They swore AI code would make life easier. Spoiler: it did, if your idea of “easier” is reviewing a pull request that looks like it was stitched together by three interns and a blender. Nothing like a “tiny update” that drops 600 lines of duplicated functions, a casual console.log('debug lol') left in prod, and an AI-invented variable name so bad even my cat walked out. At this point, AI coding doesn’t replace junk, it just scales it like Costco bulk packs.. and reviewers happily rubber-stamp it with “LGTM 👍.” Two sprints later, I’ve aged 50 years, and everyone’s calling me Marjorie, 27, software dev, thriving. I wrote down how I try to keep code meaningful (not just AI-amplified junk) before it gives me more gray hair : https://www.codeant.ai/blogs/code-review-tips

My honest review of Scaler after paying around ₹3 lakhs and joining in April 2024.

First, DSA — I’ll give credit where it’s due. DSA was actually very good and well structured. Before joining Scaler, I had almost zero knowledge of DSA, and after completing it, I became confident enough to solve even hard-level problems. So DSA was definitely the best part for me.

But after that, the value started going down.

SQL was just average in my opinion. They skipped/covered very little of some important topics like normalization, CAP theorem, window functions, triggers, etc. You can learn SQL from many other places for a much lower cost.

The backend project was honestly a waste of time for me. It was around 1 month, but mostly basic Spring Boot. I didn't feel there was any real-world value in the project. If you put that project on your resume, I don't think it gives you any significant advantage.

Then Java concepts — OOP, multithreading, etc. were taught, but many important concepts weren't covered deeply enough. LLD was also not up to the mark in my opinion.

HLD is a different story. If you already have software development experience, you may understand it better, but for someone coming from a non-tech background with no real industry experience, it can be extremely difficult to understand. Personally, I don't think HLD should be the main focus when you're just starting your career. You can learn it properly after getting 2–3 years of experience.

And now the biggest issue: **PLACEMENT.**

Placement was the main reason I joined Scaler. I graduated in 2024 and was coming from a non-tech background, so I specifically joined because I thought Scaler would help me transition into tech.

But honestly, my placement experience was extremely disappointing.

I waited for a long time and got only around 3 (in that 2 was for internship of 15k and 20 k and one was full time for 5lpa that to in mumbai) interview opportunities. Even those opportunities didn't really lead anywhere. On the website, you see average packages like ₹12 LPA for freshers, but the opportunities I personally saw included ₹15k–₹20k/month stipend roles.

Initially, I thought maybe it was just happening to me. But after talking to people from my batch, I realized many others were facing the same issue. In my batch, a lot of people were still waiting for placement opportunities, and only a very small number of people had actually been placed just 3-4 in the 150 students and i even talk to the senior batch people same situation there to.

I'm not saying nobody gets placed through Scaler. Obviously, some people do. But I'm talking about my experience and what I saw around me.

And honestly, if you're joining Scaler mainly for the curriculum, you can build almost the same roadmap yourself for a fraction of the cost.

DSA → Striver's free playlist + LeetCode
Java/Spring Boot → Udemy/YouTube
LLD → YouTube/Striver
Microservices → Udemy/YouTube
HLD → Arpit Bhayani or other resources, but honestly you don't need to spend money on HLD when you're just starting out.

You can probably build a complete roadmap for ₹20–25k or even less if you use free resources properly.

The biggest thing I learned is that **real work experience is much more valuable than just completing courses**.

If you're struggling to get your first job, don't wait 1–2 years only for a placement program. Take an internship, even if it's unpaid initially, work at a small startup, do freelance work, whatever helps you get real experience. A growing career gap can make things harder later.

So if you're thinking about paying ₹3 lakhs for Scaler **only because you believe they'll get you placed** its totally waste of money they you will not even get 3lpa package from here .

This is just my personal experience, but I genuinely wish someone had told me this before I spent ₹3 lakhs.

AND ONE MORE IMPORTANT THING:

Be aware of the scammers who keep saying that Scaler is amazing or that it is definitely worth the money. There are people who are getting around **₹13K for every successful referral**, so obviously there is a financial incentive for them to convince you to join.

Because of this, you'll see many people saying, "Scaler is really good, definitely join," especially under YouTube videos.

For almost every Scaler-related YouTube video, take a look at the comments. You'll find people sharing their **phone numbers, LinkedIn profiles, or Google Forms** and asking you to contact them so they can refer you.

PLEASE DON'T FALL FOR THIS.

If you really want to join Scaler after reading my review, **I can refer you too.** I'll also get around ₹13K for the successful referral.

So if you really want to waste your money and your time, please contact me — I'll happily refer you and get ₹13K for helping you ruin your own career.

