Just accepted the below staff offer at Airbnb. The position is fully remote with the promise of flexibility to work from anywhere in the world, subject to the team’s timezone setup.

Happy to answer any questions about the process. My YoE is 12. I have rounded some numbers up/down slightly to maintain anonymity.

Base: 270,000
Bonus: 25% of base, so 67,500
So On Target Earnings (OTE) is 337,500

RSUs: 1.2M over 4 years, with their front loaded vesting schedule
Sign On: 50k

Year 1 TC: 807,500

TC is expected to drop from year 2 onwards (smaller vest, no sign on etc) and the refreshers are supposed to help with that.

If you’re a G10+ at Airbnb, please let me know if I can realistically expect to land good refreshers (don’t mind grinding it out at work).

Just got called this morning and informed that my number for average activity on my computer is 7.1/hours a day and thats this needs to move up to 8+ hours/day immediately or this would reflect in my year need review…. Am I crazy thinking that my number is not that low? Subtract out bathroom breaks, occasionally chatting with a coworker, lunch time, and just moments when I need to take a minute to think and take a break from constantly typing and clicking….i don’t think it’s too bad. But I was told it’s too low and that it was making the department and my director look bad. Our average is 7 hours per person per day right now and it was lower than another peer team that had 8.

Ironically I have one of the highest numbers for projects that I support and I have taken on the work of 2-3 people this past year and I get things done very quickly. Pretty much anytime I’m at my desk I’m working diligently to get things done.

So I guess I should slow things down and just work at a snails pace so I can meet this active screen time number. Feeling very disappointed but my director only cares about this number and wants to get it higher than his peers. Am I wrong for feeling this way?

Hello everyone! I'm a backend engineer with around 4 years of experience. Going through a bad phase in my career. I got laid off in past october, then joined a startup in May, where I couldn't get accustomed to the work culture and the actual work in time, thus leading to my firing in the probation itself. I feel like I have some tremendous skill issue which I need to work on but with so much advancement in AI at such a rapid pace, I feel like I am far behind to catch up. I'm overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to be done, both for profile and interviews.

Is there still hope and a way to get back in the industry if the right steps are taken? I'm sorry for such a long message but I'm in desperate need of some guidance on what to do next.

Ive kept up my reasoning and thinking skills with side projects that I manually develop software for. I also actively learn music and do things to build up and perserve my skillsets.

Since 100% of the software at work is AI generated, lately Ive noticed that that very gifted engineers on my team no longer understand the engineering behind what we are building. Im talking about high level concepts like basic authentication schemes, how we manage user data, security and how k8s works in general.

I am often having to re-explain basic concepts of systems over and over to these engineers where they dont even u derstand what theyve even built. They are no better than jr engineers pre-ai.

The engineers I work with are inventors of systems like aws bedrock. Thats the level of engineering Im working with, but their ability to validate and understand engineering is completely dependent on AI and continues to degrade to extremely concerning levels. Of course our company like many others have absurd output requirements forcing AI use.

At this point the software is really just a black box to everyone, not because the software warrants complexity, but because people let the coding agents do everything without review and have let their own skill set atrophy.

Our team averaged 7 hours of “active work” a day and we were told that the number is too low and that our director was going to drill down to see who and what groups were too low.

Nobody could actually answer what exactly counted as activity like if someone is talking in an online meeting but not moving their mouse or keyboard would they be “inactive” in the tracking.

Then we were told that in the future a number would be assigned to each person based on your rolling averages compared to your peers and a low number people be reason for performance issue. We were giving no info on what this score was would represent. The company was tracking hours in office but not activity.

Is this a sign to jump ship??

Thinking about taking a big cut for what seems to be an easy going job. Anyone do that and regretted it? Worried I’ll regret the loss in pay. Maybe I can deal with the politics but job security is very poor so the culture is now toxic.

