I’ve been reflecting a lot lately, and honestly, I feel stuck. Some of my friends who are younger than me are already Principal Engineers at big tech companies, making close to half a million a year. Meanwhile, I’m earning about a third of that. It’s not just about the money, but it makes me realize I haven’t pushed myself the way I should have. I also realize that I'm not learning enough to grow to the next level.

• I’ve mostly just done my day-to-day work all these years, meeting deadlines, but never really gone beyond that.
• I’m bad at Leetcode. So I’ve set myself a 6-month target to get better at it.
• I’m an introvert and interviews are tough for me. I freeze and can’t recall exact terms and end up sounding more like a junior engineer.
• I want to work as a Senior Engineer, but I don’t project confidence or technical strength in interviews yet.
• Visibility has been my biggest flaw. I get too conscious about what I say or how others perceive me that restricts me from putting my point firmly out there.

I definitely want to improve and am willing to put in the time and hard work.

1. Are there any good resources where I can watch mock interviews or real interviews so I can see how strong candidates communicate?
2. How do you train yourself to sound like a senior engineer in interviews instead of fumbling under pressure?

I never engage myself in politics but I have observed people talk bad about me behind my back. For example: one day I caught my manager pinging his manager that I was not helping with a production issue. But in fact I was actively helping resolving the issue and even my manager was in the same call. I don't want to engage in politics but at same time I also want to be aware of things happening around me and protect myself. The manager and his manager are good friends, stay in the same community, know each other for more than a decade, etc.

Hey all. I have been building software for about 15 years. The main focus of my experience has been backend services, generally distributed, and generally cloud based, though I do have some passing skill at frontend dev as well. Mainly in IC and architect roles.

After a long, dramatic, and grueling personal drama over the past several years, i have burnt out of my last position and have taken a much needed summer off, looking for what the next thing is going to be for me.

I am moving into a new phase of my life, and I feel excited, and at the same time overwhelmed at the possibilities.

I am looking to you guys for some inspiration, some ideas, or some insight. I want to do something different, something meaningful, something that helps people. I am not financially independent, but not terribly constrained, so money isn't really the topmost priority. I have a little cash that I could even put into the right initiative. I just want to build things that I can feel good about, and lead a simple life.

I know this is vague, that is intentional. I am quite open to a wide variety of things. Here's the types of things i'm considering:

1.) indie game dev. This has been a hobby of mine for a long time, and I think it could be cool and provide a great deal of freedom. It also could help me detach from the empire just a little bit. No need to get rich, just crank out small to midsize games, hopefully enough to feed myself and move into a semi-retired mode. Lots of opportunity to tell interesting stories here and actually say meaningful things.

2.) starting a digital coop. Try and replicate or build out a competitor to some major piece of software that is actually worker owned/non profit.

3.) Discover a niche business interest that I could build custom software for. A digital mutual aid network? or maybe a digital coop+mutual aid network?

I'd rather not just get back into the interview circuit and go work for someone else. If I needed to do that, I'd prefer it be a company that i actually admire and respect the work they do, and there are vanishing few of those these days.

Anyway I'm open to hear any bit of advice, insight, inspiration, industry ideas, company names you think i should research, or personal experience that you all might have. Even if you don't have any of that to offer, I appreciate you taking the time to read this.

I'd been working on a startup as a tech founder didn't succeed, aka didn't take off, so I've decided to join back in a company.

I have around ~6 years of work ex (including having worked on this startup). I have most experience in mobile and frontend engineering, but I've also done fullstack projects and some backend work as well.

Having done pretty much everything at this startup, I'm wondering what kind of roles should I chase for right now. Is it going back to mobile/frontend at mid-big company or shaping up my profile for engg lead / fullstack roles at other startups considering I led projects and did pretty much everything at this startup? To prep for interviews, should I be doing the regular leetcode + technical skills refresh + system design?

Any advice here from senior folks who've seen/gone through such situations?

Are there any mentor groups/websites/discord servers that can help me out with this career transition?

