r/developersIndia

I was at 50LPA at an American startup. Then got systematically laid by the company, in the name of performance. Been out of work for 4 months. Finally got an offer at 33LPA at a service company

Looking at the market, hope is less. Lost few compacted in final round

7 YOE

I’m currently trying to switch jobs and feeling a bit stuck, so I wanted to hear from people who’ve recently made a successful move.
If you switched in the last 6 months, it would be super helpful if you could share:

• What role you switched from and which role you switched to
• Your tech stack
• How you prepared (DSA, projects, system design, etc.)
• What actually made the difference (you knew a guy who knew a guy, resume etc.)
• How long it took you
• Any mistakes you made or things you’d do differently

I feel like a lot of advice online is too generic, so real, recent experiences would help a lot, this will help not just me but others also trying to switch right now.

Even short answers are appreciated.

I've been on both sides of hiring in Indian product companies - applied myself, also been on panels. This isn't career advice from LinkedIn. Just a pattern I've seen too many times to not say something.

The resumes that get filtered out aren't always from weak engineers. A lot of them are genuinely solid people with real experience. The problem is almost always the same thing.

The resume describes the project. Not the engineer.

"Worked on banking domain application for a US client using Java, Spring Boot and Oracle DB."

That's the engagement description. That's what your manager would write too. And the TL above you. And the three people who had that role before you.

When I'm looking at a resume for a product role, I'm trying to answer one question: what did this person specifically do that had an impact?

A bullet that actually answers that looks like this:

"Identified a recurring timeout issue in the payment reconciliation flow that was failing 6-8% of transactions. Rewrote the retry logic, brought failure rate to under 0.3%, no incidents in 11 months since."

Same Java, same Spring Boot, same banking domain. Completely different read.

The engineers who make the switch aren't always the most technically impressive on paper. They are the ones who wrote down what they personally moved and not just what project they were assigned to.

Most service company resumes describe the bench. The resume that gets you the call describes you.

I have been using instahyre from 2024 and I have in total 5 years of experience in backend development from a startup.

I have a clean resume but still I am not getting any calls from the jobs that I have applied for on Instahyre. I have applied for 200-300 job postings that are of high match score, but no show.

Basically, I’m at a crossroads. I’m currently an Associate Team Lead (Business Analyst) at a SaaS startup. I work remotely from Delhi and my CTC is 7.75L (6.75 Fixed + 1 Variable). With performance incentives, I’ve been taking home about 63k-65k per month. I have been able to perform well till now so got 10-12k extra per month on top of my fixed salary(52k).

The problem is, my current company is in bad shape. They’ve laid off senior management, 50% of the sales team, and several engineers lately. They aren't hiring replacements, so I’m currently managing a team of three BAs while doing the full workload of an individual BA myself. It feels like a sinking ship and the stress is getting high.

I recently cleared all rounds for a role at Times Internet for Data Analyst role. They offered me 10.5L (Fixed), which is a 55% jump on my fixed pay, but only a 35% hike on my total CTC. After PF and taxes, my in-hand will be around 77k.

The main issues:

• The Commute: It’s 100% in-office in Noida. I live in West Delhi and there’s no cab facility, so I’m looking at 2-2.5 hours in travel daily by metro.
• Title Downgrade: I’m moving from "Associate Team Lead" back to "Data Analyst." HR says it’s because I only have 2 years of experience, but it feels like a step backward on my resume.
• Market Rate: I’m not sure if 10.5L is actually a fair market rate for my experience, or if I should be holding out for more.

I’m really torn on a few things:

1. Is 10.5L a fair market rate for 2 years of experience at a place like Times?
2. Does the "Times Group" brand on a resume outweigh the title downgrade?
3. Is the 12k extra in-hand worth the 2+ hours of daily travel?

If I stay at my current job, I’m worried the company might not survive or I'll get burnt out doing three people's jobs, but I’m not sure if the 12k extra in-hand is worth losing my remote flexibility and spending 10+ hours a week in traffic. I have to decide by Monday and I don’t have any other offers right now. Company is really not in a good shape but i don't think they are going to fire me immediately.

What should I do? Is the "Times Group" brand worth the title downgrade and the commute, or should I keep looking for something better? I have got the appointment letter already. Joining date is 18th May 2026. My notice is 2 months. They have asked me to put down my papers and negotiate the joining date with the HR.

Hi everyone,

I’m a fairly new joiner at a large company, and I recently took an important certification exam that my manager (who is quite senior) expected me to pass. Unfortunately, I failed and it wasn’t by a huge margin, which somehow makes it feel worse.

