throwaway123198

I broke my rule not to bother with a take home and I regret it. Spent about 6 hours on it and the company decided to give me no feedback but a standard rejection email.

As usual, the companies who expect it have no real idea who they want to hire and the take home was ambiguous and poorly structured. There was no clear criteria for success and they said it was 'open'.

All that means is they don't know what a successful candidate looks like and therefore have no idea who they want to hire and the person reviewing it will just nit pick anything they think is wrong.

As a candidate, I have found that take homes just aren't worth it.

Do you do take homes? If so, under what circumstance/context have you found them successful?

Fwiw I'm in ML so they are exceptionally and especially stupid for ML.

I currently manage a ML team in a startup. Been doing it for about 2 years now. Due to a number of changes including required relocation, I can't and won't stay. Let's say I get an offer as a Principal MLE at a much larger/better company (think Salesforce, Workday etc.), with bigger scale opportunity.

If I make this transition, is it realistic or even possible to make it back into a management track role later?

Is it inability to get interviews? Inability to pass them?

Is it after a certain time?

If it's happened to you already what was the threshold?

I don't get it. Why can't we move past this world

- where Job Descriptions aren't REALLY what the hiring manager wants - where Resumes don't REALLY represent your skills - where we can't seem to give candidates feedback on their gaps - where we can't seem to match talent to jobs they're qualified for

LinkedIn didn't really solve it. We're still using terrible interviewing platforms. This is a data problem.

Why is this still unsolved?

I'm asking this from two angles:

- What areas are current models and current approaches not sufficient?

- Is there any chance that the job market for these areas will exist if one chooses to specialize in Comp. Vision?

Do you see a point in sticking it out in the tech industry? If so, what is your role/career trajectory?

I'm a ML Engineer and currently a ML Manager at a startup, but don't really get the opportunity to do a lot of work on a high-scale recommender system or search system.

I want to really flex that muscle and build a strong portfolio to break into a solid opportunity for recsys.

Is my only option at this point heading back to school to do an advanced degree/research to break in?

Question as title.

We are in 2025. Has every software opportunity for a business been addressed?

Basically, which industries that would benefit from software and automation, are yet to be realized?

If so, why is this the case? Is it regulatory? Or something else?

My profile. Mid-30s, manager of ML team at a Saas startup.

Academic background: ee degree + msc in data science

Professional background: over a decade in financial space and tech doing software and ML

I just have lost interest in this whole thing and any motivation to keep going.

Thinking of pursuing something like industrial automation.

Currently married with kids and living in the US on a visa, maybe might get a GC this year if things don't blow up.

What are suggestions on other paths to pursue? Just want to do something more real than enterprise Saas or adtech.

Is there a negative impact to a career if you join a PE owned b2b Saas? I've heard recruiters don't bother with you as you'll be seen as a low skilled

LLMs and Agents are not automating SWE, but they are changing it.

Interviews have become nightmares, even at 'non-tech' companies, making switching very time consuming and difficult.

A lot of SWE work is objectively make-work, and a lot of startups are building fluff or things that are net negative to society.

Beyond this, the supply for SWEs vs the demand is clearly imbalanced on the supply side.

Is SWE a sustainable career anymore?

If you are mid career today what would you do?

If you are to switch where would you go?

How does one go from a career spent in financial software, data science, ML and web dev towards game dev or some other industry that might benefit from software skills?

Currently working with a scale up with a very rocky future.

Joined about 3 years back, always felt weird about this place. Multiple leaders have left, and to be honest I don't really see the value my team brings to the place anyway.

At this point I'm only really here for the immigration sponsorship. Otherwise, I would have considered quitting without anything lined up to just take a break and figure out what's next.

What would folks recommend I do here?