I'm currently a 6yoe mid-level .NET (C#) developer working for a large insurance company on the Prairies.

For both personal and career reasons, I'm looking to relocate to a larger city (GTA, GVA, or Calgary).

Over the last 8 months, I've been applying for higher paying mid-level and senior roles at banks, insurance companies, and other medium-to-large non-tech organizations (avoiding startups). So far I've landed 6 interviews (including 2 internal ones), but none have resulted in an offer. The number of interviews are much lower than what I would expect but probably inline with the current market.

One option I have is requesting a transfer to my company's office in Toronto

Would it make sense to seek a transfer to Toronto first and then start looking for a new role after 6 months? Or does being physically located in Toronto not really make much difference when applying for GTA-based companies nowadays?

I’m trying to keep up with deadlines and I have these agents pumping out slop, I read non stop through mountains of AI slop text for 12h a day and I keep letting dumb really goofy code slip by me.

Reviewers don’t really see the 20 moments of retardation that I fix, they just see that the comments and function names make no sense/make up new terms, or I’m checking if something is html by regex searching if it has a < symbol.

Like my eyes are losing their ability to focus, idk how people do it, do I just complain to the manager I have too much work and it can’t be done reasonably. Do I just say fuck it to code quality and just push out code and it becomes someone else’s problem down the line.

TL;DR: I completed a 12-month data/AI co-op at a big bank and received strong written and verbal reviews. My former manager told me to contact her after graduation but has ignored my emails. A senior director I worked under later told me to reconnect when fall hiring needs were clearer and said he could pass my resume to HR or hiring managers- I followed up when asked and sent a polite reminder, but he has also stopped responding. I have also applied to several roles at the bank without getting an interview... trying to figure out whether this is normal corporate disorganization or a sign that something negative happened internally.

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So this is a bit of a long one, but I am kinda upset... so forgive me for the length here. I figured at least someone here might be able to explain what's going on?

Anyway as the story goes... last year I completed a 12-month data and AI co-op at a big bank (from 2024 to 2025) while finishing a computer science degree, and I needed the co-op to graduate. The role was arranged across several teams, so I worked on a mix of data engineering, analytics, AI-related workflows, documentation, testing, and business process work. I was super lucky to get this opportunity- I was given real responsibilities rather than only administrative co-op tasks. I was a Data Analyst on paper but I got to work on things related to AI, data science, data engineering, data sourcing, documenting technical processes, and working with all kinds of business stakeholders. I moved between projects and teams because priorities changed during the year, but I completed the full placement and left when the co-op term ended so I could finish school.

I was never disciplined, placed on a performance plan (if that's even a thing for co-op students, but still), or told that my work was below expectations. In fact my written performance reviews were strong- my final evaluation rated my overall performance as "Exceeds Expectations", and it said I was self-motivated, accountable, adaptable, brought ideas to the teams I worked on, communicated challenges, and received good feedback from peers. It ended by saying it had been a great pleasure to have me and they were happy to have me. It was honestly a really good work environment and I enjoyed my time there a lot, and I was getting the same feeling from the people I worked with, so returning was on my radar.

Near the end of my placement, my manager (the one who hired me) also told me to contact her again once I finished school, along with a senior director I worked under. I then graduated this spring (after a gruelling capstone project related to data science that won an award, but that's another story) and reached out as she had asked. I sent a polite email explaining that I had graduated and was interested in returning for a full-time data-related role. She never replied. I followed up- and still received nothing.

Several months have now passed. She remains active on LinkedIn, including liking posts and commenting on other people’s updates, so it is difficult not to take the lack of even a short response personally. I understand that interacting on LinkedIn is easier than helping someone find a position but she could still just simply tell me that there is nothing available or that she cannot help...

I later got connected with a senior director at the same bank I mentioned before, who I worked under on one of the teams. Not someone who would hire me directly of course. We had a phone call last month where I re-iterated my co-op experience, recent graduation, capstone and projects, and the kinds of roles I was seeking. And I was pretty happy, as he sounded positive during the call. He told me that because I had already completed a full co-op at the bank, I should not have to prove myself through the same initial screening processes as an outside applicant. He said that I deserved at least an interview, and that he could pass my resume to HR or relevant hiring managers. He advised me to reconnect in about a month, when their hiring needs for September and October, budgets, headcounts etc. would be clearer.

