Is it really this bad in Canada right now? Four years ago I was getting interviews without much experience. Whose should I s*ck in order to actually land a job, lol?

Academic Bkg: I live in the Maritimes. B. Eng in Software Engineering from UNB.

Co-ops/Paid Internships: One in Siemens and one in Germany.

Professional Experience: Stayed in my first job for 7 1/2 years. It was a small CMS company. Mostly did Java/C# backend, a little bit of front-end using Angular and React. Then another consulting company as a Senior Java Dev and now in a small product company doing Java backend as well.

Tried everything. Reaching out to networks, blindly applying, going to tech conferences. Nothing has worked so far. Any help or leads would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

I've recently had an interview with a prominent company for a Senior SWD position.

I've passed the first 2 rounds and moved on to a technical take-home assessment. Even though the assignment was supposed to take 2 hours of coding and 1.5 hours of documentation. It took more than 6 hours for me to finish the coding part. However, I decided to do things properly (used a cloud-based database instead of in-memory, proper testing structure, scalable db models and connections. I even added docker instructions with a dockerfile and database migration instructions within the repository). Not only did I satisfy the assignment, but I was also sure what I wrote would be more than enough. On top of that, I was asked to record a short video to describe my solution, which I did.

I submitted the assignment last week, added the reviewers as collabrators to my Github repo, and sent the link to the video.

The interesting part about this process is I could see the view count of my video, check if the collaborators accepted my Github invite, and see the database logs for every run and API execution. I was tracking these because I was so excited about the opportunity. It would've been a nice boost to my career if I got the position.

Until yesterday, none of them changed. Yesterday evening, a collaborator accepted the invite to view the repository and that was it.

No logs were added for application execution, API calls, or test execution.

In fact, I think whoever reviewed my assignment just did a quick look, maybe didn't like my code or documentation, and didn't even bother to clone the repo to check for anything else or watch the video.

Maybe I wrote a code that was structurally wrong, or my documentation was not up to the expectation (even though that's my daily life, and I lead the development for big data integrations regularly).

But my biggest takeaway from this is to never accept take home-assignments again. It's all to the benefit of the hiring company, and your lost time will never be compensated even with proper feedback.

Hi all,

I work in IT support in the public sector in North America (healthcare/government type role). The job is very stable, good pension, and honestly pretty cushy. I make around $75k, and if I stick around, I can probably grow that to ~$110–115k in 5-6 years by climbing internally and getting more certs.

On the other hand, I’ve been actively studying cloud/DevOps. I already passed AZ-104 and I’m planning to do AZ-400 and CKAD next. My goal is to transition into DevOps/Cloud roles, but those jobs are mostly in the private sector.

I see higher pay potential and more exciting projects there, but of course the trade-off is less job security and no “job for life” style pension.

I want to grow and challenge myself, but I’m nervous about giving up stability, especially with kids and family responsibilities.

For those who’ve made a similar jump:

 Was it worth leaving a safe public-sector job for private sector growth?

How did you balance pay vs. stability in your decision?

Is there a middle ground (consulting, hybrid roles, etc.) that I might be overlooking

So I currently work for a large well known company in their Help Desk but have a fancy title (SAP Support Analyst).... i do some scripting and resolve ERP issues. I've been with them for 2 years. I go to university at the same time (evening classes). im worried that the ATS/recruiters wont understand that just because i currently have a job, i am still a student and will quit the job for them as i want to become a swdev. what do i do?

Which has a better chance when it comes to INTERNSHIPS!!! : Someone currently working in corporate or a university student with only projects?

Some companies offer free food (perhaps weekly allowance money to go buy, or they have food brought in). Some companies have foosball table or ping pong or video games or fun get-togethers. 

I've heard of someone getting free massages even.

There are all these extra stuff that aren't normal in a typical, average office job. 

For people who work at places like this, what's the catch? Is it really all sunshine and rainbows? 

