r/cscareerquestionsuk

Me: ~2.5 YoE in London, no dependents (well, a cat), currently living in outskirts of London with parents to save on rent, might have to move if needed to come to the office too often.

So the fact that I can take the Depop job without having to move home and thereby saving on rent makes this offer effectively worth about 25k£ or so more per year (OTOH I should probably really move out at some point, my dating life is dead). Moreover, Depop seems more chill, my current work is also agentic/llm stuff and I'm kinda tired of that, and they probably have better work life balance.

OTOH Amazon probably looks amazing on the CV - at this stage in my life maybe I should be throwing myself into the company that will be best for me in the long run, and that might be Amazon - the work is more topical - LLMs/AgenticGenAI stuff, it has the better brand value, and potentially greater long term earnings scope.

One more thing - Depop is currently being acquired by Ebay. There is a question of how this may or may not affect the long term viability of this company and the RSUs that are part of the offer package. OTOH Amazon seems to just be going through quarterly brutal layoffs.

I will be honest, I am currently leaning towards Depop but I am open to your suggestions.

Can any current or former employees of Mistral AI share what it’s like working there? Considering its size, I was a bit surprised there is next to nothing in the way of reviews on Glassdoor or Blind.

I’d just like some honest opinions on whether it’s a good place to work, what the culture is like, etc. They seem to want to hire “low ego” and collaborative people but I’m curious if this is a true reflection of the working environment.

Hi all, I’d really appreciate some honest advice.

I graduated with a First in Computer Science from a lower-ranked UK university. I didn’t manage to secure a grad role at the time, so I went on to do an MSc in Advanced Computer Science at a top 10 UK university as I got offered a partial scholarship. I’m currently on track for a Merit/Distinction and finishing this December.I’ve been applying consistently for grad schemes and junior roles. I am getting more interviews than before, but I haven’t been able to convert any into offers yet.At this point I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong or what I should change.

A few things I’m unsure about:

Should I focus less on grad schemes and more on junior/entry-level roles? Is it worth messaging people on LinkedIn (recruiters, hiring managers), or does that not really help?How important are personal projects at this stage vs just applying more?Is my MSc actually helping much in the eyes of employers, or is experience still everything?

Also, worst case scenario if I graduate with no offers:

Should I take any job (even unrelated/part-time) while continuing to apply?Or should I double down on projects/skills and treat job hunting like a full-time role?

For context, I’m open to relocating anywhere in England and I’m mainly aiming for software engineering / AI / data-related roles.I’m just trying to maximise my chances of landing something at this point.Any advice from people who’ve been in a similar position (especially in the UK market) would mean a lot 🙏

Hey all, I've been working as an SDE at Amazon in London, UK for the past 3+ years. I have received an offer to join a Paris-based AI lab... (job in London office) however it would be for quite a large compensation hit.

Base pay around 20% lower than current role. Equity is similar (albeit slightly less) on paper, however AI lab is offering options which could well end up being significantly less or even 0. Realistically, it is more like a 30-40% compensation drop.

Would I be crazy to take this? I'm not particularly happy at my current job, however it isn't awful and the WLB is manageable. I liked the new company during the interview process, however it is an unknown what the job will be like. It could end up being a lot more stressful for a lot less money.

For context, 27 y/o, mid-level engineer.

I am from India and I recently got the UK Youth Mobility Scheme Visa. I am looking for jobs in data science and data analytics. I have been applying to 10-20 jobs everyday only to face rejection. I have also gotten a UK Virtual number for job hunting. Am I doing something wrong? Do you guy have any tips for me?

My\_qualifications: 4 years of experience in data science and data analytics and Masters degree in Operations Research.

Hi everyone,
I've landed two final stage interviews for junior devops/infra for an ai company, and a hft firm.

I'm graduating in a few months, so this would be my first proper tech job. I don't have much experience with on site interviews, is there anything anyone would recommend prepping for?

I know one interview has a whiteboard section, is that something I can practice for well? Or is it too context dependent.

I would generally consider myself to be a social person, so I'm more worrying about hard skills rather than soft.

Thanks :)

I am currently in the second year of a graduate scheme looking to offboard and apply for roles externally. Ive spent the last few months learning and working with golang to build microservices and apis, but i spent most of my degree writing java.

However it has been sometime since I have used java and I am really rusty with it and i wouldnt be able to write code without googling a lot. Im starting to look at job applications and most of them are asking for java experience. I really enjoy golang but it isnt as popular.