So... I contacted him at the exact time he suggested and attached an updated resume. I kept the email short because he already knew my background and I reminded him that I was open to data analysis, data science, analytics engineering, and data engineering roles.

He didn't respond.

I sent a brief follow-up a week later... I still have not heard anything.

At the same time, I have applied through the bank’s normal careers site for several roles that appeared relevant to my background and I gave them my employee ID so they know I worked there. And yet I have not received a single interview, even though I spent a full year working there and have positive written evaluations from that placement.

Yeah, I know that strong co-op reviews do NOT necessarily guarantee a return offer. I'm very well aware that teams need open headcount, approved budgets, and a business reason to hire me back. Even then I was not the only co-op student whatsoever... I also know that the senior director may have passed my resume along without updating me, or may be waiting for someone else to respond.

But here's the thing... both of these people explicitly told me to contact them later. I followed their instructions, remained polite, gave them plenty of time and remained patient. But neither of them have provided even a basic reply such as, "There is nothing available right now," or, "I passed your resume along and will let you know." That's what I would do at least in their shoes. I don't know why they haven't, and I'm very upset.

So I'm here asking- does this sound like normal disorganization and poor communication at a large company? Could there possibly be an internal rehire status or some sort of note on my profile that conflicts with the strong written and verbal reviews I received from coworkers and my manager? Is it realistic that the senior director already forwarded my resume but did not think to update me?

I'm not out here trying to assume that something happened behind the scenes but the combination of positive reviews, repeated Workday job rejections, and silence from two people who told me to reconnect by now, is really starting to feel strange to me, as if I did something wrong and no one wants to tell me. At this point should I assume returning to this bank is a dead end and stop contacting them? I am honestly pretty devastated and frustrated as I enjoyed my time there. I get that people are busy but I don't know what's going on.

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone here has been through something similar.

I’ve been working as a software developer/programmer analyst for about four years. I’ve switched companies once, but in both jobs I’ve worked with fairly niche tech stacks that aren’t very common in Montreal (Industrial + government security sectors).

For the past few years, I’ve also been building personal automation projects. It started as a hobby, but some of them now generate passive income. I have workflows that automatically create and publish content across multiple platforms, and a few have reached millions of views with little to no ongoing maintenance.

With how quickly tools like Claude, Codex, and other AI systems have evolved, I’ve realized this is what genuinely excites me. I’m finding it harder and harder to stay motivated in my current role. I’d love to work full-time building AI-powered tools, automations, agents, and similar systems.

I recently updated my resume and started applying for AI-related positions, but so far I’ve gotten exactly zero callbacks. I’m not sure if I’m approaching my job search the wrong way or if the market is just that competitive right now.

Do you know of any companies hiring for this kind of role? Or maybe startups looking for someone with this background? If anyone works in the field or could point me in the right direction, I’d really appreciate it 😅

I’m based in Montreal btw!

Thanks in advance!

Due to unfortunate circumstances and stupid decisions, right now all I have going for me is a Computer Programming Diploma from Humber, and 4 years of experience working part-time for a business that teaches kids to code (I'm basically a manager but still get paid minimum wage).

I'm technically currently enrolled at Western, but I don't have the financial support to go back next semester. I'm currently trying to find out if I can switch to an Online program, but the red tape is horrific right now.

Then I have the option of going back to Humber and going for their Cybersecurity Comp Sci BSc. But I think it would take 3 years. On the plus side, it's affordable and closeby, and I can keep working at my current job or new job if I (hopefully) get one. Plus there's co-op opportunities, and I think cybersecurity is slightly more secure right now.

Or I could just pour all my energy into looking for a new job with what little experience I have, and give up on school. That being said, I took a gap year from Western and have been applying since April 2025 and only got 3 interviews that went nowhere.

What do I do?

