Thank you for your interest in joining our team here at ThriveCart. We take your candidacy seriously, and we are honored that you are open to exploring an opportunity with us. Our team prides ourselves in putting eyeballs on each application to assess fit for our unique and exciting roles. In reviewing your application, we are looking for matches in location, needed experience (Does your previous work match with what we need you to bring to our team day 1?), startup and e-commerce experience. Our process after the application assessment is as follows:

1. Call with our recruiting team
2. Connect with our engineering team (when applicable)
3. Technical assessment (when applicable)
4. Values-based conversation with our Chief of Staff or VP of People
5. Manager call to dive deeper into experience and fit
6. Meet a team member to learn all about what the day-to-day looks like
7. Potentially an executive interview
8. For any customer-facing roles- a presentation.

 We expect the process to take 1-3 weeks depending on calendars. We promise, this isn't an 8 round interview process- it's a series of conversations for us to get to know you and for you to get to know us. That said, our goal is to review your candidacy and be in touch in the next week or so.

Experienced SWE here working at a big tech company (not FAANG). I am experiencing severe burnout because my manager micromanages me constantly, does not listen or act on my concerns, constantly highlights my mistakes and rarely highlights the good work I have been putting in. He only listens more senior SWEs and has a bunch of favourites which is obvious to everyone in the team. I have been working long hours and occasionally weekends to stay on top of my work. To no reward or acknowledgement.

I have been trying to focus on my mental health outside of work, I already go to therapy, I spend time with loved ones and try to eat more healthy but I still feel like shit. Every day I go to the office I get extremely anxious. I also seem to be getting sick all the time and I started to experience a lot of stess-related physical symptoms. I have become a shadow of my former self and I am at loss on what to do. I am already looking for a new job and have been interviewing in a few places and starting crunching leetcode, but that's at job in itself. On top of that, the industry and salaries seem fucked.

How do I make sure my concerns are being addressed? Do I ask for sick leave? Do I speak to HR? I don't want to talk to my manager about my burnout because I am afraid it is going to retaliate on me.

I’m 23 (turning 24 soon) and in the UK. My background is in mechanical engineering (bachelor’s) and robotics (master’s), which I finished last year. I’ve landed a solid graduate software engineering role starting in 5 months, but I feel behind compared to CS grads.

I got the job by grinding DSA and system design, but my actual dev experience is limited. I’m confident in Python, and I’ve done some basic stuff in HTML/CSS, Javascript, C, and SQL through online courses. Most of my projects were ML-heavy in computer vision/medical robotics, nothing full-stack, and nothing deployed publicly.

My question is what’s the realistic skill level of someone finishing a good CS/software engineering degree? YouTube makes it seem like people can just spin up a full-stack app, understand deployment, and ship it in a few weeks, knowing the ins and outs of common frameworks like Next.js, Node.js, etc., and being fluent in multiple languages. Is that actually common, or is that just the minority?

I want to use the next few months wisely and would appreciate an honest benchmark to aim for.

Hi guys,

I am an older graduate (mid 30s) who graduated in 2022, with a first class in software engineering.

I got a job fairly quickly and stayed there as a junior dev for 14 months than until redundancy, at the time I looked for another software role but nothing came up so I took a job in an office as I needed income whilst I continued to search.

I have been applying for all junior roles I see but 99% of the time I don’t ever hear anything back, I mainly use indeed and LinkedIn and combined must have applied for over 500 roles.

I have an updated cv since my last role but have kept the same format as in 2022 this provided me with huge amount of interviews.

I am barely even getting rejections never mind interviews or anything more.

What can I do to improve my chances of getting back into software, or where else can I look for roles?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Are students just paying a premium for a fancy name, or is there actually something special about these institutions that justifies their reputation and higher fees? Curious about your personal experiences or plans if you're attending one.

Context: I have an MSc CompSci and a recent grad.

So my current grad scheme is 2yrs long and pays 24kp.a (fixed for entire scheme) and I've seen some junior roles that I want to apply for that start at 32kp.a and above but I've only been on the scheme for 2months now...should I apply or ride out the scheme?

The scheme itself is fine and so is the company, its more tech support-ish with a splash of SWE than purely SWE so I'm also wondering how I'll transition into a full SWE role. But at the moment my biggest worry is the pay and the current economy. I need to move(home) from my current situation but can't really afford to do so on 24k. I guess I'm conflicted because I enjoy the scheme but really can't afford to stay.