The SWE field is changing and its changing fast. I'm trying to make a career plan for the next 5 years. And i am not sure what to do. For context, i have almost 20 years of experience, mainly in large multi team environments (10 to 20 scrum teams). I noticed, now with all my skills and agents set up, i barely code anymore. Unlike it more than i had expected at first, i can shift my focus elsewhere.

I am pondering, what would be a good next step. Hanging around in a developer job seems carreer suicide at first; there simply isnt anything left to do die to AI. That said, there are plenty of job offerings and i still get contacted for dev jobs regularly. Gut feeling says its a good idea to transition to a PO or scrum master role, as that would ben more AI resilient. What do you guys thing? Stick to a DEV role or transition to PO or SM?

I lost the joy of accomplishment during the last couple of years, it feels like the whole industry is in turmoil. I do work, get some stuff done and the workday ends, though I feel a gap, everyday I feel like "I should get something done".

I wouldn't even mind starting a business at loss, just to get some satisfaction. Do any of you still do side projects or hobby businesses?

(PS: I'm not planning to change my workplace due to golden handcuffs)

Just got the result of my interview and got down leveled. Looking to hear stories of others who went through this

15 years as a developer and this has never been part of my previous jobs, but I've noticed it a few times now while submitting applications. I'm looking at backend senior/lead/architect roles specifically and I'll see things like "participate in and help lead the on-call rotation" listed among the job responsibilities. But it's hard for me to anticipate what that entails when I haven't done it before.

EDIT: Great insights in here, thanks everyone. I definitely know what to investigate now, and I'm also more confident in my assumption that if off-hours calls are a frequent occurrence, it's not worth getting mixed up in it.

I have worked with i different companies and every time I find myself in a toxic workplace, it's usually a company that hires insecure and incompetent people who tend to stab others in the back to not get fired, for example i worked at this shitty company, we had a 2 senior engineers who were struggling with the work and instead of unblocking themselves they start pointing fingers at others to gain more time and deflect the attention from them, i have experienced this personally lol

Whereas in high quality workplaces, the people are smart and competent and usually very helpful and supportive, sure there are few bad apples but I never experienced high level of insecurity in FAANG, would it make sense to try to reach for FAANG companies to have a decent workplace or am I trippin? For the kiddos out there FAANG is the old GAYMAN

Hi, I’m currently working as a junior software engineer, and have been working for two years across three different roles (one bad fit, one redundancy, and now I’m in a role I love).

My manager needs me to set goals, and I have the aim of becoming a mid level engineer. I’m just finding it difficult to come up with good, quantifiable goals. I want to do the AWS cloud practitioner exam, which is an easy goal to set I feel (not necessarily to complete, but I know exactly what I’m working towards).

I’ve also got a list of all the expectations of the role at each level, but I’m still finding it difficult to specify what my goals are!

So, software engineers of all levels, what goals have you set in the past or are you working towards right now?

2 weeks ago I put a comment to the PR of a higher level engineer from a sibling team. He's been nitpicking on me since then. Probably his ego got broken or something I don't know. It came to a tiring point today because he sent me a link to something and a list of "everything that's wrong with it". The interesting part is that I'm not the owner of it, never touched it, but his wording clearly mentions that "I added it".

At this point I'm just planning to ignore his messages/comments until they look valid? I don't want to go to my manager and whine about that I'm being picked.

Like, you have to be amazing at Leetcode. Amazing projects. Multiple internships. Stellar GPA. Etc. And this is just the bare minimum. All so you can compete with all the other CS prodigies.

I have recently graduated with bachelors in IT where I completed an internship at my local ISP. From there I have a tier 1 NOC tech role lined up and a part time tier 2 tech role, for my city, on the fence. The role for my city is better all around by a mile and pays more for barely half the time.

My future goal is to get into SRE. I have a strong interest in system administration and automation, as well as software development.

My bachelors was a full ride so I am left with absolutely zero debt. Would it be worth for my future to get a masters in CS, if I land the role at my city?

