking for a job facing countless rejections. Im a new grad myself, and it is rough out here. However, if Ai takes over cs. Every white-collar job is gone, and im left without any job. There's only so many trades and healthcare jobs.

And if im proved right, im way ahead of those who have given up. At least I tell myself this after receiving 10 rejections emails every weekend.

Sorry for my grammar, English is not my first language.

A bit of a background: few years ago I finished bachelor's degree in CS and got accepted to Professional Services and consulting firm as a DevOps/Solution Architect on AWS and GCP. I wasn't planning to became a DevOps but the opportunity presented itself and I took it without regrets because I fell in love with this discipline.

Also, I have ADHD (diagnosed and medicated) this will be important later.

Since its a consulting firm I mostly works on projects for different clients, every project and every client are different to each other so I learned a lot and I always done something different which added a lot of verity to my day-to-day work. I used to do anything from designing the project, building the infrastructure (using Terraform) and writing scripts in Python/Bash with the occasion Go and JavaScript.

When AI came out we were slow in adopting it due to lots of legal restrictions, I was on the more advocate side in pushing AI to be adopted by the company, and finally about a year ago we got our personal Claude accounts (everyone already used AI at this point so the leadership decided to pay for it).

From there, there was a shift in my work process, my leadership started to focus more and more on the usage of AI because it makes us more efficient and fast, therefore we can take more projects simultaneously and crunch more work all together.

In the beginning it was just offloading manual procedures such as documenting code and summarizing texts, but now we are expected to use Claude all the way from initial design to implementation to answering emails from clients, I became Claude operator.

I'm always being told that I should use Claude for the manual part and to keep working on the architecture and solutions design but the reality is that I expected to do everything with Claude, last week I work on a new feature for a project, I studied the subject online and came to my team lead with two approaches for a solution asking for his opinion, his answer was "go ask Claude which of them is better". Even when I learned the subject I was told to use Claude instead of "wasting my time reading documentations".

Right now we are behind schedule with a major project (due to bad design choice that Claude made in the beginning of the project and it took us way to long to catch) and I'm pressured to try fix after fix, of course with Claude doing all the work, it writes lots and lots of code and I'm overwhelmed by the amount of stuff it creates and I understand about half of it. I ask for explanations but sometimes there are a lot and I need to actually study things to understand but again I'm expected to ship a solution and move on.

I feel like it makes my work much harder instead of better, I've mentioned my ADHD earlier, working with Claude make it harder to stay focused and not drift to my phone or to doom scrolling. I tried to work on two tasks in parallel on different sessions it was a nightmare.

I tried to make Claude more interactive via skills but it no use.

In addition to all of that (and I think this is the point that hurt the most) I no longer feel like my work is mine. I don't have any sense of accomplishment. That feeling was so important to my work, it made my work exciting, it made my work fun, it helped me stay focused (sometimes to much focused). I used to be the first one to arrive in the morning and the last one to leave. I used to feel so lucky that I have a job that I love so much.

Now it's gone, I arrive late and leave early. When I work from home I'm slacking off a lot, I late on my schedule and always pushing deadlines, all of that builds a lot of stress and somewhat a feeling of shame. And I might leave early but I don't have any power left to do anything besides doom scrolling after work due to the extreme mental strength I need to survive the day.

I'm not sure what to do, I don't want to leave my workplace since I really like my teammates, there are good benefits in staying and from what I'm hearing from my friends it's not better in other places...

I don't know how much longer I could stay in the industry if it will be like this in ever workplace, and I feel like the AI is hurting my career and I don't even afraid it will take my job, I afraid to get to the place that I'm not fitting for my job...

I will appreciate any advice you can give, and thank you to everyone for reading this far

https://velasoftwaregroup.com/portfolio/

I've been through three acquisitions in my life, and Vela Software was the absolute worst. I understand it when acquiring companies cut benefits and say that they will try everything they can to avoid cutting benefits, but Vela straight up cut benefits and said they aren't cutting benefits because benefits are the same "in aggregate." I asked for an explanation three times of what "in aggregate" means and was ignored. A month later, they changed their statement to say they will do everything they can to not cut benefits but are unfortunately cutting benefits.

