Hi All!

Career switcher here, who moved from a role in mental health into a mid level backend role in retail, based in London.

I did 100 devs on youtube (free bootcamp) as well as some freelance and volunteering Web dev. Took me around 3 years from writing my first line of code, around 130 apps, one other interview.

I am liking the role. It's quite challenging, adapting to such a large codebase is kind of mad, but I'm fairly productive already, and there's not really any pressure on me to do anything in particuar.

However, it's very hard to get a handle on how good I am at Swe!

The company have started implementing claude in the past 6 months or so (at least on a wider scale). I am one of the first people to join since.

Whilst I only push code I understand, I feel like claude is making 95% of the strategic decisions for me. It's hard to get a feel for the context of what is going on sometimes.

I was trying to write most stuff by hand at first, in order to familiarise myself, but I'm starting to feel there's not much point! Not necessarily a bad thing... It's just hard to know how to feel as a beginner in this environment (well, I'm not a beginner to coding, but a beginner to a full time role)

I recognise I have learned a lot, but as an impatient person it's difficult!

Anyone else fairly new to SWE full time and gone through anything similar, or, more experinced and have any wisdom to impart?

Thanks!

I completed an interview a month ago, but HR still has no updates or clear timeline.

Is this extended delay typical for UK infrastructure/utility companies? Is it usually down to slow pre-employment checks for the first choice, or internal budget sign-off bottlenecks?

How long does this process usually drag on, and when should I simply move on?

Would appreciate any insights!

In the loop for a Sr Analytics Engineer position, the role seems a really good fit. However, coming from an analytics/science background I'm a bit nervous about the case study round (part of final on-site).

Any ideas or tips on what to prep or how to approach that round?

Im a second year student for computer science (software engineering) and im looking to get a placement year at Lloyds banking . My biggest concern is the Assessment once I have sent the application. I have looked around their website, and from what i can find, its about a 130 minute assessment with around 3-4 questions. It explains to have knowledge on a range of topics, but the specific ones i could find were API and data handling, transactions and money logic, graphs, core algorithms and testing and quality. Any information on things such as the best recourses for revision, what the exam would look like, or what other topics I should revise for it would be appreciated.

Hello!

A couple months ago, I left a nice mid-sized company with rubbish pay but great WLB and good stability for a big tech company with nicer pay and now I'm regretting it big time.

I know big tech always has it's quirks; red tape, politics, and maybe more pay as a result. But I genuinely feel so lost right now.

I obviously left for the money knowing well it's going to be a grind, but stack ranking? bad leadership? unstable future? how does one even survive!

I don't know what to do tbh, I'm trying to make sense of the culture shock I suppose - has anyone else felt the same? Did it get better? or worse...

I am on a 2 year data science/mle graduate scheme at a top UK bank with a Master's in AI and a Bachelor's in CS. My graduate scheme lasts 2 years and I am thinking of spending the money from that scheme on travelling for 2 or so years. Would this prevent me from rejoining the field once I come back?

At this moment in time I am not focused on climbing the career ladder as fast as possible, but I want to have the ability to rejoin the field at a graduate/junior position after travelling.

Nothing too taxing and doom and gloom for a Sunday morning!

We often talk about personal projects for juniors and those breaking into the field and as you get older never having the time or motivation, what was the last thing you worked on.

15 YOE. Just finish up adding a new Boolean (not boolean) property to a Java API used by my SAAS. Rock and roll… last time I did anything for me was getting Codex to build me an app a few months ago to help me keep track of stuff instead of spreadsheets during a house move.

A UK database CV is not read as a skills cloud. The first pass is the most recent role, then whether the engine in that role is the engine in the advert. SQL Server, PostgreSQL and Oracle are three different jobs that all get written as SQL. A line that says familiar with PostgreSQL under five years of SQL Server does not read as a PostgreSQL DBA. It reads as a SQL Server DBA who installed Postgres once.

The parser and the person are looking at different things. A parser counts the words SQL, Azure, AWS and backup. A person wants one restore that was actually run: the size, how long it took, and what the recovery point was. RPO and RTO written as a pair, with a number, beat a certificate. A certificate with no system behind it does not move that pass. Neither does a list of every engine touched in a lab.

Degree filters are common on graduate software schemes and rare on a database advert that already asks who owned the backups. What fails the screen is a page of courses and no production system. A homelab line only counts when it names the engine, the size, and what failed. A sentence with those three is read. Built a homelab is skipped. People coming from support, from a data analyst job, or from a degree that stopped at level 5 get through when the first bullet is a database they ran. They get dropped when the first bullet is a module list.

Two pages is the whole document. Three bullets under the latest role is what gets read, and the first of those three has to be the engine, the estate and an incident. The other two are only there if they are a different system. Everything that does not fit is an interview story, and leaving it off the page is what makes the first bullet visible.

