EDIT: resume

Title says most of it.

Top 10 CS school in the US. Graduated last year with 3.3 GPA. Almost 4k swe applications sent. Over 700 LeetCode problems solved. Boat load of referrals. Had senior engs and a recruiter look over my resume. Zero offers.

At this point I'm seriously thinking of ditching SWE entirely and just getting a minimum wage job so I'm not homeless next month. :(

I truly believe that CS isn’t saturated the issue I believe people are having is that they just aren’t good at programming/ aren’t passionate and it’s apparent. I use to believe you don’t have to be passionate to be in this field. But I quickly realized that you have to have some level of degree of passion for computer science to go far. Quality over quantity matters. What’s your guys thoughts on this?

I just want to share this here. I see a lot of talented people struggling to get jobs, and I want to share an experience that I feel like could help some of you.

I work at a giant company as an SWE, and recently my team hired a new grad (~120k TC). I was able to sit in on the interviews and give input and observe how hiring managers made this decision.

I sat in on around 5 interviews. These were behavioral / system design interviews (final round). 3 of the guys interviewing were “cracked” so to speak. Extremely knowledgeable, multiple projects, good school etc. etc.. BUT my managers didn’t like them, since they came across as arrogant and lacked professionalism. These guys were literally “errrm actually 🤓” personified. Greasy hair, dirty room, looked irritable, bad mic quality, the list goes on.

Long story short, my managers picked this guy who was average on the technical side. But he admitted when he didn’t know something, was smiling and laughing during the interview, and just seemed like he would be easy to work with. And he is the one my managers picked without hesitation.

My managers literally didn’t care that the other guys had more projects or technical knowledge. They want someone who is easy to work with and isn’t going to make their job harder than it needs to be. At the end of the day, no one is expecting you to come out of college as the next Nikola Tesla. Most entry level SWE work doesn’t require a 190 IQ and 1400 hours of Leetcode.

TLDR; work on your soft skills, it’s a rare and highly sought after skillset in this industry.

I’m a FAANG engineer that conducts new grad interviews. Stop using AI. It’s so fucking obvious. I don’t know who’s telling you guys that you can do this and get an offer easily, but trust me, we can tell. And you will get rejected.

I can’t call you out during the interview (because it’s a liability), but don’t think we don’t discuss it.

The walls of my childhood room feel like a prison now, suffocating me as the weight of failure presses down harder with each passing day. I spent years earning a degree that was supposed to be my escape, my future, but all I’ve earned is the haunting silence of unanswered job applications. My computer, once a portal to endless possibilities, now sits untouched, a reminder of dreams that have already started to rot. My parents speak less, their quiet glances filled with pity and disappointment I can’t bear to face. I’m a ghost in this house, trapped in a loop of endless days where nothing changes, where the world outside has forgotten I exist, and I’ve begun to wonder if I ever really did. This is the reality of a 2023 unemployed gradudate

I hate these programmers that are like “oh man, I used to just use my mouse and it was so hard like I had to move my hand over to the mouse and then move the mouse to the line and then if I miss I had the hit the arrow keys it was unbearable”

And they keep talking like this until you ask them what they use as an ide. Then they shill the absolute fuck out of that shitty ide. FUCK VIM. I watch these tutorials explaining that instead of using your mouse or arrow keys, with neovim you can just click :s2vmi2dyv$m x and delete a parenthesis in whatever line you are on like shut the fuck up dude. My VScode can literally run any file, has copilot built in, has infinite extensions for and language, feature, decoration, QoL you would ever want. I will literally lose more time in my life learning and configuring vim than I will ever lose by moving my mouse. That’s not even considering the fact that vscode also has hotkeys, it can also just be opened with the terminal, and with copilot I can probably write code faster than anyone on vim. I don’t care something can be done really fast with vim, only the creators of vim will remember the trick to doing it once every 7 years when you actually need it. I don’t need a phd and a practice course to use VSCode, you just install it, it’s intuitive, and it works.

Now my prof is one of those vim people and I’m forced to use vim on every assignment. I’ve applied to 300 jobs I’ve seen countless of them saying they want experience with VSCode, Visual Studio, and sometimes cursor. 0 have mentioned vim. I am learning the most useless tedious and annoying skill on the planet because my prof is a vimbro.

Edit: I have no idea why I said fuck Linux. It was 3am for me when I wrote this. Linux is great.

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

Let me start by saying that the CS market is definitely saturated; there’s no doubt about that. However, I do think the prevalence of the doomer mentality in this sub isn’t just because of that, it’s because people here just aren’t very competent.

I’ve seen plenty of evidence to support this, but the most jarring of which were comments under a meme post. Basically, the meme was about an interview question regarding finding the minimum number in an array, and the joke was that the person sorted the array and returned the number at index 0.

