L4 SWE in Google Cloud Warsaw - TC 130K USD
Senior Software Engineer BBG London - TC 200K USD

Not an EU citizen.
Is Google's name on resume worth it? How realistic is a transfer to London within google later?
I'm leaning towards BBG.

Hi r/cscareerquestionsEU!

I recently graduated about 4 months ago and I just received my first job offer! I have zero prior professional experience (no full-time roles, just my degree and some personal/uni projects). I'd love to get your thoughts on the offer and what my career trajectory might look like.

The Offer: * Role: DevOps Engineer * Company: Capgemini * Location: Germany (Hybrid/Remote depending on client) * Salary: €59,000 base (gross)

My Questions:

1. Is this a competitive starting salary? Given that I have no professional experience, €59k sounds pretty solid to me, but I'd love to know how this compares to the current German market for an entry-level/Junior DevOps role.

2. Career Progression & Salary Bumps? How fast can I expect to develop my skills here? For those who started as juniors in Germany, what did your timeline look like for promotions and significant salary spikes? What milestones, skills, or certifications should I aim for in my first 1-2 years to accelerate my growth?

3. Capgemini Specifics? Does anyone have experience working as a DevOps Engineer at Capgemini (especially in the DACH region)? I'm particularly curious about:

   • The tech stack you typically get exposed to (I assume it's very client-dependent?).
   • The general work-life balance and culture.
   • Internal training, mentorship, and support for fresh grads.
   • Is it a strong stepping stone for my career?

Any advice, insights, or tips on what to expect in my first few months would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

TL;DR: Fresh grad (0 YOE) offered €59k as a DevOps Engineer at Capgemini in Germany. Asking if it's a good offer, what the promotion/salary timeline looks like, and any specific experiences working at Capgemini.

I applied through OliveGreen for a position related to Revolut. The recruiter was based in Macedonia, and I went through the first interview.

Afterwards, I received an email saying I had been selected for a second interview. I was expecting an invitation or some information about the next steps, but I never received anything.

It has now been more than three months, and I've been completely ghosted.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with Revolut recruitment ?

TLDR: Do you learn in your free time or just whatever you pick up at work, what do you learn (programming as practice or theory, system design, etc.) and how do you learn it (projects, tutorials, etc.) in order to progress in your career?

--

A year ago I finished my Master's degree in Computer Science and got a job at a smaller company where I work as a programmer (full stack).

Before I got the job I went through Udemy courses and various tutorials, read blogs and similar stuff about Javascript, Typescript, ReactJS, NextJS, NodeJS, etc., and through university I learned about data structures and algorithms (leetcode), system design (e.g. Designing Data Intensive Applications and going through the islands, etc.). Basically, I have a solid foundation and I'm interested in everything and actively follow what's happening, but I'm far from something you would call a programmer (lack of practice that I'll never get?).

Today, I do all the work I get with the help of AI (mostly Codex + Claude) and I literally write little to no code (and I didn't really write much code before either, but I do have some small projects).

So my main focus is to define the problem and smartly design the solution (with suggestions from AI) and let AI do the work?

So I work as a "programmer", but I don't know how to write code, but I know how to understand it and recognize when something is good or bad.

--

And now I'm thinking, today I can build an application from start to finish, or basically build something that directly contributes and makes money, while 6,7 years ago I wouldn't be able to build a single feature of that product, or it would take me 3 months to do what I can do in a couple of weeks.

Meaning I would be building one application for a year or more and in the end I would have a 10x worse product than what I can build today with AI (and all of that without the practice of writing code because that's a waste of time during work).

And at first that seems pretty scary.

But then I realized that I was actually never interested in writing code, I always wanted to build something concrete and that's exactly where AI helps me, to turn my ideas into reality.