Since then, I’ve been feeling really anxious about work. Even small things are making me overthink, and I keep worrying that this might lead to some kind of negative action or impact on how I’m perceived.

I haven’t informed my manager yet. The exam was in the morning, and I thought of telling him over the weekend, but now I’m second-guessing whether that’s the right timing or approach.

I know logically that one exam shouldn’t define everything, but I can’t seem to shake off the anxiety.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you handle telling your manager, and how did things turn out?

Any advice would really help.

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In the recent news of layoff I think it would be the perfect time to write my story to give everyone something to look on the (not so) brighter side.

My story: Graduated in 2022 from a T2.5 engineering college with a mechanical Engineering degree and a campus placement with Cognizant as GenC developer. I was trained in .net full stack as intern and joined as full time(Aug 2022). And to my fortune I wasn't given any work for the first 2.5 years(till march 2025), I realized this at the 1 year mark and started studying Java and Springboot on my own, and also started doing Leetcode. And comes March 2025 and as expected i was moved to bench. I then went on to clearing 3 rounds of Java+Angular Interviews in the next 1 week and thanks to my hiring manager who was ready to overlook my lack of hands on experience and gave me a shot. I worked there till last month and quickly went to be critical resource(lol, my colleagues were that bad).

Now I don't want this to be a low effort flex post and want to actually provide some inputs.

I will be giving how different companies interview candidates for Java specific roles as mid level software engineer

WITCH:

I attended interviews with Accenture, HCL, LTM(LTIMindtree previously), TCS and they usually have 2 rounds (if necessary client rounds) and you can expect theoretical questions from Topics like JDK,JVM,JRE(low priority) Multithreading, Springboot annotations, Spring security, Java 8/11/17 features, SQL index, joins, some questions regarding optimization. Then stream API problems (try to cover with Student class,Employee class and questions with hashmap and groupingBy)

GCC/Product/Upper level SBC

EPAM : longest prefix, second largest in array, SQL joins & indexes, try-with-resources, Mockito assertions, partitioning, abstract vs interface, terminal vs intermediate streams, HashMap vs Hashtable, ArrayList vs LinkedList, Cloneable, immutable class, object creation, BFS on binary tree, path variable vs request param, stereotype annotations, application.properties vs application-dev.properties, design a chatbot(basic).

EPAM is notorious for conducting several rounds and long interviews but they tend to focus a lot on Java Core and Springboot internals. Also will have to write code in their platform and run. Problems can be on easy/med level DSA or stream API

UPS:

R1: Second largest number and First non repeating char in insertion order using stream API and then Java, Springboot standard questions

R2: 2 people from USA, mostly around discussion around designing scalable systems, how to optimize query, how to optimize largest dataset retrieval , horizontal vs vertical scaling, some discussion around message queues, Checking logs, deployment and a Code review

Atheanahealth:

https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7779031/athenahealth-mts-chennai-selected-by-ano-329k/

https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7612993/athenahealth-mts-chennai-by-anonymous_us-d7xw/

BNP Paribas:

https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7610904/bnp-paribas-chennai-by-anonymous_user-e1bi/

Final closing thoughts: You don't have to answer all the questions with perfection or need to know all the answers, being confident goes a long way. Some of my system design were wrong, some of my dsa coding were wrong, but they bought my explanation. Hiring managers were impressed with leetcode and github profile. (solve ~800 in leetcode), one manager in Deloitte asked to try for FAANG and asked not to join here :P

Resources for Java and Sprignboot Interview focused: sumit java ebook, makakmayum java ebook, code period channel for streams api coding, lot of java interview experience, coding odyssey medium articles and chatgpt for references all this should be more than enough to crack any java springboot interview

Feel free to ask any questions! Happy to answer!

Guys, I need some honest guidance.

I have 8 years of experience and currently earn 20 LPA. My core experience is in Java and Python. I didn’t switch earlier because my company felt stable.

Recently, we got news that the company may relocate sometime in the coming months (possibly by year end). There’s a lot of uncertainty and people are getting worried.

My background:

- C# (desktop apps)

- Java (Spring)

- Python (FastAPI)

I live with my family, I’m the sole earner, and I have an ongoing home loan. With all this happening, I feel completely lost about what to focus on next — AI/LLM, deeper Python, Spring/Java, DSA, or something else.

Honestly, procrastination and anxiety are kicking in, and I’m struggling to take clear action.

I’m willing to put in the work and learn anything necessary — I just need direction.

