AdityaSanthosh

Background: I have been working as a software engineer in Bangalore, India for 4 years now. My first 2 roles were fine where I was working mostly alone and my managers seemed fine with it, my work did not involve much interaction with my teammates. I switched to a 3rd company last year and there started my problems. Despite being friendly and warm, it seems like I was just not able to gel well with my teammates, plus I was remote as well, people wouldn't respond to slack messages. I ultimately quit that company because one project dragged on beyond original timeline and I felt demotivated to burnt out to even touch it. I changed 2 other companies since then and the common feedback I get is I am not engaging enough with the team. All this while I am approaching my work from the POV of deepness. Like I go hours and hours without talking to anyone all but coding. I only talk when there is a unknown in my tasks or if I need some clarification. I suppose this is a cultural thing. Also because of this nature, I usually get the feedback that I am not leader material or that I can't influence others or I can't work with others. Hearing this feedback constantly over the past one year at multiple roles is depressing me. FYI, I was always told that my coding skills are great, my commitment skills are high and I ask good questions while picking up a task. I am thinking of switching to something like linux system programming or join some GCC

I am at a medium-sized startup owning an internally used self-serve analytics service with a reasonable load. I am the sole owner of this service with thousands of lines of code. Since I am the only guy working on this, I take all the architecture decisions, do DevOps like setting up step functions, API Gateways, giving accesses, setting up staging infra, writing feature code, raising PRs, reviewing and deploying them myself, test on staging, and do sanity on production. However, I have fumbled often while releasing new features most recently today resulting in downtime for many users throughout the day. Even though I come up with creative ideas and write good code, the optics of my work are getting bad because of the bad releases. The reasons for the bad releases are 1. I did not do enough load-testing 2. Since this service is constantly updating, I frequently fumble with git. like accidentally pushing testing code/hardcoding onto prod 3. there are lots of flows in the service, so missing out on testing one of them. 4. other notable issues like bad queries from analytics team.

I am always the kind of guy who is creative, authentic and believes in move fast and break stuff. However, my company expects me to move fast but don't break anything. I was also told that I make small mistakes from time to time. (Most recently, I forgot to turn on a cron on prod). I do love my work and I think the decisions I make and the code I write are of high quality but these issues are affecting my optics. (I have trouble concentrating for long hours. I work in short bursts if that's worth anything). How do I overcome this situation, and improve my optics and my confidence? Thanks

SDE of 2+YoE here. The question says it all. I have been interviewing couple of months only to be rejected in the coding round because of these leetcode questions. (I am based in India where the coding rounds are brutal). I have solved some 200 problems but when it comes to interview setting, I am failing because I generally take long time to solve problems. That time constraint pressure is the reason why I am not getting any offers. I am stuck in a really terrible role. So I am quite desperate now. But my PoV is that even if I am able to grind Leetcode now, I cannot keep doing that until 10 years down the line. I love to build OSS projects, build architectures, do side projects instead of grinding trick problems.

Has any one ever made the switch from SDE to DE for the same reason?

I have little over 2 Years of Experience. I had joined the Industry in 2021 when developers are making a lot money here in India thanks to Startup VC Funding. I had job-hopped a bit and got to a decent salary at my current role but the market has changed dramatically. I have been applying to several companies passively and actively since couple of months resulting in vain. Now, I am very much passionate about software but I am also flexible. I do get some decent ideas in IT sometimes. Should I just keep upskilling myself in promotion to mid-level engineer/ grinding leetcode or do a side hustle completely unrelated(or related) to software? I am flexible with anything. My Long term goals are Financial Independence and stimulating work

Just wanted to know if there's any reason beside the obvious

Background: I am 22. I am backend dev working in a massively growing fintech in India. And my salary is quite decent. I like to solve codeforces problems, play Video Games. I got great applauses at my work for my performance and business impact(i automated something business critical).

But I have this feeling inside me that I am not doing anything useful to the world. These ecommerce, fintech, Data Engineering, Analytics etcetc though i like them, i feel like i am not doing useful things unlike a doctor, scientist. I am interested in Space, BioInformatics for a long time. I explored a few Open Source Science Software to contribute to, but it seems like most of the algorithms are implemented by the people who knew physics and math stuff. I feel like apart from making good software, i do not have any other skills in any other domain like science.

My family is not yet financially stable and i cannot afford to lose my job and do masters in aerospace engineering or start a startup. Maybe I can startup, maybe i can succeed. I dont know. The worst part is that i do not have american Visa which disqualifies me to work for many interesting startups in US. But I am looking for inspiration. I want to be rich but i am not that interested in money. I just want to do something important and be at peace and not overthink like this.

Any advice people?