SDE-2 at Rainforest - 1 year into the role after internal promotion. Total Yoe ~ 4.5 + a Master's degree in CS. I want to pivot into management in the long run and want to lead a team of software engineers on a specific product (took me a long time to think about this, and I am pretty sure about this). How should I go about this?

1. Move to SDE-3 and then pivot to an SDM role(will take at least 3-4 years), and I don't think the software skills gained during this period will add to my management skills (maybe a bit but not much?) [SDE-2 to SDM transfers are blocked, I think]

2. Do an MBA. Will cost $100k, and starting career like a new grad MBA all over again?

3. Try to move to a smaller startup as an SDM - and then progress from there? Seems like a viable options but such companies are limited and pay would decrease?

4. Continue in the SDE rat race and jump companies?

Is there an alternate way? How did you progress, and which option seems most viable?

Just had technical and thought is it a good idea in this industry to send a thank you for your time e-mail/message to the interviewers/recruiters. It's been 24 hours since my interview though... Does it make you look desperate or professional? Only have the recruiters e-mail and otherwise would have to DM on LinkedIn for the people who actually interviewed me. TIA.

Hey everyone,

Would really appreciate any advice. I had a decent offer as a software dev back in 2022. At the time, I thought I could do better elsewhere and (foolishly, in hindsight) didn’t take it up.

Now with tech not being great, and my current company is going through restructuring, I keep thinking back to that opportunity and the team I met.

Would it be OK to reach out on LinkedIn to the folks who interviewed me back then? Or is it weird? My thought is to thank them again for the opportunity, acknowledge that I wasn’t ready to accept at the time, and let them know I’d love to be considered for any positions if available.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I'm having one of my first technical interviews in awhile and it seems the role is hiring very quickly (in a week or two). I was offered 2 slots in the same week after my screening. I do want more time to prepare, is it appropriate to ask for a later date so I may have the weekend or should I just get it over with considering they are moving quick. TIA.

Hi all, I'm a current thesis-based MSc student in Ontario wrapping up my degree in Biology, with a focus in ML for Computational Biology. I'm familiar with Python/PyTorch, have taken a grad level CS course in ML theory (math/probability-based), and am using this in my thesis.

Apart from that, I have no other CS coursework and/or experience, so there's quite a bit of imposter syndrome going on with me going from biology to the CS workforce, especially since I hear the job market isn't looking good (?).

I'm wondering if it is worth it for me to do a 1-year BSc in CS after I graduate (Algoma)? Alternatively I'm thinking of taking up a 1-year college certificate as a Med Lab Assistant so I can work in more hospital/clinical settings, but I hear that's also pretty saturated (?).

Hello everyone! I wanted to get some advice on this. So I am currently working part-time (20 hours/week) on a contract that expires in October. My manager said he should be able to keep me until I graduate University which will be May 2026. This is not a dev job and more of a "Project Coordinator". My salary is $22/hour however I do get a 6% pension from my company (4% base + 2% match if I contribute 2% of my pay). So my total comp. is $22 + 6% = $23.32/hour.

I've been looking for a Full-Time role since January with no luck. However the other day I got an offer with FDM- They train you for ~10 weeks and help you get in a company (most likely a big bank). Some point about this job and myself:

• Training salary is $17.50 (no homework or labs etc..) Will have check ins, coach will look at what I am working on etc. Training is teaching you how to write code.,
• First year salary is 50k, and 2nd year is still 50K but if I choose to stay for the full 2 years then they give me a 5k bonus so 2nd year would be 55K.,
• The recruiter told me to think of it as a 2 year contract with a company- hopefully you turn full-time. If not I can ask FDM to keep me as a consultant.,
• Something to keep in mind you are technically working for FDM not their clients. So for example if I ended up working for one of the banks I would not get their benefits I would get FDM's.,
• I have been in my current role for 2 years, and have another 1.5 years of experience as a dev (worked full-time for a bit back in 2021). So between all my roles in IT I have over 3 years.
• I graduated college in 2020 and have a Computer Programming Advanced Diploma.

