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?

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.

Do you think engineers spend enough time thinking about the user experience of internal tools? I’ve seen teams tolerate painful internal systems that they’d never ship to customers.

My manager takes my work (which takes hours), feeds it to AI, and tells me to match the AI's output. Except the AI version makes zero sense for the actual project. I'm so annoyed and checked out that I'm skipping crucial steps in my workflow, making things worse. I used to love this work, but now I’m losing all passion. Has anyone dealt with a boss like this, or is it time for me to quit?

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?