As the title says, i got luck i suppose in the summer where i managed to get reached out to by a couple of recruiters for some swe/quant engineering new grad roles where they gave me an OA to do, during the interview i could not think of an answer in that moment bu then again each first stage was quite different it was either dig through a couple of file code base and find a couple of bugs and implement a feature, or give decentish understanding of the main language i am being interviewed for with a small leetcode style question at the end, or just straight up 3 leetcode mediums. Like i want to get better at interviewing and have tried to use claude and gpt for it but they seem to kinda suck at generating questions. Any tips on how you guys practice for these styles of interviews would be great

Can you even get a job or internship with an OU degree?

I’m currently at RG uni high ranked for the degree I’m doing (Econ). I’m looking to switch to open uni, either the computing and IT or the CS And AI degree.

When I search on linkdln, every OU grad is unemployed or working a minimum wage job that doesn’t need a degree. I know the job market is terrible for everyone, but I couldn’t even find ONE working in industry.

And here on Reddit, I can’t find any recentish post of someone talking about professional opportunities coming from OU.

Reason I’m looking to switch is due to medical reasons that in person Uni I don’t have time to properly take care of, and SWE has always interested me.

I just want to know how OU is perceived by employers, either in applying for grad roles or internships?

Hi, I am considering doing a net comtraining course in Comp TIA in London, UK. Does anyone know if this is good?

www.netcomtraining.co.uk

28Y0 Optometrist (person who tests your eyes) MSc computer science (Uni of Bath online remote), built and deployed 2 small mvps on AWS health tech and optical related. PSPO 1 and AZ-900 done.

Really wanted to be a health tech consultant because I had big dreams of actually implementing decent tech in the healthcare sector.

200+ rejections/no answers. Am I stupid for bothering? I've applied to a range of jobs and grad scheme in consultancy, SWE , AI engineering, system design etc you name it.

I just thought I'd be useful with my clinical experience but I guess that's more or less useless.

I have no idea what type of jobs I should be applying for I know that sounds dumb but this field is all new to me I'm so stupid I thought there were jobs made for health tech consultants lol

Any advice would be hugely appreciated

I am an international student currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Finance & Accounting, and I have opted for a placement year. Am I permitted to apply for and work at very small companies during this placement year (provided they are willing to hire me), or am I required to work at large firms like the "Big 4"? I am applying to the Big 4, but the competition is extremely high; if I were to apply to a smaller company and secure an offer, would it be accepted and approved by my university as a valid placement?

Hey everyone,

I had a 20-minute intro call with their recruiter this week. The recruiter shared their interview process, which consists of:

• Team intro: meeting with 2 engineers from the team
• Task: either a take-home assessment or a 1.5-hour live pair programming session
• Final onsite: 1-hour technical extension, 45-minute infra discussion, 45-minute behavioural/culture interview

I'm supposed to have the "team intro" call next week.

Has anyone gone through this process recently? I'd be interested to hear about your experiences, what to expect in each round, and what the interviewers typically look for in candidates.

I would appreciate any insights.
Thanks in advance!

I have recently interviewed with a UK based company and the very first step consisted in a CCAT (Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test) assessment. In case you’re not familiar with it, it consists in 50 logic questions covering maths, logic, spatial reasoning to be solved in 15 minutes. They expect a minimum score to be met to proceed with the next steps.

I think it’s one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard and withdrew my application as soon as I found out what this test is about. What does a question like “Choose the word that is most nearly OPPOSITE to: LENGTHEN” tell you about my ability to code/solve problems?

Is this something companies ask for now? Am I being too harsh?

A lot of advice that this sub can provide varies depending on whether OP is on a visa/is based in the UK.

It's quite hard to provide good answers to the questions posted in this sub without this info.

Basically I interviewed with a company on in like mid October, and two days later, they emailed me saying they were happy to offer me a 12 month placement for 2027/28.

They said they'd follow up the following week with more details, which I'm assuming is about salary, the contract and everything else. But they have literally gone ghost on me. Idk if this is common or something but I'm rlly scared because I stopped applying for roles after I got the initial offer email. I'm scared that they might have also just accidentally sent me the email rather than another candidate and they just thought the best way to deal with it is to air me. Idk can anyone shed light onto this (it's my first time ever working in any form of professional environment so I have 0 idea what's going on or how these things operate 😭😭)

https://ibb.co/gZMnpDx9

here is the link, i have been applying to grad jobs for the last couple weeks and would appreciate feedback on it, i used a similar version to this cv when applying for placement years and got a good number of interviews but kept messing up

i try to personalise it for every job i apply to, the parts i change are the modules studied and the technical skills

So here's a quick breakdown of me:

MSc financial mathematics

Cleared CFA though still need to claim it

I was working in IB/AM market risk my last role was about 8 years ago. Anyway I had a fair amount of mental and physical health being drained.