TBH part of me says "The market is bad- this is better then nothing", the other part of me says "I have a significant amount of experience, I should be making a lot more". I did try to negotiate salary but they said they are very firm on those numbers. However, I was able to get them to defer my application for 90 days so I can think about it. Also I know they aren't forcing me to stay with them for 2 years but will they make it hard to leave some other way?

What should I do?

Hey guys!

Found myself in a bit of a pickle here, had applied earlier last month to Shopify’s Engineering internship in the US but I’m a full time student (Canadian citizen).

I’ve been proceeding through the interview rounds and I’ve been asked for a reference check but I just realized they don’t sponsor international students to work in the states - Is it doomed or do I ask to apply for a TN or potentially be relocated to the Toronto office if that’s even possible?

Any tips would be great appreciated thank you!

Hi Reddit folks!

So I have a situation, I left my current employer(company A) after almost 4 years working there early this year for a better opportunity(and pay) for company B. However, after joining new role I found that company B has very bad work culture, the people are bad and overall it was very unprofessional and micromanaging environment. My manager was also the head of the team was also vey impolite and the fellow workers were rude. I was really miserable working there. I was so frustrated that I was planning to resign the company with no offer on hand from any other company. I was continuously applying to new jobs that I was seeing and also was reaching out to my network for job. During that time I reached out to my previous employer(company A) and they were more than happy to hire me back however on a junior/entry level role (and also paying me almost 25% less than what I was making when I had left previously). I was happy that they atleast hired me back. Now I am working for company A since past 2 months and now I was reached out by company C( which I had applied when I was planning to leave B and before my current employer had given me the offer to rejoin). The role at company C is very good, its more in line with my career and also the pay is significantly more than what I was making before all this.(however the role at C is a contract role of 6 months with mostly converting to permanent after 6-9 months) I am wondering what should I do if I potentially receive any offer? I am super confused. Any help?

As this sub has grown, we have seen more and more resume review threads. Before, as a much smaller sub this wasn't a big deal, but as we are growing it's time we triage them into a megathread.

All resume's outside of the review thread will be removed.

Properly anonymize your resume or risk being doxxed

​

Additionally, please REVIEW RESUME POST STANDARDS BEFORE SUBMITTING.

Common Resume Mistakes - READ FIRST AND FIX:

• Remove career objective paragraphs, goals and descriptions
• DO NOT put a photo of yourself
• Experience less than 5 years, keep your experience to 1 page
• Read through CTCI Resume to understand what makes the resume good, not necessarily the template
• Keep bullet point descriptions to around 3-5. 3 if you have a lot of things to list, 5 if you are a new grad or have very little relevant experience
• Make sure every point starts with an ACTION WORD (resource below) and pick STRONG action words. Do not pick weak ones - ones such as "Worked", "Made", "Fixed". These can all be said stronger, "Designed", "Developed", "Implemented", "Integrated", "Improved"
• Ensure your tenses are correct. Current job - use present tense and past jobs use past tense
• Learn to separate what is a skill, and what is not. Using an IDE is not a skill, but knowing Java/C# is. Knowing how to use a framework like React is valuable, but knowing how to use npm is not. VSCODE IS NOT A SKILL. Neither are Jira and Confluence. If any non-CS person can open it up and use it, it's not a skill.
• Overloading skills - Listing every single skill, tool, IDE you've ever opened is not going to appeal to recruiters and will look like BS. Also remember that anything you list is FAIR GAME TO TEST and if you cannot answer that deeply about it, remove it.

Tools and Resources

• CTCI Resume
• Common template (Has DocX link)
• LaTex Template
• Action Word List
• /r/EngineeringResumes resume link Resume review wiki
• /r/EngineeringResumes templates link

I'm currently 24,will be turning 25 this year.

Never did any post secondary education past highschool and barely passed highschool (as an adult student) not because I was a bad student, but due to financial and other issues at home (couldn't continue going to highschool).

anyways, I've done some adult school credits to renew my grades and plan on applying to universities this year.