And what I see as the future, or what I should focus on in order to maximize my knowledge, as well as my income, is to build as comprehensive a picture as possible of how to take a product from zero to the end (e.g. even sales, marketing, ux/ui, product planning, frontend, backend, databases, devops, scalability, system design, designing real-time systems, etc.), basically to learn the theory really well and have a good understanding instead of spending my time learning syntax and code because with that knowledge I can actually contribute to something.

But then again, I should also focus on learning how to "actually program", and the problem with that is how do you now, when you have all these tools, go back to the stone age and manually program and spend your time reading documentation and debugging without AI and building an application from scratch?

--

My goal isn't to become the best programmer nor to be good, I want to go deep into this field, but at the same time I want to maximize my income so I can live my life, not just survive on an average or slightly above-average salary.

I'm also interested in business and would like to start something of my own in the future.

Hi all! 28M, 4yoe, I previously posted a similar question, but I managed to negotiate.

I received an offer from Amsterdam in a little company AI focused.
The offer is at follows:

gross * 12 * 8% holiday allowance * 10% pension (which I can spend "as I like"). This amounts to a total of 80.7k.

I currently work remotely in the South of Italy for 38k + 3k variable + meal paid and other little benefits (little welfare).

Problem: I think the indication regarding the pension is actually deceiving and inflating the gross. The total compensation includes the pension inside to arrive to the final gross of 80.7k as the offer does not include a pension scheme. I am worried thus that the real offer to compare to would be instead ~73k, which is basically the compensation minus the 10%. This makes the comparison a bit problematic.

What do you think about this offer? Is my concern real? I am worried it can be a huge red flag. Note: I already negotiated a 7.5% increase from the base offer.

I am also considering whether this offer is ok for my current YoE.

thank you!

Hi everyone,

I’m a final-year CS undergrad preparing for technical interviews with Canonical for a Web Frontend Engineer (JS, CSS, React, Flutter) role via their Fast Track pipeline.

I’ve passed the application and written statement stages, and I have 3 specific technical interviews scheduled:

1. Quality Interview
2. Software Architecture & Engineering Skills Interview
3. Web & UI Skills Interview

Since Canonical has a unique hiring process and explicitly forbids AI tools during interviews, I want to make sure I’m thoroughly prepared for real human-to-human technical evaluation.

For anyone who has interviewed with Canonical for web/frontend engineering (or currently works there), I’d really appreciate your insights on:

• Specific Topics/Questions: What kind of practical or conceptual questions are typically asked in these 3 specific domains (Quality, Architecture, Web & UI)?
• Live Coding / Screen Share Format: Do they ask you to write a React/TS component from scratch in VS Code, debug broken code, or do a live walkthrough of your own project repository?
• Quality & Architecture Expectations: What key concepts do they focus on during the Quality round (testing strategies, CI/CD, edge cases) and Architecture round (API design, state management, full-stack data flow)?
• General Advice: Any tips on how to structure explanations or mistakes to avoid?

Any sample questions, past experiences, or prep recommendations would mean a lot. Thanks in advance!

Final-year engineering student (non-EU), looking for a ~6-month research internship starting January 2027 in security research. I started reaching out this month and wanted to sanity-check the timeline.

Two well-known research groups replied quickly and politely, both effectively "no room":

• One said they had no intern slots left for that period and weren't taking more.
• The other said they had no slot and no active project in my area at the moment.

Both were friendly, same-day replies — not knocks on my background, just capacity. But it's got me wondering whether I'm simply late.

For people who've done research or security internships in the EU:

• Do spring/January slots usually fill this early — mostly gone by September?
• Is there a big gap between academic groups (seem to fill early) and companies (do they recruit later)?
• For a January start, when should I realistically have started, and is it still worth pushing now?

Not discouraged , just calibrating so I aim right. Appreciate any input.

I just watched a video by a YouTuber who reflected on some of the mistakes she made throughout her career. She currently works for her first employer again as a Principal Data Scientist.

In the video, she talks about how she used to view job hopping as a positive thing because it meant higher salaries and faster career progression. Looking back, however, she says she would have tried harder to get promoted internally, because leadership positions are often given to people who have been with the company for a longer time.She compares her career to that of some of the people she worked with at her first company, who now have significantly more influence and more senior titles.