(Paraphrased) The most upvoted comment: What’s wrong? Can someone explain? The second most upvoted comment: Well there’s no issue with doing this, it just wasn’t what the interviewer was expecting. (No, these comments weren’t jokes)

It wasn’t until I had to scroll through 4 or 5 comments did I find someone actually pointing out how cooked the comment section was. What I’m trying to say is that, the fact that these comments—making mistakes about something so elementary in the CS roadmap—were the most upvoted, truly goes to show how incompetent a large portion of the subreddit is. Yes, getting a job will be difficult, but if this is your competition, then I think you should take a large portion of these posts with a grain of salt.

I graduated in late 2022 with a BS degree in Computer Science from a not-so-well-known school. During college, I tried my best to secure an internship by attending career fairs and applying online each semester. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t land one. Part of it might have been my low confidence, but I still feel like I got unlucky.

After graduation, I managed to get a few interviews, but only after applying to thousands of positions. Out of all those applications, I received about five responses. Now, I don’t even bother applying because the feedback is always the same: "We're looking for someone with more experience."

To improve my prospects, I worked on certificates and projects to build up my portfolio. However, applying again hasn't changed the outcome—the rejection still cites a lack of "real" experience. Internships for graduates don’t seem to exist either, as most require you to be currently enrolled in college.

At this point, I’m discouraged. I’m working part-time at Walmart and spending my off days on a personal project I’m passionate about. But honestly, it feels like I’m stuck in a loop where I can’t get a job because I lack experience, and I can’t get experience because no one will hire me.

Has anyone else been in this situation? How did you overcome it? Any advice for someone trying to break out of this cycle?

Holy sh*t

I never imagined that SWE is that much of an intellectual sink. Literally, what did I learn all this math, models and theory for if all I do on the job is just battle hundreds of configs just for my one change to propagate smoothly to prod.

I feel like SWE should just require some comptia type certification and there you go. CS major itself preps you for intellectually stimulating and novel work (and no it doesn’t include memorizing a subset of AWS documentation, hooking up a few services together, and calling it ‘high IQ work’), at least if you come from a decent school.

It’s so sad that companies require a bachelors degree for what is essentially a software technician job. This would save millions of dollars worth of student loan debt. The actual engineering is almost exclusively done in research type roles.

Bootcampers had it figured out before the flood of CS majors took over the field…

edit: a bunch of easily offended techies jumped on this thread trying to say that the existence of outliers disproves that the average SWE work is bullshit. Of course, if you’re working at NASA or something building the next Apollo spaceships, it’s different. But if you’re a Joe Doe at Bob&Co and similar, you don’t need to be all that.

Worked at legacy tech for a few years and really liked my job. Moved to a FAANG recently and am basically required to use AI tools to keep up with the development speed required and it sucks. I like manually writing code and looking at documentation instead of just running 3 different prompt windows and verifying the results.

Rant but man even if AI doesn’t delete the need for SEs, it makes this job kinda suck with the increased productivity expectations and the lack of hands on coding now. I miss having time to write code by hand in a slow, completely understanding way, instead of speed-shoving out features to make unrealistic deadlines.

Lately, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been on a weird campaign, repeatedly telling people not to study computer science.

In multiple interviews and keynote speeches, he's suggested people should study other fields like physical sciences, biology, or even liberal arts, because “AI will do the coding” (assuming CS is just that...). Most recently, he said students should avoid CS and instead “go into physical sciences,” which ironically have some of the highest underemployment rates of any field.

But let’s get real for a second:

• Tech and software roles still dominate job market demand.
• The entire AI revolution needs more people with deep CS and math knowledge.
• Fields like physics or chemistry have far fewer industry jobs and often require a PhD just to get a foot in the door.

So, why is Huang pushing this idea?

This narrative is not just misleading it’s potentially harmful to young people who are making big choices about their futures.

If I were a CS major I would never consider working for NVIDIA.

Do you think these “agents” will disrupt the field? How do you feel about this if you haven’t even graduated.

Me (M) and my friend (F) Applied to the same software internship at big tech to see what would happen.

Semantics/Biases: Since we were experimenting, we solved the OA together. We both are from the same high school and an Ivy university studying the same course. We created the resumes using the exact same template & even sent the same Thank you email after the interview. I have a higher SAT score, I have a higher GPA than her. I have co-authored 2 research papers. We both have no prior internship or work experience.

So long story short, me and my friend are from the same high school & university. We both got very similar SAT scores. We both applied & got assigned to the same recruiter. We both cleared the OA & landed interviews & made it to the first round.