Hi all, I have been interviewing with a software company for a C++ role for over two months. 2 screenings( one by the recruiter and one by the hr), One hackerrank, two technical rounds, followed by one with hiring manager and one with head of the department. So in total 5 rounds(excluding screening call). It's been 2 weeks since the last one and they came back and want to schedule one more technical round. I am not sure how to take it that they want to have a technical round after cultural round. Is it that they have another strong candidate already in line and they want to have another round to make sure to reject me?.

Our org has very customised architectures for both frontend and backend, basically extra frameworks on top of existing ones. Usually, when hiring new developers, junior-middle level, after onboarding I tell them to reach out to me if they ever have issues understanding our projects, instead of wasting time trying to piece it together themselves. This results in quite a bit of calls during the first month or so of our new hires during which they’d ask “how do I do…” or “what exactly does … do?”, to which I then explain our features, what they do, how to properly use them and some of the things to pay attention to.

However, this got me thinking whether I’m stunting the newbies in some way, or discouraging them from doing their own research, digging through docs, other people’s code and git history to figure out how to use a feature themselves. Personally, I’m satisfied with my approach so far as I’ve seen good productivity from the new guys after info dumping them all the useful info, as opposed to just leaving them to figure it out themselves which usually leads to:

1. Extra time being wasted on learning, which delays the real task assignment
2. Incorrect code due to misunderstanding of how to use some of the things

But I’m unsure of the long term implications. I’ve frequently seen an opinion in experienced swe circles (including this sub) that inability to figure out things yourself and needing to call seniors to ask them stuff is a sign of being a bad engineer and lacking autonomy, which then translates into being unable to complete more complex tasks without help. Thoughts?

For context, I'm a DevOps Engineer with 6 years of experience (with a brief 1,5 years gap as Fullstack Engineer).

I like what I do, the technologies I work with, but to be honestly blunt, I'm getting tired of other people bullshit crazy complex systems. More and more I see myself craving to be working in a field with a smaller scope that's much more self contained.

Assuming you have all the time in the world to transition, what would you recommend? Open to any suggestion.

As a concrete example of what I see myself doing, I loved the https://www.nand2tetris.org/ courses. There's this book about compilers/interpreters (https://craftinginterpreters.com/) that is on my list. Is it realistic to consider learning a lot about languages/compilers/etc and get a job remotely in this area (say, a Go language developer)? 

I'm from Portugal, so that's something to consider.

I am tired of the job market if I am being honest. Switching jobs from one to the next, running scared of being fired, getting lowballed by the hiring team and micromanaged by team leads... and now the AI boom has made it so that both the quality and quantity of salaried dev jobs has gone down significantly.

Applying to your own projects, negotiating your own pay, working your own hours and being your own boss seems to be such a "greener grass" so to speak.

I am not an idiot; I am aware that this could very well be an illusion, so I am asking the community: if you have done it before, would you recommend it?

I have done freelancing before I got my first job, but that was outside of dev (article writing actually) and it wasn't big enough to pay a proper wage. Plus at that time I was looking forward to being a dev; this was just to fill the gap after graduation.

Hello everyone! I have about 8 YOE in software engineering. I’m self taught but have several years of FAANG experience, and I used to work at NASA until recently. Unfortunately, I lost my job with all the government cuts happening currently, but I was able to rejoin my previous company (Amazon) pretty quickly.

While at NASA, I took advantage of their tuition compensation program to resume my education in hopes of transitioning into science. I’m getting my bachelors in physics currently and I’m shooting for a phD. I’m aware that this doesn’t make much financial sense, but physics is genuinely my life’s passion, and there’s a big intersection with my programming background. However, while I am working full time now, I don’t intend to do so while in grad school.

I don’t want to have a giant gap in my resume for so many years, and so I want to find part time work while I get through school. With my resume, I’ve usually not had a problem finding work, but I have no idea where to start looking for something like this. Does anyone have any advice?

First of all thank you to anyone who reads through this whole thing.

