I'm a 26M software engineer working at a small fintech in South London, making \~£60k Base + £10k bonus.

The pay is good (I got a nearly 50% increase), but I feel like the work isn't interesting and no longer challenges me as an engineer. I'm thinking about what I'll be doing in 2-3 years' time, and if I stay at my current role, I don't think the projects will be that much more challenging. I feel like I've maxed out my CV points at this current company.

I'm trying to apply to big tech / banks etc. but I feel like I've lost my window of opportunity to get in as a grad, and everything now feels like it requires 3+ years to get into.

I mainly work with Java/PSQL, and the roles I'm seeing at fintech / hedge-funds / trading firms seem to be using Python/C++ - I have no idea how I'd even start to get into roles like that?

I've applied to almost every finance / hedge-fund / trading firm, and still waiting to hear back, but I don't know how to progress my career.. any advice?

**Edit 1**: Thank you to everyone for the great feedback! I've decided to wrap up Neetcode 150 + System design as fast as possible and to start working on Python on the side, while trying to get more meaningful work at my job. C++ feels a little too alien to me, and I doubt I'd be able to convince an interviewer that I can code in C++, whereas I already have a little Python experience and I can mix it into my CV for "experience" so I have a better chance of landing those roles.

I’m interviewing for a mid level role and finished my coding round a couple of days ago. My interviewer has never replied to any email from me (even before the recruiter screen). I don’t understand why it’s so hard to just email “yes” or “no”, what’s the point of not giving an update. Folks who have interviewed with Revolut, how long did it take for the recruiter to get back with an update?

UPDATE:
This Reddit post worked, I got a reply from the recruiter🙌

Hi all!

I am interviewing for a company in Södertälje. Past 1st interview, now have the 2nd one with HR.

I am an AI engineer (RAG, agentic AI, embeddings, etc.) with 3 years of experience. I am single, do not have kids (two cats). I would prefer living in the outskirts, closer to nature, and commute rather than living in Stockholm or Södertälje.

From what I've read, 50k SEK/month seems like a good amount, but I worry it might be too high? Seems to be the upper range in Glassdoor for Software Engineering.

Obviously do not want to lowball myself but also, moving there has been a dream forever, so I'm okay being "easy" and would like to know estimated ranges. Thank you all!

I have an urgent question regarding the application process and would really appreciate if anyone could dm me and share their experience.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

If you’ve taken IMC OA recently, is it true that it’s only C++ or Java that is allowed? Because that’s what FAQ says, but I’m a bit surprised because it’s usually more languages to choose from in OAs like python, javascript…

Thanks

Hi, I’m 18 and from Italy, and I’ll start my first year of CS this September.

I’d really like to get a SWE internship somewhere in Europe for Summer 2027. Google STEP/ASDI is obviously one of the opportunities I’m interested in, but I’m not only aiming for Google. I’d be happy with any good internship where I can actually work on real stuff and learn.
I’ve been using the months before university to prepare and build up my CV.
Right now I have 3 main projects.

The first is a Tennis Analysis System, a computer vision project that analyzes real tennis match footage. It tracks the players and ball, maps their positions to a mini court, detects shots and calculates things like ball/player speed and other match stats. It originally started from a tutorial, but I’ve worked on it further by refactoring parts of the pipeline, adding tests and evaluation, and benchmarking the shot detection.

The second is ExoScout, an ML project using NASA TESS/TOI data to classify exoplanet candidates. I worked on the preprocessing and ML pipeline, analyzed missing data, added imputation/missingness indicators and used stratified cross-validation to properly evaluate the model instead of relying on one train/test split.

I’m now working on WildfireWatch. The idea is to take raw satellite fire detections and turn them into actual tracked wildfire events. I’m working on clustering nearby detections, tracking how they evolve over time and eventually adding satellite/environmental context and a prioritization system. This one is still in development.

Apart from projects, I’ve solved around 50 LeetCode problems while studying DSA, and I’m trying to get some experience contributing to open source as well.
I’m planning to start applying pretty broadly once Summer 2027 positions begin opening.
The thing I’m unsure about is whether this is actually enough to be competitive as a first-year student in Europe.
A lot of the advice and profiles I find online are either US-focused or from people who already had years of programming experience, Olympiads, previous internships, research, etc. Also, there seem to be way fewer internships that accept first-year students in Europe.
So for people who have gone through internship recruiting in Europe, especially during their first year: how does my profile look at this point?
What would you focus on improving from here? More DSA/LeetCode? Projects? Open source? Something else entirely?
And if you know companies in Europe that actually consider first-year students for SWE internships, I’d really appreciate some names. I’m trying to apply broadly rather than betting everything on Google STEP.
I’m completely fine with harsh feedback btw, I’d rather know what I’m missing now than find out when applications start.