I knew it would be a long shot, who would hire someone with such a long break and been in ICU 3 times.

Then I realised the world had completely changed.

So any ideas? The only thing that might be in my favour is l have always picked up programming fairly easily, though that might be different too now? I was teaching my self python a while back so maybe that's something I should get back to?

Any advice would be great.

Oh and nationality: British - Londoner, born and raised!

I am in a position where my company has required me to change departments as part of restructuring. Before it was more legacy code, a lot of Java, gross SQL stored procs etc.

The department I am swapping to uses Typescript, primarily with Nest and React. I have very basic experience with JavaScript with a lot of it being AI assisted and not really doing anything more than some AJAX. I am apprehensive about performing badly on this team and leaning too heavily on AI. With my old stack, I felt comfortable picking out if there was some weird or unnecessary stuff happening in my own code or reviews due to AI or Human error. I fear becoming overly reliant on AI and not actually becoming competent in this new area.

Does anyone have any tips on swapping stacks? I am still fairly new with 2 years of experience.

Hi everyone,
I’m currently a Clinical neurophysiologist/Scientist (Band 7) working in neurophysiology in the NHS, with around 8 years of experience.
My role mainly involves performing, analysing and interpreting neurodiagnostic tests such as EEGs, evoked potentials and nerve conduction studies to aid in the diagnosis of neurological disorders.

I’ve been considering transitioning into the healthtech industry for a while, mainly to increase my earning potential, develop new skills and hopefully move into more strategic or product-focused roles. My longer-term ambition is to work in AI/healthtech, ideally in product management, product strategy or a similar technology-focused role.

I’ve recently been approached by a recruiter for a Clinical Sales Specialist position at a neurodiagnostic medical device manufacturer that also offers AI-enabled neurodiagnostic technologies. I’m wondering whether this would be a good stepping stone towards my longer-term goals.

I know that people from similar clinical backgrounds have successfully transitioned into Clinical Applications Specialist roles, but I’m less familiar with the sales route and the opportunities it might open up.

My aim isn’t to stay in sales long term. However, I’m wondering whether gaining commercial experience and exposure to the medtech industry would make it easier to transition into more product-focused roles later on.

I’m torn between waiting for a Clinical Applications Specialist or Product Specialist role, which might be more closely aligned with my long-term interests, or taking this opportunity to get my foot in the door of the industry.

The difficulty is that these more product-focused positions seem relatively hard to come by, particularly without prior industry experience.

Would taking a Clinical Sales Specialist role at a medical device manufacturer be a sensible stepping stone towards AI/healthtech product roles, or could it potentially prolong my journey by taking me down a more sales-focused career path?

I’d be particularly interested to hear from anyone who has made a similar transition from a clinical background into industry, or who has moved from medical device sales or clinical applications into product management.

Would you recommend taking the opportunity to gain industry experience, or holding out for a role that’s more closely aligned with my long-term goals?

Any advice or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I just had a conversation with one of my mates.

He is a tech lead at Barclays, and he was made redundant today. His entire team was laid off. He was not in a pleasant mood, so I didn't get the numbers, but I reckon it's more than 200 developers and other engineers from the UK, and maybe more outside UK.

Surprisingly, he was working on an AI team, and they had received a good response from management and higherups.

Still, the team was made redundant, and they had no clue. Do you believe this is the normal trend in companies these days, even for software engineers focused on AI roles?

Hello, I need to make a project for final year but I am not sure what to do to get it right? my supervisor saying that he wouldn't be able help because he's no background at what I'm going to do. My idea is design a small programming language, build an interpreter for it in Java in two ways, and measure which way is faster and why. the two are tree walking and bytecode!
do you guys think this is a good idea for final year project?

Hi everyone. For context, I’m 34, currently in my first year of a CS BSc, and I have only ever worked in unskilled physical jobs. Hence the lack of tech experience. I'm also hard of hearing, which sometimes makes communication difficult.

I'm facing a dilemma over whether to do a sandwich/placement year or continue with the normal three-year degree.

I’ve been getting completely conflicting advice:

- Some people tell me that a CS degree without experience is basically an expensive paperweight. A placement would give me proper tech work experience and also open the door to grad schemes. But I would graduate at 37 instead of 36, losing a year of proper wages.

- Others say that missing the opportunity to enter the "real" job market by a full year at my age is unwise. They say I should focus on LeetCode, build projects, and apply for summer internships instead, and I will have the same chances of finding a job.

Summer internships usually open and close applications well before placements do. If I put all my eggs in the placement basket and don't land one, I'll miss out on summer internships. I could end up graduating with absolutely zero experience.

Is a placement year the golden ticket they say it is, even for an older career changer?

Or will I waste a year of my life?

I would really appreciate input from hiring managers or anyone who's been there. Do hiring managers prefer people with placement years, even when they’re much older than the average graduate?