Note: I think what’s keeping me at the company is I’m trusted, the market is rough, interviewing sucks, it’s fully remote, salary is good enough

The team is composed of: 1 manager(lead dev), 1 senior (me), 1 junior, 1 contractor, 1 QA

The junior has been around for 3 years and still has the work quality of an intern, has to be hand held through everything. Still missing technical fundamentals and lack of domain knowledge.

The contractor works fast and breaks everything. regression bugs are contained per feature PR, which must be found by reviewers looking through the code with a fine tooth comb or QA. Nothing feels safe when the contractor writes new code, any area that has been touched even if only partially related, most likely has been broken.

QA rarely documents test cases or test scenarios. When receiving pushback and they DO document, the test cases have barely any information in them. QA doesn’t read the ticket descriptions and constantly calls developers to explain the tickets. Many times the conversation goes “as written in the description, we need to verify X”.

The manager is now leaving to another team. Leaving me (the senior) left to carry all the bullshit. The manager no longer has assumed lead developer roles (architecture, code reviews, security…) but is keeping the title of manager.

Our roles are all the same we are all “software developer” except the manager.

I have no authority because we all have the same roles. What change can I make?

Do I just say to the company “these aren’t my job responsibilities I’m not taking them on until I get a raise and a new title?”

I can’t push the contractor to do regression, or QA to read the damn tickets and document things, or the junior to gain fundamentals.

Regardless, it’s still a total shit show that was held together by the manager and I. But now I’m left alone.

Hey folks, not sure if this is the best sub for the question, but I'll try anyway. I'm asking here to gather some feedback before asking internally.

I've been developing software for a decade by now, but admittedly I've never really investigated the legal aspect that kicks in every time a piece of software goes out to the public. I mean, I'm aware of a subset of steps (certificate of originality, export control, OSS, etc.) because I'm part of that process, but I've never gone beyond that because of time and responsibilities.

We've recently switched from a 4-months long release cycle for product A, to a more agile alternative for product B, where we (devs) planned to deliver multiple updates per month. Not really continuous delivery, but you get it. This was discussed for a long time, we came up with the proper versioning scheme, and all parties seemed to agree.

However, now we are blocked by processes again: we must let the PO know about an update at least a couple weeks in advance, so that all involved people (no idea who they are apart from a couple of them) begin working on their tasks. I see a lot of stuff going on in Jira (I don't use it, I track on GitHub), like dozens of work items, epics and whatnot. We then get an estimated code freeze and text exit dates.

This obviously screws up the "continuous" aspect, as realistically we are able to ship once a month on the good months. So I'm wondering, how do companies manage to release multiple updates per month? Or even multiple updates per day? Do they have a legal department always running at 100% to keep up with development?

Or is the process I'm witnessing something entirely arbitrary that they simply don't want to change? Should I even attempt to get this corrected?

I've noticed that management and sometimes other devs are often very eager to latch onto ideal or best-case scenarios. I feel I constantly need to fight to reign in expectations on how long things are going to take and how difficult work is going to be because of this.

For a concrete example:

Someone asks for details on a timeline for an ambiguous project. I tell them I'm currently figuring out step C, I'm trying X and Y, and I'll have more info on it by EoD. They immediately assume that X or Y are going to work, and we'll be moving on to step D tomorrow, which isn't the case.

I then need to reign in expectations that X or Y may not work. I explain that I'll then need time to figure out why they didn't work, do more research, and find approach Z. (This sometimes spawns a discussion about approach Z, and generally a bunch of wasteful discussion that doesn't need to be had until/ if that approach is even required).

The end result is that the person wants the result faster than it will likely happen, and I need to either promise fast delivery (which will likely be untrue), or disappoint them by pushing back on their expectations. And additionally, someone with an aggressive timeline is never going to be impressed. It's either going to be on time or late.

Any thoughts on how to handle this, and set expectations in a reasonable way? Both for influence/ advancement in the field, and for your own day-to-day sanity.