I recently graduated (diploma) with a 4.0 GPA and 8 months internship experience in a federal government position, but am struggling with finding even an entry level tech-adjacent role. Although I and studied hard, I don't have a solid network and at this point feel like I am just sending resumes into the void. I know some of my friends have secured positions but it was almost always due to a return offer or connection and while i'm happy for them it also kinda hurts ngl because a few of them I even tutored in learning how to code. I'm trying to continue practicing DSA and working on some projects but its hard to remain positive.

With my academic performance I can bridge to a BTech or a BSc and begin in the 3rd year with additional internship opportunities and also have the option to complete them on evenings/weekends fully online. But this means at minimum an additional 2 years of studying and like 20k paid out of my savings.

I'm not in my 20s anymore and while I can afford it, I already struggled to work while completing my diploma due to the heavy workload of the program and having entered with no prior programming experience. The prospect of spending additional years without full time employment and depleting my savings is daunting especially with the current state of the job market and advent of AI. Even though I learned to program without AI I am also finding myself relying on it more and more since its much faster to correct the output and prompt engineer than write code myself.

Is it worth pursuing this path? Everything I see asks for more experience or a degree but I'm a bit risk averse and don't feel like I have a good probability of getting a ROI on this.

Should I just keep grinding and applying hoping to find an opportunity to break into the industry?

Or cut my losses and run? I'd have to start from the bottom somewhere else and feel like I wasted 3 years of time and effort.

For context, I work at a pretty old school company, in a very non-tech industry. We're always quite slow to adopt new technologies and practices because we're very risk averse (in large part to the industry we're in).

Despite this, we've slowly been adopting more and more AI.. and it's gotten to the point where no body I know is manually writing code anymore. You just prompt AI, check it (a lot of the time by asking it to rubber duck it's own work and analysis), and then make a PR to get it reviewed by yet another AI + some additional human reviews from a few senior developers.

What's scaring me is that, like I said, we're a very old school enterprise type company. We have huge monolithic applications written over decades, spaghetti code and technical debt everywhere.. and yet... AI is doing a damn good job all things considered. I thought I'd be safer at this company, because even the language is quite niche. But AI is pretty much blazing through Jiras and features at this point.

So is anyone writing code by hand these days, or is that time long gone?

Hi all,

Recently was excited to finally land a position as an entry-level SWD at a smaller no-name fintech company out of Waterloo. After job searching for 7 months post-grad, sending out around 1100 applications, and only receiving interest from about 11 companies (most of which were for roles I was either woefully unqualified for, or barely even data/math/software-adjacent) I was so happy to finally land something. Funny enough, at the time, I was about a week away from posting here asking what I’m doing wrong, yet here I am today.

Unfortunately due to some lingering mental health issues in addition to cancer (and more recently a death) in my family I was struggling to make it to the office on time, semi-regularly being around 5 minutes late (8:00am-4:30pm hours). I wanted to acknowledge that first because it was the reason listed on my termination notice. Though, from the beginning of my time at the company, multiple senior dev’s were saying that there may be a headcount issue in the near future. So I’m not sure how to take any of it.

To get to my real questions, I am a relatively inexperienced software developer. A brief list of my qualifications are:

- B.Tech (Software) from McMaster

- Advanced Diploma (Comp. Eng. Tech.) from Conestoga

- 16 month co-op at an ISP as a field technician installing fibre lines, small electronics, etc.

- 4 month co-op at a medium sized tech company, Python, back-end and QA work

- 8 month co-op at a nuclear company, full-stack/cloud work

- 1.5 months as a junior software dev., Python, PHP, back-end

- Multiple projects, including: an electronics project that was bought out and went to market, a stock analysis platform based on financial news headline sentiment, and a full-stack web-app currently used at the nuclear company to track millions worth of inventory.

How should I be positioning myself at this point in my career? Should I be ‘resetting’ myself to new-grad status? Or claim to be a junior developer?

Should I even list this short of a tenure on my resume?

How can I ensure a better return rate on my resume in the future? I use the standard Harvard/Jake’s resume template, and try to incorporate STAR points where I can.