Im practising leetcode questions and im not sure if i should stick to golang or refresh mt java syntax etc, or if I should just do both.

I have been working at JPMC for under a year as a Data engineer. My team is split across India and UK with team leads and managers in India.

I don't like the work culture or the AI focused work. We are texted on our private numbers to complete work on weekends and will get pinged on teams went we are on holiday for example I was pinged on Christmas by colleagues in India.

For context I was previously a grad embedded swe and have little experience so I am not sure if this is normal or not. I would like to know if this is common not only at JPMC but also at other swe companies?

I am unsure if I want to continue to work here as I have mentioned I don't enjoy the work culture and we are pushed to use AI in all aspects of development with upper management being very open about this being a step towards redundancies. I also feel this may stunt me as a developer as AI does most of the heavy lifting.

I work at a FAANG company. I was forced to leave my team (re-org) and joined a new one. I haven't been integrating well in my new team and my Manager gave me lots of negative feedback and even threatened PIP. I am honestly sick of the work environment and of how condescending my manager is towards me. I also found another offer, so I am not worried about job hunting. However, I don't know if I should wait for PIP or just talk to my manager and ask him for a mutual exit immediately. I am worried asking for mutual exit will give away my intent to leave and make me lose my leverage that they also want me to leave. I am also concerned that if I ask for a mutual exit my manager will ask me if I have another offer, and I will be forced to either lie or reveal my leverage. I can wait for PIP (it shouldn't take long now given my manager's position), but it honestly seems easier for both sides to do the mutual exit, since I will be given the option for mutual exit as an alternative to PIP.

This is one of the those posts where either option could be reasonable. I wanted to ask other engineers their opinion based on their experience of how other orgs are

I've been working as a senior BE engineer at a "scale up" corp (about 500 engineers) for nearly 18 months. It's been an up and down experience

What's good:

- some high scale systems, at least for me. Services handling thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of calls per minute. Working with Kafka and Go for the first time

- fairly serious BE work that I didn't get to do in my previous "full stack" TypeScript job. Feels more like serious tech than React fiddling

- in the long term there could be options to work on a Rust project (_maybe_) and perhaps be exposed to some meaningful network and systems programming

- very high PTO, money is good for UK

What's bad

- very stressful on-call with a horrible support process. High pressure figuring out the causes of failures that my team gets dragged into due to (honestly, buck passing) blame of other teams. Always reverse engineering someone else's weird systems to get them to look into stuff - this is most of my role

- not building much - most of my work is writing plans, writing tickets, building Datadog dashboards, and when I do program, it's semi-mandatory to do it via an agent

- RTO is now enforced and I find the commute tough

- money is good but UK tax system means I now pay 60% marginal tax. Most of the on-call stipend goes to HMRC

I am a bit torn. I have sort of settled into this job and am coping OK but it is very tiring, stressful and I am not building much. I worry about skills atrophy and everything is a grind.

Morale is poor and lots of people are leaving; staff+ engineers are constantly leaving which is making the knowledge and support problems worse

OTOH I suspect an out-of-frying-pan-into-fire situation as I am sure a lot of tech jobs right now are shitshows: mandatory AI, vibe coded tech debt, push for layoffs.

RTO is probably at least 2 days at most orgs, and I may not get the same money or time off.

I am tired. I want to focus on the things that matter to me: improving my health/ fitness, being outdoors, my relationship, perhaps some creative endeavours and hobbies. Instead work is the big drain on everything.

But I don't know if changing jobs is wise until some of the craziness around AI has settled. What do you think?

Hi all, I have recently applied to a few Level 6 Software Apprenticeships and have managed to pass a pre-screen interview for one of them!

I just wanted to know what kind of questions I would be asked and how I should prepare for it. I'm also 17 and will be skipping a year of A-levels if I get the role but they did seem fine with that so I reckon they like my experience (mostly hardware and IoT projects)

I’m based in London and the company I work for is currently going through a major growth phase and hiring lots of front end / back end / mobile engineers. We’ve been asked to recommend people and if they pass probation we get a solid bonus.

I’ve been going through LinkedIn to try source people and I noticed that so many of them have just 3 month gigs at each place and nothing long term. Is there a reason for this if not a freelancer?

And can anyone recommend where I can find the best engineers for the above jobs in london? Are there special engineer job boards?