Hi there,

The startup I work at, due to revenue growth, is anticipating that we hire some 50 developers by the end of 2026 (for context, we currently have 25). We’re all worried about the prospect of keeping our internal culture strong while simultaneously not lowering our hiring standards (and we don’t do fully remote). The topic of discussion internally is improving our sourcing and process to be more amiable to high quality talent. Our base compensation is very high for our area (80% percentile, under the big tech companies).

Things I’ve thought about: * Dev blog / more devrel * Recruiting directly on conferences * Encouraging more referrals through higher cash incentives * Shitposting on Twitter (?)

Any thoughts? Note that I’m a developer, not in management, but I do have a vested financial interest in us doing well.

I found these posts helpful while planning my job hunt, so I figured I’d contribute my experience in the hope it helps someone.

About me

~20 YoE. A good amount of depth in backend, distributed systems, devex, etc mixed with a product/value mindset from a career in startups. Past experience is mostly startups with a shorter stint at a big tech. Undergrad + graduate degrees in CS from a locally respected university. US citizen who does not & will not need any visa sponsorship. Live in a VHCOL not quite tech hub. Solid L6 in most companies, L7 in some niche problem areas, realistically L5/low L6 at a big tech. Old TC: ~$300k cash + equity, new TC: ~$300k cash + equity.

Goals

Initially wanted to gauge the market and convince myself that I could still pass an interview after being at my current employer for most of a decade. Turned more serious and more targeted as the year went on and macro trends/tariffs started registering on our balance sheet. Eventually turned into an actual job search when layoffs started and it became a choice between leaving on my timeline and leaving on theirs in the next round. Bittersweet outcome. I really like my current employer, my current team is the best I’ve ever worked with, I would’ve been happy staying, but the economy is what it is and I get the sense that most of the folks I enjoy working with have one foot out the door already.

Ended up targeting two types of role:

• Startups in the pre-unicorn/early unicorn phase. Aiming for L5/L6, more hands-on/solver than tech lead, $225k base and up. I’ve built my career on this type of role, and it’s where I tend to be happiest.
• Smaller public companies: think Instacart, Snap, Pinterest, etc. Aiming for L5, aiming for $350-$400k TC. This is me getting out of my comfort zone and giving big tech another try.

Would've really liked a hybrid or on-site role and looked for one, but everything I interviewed for (and the offer I accepted) was full remote.

Timeline

• March 2025: started LC prep. An hour a day after work, an hour or two on weekends.
• May 2025: done with LC prep, started research on companies I’d like to apply for.
• June 2025: started applying, STAR prep, system design prep.
• Late June 2025: first responses from recruiters
• July 2025: screens & interviews
• August 2025: offer

Prep

• LeetCode. I used NeetCode 150, excluding some categories my research told me didn’t come up a lot in screens (2D DP, more advanced graph algorithms than Dijkstra’s, bit fiddling), and excluding hards in general unless it was something I found interesting for its own sake. I followed that up with 2-3 random problems every few days. This is important. NeetCode’s categorization of problems by data structure/technique is a big hint about how to solve them, and not one you’ll have in an actual interview. I felt ready when I could complete most new to me mediums in 15-20 minutes with all test cases passing.
• Some light prep for soft skills/STAR questions, though I mostly just wing these. Prep was mostly building bank a of stories that are good matches for certain questions. I took notes on these interviews, tried to note questions that I hadn’t seen before and caught me off guard, and identified good ways to answer them for next time.
• A little bit of studying for system design, and a couple of mock interviews over text with Claude. I was a little nervous that I’d gotten out of date here (working at the same place for a while), but watching mock interviews on YouTube and doing mock interviews with Claude made me feel like I could just wing these. Figured I’d come back to it if it ended up being a limiter. Never was, though definitely a little less polished on average than the LC panels. If I’d really wanted to get into big tech I would have spent more time here.

