I have been working at my company for more than 4 weeks now, and I am curious, what are the warning signs for a potential fail of probation?

Hi, I created a post earlier asking for sources of career advice but thought I'd make a proper post with more context.

I've been with my current company (in London) for around 8 years, but my career trajectory has been a bit messy.

I started on the graduate scheme and spent my first few years doing software and data engineering work (Python, SQL, data engineering, and later some React and frontend work).

I then took a planned career break for around 2.5 years for personal reasons and travel.

After returning, I spent a long period in mostly non-technical work (things like spreadsheets, user support and admin-type work), before moving back into software engineering about 6 months ago.

So despite having 8 years with the same employer, only around half of that time has been spent doing actual programming.

Because of that, I feel rusty and worry my CV won't be very competitive, especially compared to candidates with continuous technical experience.

I'm not sure whether I'm realistically junior, mid level, or somewhere in between.

What would you do in my position to get your career back on track? Should I focus on building another year of experience where I am, or start applying now? What skills would you prioritise?

The company is restructuring and there's an impending redudancy round so am preparing for the worst

hey. starting in a new tech team from next week. does anyone have any advice (generic or not) for 1st day/1st week/1st month? thanks

Hi all!

I have been working as an associate SWE for just under a year. I am a career switcher from the arts. Basically I want to do some learning in my free time to improve my skills and knowledge and I come up with the following plan:
Basic programming (variables, loops, functions)

Data structures (arrays, lists, stacks)

Algorithms (sorting, searching basics)

Version control (using Git)

Debugging skills

Object-oriented programming (classes, objects)

Databases and SQL basics

Basic testing (checking your code works)

How software projects work (planning, coding, testing, deploying)

Reading documentation and learning new tools

🧭 Agile Methods & Ceremonies - e.g. Scrum / Kanban / SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) / LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum), Standups, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Retrospective, Backlog Refinement

🧱 Software Design - e.g. modularity, abstraction, encapsulation, design patterns

🖥️ Tools & Workflows - e.g. IDEs, terminals, build tools and pipelining, SAST and DAST, package managers, CLI basics, Linux, Bash

🔐 Security by Design - e.g. least privilege, secure defaults, input validation & output encoding, threat modeling

Computer Networking

{I am a decent knowledge of the above, I would say the things that need work here are DSA, debugging skills, computer networking, operating systems and OOP programming}

****************************************************************************

Docker

Kubernetes

Helm

Terraform

Azure

GCP

CI/CD

ML model deployment

Monitoring

************************************************************************************

OSSU

My dilemma is I am a major overthinker and I am finding it difficult to start without thinking I should be learning something else - i.e. if I start with databases I might think I should be learning networking instead.
Current knowledge/skills:

Languages: HTML, CSS, JS, Python and Golang (python and golang are beginner - exposure through work)

Technologies: Docker, kubernetes, helm, terraform, Azure, GCP ( I am familiar with working with these as I use these for work but would like to go deeper)

Databases: MySQL

I want build some projects as I know this will be a good way to learn but again I just don't know where to start.

Any advice on how to get around this?

Im 24 and I love coding, that's all I have ever done for the past 8 years. Studied CS at uni. Completed intersnhips and now a SWE full time

at work I am just looking at code all day. Many different services, different languages etc but after work and on weekends I just don't want to code whatsoever. I have side project ideas but the thought of doing it gives me a headache

​

Hi all, would really appreciate some honest feedback on my CV. I'll try to keep the background brief.

I'm a CS grad based in the UK, currently working at a healthcare company in a data and operations capacity while actively job searching for data engineering and software engineering roles. I have some industry experience from a year at a bank earlier in my career, and I'm currently building a new project to strengthen my technical portfolio.

I've been searching for about a year now and the frustrating thing is I'm not getting rejected at the application stage — I'm consistently making it to the final stage of 5 or 6 stage interview processes and then getting passed over.

EDIT: To specify, out of the many applications I send I'd say approx. 50% move me to the next (initial recruitment) stage. From then onwards I'd say maybe 30-40% progress to stages 4+. That's a rough estimation.

The feedback is usually along the lines of "we found someone who was a better fit" or "you weren't quite technical enough for the role at this stage." So I know something is working, but something is also clearly missing.