She also says that she should have played the corporate game more. Visibility is extremely important, and you need to actively make sure that the right people see and recognize your work.

At the same time, she acknowledges that career progression also depends heavily on luck: being in the right place at the right time, having a manager who particularly likes you and wants to support your career, and so on.

I find myself questioning job hopping for similar reasons. Obviously, it doesn't make sense to stay at a company if there are no opportunities for growth or advancement.

How do you feel about job hopping, and what would you do differently if you could go back and make your career decisions again?

I was pretty excited to break into fintech as a software engineer, but then I saw Revolut's employee reviews. Has anyone worked in the Growth, Measurements & Automations team? How's the work life balance there? How reasonable are the KPIs? I used to work in a high performance always on-call type domain at the start of my career and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but in the last 3 years I've been working in a slow-paced environment so the switch seems scary. I don't mind working hard and being on-call, but I'm scared of job security

Hey everyone. I am looking for brutal honesty on how to position myself in the EU deep tech market.

I am about to graduate from a Master in AI with a year of working on Diffusion LLMs. While studying I also worked in a small startup as Founding AI Engineer for three years know, 2 years as part-time and 1 as full time.

My uni is a very know one in Europe, but it's cs course is young so it's probably not target for companies. Also the startup is still in 1-10 phase so not very know yet.

I make good money here and I have it pretty good. The problem is that it's a product company, and I want to move towards deep tech to get some experience/money before starting my own.

I am looking for Research/Engineering position in every EU tech hub.

My questions are:

- Should I lead with my work experience, or with my degree on the CV?

- Do I bother sending CV's without referral to FAANG, deep tech scale up and top eu labs or do I just bet on LinkedIn and connections?

- My perception is that I should ahead of normal AI graduates. I don't understand if it's my perception of myself that is wrong, or if I am just not able to comunicate it via the CV.

hello, I’d like to share an experience I’ve had with the hiring manager interview at Personio for a senior frontend developer role. Two interviews were scheduled together- hiring team manager and the next was live coding task. I thought the hiring team manager interview was good but I messed up the live coding. I received a rejection email and I could get feedback from both the interviewers, so I scheduled a call where the HR would give the information from their notes. Never have I ever received such petty feedback from an interviewer- the hiring team manager.

1. he had said i have switched too many jobs (3 jobs in 8 years- and I had to quit the last one due to operational reasons. Which I mentioned in the call) and even the HR was surprised by it. So why even schedule this interview and the next interview if he thought I switch jobs often?

2. a topic came up about some proprietary stuff from my previous company and I could very well not divulge the ex details, and I mentioned this to him since the call was also recorded for note taking purposes. He wrote feedback that i didn’t speak in detail about this.

3. He asked me if received any good feedback in my previous jobs. To which I asked him if it needs to be technical feedback or any feedback works, to which he said any feedback is fine. so I mentioned a nontechnical one and he said that’s great and no feedback. His note said “he didn’t mention any technical feedback that he got”.

4. When I was giving my introduction, I went in depth about a project to which he said we can talk about it later, and I stopped after finishing with one last sentence. His feedback was “The candidate kept going on and on even when I asked him to speak about this later”

This goes on for every single thing i said in the interview. So it feels like this guy made sure that I wouldn’t get qualified for the next step regardless of how my technical interview went.

Has any of you had such an experience with any company in Germany?

Before you say “it was an experience, move on”, I know it’s an experience and I’ll move on in my own time. I just want to hear any similar petty interviews it anyone’s had. Because I was looking for genuine feedback, and I felt like i was in a teenagers’ group chat.

thanks in advance! :)

So this happened recently and I'm still processing it a bit.

Had a Probetag (trial day) at a company, went well, they offered me the job. told them that i ll take it, I signed the contract but held off sending it by post for a few days because I wanted to include something else with the same package. By the time I got everything together and sent it, it apparently took too long in the mail.