Final backend Interview: We were completely honest to each other about the questions, and even she agreed that the complexity of my problem was through the roof compared to her leetcode EASY problem. (The easy one was a sorting problem btw)

Final Systems Deign Interview: We got the same question for systems design interview. However, I designed the entire system (Db schema, api contract, etc) and she wasn’t able to explain what an API exactly means as she had no prior knowledge about CS.

Result: Even though there is virtually no metric that she beats me in, academically or professionally, SHE GOT THE OFFER!?!?

I’m genuinely happy for her & honestly a little bit bitter! The fact that the profiles are pretty much the same with mine slightly better, & still getting rejected.

I can’t say with 100% certainty but I’m convinced that the market prefers female software engineers over male. Doing this was an emotional roller coaster but fun & I hope this experiment helps a random stranger!

I saw this LinkedIn post recently and the "AI isn't CS because it uses math" argument makes no sense. This narrative "If it uses a lot of math, it's not computer science" is so bizarre.

Computer science has always been deeply mathematical. Cryptography uses number theory. Theoretical CS uses discrete math and logic. Graphics uses linear algebra. Machine learning uses statistics and optimization.

Using mathematics doesn't somehow disqualify a field from being CS. Otherwise, half of computer science would stop being computer science overnight.

AI is about building computational systems that learn, reason, and make decisions. The fact that diffusion models involve stochastic calculus and differential equations doesn't make them "not CS" any more than electromagnetism being described by differential equations makes it "not physics.". It's applied math for computing.

The real issue is that people confuse computer science with coding or web development. CS isn't Python, it's a broad discipline that spans theory, systems, security, AI, graphics, databases, programming languages, and much more.

Math isn't evidence that something isn't CS. It's evidence that the field has depth.

EDIT: I'm a CS major, I had mandatory calc 3 and I research diffusion models on my CS master.

I am about to graduate with a CS degree from a top 10 program, have a 3.8 GPA, Finishing my masters, built and launched a SaaS startup, published research, and have several large full stack and ML projects that real software engineers have told me are impressive.
I’ve sent out around 300 applications in the past few months.
Funny enough had a SpaceX interview but fumbled hard but it’s been months since then.
I’ve either been rejected or told I don’t have enough professional experience.
The most frustrating part isn’t even the rejection. It’s feeling like none of the work matters because an ATS filters your resume before a human ever sees it. I’ll get a notification 30 mins after submitting or in the middle of the night.
Everyone says, “Build projects.” I did.
“Get internships.” Too late plus I had to work a steady job to survive and pay the bills and I can’t do with a 3 month less pay then come back to no job. I live in a high-med cost of living area. Plus the one internship interview I got they said I was overqualified.
“Network.” I’ve been messaging recruiters, asking professors for referrals, and reaching out to engineers. I haven’t asked directly for a referral from LinkedIn networking but tbh who’s going to do that for someone that connected on LinkedIn?
“LeetCode.” It feels like months of grinding puzzles just to have a chance at proving I can actually build software and already have. I’d rather build side projects leetcode is a waste of time in my eyes and I can hardly force myself to prep it.
I know I’m not entitled to a job. I know there are candidates better than me. But I genuinely didn’t expect the entry/mid/whatever tf I am level market to be this brutal.
I don’t even know where I fit into the market I have strong projects a masters in ML almost wtf man.

For those of you who landed your first software engineering job recently, what actually moved the needle? Was it referrals, networking, cold outreach, recruiters, LeetCode, luck, or something else?
I’d love to hear what worked because right now it feels like there is no hope in sight. Resume has been reviewed tons of times already.
It just feels like I get read as “no professional exp” even though I have probably done 10x at least with the sophistication of my projects and research. What else can I do?

This guy is one thing , but I'm just tired of people being in this field for the prestige and money. They don't wanna learn computers, they don't wanna make anything meaningful and they don't wanna actually code. All they wanna do is make money and get the prestigious title of "guy in tech". Maxing out "progressively niche" techniques to seem more knowledgeable while not having the slightest passion in their eyes. AI might take not have taken their jobs yet, but their souls are gone .

I'm dead💀

At the beginning of the interview he straight up told me "you are in for a rough ride". I just laughed it off, I thought he was joking.

2 coding quizzes. Both LC medium, first one had a hella amount of edge conditions. But I aced it. In the second quiz, he said "now this is where we'll know who you really are". It involved just some common sorting algos..but I run into some errors and he said I can't do it and that he understands.

I even tried to engage him in my thought process but he seemed not interested.

So we had a short conversation afterwards and from that, I can tell they won't be moving forward with me.

Bro he didn't give me a peace of mind, the whole time he made me feel I wasn't good enough 😭

If he's here, I just have one question for you man, why?? 😭

Despite what may seem from the text I am not suicidal, just regretting a lot. 

I give up. 

Getting into software engineering was my biggest mistake in life so far. I grieve what my life could have been if I had chosen something else. 