What should I focus on to stay relevant and secure a good opportunity if things go south?

Would really appreciate practical advice 🙏

I cleaned above message with ai.

a bit about me

I graduated in 2024, currently working as a backend developer around 2.5 YOE (node, .net), and I live with my family (so no rent)

more than 150% of my fulltime job salary goes into loans (not my fault, but those are my responsibilities now), these loans will last for another 3 years.

i work around 240 hours a month to pay those loans and get left with something like 4-5k for travelling and mobile, wifi bills and some food (i don't spend anything on myself)

From the last few weeks I am getting hints from my fulltime job that i will get laid off soon in like 2-3 months (they are planning to replace me with a junior dev coz he will be cheaper and they don't care about code quality) and they recently did exactly the same thing to my coworker,

I got lucky to connect with this guy in mid 2025, he is great and pays good to me but now from a few days this guy is talking claude and claude like he wants to marry claude and according to him claude is amazing and wants me to just use it to vibecode his things, when i asked him to do it yourself he said he don't have time, i will probably stop getting work from him soon (because of claude), I do fullstack and software and low end stuff for this guy

i have one more freelancing client but pay here is not that good, but they have lots of work so it is fine to me and they pay at time, i work as a FE developer here

now if i lose any of these 3 - i will be totally done, i have some savings to pay 2 months of loan but after that i will be fucking done

I can't tell any of these to my family coz they will get worried and eventually the 10% mental peace i have at home will be lost, telling my family will make things worse, I want to deal with all of this by myself, family is the last option

The only remaining option i can think of is getting a good paying job, the current one pays around 5LPA, something around 12LPA will solve all my problems but with the current market it is very very hard

since i am working almost every time (8 hour office + 4 hours traveling + other remaining goes to freelance), i don't have time to prepare DSA, don't know what to do

my mental health is getting low day by day, I have no emotional support and can't share any of these in real life (got no mature enough friends)

i started doing this freelancing stuff for fun and extra money, but from the last few months they are my "majburi"

any suggestions? referrals? i will love to talk to anyone who can help me with suggestions or anything

also i got this client because of my personal connections, If I know how to get more clients i won't be posting this here so please don't ask me about this

Hey everyone,

I worked in a small IT services company for 9 years, it was the first and only company I’ve ever worked for. I joined as the second employee and over time handled multiple roles like business development, lead generation, client management, marketing, delivery, and operations.

Recently, my CEO decided to let me go due to a shift in direction. I’ve been given a 2-month notice period.

Honestly, it’s been tough to process. I didn’t get any increment in the last 2 years but still kept working and adapting, so this feels a bit heavy. I’m bit unsure about my next step.

Right now, I’m planning to look for an Account Manager role since that fits my experience.

At the same time, I keep thinking if I should try building something on my own since I have developer connections and experience in lead generation and client closing.

The part where I’m really confused:

The market feels uncertain right now, especially with all the AI hype and changing demand for developers

I’m the sole breadwinner, so stability matters a lot

At the same time, after doing so many roles, I’m also unsure how easily I’ll be able to crack interviews after being in the same company for so long

My question:

Should I just focus fully on getting a stable job right now,

or explore starting something on the side while job hunting?

Hey everyone, I need a reality check on a situation.

I just quit my job (SDE 5) on April 1st because the environment was incredibly stressful. I have 4 years of professional experience, but my old company used a really outdated stack—just vanilla JS and TS.

To get past HR filters in the current market, I lied on my resume and said I have professional React experience. The truth is, I am entirely self-taught in React/Redux (even published a couple of open-source NPM packages), but I don't have corporate React experience.

Recently, I interviewed with Blackstraw AI, and they are moving aggressively fast. I'm getting a really bad gut feeling, but I don't know if it's genuine intuition or just my imposter syndrome acting up because of my "fake" React experience.

Here are the red flags:

The Interview: The technical questions were suspiciously easy. Instead of testing my skills, they kept asking how fast I could commute to the office.

The Schedule: They did two interviews on the same day.

The Manager: I had a meeting with the Operations Manager who explicitly told me: "If you want 9 to 5, don't join us. People come at different times, it depends on the project, we expect you to finish the work. Timings don't matter."

The Rush: They are literally having HR work today (Saturday) to prepare my offer letter so they can force me to join this coming Monday (just 1 day away).

Because they pressured me so much on the call, I panicked and verbally agreed to join on Monday.

Am I just being a coward and running away from a good opportunity because I'm scared they'll find out my React experience is self-taught? Or is my gut feeling right that this is a toxic trap?