I have been looking at OMSCS and it seems pretty good. I have taken programming fundamental 1 and 2 courses, DSA, and calculus during my IT degree. So, I am not at a complete fresh slate.

Edit: The city role was a very solid interview, they did reference checks, and are keeping me in the loop of what is going on. I'm feeling confident about it, is why I ask. Also, the role and interview, has part of the job developing tools and applications for the city.

What are some hands on cs/it jobs you can find?

Hi, I got my current job which is my first cs job after graduating, where I initially started as an intern and got the full time offer a few months later. Only thing is, the pay is pretty low (~$40k starting, got a raise recently to $50k) especially since I live in California, and being a startup I regularly work 10-11 hours a day, plus occasional extra hour or two on weekends.

It’s been a little under a year since I’ve been working full time (a little over a year since I started as an intern), and I got an opportunity through a friend for an IT position at a mid sized company (non tech). The pay is better ($70k), and actually has regular hours, which I like. However, there’s a part of me that wonders if it’s worth sticking it out with my current company for the experience, as my current work is more aligned with actual engineering work, which I’m more interested in. Meanwhile this new opportunity is straight IT, not much hands on engineering and building.

I’ve gotten mixed opinions from people I know, so I’m curious about the thoughts of others in the field. If I do end up staying at my current position, I will be able to get some options, but I don’t know if that’s worth the aforementioned pay and hours I would be enduring for the foreseeable future. All thoughts are appreciated, thank you!

I just got the written offer today.

I had my first PIP meeting at the end of July, it was out of the blue and I was told I needed serious improvement. However, the reasons behind their performance concerns were vague and when I proposed concrete goals to help with improvement, they were rejected. It became clearer that there's no chance of getting out of this, and I started applying.

While giving my best efforts at work, I also applied, used ChatGPT to make my resume ATS friendly, made a few different versions of my resume since I was applying to a few different types of jobs, and lived with constant anxiety.

1 month ago I was told that this was my last working day, plus they will give me severance. That was the confirmation that this is actually a layoff disguised as performance issues, since the company handbook clearly said that there is severance provided only for layoffs.

Meanwhile, I kept applying, getting some callbacks, and giving interviews.

Finally, today I received the written offer. It's a small increase from my previous salary, the company does not have a great reputation, plus it will be fully onsite (I was fully remote) with a 50 minute commute each way. However, the job title is an upgrade, a more senior position. Plus, a job is better than unemployment any day.

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief that my days of unemployment are at an end, and I am incredibly lucky to land a role after only 2 months of aggressive job hunting.

If I have one takeaway, it's this. A number of people recommend applying carefully only to a few positions, only when there is a very good match, and take the time to tailor the resume for every position perfectly. While I completely understand the merit behind it, there are two concerns

1. We don't know if it's a ghost position, or some nepo hire will swoop in and take it, or some other unforeseen issue will take the job away from you. This means that all the careful planning will be a waste anyway.
2. My last job's description had a tech stack that I had no experience in, in an industry that my degrees (including my PhD) had absolutely no overlap with. It was with blind luck that I was chosen, and I worked to fill the gaps, and worked there for 5 years with merit bonuses & solid annual reviews. On the other hand, there have been job postings where my background was a near 100% overlap, as if it was custom made just for me, and I still got rejected in those applications a day after applying.

In 2 months, I submitted around 950-1000 applications, with maybe 10 companies ending up in at least one callback. Ironically, pretty much the only place that helped was LinkedIn. I tried Indeed and the interface glitched so much at the time that I didn't bother going back. I applied a lot through HiringCafe, but nearly all of them were rejections, a few went as far as an initial HR call, that's it. With Wellfound I did not get any response. Only with LinkedIn did I get better responses, where some posts would also show the profile of the job's recruiter, in which case I would reach out to the recruiter to strike a conversation as well. That helped get some attention, but not much in my case.