Hello,

I studied Electrical Engineering overseas and I was thinking of taking Intelligent Networks and Cloud Computing / with Management Studies MSc in Kingston University.

Im not sure what knowledge I need to have before taking this, but the basic knowledge I have is from my job and I do not have any formal lectures. I've been working in a Data Center for around 9 years.

I am also overwhelmed with the information regarding student finances loan.

If anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it very much.

Also, I have ILR status

Thank you

I’m a recent CS graduate software engineer and I’m honestly struggling with how much the job seems to be changing because of AI tools.

A lot of the team I work with have fully integrated AI into their workflow. They use it for everything: planning features, brainstorming architecture, debugging, code reviews, writing tests, and even finding bugs. Some people have built really advanced workflows around tools like Claude and Codex.

I get that this is where the industry is going, and I’m not anti-AI at all. I use it too. In fact, in my team it almost feels expected that you use Claude as part of your workflow.

But if I’m being honest, I really miss the older style of engineering where you had to sit with a problem, think hard about the logic, architecture, and code, struggle through bugs, and build features end-to-end yourself.

What I miss most is that feeling when a bug has been bothering you for days and then the solution suddenly hits you when you’re doing something random like washing the dishes. That rush of finally understanding what was wrong and how to fix it. It genuinely felt rewarding.

Now I find myself instinctively pasting bugs and features into Claude very quickly, and I’m starting to feel a lot of shame around it. I know that sounds dramatic, but it almost feels like cheating.

I recently shipped a pretty big feature at work and got a lot of praise for it. Objectively it went well. But I felt zero pride in it because so much of it was written by AI. Honestly, I think I probably made more keystrokes writing prompts to Claude than I did writing actual code.

It’s making me question whether I’m actually growing as an engineer or whether I’m slowly becoming a prompt operator.

I also genuinely want to ask:

do software engineers still manually write code much nowadays? In my team it almost feels like you’re expected to use AI, so I’m struggling to work out what “good engineering” even looks like now.

So I wanted to ask people who are further along in the industry:

- What does good engineering actually look like now in the AI era?

- How do you keep growing technically without just becoming a prompt operator?

- Do people still spend time manually solving bugs and building things end-to-end?

Would really appreciate honest perspectives from people working in the field.

Due to unfortunate circumstances during my undergraduate, I ended up getting a 2:2 from a mid tier Russel group university. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get on to any internships either due to my visa restrictions at that time. Although I no longer have those restrictions, my credentials are making it difficult to secure literally anything in tech.

To circumvent this, I decided to apply for the best masters programmes that would accept 2:2s and I got into a decent Machine Learning Msc again at a mid tier Russel group uni (top 100 internationally at least, so hopefully not too bad), and tbh it's a miracle I even got in so I am very happy. The course is THOROUGH and it does provide some great in depth modules with very interesting content overall. However, I have certain thoughts that come across my mind such as 'if I couldn't secure a role without the masters, is the masters going to be enough to push me in?' or in general about AI and how it's making the market so much more difficult to get into.

The thing is, I do have interest in machine learning due to the amount of mathematics and I love maths and solving problems. I'm just worried about my future should I decide to go with this. Its also going to be a part time masters because I can't afford to do a full time one at the moment, but I'll still be able to access internships and network there better than in my undergrad.

Any thoughts on this? Any advice? Sorry if it came off as a venting post, but I really do just want some realistic advice about what this masters could do for me, and whether or not there will be value added.

Edit: I have full citizenship now so the visa isn't an issue any longer. Just thought I'd clarify!

Got a few interviews coming up with Deliveroo in London for a senior backend role.

Anyone who’s interviewed recently, what should I expect?

• Is live coding more LeetCode or practical stuff?
• How hard do they go on system design? Heard something about “burger distribution” type questions?
• Anything that usually trips people up during the interview?

I am trying to calibrate my prep and would appreciate any recent insights.

I would be very keen to hear folks opinions on which job they would prefer and why. Both Senior SWE.

Job 1: £120k, 9:30-17:00, decent benefits (but nothing crazy), generally stable, no layoffs historically, UK based, interesting work, limited scale (scale up company), infrastructure, collaborative environment

Job 2: £180k, 9:30-19:00 with work bleeding over to after hours or weekends due to company structure and projects etc, top of markets benefits, volatile (big corp), US based, interesting work, huge scale, infrastructure, non collaborative environment (individuals working towards personal goals), history of layoffs