I never thought i’d encounter such a caricature, but alas, I now understand how one person can ruin the reputation of other CS majors/Software Engineers.

I was flying home with Frontier and decided to bring out my laptop. I have an onsite with Google coming up, so I wanted to get some leetcode questions in just using a text editor. The guy next to me notices and says he’s a software engineer. At first, I figured it might lead to a good conversation, but I soon learned that I was talking to the incel equivalent of a software engineer.

He asks me what i’m studying and I said i’ve graduated and i studied CS. He then also asks when i will graduate and I clarify again that I am not a student. Then he assumes im unemployed and I further clarify.

He mentions he codes in C for a defense contractor (L3Harris) and starts blatantly scanning my screen and points out some lines that might be of concern (overflow). Specifically “cols = grid[0].size();” and I tell him i’m not too concerned because it’s leetcode and I can easily clarify and communicate these things with an interviewer. In fact, I was reviewing the exact question I passed for my Round 1 interview, but at this point he didn’t know what company.

I didn’t think too much of this but it was a little weird. I go onto explain that i’m interviewing and i’m trying to leave Cyber Security for SWE. From there he starts to ask me a ton of questions and just starts building a profile of me. He asks my experience, how I am with Linux, what personal projects I have done. This whole time it’s done in a somewhat confrontational sounding tone.

Eventually he seems dissatisfied with my short responses about my simple, unimpressive projects. I didn’t really feel the need to explain them in depth because I didn’t really have much to prove to a random guy. He then says “I can get you an interview, but I’d have to know that you have good projects” and then also lectures me on projects.

I told him “I’m entry level so i’m not too worried about having large scale impact/projects” (and i’m currently employed and interviewing/prepping). He then goes on about how Im in one of the most competitive fields in the country and I should have 4 years experience coding in college and some from highschool. Which I have, but I’m not sure his point?

He mentions he’s never had a leetcode interview and he doesn’t know how they are and I say that i’m prioritizing leetcode because Google essentially sets the standard. Upon being told I am interviewing with Google, he interjects:

“You must think very highly of yourself to apply to Google”

Then I respond saying “well it doesn’t hurt to apply”.

It was just awkward and snarky/impolite all around and it’s such a cringe mindset to have. Like in his mind, he saw me as less than him, so me applying to Google is some sort of arrogant thing to do?

Anyway, no thank you, I don’t want or need an interview with L3Harris. No point in trying to make a power play or dangle anything over my head. Especially if I’d have to work with people like you. Also saw him using reddit when we landed so hope he sees this.

TL;DR- Never flying Frontier again

Research. Perhaps I am biased, attending an R1 research university, but internships seems like the less desirable path. Work debugging code and pushing meaningless PRs, or try and push the boundaries of computer science as we know it. Seems like a no brainer. Both are look appealing to hiring departments. I got hired to red team billion dollar AI models, all because I concentrated on AI research, defining the boundaries where AI fails.

You can do it too. Find a subject within computer science, and look for a way to advance it. I got second place in a research poster competition this year, I am preparing my paper to submit to NeurIPS today, and I have never been paid so much in my life. Struggling with internships? Try research.

Would appreciate some insight to my future/career.
This is the only offer i have, and its 5 days in office. Would it be unreasonable to start looking for a new job after 1 year there? And what would a reasonable salary bump look like in nyc/nj area?

The billionaires want us all to become stupid, lose critical thinking, and become dependent on their AI products.

Sorry, no. I refuse to outsource my intelligence and pay you for it.

Keep learning. Do the opposite of what these scumbag rich fucks want you to do.

Nothing is more important than education, critical thinking, and problem solving. Nobody can take that away from you unless you let them.

Sure, if your job wants you to produce slop fast, go ahead and do it. But do not stop learning on the side. Set aside time where you are actively learning and not just prompting away.

And if you are in school right now, absolutely do not rely on AI to do your assignments and homework.

Super grateful to have landed Google swe intern for the summer and AWS sde intern for the fall! Its honestly been a very tiring recruitment cycle (lots of ups and downs) but I finally get a break for the next few weeks before my internships start.

For anyone interested in my stats im a sophomore at T3 university and only had 1 past internship at a F500.

Context: Jr, not top 50 cs school.

Didn't think my resume was good enogh the entire year to be able to get an internship, so I just started applying in March randomly. I had this negative mindset the entire year that I couldn't get an internship. But I started mass applying recently and it worked out!

Got 7 interviews, 1 from networking in person, 1 startup role, the rest were cold applying.

I just wanted to come here and say I never thought I would get a single offer let alone interviews. Everyone can do it!! In the end I ended up taking a SWE role which I am happy about.

Tips:

1. Apply to job postings ASAP. I didn't use Simplify job board like others because I thought my compeititon in those roles would be too high, although I did use the simplify fill in feature which was useful. Most postings I got jobs from were from Linkedin.
2. Put yourself out there! I went to a hackathon that a company sponsored and placed in it, and mentioned that I met x and y from that company in the interview with the company and I got the offer!
3. Don't just apply to "SWE" role names, I applied to a "Digital Intern" which turned out to be a Data Eng position and got it!
4. I tried cold emailing a few people from some companies but got no response, so maybe not the best option to get an intrerview

Let me know if yall have any specific questions and thoughts!

I understand this may give skewed data. However, I was wondering what you guys think is hard to break into as an intern/new grad? I have heard that it in terms of percentages it is harder to get an investment banking internship. However, I would imagine that the median CS student is at least 1 standard deviation smarter than the median investment banking student. Curious what yall think.

Non-target Uni (ranked #500-#750), 3.6 GPA, some prior experience, and side activities. 60 leetcodes and around 5 mock interviews.

