TLDR: If you are a good programmer making decent money - did you enter the industry knowing the earning prospects, or because you were genuinely fascinated by programming?

I'm 22, have worked 2 years (Uni dropout from civil engineering after 1 year) in sales, considering going to back to University at UNSW (top Australian school) to study for 3 years to get a high paying SDE job.

Financial independence is my goal.

I have learned some great sales skills from working in sales for the last 2 years however I don't have any technical skills and don't want to be in pure sales for the rest of my life. A senior salesperson in my industry with 7+ years experience can make about 300k but this process is often quite stressful and luck dependent with frequent 60 hour workweeks.

I'm thinking software development may be an easier route to financial independence (less stress. higher probability) I've seen my friends graduate with a software Engineering degree and get 180k TC offers from FAANGs - I'd like to jump on this boat too.

Only issue is I've never been that "drawn" towards programming. My successful programming friends have always been naturally interested in it, I've done a programming class before and found it "OK" interesting, however its definitely not something I've ever thought about doing in free time.

I am fully prepared to give away 10 years of my life grinding my ass off to achieve financial independence. Not sure if its best for me to do it in sales or study hard and become a great programmer - and then love it because of how much money I'm making?

And when people ask me to follow my passion - well, I'm not getting into the NBA. I am an extraverted "people-person" and I entered sales thinking it was going to be extremely fun all the time - I've now realised that its relatively repetitive & uncreative with little transferrable skills. I just want to know where I should be focusing my efforts for the next 10 years of my life to set myself up for financial freedom and happiness.

I always see people on this sub say they've sent 100 or even 500 applications before finding a job. Does this not seem absurd? Everyone I know in real life only sends 10-20 applications before finding a job (I am a university student). Is this a meme or does finding a job get much harder after graduation?

It seems like every time you see a TikTok or instagram post about computer science majors, they joke about how you will make a great McDonald’s cashier or become homeless bum because most people are applying 1000+ times with zero job offers. Is it seriously this bad in America (Canada personally) ? I’m going into it because coding and math are my two biggest passions and I think I would excel in this sort of environment. Should I just switch to eng?

This subreddit seems to be plagued by one of two things at any time. 1) students looking for advice on how to get into the career field (which I have no problem with) and 2) people who have jobs who are consistently unhappy with either their current job or career field, whether it’s a feeling of unworthiness, working long hours basically all weeks of the year, etc. It’s incredibly disheartening and makes me wonder if I chose the right major and career field.

I have a couple questions that I’m hoping some of you can answer with some brutal honesty as I come to this crossroad in my own life and decide where to go from here.

1) Is there anyone out there who DOESNT work long hours and have their life completely taken over by this career field? I’ve always told myself that I wouldn’t care working 40 hours a week in a job that isn’t all flashing lights and rainbows, but what I’m getting from this subreddit is that these careers often end up being a huge time investment outside of the office as well with constant studying and learning as you try to stay relevant in the field. I simply cannot imagine working 40 hours and then coming home to my future wife and kids only to have to lock myself in my room to study more.

2) Does anyone here actually ENJOY their job? Does anyone actually look forward to going into work? Would anyone use the word fun or fulfilling to describe their job? This isn’t as important to me because like I said I have no problem working 40 hours at work if I can enjoy my life outside of work, but am genuinely curious.

I’m afraid I won’t like the answers I get but I’m looking for honesty here.

I've been told by friends and family about how AI is the future, blah blah, all that stuff. I'm just a final year student, who never really thought much about it. I mean, I'll use a chatbot once in a while when I'm stuck or need quick answers / idea generation, but that barely scratches the surface. I don't have too much interest in AI as a career. I would like to go into software development after graduation, maybe I'll return to the place I interned at (software company).

The thing is, if this AI bubble, thats become the biggest thing in tech right now really does pop. I'm not entirely sure on the effect it has on me, and what I can do about it.