They emailed me saying since they hadn't received anything, they assumed I wasn't interested and were filling the position with someone else.

I immediately replied explaining what happened and offered to scan and send the second contract right away by email instead of waiting for the post. They never took me up on it. Just silence after that.

It's frustrating because the actual reason (waiting a few extra days to send something along with it) had nothing to do with my interest in the job, quite the opposite honestly, and one quick call or email from their side asking would've cleared it up instantly. Instead it went straight to rejection.

Anyone else had something like this happen? Genuinely curious whether this is a somewhat common thing in hiring processes or if I just got unlucky with this small company.

Hi everyone, I'm a prospective SE student at Ain Shams University planning my academic and career path toward Germany. I'd love to connect with any alumni or software engineers currently studying or working in Germany for a quick chat. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I recently graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Kabul University, and I’m planning to move to Europe in the future.

During university, I worked with different technologies such as Python, Java, JavaScript, React, Laravel, FastAPI, Tailwind and Bootstrap. I also have some experience with AI and NLP.

For my final-year project, I built a smart tourism recommendation system for Afghanistan. It was a website showing tourist places, with a chatbot that asked about the user's interests, budget and number of travel days, then recommended suitable places. I built it using Laravel and FastAPI, with AI/NLP for the recommendation part.

Now I’m trying to decide which area I should focus on more seriously to improve my chances of finding a job in Europe.

The three areas I’m most interested in are:

- Flutter / Mobile Development

- Python Backend

- Node.js Backend

I know that learning everything at the same time isn't a good idea, so I want to choose one and go deeper.

For those of you who work in Europe or are familiar with the European tech job market:

If you were in my position, which one would you choose: Flutter, Python Backend, or Node.js?

I’d especially appreciate advice from people who have actually worked in Europe and have gone through the hiring process there.

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

Is anyone here currently working in AWS Data Center Operations (DCO) in the Frankfurt region (or Germany) or familiar with their technical screening process?

I recently completed a 60-minute technical phone screen with an engineer for an AWS DCO / IT Support role in Germany. During the technical portion, I answered all hardware, networking, and cabling troubleshooting questions without getting stuck. At the end, the interviewer explicitly told me: "The technical part was pretty good, that's what I can tell you."

For the behavioral part, I answered four questions using the STAR method. In the closing feedback, the interviewer noted that I sounded a bit nervous and strictly said the literal STAR words out loud ("The situation was...", "My task was...", "The action was...", "The result was..."), though he mentioned that if my recruiter instructed me to use that exact structure, it doesn't matter.

For anyone who has been through this specific Frankfurt/EMEA pipeline or interviews for AWS DCO: does sounding nervous or explicitly vocalizing STAR labels carry a negative impact if the technical answers and core story data points were solid? What are the realistic odds of moving forward to the onsite loop from here?

Would really appreciate any insights from anyone with AWS DCO experience in Frankfurt or Germany. Thanks!

I got an offer from revolut and now background check with zinc is going on

All the 8/8 background check shows done

But in cv check it shows 'consider'and 'ready for review'

Has anyone gone through it and knows what does that mean ?

I’m 23 with a first-class CS/Engineering degree from a top UK university and ~1 year of professional experience.

I’m currently a backend engineer at a Fortune 500 fintech/payments company, working on core production systems. I’ve also worked on AI agents/automation. I make ~$35k/year, live at home with no rent, work remotely ~4 days/week and have very good WLB.

I’ve received an offer for an AI Engineer role at a large international company that is currently restructuring/moving some operations to the UAE.

The offer is around $70k/year base, with a potential performance bonus that could significantly increase total compensation, (up to $210k) depending on KPIs. The bonus structure is somewhat difficult to assess from the outside.

The role would involve significantly longer hours, essentially no remote work, relocation and paying for housing. The company is also currently undergoing restructuring, which adds some uncertainty.

