Software engineers feel demoralized by harsh rejection feedback
30 posts across 8 communities in the last 60 days; 60% from r/cscareerquestions.
“pretty generalized response that misses the mark for many scenarios. [re: I'm so fucking tired of corporate bullshit getting in the way of actual engineering]”
“I was a consultant before I moved to product. Like consultants, engineers are built to “solve problems”. It’s how our brains are wired. Someone asks for a thing because they say it’s really important and will drive a lot of value, and your mind immediately goes into problem…”
“Why are people with 1-1.5 YoE holding technical interviews?”
Several posts express a sense of discouragement and hopelessness among software engineers, particularly those early in their careers. One post references being told to 'eat the shit sandwich' after an Amazon rejection, highlighting a lack of constructive criticism and a feeling of being dismissed.
SOURCES (57)
“pretty generalized response that misses the mark for many scenarios. [re: I'm so fucking tired of corporate bullshit getting in the way of actual engineering]”
“Like you completely blanked? That's not great. I'm on the generous side and I've passed people who needed even a major hint if they seem great, but you should at a minimum have more or less the whole thing.”
“Ha! I don’t need to practice leetcode if I’m never getting any response from my applications… oh wait.”
True. It’s not that I don’t feel appreciated, I feel inadequate.
“I’m doing my last week at Amazon right now, after just over 5 years there. Right now, I’m feeling pretty burnt out and I don’t feel like my career grew as much as I would have liked here, so probably not. But it depends on a lot of factors, like: -if I really needed a job -what pay they’re offering -which team was hiring (this is the biggest one imo) -what the rest of the industry is doing My experience has been that there are some really good teams within Amazon that shield you from a lot of th”
“This actually made me cry (happily), because I have been trying so hard to please others and get the 'perfect career' lately, including doing things that I know my body could not handle. This is absolutely beautiful and I actually saved this quote to look on. Thank you. Thank you so very much for this wonderful comment. Please have a great day.”
“It’s fine, you don’t have to push yourself if you don’t feel it’s right for you.”
“I was a consultant before I moved to product. Like consultants, engineers are built to “solve problems”. It’s how our brains are wired. Someone asks for a thing because they say it’s really important and will drive a lot of value, and your mind immediately goes into problem solving mode. With product, you’re just step is to understand the use case thoroughly. “What is the intended outcome? What are the KPI’s? Who is operating it? Do you have formal plans to use this thing? Is this ask coming fro”
“Been there (raised, built, collapsed) done that at around the same age. A good split of opinions from recruiters in my case. 60% rejected me because they feel I may have too high expectations or have that 2 year gap which may have reduced my technical/teamwork skills. 20% I got rejected at the final VP/CTO round because they said “it’s a waste of talent to have you just as an engineer, please do something else”. The last 20% hired me.”
“Hey man, you made it further than me. I have 6 YoE and I started hating it on the 3rd.”
“Hey man, just glad to see someone feels the same way. I grew up poor (dad was always in between jobs, mom was a substitute teacher ) and I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and have 5 yoe as a software engineer. I also bought a house last year before I became doomed pilled. I’ve done well at my job and have even befriended c suites at my company from getting so many positive reviews… but it just feels like our time as engineers is coming. In the last year these LLMs have gotten so much better th”
“maybe you are ugly. You know what they most want, a 22 years old with 5 YOE. In my career, long half of your career, I rarely rarely saw developers older than 35. I have the feeling that they discard me because of my age. Could be same with you.”
“When you see conversations about how companies prefer young employees because they can bend them over, ream them thoroughly taking everything their soul has to offer, then spit them out a few years later? It's because fellas like OP exist. Brotha, it is entirely possible that the dinosaurs know something that you don't.”
“always gotta insert an "inspiring" last line or a question "what do you all think?"”