Also, since I already said yes on the phone yesterday, what is the best way to back out professionally over email today?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated!

Feeling lost in life after a bad decision making in life.I'm seeking advice regarding a past career decision. I was previously employed as a Cloud Support Engineer at AWS, earning a base salary of 19 LPA. My role in cloud support offered minimal learning opportunities, and despite it being a remote position, family circumstances made staying at home difficult. The job was intensely demanding, with constant paging. These factors ultimately compelled me to resign without securing another job offer, driven by a strong aversion to the support domain. Subsequently, I spent three months unemployed before accepting a new position with a 10 LPA base salary, plus additional incentives, in a tier-three city.

I currently feel a profound sense of regret, often questioning my decision-making and enduring criticism from others. The primary positive aspect of my current situation is an excellent work-life balance and the transition into DevOps and SRE work, which provides valuable learning experiences. Furthermore, the cost of living in this tier-three city is considerably low. However, this regret continues to weigh heavily on me . A crucial lesson I've learned is to never resign from a job without another offer in hand. My YOE while accepting the offer was 2.7 .

So, I've switched jobs twice in three years, and I'm guessing that might make me look bad to potential employers. I'm feeling a bit down about it, and I'm wondering if anyone can give me some advice. All of this forces me to call myself an idiot almost everyday . How do I get past this regret, and how can I find a new job with this big problem on my resume?

YOE: 3~ years (Full-stack)

Current role (FinTech):

• 11.5 LPA (increment due soon)
• Strong WLB (log off ~6 PM)
• 5 days a week
• Stable team, good manager relationship
• Remote 100%

Offer (AI startup, ~250 employees, US-based):

• 30 LPA fixed (~2.5x jump)
• Mixed-to-negative reviews on:
  • “996” work culture
  • Reviews on constant firing.
  • Aggressive leadership
• Remote 100%

I’m confused between:

1. Taking the 30 LPA offer and risking work-life balance + stability
2. Staying and possibly negotiating a raise (maybe ~18–20 LPA)
3. Using the offer as leverage (but unsure how that might affect trust long-term)

Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did it turn out for you?

I have been in industry for 15 years. I see people with 7-8 YoE is having 45-50LPA or even more.

I have only switched 3 times in my career and still I am on 35 LPA. I was in my last company for 10 years which i understand was not a good move on my part .

I don’t code now but manage the product and lead the team.

What is it that is missing? I work on Angular predominantly.

Are there any one with similar exp and compensation? Others who were in similar position, what did you do to accelerate your growth ?

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to get a reality check from fellow 2024/2025 grads. Are you guys getting placed through off-campus opportunities, or still grinding and facing rejections ?

I’ve been actively applying, building projects, and upskilling, but responses are pretty inconsistent. Sometimes it feels like off-campus hiring is way tougher than expected.

Would love to know:

Are you placed? If yes, how did you crack it?

If not, what’s your current strategy ?

Any tips that actually worked for you ?

hey everyone,

I wanted to get some clarity from people currently working at Infosys.

I’ve been hearing a few different things some people say Infosys allows work from home and even lets you work from any office location unless you're specifically asked to report somewhere.

At the same time, I’ve noticed that many of my friends from my hometown are working in SE roles (and some in SP roles) in the same location.

I’ve applied for the SP/DSE role, so I wanted to understand: Is this level of flexibility actually true?

And how does work location and mode really work after the training phase?

Would love to hear from people who’ve gone through this recently.

even I'm good at coding and development i still failed to get into companies, I'm a 2024 cse graduate and from recent years i gave interview for tcs , cognizant and never got even first round mail from Accenture and yesterday i wrote tcs nqt and failed to run the first code lol because even i wrote the test before i failed to notice input format which took lot of time later i regretted a lot , now i feel like there aren't any options for me ,i should focus on govt jobs may be but i don't like govt jobs because of there work and comes to joining in any startups i don't have any money to stay in other states i can't even afford to do courses...

https://reddit.com/link/1sc13d5/video/brqbg8ul34tg1/player

Been slowly refining my personal portfolio website over the past few weeks and finally reached a version I feel decent about.

I wanted something minimal but still interactive, not just another static site. Focused a lot on smooth UI, small animations, and keeping it fast.

Built it using Next.js + modern frontend stack. Also tried to structure it in a way that I can easily keep updating projects without breaking things every time.

Live: https://ankit-nayak.vercel.app/
Code: https://github.com/AnkitNayak-eth/ankitFolio

Still iterating, so open to brutal honesty 🙂