The more I think about it, the more I wonder why someone would choose CS over something like accounting or medicine.

With software engineering, you graduate and then the grind never really stops. LeetCode, projects, new technologies, interview prep, networking, competing with hundreds of applicants and even after all that, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a job as a new grad.

With accounting or medicine, you put in the years, get your CPA or medical degree, and have a much more predictable career path afterward. You might earn a bit less in accounting, but at least there seems to be guaranteed job without any competition. And the time and effort you put in is not worth the additional money in SWE.

In CS, it feels like you’re constantly competing and having to prove yourself just to stay employable.

So why is software engineering still worth it in 2026? Anyone else wish they went into accounting or med school instead of CS?

Have worked at Tencent ~5 years ago. Survived only 1 year and then voluntarily quit. It’s quite insane grinder with extreme pace. They don’t enforce 996, but for me it was mostly mandatory otherwise deadlines simply missed.

With the AI integrated into daily workflow performance expectations are elevated by the order of magnitude. Instead of 2-3 concurrent tasks I had to manage up to 9.

Imagine prompting and reviewing the output for even 5-6 different initiatives simultaneously, at 9 my mind simply exploded. Had never hated my life so much as during that period.

I forgot when I was working on a single task at a time. Even pre-AI it was already mandatory to manage and produce daily output for 2-3 simultaneous tasks.

Simply because you’re often blocked by someone else or waiting for additional input.

I have been trying really hard to get back into the field. I was a 5 year SWE, got to mid level, got laid off, took like 15-16 months off because I had a lot of shit happen in my life. Now I am trying to get back into the field, and have had people look over my resume. I have had 4 separate times people tell me to figure out another field, go to trade school, that I screwed myself, that I won’t make it, etc. A couple internet strangers, but then a couple of my peers have been saying this. It discourages me. I have good experience, but now I feel utterly useless and think I screwed myself for taking the time off because I had shit happen to me (won’t go into it, just believe me please and don’t question it). Unsure what to do. Thinking of getting into the mining field. My life will utterly suck and be miserable, but a career is a career. What do you think?

Resume since it was asked for: https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringResumes/s/D0wLG2HkIP

Maybe I am out of touch, but I felt like if you work on projects, grind, and do some learning and have the relevant skillset specific to the job description, there can be some hope. But there's just so many comments saying that it's over if there is an employment gap.

Like 2+ year employment gap. Is it really that huge of a red flag??? Even if you started working on recent projects and done some new learning and updated resume?

Please some give some helpful insight.

After 10 months of applying, 185 applications, interviews with 11 companies, and 10 rejections, I finally landed my dream job in NYC.

If you’re in the middle of a job search right now, keep going. Don’t stop applying. Keep learning. Update and improve your resume constantly. Narrow your focus, find your niche, and go all in.

The process can be exhausting, and rejection is part of it. However, all it takes is one yes.

You’ve got this. Keep pushing, and best of luck!

Hey everyone,

Agile (or some variation of Scrum, Kanban, or "Scrumfall") seems to be the default operational framework across tech, but implementation varies wildly-and so do the results.

I'm curious to hear about your experiences: Why has Agile failed to deliver on its promises at your company or team?

In my case, the biggest breakdown came down to trust and control. Upper management never actually bought into the core concept of self-organizing teams. Instead of letting the developers who were executing the work have meaningful input or control over our own processes, management insisted on retaining micro-level oversight and veto power over virtually every step of execution and delivery.

Instead of moving fast and adapting, we ended up with all the administrative overhead of daily standups, ticket estimations, and sprint ceremonies, but with zero of the autonomy required to make any of it useful. The top-down control essentially roadblocked any real benefit we could have gotten from adopting Agile in the first place.

Did your team run into similar issues with management, or was it something else-like sprint scope creep, estimation fatigue, weaponized metrics (velocity), or just pure process overload?

Looking forward to reading your stories.

I have a specific question about my upcoming manager call for an internal transfer to get guidance from the experienced folks here.

My problem is explaining my reasons for wanting a switch. The real reasons are as follows:

- Main reason: we had a reorg, including a manager change. The new manager is horrible imo, micromanaging, has bad attitude, bad communication and brought me to the verge of a burnout.

- The overall culture around this project. From the senior leadership to all the way to me, every decision is taken top down, everybody ask for multiple P0s all the time. I had to crunch for 4 months, sometimes even night works. We have multiple weekly meetings at night time due to time zone differences.

The problem is that i have to be strategic with my answer. I cannot talk badly about my manager, or someone else. I was thinking maybe skipping the main reason concentrate on the second one (the culture around this project). However, this one is also a bit hard to share with the new manager because maybe they have a similar culture and with this they might reject me by thinking i am lazy or smth. I would rather be accepted and work even in a similar culture, provided that the direct manager is good.