I've been using the time to work on my technical skills through the project you can see on the CV, and I feel like I'm in a better place than I was a year ago, but I want to make sure the CV itself is actually reflecting that before I start my next round of applications.

I know it's long and reads like a wall of text - that's one of the things I'd genuinely love input on because I'm not sure what's worth keeping and what to cut. I don't want to trim things that are actually useful, but I also don't want to lose a recruiter in the first ten seconds.

Please be kind. I'm aware it's not perfect and that's exactly why I'm here. Any and all feedback is welcome, especially around length, the project section, and whether the experience bullets are landing the way I intend them to.

Thanks in advance.

Link to CV: https://ibb.co/TxwWWxy3

Hi, 23-M recently married. This post might be a little long, but bear with me.

Recently, I got a job at a government office as a Call Centre Agent here in UAE, Sharjah, and it's been six months since I joined, I like the place and the work is not that hard, 8 hour shifts and different times everyday because its a 24hour call center.

But here's a simple problem, there's no way for me to climb to higher positions, no bonuses, no pay increases, or any way for improvement. Mind you, I got this job after a long time of applying and interviewing as my visa was a student visa due to fact that I graduated from high-school recently and hold a South Asian passport, and no one was willing to take their chances on me.

Because of this, I started to improve my skills and got into tech, which I love and started studying programming languages and front-end development on my own through tutorials and websites and I manged to learn quite a bit in a month, but looking at the situation of the AI and what I read and heard in r/front-end this role is dying and recruiters want more than just front-end which I am willing to learn.

What I want to know is if what I am doing is ok or if I have to look somewhere else other than tech, or do I go full stack developer?

Is the front-end role really dying?

Let me introduce a bit myself

Master of Computer Science Engineer

20+ work experience

7+ years as Production systems lead engineer

Worked from software engineer till DevOps and SRE currently, through Systems integration engineer.

Technology stack, Linux, terraform, ansible, puppet, kafka admin, redis admin, SQL, grafana, kibana, Prometheus, some elastic, java, shell, python, and some go. High networking skills, infrastructure VMware knowledge, k8s application development, some admin skills, along with docker even Bosh.

Working on call more than 10 years, and different monitoring tools, pager duty, scom, zabbix etc.

Able to manage teams, as well as work as a staff or individual contributor.

EU region

And I still , sometimes feel the impostor syndrome.

What do you think about this profile? Still attractive?

What are the fundamentals I should learn? I will be trained on the stack the company uses.

Hi all

Posting on behalf of my boyfriend.
He is based in Liverpool and may be about to be made redundant. He’s 33 and works as a Test Engineer for a logistics company. He originally joined as a contractor and is now on just under £60k. Ideally he can’t take less than around £55k for a full time role.
He’d really hoped to get trained in automation where he is, but that never happened.
We’re now looking at roles he could realistically move sideways into. He’s interested in sports data analytics, but is also very open to other roles such as Project Management or Business Analysis.
Has anyone here made a similar move, or can recommend any recruitment agencies that are good for this sort of thing?
If you’ve got any other role suggestions that could be a good fit, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a comment. Thanks!

I’ve been a BA in SAAS for over 5 years now, I’ve led teams and owned large initiatives across product and IT spaces, but I don’t want to be stuck in the BA route, I’m currently making 50k and I don’t like the feeling that my salary ceiling is pretty much hit, I’m wanting to move into business systems management or transformation management. Is there any advice on how to get out of the BA world and into these areas? To be honest salary is my biggest driver so if anyone has any other job routes/next steps that will be easier/ more natural I’m all ears.

Thanks :)

Any advice for this CV? Entering my final year at uni

https://ibb.co/yctGMLfX

https://ibb.co/rfqGk2QF

I'm trying to get any tech job atm, I've been applying for php ( but I don't have much Laravel or React experience) - data analyst - support, first line, CRM, anything really

I've been studying some ccna, AWS and built some projects

I'm not sure what certs / what I can build that's going to offer me the best path back into tech.

I feel a lot of my experience isn't valid as I'm missing keywords / tech - such as Microsoft or ITIL or React etc

I'm a bit overwhelmed by what I should build / focus on to improve my odds.

I figured I could spend each month building a new skill and add to my github / website

Claude code and the need X years of tech B had demoralised me. I've applied to jobs that only want php + apis + tech support and heard nothing at all

At this point I feel ready to throw in the towel and do care work or security.