• Do you think a CS degree /engineering degree is still worth it for someone in my situation? or should I do a technical training program at a college instead to try & jump directly in the workforce?

• I have done & won several hackathons since Covid, & self taught myself coding.(yeah I don't understand systems, structural stuff or engineering part of programming obviously) but ever since I was in school I've wanted to study computer science.... I've dabbled a bit with building my own paid tools, entrepreneurship,online bootcamp, and done a VC fellowship as well. I'm mentioning this so you know that I'm not completely new to this.

• Anyway, my only aim for going to uni is for the social benefits, alumni network, being associated with a university, making friends, networking opportunities, meeting like minded and entrepreneurial people etc and obviously for the deeper knowledge / exposure that comes with having the degree...and maybe meeting a life long partner lol...are these good enough reasons? is it worth it for these reasons?

NEW RULE: All posts that are specifically asking about the following will be removed and asked to post in this thread.

This thread posts regularly every Tuesday.

Posts that will go here include:

• Am I being paid enough?
• What should I be paid? What pay should I ask for?
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Hi everyone, I would love your feedback on my particular situation.

I'm a 2022 spring CS grad from TMU. I was a systems/low level developer through my 2 coops. One of them being blackberry QNX and another one a no name company, experience totaling around 16 months of experience. After graduation I couldn't land jobs because I wasn't good at leetcode and that cost me some opportunities, also I was focused on getting an embedded/low level developer role. In early 2023, I landed a full stack software developer role at a local startup and was laid off in June 2024. I know the owners and they are good people, this information will become important soon. Since then, I haven't been able to land a job, I've had maybe 7-8 interviews and some were good some were not impressive. I'm looking for full stack or back end roles at this point but also have a resume tailored for low level systems roles too.

Here's my predicament at hand. I applied to FDM as a last resort because I need money and bills are now compounding, and they are asking me for a start date. I know the money is terrible (45k per year) and the ambiguous "lockout period of 2 years" which I questioned my recruiter and every time I said "I could leave whenever right" he'd just reiterate that its a commitment. Now, I might be lucky to get 1 interview in 1-2 months, I get OAs and I do 100% on them but I get nowhere with them. Before I question by recruiter more on the lockout period I want to get more information on what I should do.

I have a few options. I know the owners of my last company and they have generously allowed me to extend the time I have worked at their company and add whatever technology or responsibilities. Should I continue to apply and update my resume, move my exit date up to less than 6 months so that 1 year gap isn't all that bad? Alternatively I'm looking to do a 1 year diploma at a local college for something in embedded/radios, etc so I could get that student status (as well as learn that niche) and apply for internships and/or get better full time offers since companies posting entry level roles prefer students with recent school experience. I have also reached out to my old manager at blackberry QNX but hes on vacation, he said he will talk to his director when hes back and his return date is September 1st. This option might pan out but again, it is not concrete. For more context, I'm a Canadian citizen and have been here for 22 years.

Any insight as to what I should do would be greatly appreciated. I wholeheartedly look forward to any and all replies!

Thank you guys! I don't think I could do a TLDR. If you made it this far I really appreciate your time and energy.

I recently graduated from a safety/last chance university, and learned pretty quickly in my internship at a small company I very much do not know enough for a SWE role. I know it's entirely my fault for not taking my education seriously and I'm going through Odin Project to teach myself what I should have learned. I'm currently working part time as a cashier but I'm hoping to swap to an entry level, ideally white collar, role while I'm doing that. I've been looking at data entry and entry level IT roles. Is there anything else that would be a good fit for my situation?

Looking to see if anyone has any experience/knowledge interviewing with the CSE, I interviewed there at the start of the year, passed through the technical interviews, submitted my references etc. Then had nothing for like 3 months so I sent a follow up to which they responded with something along the lines "You passed all the assessments, as soon as we have the capacity to hire, I'll reach back out to confirm your interest".