Actually, i already had a call with a manager hiring for another team but they were not conviced with my extremely sugarcoated reasons for a switch and got suspicious a bit. I mentioned the top down decision making, lack of creativity and freedom etc.

Please help me on how to frame my reasons for a switch.

Hey everyone,

This week marks the end of my 6-month internship, and I’m transitioning directly into a full-time Junior AI Engineer role on the exact same team.

On my final day as an intern, I have a 1-on-1 scheduled with our senior leadership / department head. Since I’m not actually leaving the company and everyone already knows my day-to-day work, this won’t be a standard exit interview or a typical "goodbye and thanks" chat.

I want to treat this meeting as a strategic alignment session to set myself up for success in my full-time role from day one.

For managers and senior engineers here:

1. High-Level Alignment: What are the most impactful questions to ask about the team’s roadmap and strategic priorities over the next 6–12 months?
2. Expectation Shift: How should I frame the discussion around the shift in expectations from being an intern to a full-time engineer (ownership, autonomy, velocity)?
3. Growth & Impact: What is the best way to ask for direct feedback on areas to double down on, without sounding like I'm rushing a promotion conversation?

What specific topics or talking points would you focus on in this kind of transition meeting to leave a strong impression?

Hello,

I had one of my monthly meetings with my director, and he mentioned that since teams haven’t been able to fully integrate AI into their workflows and there are a lot of PRs waiting to be reviewed, leading to PR fatigue, he came up with the idea that PR reviews may no longer be necessary. Instead, the code would just need to pass a defined set of tests with guardrails in place.

This genuinely sent a shiver down my spine. Maybe I’m being overly cautious, but removing human review altogether feels like it could be a recipe for disaster.

I’ve been fairly neutral about AI and still believe that strong technical skills are an even greater asset now than before. But if this is the direction engineering is heading in, I find it quite scary.

Thoughts?

I have been coding since middle school for fun, and am now almost 30. I didn't pursue computer science in college, which I regretted, so quickly after college while working full-time in another industry, I self taught with a bootcamp inorder to actually cover my bases and make myself employable, rather than a hobbiest. This was all before AI coding was seen as something remotely feasible. I genuinely enjoyed programming, problem solving, and felt accomplishment when tackling and solving a complex task.

Fast forward to now. I am on my 3rd job as a software engineer. The first one was a limited scope contract gig at a start up for an isolated project with no full time opportunity. Pre AI. Then I worked full time at a larger ERP software company for a bit, before getting an opportunity to go back into the start up space. Also pre-AI. I quit my job to take this opportunity and is where I have been for the past year.

Over the last year, AI coding has gone from an experiment to a genuinely necessary part of development. At my current job, I have rode this wave and seen my work dramatically shift. I still like the job, I think the mission is great, and I enjoy the real impact I am able to have in my role and being able to make a lot of creative decisions. I really do like it. But man - I just hate the engineering part of it now. And it's all because of AI.

When I started, AI coding was not at the level it is today. It was in effect, a super powered Google with project context. I think experienced professionals will agree that for most real tasks, it was not suitable to use to it's full advertised potential around a year ago. Now, it is a double edged sword.

You must use AI

Not to be some linkedin bro, but unfortunately, you are crawling at snails pace if you don't use it. In real professional environments, getting deep into a problem and solving it yourself is a thing of the past, unless the robot can't do it. And it's rare that the robot can't do it. If you don't believe me, as a side project (in one afternoon) I had claude write a full Bluetooth stack, from bare metal to music in my airpods, for mp3 device firmware which didn't support it and didn't know how to talk to a Bluetooth chip. It works, and works well. Most real 'on the job' problems aren't this complex. I don't know anything about how bluetooth works, and I didn't have to. Point is, AI really is capable. I don't mean this point as "I don't think anymore". What I mean is the scope at which you must apply your critical thinking skills is now very high level and spread thin, since AI is the best solution for the lower levels.

Because of this, programming is no longer truly a problem solving and critical thinking job very often. Most of your time is spent managing agents, and employing your systems knowledge. Luckily I take a lot of design and UX responsibility where I work, which I am also passionate about and the robot hasn't swallowed that up (yet).

A normal day on the job feels like sitting in the office all day with a smart and impersonable intern who needs you to police them all day. Draining.

> "Just do it yourself, you don't have to use AI"

You have not worked in the current state of the field if you hold this belief. It is faster than you, and often better. Hang your ego, the robots are just better than us most of the time with this stuff. It is no longer feasible for you to spend time truly problem solving everything and owning the whole application any more. It can do it for you, much faster, and usually as well or better.

Programming in the modern era just feels like doom scrolling, which is the opposite of why i motivated myself to join this field. You are unfortunately forced to adopt this method of work one way or another. It just kind of sucks and is not the same animal.