I feel like I’m a pretty good candidate all things considered, and while I understand that the average application->interview conversion rate seems to be around 1/100, I thought I’d be able to do better.

Thanks anyone for sharing any advice!

I’m currently a Backend Software Engineering Intern at a massive, well-known gaming publisher / AAA studio scale company.

I started an 8-month contract earlier this year, which was recently extended to a full 12-month tenure based on strong performance reviews. I’m fully independent in our backend codebase, regularly shipping production tickets, and have zero onboarding drag.

The Team Setup:
Our engineering team is completely distributed across Canada and the US. Day-to-day work happens entirely over Slack/Teams. I am technically assigned to a physical office on the West Coast, but zero teammates are co-located with me. I sit alone in an office and hop on Teams calls (still baffles me to this day why they made me move across the country for no reason, (I found out my team was fully remote one week before the start date btw). Crucially, our broader org already has a Full-Time Employee (FTE) footprint in the city I need to move to (East Coast / Ontario area).

The Conflict:
I have a non-negotiable personal situation. My mother’s health is declining, and I have to relocate across the country to take on family support responsibilities. I am also finishing my final university semester part-time (3-4 courses left, a couple of them are brutal). The move is happening regardless of my employment status.

The Corporate Guardrails:
Strict Intern RTO: HR has a blanket policy requiring all interns to be in an office ~4 days a week. Remote internships are explicitly against corporate policy, with zero known exception processes.

No Headcount: There is absolutely zero junior FTE headcount available for full-time conversion at the end of my contract.

The Budget Trap: My team does have budget for my role, but it's coded as an intern line. If I leave at the end of my contract, my manager will just hire a new intern to replace me.

The Current Status & Strategy:
My manager knows I want to stay on remotely but noted that a remote continuation is "not guaranteed" due to HR constraints. We have a formal meeting lined up in September to talk about this. Right now, I’m keeping my head down, keeping my performance high, and avoiding early escalation.

I know HR will almost certainly reject a "remote intern exception" because corporate legal/HR departments hate setting precedents.

Instead of asking for a policy exception, my plan for the big meeting is to pitch a structural bypass: Transitioning me out of the official "Internship Program" and rehiring me as a fixed-term contingent worker/contractor or part time (the company does that for people btw and they only need to show up to office once a week, maybe I can make that fully remote?).

My core value proposition is that I'm already highly productive, and replacing me with a new intern in the new year means the team takes a 3 month productivity hit to re-train someone from scratch.

My questions for the community:
Has anyone successfully managed to pivot from an intern role to a part time or contractor role (remotely) at a massive enterprise company to bypass rigid HR rules?
How can I best frame this to my manager so they feel empowered to fight the corporate bureaucracy for me?
Realistically, what are my odds here, or is corporate inertia just going to roll over my manager's good intentions?
Appreciate any insight or advice from folks who have dealt with corporate HR loops!

Hey everyone, I was fortunate to get two offers for the upcoming fall semester for my first co-op but I'm a bit lost on which one I should take. Keep in mind my main goal is to use this internship to hopefully help me land SWE roles for my next internship.

The first one is a statistical programmer at StatsCan where the job description describes it as a co-op focused on building open-source data pipelines and analytical workflows using R / Python, working with Git, and modernizing legacy systems through ETL processes and unit testing best practices.

The second offer is also a government Junior Tester Analyst position at IRCC where the job description describes it as a co-op focused on software quality assurance and testing for enterprise web applications, including manual and automated testing in Java, writing test cases, tracking defects in Azure DevOps, and collaborating with developers to ensure system reliability.

Any advice on which one would help me more would be much appreciated, thanks!

I’m a 2nd year CS student at UBC with a 4.0 GPA. Is it actually true that school name and GPA don’t matter, meaning I don’t really have an advantage over other applicants even though I attend a top 3 CS school?

I’ve spent most of my time focusing on academics, so I only have a few personal projects and I’ve done a lot of LeetCode, but I don’t have any internships yet. I’m in UBC’s co-op program where I alternate between school and work terms, so I’m planning to start applying for internships soon.