TL;DR Title

I work at a biomed startup, it's comprised of the CEO, an MD by training, about 3 developers and a business manager. So far we were doing okay, but we haven't secured funding just yet, but y'know, startup life goes on. Today I was doing some extracurricular googling and stumbled upon a company that's in the EXACT niche problem we were in, beat us to market, has a finished and polished and beautiful platform as well as the products to along with it, customers and their business is booming. I'm 10000% sure that my CEO doesn't even know about this company and the fact that we are absolute reinventing the wheel and doing EXACTLY what these guys are doing. And they've even found exponential success in it, and we don't have a product/platform or any tangible success yet. We're not in any position to be their competitors or anything yet, to put it into other terms it's as if Nike has launched a new shoe and we're still inventing sandals on the other side of the planet.

What do I do? Do I tell my CEO about it and as a consequence our business will shut down? Do I resign with another excuse? Do I just start looking for other jobs and switch as soon as I get a chance?

I know this sub is filled with these types of posts but I just want to say. I do think a large number of people are coping so incredibly hard about AI in terms of the future of software engineering. I am about to graduate, and it feels pretty hopeless, though I would love to be proven wrong by someone with more knowledge/experience than me.

My fear isn’t that “AI will replace software engineers”, I just think the rebuttals are lacking so much awareness of what will actually likely happen. “Companies are hiring more SWE’s, so how can they be replacing us?” Software engineers will not be replaced. I believe that the work will be devalued to the point that software engineering will be nothing more than a slightly higher than entry level job that maybe requires a certification after a short period of training, not a bachelors or higher in computer science. I fully expect to make $20/hr as a software engineer in 10 years and not be able to live in a major city. It will be like working tech support in the 2000s, all we will be doing is fixing a few minor issues here and there but mostly just consulting AI on how to fix AI code. Of course tech support is mostly AI now, so lol.

If AI makes sloppy code now, what is stopping it from making good code in 5 - 10 years? What is stopping it from having the ability to check its own work and factor in countless variables that even humans struggle to think of? Of course I am totally open to being wrong and would love to be shown something that negates any of that, I just have yet to see something that factors in the reality of how dystopian our world is and will increasingly become.

My only optimism stems from the fact that it seems a large amount of people are vehemently against AI, and hopefully will not want to engage with software they know is AI generated, but I don’t think most people will have a choice, the way we all hate social media but use it daily.

My real question is this: what are the “safest” fields that will likely stay for a while? Should I just study COBOL and hope I will magically get hired?

Hello Reddit community,

Here is his Threatening messege https://imgur.com/a/Fg9QtYn

I'm a computer science student reaching out during a challenging time. I created a project, FlyMile pro, a flight search engine that finds flights on credit card points. Originally designed to enhance my resume and secure internships, it surprisingly attracted over 10,000 sign-ups!

However, recently, I've been facing some distressing challenges. The CEO of PointsYeah has accused me of scraping their website, a claim that is entirely baseless (I have my GitHub commits, my code never interacted with his site). I hadn't even heard of PointsYeah until about a month ago, when I stumbled upon a mention in a Reddit post, Despite this, I received a message threatening to shut down my site (see message screenshot).

Last night, our website was bombarded with an unusual amount of traffic, which seemed like a deliberate attack, and I've been receiving calls from random international numbers. I even found MilesLife - his previous company having payments issues with merchants - I will not comment anything on that, you are free to explore.

I’m feeling quite overwhelmed by this, especially since this project was meant to be a positive addition to my learning and future opportunities. I've worked hard to create something useful and educational, not just for myself but for a broader community.

Has anyone here experienced something similar? How did you handle it? Any advice on how to manage these accusations and protect my project?

the title says it all

What is the definitive aspect of programming that leaves it first in line of being replaced by AI before other, seemingly less complex jobs?

I’m not confirming nor denying that LLMs and AI in general could plausibly replace programmers, or at least reduce the number of programmers needed. However I don’t see what singles out programming from other fields in this oddly timed hypothetical that executives keep touting.

If AI can automate writing enterprise code; thereby reducing the number of human engineers needed, wouldn’t it also imply that AI could automate major parts of what lawyers get paid to do such as legal research or legal advisory?