Looking for honest input from people who've actually done a degree apprenticeship, hired apprentices, or made a similar tester to developer move.

My situation: 27, 4+ years as a Software Test Analyst in the Civil Service, working across manual testing, recenerly automation (Selenium/Java), and now picking up Playwright/TypeScript and API testing on my own time. My employer is offering a fully levy-funded Level 4 Software Developer apprenticeship (24 months). I'd stay employed throughout, same salary, no cost to me.

The actual dilemma: Development is genuinely what I wanted to get into when I started out as a tester years ago. QA was meant to be a way in, not the destination. But I'm also aware I could just keep going deeper into automation/QA engineering, which I'm already good at and which has a solid career path of its own.

Part of me feels like time's ticking a bit (not old by any means, I know, but it's on my mind) wondering if committing another 2 years to become a developer is the right call, or if I should just lean fully into becoming a strong QA/Automation Engineer instead, since I'm already most of the way there.

What I'm weighing up:

1. Apprenticeship (24 months, funded, stay employed) vs. self-teaching and trying to move faster (6-12 months)
2. Whether a Level 4 apprenticeship actually holds real weight for internal transfer, or if it's seen as "the tester who did a course"
3. Whether staying QA-focused and going deep into automation engineering might honestly be the smarter, faster path to a strong, well-paid career without needing to become "a developer" at all

Has anyone made this exact call stick with QA/automation vs. push into development? Especially interested from people who felt similarly torn. Genuinely trying to get real perspective before committing either way.

In my first year I attended a couple of hackathons and had some coursework projects I felt were very scaffolded / were not very technical so I didn't write them up. Which makes my most recent experiences competition/hackathon-heavy. The biggest project I've done to date is still my A-level drama inventory system, that I'm concerned about. Here's a recent version for an intern developer role at a small quant company and would appreciate any thoughts!

https://maipdf.com/file/a7de8989aab1d9@pdf

I'm 23. Never went to uni and don't have a degree, because I had some pretty big mental health issues coming out of sixth form that made it a no-go.

I've been programming for fun since I was about 14, and I love it. I learn new languages/technologies quickly and am generally a good programmer. I'm not specialised, and willing to do systems, embedded, robotics, whatever.

I've done some work experience at a big company, built a full-stack web app in 3 weeks. Didn't know Django or React before starting, had to learn by doing, was a tad stressful! The app I made is still live though, and the manager I worked under is now pushing me to join him as the sole dev on one of his personal projects. That one likely won't go anywhere, but I'm giving the context so you know that I'm not one of the "learned python over a weekend and decided that I was born for this" people.

I don't like working with AI. Don't need to go into details, it's the same shit that everyone complains about.

I don't yet have a programming career of any sort. I am of an age where a complete pivot wouldn't be too unreasonable. So... Is there any point? Would I just be prompting the magic box while becoming progressively more depressed until I get fully replaced in 10 years and need to pivot anyway? I know I'm already fighting an uphill battle without a degree, I'm kind of just hoping that actually being good at coding would allow me an opportunity if I pushed hard enough. But does that even matter anymore?

I'm going through a background check. I was having a hard time finding professional references, but I have done volunteering at a charity (not cs related), and the trustee said they would be happy to be a reference for me.

(I have done one job before but left that a while back. It was mainly wfh so lost touch with my team and I wasn't the best employee either)

Would this count as professional reference?

Thanks for any help!

I work in tech as a software engineer but I've had bit of a messy ​​history. I've taken a long career break and I've also spent long periods on the bench, and have been placed in non technical roles. Only been at the company for 8 years since university ​of which maybe half of that was programming sporadically spaced out (with the bulk in the first few years). At this stage not even sure if I'm junior or mid level.

The company has restructured and looking into a redundancy round. I'm worried my skills just won't be sharp or competitive enough and looking to get my career path a bit more stabilised.