**Jokes apart, please do your own research. Don't join a ₹2–3 lakh course just because someone in a YouTube comment is telling you how amazing it is when they have a direct financial incentive to refer you.**

Hi, I am a 2019 Btech passout; below I am mentioning my growth in an IT company.

2019: I got selected by college placement; that company was a mid-level company; the package was not good, but I joined that company as a trainee software engineer; at that time, my starting package was 1.2L; in my 2nd year, I got promoted; my package was 3.

2021: I switched to Infosys as a system engineer with a 4.5 LPA. As that project was a support project, no career growth was there. Due to that, I left Infosys within a year.

2021 Nov: I joined CGI as a Senior Software Engineer with 8 LPA. Here I learnt many things, then after working a year I got an 18 LPA package from another MNC, then I put paper due to that good hike. but my manager retained me with 14 LPA

fresh out of college in 2018. joined a bangalore startup as an intern for ₹10,000/month.

had a ₹25k offer from a service company. turned it down. everyone thought i was being stupid.

my logic was simple which is I wanted to write real code from day one. not spend 6 months in training.

here's how it actually went:

2018 - ₹10,000/mo (intern, bangalore startup) shared a 2bhk with 3 roommates in koramangala. survived on maggi. learned react and node by debugging production crashes at 2am.

2019 - ₹25,000/mo first full-time role at the same startup. started building features end to end.

2020 - ₹35,000/mo full stack. started making actual architectural decisions.

2021 - ₹45,000/mo → then jumped to ₹80,000/mo this is where things changed. i spent 4-5 months learning blockchain at night while still employed. cryptozombies, patrick collins' youtube bootcamp, two side projects on github. applied to 15 companies, got offers from 2. nearly doubled my salary overnight.

2022 - ₹3,50,000/mo french blockchain startup found me on linkedin. three interview rounds. offered ₹3.5L/month — 4x my previous salary. took it.

worked remotely for 1.5 years. used that time to quietly build my own company on the side.

2024 - left the ₹3.5L salary went full time on teckas technologies. we're now 9 people, clients in india, europe and the us, 6 months of consecutive revenue growth.

a few things i'd do differently:

• specialized 6 months too late. was comfortable when i should have been uncomfortable

• didn't build in public at all. wish i had started documenting from year 1

• underestimated how much financial stuff matters — taxes, contracts, invoicing. learned the hard way

the one decision that mattered most: taking the ₹10k internship over the ₹25k service company job. everything else was downstream of that. happy to answer questions.

wrote the full breakdown here if anyone wants it: developerstory.xyz/stories/from-10k-intern-to-tech-entrepreneur

found this gold comment from one of the youtube video

My Company has a 3 Months Notice Period, I am desperately trying to switch but no one will hire me, I had to finally resign to even apply.

Yesterday, after clearing every freaking round, even cleared by the CTO, the CEO rejected my profile because my notice period was 45 days when I clearly told HR about the duration of my Notice Period.

I wasted 3 weeks with that company and everyone is hiring either immediate joiners or just not excepting resumes, I can' t take my resignation back and I don't have a lot of time left as I have bills to pay and cant skip a paycheck.

I will be unemployed by November this year, plus the Project manager has already assigned me to interns to debug their AI garbage.

Please be careful about notice periods It can be too difficult to get out.

yo flipkart you have just ruined your entire website 😭😭😭
so buggy and vibecoded feels

I recently attended a meeting with a department commissioner. Our IT team presented a solution meant to improve internal workflows and make services easier for common people. She liked the solution, but said something that stayed with me: “The solution is good, but due to ego issues of department workers, it won’t be possible.” After working with government IT projects for about two years now, I’ve started believing that ego is a much bigger problem than lack of funds, technology, or even corruption. Systems don’t resist change because it’s bad. They resist change because it exposes them. Time and again I’ve seen: Solutions that genuinely help citizens Seniors agreeing that the idea makes sense Yet implementation failing quietly Not because the solution is wrong, but because: It didn’t originate from that department It exposes inefficiencies It threatens existing control or relevance The sad part is that common people end up paying the price — through delays, inefficiency, and outdated systems. Sometimes I honestly feel that corruption comes later; ego creates the real bottleneck first, at least in my experience. The resistance is rarely direct. Instead, it shows up as: Endless delays “We’ll discuss this later” Committees, re-committees, and silence I’m curious — is this uniquely an Indian government problem, or is this how large public systems work across the world? For those of you who’ve worked in government, public sector, or large institutions: Have you found any real way to beat this kind of ego? Is there a practical strategy to push tech-driven change without hitting these walls every time? Genuinely looking to learn from others’ experiences.

Designed an Amazon/Flipkart-scale e-commerce backend HLD from scratch.

The architecture covers User, Product, Search, Cart, Order, Payment, Inventory, Shipping, and Notification services.

Technology choices include PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch, and Cassandra.