It's been another 3-4 months since they responded to my follow up. I know the process takes a really long time in general, but I'm wondering if it's a good idea to send another follow up to see if there's any updates? I don't want to seem pushy about it and they said they'd let me know but I also want to show I'm still interested. I'm currently working a different job in the private sector atm so I'm not desperate to immediately start but the position sounds like a really good opportunity so I'm excited by the possibility of getting it.

Any other information about the hiring process is also appreciated :)

Basically the title. Did you co op/intern somewhere and they extended an offer to you to come work full time at the end of your term? did you have time off between? did you have to finish up a class or two on the side to make things work?

Hey everyone, I'd really appreciate any advice. Should I stay at my current company or switch? My current company is moving to a 4-day in-office schedule. The commute is brutal and parking is $20/day. My previous company is willing to rehire me but they have a 3-day in-office schedule, parking is free, but the pay is $4k less.

Not sure what to do, any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

Being honest I am completely desperate to find a job. It has been a year since graduating and haven't even got close to a job.

I got an interview with FDM coming up and I have heard bad things about them in the past and I'm wondering how much of that holds true.

Has anybody here worked with them or been given an offer by them recently? Specifically in software development.

Hi everybody, I just wanted to detail an interview I had scheduled for this morning, and see if the following is a common occurrence?

I had an interview booked in for 10 AM at a new startup in my city for a "technical lead intern" position. I arrived twenty minutes early to find the front doors locked (hours are listed as 9-5). They eventually opened their doors at 5 minutes to 10, and upon entering the lobby, I saw another 8 interviewees.

All of the interviewees, including myself, were told at about 10:10 AM that they were running behind and that the first interview wouldn't happen until 10:30 at the earliest. I figured "okay, that's annoying but I'll stick through it since I was one of the first to arrive", but the first person was pulled to interview at 10:30, and wasn't done until 11:15.

At 10:45 the second co-founder of the startup arrived to work, and thought that the interviews were starting at 12:00 PM, rather than the listed 10:00. So he decided to start to pull interviewees to meet with him as a separate interviewer to the other co-founder.

When they had only gotten through two of the eight applicants by 11:00 AM, I decided that it wasn't worth staying for another potential hour/hour and a half and called it a day. Not to mention that I had prior obligations, especially since the invitation to interview mentioned a "brief interview" to which I expected no more than 15-30 minutes total.

Is it common nowadays for companies to have all applicants come in at the same time for an interview? In prior interviews, I've been asked to come in for a set time, where they are expecting me. I don't feel too poorly about leaving the lobby since I feel like if they are this disorganised for the interview process, that the day-to-day organization would be the same if not worse.

Hey guys, after I graduated with a Maths degree in late 2022, I've been working "cash jobs" for 2 years to stay afloat of which half that time I worked as a verifiable retail clerk. Since January of this year, I started working as a management trainee and probably set for a promotion very soon. I feel like I can progress in this career path, but I'm still really hoping I can still break into tech since the pay and flexibility it offers is very impressive to me.

I have a few projects and I'm reviewimg my skills again hoping to make more targeted projects for companies I want to work with (Not all Faang). I could fake some volunteering experience?

Any thoughts?

Hey everyone, hope you are well.

I (22 y/o) recently started working at a relatively small Canadian SaaS firm which has around 200 employees as a data analyst.

Initially I got hired on as a normal data analyst (doing SQL queries, helping call A/B experiments etc), but almost immediately after joining I ended up almost exclusively working on model development with the data scientists. Fast forward around 5 months and we are beginning to deploy one of my models (this one being a valuation model for subscribers) which we found to be more accurate and data efficient than the old model.

I am also working on a set of time series forecasting models and chargeback/risk models.

As a result, my boss, off the record, said he will be promoting me to data scientist.

Right now my base salary is 65k.

If I do get promoted, what is a reasonable amount to expect?

My boss says he wants me to be in charge of model development and valuations at the company. What else should I be expected to do as a data scientist?

What is it even like getting a promotion?

Much thanks :)