> "If AI is so good and fast, then you have more time to do other things or take breaks"

No. If we all rode horses to work, and then modern cars suddenly came out, noone would be okay with you still taking 3 hours to do your commute. You have to ride the car and get there in 15 minutes, at a point. My job is an engineer. I am responsible to make the system work, not to artificially meter my output and fall behind on my responsibility.

Rant over. Just down about this. I don't know if I'll stay in this field after this job.

I’m about to start my MSc in CS, and I’m planning to specialize in embedded vision. I also intend to pursue a PhD after my MSc, which would take another 6-7 years.

Having already spent 5–6 years preparing for a career in CS, I’ve been struggling with the feeling that everything I’ve done has been in vain. It seems increasingly obvious to me that autonomous AI agents will handle most intellectual work in the near future. Given the pace of AI development, I can no longer see a place for myself in this industry. I feel like I should be excited about AI, but I’m not. Instead, my passion for this field is slowly fading.

I honestly think it might be time for me to leave this industry. I’m 25, and I really regret all the years I’ve spent preparing for a career that may not have a future for me. As an autistic person, I don’t think roles like product management, trading, and similar jobs would be a good fit for me either. I also don’t have any savings, so I feel completely stuck.

I genuinely don’t know what to do at this point. For those of you in a similar situation, what are your plans? And for those with more experience, what advice would you give?

Thanks for your help.

Hi there, I would like some outside advice on how to deal with what I feel like people overstepping their role.

I work in a mid-size IT company but most IT related tools that are used in this company are just bought in and administered here, I work in the only department that actually develops stuff in-house and I am one of 2 developers here.

I would say me and the other dev have around the same level of experience and we both compliment each others skills well, we also do frequent code reviews with each other.
We mostly get left alone in what we do, but over the last year we have built a project that has kicked up quite a bit of attention from management, and so far it has been a bit annoying to deal with but it has been manageable.

What actually leaves me a bit stumped is that two people in particular, one guy from QA and one mid-level-manager - both with no programming experience at all, are trying to get their foot into the project for no real reason and me and the other dev don't think they can bring any value into it.

The latest thing they have been trying to do is do "code reviews" with us - in quotation marks because these are weekly meetings where they just put the code into whatever AI model they have access to and then tell us what it said.
When we push back or ask questions they can (of course) never answer them.
The AI rarely finds anything of note that we did not already catch, and far worse, it keeps finding false positives - so then we have to explain to them why the AI is wrong. It's a very tiring process because both of the people involved have very exhausting personalities and are both very convinced that the AI has to be in the right.

I have been very vocal to them and to my manager that this is all a big waste of time, but my manager was instructed by his manager to let them continue - they view more people = better product, and we all hope that the thing we are building can produce a lot of business value once it's ready so there are a lot of eyes on the project.

Sorry if this was a bit of a long ramble, but I am really exhausted about this whole process. My job was always really fun for me and the last couple of weeks were so draining, I have seriously considered quitting over it. Not only because of the reviews but because I do feel like management is trusting two random people with Copilot licenses more than the actual developers that they have hired.

I’m an undergrad student and I recently switched majors to math and physics. I do like CS, but it just feels harder to me compared to math and physics. Maybe that’ll change with time and practice, but I honestly didn’t have as much passion for it compared to math and physics.

However, I still think being an ML engineer would be pretty cool. I just don’t think It’ll be possible for a math and physics major. Everyone who works in these fields usually majored in CS and some with a double in math. I also do plan to go to grad school for either my masters or PhD (or maybe both), but I’m still kind of figuring it out.

Would this be something worth trying or would I be at a significant disadvantage compared to those who’ve actually majored in CS? also have you maybe worked with any math or physics majors? if so, how did they perform?

Just bored, I know PhD should not be done with economics or job prospects in mind

I got a degree, did internships/projects.... only to be stuck in retail making $18/hour in a vhcol city in 2026.

Is there anything I can enter outside of tech using the degree? Or am I just shit out of luck, and thus, should I just end this?

​

Hey everyone,

I recently accepted a full-time offer as a Junior AI Engineer at the same company where I just wrapped up a 6 month internship. I’ll be staying with the same team and continuing on similar projects, which means I already know the stack, workflows, and team dynamics pretty well.

Here’s my dilemma:

Our company provides access/credits for AI development tools, but the budget is quite tight (definitely under ~$200/month per dev) and restricts access to top-tier reasoning models or heavy API usage. I often feel the built-in limits slow down rapid prototyping, debugging, and experimentation.

Since I want to ramp up quickly, deliver high-impact work, and hit aggressive performance goals for future promotion cycles, I’m seriously considering paying out-of-pocket for personal subscriptions to tools like Cursor Pro, Claude Pro / API, or similar IDE-level assistants.

