Hacker News with Generative AI: Career Advice

Ask HN: Struggling with Anxiety as a Developer – What Are My Options? (ycombinator.com)
I'm a senior web developer (10 years), but in the past three years, I’ve struggled with anxiety, and my performance has suffered because of it. I started a new job last year but I was let go due to performance and am now wondering how to move forward.

Mental Health, Software Development, Career Advice

23 points by devwithanxiety 14 hours ago | 45 comments

Ask HN: How to make money in the new age of AI? (ycombinator.com)
Employed. Unfairly compensated. Old. Love AI. How to capitalize on the new tech wave?

Artificial Intelligence, Career Advice, Employment, Finances

11 points by tempcal 3 days ago | 13 comments

Ask HN: Best and worst jobs of your career and why? (ycombinator.com)
Ask HN: Best and worst jobs of your career and why?

Jobs, Career Advice, User Experience, Work

17 points by ronbenton 6 days ago | 5 comments

Ask HN: Should I learn COBOL at 14yo in 2025? (ycombinator.com)
I've worked in many programming languages, but are older languages like COBOL or Fortran worth looking into? COBOL certainly has a job opportunity later on since the average age of developers is over 60, they will probably hire any young person who has learned a minimum of COBOL which is already quite rare

Programming Languages, Career Advice, Job Market, Education

21 points by Genius_um 13 days ago | 56 comments

My Horrible Career (bitfieldconsulting.com)
I recently had a fascinating, and wide-ranging, conversation with ace developer advocate Zack Proser, of the highly recommended Supercharge Your Dev Skills blog. We’re both very interested in tech careers and how they work (or don’t), and Zack had some penetrating questions about my own career, and whether or not I’m any good at taking my own advice. (Spoiler alert: no.)

Software Development, Career Advice, Technology

4 points by mu0n 17 days ago | 1 comments

Career Advice in 2025 (lethain.com)
Yesterday, the tj-actions repository, a popular tool used with Github Actions was compromised (for more background read one of these two articles). Watching the infrastructure and security engineering teams at Carta respond, it highlighted to me just how much LLMs can’t meaningfully replace many essential roles of software professionals. However, I’m also reading Jennifer Palkha’s Recoding America, which makes an important point: decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. (Or, in this context, remain employed.)

Career Advice, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence

307 points by herbertl 18 days ago | 178 comments

Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise? (ycombinator.com)
I’m a software developer (web, fullstack) that’s been in the industry for about 10 years now and I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t care about advancing my career.

Software Development, Career Advice, Work-Life Balance

108 points by throwaway929997 19 days ago | 145 comments

Senior engineers: Please prep for interviews (josvisser.substack.com)
This week I am writing to you from my adopted home country of Spain. People who are not from Europe might not realize this, but Spain is the Florida of Europe, in the sense that many older Europeans of some means spend some or all of their retired life on the sunny Mediterranean coasts of this lovely country. My parents did so too and that’s how I ended up here.

Software Engineering, Interviews, Career Advice

9 points by 0xKelsey 20 days ago | 3 comments

Ask HN: Advice for tolerating the "corporate" aspect of software jobs? (ycombinator.com)

Software Engineering, Work Culture, Career Advice

30 points by superarch 22 days ago | 18 comments

Ask HN: How to find intellectually challenging work? (ycombinator.com)
After working (mostly) as a backend developer since 2013, I was recently burned (or bored?) out a bit, quit my job and went on a sabbatical for half a year. Now I need to start looking for a new job. However, I'm not sure how to find something that feels more meaningful and intellectually stimulating to me.

Career Advice, Software Development, Work-Life Balance

14 points by Tainnor 23 days ago | 31 comments

How to know when it's time to go (bitfieldconsulting.com)
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. When you hate your job, no matter how much you try to put up with it, there comes a point where you’re mad as hell and you’re just not going to take it anymore. So, maybe this is the right moment to reflect: is it time to go?

Career Advice, Job Satisfaction, Burnout

60 points by chautumn 25 days ago | 61 comments

How to spot a rocketship startup in AI: lessons from interviewing at 46 startups (janvikalra.substack.com)
Many of us optimize for the wrong things when choosing a startup to join: prestige, billion dollar valuations, or what’s trending in the news. In my last post, I shared why one should optimize for hypergrowth as well as distracting metrics to deprioritize.

Startups, AI, Career Advice, Hypergrowth

4 points by janvikalra 27 days ago | 0 comments

Ask HN: Escaping Difficult Employment Situation? (ycombinator.com)

Career Advice, Employment, Ask HN

19 points by dirtybirdnj 27 days ago | 38 comments

Dear Student: Yes, AI is here, you're screwed unless you take action (ghuntley.com)
Two weeks ago a student anonymously emailed me asking for advice. This is the reply and if I was in your shoes this is what I'd do.

Education, Artificial Intelligence, Career Advice

40 points by arrowsmith 28 days ago | 30 comments

Ask HN: Should I Make the Pivot to Cybersecurity or Grow as a Software Engineer? (ycombinator.com)
I'm 28, and I'm working as a fully-remote software engineer contractor for a US-based startup.