Process/Stats

(being a little vague on purpose)

• Applied: 10-20, split between big tech and startups. Heard back from most of the startups, didn't hear back from any of the big techs.
• Recruiter, HM, coding screen: about half of those. 1 role closed after this phase, and I withdrew from some others that didn't seem like a good fit after going through the intro panels.
• A few onsites with standard panels (coding, system design, reverse system design, soft skills).
• 1 offer, which I took (also the one I was the best fit for, and the one I wanted). Others were "you did well but we found someone with more related experience", which I don't have a problem believing in this market.

My application process was basically what I did in 2017, and was suboptimal in a few ways in today’s market: no keyword stuffing, no quantification of every resume bullet point, no ATS optimization, no bulk applying, I wrote cover letters myself rather than having Claude do it, etc. Also didn’t lean on my network much (could’ve, would’ve if I’d been unemployed and hard up, but prefer coming in the front door if I can). Was open to changing that if needed, happy I didn’t have to. I also limited myself to one company at a time once we moved past recruiter/manager screens (scheduling around my current job and life stuff was too hard beyond that). This would have made it hard to cross shop offers, and is probably something I’ve have adjusted if I’d gotten a lower offer.

Retro/Takeaways

• Overall: definitely less frothy than 2022, a little worse than 2017 when I last did this seriously, far less bleak than I was expecting. Which is honestly a pretty important takeaway. It’s easy to convince yourself to not even bother looking around because the job market sucks, and that’s a mistake if it means you continue to slog through a stagnant or toxic job.
• First response to offer was similar to last time at about a month, that mostly limited by me needing to schedule interviews around work and some home renovations.
• Series B-C comp is still decent, at least at senior and above. Maybe a little less frothy than 2022, but comparable to what folks were paying in 2020-2021.
• No responses at all from big tech, which wasn’t too surprising. I didn’t optimize for them, and I assume they see a lot of applications from former FAANG folks who need/want their comp. Still curious to try one again someday, not worth it this time.
• Some will read my LC prep as “2 months of LeetCoding to get a job with 20 YoE” and despair. I’m sympathetic to that. I looked at it as: I know companies I want to work for ask live coding questions, I know I can do live coding questions if I prep, I don’t want to lose an otherwise good job because I didn’t prep. I was also a poor student, and blew off plenty of LC study days because of work stress, doing stuff with friends, powder days, etc. If I'd been focused on this I would have gone a lot faster.
• I’m happy I did NeetCode 150 – I like the CS theory, the format makes me nostalgic for competitive programming in college, and it gave me confidence going into screens – but it was overkill for my target companies. Knowing how to memoize with a hash, how to use a set, how to find things in a sorted list and basic tree stuff would have covered every screen I did. This probably changes if you’re targeting FAANG.
• The system design panels I encountered felt dialed down a bit compared to what you see on the interview prep YouTube channels. At least for my startups/unicorns, I think someone who’s run a significant backend system at scale would have been able to pass them cold. Mine were honestly pretty fun; less adversarial bar raiser, more collaborating with fellow senior people on some toy thing.

Happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Reading all the posts about recent layoffs on LI, blind, etc., led me to think, some of these guys may have aged out of tech industry. Few guys were aware and talking about early retirements.

From my experiences, here’s how I break this down.

20 - 30, no worries.

30 - 40, 25% chance with outdated skills, burnout, etc.

40 - 50, 50% chance of aging out.

50 - 60, 75% chance of aging out.

60++, 95% chance of aging out.

There are some outlier guys with exceptional networks, tech skills, etc. but there is a definite age out date.

Whenever a huge concert or event goes live on BMS, they put everyone into a waiting room. You log in, you get a queue number, and when your number comes up, you can book your tickets. From the outside it looks simple, but I’m really curious how it works behind the scenes.

Do they actually maintain a giant queue of users somewhere? How do they decide how many people to let through at a time so the booking system doesn’t crash? And once you finally get in, how do they make sure the same seat isn’t sold twice while thousands of people are trying to pay at the same time?