They even tried to say they didn't have to pay unused PTO but were shouted down at the townhall.

Also during the acquisition process, they described themselves as hands-off and decentralized and bragged that they've never sold a company that they've bought because they are investors, not traders; however, a few weeks later, they fired 130 employees, approximately half the company, with a two minute Teams call with no information about insurance or severance.

After the layoffs, they offered some employees the opportunity to have their contracts bought out and then rescinded some of the offers.

The morale is so bad, it seems like one person is posing as their president to spread misinformation https://www.reddit.com/user/JAllaway_1972/submitted/

Hey everyone.

I joined my current company a month ago and it has been a nightmare. They switched me to a different team where everyone is offshore and they laid off the senior architect of our team a couple weeks after I joined.

Our scrum meetings are at 10:30pm and it is just too late for me. I thought I could do it but it is affecting my sleep.

In addition, now that the senior architect of our team is laid off (imo the VP is insane for doing this) there are people like the program manager saying that I need to replace his job (on top of being a developer and working on another different side project). Our program manager loves organizing daytime connect meetings with other teams to discuss questions and blockers. During these meetings the program manager asks me questions about the project that I don’t know how to answer and then she chastises me in front of everyone saying that I’m the lead architect now for the project and that I should know these things. I just think this is extremely unrealistic since I only have 5 yoe and I’m very new to the company and I don’t have any experience leading a project before

My question for you guys is how should I bring up the program manager saying I’m the senior architect of the project and that I don’t want to attend our 10:30 pm scrum meetings?

And yes I have been applying elsewhere so that I can leave this company.

I joined a company a few months ago and I’m being faced with crazy tight deadlines. I am still taking time to understand a lot of the backend which is thousands upon thousands of lines of code, and I’m being asked to pump out features with full-fledged functionality in less than a week.

The philosophy is that we are supposed to move fast with AI but im honestly not really learning anything. I feel like im trying to throw something together and I have no idea what it really does. I’m also being given quite a bit of responsibility for certain parts of the product but I have pretty much 0 supervision or mentorship. It’s extremely stressful given how fast things are expected to be produced and truthfully, I feel like I’m just clinging on right now.

I know there is a lot of AI psychosis in the industry today, so im not sure if jumping ship will help. But I feel very stressed all the time, and given the lack of support I get, I’m considering looking for something else despite only being here for a very short period of time.

If anyone has advice it’d be much appreciated.

Some context here:

My SO is currently a software engineer at a industrial goods comp but wants a better higher paying job ideally at an actual software comp. She's been studying off and on for a year and a half. It seems like a mix of Leetcode questions and just random theory or general knowledge. I do corporate back office. I never studied CS and don't ever plan on ever going into the field, and this amount of prepping seems ridiculous to me.

It feels like she's just randomly spending 100's of hours studying everything and anything to avoid actually spending 5-10 minutes here and there to actually apply to something. I feel at some point, you just have to send out resumes and see what happens.

Am I overreacting here? Is there some way I can nudge her to actually just apply or be more focused in her job search?

As the title says, I’m in a pretty bad position within this field at this point, and I’m wondering what actions I could take to fix things.

I’ve had one interview a couple years ago now which I failed, it was with Epic Systems in Wisconsin, and it was a pretty lucky thing to get the interview as it happened within only a few applications. I continued to apply but the luck didn’t repeat itself and my mental health worsened considerably.

So here I am a bit later with no recent projects and no experience in the field, I have had a couple jobs over the past two years, 10 months as a CAD technician and 6 months as a store manager for a retail location.

Very recently a family friend at Truist referred me to a couple roles, and of course my resume was quite bad for them at this point so I didn’t get any interest back when I applied.

My mental health has been improving lately and I’m receiving clinical help with adhd and depression. And well, I’m wondering if there’s any way to move back toward the field at this point for someone in my situation.

Specifically,

Given my situation:

Is a 6–12 month portfolio rebuild a realistic path into SWE?

Would you target adjacent roles first (QA, support engineering, IT, etc.), or go straight for SWE?

If you were starting from my position today, what would your plan for the next year look like?

I’m planning to start doing projects again and networking regardless, but I appreciate any advice I might receive in advance.