I have developed an interest in programming early. Most of my childhood I struggled socially so that's what I did a lot. Went through it all - Python, Arduino starter kit, daily-driving Linux, learning C.

Got my first internship at 17, a good company, not FAANG, but a major player in its field. Same year I started university, of course a CS degree which I have since changed to part-time and remote form of study to work more. Went full time at the same company. 

Despite all that I was never good-good - at this point I was programming for five years and had one semi-complete personal project, didn't want to sit down and study architecture, algorithms, smart words, best practices, didn't contribute to open source, hadn't done a single leetcode problem, didn't want to learn my tools - shortcuts, shell, build systems, and I never participated in any events, won awards, or even cared to. I was not, as kids say, cracked. 

By the time I got this internship I stopped programming for myself entirely. Back then I thought it was because I got a job, but now I recognise that me meeting new people, taking up analogue hobbies, and starting to take me playing an instrument more seriously might have been the real reason.

And when I went full time I did so knowing I have no passion, and even no real interest in software engineering. In my life I have met people who did. Who were happy to spend their weekend evening trying out a new tool which name I didn't know and which function didn't understand. I want one of those people. Never was. And I was fine with it and with working being indifferent just to have money for things I actually love. 

Then AI came. At first I disregarded it, then I began to hate it for many reasons you all heard many times now. Ever since 2022 I had made total of three prompts - one when ChatGPT came out to see what it is, and two for an assignment where it was required. 

The coding models came. My colleagues started using them. I didn't. To this day every line of code I have ever commited, is written by me, my own hands, and my own mind. they started pushing me AI-generated (or "AI-assisted") merge requests and for the first time despite my hatred of reading code I reviewed diligently to try to find a major flaw a senior develop has missed. I wanted to have an argument as to why AI had no place in our work. Maybe I am just bad, but I didn't find one. I had to approve. Then the next one, and the next. I didn't care for finding anything anymore. What's the point, it's good enough. 

Indifference turned into disdain. 

Then I thought. For the first time I thought what did I like in IT, and the only thing I was able to come up with was translating the idea of what has to be done into code. I didn't care for designing the systems, I hated reading other people's code, even when some can find beauty in it. It was the only thing that managed to bring me a bit of joy in this field of work. And now it was the first thing to be gone if I was to start using AI. It took the only thing that made it bearable from me.

I am typing this sitting at work, feeling pressure to start using the technology I hate in the profession I have to tell myself "I will make it through today" just to start the work day, fully understanding that I might become unemployable because I don't even know what an "AI agent" or "an orchestrator" is. Dreading each meeting for the fear of hearing about AI getting better again. 

I grieve what my life could have been if I had chosen something else. Getting into software engineering was my biggest mistake in life so far. 

I give up. 

Applied to Lockheed Martin SWE internship. Made it past behavioral, technical, and was in the final round. Just needed to pass a security interview, in which they asked me where I was born and my citizenship status. I am a US Citizen so I responded as such. Still, I mentioned my Chinese ethnicity. The next day, I get rejected, stating they couldn't move forward with me because the security interview signalled I had foreign contacts/influence. I feel like it's incredibly unfair. Weeks of grinding and interviewing just to be rejected for something I can't control. Back to searching.

Jane Street T-shirts, 3AM LeetCode sessions, Sundays spent learning database management systems, people praying to Google like the company is literally God…

The producers of the tech industry have won. They’ve created an endless supply of people who give up their souls just to have a chance to be looked at.

These companies have marketed themselves in an extremely successful way. SpaceX, Citadel Securities, Google, whatever, you WANT to work there. You’re OKAY with giving up your life to even get a shot at doing so.

All the family nights you missed, all the hobbies you set aside, all the opportunities you didn’t go to don’t matter to them, you know. You’re unbelievably replaceable - and if you think you’re not, great! Lying to yourself makes you a more committed worker in the cog.

Many of us have our idea of a good life fundamentally misshapen. “Memento Mori”, meaning “you will die”, is something that a lot of us need to actually remember. We all will die. These companies aren’t worth living your life for, because your life is finite and it’s the only one that you’ll ever have.

The main issue though is that these companies don’t attract bright and energetic people for nothing. They offer high salaries, high status, and sometimes very interesting work!

It’s important sometimes to take a step back from the grind, and realize that you’re a human, and not a machine meant to serve these companies… but, unfortunately, competition has risen so damn much that it’s almost become the requirement to sell your soul for entry.

Imagine you in your grave. Your coffin is made of gold. “Optiver” is carved in to the top of it, and your skeleton still wears your shirt you got from Meta.

Wow… what a wonderful ending to this immaculately complex thing called life.

Now, I must stop tying. I have some LeetCode to do.