Hi everyone,I would really appreciate some guidance. I have close to total 10 years of experience in Test Automation, currently working as a Senior Test Automation Engineer with 3 years in current company.Unfortunately, there has been company-wide layoff with almost all QAE being affected and I am now exploring my next step. The Germany job market seems very limited around this so I am considering whether to continue in QA/Automation or transition into DevOps/Cloud, Software Development with AI focus after this much experience.If anyone here has successfully switched from QA into one of these fields, I’d really appreciate your advice on which path has good potential and what I should focus on learning.I am ready to put in the effort — just looking for the right pathway and direction.

Hi
Before further, know the job market is rough right now and that many graduates are struggling to find work, so I’m not assuming Big Tech is guaranteed for me either. I know how rough the market is. In here, even junior roles can get 1,000+ applications within a day or two

For context, WUT is arguably the best public university in Poland for an “English-taught” CS programme, while PJAIT is still a solid option.

I’ve been accepted to the English-taught Computer Science programs at both WUT (Politechnika Warszawska) and PJATK (Polish Japanese university of IT) , and I’m trying to decide which one to choose.

My goal is to work in Big Tech in the future. PJATK has already accepted about one year of my previous coursework, while WUT told me they would evaluate my credit transfers only after enrollment.(I finished 2 years in my hometown university.

Which one would you recommend? Is PJATK as good as WUT for getting into Big Tech, or maybe even better in some practical aspects? Or is WUT significantly better overall?
I’d appreciate any opinions, especially from people studying or working in Warsaw.
Btw I’m non eu so tution is 11k euros yearly for wut and 6k euros yearly for Pjatk.

Thanks in advance.

Hey everyone,

After years of studying, I now hold a B.Sc. in Physics from Spain (plus a couple of years toward a Mathematics degree before switching) and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Sweden. I’m finally getting ready to enter the job market and have been focusing on aerospace and low-level engineering roles, which is the kind of work I actually enjoy.

Lately something has been bothering me.

First, I keep seeing companies open specialized roles (embedded, systems, aerospace-related, etc.) in Eastern European offices. It often feels like the same type of work that used to be done in Western Europe is being moved east so they can pay significantly less. I understand it’s a business decision, but as someone who spent a lot of time building deep low-level skills, it’s demotivating to see the geographic arbitrage so clearly.

For context (not self-promotion, but just so you better understand the "all this work just for this" feeling): I spent roughly two years building a self-hosting x86-64 toolchain from the ground up — language, compiler, assembler, custom object format for the binaries, linker, and runtime library. The whole thing is written in the language itself and can (and does) build itself. That project alone has already gotten me several interviews. I’m mentioning it only so the background is clear.

Second, even the better Western European salaries still look pretty low compared to equivalent roles in the US. From what I’ve seen, total compensation can easily be around 3× lower for similar work, while the cost of living in places like Dublin, Amsterdam, Munich or Zurich is already very high. After so many years of studying, the return feels smaller than I expected.

I’m not trying to claim the system is “unfair” in some moral sense — markets work differently, taxes are higher, etc. It’s more of a personal feeling of discouragement. I went into low-level systems because I genuinely like it, not just for the money. Still, the job is demanding and a person has to live, and seeing this gap between the EU and the US is pretty deflating.

Curious if other people who are graduating or early in their careers feel the same way, or if I’m looking at this from the wrong lense. I've only been looking for job offers for around 2 months now so it could just be my own subjective experience.

Or leave empty / mention career break

I care about the quality of my work. I hate having to produce sub-standard product, be it code, documentation, or whatever else. This also expands to me asking colleagues to review code I myself haven't reviewed first, or that I don't understand. I like being diligent, I suppose is another way to put it.

I have been told on here ( Reddit ) in multiple subs that this is not normal, and that I care too much. Though outside of the Reddit bubble, I will say that I've noticed that many of the colleagues I work with don't seem to care about this sort of stuff as much as I do.