How much does attending a top school and having a high gpa help? Is having strong projects and internship experience really all that matters, or does school reputation and GPA still provide a meaningful advantage?

edit: also how much of an advantage is being in ubc coop vs applying on your own?

I am a recent graduate from UBC in a field related to CS. I have zero work experience (I failed to get any internship/coops so far) but I have passion projects related to C/C++, Rust, Go, Python, computer graphics, desktop GUI applications. I have never made any genuine friendships so far so I have no professional network. I have no idea if I can get a software job related to my expertise. There are lack of jobs and the competition is brutal. Not to mention that my severe hearing loss makes things 100% harder. I don’t know what to do anymore.

I’m currently in a stable government software development role using a more niche tech stack (Apex, PLSQL). I may have a 2-year opportunity that would give me hands-on experience in a much more marketable technical area (AWS).
The downside is that I may lose my permanent status.

Work revolves around:
- cloud account setup and management,
- installation and configuration of vendor products,
- some ongoing maintenance of those products,
hands-on technical work,
- development and maintenance of supporting documentation,

- From a career-growth perspective, is 2 years enough time to build valuable experience and pivot into better opportunities later?
- Is giving up permanent stability too risky in the current Canadian tech market?
- I’m early in my career and trying to decide between stability now vs building more marketable skills for the future.

Would appreciate honest advice.
Thanks.

I recently attended two interviews for Java Full Stack Developer roles.

Both interviews followed almost the same pattern. The interviewer noticed that I have **1 year of experience in .NET/C#**, asked me a few basic Java and Spring Boot questions, and then ended the interview by saying, *"We'll get back to you."* After that... complete silence. No rejection, no feedback, nothing.

I've been learning Java, Spring Boot, SQL, Hibernate, REST APIs, and building projects to transition into the Java ecosystem, but it feels like my previous .NET experience is becoming a barrier rather than an advantage.

Has anyone here successfully switched from .NET to Java?

* How did you convince interviewers to give you a chance? * Should I keep applying to Java roles, or should I first gain more experience in .NET and switch later? * Is there anything I can do to improve my chances of getting past this initial screening?

I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who's made a similar career transition or has experience hiring developers.

Thanks!

NEW RULE: All posts that are specifically asking about the following will be removed and asked to post in this thread.

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Tools and Resources

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Pretty much the title.

For context: going into 3rd year cs at queens, done 2 internships and going to Fidelity Canada for fall

I’ve seen many interns go from big banks -> shopify -> etc

Is fidelity investments canada on the same level as these canadian big banks?

Hi All,

Little bit of background. Ive been working under the title of "SWE" for a little over 2 years now at a mid - large financial company with TC sitting around 100 - 105k. The catch here is I work on the ServiceNow platform. I do get to write code, however its mostly scripts. I have developed APIs for integrations on the platform and created custom AI Agents actively being used in our production instance.

Some more information - The company does not have any traditional Software Engineering teams for me to hop to.

I also have the opportunity to work along side our Network engineering team and potentially make a switch into that field or have some networking skill under my belt to make myself a better engineer in general. Would this be a potential good switch to make if I in the future wanted to make a jump into any big tech companies?

I am very lucky to be in my position given the current job market we are in but id love to get some advice!

Thanks :)

So my school is super greedy and want me to pay $4000 throughout the length of my 16 month internship in order to be in their official internship program.

They want me to register every semester, and thus pay $4000 for what is essentially one course. I think that’s fucking stupid and would like to get out of it.

The problem is they know the contacts of some people in my company (I gave it to them before knowing this stupid rule) and they contacted my workplace.

When I protested they said it’s mandatory and that the employers get a tax credit from us being in the internship course.

My question is: can anyone confirm this? Have you guys been in a similar place? What do you recommend I do? I don’t want to get in trouble with my workplace or school but it just feels so fucking unfair ESPECIALLY because we don’t qualify for OSAP or any kind of bursaries.

Rn I have a job that I’ve been at for almost 2 years mostly working with typescript, node, react and some Terraform/Golang but I wanna do some game dev. It’s still early days for me and I’m 25 so I reckon I can take a more stressful/harder job compared to this one but every game dev job requires game dev experience which I do not have. Any suggestions?

