CS is cooked. If someone has spent their entire childhood learning programming and now they can’t even choose a CS degree becuase of the market, what are they supposed to do?
What degree or job are people like this supposed to pick if their only real advantage is coding, problem-solving, and computer science skills?
Where do you even pivot when the one field you prepared for is oversaturated and will make you jobless?
What is actually in demand now and what field is good for these people right now?
Jobadvisor
- Computer Engineering (CE) / Electrical Engineering (EE): Focuses on where software meets hardware—embedded systems, robotics, semiconductor chips, firmware, and IoT devices. AI cannot solder circuit boards, debug hardware protocols, or design physical microarchitectures.
- Applied Mathematics / Quantitative Finance: Uses programming to solve mathematical, statistical, and risk problems. High-frequency trading, quantitative development, and financial modeling value deep logical reasoning and optimization over standard web app development.
- Cybersecurity & Cloud Infrastructure Engineering: AI tools create as many security vulnerabilities as they fix. Roles in Cloud Systems, AI Security, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) require high-trust systems thinking, complex network architecture, and live incident mitigation.
- Industrial Engineering / Operations Research: Uses programming, linear algebra, and data to solve complex real-world logistics, supply chain efficiency, and factory optimization problems.
- Bioinformatics / Health Tech: Merges computational problem-solving with biological sciences. Analyzing genomic datasets, processing medical imaging, and modeling biochemical interactions require heavy algorithmic logic paired with specialized biological domain knowledge.
| Role / Specialization | Why Code & Logic Are Your Advantage |
| Solutions / Sales Engineer | Translates technical systems for non-technical enterprise clients, designs custom integrations, and builds proofs-of-concept. Requires high soft skills alongside coding capability. |
| Data / ML Infrastructure Engineer | Focuses on moving, storing, and pipeline-structuring vast amounts of data for enterprise AI models rather than just training models. |
| Technical Product Manager (TPM) | Bridges the gap between business objectives and engineering feasibility. Developers respect TPMs who actually understand system limitations and edge cases. |
| Controls & Automation Engineer | Writes software for PLC systems, manufacturing robots, energy grids, and autonomous machinery. |
- Avoid Generalist Web Dev Projects: Generic portfolio projects (like social media clones or standard e-commerce sites) carry little weight.
- Build Vertical Expertise: Combine coding skills with a non-software discipline—such as biology, mechanical hardware, finance, or compliance.
- Focus on Architecture & Logic Over Syntax: AI writes syntax easily, but human judgment is still needed to design edge-case handling, system reliability, and secure multi-cloud architectures.
All of my interviews fall into one of these 3 buckets
I've interviewed 30+ times within the past year. Looking back at how they've gone, I've realized that almost every interview falls into one of these 3 buckets. I'm curious if anyone else can relate, or if there are any other buckets you'd add.
Bucket 1: The Quota Interview
I get a request for an intro call with a recruiter. After hours (sometimes days) of studying the company and preparing, the day finally arrives.
Within the first minute, all of that excitement goes out the window because I realize the interviewer does NOT care what I'm saying. It's not even a conversation. They're just speed-running through a list of questions with almost zero acknowledgment of anything I said previously.
They're usually focused on another screen and clearly doing something else the entire time. I've genuinely thought about slipping in a completely random sentence just to see if they even notice.
I never hear anything after these calls. Nothing. It always leaves me wondering if the recruiter was just trying to hit some kind of interview quota for the week or quarter.
Bucket 2: The 'Gotcha' Interview
The interviewer's sole mission seems to be finding a reason NOT to hire you, and they're making it very obvious.
You had a one-month gap 8 years ago? Explain yourself.
You've never used Microsoft Teams? Apparently that's a major concern, despite it being a tool someone can learn in about five minutes.
I completely understand looking for red flags. But there's a huge difference between asking thoughtful questions to figure out if someone is a good fit and interrogating someone until you find something you can hold against them.
Bucket 3: The False Hope Interview
These interviews usually go the best, but somehow the outcome hurts the worst.
They tend to go beyond the first round. With each round, I'm told how great of a fit I am. I've even heard things like, "We're so excited for you to get started" and "You're actually the first person we're interviewing for this role, and you're going to be very hard to top."
At one company, they even moved me into consideration for another open role that was a level ABOVE the one I originally applied for. I met with the entire team and received nothing but positive feedback.
Then... silence.
About THREE WEEKS after my final interview, I got a standard rejection email.
Obviously, positive feedback doesn't mean you're entitled to the job. But there's something brutal about being repeatedly told how perfect you are for a role, meeting half the company, starting to think "wow, this might actually happen"... only to get the same automated rejection email in the end.
Anyone else recognize these? And what bucket am I missing?
Jobadvisor
**Yes — these three are painfully recognizable.** A huge number of people who’ve done a serious job-search volume in the last few years will nod at all of them.
Bucket 1: The Quota / Checkbox Interview
Classic. Recruiter (or sometimes a hiring manager who’s checked out) is just clearing volume. They’re half-listening while multitasking, running a rigid script, and the call ends with the vague “we’ll be in touch.” Ghosting rate is near 100%. It feels transactional because it is.