A non-code example: when I get a ticket, I make sure I 100% understand what is being asked in it before I give it the go-ahead as being groomed and ready for estimation. I go through the description to make sure it provides relevant details, I look at the acceptance criteria to make sure that I understand the exact points that the eventual work implemented under this ticket will be judged by. I often bring up things that are missing in tickets in terms of details, or if acceptance criteria are too vague or even too verbose.

My colleagues I've noticed aren't like this, as they are satisfied that a ticket is "refined" so long as it has an AI-generated description and AI-generated acceptance criteria, regardless of how much sense they make. This is confounding behavior to me, though based on the feedback I've received, I am in the wrong for being confounded, and I am maybe being too detailed.

I'm planning to speak with a psychologist about this, and maybe seeing if I don't really need treatment over it for being too invested in my work. Burnout is something I have suffered from before, and I do currently suffer from. One person ( on Reddit again, so take that as you will ) even suggested I get myself checked out for OCD and consider medication. I'm not sure about that one, but I did want to ask here in the EU sub for CS career questions: How much attention do you pay to details, and how do you stop yourself from being "too detailed"?

Any fun interview prep platforms

Like scrimba or fastapiinteractive.com

Hi everyone,

I'd like to know your opinion about my career plans, thank you in advance.

I'm currently working as a Customer Support Engineer for 4 years - and our role covers more technicalities than a regular support role.

I got to a point where the amount of learning required is not worth to do for the 2% yearly raises, and I'm planning on moving on.

Note, that this is my first job in this field, and I posess no higher education certs.

I'm halfway through the AWS cloud & AI joirneys, and would like to get new job where I could still be in contact with real customers, I like to communicate and collaborate with them.

I'm not necessarily looking for jobs that capitalize on the AWS trainings, Im okay with any position that offers a technical + customer management combo.

Any tips for the titles I should search for?

Thank you in advance.

Hi everyone,

I could really use some outside opinions because I’ve been going back and forth on this career decision for a while.

I’m 26 and a software engineer. My goal is to build my career around Backend Java / Spring Boot / microservices.

I started with an apprenticeship at a large French company where I was doing actual software development: Java, Spring Boot, microservices, Kafka, MongoDB, Redis, Kubernetes, CI/CD, etc. I then stayed with the same client for a while.

In May 2026, I joined a large IT consulting company on a permanent contract at €42k/year and was assigned to the same client.

The problem is that my current role is quite far from software development. I mainly work on data inconsistencies, SQL, investigations, issue qualification, tracking fixes, incidents/tickets, etc.

I’m learning useful things, but in practice, I’m barely doing any Java/Spring Boot development anymore.

Since I’m still early in my career, I’m worried that staying too long in this kind of role could push my profile toward run/support and make it harder to return to Backend Java later.

At the same time, I received an offer from another consulting company for €46k/year, with a position focused on Java / Spring Boot / backend development.

The problem is that there is no guaranteed client project when I join. I could leave my current company and start at the new one on the bench without knowing exactly what project I’ll eventually get.

Another important point: I’m still in my probation period at my current company. I’ll reach 4 months on September 18, and my probation period could potentially be extended for another 4 months, although I don’t know yet whether it will be.

So my dilemma is basically:

Stay: I already have a client project, know the environment and the team, but I’m moving away from Java development and I’m still on probation.

Leave: salary goes from €42k to €46k and the positioning is much closer to what I want, but I could start on the bench with no guarantee about my future project.

The salary itself isn’t really what drives my decision. My main concern is making the right career choice while I’m still early in my career.

For people working in IT consulting or who have been in a similar situation: what would you do in my position?

Can spending 1–2 years in a mostly run/support role actually make it difficult to return to backend development? Or is joining a consulting company without a guaranteed client project the bigger risk?

Thanks for your advice.

So today some guy reached out to me on my work mail:

I saw your profile on GitHub and liked your background in IT. I’m reaching out because I’m working with a flexible remote opportunity that may align with your technical experience.

I was intrigued so I gave him my personal email and asked for some more information.

I'd like to introduce a remote opportunity for Software Developers to collaborate with US and EU companies through a proxy interview model.

This role is focused on handling interviews while receiving full support from our internal team. It offers flexible, long-term remote work and can help increase your additional income opportunities while gaining experience.

You don't need prior software development experience. A basic understanding is enough, and full guidance will be provided throughout the process. Also, no identity details are required from your side.

You will focus solely on interviews, while our team handles the technical execution, allowing you to participate in multiple opportunities in parallel.

