mariogintili

what are the most unhinged and uncensored models out there?

1) no 2) kind off but isn't that a really bad idea? specially knowing that the industry seems to be going down

I'm fairly successful at the interview

just crickets, I get nothing!

I'd like to thank everyone for the comments and upvotes,

as it stands, I have now been unemployed(while searching) for 3 months.

I have decided to make some serious changes to my search and what I do with my spare time.

I'll post a follow-up to this.

> But the risk is that someone else will go even lower than your offer until the role can be done internally by another person using an AI agent.

I have assessed various AI models & agents. I don't think I can be replaced by them, so I feel safe on that end.

That being said, I don't think my potential employers fully understand that.

> The point is, most businesses that are non-quant and non-big tech, non-big AI do not want to pay the extortionate level of taxes in the UK and it makes SWEs in the UK look very expensive and the jobs + office move off-shore.

Yes, this is where contract work came particularly handy. But the government made a big deal about taking them offshore due to IR35 pushing them out

any recruiters you'd recommend?

> Hypothetically being able to afford something if things were hypothetically different is not an indicator of what is affordable in reality.

unemployment is an extraordinary circumstance for me. Extraordinary circumstances affect affordability in an extraordinary way.

even with employment far below my usual pay I can afford where I am.

yes, so when I see an opening I try to message the key people around the role first, not just fill out a form. Any other approaches are well welcomed

> What’s funny is that many companies hiring “AI engineers” don’t really know what they’re doing. I’ve had interviews where they openly said: “We don’t really have AI expertise, but we know we need AI.” That’s how things are right now. It’s both good and bad. They can’t really judge your skills properly — but that also means your chances of passing are higher.

A lot of money is being thrown around at AI, it's a good time to open a company :) I agree.

> As for the Ruby/Rails world — I’m honestly very disappointed. The market feels completely saturated. There are too many experienced engineers competing for too few roles. Being good is no longer enough.

Ruby/Rails, and other platforms NEED deep AI integration. That wave is coming.

I am surprised that people don't do a rails new for their new startups. I still see it as the king of web frameworks.

> With LLMs, the world changed. You take the best tools available. Next.js with standardized React components instead of Stimulus and Turbo. Hosted auth instead of rolling your own. When I needed to integrate something like Clerk, I just dropped in a component and moved on. There are tons of ready-made solutions in the React ecosystem.

Show me those ready made solutions? I haven't used them commercially so I can't vouch for them

> Now compare that to Ruby. Are there modern AI libraries? Yes, technically. Are they well-maintained? Not really. You’re often dealing with abandonware. LangChain officially supports Python and TypeScript — not Ruby. And like it or not, AI today is happening in Python.

True, I should probably ship something in Python and just add that to my inventory.

> The more time you spend clinging to Ruby/Rails, the further behind you get. That’s just reality. My advice is simple: if you can, move on. The opportunity window in AI is wide open right now, but it won’t stay that way forever. 2026 is probably the last really good entry point.

I agree with you! time to move to new pastures

Open to remote peeps? I'm in the EU

Nah, definitely not.

And programmers haven't gotten any better in the last 5 years

I strongly advice you not to leave, this is a hard market

thanks, email sent

I'm no longer in a location where is easy to commute to a major city. I can't choose to get a job in a big city anymore that's 5 days a week

true!

I do believe in the 1 man SaaS legends. Any of us could build a little app overnight and watch it succeed.

I just don't have the sales/marketing muscle to my efforts

How do people find jobs in the US?

In the UK you're usually "discovered" by a company's talent team or independent recruiters.

I've had very little to no success with direct applications

your comment honors your handle,

That being said, this is about unemployment not affordability. I can afford where I am, if I had a job

> I'd also recommend looking beyond startups and pure software/tech companies. There are many businesses in eg manufacturing, or in less mainstream locations, that struggle to hire decent devs.

That's where I'm aiming for.

I know there's a million companies that would benefit from my work and can pay well, but they're just not the ones that find you on Linkedin, or post on Hacker News

hmm it depends really, I go below and above my "market rate"

I've come to learn that your salary as an engineer is more directly tied to your company's success rather than your personal outcomes as an engineer.

I've seen people padding buttons for £700/day working for large brands

I've seen people train open weight models for £350/day trying to ship an MVP.

The last permanent role I negotiated had a TC of £160,000/year. I'm open to go down to £90,000/year or even less for the right opportunity

As for contract work, my last 3 projects were £600/day, £700/day and £550/day. Again, I can go down for something stable.

That was back then when we were in our infancy as an industry and everything was about spitting out some cool graphics in less than 100 lines of JavaScript

Right now(specially looking at the world economy) It's all about getting yourself a nice, stable placement.

I haven't stopped hacking away, but I need an income

Honestly, like the international landscape for salaries has kind off like normalised itself. Wages for SWEs are more or less the same across the globe when you look at remote work.

Intelligent people are cutting costs instead of trying to earn more money

I'm open to be partially onsite

Thanks Marius! Here's my contact details

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/ https://github.com/shellandbull

I'll send an application over. my contact email is code.mario.gintili [at] gmail [dot] com

Here it is :) https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/

And my Github https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/

I applied for those(hybrid), still the same reach :(

> Is there a particular specialisation you have, and then how does someone who needs that specialisation find you?

Being a generalist and having experience delivering products all the way its what makes me stand out. That being said, I've done some cool pieces with backoffices and dev tooling and developer experience

> Or if there’s a local company that needs you… even if the work isn’t the most challenging… Can at least leverage the real-world relationships? Anyone at prior jobs who can help with connections? (Never hurts to ask).

I've done my best and decided to take any job even if it doesn't pay as much. I have exhausted all of my prior connections

Thanks for the good wishes

I can, I have an EU nationality so working for an EU client is seamless to me.

> Unless the company is a FAANG company or hedge fund, the UK tech scene is dead.

That is VERY, VERY true

> I don’t see any good UK startups worth joining in the UK. All the good ones are in SF / NY, etc.

There's a few popping up all over the EU too but from my search a single hub in the US(Say Austin, TX) has a bigger and better ecosystem than the entirety of UK+EU.

Funding is better over there too

How did you get cancelled? I think the same happened to a friend

I have successfully explored AI & prompt engineering. I already feel I'm "augmented" vs when I didn't had access to these tools.

I do 100% agree with you, thanks for the good wishes

My commute is not in a realistic location for commutes.

> I’m in the US and everyone I’ve talked to who wants to move have been discussing the challenges of getting a foot in the door anywhere.

Really? I thought the US was doing extremely well