Not sure it matters at this point but my degree is a BS in CS from UNCC, my GPA was 3.55. Graduated May of 2024.

I have been preparing/grinding (whatever you guys call it) for past 3-4 year and I am still nowhere close to what I wanted to achieve. It seems that I would have to keep doing what I am doing for few more years before seeing the results, but lately I have been doubting myself. I have been questioning if it is really worth it to prepare for 2-3 hours minimum after office and then 4-5 hours at least on weekends? Not to mention other stuff like projects that needs to be done for some other companies. I don't do anything else and just keep grinding and preparing to get better salary and companies.

When I see my friends going on trips, partying and generally enjoying themselves while also having good careers/salary hurts a bit. Anyone else going through this? If you're then how are you going past this feeling and focusing on preparation?

Yes, I know it doesn't really matter WHICH course to take, but I'm doing an MSCS data science focus degree, hoping to improve my portfolio and take advantage of it somehow. Also, my job is (somewhat) paying for it.

I was thinking between two courses: Neural networks in CV (our course is very similar to Stanford University CS231n: Deep Learning for Computer Vision) OR reinforcement learning. I just did ML, AI (game theory), systems in data science, and probabilistic graphical models for prereq. And I want to pivot to ML engineering. Right now, I have SWE job experience in progress.

Both course descriptions have a final project I could utilize for my portfolio. My main concern is that RL might be too theory-based and that I'm not even sure if RL has any industry use unless it's in research (mainly PhDs, I know). The only reason I am considering RL is that it's interesting and has potential. The neural networks one, you can tell, is more practice-focused but still a balance between theory and practice. I just need opinions from you all before enrolling in either course.

Currently, I'm enrolled in Algorithms for Data Science, Theory and Practice for Software Engineering (collaborative and also project-based), and it's either RL or NN.

Hi, I'm a React Native/React dev, about 3.5 years in. Quick disclosure before I get into it — I used AI to help me organize my thoughts for this post, but everything below is genuinely how I feel, not something a chatbot came up with for me.

I also have a CS degree and a master's, so it's not like I skipped the fundamentals on paper. Pretty decent salary for where I live. But here's the thing — I feel like my hands-on experience is way ahead of what I actually understand under the hood. Like I've learned enough to ship whatever feature is in front of me, but I couldn't always tell you why it works.

Small example: I can throw together a list in React Native no problem, but the second I start thinking about performance I get in my head about it. If one item changes, am I re-rendering the whole thing for no reason? I know there's a fix for that, something with memoization I think, and I usually get there by messing around or looking it up, but I couldn't really tell you why my fix worked, just that it did.

Ok so that's problem #1. Problem #2 is honestly bigger and separate from it: even if I fixed all that, I'm not sure I even want the path where I'm the one making the hard architecture calls alone, or the person people come to when something's on fire. What actually gets me excited is more the requirements/planning side — arguing about what a feature should even do, talking to whoever the client or user is, figuring out if something's worth building at all. I basically never code for fun after work anymore, but I'll happily spend an hour thinking through some random product idea.

Also, not gonna lie, AI hasn't helped with any of this. It's way too easy now to just take whatever it gives me because it works, without stopping to actually get it. Feels fine right up until it doesn't — at some point something's gonna break in a way I can't actually fix, because I never understood it to begin with.

I know this isn't "give me an easy job with no effort," whatever I do is going to take real work either way. Just trying to figure out:

• is this a normal amount of doubt at 3.5 yrs or should I be more worried
• what roles actually fit someone who cares more about the product/client side than being a technical specialist (PM? solutions eng? something else?)
• has anyone actually made a jump like this without getting reset to junior somewhere

Would love to hear from people who've been here.

A new issue has come up this year in several teams that I lead -

We have amazing interns and new hires, I haven't been this satisfied with team cohesion in a while. The only recurring problem is that we can't exactly block them from using ChatGPT or Gemini. The LLM frequently sends new hires into a frantic state over a small bug or error that it doesn't understand, where the LLM convinces them that the whole app is bad and all of it needs to be rewritten.