Career Advice, Software Engineering, Cybersecurity

7 points by OulaX 33 days ago | 5 comments

Ludic's Guide to Getting Software Engineering Jobs (mataroa.blog)
The steps in this guide have generated A$869,000 in salary prior to being published, measured as the sum of the highest annual salaries my friends have reached after following along, which they have attributed to these steps. If it works for you in the coming months, email me so I can bump the number up.

Software Engineering, Career Advice, Employment

29 points by Brajeshwar 33 days ago | 2 comments

The future of MCP in agentic environments? (ycombinator.com)
I just wanted to chat here real quick with anyone interested in this. I am a founder of kallro.com (unlaunched) and we are using MCP throughout our product. I was wondering what the future of mcp might look like in y'alls eyes and get some outside opinons on it. What might talent look like and are any new grads here intersted in learning it for future jobs?

Software Development, Machine Learning, Career Advice

6 points by echollama 34 days ago | 3 comments

Troubleshooting: A skill that never goes obsolete (autodidacts.io)
Much of what I do, in multiple fields, could be reduced to one skill: troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting, Skills, Career Advice

406 points by surprisetalk 37 days ago | 137 comments

Do you want to be doing this when you're 50? (2012) (dadgum.com)
When I was still a professional programmer, my office-mate once asked out of the blue, "Do you really want to be doing this kind of work when you're fifty?"

Career Advice, Programming, Personal Growth, Ageism

192 points by debesyla 40 days ago | 181 comments

Ask HN: Tired of startups – want a normal job. Help (ycombinator.com)
All but the first few years out of school I spent the better part of my 20's working in startups.

Career Advice, Startups, Work-Life Balance

99 points by mertleee 41 days ago | 96 comments

Ask HN: Advice for someone entering their 30s (ycombinator.com)

Life Advice, Career Advice, Personal Development

12 points by marclave 45 days ago | 17 comments

Unsloth's 5 challenges to get a job offer of $500K/year and equity (twitter.com)

Career Advice, Salary Negotiation, Startups, Equity, Job Offers

17 points by amrrs 45 days ago | 21 comments

Why I'd never apply for a job online again (hottakes.space)

Job Search, Career Advice, Personal Experience

30 points by rwmj 46 days ago | 8 comments

I'm glad I took the off-ramp from software engineering (goodtechthings.com)
Congratulations on your shiny new computer science degree! You won’t be needing that anymore, feel free to forget all about it.

Software Engineering, Career Advice, Technology

42 points by scarface_74 51 days ago | 22 comments

Questions I'll always ask in a product review (destraynor.com)
I figured some of these might be useful to folks earlier in their career, certainly I wish I had them earlier, so here goes.

Product Reviews, Software, Career Advice

22 points by tosh 52 days ago | 2 comments

Ask HN: Finding interesting work if disenchanted with "big tech" & "VC-backed" (ycombinator.com)
For a long time i opted out of big tech and worked at startups because i liked being on small collaborative teams building cool impactful things.

Career Advice, Startups, Technology, Work Culture

50 points by AbstractH24 53 days ago | 42 comments

In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager (digital-horror.com)
This post is a collection of personal reflections from my time working as an EM and similar roles. It’s not meant to be a comprehensive guide but rather a snapshot of the lessons I’ve learned and the challenges I’ve faced. For those looking to transition into leadership, or even for engineers wanting to understand management better, I hope this offers some insight into the realities of the role.

Engineering Management, Leadership, Personal Reflections, Career Advice

82 points by juxhindb 56 days ago | 49 comments

Ask HN: How to handle pushback on a team switch? (ycombinator.com)
Here's an _imaginary_ but common scenario in the corp tech hemisphere:<p>VP: Gives the IC a dubious signal about a promo in the next cycle, mentioning tenure, budget constraints, or something incredibly vague.<p>IC: Lets go of the promo and seeks to switch teams at the same level in search of more interesting work and possibly to avoid a similar situation in the next cycle.<p>VP: Feels betrayed, claiming they were working hard on the promo case and that it might have happened

Career Advice, Team Dynamics, Software Engineering, Management

38 points by rednafi 57 days ago | 46 comments

How to get ahead of 99% of developers (jackhodkinson.com)
These are the exact strategies that 10x developers are using to outcompete 99% of other developers and dominate the industry.

Software Development, Career Advice, Programming

10 points by sd9 60 days ago | 1 comments

Ask HN: How to passively prepare for a job interview? (ycombinator.com)
Hey there fellow HNers! I am currently at a stage where I am working within a Tech Consulting company for 5-6 years. My plan is to prepare myself well in the next 5-6 months and then possibly start actively interviewing for jobs. How can I do passive job search and interviewing in the meanwhile so that I can setup myself best after few months? I am in a data-science and machine-learning domain.

Job Searching, Data Science, Machine Learning, Career Advice

34 points by rookie123 63 days ago | 13 comments