I’m guessing it’s some combination of Redis/Kafka for queues and a database for seat locking, but would love to know if anyone here has worked on similar large scale systems or has insights into how it’s usually designed.

As a percentage.

Let's define "don't understand" as: there are major chunks of the code in the PR where you're not really parsing through so if you were to try to copy the implementation from memory, it would probably look pretty different. These could be totally legitimate reasons: Don't have time, can't be bothered, trust in your team, etc.

We are valued at $500 million, but I don't have the full equity agreement yet. The business is both, Services and SaaS. Next week I want to ask to finalize it, what should I look out for?

I've prepared following questions, but seems like a bit too many:

SaaS Business Value & Structure

• Current standalone valuation of the SaaS unit my 1.5% applies to?
• Is my 1.5% calculated on a fully diluted basis? Total shares outstanding?
• Type of equity (common stock, preferred shares, or options)?
• Any scenarios where my 1.5% could be adjusted or reduced?
• Can you share the cap table for the SaaS unit?

Vesting & Timeline

• Exact meaning of “standard vesting”?
• What percentage will be vested at the partial sale in ~6 months?
• Are there acceleration provisions on change of control?

Transaction Impact

• Will the SaaS unit be part of the main company sale or separate?
• Current liquidation preferences for common shareholders?
• Any dilution risks before or during the transaction?
• Does my equity include anti-dilution clauses? If so, which type?
• Will I have drag-along or tag-along rights as a common shareholder?

Company Structure & Rebrand Clarification

• If the company is restructured, spun off or assets moved, will my 1.5% automatically carry over?
• How does a restructuring affect my liquidation rights and vesting schedule?

Also what happens if a SaaS is sold?

Obviously, this post is my point of view and the "hero's narrative." So I like to get opinions of those in UI/UX. In my org, they have a lot influence in the direction of the product. Ideas from engineering are usually cast aside.

I come from a very customer-focus background. My purpose is to make the customer's life better; reduce friction, churn and pain points. So if someone doesn't like to use our product and feel more comfortable using their existing flows, I accomodate. They have their data in AirTable? Fine, I create an adaptor that sync. They store all their files in sharepoint or dropbox? Fine, I have an fileStorage Adapter to import their files so they don't have to re-upload their dozen of existing files. They hate going through 20 pages of data entry, I give them the ability to upload an Excel, I parse it. If there are conflicts, unknowns, I build a UI so they can map the right field.

I do this because I have leverage in building POCs and forks. I can take our product, fork it, create a new canary branch, load it up with features to let test users A/B test. And All the time, test users prefer simplicity, one click, less pages. It is ugly button in bold. And the modals look ugly but they are functional. Then business loves the idea . Then it actually gets backlogged and work on. It is rinse and repeat. Over and over. Often, UI/UX comes up with a feature, I already had a feature branch of it running 6 months prior. It is like, now they need it once they see the pain points of using the product themselves. It is hilarious, "now you want multiple variations of the output? For those use cases I pointed out to last year? I guess you have to spend 4 hours on that task versus a one-click solution."

They refuse a feature, discount it. I show it, sample user base love it, now they have to do the design. It is like they are only focused on pretty pages and nothing functional. As if, where is the UX (user experience) in UI/UX?

Has anyone ever dealt with this. I am creating work for engineering and I believe projects for design. They can build the screens, the modals and interfaces. It always feels like bad blood. There is no collaboration.

Hi

I am an IT consultant and I have worked as a freelancer for almost all of my 23 years of career. I am a hands on software programmer and have worked on various domains like full stack development to data engineering and analysis. I mainly get work where I augment a team and bring in my technical expertise.

Recently what I have seen is that clients do reach out to me, but all through their discussions they somehow want me to continue to do work for them for free. Initially I do entertain them by giving few presentations on how a set of technologies or approach would solve their needs, but somehow indirectly they keep wanting me to do more and more. Somewhere then I draw the line and I mostly say that I would need to understand their system better under a contract to provide a more details POC or a workable solution. Then I suddenly get ghosted.

