A senior engineer on my team is leaving, and our manager sent a link for a farewell gift card. She mentored me when I was a junior, so I want to chip in, but I can't see what others are giving and have never done this before. She makes great money if that matters. The default options are $20, $30, and $50. What's standard here? Is $30 enough, or should I go higher since she helped me so much?

How do you know when it’s time to leave a job vs. stick it out and push through a rough patch? For me it comes down to whether the core reasons I took the role are still intact. If the work is still interesting and the people are decent, a rough patch is survivable. But if I’m dreading Mondays every single week, that’s usually a signal worth listening to.

I recently switched to salary, and my workload exploded. Suddenly, everything is "urgent," so I'm working 2–3 hours of unpaid overtime at home every night. The company is billing the client for my extra hours, but I'm not seeing any of it. How do I bring this up with management? I'd rather not keep working for free.

I've been stuck in a pure maintenance cycle for six months, and I'm starting to feel like a script-runner instead of an engineer. I'm trying to move into a senior-level job, and I worry about stagnating, but I'm not sure what to do. Is this a common issue with engineers who hope to level up?

I'm a junior engineer, but I inherited a project mid-construction because the designer left. I wasn't around for the early phases, but now I’m running the site meetings. I'm stressed about the technical gap and being asked questions I don't know the answers to. I don't want to appear clueless in front of the clients, even though I am. Is it okay to say that I don't know, but I will get back to them? Or does that look unprofessional?