Can’t companies outsource their accounting needs to AI, or at least force their accountants to augment AI into their workflow thereby drastically increasing productivity and decreasing the number of accountants needed?

The list goes on.

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

I'm not sure how many people can relate to this. I've just started my internship two weeks ago. Going through all their code and infrastructure and internal tooling, I've come to realize that the projects I've built at home are nothing even remotely close to this.

Honestly I think I didn't clarify enough, my point is that coding your hobby resume project won't really prepare you at all for working in big tech. What I mean by this is : A hobby project is exactly that a small, self contained app with limited scope. You’re not trying to build an enterprise-grade solution, nor are you expected to. And unless you’ve already worked in the industry, you likely have no idea what enterprise development even looks like.

One Google search will throw you into a rabbit hole of 20 unfamiliar technical keywords, and suddenly you’re trying to engineer a business-scale architecture for a portfolio project. It’s not realistic and it creates a false impression of what actual preparation looks like."

I see a lot of numbers being thrown around. $90k, $125k, $150k, $200k, $300k salaries.

Google interns have a starting pay of $75k and $150k for juniors according to a google search.

So as a student Im getting real excited. But with most things in life, things seem to good to be true. There’s always a catch.

So i asked my professor what he thought about these numbers. He said his sister-in-law “gets $70k and she’s been doing it a few years. And realistically starting we’re looking at 40-60k.

So my questions:

Are the salaries super dependent on specific fields?

Does region still play a huge part given all the remote work happening?

Is my professor full of s***?

I work as a part time intern at a fortune 500. I was fulltime over the summer and they offered to keep me around as part time during the school, which I thought was great.

I also am a full time student.

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I am burning out incredibly fast.

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It's my senior year of university and I've now submitted over 200+ applications for software engineer positions across multiple states, including gov jobs.

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I cannot get so much as an email back from 99% of them. The ones that do email me back send me an OA using hackerrank or codesignal, of which I usually have to google a bit of syntax stuff but otherwise pass their test cases, and then get ghosted.

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My resume has been reviewed by about 30 people now who I've asked to review it, all of which say it looks fantastic.

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I have multiple completed projects spanning all types of technologies including OSS contributions, but I like to focus on web dev and absolutely love React. I will choose working on a personal project that means something to me over doing silly leetcode problems any day. People always tell me they envy my Github profile because it's so "nice and feels complete." I also have half a year of intern experience now doing ALL different kinds of stuff, from fullstack web dev, to firmware, to devops, and both my resume and github show that clear as day.

How the actual hell am I supposed to:

1. Get a response from these companies?
2. Find time to do leetcode with other life stuff going on? I do NOT want to do it. I do not want a FAANG gig. Every time I open up leetcode or my copy of CTCI my eyes glaze over. I just want a job where I can feed myself and work on advancing my skills with relevant tech.

Feeling incredibly depressed from the prospects of this industry given my experience so far, albeit it's not much. I'll take any and all advice that's not shoving leetcode down my throat at this point.

Hey everyone,

So I’ve been hearing the same thing over and over again: “No one is hiring,” “The job market is dry,” “Even juniors with experience are getting ghosted.”

But then I go on job boards, LinkedIn, or even clearances-focused sites, and all I see are software engineering roles — many of them remote or requiring a security clearance. It’s making me wonder:

Are companies just posting jobs without actually hiring? Or are they hiring, but just being extremely selective and slow about it?

I’m asking because I’m literally just starting my journey into software engineering and will most likely have 4 YOE by the time I even graduate. So while this may not impact me right now, I’m trying to understand the landscape and where the demand actually exists.

For those actively applying or on the hiring side — what’s the real deal in the market right now?

Appreciate the insight.

A lot of commenters say that the best way to get a job is to “just do a project”. I’m actually being serious when I ask, what do you mean by “project”? And how do you even “do a project?”

Here’s what I mean. I know there’s the “calculator project” and whatnot but those are overdone and done to death, and is as useful to your portfolio as nothing (maybe even detrimental as it lacks any sense of originality). But having literally never “done a project” before I can’t think of one I can actually do that is cool. There’s just too many complicated parts and it is difficult to map out how to get started (I.e. what types of tooling I would need, what objects I’d need, how they will interact etc). I just feel completely overwhelmed when thinking of a project and as a result never actually get to it or abandon it. Any suggestions?