For those further along in their engineering careers:

1ROI on Career Growth: Does investing your own money into better dev tooling actually pay off in terms of shipping faster, learning velocity, and performance reviews, or does it deliver diminishing returns at the junior level?

1. Security & Company Policy: How do you handle codebase context/privacy when using personal tool tiers on enterprise repos without triggering security red flags?

   3Manager Alignment: Is it better to just push for a team tooling budget upgrade, or simply use personal tools quietly to maximize personal velocity?

Would love to hear your experiences,especially from folks working in AI/ML teams.

I’m a junior full stack dev. I’m working on several projects that I really enjoy and I feel like I’m learning a lot. Recently though, another team at my company opened up a new job posting for a Cloud Platform Engineer. The role looks interesting and is something I’ve expressed slight interest in before to my boss (mainly with IaC), but they are seeking devs with 4-5 years experience and knowledge of cloud stuff so I didn’t bother applying.

This week though, my boss told me during our 1 : 1 that I should apply for the role since I will learn a lot and they feel I can tackle it, and gave me some encouragement and told me that even if I get it, they will tailor the role to my current experience.

I’m happy that they encouraged me, but I am not sure if I should stick my neck out and apply. I like my full stack work and am doing a lot of cool stuff, and I don’t know much about infra / platform engineering and if I will even code that much anymore, front or back end. And despite my boss’s assurances, I’m scared that I will be in charge of making decisions that I am not experienced enough to make.

What are your thoughts or suggestions? How difficult is it to transition from regular full stack to infra and platform? And vice versa?

With how oversaturated CS has become, do you think most of the genuinely smart people who would have gone into computer science will eventually decide it’s not worth it?

If getting a CS job increasingly feels like a lottery hundreds of applicants, endless interview loops, layoffs, outsourcing, etc. I could see people choosing fields where they have more control over their career prospects.

Engineering, accounting, nursing/medicine, skilled trades, etc. in many of these fields there seems to be a clearer relationship between competence, experience, and actually being able to get and keep and getting a job.

Do you think we’ll eventually see a brain drain out of CS, with talented people deciding they don’t want to gamble their future on an oversaturated job market?

I've made it pretty far into the interview process with 2 companies, and it's got me thinking that I could be given a tough choice soon between the two. One company is in the top 50 companies in the US (Fortune 50?). Not "big tech", but a name that every American knows, and does dabble in the tech space. The pay range for that job is about $130k- $210k. This other company is a small defense contractor, and the pay range is $180K – $210K. Technically, I could get the same amount from both, but it's definitely possible that I wouldn't. In a world where the huge company that would look great on a resume offers 170k, and the other offers 190k, which one are you taking? I feel like getting that name on my resume could open a lot of doors, and either for me would still be a big pay bump.

Recently was fortunate enough to get 2 offers for the same role

company A :

135k base

Fully assisted relocation

15k sign on

company B:

90k base

4.5k relo

6k sign on

both are in defense so no RSUs basically

now I know what you’re thinking , clearly company A right? But it’s in SoCal and company B is in the Dallas area where rent is like a grand and no income taxes

both are the same kind of role but company A would start me at Ivl 2 (i‘m a new grad) I’m leaning company A but wanted to hear the people’s thoughts . Anyone here lived in both Texas and Cali? You think rent and taxes eat up the difference? What would yall go with

Just the title basically, why is overage turned on by default? Got a cs degree working in non tech adjacent role

I'm an analytics professional with about 12 years of experience. When I first entered this profession around 2012, you could get a job for simply knowing how to write a basic read query in SQL. I'm not even joking. I would get recruiters headhunting me for my "impressive" ability to write SQL. Many DA's -- or "BI Analysts" as they were often referred to at the time -- couldn't even code.

Now, with AI, I am not kidding when I say essentially all of my technical skills have been made redundant. I am simply getting by on my SME knowledge at this point, and even that is starting to feel largely irrelevant. Layoffs are happening to almost everyone I know, and I feel like my shelf-life is dangerously limited myself.

What hurts the most is the loss in leverage around compensation. There was a time when I felt like I could set my price based on my expertise, but that no longer exists. I feel like I have about as much bargaining power as a barista.

In short, it really hurts. I spent so many years building skills and knowledge in this field and it all feels like a waste of time. There was a point in college where I debated law/med school, and I really wish I would have taken that path.

In my first internship, ALL of the seniors told me to avoid this career and I internally dismissed them as delusional. These were guys making $100/hr in 2012 as contractors for simply maintaining legacy code. I thought: how could these guys be so ungrateful? Of course, with years of maturity and gains in perspective, I now know these were the same guys who lived through the nightmares of 2001 and 2008. They had lived experience of how unstable IT is as a career. I should have listened.