I remember in 2000's client even used to pay for a small POC, but now all this has disappeared. Now they want the entire solution to be built free of cost and they may pay only after using it for few months and they see some value accrued to them.

Is this just the norm these days ?

Isn't this unfair for devs, who spend months of effort without any pay ?

I love remote work. Have been fully remote since covid. Plenty of benefits for me personally. But it seems to me like people just aren't working as "hard". Not talking about hours, but innovation and excellence. Seems to me like a whole bunch of people do very little due to being remote. Also it's pretty rough for new hires or juniors/interns. As I staff IC on an infra team, I don't collaborate like engineers do on other teams (e.g. daily iteration on product development), but I can't see how remote work doesn't hurt collaboration. And to top it off, we used to have a fun office that had a really good vibe that that I legitimately enjoyed going to. we still have an office but it's a depressing wasteland of vacant standing desks and meeting rooms, so I go maybe once a quarter.

I know this sub skews heavily towards remote work, but does anyone feel the same?

I have a new manager who loves to constantly change priorities, add new initiatives/ meetings, reassign tasks from one person to another, and ask for in-depth status updates on things multiple times per week.

Despite many hints from the team (and people overtly letting him know that he is micromanaging), he seems oblivious to the fact that what he's doing is hurting productivity, not helping it. I know this because he has confided in me in private meetings things like "others on the team might think that I'm micromanaging, but actually... <insert his justifications for micromanaging>".

Personally, my productivity has taken a HUGE hit since him coming on. He has assigned a new, large project to me, saying that it would be the top priority and the only thing that I would work on until it is finished. (He never asked about my existing work, and I still have other hanging tasks). Since then, he has shifted gears multiple times on what the priorities are.

I have already played the "I can swap to task B, but that will put task A behind" card multiple times. Again, he seems oblivious to the fact that there are tradeoffs, and that constantly switching priorities carries its own cost.

He likes to ping for detailed status updates at random times of the day. "Hey, do you have a minute?"s that become a 30+ minute meetings in the middle of focused work. I got him to start scheduling meetings instead. But even then, he had decided to stick meetings at awkward times (like right in the middle of lunch), which I also had to push back on.

He has also done multiple knee-jerk shifts of project ownership between members of the team. Like re-assigning long-term responsibilities from person A to person B so that person A can focus on what the "priority" of the moment happens to be. I shouldn't need to explain why this is bad.

Currently, he's breathing down my neck to finish task X (which both was and wasn't the priority at various times in the past week) so that I can make progress on task Y. He doesn't seem to realize that it would probably all get done faster if he just took a vacation for a couple of weeks and actually let me do the work.

Personally, it also feels like shit to have someone try to push progress faster (while constantly slowing you down). I want to feel like I did good work because of my own abilities, not because of a outside pressure.

The guy seems to mean well, but seems either oblivious to or in active denial of the fact that what he's doing is hurting the team's productivity, and making the work environment worse for everyone.

It is worth trying to change this guy? And if so, how should I do it?

I had to accept to work for a startup that has some of the Crypto buzzword in its name. Since then I am contacted less and less on LinkedIn.

I’m working on a Shopify-like project with most of the core features. One feature I’m trying to figure out is templates. I don’t want full drag-and-drop customization like Shopify, but I do want to provide a template-based system so users can choose from predefined designs.

Here’s my current plan:

• I’ll have a templates table in the database with fields like id, name, path, and cover_img.
• The user can select a template, and that will be stored as their active template.
• On the frontend (Vue.js), I’ll have a folder for each template. Each template will include components like Header, Footer, etc.
• When the website loads, I’ll fetch the user and their selected template from the backend, then dynamically load the corresponding components from that template folder.

Basically, the site will render the components from the selected template folder.

My questions:

• Is this a good approach or a bad one?
• Are there better ways to implement a template system?
• Should I consider a different structure for flexibility or performance?
• Also any advice before starting the project?

Would love to hear from anyone who has built something similar!