I don’t currently have an MSc. My long-term goal is to work at a major, highly regarded technology company.

The choice is essentially:

A: Stay at the Fortune 500 fintech, build 2–3+ years of backend/production experience, continue developing AI skills and potentially do an MSc, while maintaining excellent WLB.

B: Move into AI engineering now, substantially increase my income and potentially save for an MSc, but take on relocation, higher living costs, longer hours and more company/bonus uncertainty.

Which would you consider the stronger move for long-term career progression over the next 3–5 years?

I’m particularly interested in perspectives from people who hire software/AI engineers or have made a similar early-career decision.

Job hunting has quietly become a full-time job in itself.

You find a role, read the JD, compare it with your experience, use an AI tool to understand the requirements, another to tailor your CV, another for a cover letter, draft an email, submit the application — and then you're left waiting without really knowing what happened.

And I wonder if this is affecting people at very different stages of their careers.

Someone with 15+ years of IT experience may have strong experience but struggle to understand which newer technologies and skills employers now expect. Someone early in their career may have the opposite problem — plenty of relevant skills and projects, but no idea how to position them against a JD.

Meanwhile, the hiring process itself can feel increasingly opaque: ATS filters, keyword matching, hundreds of applications, AI-generated resumes, and weeks of waiting.

What started as “finding a job” has become managing an entire chain of tools, decisions and uncertainty around every application.

I'm genuinely curious to understand how widespread this problem is across different experience levels and markets.

I'm based in Poland and looking for a fully remote frontend role, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm searching in the wrong places.

I have 4 YOE, mostly React/Next.js/TypeScript. I'm completely open to working remotely for companies anywhere in Europe, but so far I haven't managed to get even an initial recruiter call from the international remote roles I've applied to.

Most of my applications come from LinkedIn, but "remote" there often seems to mean remote within the company's country rather than anywhere in the EU.

So how do people find their fully remote job in 2026?

LinkedIn? Remote job boards? Company career pages? Recruiters? Networking? Did you specifically search for companies hiring across the EU, or just apply to remote positions and ask about location later?

Hello! First of all, I wanted to preface my message by saying that I did my best to structure it in a clear and easy to understand way. I hope that I managed to do that.

I wanted to share my story, and ask you for advice on how I should understand my situation. Around ~1 year ago, I had 5 YOE as SWE, ~1 year in the current company, my manager sat me down and asked if I would like to become a team leader, that he thinks that I would be good and so on and on. I replied "yes". Not because it was necessarily my plan or dream, mostly because I just didn't want to "waste an opportunity".

Now, ~1 year later I have mixed feelings. In general I learned a ton, I got pretty good coaching from my manager, read several books about leadership, attended some lectures, trainings and so on. During this one year I also had an opportunity to do "managerial" stuff like: a lot of interviews (both "soft" and "technical", "exit" as well unfortunately), built a team, had some very stressful conversations and feedback sessions with my reports and other managers. I also had an opportunity to switch from writing code to observing "big picture", architecture, making and defending some design decisions and stuff like that. During this one year there was also a period where I was handling a lot of PM/PO things, creating jira tickets, splitting work, hosting agile ceremonies (sprint planning, retro, etc.)

And while I am reading now what I wrote - it doesn't sound too bad. But right now, after this 1 year, the dust has settled and I started to have some thoughts:

• I can talk to people, discuss things with stakeholders, align teams etc, and I even have fun doing it to be honest. But giving people feedback, especially bad feedback, it's killing me, same as having responsibility for people. I try each time to convince myself, that bad feedback helps people grow (ruthless empathy, radical candor etc.) but it weights heavily on me. I also see that sometimes there are some very heavy decisions to be made, and even though in general "deep inside" I feel I know what is the right call I am not able to do it (due to fear of hurting people).
• I was excited about having responsibility for the technical "big picture", but after some recent changes, new architect took most of the responsibilities away from me.
• I was also kinda excited (but not that much) about scoping work, dividing tasks into smaller chunks, working with stakeholders on the order of work, but this responsibilites went to our PM.