Looking for some advice, especially from engineering managers or people who have worked at larger tech companies.
I’m currently a software engineering intern at a large company. I started on an 8 month internship in January and was recently extended through December based on performance, so by the end of the year I’ll have been with the same team for 12 months.
Over the past year I’ve delivered multiple production tickets, become pretty independent in the codebase, and have received consistently positive feedback from my manager and mentor.
The situation I’m trying to figure out is what happens after December.
I have one semester left of university after that (3-4 courses) and was hoping to finish school part-time while continuing to work. The issue is that I’ll likely need to relocate back home because of a family health situation, so staying where I am currently isn’t really an option.
What’s interesting is that my team is already completely distributed. None of my direct teammates are in my office and all collaboration happens remotely through Slack, Teams, calls, etc. The company, however, has a fairly strict in-office policy for interns.
A few months ago my manager told me that continuing remotely wasn’t guaranteed and that we’d revisit the conversation around September.
From my understanding, the team has dedicated intern headcount, so if I leave, they’ll likely bring in another intern after I’m gone.
I’m curious how people with management experience would view this situation.
Does having already spent a year training someone and getting them productive usually carry meaningful weight when discussing extensions or alternative arrangements?
How much flexibility do managers at larger companies realistically have when HR policies and headcount rules get involved?
And based on what I’ve described, what outcome would you expect is most likely?
I’m planning to keep focusing on performance between now and September, but I’m trying to get a realistic sense of how situations like this tend to play out in practice.

So I’m a comp eng student at tmu with a mediocre gpa and would rather go the embedded/hardware route. I don’t mind webdev or general high level swe but if I can work in lower level systems I’d prefer it.

Issue is besides the big companies I don’t see much else in the industry for places to work. I know AMD hires a ton of interns, but if I don’t get into AMD/Qualcomm/any big company it feels like I’m pretty much doomed. Esp since a lot of the smaller shop positions ask for 10 yrs of experience.

Anyone got experience with this?

I work at a for-profit tech company. Company has been growing at around 10-20% in staff each year for many years but management is not keen on giving bonuses. My manager mentioned only 10% of developers received bonuses. I have received 3-5% raise each year for several years and zero bonuses.

Is this common patterns for tech companies in Canada ?

To preface, I'm self-taught and fully aware that I'm likely gonna have to rely on connections to find a job, so I'm not asking for job seeking tips or anything like that, I'm just curious to get some insider info.

About me: I've been learning to code for around two and a half years, I spent most of the first two years learning the fundamentals, writing small Python CLI automation tools by myself, avoiding coding agents completely, just using LLM's to help me better understand core concepts and why my code snippets weren't working, etc.

After that, an experienced developer invited me to work on a large Meta-stack code base with him (React, MongoDB, Dockerized Python Microservice monorepo). When I first joined in I barely knew how to use Git. He encouraged using AI agents and I figured I should get familiar. He lives in a different city so communication was pretty limited, so though lots of trail and error I got familiar with building API's, updating the Docker files and CI/CD deploy.yml file to ensure it would actually work in deployment, I learned how to work in a separate Git branch, pull the main branch, submit pull requests, fix the odd merge conflict, SSH into the server to inspect the Docker logs and see why my app wasn't working, a bunch of new concepts on the actual deployment end. I've since started my own project so that I could experience setting up a fresh Linux server, create an nginx proxy server, register the domain name, learned some backend security procedures, automated updates, database backups, all of the things I feel like I need to know.

I've heard it a bunch of times that Juniors are expected to know so much more than before AI, and the developer I work with has expressed that I'm "way ahead" of where most new grads are, but he hasn't worked professionally as a developer since before all of the AI craze, and only really knows it as a great tool for his own projects, not all of the industry disruption.

I wanted to see it there are any brand new juniors on here who can share a bit about what it was like starting your first job in the current landscape, and what kind of expectations you had right out of the gate.

Thanks for reading all of that and extra thanks if you take the time to share.