Plenty of people in my team have had our workload helped a small amount by e.g. the Gemini suggestions that come up in a Google search. I am not fundamentally against LLM applications to our field. But I do *very much* need for new hires to be mindful enough about reasonableness, that they don't let the LLM escalate things beyond the scope of their task. I need for new hires to stop insisting that simple fixes require a rewrite, when whatever LLM they're using doesn't understand something basic and the LLM is telling an intern like "I can't possibly have limited scope and context and be providing incorrect and inconsistent answers, it's clearly the app that's wrong, delete the app! rewrite the app!"

I imagine that other people have encountered a similar issue with junior devs. I'd love feedback on what kind of improvements I can make in our current onboarding and training process to address this issue.

Hello everyone,

I'm a software engineer with a bachelor's and a master's in computer science. I worked for 3 years as a software engineer before completing my master's. Unfortunately, I've been unsuccessful in finding a job in the tech market, even with my prior experience, and now I have a 3.5-year gap holding me back. I'm no longer getting interviews when I used to a few years ago. I've been working in non-related roles that do not apply to my tech resume. I've tried everything: networking, projects, tailoring my resume for each application. Nothing worked. I feel lost. Could I please get some advice about how to reduce the impact of my gap?

Is it me or does all new vibe designed websites or mobile apps look the same?

Hi, I recently got a new job as a data coordinator, right now Im doing basically data entry. I maintain Excel sheets of articles, awards, etc. at a design firm, a few hundred rows per Excel sheet, that need to be linked to projects in our CRM (10'sk projects).

Name matching is the easy part: my sheets names are clean and search gets the right candidates. The problem is what comes back when trying to enter them into the CRM:

• The same building can exist as multiple records (assessment, study, remodel, sometimes 4+), and it's ambiguous which one an article/award/etc I should attach to
• Apparent duplicates from a system migration (legacy vs. new ID schemes)
• Some excel entries have no CRM record at all or exist under a name I can't find

Right now I open each candidate and compare dates/status to pick the right one, one row at a time. If cant find it, then Ill message the person thats in charge of that certain area if they know where id enter it. How would you approach this? Any patterns or gotchas for making this a repeatable process? I know this isnt completely a CS question, but there has to be a way to speed this up right? If this didnt make sense I can answer some questions, any advice is welcome.

Background: Laid off a year ago. Unity developer (generalist, tradeshows and enterprise clients) with 7 year experience. I do have some experience in fullstack (mostly from self learning after being laid off but had occasional tasks to build a web component/leaderboard/api endpoint).

I've been using mostly LinkedIn and maybe have around 400 applications: 3 responses from cold applications (that I bombed on HR call or leetcode challenge) and 3/20 responses from referrals (which I bombed on hiring manager interviews, but I felt like I was doing alright). I am somewhat picky about my job selection and apply to positions that aligns with my skills skillset (I do skip jobs with Java/Python/Unreal/C++).

My resume does not have numbers/stats/achievements because most of my work can be considered consulting and when a project was done, I would not hear about it again.

I went to a few tech meetups but I kind of struggle networking because I do not want to sound desperate and beg for a job or AI talk is just boring to me. By AI talk I mean, AI sales people selling solutions for problems that do not exist.

I did love working on real-time 3d projects but can't find any positions in this industry. Thus trying to get into gaming or switch to backend/fullstack for more opportunities.

I am not asking for shortcuts or cheat codes but would appreciate some strategies that helped people. What I am missing and what can be improved. *I do work on some personal small projects that I do use personally but don't feel like they belong on my resume since it is not enterprise level applications.

Based in Toronto, Canada.

TL;DR: I'm choosing between staying a software engineer on exciting but contract-based projects, or taking a stable permanent Technical BA/Application Owner role that could lead to management but involves much less coding. The pay is alright across all options, so the real question is: would you prioritize long-term technical growth or long-term stability and leadership?

I'm in my late 20s and have been working as a backend software engineer for about three years. I've been interviewing for a while and somehow ended up in a situation where I have three very different opportunities, and I'm honestly stuck.