But the most scary part for me is something that I noticed recently. I am not sure how to describe it, but I feel like a "human context". I am attending many meetings, talking with many people and therefore I keep the "context". So if someone is starting a new task, asking about some service I can share with them how things work, what could be a blocker or some risk. It kinda makes me feel like someone who just "keeps notes" of what's going on and letting people know. I would say that recently more than 60% of my time is devoted to it.

While I do definitely think that I am (/ I was) growing (experience in working with people is I guess pretty valuable?) but I started to think how much of it is actually transferable to other companies. Especially when I would like to change a job in some time. I don't think that I should apply to managerial positions from the start, I am mostly leaning towards some IC engineering positions with again - some managerial path maybe in the future?

At first I wasn't even thinking about switching companies, I thought that maybe I could settle for longer in one place and try to build a "career" here, but some recent changes made me rethink my situation:

• My direct manager was rotated to different project and my skip manager that currently is directly above me doesn't have an idea or growth plan for this "Team Leader" position.
• The "human context" part from above.
• When I asked for a raise, I got response that the company doesn't see my jump to team leader as a "promotion", they see it as a different career path so therefore raise is not needed.
• Most important one I think: I see my colleagues and friends gaining engineering experience, learning new technologies that are getting them really nice offers in various companies. I am not learning currently technical things and I kinda start to feel like I am wasting time? By that I mean, I don't feel like my value on a job marketplace is going up.

So right now I am wondering what should I do? I was thinking about options like:

1. Staying in the current company and pushing this team leader thing further, gaining more experience in people managment and trying to get another promotion and fight for a raise.
2. Waiting ~1 year to get "nice 2 YOE as a leader" and look for a managerial/leadership job in another company.
3. Waiting ~1 year to get "nice 2 YOE as a leader" and look for an IC job in another company and aim for being a technical leader instead of people leader.

I have to say, that option number 3 sounds currently best to me. Like I could combine technical skills and fact that I enjoy working with people and building things together (not as a "people manager" but maybe as a "technical leader"?). But I have a hard time determining if it's really the best decision, or maybe I am simply scared/confused and sticking with people management and leadership will reward me in the long run in terms of career opportunities and so on?

I have 2 years of experience as a Frontend Developer working with React. I want to move to another company, but with everything people are saying about the current job market, I’m feeling a little confused and worried.

I want to understand the real-world situation. What are frontend interviews actually like these days? What kind of questions do companies ask? What does the selection process usually look like? And what is the expected salary for someone with 2 years of React experience?

Please let me know about the current market and what I should realistically expect.

Hello guys,
I'm a CS undergrad in my final year from India. And ever since I started my undergrad I had made up my mind on pursuing masters right after (I'm primarily thinking of Ireland and Singapore).
I have a decent profile 9.15 / 10 gpa, one previous internship and taking up one more 6 month internship from september; and published a paper in journal of imaging.

But recently I've been seeing some posts saying that getting a job abroad after pursuing masters there is extremely challenging without prior solid experience like 3-5 years.
So what do you guys suggest? Should I work for a couple of years and then pursue masters ?
Also how is the job market currently for international freshers ?

Thank you!!

Hi, Wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some OT stuff, I do tons of fiddly work with microcontrollers and have done a LOT of fiddly work with lab instruments (Terraspec, a litany of ICP-OES, AA, and a bit of mass spec plus physical mechatronic repairs having to do with optical equipment, principally surface generators and lens edgers)

I was looking at GRC, but I really enjoyed lab work. I however have never been directly in OT. Am I in a good position?

I have been looking at compliance as I have played with DORA for fun in my spare time, and had ISO27001 compliance requirements at clients along with FedRAMP, HIPAA, etc (Also worked with HIPAA as a medical professional, but that is a lifetime ago)

Anyone have experience with the OT market in and around Dublin?

Moving from the US.