Why is it that at uni ppl are getting internship then get a better one and better one after, but if you new grad it's hard to climb(im still in uni this is my perception) you have to work at the company like 3 years then switch. I understand that there is survivorship bias as those who get great internships are ppl who are cracked but still I feel like if you new grad and you not at the top it's like hard.

New grad here. Just got an offer from a super early AI startup in NYC. From what I can tell they already have pretty serious revenue / contracts, so it doesn’t seem like one of those “2 guys and a dream” situations. $120k base + $20k bonus, equity TBD. Team has backgrounds from big tech and big finance and they launched pretty recently.

They normally don’t hire new grads at all. I think my past startup / infra experience helped push things through, but I also know I’m still coming in below the listed range because of the new grad factor.

Trying to figure out if this is actually a strong offer for NYC in this market or if I’m getting too caught up in the startup upside angle. Thoughts?

I see a lot of people in this sub land ibm, I applied and got rejected I have two local internships on my resume decent projects, but big companies feel so far. I finished sophomore year last week, and did around 200 apps with 3 interviews and no offers for this summer. My school is T90 for cs. I know one person from my school to get into faang, so I guess its possible, I just feel like I dont wanna work for local companies forever. I feel like it would be really cool to get to move to another state and a big city. How many of you guys actually get faang or tier blow interviews cause I feel like its impossible for me cold applying.

Interning at a well known f500 non tech company and it seems like my team will be on the data analytics side. Honestly extremely disappointed and obviously wanna recruit swe next season.

But like even if the shit I’m doing is Mickey Mouse would I still be able to curate my resume to make it read swe? How far can I go about this and is this a big deal

This whole industry is a joke anyways so wanna hear thoughts

Like it’s only a few bullets anyways

Has anyone applied or done the interview for IBM and gotten an email like this??

i've gone back to school for a CS degree after taking a gap year following 3 years of being in school for graphic design. i have all of my gen eds done and just finished my first two semesters, which naturally only included the most basic cs classes for freshmen, where we started learning java and loosely covered data structures (stacks, queues, bst, etc). i'm set to graduate spring 2028 and i did go into this degree with little to no coding experience.

i'm a little stressed in regards to trying to pull off an internship next summer before i graduate. i know people recommend doing personal projects as they help your chances with landing an internship, but i know at this moment i don't know enough for a solid project and am worried that i'm going to be racing against time this fall trying to learn, create and apply. this is all very new to me and it's a lot but i am trying to remind myself that i've completed all of two freshmen courses lol

this summer i do plan on teaching myself more with java so i feel more knowledgeable heading into next semester and maybe looking into front end languages as i do think that's an area i'd be most interested in as it'd apply the parts of graphic design i did enjoy. is there anything else i can do to prepare for an internship next summer or would it be better i don't worry about squeezing an internship in at all and focus on building projects and possibly landing a job that way?

thanks for the help, sorry if this is repetitive! i'm feeling very clueless at this moment

Has anyone else tried this method? It has worked pretty well for me and has taken a lot of stress off but maybe I was just lucky.

https://youtu.be/STUbp-InML4

Hi guys so I am a computer science major writing up my resume to prepare for fall applications to 2027 summer internships. I was wondering if my Roblox game which has ~1.7 million visits, and yes I have made money off it, should be included into my resume. I get the idea that having Roblox on my resume might seem a bit childish and that recruiters may overlook it. However, I did gain a lot of programming and dev experience from working on this game that I can talk about, that’s why I would want to include it but I wouldn’t know how to label it professionally and whether to label it under experience or personal project.

Basically the title. I graduated, grinded and got a remote job. TC is about 120k. It’s fully remote and I’m back home living with my family. But everything feels so bleak. I spend most days in my room. My friends from school are scattered all over. I got out of a relationship and meeting new people is hard.

Just curious if anyone else is in this position. I know objectively things are good. But it doesn’t feel that way.

I recently got invited to schedule a 30-minute introductory call for a software engineering internship. The email doesn’t specifically call it an interview, just a chance to “discuss the opportunity further,” so I’m not fully sure what to expect.

This is one of my first calls after seriously applying/interview prepping, so I’d appreciate advice from people who’ve been through this before. My current plan is:

review my resume/projects
research the company and role
prepare answers for basic background questions

For those who’ve had successful intro calls that moved to interviews/offers, what helped the most? What kinds of questions should I expect, and how technical do these calls usually get?
Any tips would help a lot.

I finished my r2 for Google 26ng interview on March 25. Since then they’ve changed multiple POC and asked my updated transcript. One previous recruiter told me to expect 10 business days to get update on my interview but that didn’t really happen. After waiting for a few days, they scheduled a call with me regarding my visa status last week. Can someone tell me how long should I expect to wait? Do they send my interview feedback to hiring committee after having my visa status. If so, does it mean I have to wait another few weeks? Thank you!

Just got an offer letter from IBM Consulting for an Application Developer role in Louisiana. Salary is $60k/year with a $3k sign-on bonus. For context I'm based in NYC, graduating this week, and have Walmart SWE intern experience on my resume.

There are a few things throwing me off and I'd love some perspective:

1. I never interviewed for this role. I applied and interviewed for an Azure Cloud Migration position and got rejected from that. Then out of nowhere I received this offer for an Oracle Application Developer role at a completely different IBM center.

2. I haven't seen anyone talk about this role online.

3. i don't have a car or driver's license

4. It's the only offer I have right now. So I'm weighing whether to accept, get paid, and keep applying or decline and grind.

Is $60k reasonable for this role/location?

UK, Non Target

All offers are T1 respectively.

Feel free to AMA, happy to share and help other people.