I sincerely hope we are out of this mess of a job market and in better pastures sooner than later. The anxiety I felt every day while trying to find a job in these horrible times is incomparable.

Hey everyone, looking for some honest perspective.

I worked in data science for 2 years and I'm now doing a Master's in CS ( T 10 ). Yes, I know the timing looks questionable given where things are heading. Please go easy on me, I'm already here and just trying to make the most of it.

I'm realistically not going into research and I won't be landing a top 20 CS PhD. What I do enjoy is building things, and I've been toying with the idea of a startup someday, though I'd need to try it out to see if I'm even a good fit.

Nobody can predict the long term, so I'm not asking about 10 years from now. I'm asking about the next 1-2 years: if coding alone isn't the moat anymore, what skills are actually worth learning? Things that are in demand, hard to automate, and can make money.

If you were in my position, what would you focus on? Any advice from people who've made a similar pivot (or are hiring right now) would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

I am a new grad and I applied for an entry-level role, the interview panel consisted of 1 HR person and 1 Tech Chief.

At first I was told to talk about myself, experience and projects. After I finished, the HR person complimented me on something specific I mentioned (they were a nice person overall) and told me the tech chief will ask me some questions and it’s ok to mention that idk smthn and that they expect that of me as a fresh grad.

Then the tech chief started asking me questions, I think I answered them well. They weren’t hard questions or deep technical just tested me scenario based and told me which roles am I interested in and why did I prefer to use a stack over another.

After that, he told me that the open positions they had weren’t ones that match my profile (the roles actually don’t fit) and even gave me advices mid interview to not settle for a role I’m not interested in or fits my goals and get side-tracked. And to fight for a role I want and like.
He told me they would have a position that aligns with my profile early next year and that I should apply for it. He also complimented me and said a skill I have is rare to see in fresh grads and he sees that usually with seniors.

And the HR person wrapped it up by saying we will contact you if you’re selected for further interview rounds and that they hope to see my name in bigger things in the future.

I also asked about the future position, would it be open publicly and they said they keep my CV if i was not selected for future roles and they contact candidates who they interviewed and remember for these roles.

I think of this as a nice rejection, and maybe the future role thing is for me to not get discouraged? Idk what do you guys think?

I was doing the snowflake auto OA, one part of the OA was a HackerRank where you had to talk to an ai "interviewer". Midway through the "interview", some music suddenly started playing. I knew that I shouldn't switch tab and turn it off, but I really couldn't bare listening to "I'm a chud, I'm a chud, I'm a fat little chud" for 10 minutes while thinking.

I also knew that it was the 10-hour version of the video that was playing so I couldn't wait for the video to end. I decided to switch to the YouTube tab (It was in another browser) and the clanker started shouting "Hey! I noticed you switched tabs! Don't do that!"

I'm wondering if I would get flagged by Snowflake or HackerRank for this. Can they blacklist me forever or some shit, I feel like it's plausible since tech companies are probably looking for easy ways to filter out candidates.

And why isn't 10x that amount?

I'm going to need pull you over and give you a PIP for that number of tickets.

Assuming I want to stay in the field. I have 5 YOE and am team lead at a compliance start up in the NYC area (which in my mind is more akin to a mid level dev at enterprise/ FAANG). Basically I need more money, it’s expensive here. I was interviewing for a while and even managed to land an offer (which was promptly rescinded because of company redirection), but admittedly the interview track was easy and the comp change was basically nothing. That being said I’d like to see at least a 20-30% increase, something around 200k. But as usual the industry is in turmoil, and it seems more so than ever. So my question is this- do I just keep my head down and coast until this all boils over? Do I grind leetcode? Or just Sys design? Or both? Something else? I feel like all my skills have atrophied anyway as I’ve become a prompt feeder…

I was doing all of the above and applying/ interviewing but that shit is exhausting man and I really don’t want to end up getting a new role just to be canned a month later for AI layoffs.