“Give it another 2 months and your tune will change. This is exactly how I felt at one point”
“It's very difficult to get hired entry level except through new grad programs; they're very unlikely to interview below midcareer (L4 if they're following the scale at Meta/Google/Amazon use.) Doubly so at his years of experience. It's not unreasonable to want to break into what for some people is "the big leagues" and getting back to a senior role is usually pretty quick for people transitioning from the broader industry, at which point the equity comp and the listing”
“Mmm there is a lack of soft skills in most developers which is why they make it a mandatory class in many cs programs. I say that because it takes soft skills to speak to your experience without making it sound like you don’t know anything. You also may be reaching for higher skill jobs than you’re qualified for. It’s also not a great hiring market but 6 years of trying to get a job points to a high likelihood that there’s something you’re missing in your approach, not your level of honesty. In”
“Damn every time I come to this sub I get more disillusioned. I was thinking “looks good enough to me” and then read the replies. Never mind 😂”
“Ok keep doing you then, clearly it's working. You need to somehow convert your projects to 'shiny shiny look at me' for the recruiter stage because that is where you are failing”
“People are downvoting you but when I interviewed after this AI boom, I was asked about transformers for a data engineering position for a school district. The interview panel didn’t like that I answered that I use AI sparingly and that I catch too many errors from it.”
How is 1000 PRs shipped in a month something to brag about?
“After how much money invested/saved, will you have psychological safety? And why that amount? submitted by /u/daimon_proc [link] [comments]”
“Got rejected from a company recently and they actually sent some feedback, which I guess is rare, but honestly some of it just annoyed me more than helped. The feedback was so oddly specific I actually suspect it came from an AI-generated on interview transcript. Anyway, one of the points was that over the past year+, I left a large company (where I worked on a team of 10+ people, obviously) to co-found a startup with a friend, and worked as basically the sole developer and apparently that doesn”
“You routinely underestimate your own competence while simultaneously holding yourself to a standard of perfection that no human being could actually meet. That pattern shows up everywhere.”
“I've never felt so simultaneously complimented and burned. -You systematically underestimate the value of what you already know. Not in the generic “believe in yourself!” sense. I mean it as a reasoning error. then after a long ramble -So if I had to tell you, bluntly: I think you're wrong about the size and portability of your professional skill set. I do have to note we've been working on my resume a lot lately. Figure if my resumes gonna be judged by AI, I should probably build it”
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still get pipped. That is not a weakness. That is life. - Capt. Picard It doesn't really matter whether you are a good engineer/bad engineer. The only things that matters is how you compare against your coworkers. There's nothing wrong with being in the bottom X% of some company, somebody needs to be in that bottom X% at all times. You could be a great engineer, and make no mistakes, but also not get any good projects, and get pipped because other”
“Well I am glad life always goes according to plan for you. I hope you can publish a book so I can read it”
“And Millennials are the hated generation. We were idiot children until we seamlessly transitioned into cringey entitled old people.”
“design eng here. phew, i feel my design skills are the only reason i still have a career. my coding skills are mediocre, AI outcodes me, but can't out design me when it comes to what customers want.”
“What type of engineering? Get narrow and then start searching companies and cities that are hiring what you have to offer. Then figure out what companies you actually want to work at instead of looking for anyone that will hire you. Get intentional. Research, prepare find people who work there in your network or online and start reaching out and keep at it. Also, don’t preemptively take a loan from your 401(k) unless you need it. But if you do it, it’s OK it’s there and you’ll be paying yourself”
“Just like the gym, failure is optimal for growth bro. You will come back stronger.”
it’s making me feel bad about myself Oh no, you're not in the 0.00001%.
“Point number two hit the hardest with me. Engineering always stepping up to say they can do it better. I got so many stories around that I can't even begin to enumerate him here other than, "What we're going to spend money building something in an area of practice that's not what we do for business?" I got plenty more where that came from too.”
“that's true for all of engineering. I would advise you not to conflate social needs with work, they should be pursued separately”
“Hello, would you be open to a bit of assistance? Nothing related to a job, I am not even from the same field.”
“> This is a normal problem to have: software engineering is hard Yes it is, and when it starts feeling easy is when I realize I'm falling behind and not learning.”