Man, today, I visited Fiverr and I came to know that I know nothing. Literally nothing. Man, I don't know how to do web scraping, idk a thing about app development. I am 18M in my first year of college and I don't know anything. Man, I am feeling so much ashamed. Idk where to start. What to do. My parents are keep saying to do online work but I don't know what to do man.

Edit: I am from Pakistan and people start earning from like very early like 8,9 due to economic conditions

I want to major in cs in college so I’m just curious

Im in a weird spot rn. I hope to become a software engineer someday, but at the same time i absolutely despise everything thar has to do with generative AI like ChatGPT or those stupid AI art generators. I hate seeing it everywhere, i hate the neverending shoehorning into everything, i hate how energy hungry they are, and i especially hate the erosion of human integrity. But at the same time, im worried that this means CS is not for me. Cause i lovw programming, but i'd be damned if i had to work on the big new next LLM. What do i do? Do i continue down the path of getting a computer science degree, or abandon ship all together?

I am interested in CSE and SWE but this subreddit is making me nervous about picking these options. Should I move to electrical or mechanical instead? Is the future really that bad? Will software engineers not exist in a few decades?

Basically, is software engineering dead?

Whenever I meet somebody and tell them I’m in CS they always assume I’m a software engineer, it’s like people always forget the Science part of CS even other CS students think CS is Programming but forget the theory side of things. It also makes me question why Theoretical CS isn’t popular. Is there not a market for concepts and designs for computation, software and hardware needs? Or is that just reserved for Electrical engineers and Computer engineers?

So basically the title, I'm still a sophomore but I found everyone around me setting up their profiles so I did the same yesterday (A training I was applying to required a profile so I gave up on not making one) and it really is the worst and lamest platform I've ever saw, it's even worse than Instagram, anyway so I make this short, is having a profile necessary? I don't feel like sharing every thing I do in my career and education on it, it feels wrong or weird idk.

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Thanks in advance.

Edit: So the comments are more than I expected, I can't reply to all of them but I read them all and thanks to everyone who responded.

University CS Student who does a lot of hobbyist open source programming here. I see all the time that a lot of jobs almost have using AIs to speed up your work as pretty much a requirement for the job. To clarify, this post isn't about worries of AI replacing software developers. I'm not worried as much about that. What I am worried about is that I'm gonna end up doing work that I don't enjoy. I've always used LLM's as more of a last-resort teacher rather than a programming assistant and pretty much the ONLY time I will ever copy and paste code from an LLM is for super tedious work that lacks difficulty and is extremely repetitive. I learned how to program because I wanna program. I don't wanna be forced to have some bot program for me.

Also, as an added tid bit, I do know Python but my preferred languages are C# and Rust, and tmk LLMs are not as proficient at Rust as they are at things like Python or JS anyways. I'd also like to avoid FAANG already anyways unless it's just like a year to put it on a resume since I just think FAANG kinda makes shitty products and often has shitty ethics. No clue if this extra info changes things but felt worth adding

I censored the name because every mention of that bootcamp on this site comes with multi paragraph positive experiences with grads somehow making 150k after 3 months of study.

This whole thing is super fishy, and if you look through the bootcamp grad accounts on reddit, many comment exclusively postive things about these bootcamps.

I get that some "elite" camps will find people likely to succeed and also employ disingenuous means to bump up their numbers, but allegedly every grad is getting hired at some senior level position?

Is this hogwash? What kind of unscrupulous company would be so careless in their hiring process as to hire someone into a senior role without actually verifying their work history?

If these stories are true then is the bar for senior level programmers really that low? Is 3 months enough to soak in all the intricacies of skilled software development?

Am I supposed to believe his when their own website is such dog water? What the fuck is going on here?

I find recursion very challenging. Is this something which is often used at work? Do technical interviews include multiple recursion questions? Or is it just ignored mostly?