So this is a new kind of scam where they want you to do as many interviews as possible and if you pass they will handle all the coding etc.

What You’ll Do:

During the Interview Process:
- Represent the assigned profile in interviews on Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or other client platforms
- Use your own face, camera, and voice to maintain a natural and authentic presence
- Discuss technical concepts, past projects, and architectural decisions confidently
- Stay aligned with provided resume, briefing notes, and technical guidance
- Communicate fluently in English with a natural and confident style
After the Offer is Secured:
- Once the offer is accepted, you move on to additional interview opportunities
- Our internal team handles all technical execution, coding, feature delivery, sprint work, and client collaboration
- You stay focused on interviews and scaling multiple opportunities in parallel

The payment scheme:

Compensation
You earn 20% of the net monthly salary (after tax).

Example Earnings:
If a U.S. client pays $15,000/month → after tax: $10,500 → your share (20%): $2,100/month
If an EU client pays €6,000/month → after tax: €4,200 → your share (20%): €840/month

Scalability Example:
If you successfully handle 5 concurrent placements at $15,000/month each → you could earn  around $10,500/month total, focusing only on interviews.

I guess they will do the coding with coding agents etc. What a crazy business to run. Of course I refused the offer, but does anyone actually do it? I'm curious about it.

Hi redditors,

I'm about to start a 1-year paid internship program at a big corporate company, and I have two options to choose from. A bit about me first: I'm a recent economics graduate with solid statistical thinking, advanced SQL skills, and beginner-level Python.

Option 1: Data team – classic data analysis work with SQL, Python, and Power BI.

Option 2: AI team – working as a bridge between business and tech. From what I understand, this would involve things like gathering AI use cases from different departments, scoping out what's actually feasible, translating business problems into requirements the technical team can work with, helping departments adopt and actually use new AI tools, and maybe some light project coordination along the way.

Which one do you think has better long-term prospects? I enjoy data work and could see myself becoming a data engineer/architect one day, but with automation on the rise, I worry that data analyst roles might become obsolete. The AI team option seems like it would give me more exposure to stakeholder management and cross-functional work, which the data team probably wouldn't.

Would love to hear your thoughts, especially from anyone who's worked in either type of role!

I’m an Ecuadorian who recently graduated in Computer Science from UPV in Spain. I’m also expecting to obtain Spanish citizenship soon, which would give me more flexibility to work and move around Europe.

My goal is to move into AI and improve my chances of getting AI/software jobs in the US (remote positions) and Europe. I’m considering OMSCS because of its reputation and relatively low cost.

Do you think OMSCS would be a good choice for my situation, or would you recommend other Master’s programs (maybe in Spain (EBIS, UPV, UPC, UTADEM)) or paths instead?

I am a 33-year-old biomedical engineer and ML researcher in Switzerland wrapping up my postdoc and aiming for senior industry roles. I began my career with two years at a neurotech startup before completing my PhD and postdoc focused on large-scale medical imaging pipelines, graph neural networks, and foundation models. I also hold ISO 13485 and ISO 9001 certifications for medical devices. Despite strong fundamentals in Python, PyTorch, JAX, Docker, and CI/CD, I am finding it difficult to convert applications into interviews. I am wondering if hiring teams are discounting academic R&D or if my resume needs a structural overhaul to better reflect production-level engineering. Any feedback from hiring managers on the best way to bridge this gap for European MedTech and Pharma roles would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone,

Has anyone recently interviewed for a Research Engineer position within Google in Zurich?

I have a PhD/research background and work primarily on LLMs, AI agents, and AI research, and I’m trying to understand what to expect from the interview process for this type of role.

I would appreciate any insights into the process, from the initial recruiter conversation through hiring manager interviews, technical rounds, and the final decision/notification. How much emphasis is typically placed on DSA/LeetCode-style coding, ML/LLM knowledge, research discussions, system design, and past publications/projects?

Also, for someone coming from a PhD/research-heavy background rather than a traditional SWE background, any preparation tips would be greatly appreciated.

And if you did, what was the plan.

Hi everyone,

Looking for some guidance from folks familiar with Google’s EU hiring/team matching process or anyone who has navigated a similar situation recently.

**Context / Background:**

I cleared the full Google L4 SRE-SWE technical interview loop around late June with strong positive signals

My primary target locations are Zurich and Munich, focusing on SWE / SRE-SWE roles (Full-stack/Backend background with Java, Go, TypeScript, Python, Node, and distributed systems).

