DSE role change?

Thinking of taking a break for approx 1/1.5 years from tech, and trying for UPSC / PSC. Wanted to understand how hard would it be to get back in corporate after the gap ? If someone has successfully tried and can share their experience, it would be really helpful.

I have seen from the place I work at that growth (in terms of monetory benefits and opportunities) is much better for SDE folks than Data Science people. 1. For freshers it's easy to learn to write css and get complete responsibility of a task henceforth on completion getting more recognition and praise than in Data Science. Good tasks are almost never given directly to freshers due to steep learning curve in the field hence leading to lower growth rate. 2. SDE folks generally have tasks divided into sprints which make them a lot more easily trackable and appreciable at reviews, whereas in DS at least at the place I have worked tasks are given haphazardly and almost never account to much while reviews. 3. Another observation is that folks who have worked for about 3-4 years in SDE profiles have now become team leads whereas DS folks have not been promoted at the same pace Looking at all this, in my opinion data science folks are treated as second class citizens as compared to sde folks. All this might not be true for all the firms, and I want to know if anyone else has some views on this. I'm frustrated!

Wondering how much does not knowing DSA and lack of practice of LC hurt your chances of getting hired ? For context I am an sde with 1 yoe from tier 1 college been out of touch with dsa for over 1.5 yrs and I am planning on making my first job switch, I believe I know my job very well and am good at what I do better than most of the people around me but just out of touch with dsa.

I have around 5+ years of experience. I am an sde-2 currently that too because I made a switch. I think I am not able to crack the formula for getting promoted within the company. I made three switch even though I had decent bond with manager and colleagues somehow I didn’t get promoted I have spent about 2+ years in my last two companies. Not sure how do I plan my day or what I need to change. My ambition is to become director/ vp someday but at this pace looks like either I will be an sde-2 or have to leave tech. Please give your suggestions as what to do

Hi folks, I recently got laid off from a startup where 50% of the engineering team was let go. I was working as an SDE and during a restructuring, my role was changed to SDE-2 without any increase in pay or responsibilities. I have a total of 2.5 years of experience. In my first company (where I worked for a year), there weren't many projects, so I didn't have the opportunity to learn or code much. However, in my second company, I primarily worked on the backend using Go, Django, Kafka, MongoDB, & PostgreSQL. I realize that although I gained exposure in my second job, I didn't delve deeply into the technologies. I mainly focused on completing business tasks quickly, learning new things just to finish the task at hand, without solidifying my understanding afterward. My experience seems suitable for an SDE-2 role, but I'm unsure if I can perform the role with complete honesty and may struggle. Some friends in similar situations reassure me that this struggle is common in SDE-2 roles. However, I feel I might be better off starting again as an SDE-1, focusing on my weak areas, and aiming for a promotion later. There are very few SDE-1 job openings currently. I am actively interviewing for SDE-2, and not able to clear system design interviews. Tbh, I feel very humiliated as when I am not able to answer their questions it feels like I am wasting their time or they would be thinking: Oh this guy has been working for so long and doesn't even know anything. Now I get it why people think Indian Software engineers are not that good in comparison to other countries' devs: the reason is people like me. This realization burdens me with guilt, occupying my thoughts constantly. However, I am confident that I can crack SDE-1 easily. I have good DSA & good enough LLD, &HLD skills for SDE1. I am looking for companies who can match my prev Salary: 22 L, 2 Bonus. Can u help how to navigate this career situation effectively without increasing my guilt or feeling constantly humiliated?

Got a role promotion to SDE 2 but hike provided with role change was very minimal i.e 10%. I am disappointed with this as I have been rated very well by my peers. I am thinking of asking to reverse the role change for a better hike. Would like the grapevine community to share some thoughts about this.

Hi everyone, I am currently working as SDE. I do my work very well and i receive accolades from manager and my team members as well. But whenever i discuss my growth ideas with manager, i always receive same feedback i.e. i need to know about the other peoples are working on which task and i need to provide feedback in design discussion call. I am bit confused. I know on very high level about the task but not very much context. And i always provides my pov in design discussion if i am aware of that particular thing. My of our team member's work doesn't overlap with each other. In that case for me it is very hard to share my pov as i don't have more context. Any suggestions how can i overcome two above problems. Thanks all

I work in a small startup, we have 10 people in Frontend Team. 2 SDE-2, rest all SDE-1. I joined as Sde-1, when I joined them, we were 4(2 SDE-2 and 2 SDE-1). At the time of joining, they had a messy codebase, nobody cared about writing good, optimized code etc. Whenever I got chance to work on old feature, I used to re-write entire code from scratch, made reusable functions, components and moved common functionalities there, all these made the UI better, platform stable. Worked on optimization and performance. These folks never cared about all these things. Also started peer reviewing everyone's PRs, explained them various design patterns and made them write re-usable components, optimized, bug-free code and other things. Now I came to know, all these efforts of my mine never reached my manager to due manipulation by one of the SDE-2. My manager likes this guy and allowed him to handle the FE team. This guy has shown that he's the one who took all these initiative and he got all these things done by the team. He involved the other SDE-2 in this game. Fast forward 1 year, I see most of my code has been slightly modified by him, moved to new file and my actual file is deleted. He has done this in order to remove my GitHub history. I'm now getting frustrated and don't know how to handle this. Resigning is not an option and raising with manager won't help as he's slightly biased and won't believe me. Any help would be appreciated. TIA

I have been working for my current employer for over 2 years as PM. Most of the employees haven't received any formal appraisal over the years. The company is going through some of the financial stress till last Dec. But it seems things are getting back in order as no more salary delays at my level. I have heard and confirmed that few have received salary hikes either due to retention or other ways. Searching for a job over the past 1 year but unable to land any yet. Its getting difficult to manage financially living on rent in mumbai, committing everyday to office and all. HOW COULD I CONVINCE CEO OR WHAT SHOULD I WRITE THEM TO PURSUE THIS. PLS HELPPPP....🥺