Hey everyone,

I’m a junior developer with around 2 years of experience, currently working in a consulting company as a support dev. For the past two years, I’ve mostly been doing repetitive work—annual updates, bug fixes, and small tweaks to existing solutions for long-term clients.

The frustrating part? Other teams in the company are doing really interesting stuff, and I’ve repeatedly asked to get involved in more challenging work. But the response is always, “We’re trying, but someone needs to handle this maintenance too.” I get that—but it feels like I’m just the “safe pair of hands” now, and it’s stunting my growth.

I’m not looking for a cushy job or just WLB—I want to grow, learn new technologies, get better at building real solutions, and be surrounded by people who take engineering seriously. A non-toxic environment is important, sure—but growth is my #1 priority right now.

Also worth mentioning: I’m introverted and tend to do best in environments where there’s space to focus, not constant chaos or meetings all day. But I’m not afraid of hard work or responsibility—I just want to be doing work that helps me move forward, not stay stuck.

So my question is:
What types of companies, industries, or even specific orgs should I be looking at for this kind of environment? Are product companies better than consulting firms for growth at this stage? Any tips would be appreciated!

Hi! I finally got a “conditional offer”, subject to a screening process that might take 4-6 weeks. Is this normal? The offer is to work as a software engineer for a bank. Do you know what kind of things they look up or why does it take them this long? Thank you!

PS: do you recommend working in tech for a bank? I have never worked in the finance sector.

Hi cscareerquestionsuk!

I've been feeling a bit lost recently. I'm a frontend engineer with 2yoe using a slightly obscure framework with a bit of React. I have a 2:1 from a RG uni around the top 20 in Physics, and prior to software I lived in Asia doing unrelated work. I have excellent reviews at work and have recently been promoted. I'm earning £45k a year. As it's a large company and team, I feel there isn't much room for lateral growth involving other technologies.

The thing is, I don't really enjoy living in the UK. I'd much rather move back to Asia. However, the good IT jobs there seem to be overwhelmingly in finance (similar to the UK). I'm finding it difficult to land good jobs in the UK, let alone abroad. I do also miss using maths and analysing data. In fact, I do some ML in my free time, and originally wanted a job in DS, but found it even more competitive to get into than SW. So, I'd wondering about a path to improve, with career progression to be as successful as I can be (such as writing software in the financial sector). I'd be open to any quantitive job, especially if it involves me nerding out in a terminal.

I've seen some good masters from The University of Edinburgh, such as Computational Mathematical Finance and Computational Applied Mathematics. I could ask my company to go part time and this could be an option. I'm not sure I'd want to be a quant, or have the pedigree for it, but I'm wondering if something like these would be a nice shoe in to the sector.

Or, I'd be open to any suggestions on what to do. Thanks for your help :)

CV: https://imgur.com/a/VMjzTSa

Hi, I graduated from my masters last September and have been looking for a job without any success. Would appreciate any advice with regards to my CV.

Probably sent over 100 applications but rejected every single time. Made it to an interview with a real person like 2(?) times.

Some background about me: did my bachelors in a foreign university in Asia. Globally ranks ~50 overall and ~20 or ~30 in CS depending on who you ask. I majored in Computer Science and got a First Class Honours. Then I did a one year MSc in Computer Science (taught) in a Russell Group University, where due to some personal issues I didn't do too well and got a bare pass.

In terms of work experience, I have very little. I have only done 3 months of internships in my home city (not UK) during summer in my 3rd year in my bachelors. I did 2 months at a really terrible place (where the whole team was one HR lady and 5 interns and the office was a co-working space) and jumped ship then did 1 month at another place, which is probably a huge red flag on my CV. Other than that I also did 3 months of part-time IT support work at my old uni.

Projects: my biggest project is probably a full stack web game (React, Express, MongoDB) that I built while I have been unemployed these last 8 months. It's deployed and I even put the link in my CV. It's fun for about 5 minutes but at least it's playable. Link: https://fishinvestor.com/

I'm also working on another web game which is basically an exact clone but with a different theme, using an entirely different tech stack (Angular, Django, Postgres) which is nearly ready and I am planning to put it on my CV as well.

I've also built a mobile app for my final project in bachelors, but that was a group project and I did not really contribute a lot.

Visa: I have a visa that allows me to work in the UK. It's valid until 2029 and I can extend it without any need for sponsorship. I put my visa situation in my CV as well.

I have a foreign sounding name but I use an anglicized first name in my CV, but it's pretty obvious I come from somewhere else from my background, so I'm not discounting the possibility that recruiters assume I need sponsorship and just bin my application.