Sharing the architecture diagram to get feedback from the community.

A few things I'd like to discuss:

1. Are the database choices appropriate for these services?

2. What potential bottlenecks do you see?

3. How would you handle consistency across Order, Payment, and Inventory?

4. What would you improve in this architecture?

Looking forward to constructive technical feedback!

Join our SaaS-based startup as a Developer Intern/Fresher and work on real-world projects under the guidance of senior developers. Remote role with stipend provided, perfect for those eager to learn and grow in a startup environment.

Interested DM

Hello guys. I am looking for companies that offer 6 month internships with a good stipend (60k+).

I know some like Google, Zomato, Agoda and Cisco. Would you guys suggest some more ?

There are many startups and less known companies that offer SDE internships to freshers of 4th year students for the duration of 6 months.

there’s “clean code.” there’s “production code.” and then there’s vibe coding, the sacred ritual of opening your laptop at ungodly hours, slapping random libraries together like lego, and somehow building both a working feature and a security vulnerability in one sitting. No jira tickets, no design docs. Just pure chaos energy and ctrl+s.

Half the time you wake up wondering why it even works. the other half, you’re just praying no one ever audits that repo.

i actually wrote a whole thing on vibe coding a while back, trying to make sense of this madness. if you’ve ever been possessed by the urge to code at 2AM with lo-fi beats and questionable decisions, you’ll feel it: https://www.codeant.ai/blogs/vibe-coding

Do give it a read.. and let me know what more should I talk about in my upcoming pieces

You ever hit that point in debugging where your patience is on zero, your caffeine is on 100, and the only logical solution left is… deleting the problem? Yeah, that was me last night. I didn’t fix the bug, I just made sure the bug no longer had a reason to exist. Feature gone. Peace restored. Developer: 1, Codebase: -27. For a brief, beautiful moment, I felt like a god. No red lines. No warnings. Just sweet, deceitful silence. Then, of course, QA pinged me the next morning like, “uhh, where did the feature go?” I said, “bug fixed.” They said, “feature deleted.” Tomato, tomahto. Anyway, if you’ve ever had one of those nights, where you start debugging and end up soul-searching, I wrote a blog called “Stop Writing Junk Code.” It’s half therapy, half tough love, and maybe the intervention your repo’s been crying for. Check it out here: https://www.codeant.ai/blogs/code-review-tips

P.S. - Go read it before your next “fix” ends up in the trash bin too. 😭

I’ve been a software developer for around 6 years.

Before vibe coding/Claude Code became a big part of my workflow, I actually enjoyed programming. I liked getting stuck on a problem, thinking through the logic, trying different approaches, finally solving it, and getting that little dopamine hit when everything worked.

Now my workflow is basically:

Give Claude a prompt → watch it write the code → click “Yes” → repeat.

Technically, I’m getting more work done. But mentally, it feels like I’m sitting in a prison.

Every day, 9 AM to 6 PM, I’m in front of the computer, but I’m not really solving problems anymore. I’m mostly reviewing AI-generated solutions and approving changes.

The weird part is that the exact thing that made me choose software development in the first place is slowly disappearing from my work.

I don’t necessarily hate AI. I actually use Claude Code a lot because it’s useful.

But I miss the feeling of building something with my own brain.

Has anyone else experienced this after adopting vibe coding?

I am applying over LinkedIn, have applied more than 100 times over different company even for VISA I am not getting call back. I don’t know, is this resume not good?

I think it's a bit rude and lack of respect from the interviewers side. I have witnessed many such interviewers. Personally, I always felt awkward starting in to black screen and camera without any attachments. it's mostly indian thing. This is not much present in other cultures.

went past 4k this week, pretty wild for a repo that's 12 days old

it turns off apple intelligence on macOS 27, deletes the models it downloads and lets you undo every change

it's native swift and swiftui, MIT licensed

code's all here if you want to dig in or send a PR https://github.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI

A junior texted me telling me about the Job description of a company hiring for fresher role in his college.

Looks like the company wants a Data Engineer, Full Stack developer, Machine Learning engineering everything 🙂👍

Hi, I’m a 27F software development engineer working in a US based product company, currently preparing for a job switch.

I’m looking for friends in the 25–29 age range who are actively preparing for a switch.

The idea is to:

• Help each other stay consistent

• Discuss DSA, LLD/HLD, system design, and interviews

• Share resources, mock questions, and experiences

This is for mutual preparation and support.

Looking for people who are serious, respectful, and willing to put in effort.

If there’s any existing closed or focused prep group, I’d be happy to join.

Otherwise, feel free to reach out if this aligns with you.

Please Note: Low-effort messages like “hi”, “hey”, or “I want to join” will be ignored. Please share your yoe and techstack. College students and freshers, please don’t dm.