About us
This is a group for anyone in the Tampa-St. Pete-Sarasota area and surrounding cities interested in getting out- meeting new people, trying new adventures, networking, and just wanting to have a good time around good company of like-minded individuals! Our circle mainly consists of local professionals who are classy, vibrant, and have a fine taste for the good life!
Upcoming events
12
How to Land a Software Engineering Job in 2027
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This event is FREE to attend!
In order to attend, please register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2003644029228?aff=oddtdtcreator
The software engineering market didn't collapse. It split — and most candidates are still preparing for the market that existed three years ago.
Openings exist, but they've concentrated. AI-adjacent and infrastructure roles are competitive to fill while generalist roles sit far below their pre-2022 baseline. The entry rung has thinned as AI absorbs the well-bounded work that used to train junior engineers, which pushes recent grads and career changers into a crowded middle already occupied by laid-off mid-level engineers. Time-to-hire has stretched. Fully remote postings are rare.
The bigger change is one almost nobody is preparing for: the interview itself got rebuilt. After a wave of real-time AI assistance in remote coding screens, companies responded in two directions. Some dragged interviews back on-site. Others redesigned the assessment — adding rounds where you're handed an AI assistant and evaluated on whether you can prompt it, catch its mistakes, and defend the result. Follow-up questions became the filter. Narrating your reasoning out loud went from nice-to-have to the thing you're actually scored on.
If your prep strategy is "grind 500 LeetCode problems," you are optimizing for a screen that increasingly isn't the deciding round.
Join software engineer and mentor Phong Lam for a working session on what's actually required to land a software engineering role right now. He'll cover:- Where the market genuinely split, and which side of it your background currently sits on
- Why interview loops changed in 2026 — on-site returns, AI-assisted rounds, and follow-up questions as the real filter
- How to prepare by pattern, not volume: recognizing question families instead of memorizing solutions
- The new prep skill nobody practices — debugging and defending code you didn't write
- How to talk about using AI in your work without sounding like you've outsourced your judgment
- How mid-level and senior engineers coming off a layoff avoid reading as "generalist" on paper
- Where the openings actually are, including the non-obvious companies quietly hiring software talent
- What career changers and recent grads can do to clear a bar that moved after they enrolled
Come with your questions, your loop stories, and the roles you're targeting.
ABOUT PHONG LAM
Phong Lam is a senior software engineer at Circle, with past stops at DoorDash, Walmart, and IBM. Alongside his career he mentors junior and senior engineers on algorithmic problem solving, web frameworks, and navigating interviews. Connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/phongtlam/.1 attendee
2 Hours to Freedom: Build a Job Hunt AI Agent with Claude
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Attendees can be located anywhere in the world!
There is a cost to attend this event.
In order to attend, please register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2003644622001?aff=oddtdtcreator
Build an AI agent that job hunts while you sleep.
In this hands‑on session, you’ll use Claude to build a job hunt agent that actually saves you time instead of creating more busywork. You’ll learn how to set up focused channels for targeting roles, researching companies, and tailoring outreach, then wire in various APIs so your agent can pull fresh job postings and context on demand. We'll learn how to have a reusable channel setup and prompt patterns you can run weekly to keep your search organized, personalized, and mostly on autopilot.Build an AI agent that job hunts while you sleep.
AI agents are an emerging way to automate parts of your job search, from sourcing roles to drafting outreach, so you spend less time grinding and more time in real conversations.
In this beta, hands‑on workshop, you’ll follow a guided build to assemble a prototype “Job Search Copilot” using Claude. Rather than promising a polished, one‑click agent, we’ll focus on helping you understand the building blocks: structuring prompts and tasks, wiring simple workflows, and tailoring behaviors for your role or niche.
Because tools and setups vary, not every participant will leave with a perfectly running agent in their own environment. Instead, you’ll leave with:
- A concrete mental model of how AI agents support a job search.
- A copy of the instructor’s working example project you can study and reuse.
- Templates, code snippets, and a step‑by‑step guide you can revisit after the session to get your own version fully working.
- No prior technical experience is required, but you should be comfortable installing software and copying commands. If you hit environment issues during the live session, we’ll provide ways to follow along using prepared checkpoints so you can still absorb the patterns and process.
This session will be recorded. All registrants receive:
- The recording.
- Links to the example project.
- Written setup instructions and troubleshooting tips.
- Whether you’re a jobseeker, career coach, or a professional curious about operationalizing AI in your workflow, this workshop is designed to give you a realistic, experiment‑ready starting point, not a finished product.
What you’ll walk away with
- A reusable blueprint for building simple AI agents with modern tools.
- A prototype “Job Search Copilot” project (or access to a working example) that you can refine after the workshop.
- Practical patterns you can extend to other use cases beyond job hunting.
Finally, this session will be recorded. If you sign up and cannot make it, a recording will be sent to you.
3 attendees
2 Hours to Research Intelligence: Build Your First AI Agent
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Our meetup group is participating by promoting this event.
This event is organized by Albert's List.
This is an online event.
Attendees can be located anywhere in the world!
There is a cost to attend this event.
In order to attend, please register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2003645521692?aff=oddtdtcreator
You're either looking at a company to join, or you're trying to understand what your competitors are doing. Either way, you're researching blind—reading scattered reviews, googling company news, checking LinkedIn. It takes forever and you miss things.
Stop doing this manually.
In this workshop, you'll customize and deploy a working AI research agent in 3 hours. Fork an existing competitive intelligence agent, wire in your own data sources (RSS feeds, APIs, whatever's available), and run it. Feed it a company or industry keyword. Get back structured intelligence: recent news, hiring patterns, market positioning, gaps, red flags.
What you'll actually do:- Clone a working competitive intelligence agent from GitHub
- Add your own custom data sources (RSS feeds, open APIs, etc.)
- Test it live on a real company or competitor
- Walk away with a deployed agent you can run 100+ times
Two use cases, one agent:
- Job Seeker Mode — Research a company before you apply, interview, or accept an offer. Understand growth, hiring, leadership, red flags.
- Competitive Mode — Understand what competitors are doing, market gaps, hiring trends, strategic moves. For employees and side hustlers.
What you need before the workshop:
- 10 min of pre-work (optional, but recommended): Clone the GitHub repo, set up your API key, test it runs
- A laptop with a browser (Claude.ai)
- Basic comfort with Claude—you should already be asking it questions and iterating
After the workshop:
- Post-work recap doc: What you built, how to iterate, advanced techniques, troubleshooting
- Optional upsell: Advanced agent techniques course (separate paid offering)
This is NOT:
- A tutorial on "how to use AI"
- A guide to corporate strategy
- A tool for stalking or privacy violations (we cover ethical guardrails)
Price: $17–27 (one-time, includes materials + post-work doc)
Pre-work is optional. If you complete it, you'll hit the ground running. If you skip it, no problem—we'll set up during the first 20 minutes.1 attendee
Past events
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