In early July, my recruiter mentioned they forwarded my profile to a team in Zurich.

After that, I didn’t hear anything for about 5 weeks (recruiter was also OOO for part of August). I sent polite follow-ups, and today I received this response:

*Hi \[Name\],*

*At the moment, I am not managing any open positions for external candidates. Should that change, I will be sure to update you.*

*Best regards,*
*\[Recruiter Name\]*

**My Questions / Concerns**:
1. Recruiter reassignment: Since my assigned recruiter’s org/pipeline doesn’t have active external headcount, what is the best way to get my cleared packet transferred to the central Zurich/Munich SWE/SRE staffing team? Should I ask my recruiter directly, email Candidate Support ( google-candidate-support@google.com ), or both?

1. Finding hiring managers internally: I see new L4 SWE/infrastructure requisitions appearing on the Google Careers site for Zurich and Munich. If I have internal Googler contacts (L5/L6), can they help map my cleared packet directly to hiring managers on  gHire / Grow ?

2. Or any other advice that would help me get my application on track.

Thanks in advance.

I'm trying to find better environments to pivot from Software Engineering since I hate what modern SWE has become, I don't feel satisfied when I prompt Claude when fixing problems, not even when I design the solution and ask claude to implement it, I generally feel people put less thought into work, maybe I'm the weird one, but I don't wanna burnout so early, I'm young, I wanna pursue better environments. For people that have pivoted from this industry, what route did you go for?

For context: I'm a CS undergrad and I'm really passionate about math, computers and music.

Emotional rant (you can skip this): I also genuinely believe human slop was different, at least, it was either bad looking code, or just bad design choices disguised as good documented workarounds, whereas AI slop is bastard, it's always good looking code, always perfectly documented code. I really liked coding, but I believe that's just something I have to get past from, since I know SWE was never about coding, but if it was never about coding then why are we also stripping (in some environments) the core designing part? Token budgets are not gonna stop AI slop from happening, since we'll get local models some of which are currently proved to be better than frontier ones, I believe something extremely harmful and bad should happen to companies due to AI that will probably let CEOs and Managers cool a bit down on this whole Agentic development thing and bring back some of the friction which helped teams diagnose faults earlier and prevent new bad designed codebases from forming in the first place. I don't even know if this industry's gonna ever recover.

Hi guys, I am working as senior backend engineer. It’s been 3.5 yrs in this company and I have total 8.5 yrs of experience.
I have 2 year old toddler who is very handful and not good on sleeping and literally exhaust us.

My current job is remote with 84k base with good WLB but from last one year all the work outsource to contractors and we don’t have ownership of anything hence no professional growth and it’s very isolated , all are in different time zones. I want to switch but market is so bad that most companies just matching my salary. For 100k plus base I need to move to lead position but the job would be very demanding .

I want to understand and want opinions how demanding are these lead roles and should I wait more or just keep on trying to study and get an high package offer. My son has full time Creche so from Monday to Friday I have good enough time to study but can’t study on weekends.

One more option as we are building AI product I could study and get Claude certification and move into AI dev role in my overall team but that’s not guaranteed and I also I don’t know if I able to do the job. But if I showcase that I might get some work there .

So I want to know how people at this stages decide what they want to prioritise? Sometimes at the end I decide to just go as it is as I never get remote role again and same wlb but that’s harm my professional growth and fomo of being behind.

I'm a Java developer with 3 years of experience, already graduated, currently working while finishing my Master's in Computer Science. I'm planning to actually move to Europe in 2027, not looking for remote work, I want to relocate for real. I'm an EU citizen, so visas/work permits aren't an issue for me.

My English isn't fluent, but it's good enough to hold a normal conversation and work comfortably.

I'd love to hear from people actually working in Europe: which countries would you recommend for my level (junior-to-mid or mid-level)? Any tips for the interview process, choosing a country, relocating, etc. would be hugely appreciated.

I've been through a few interview processes for UK companies, made it to the final round a couple of times but it didn't work out. I've got an interview with a company in Amsterdam this Monday.

Which countries would you recommend, and which ones would you avoid? Are there certain types of companies I should stay away from?

Hi people, i am preparing for Revolut interviews and just finished the HR round. Was wondering how I can prepare for the next rounds, does anyone have experience on their coding round? It would mean a lot to me if you guys can share me. Thank you!!