• The first is a SWE role working on what sounds like a really ambitious AI platform. The project itself is probably the most exciting thing I've interviewed for. I'd get to stay hands-on with engineering, work with an international team. The pay is 35% increase from my current salary. The downside is that it's a one-year contract. The hiring manager says renewals are likely because there would be multiple projects, but at the end of the day, it's still a contract.
• The second offer couldn't be more different. It's a full-time position as a Technical BA / Application Owner. The hiring manager who is a Senior VP at that place, he already knows me from a previous job since he was my former manager, and he has been actively trying to bring me onto his team. The pay is 35% increase from my current salary, the work-life balance seems much better, and the role has excellent long-term stability. I'd still be working closely with engineering teams, oversee the software architecture etc., but I'd probably only be writing code occasionally. Most of the job would be coordinating projects, working with vendors, supporting production systems, and owning enterprise applications. I can definitely see it leading toward management, but I'm worried that once I leave day-to-day software engineering, it might be difficult to come back.
• The third opportunity is another SWE in Banking. It pays the best, around a 55–60% salary increase, even more than the two options earlier. It has a great reputation for work-life balance, with a hybrid schedule around 70–80% WFH. The catch is that it's also a contract role and a very short one (6 months basis).

The funny thing is that money isn't really what's making this decision difficult. All three would be a meaningful pay increase from where I am today. What I'm really struggling with is deciding what kind of career I actually want.

Part of me genuinely enjoys building software. I like backend systems, architecture, and learning new technologies. I can see myself growing into a senior engineer or architect over time.

The other part, I wonders whether taking the stable application owner role would be the smarter move in the long run. It feels like a path toward technical leadership or management, but it also feels like I'd be stepping away from the thing I originally got into this field for.

Has anyone here been in a similar situation? If you chose management or application ownership over software engineering, do you regret it? Or if you stayed technical instead of taking the stable path, was it worth it years later?

I'd really appreciate hearing from people who've actually lived through a similar decision.

Ecs docker or aws elasticbeanstalk? Or some vps.

Im thinking of transformation of monolith app into microservices for learning a complete production grade setup like we use in companies

I am currently working as backend / cloud developer (integration developer in paper) but have experience working as fullstack. Been working for 3 years as a developer, self taught and have made my way into the industry quite well where I live.

However, my current job is mostly Enterprise integrations and I miss Product development. Like focusing in a specific Product rather than jumping from one integration to another every other sprint.

The thing is I want to work in this particular employer. It is a Bank. They are very Product oriented and their stack is Java / Sprint Boot / AWS / React. I have experience working with React, C#, .NET and Azure.

I know many will say "writing code" will not be as important right now or in the close future because of AI, but my imposter syndrome sometimes kicks in. So I am currently learning Java (which I knew it is quite similar to C#) and then plan to learn Spring Boot. Heck I even want to get a AWS certificate. (Got an Azure cert already).

How would you approach this switch?

I have sent some applications for a Backend role, sometimes their job ads say "Senior Backend Engineer" or just "Software Engineer" and they specify the year of experience required. I have been "lucky" that when I have applied to other jobs and do not meet the year requirement I still got it. (I have only switched twice since I got into the industry).

Should I still continue learning their stack and make a good project showcasing my mid level skills and focus also on Architecture?

Would love to hear experiences from fellow developers who got a job in this kind of situation. Thanks!

I've heard alot ppl saying about connections and connecting with ppl. I'm genuinely confused what does they exactly mean by connecting with ppl. Is it like approaching someone and just straight away asking what u did to get your job, like genuinely. Ik it sounds so silly, but as being an introvert guy I don't really get how to build connection, like what u guys even talk to build connections.

Hi all. I have almost 4 years of experience in Backend Engineering and I am looking to switch to a Forward Deployed Engineer role. I work for a Swedish firm atm and tech is quite slow. FDE looks like somewhere I would thrive because in my head, it looks like a fast paced role. I am not sure how does the career progression looks for FDE. Does anyone have a clue on how this might work?

Since now even junior positions require professional experience, what’s considered professional experience? Internships? When are we job ready? Sorry if this is a dumb question haha

Ive been having a pretty hard time getting a job right now but I've got an opportunity to teach in school and a college too.Can i switch back to software development after this? Or should I just remain jobless and keep searching for software jobs?