I spent about a decade working in the finance industry as a software engineer. Most of my experience has been on brownfield systems, using technologies like Java, Python, and React. I’ve worked on a mix of things — building data pipelines, dashboards, and web applications — as well as doing a fair amount of maintenance and incremental improvements on existing systems.
I was laid off in 2024 and have taken a gap year career break. I’m now planning my next move and aiming to look for roles as either a Senior Software Engineer or Senior Data Engineer.
During this time, I’d like to upskill and strengthen my profile, but I’m unsure where to focus my effort for the best impact.
The online material is too trivial, talking about syntaxe rather than concepts or patterns. I also felt kinda bored like I already 'knew' them but didn't challenging enough.
What are the suggestions for good read to refresh and upskill?
softwaredoug•2h ago
People can debate the merits of LLM coding, but that's something every hiring manager will want you to know.
rkomorn•2h ago
Even in adjacent roles (design, PM, etc), I'm confident "how do you leverage AI?" will be one of the central evaluation questions.
Edit: for emphasis, again: whether I like it or not.
codingdave•1h ago
I do use basic LLM assistance, at a chatbot level. It is close enough and quick enough to give me a good head start when writing something new, and its problems are fairly quick to see and fix. But the fully baked tools are overkill for the value they offer, at least where I work.
I'd say that you need to know your environment, know what AI tools are available, and know which ones work best in your particular slice of the industry. Because if I ever go back to modern stacks, I know the AI tolls will have far more value.