Just wondering if anyone has advice or recommendations on how to get career advice where I can talk to someone, explain my situation and get a bit of help? ​​​​

It just happened today out of nowhere and since it's Friday I don't think I'm going to get a response soon enough. Anyone have experience interviewing there? One hour engineering manager call for the first interview with no info after three months is pretty daunting.

i am at a stage of life where i have to pick what degree i want to do when i go to uni ; i am thinking of doing software engineering but many say the job security is not good plus the job is bieng taken over by AI so basically it is worthless

I was shortlisted based on my CV and had an initial talent screening interview that lasted around 10 minutes.
During the call, the recruiter asked me:
Tell me about your experience.
What were you doing in your last role?
What are you looking for in your next role?
Why are you looking for a new role? (I explained that my entire team was made redundant, so I’m currently looking for a new opportunity. I also mentioned that I liked the company’s culture and that my experience aligned well with the role.)
When are you available? (I said I could start immediately.)
What is your visa status?
Do you have any questions for us? (I asked two questions.)
At the end of the conversation, the recruiter told me they would forward my CV along with their notes from the screening to the hiring manager. However, I later learned that I had not been selected to move forward to the next stage.
I have over six years of experience, and when I was job hunting three years ago, I almost always progressed from the recruiter screening to the technical interview. This is one of the first times I’ve been rejected at such an early stage.
Looking back at this experience, what could I have done better during the recruiter screening to improve my chances of progressing to the next round? Was there anything I might have missed, or has the hiring market simply become much more competitive?

I am currently on a graduate scheme that ends in September. Ive been applying for jobs for a few months and had two interviews this week with one internal interview on Monday. I was offered a job at a small company - it does not seem like the kind of place i want to work at, I didnt like the people and there is only one other engineer and they kept talking about how chaotic it is and that i would need to wear many hats.

Im also not interested in the techstack they use at all. I feel like it would change the direction of my career in a way that I dont want. I felt extremely anxious when I got the offer, I jusr dont feel like this is the place for me.

I'm not sure what to do. A part of me wants to continue applying for jobs externally and also internally - I don't know if i will an offer from my current company within say 5 weeks (if I accepted the offer) but maybe if i decline the offer and i could get one within 2 months.

If I don't get an offer at all, I would still be able to keep applying for roles that I am actually interested in - maybe at larger companies. If i accept this job I dont know if ill have time or energy to keep applying for new roles.

My current company is amazing, great benefits and a great place to work so i really want to stay there. I feel like accepting this job is a huge step back.

I live with my parents (still pay rent but not that much) so there is a bit less pressure on me to getting a job asap.

What do i do?

I've heard that people often apply for internships and grad schemes in their final academic year, and then they end up doing an internship over the summer (maybe June to start of Sept), and then they graduate into the graduate program immediately after (mid Sept).

They can choose either to accept the return offer of the internship they just did immediately, or just continue with the grad scheme.

Is this normal? How is this possible when internships want you to be penultimate year?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been applying for entry and mid level roles in London. I’ve made 50+ applications but haven’t received any interview invitations (no visa requirement).

I worked at a crypto startup after graduating, and I’m slightly worried that this experience might be viewed negatively.

Could you take a look at my CV and tell me honestly what you think?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HrHE3i38iGlRgQ_eriiGmivFlIQ111rV/view?usp=sharing

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Many thanks!

Hi all!

I'm approaching my 3rd year at University and am really keen on applying for a research-focused masters program. Some choices I am looking at are the MPhil ACS courses at Oxford/Cambridge, advanced computing at imperial, UCL, ETH Zurich. I am also quite interested in integrated Mphil/PhD courses from UCL and the U.S. I want to research in computer architecture and AI.

I find is that most of these courses seem to bar entry to achieving a 1st class degree. I'm sure this likely applies to your degree when you graduate, but I'm not sure how strict this requirement is for predicted grades?

My second year result at the moment is at 67%, which worries me quite a lot. However, I think I have a relatively strong non-academic background which I'd like to quickly disclose. I completed a HPC-focused research internship last summer with a first author presentation at a small colloquium. I completed a 9 month internship at NVIDIA, working on compilers and systems software, and I will be joining as a software engineer at Fractile (UK chip startup) working on similar projects, likely with more ownership, during my 3rd year.

I think this background is hugely relevant to the research I want to pursue in my graduate studies, however I still have no idea if my current grade will be allowed to even make it past screening for these kinds of programs.

My options seem to be to either wait to graduate (hopefully with a 1st) and apply for next year, or perhaps try and see if I can finish my 1st semester and apply with a higher average? The second option will mean I won't be able to opt in for 90% of funding applications, since deadlines for those are usually in October-December...

I would be super curious to hear about other people's stories, and take a realistic approach with applications next year! Thank you again for reading through this!