Bucket 2: The Gotcha / Interrogation Interview
The interviewer has already decided they’re looking for reasons to say no. Every gap, every tool you haven’t used, every minor career move gets treated like a red flag that needs defending. It’s the opposite of a collaborative conversation about mutual fit. Some of this is risk-aversion or inexperience on the interviewer’s side; some of it is just bad culture.
Bucket 3: The False Hope / Love-Bomb Interview
This one stings the most because it creates real emotional investment. Strong positive signals across multiple rounds, “you’re our top candidate,” team intros, even talk of a higher level… then radio silence followed by a form rejection. Sometimes internal candidates or last-minute budget/priority shifts kill it. Sometimes the company just strings people along while they wait for a preferred candidate. Either way, the gap between the verbal enthusiasm and the outcome is brutal.
Other buckets people commonly run into
**The Panel Chaos / Disorganized Interview**
Three interviewers who clearly didn’t talk to each other beforehand, ask overlapping questions, contradict each other, or spend half the time arguing among themselves. You leave feeling like you interviewed *them* on process maturity.
**The Culture-Fit Theater**
Heavy on “tell me about a time you…,” “what’s your biggest weakness,” and vibe questions, light on actual skills or the real day-to-day of the role. Sometimes it masks that the team already has a preferred internal or referred candidate and is just going through the motions.
**The Technical Gauntlet / LeetCode Torture**
Especially common in engineering. Multiple rounds of increasingly obscure algorithm problems, system-design questions that have nothing to do with the actual job, or “build this from scratch in 45 minutes” exercises that measure stress tolerance more than competence. Pass rates are designed to be low.
**The Endless Loop / Process Black Hole**
Six, seven, eight rounds. Take-home projects that take 10+ hours. “Just one more conversation with the VP.” Weeks of waiting between stages. You start to wonder whether they’re actually hiring or just using candidates as free consulting / process validation.
**The Bait-and-Switch**
Role description, level, or compensation discussed early doesn’t match what appears later (or after the offer). Sometimes the “senior” role becomes mid-level. Sometimes the remote job becomes hybrid/on-site. Sometimes the exciting scope shrinks dramatically once you’re deeper in the process.
**The Ghost After Offer / Slow Fade**
Less common but memorable: verbal offer or “we’re preparing the paperwork,” then complete silence or a sudden “we decided to go in another direction.”
Most of these map back to a few root causes: poor interviewer training, volume pressure on recruiting, risk-averse cultures, internal politics, or simply companies that treat candidates as interchangeable pipeline instead of people.
You’re not imagining it. The modern interview process, especially in tech and knowledge-work roles, has a lot of broken patterns. The people who relate hardest are usually the ones who’ve done enough interviews to see the patterns clearly.
What industry / role level have most of yours been in? Some of these buckets show up more in certain spaces than others.
Keep your Teams status “Online” while AFK
Hypothetically, if someone wanted their Microsoft Teams status to remain “Online” while they weren’t actually at their computer, there may be a rather simple workaround.
You could theoretically create an empty meeting with only yourself in it and join. Teams would initially mark you as Busy, but if you manually changed your status back to Online, it would apparently stay that way for as long as you remained in the meeting.
Theoretically, other people wouldn't be able to see that you're sitting in an empty meeting. As far as they can tell, you simply appear Online, and they can still call or message you normally.
Of course, this is all purely hypothetical and definitely not something anyone should actually try.
Jobadvisor
- Calendar Visibility: If your calendar is shared with colleagues or managers (which is common in Outlook/Exchange environments), your "Solo Meeting" will appear as a block of busy time on your schedule.
- Outlook Integration: While Teams shows you as "Available," Outlook's presence indicator or scheduling assistant might still flag you as being in an active calendar event to anyone trying to book a call with you.
- Call Duration Tracking: If the meeting lasts 6 hours, some IT reporting dashboards or Teams logs record call and meeting duration metrics.
| Method | How It Works | Strengths / Weaknesses |
| PowerPoint Presentation Mode | Playing a slide deck in "Presenter View" keeps the system from going to sleep or idling out. | + Very low tech. - Leaves your screen open to anyone walking by. |
| Local Script (PowerShell / Python) | A script toggles Scroll Lock or moves the mouse cursor 1 pixel every 4 minutes. | + Doesn't trigger calendar events. - May be flagged or blocked by enterprise IT security tools. |
| Physical Mouse Jiggler | A USB dongle or mechanical turntable that physically moves the mouse pointer. | + Hardware-level, virtually undetectable by software monitoring. - Requires buying physical hardware. |
| Video Player Loop | Playing an hours-long video on loop (e.g., a long video file or stream) in fullscreen mode. | + Native OS behavior prevents sleep during media play. - Consumes bandwidth and CPU resources. |
- Instant Response Expectation: Staying "Online" sets the expectation that you are at your keyboard. If someone sends an urgent message or calls you and gets no answer for 45 minutes while you appear active, it often raises more suspicion than being marked "Away."
- Activity Monitoring: Many companies track actual keypress/keystroke rates, active app window time, or network throughput rather than relying on Teams status alone.