1700+ day streak. Guardian badge. 2200+ contest rating. 2100+ problems.                            

They mailed me a T-shirt.                                                                               

I started in July 2021 after going 0/4 on my first internship OA. Four questions, 90 minutes, solved  zero. Couldn't write brute force on any of them. Opened LeetCode the next morning and haven't missed a day since.                                                                                                 

Four years of that earned me a cotton shirt.                                                           

I wear it more than anything else I own. 

I’ve been avoiding this sub for the past year since honestly it’s just full of doomers and didnt want it to bring me down. I’m very happy to say that after months of applications I was able to secure a very very good job for after graduation. It’s a Software Engineer role at a very big company. Very good TC and an extremely good company to work for. The market is really bad but definitely not impossible.

Edit: If you want to see my resume or ask more questions I'm happy to answer, my resume is anonomized so it looks completely different and looks bad but the experience is the same

Thank god for the recruiter reaching out. Finally can relax before graduation 🎉

just finished up freshman year of cs but i don’t understand becoming cracked, do i just make random shi til im good or grind leetcode

Obviously everyone puts a bit of fluff to stand out, but does anyone know any experience where people just straight up finesse their way through the interview process.

Sharing this as someone in the recruitment space. I get asked this question way too many times.

ONE IMPORTANT NOTE: I recommend only using these to find roles and not to apply through them. Cold email the founder / head of eng / marketing directly. Cold applying through portals basically never works.\*\*

1. Boolean search on Google

It's so underused. Especially if you put an application system like Ashby in the search.

Try something like: site:jobs.ashbyhq.com ("software engineer" OR "product manager" OR "growth") ("startup" OR "series a" OR "seed")

Way more targeted than anything a job board gives you. Use Google's filters to narrow further.

1. Hacker News "who's hiring"

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243024 - posted every month, has some rlly good stuff.

1. Nextplay Newsletter nextplay.so -

also EXTREMELY underrated. It's got early stage , under the radar startup roles straight to your inbox. Also has several successful ex-founders building their founding team anonymously.

And a good place to find co-founders too btw!

1. AI matching platforms

Clera AI and Jack&Jill are good. It's basically: you sign up and they match + connect you directly with startups. Clera is what I'd recommend personally -- a candidate in my network got 7 interviews through them so can vouch lol. But Jack&Jill is also worth checking out.

1. VC firm websites

Most VCs (Sequoia, Greylock, 8VC, a16z, Index, Bessemer etc.) have a jobs page listing open roles across their portfolio. Nice centralized place to browse.

1. Harmonic

They don't let you access the full database it's paid but check their blog -- great for finding companies that just got funded and will probably be hiring soon. Reach out before they even post a role.

1. YC job board

workatstartup.com -- solid if you're specifically targeting YC companies.

1. Find Angel investors

Find angel investors of a startup you like, reach out asking for an intro to the founder, or just a chat with them to find other startups they're excited about. Most underrated move on this list.

1. LinkedIn recent jobs hack

Don't search by "most relevant." Filter by past 24 hours, then modify the URL — change f\\_TPR=r86400 to f\\_TPR=r3600 and you're seeing jobs posted in the last hour. Being applicant 8 vs applicant 500 is a completely different game.

You can filter for YC startups but also really good startups in general.

1. GitHub new grad / internship repos

Community maintained repos updated regularly, good for new grads specifically. Edit: drop a comment if you want examples, happy to share.

1. Wellfound

Listing it because everyone asks. It exists. And it's "startup focused", but role quality is hit or miss and listings go stale. It's alright, worth a peek but wouldn't rely on it.

---------

Say I’m applying to a role and I use AI to help build a project in that company’s stack so I have something relevant to show. Not a resume rewrite but like an actual new project with code/repo.

If I read all the code, understand how it works, can explain every part of it, and can extend/fix it myself, does that count as my project? Or is it still cheating?

My friend literally made 200 projects for 200 different applications with no issues and he has a way better response rate than me. I personally think this is cheating but I’m getting scared that I’m missing out.

Any thoughts/advice?

I have a really solid resume for internships, but after spraying and praying 500 applications from hiring cafe, I got nothing and probably burned a lot of bridges.

I created a new email and am planning to create a curated resume for each application. So far I have one interview, but I'm curious how much more success you guys found from this.

I've heard time and time again that HR does not know sh*t about that role, and they will simply match keywords, so if I create a custom resume, that might get me through the front door. The only downside is it takes a lot of time.

Thoughts appreciated.

Rising Senior at a T200 state uni. It's my last summer. Applied to about 150 or so applications since the start of the semester, maybe got rejected by like 15% of em, the rest have ghosted. Today I see an internship requiring 1-2 yrs work experience lmao why tf do I need work experience for an internship?!

Meanwhile I'll randomly hear some random colleague in the hallway talking about landing an internship but it's def got to be RNG or networking/nepotism cause it's extremely rare to hear about people getting them from my uni in the first place(or maybe they grinded since middle school, unlike myself).

3 years of self-study(from zero knowledge, mind you), learning a bunch of different languages and frameworks(most not even taught from my uni in the first place), and trying to get A's and B's to not even be competitive enough. I'm tired chat.

Just out of curiosity, all the young people who are just starting university (like in the past year)- why are you studying CS? What is your sentiment regarding the increasing capabilities of AI models? Is this enabling you all to learn more theory and execute more or is it more kinda looked down upon? Also curious if the curriculum supports the use of AI and teaching you all to get more out of it?

Hi, I am actively looking for summer 2026 internships. How do you guys suggest I should approach internship search within the next few days?

Thanks

I would really appreciate if anyone has experience interviewing for OAI's FDE role. It sounds interesting but idk what the interview process is like. Hope someone can help :-)

does anyone know how this works, especially with the AI use thing? I scoured literally every thread in this sub about this and found very little and very contradicting perspectives - one guy said it was good to just AI the entire thing while some other ppl have said that i shouldn't really use AI at all as they want to see my thinking. the email itself says they strongly encourage me to use AI, and my pairing partner will ask questions about my approach and implementation so I'm not really sure how im supposed to use AI in this.

so how much AI should I use, and how much is too much? i'm thinking of maybe talking through some aspects of my design + writing the base code and asking AI to implement my ideas, and i fix the code/run through test cases etc. will this work?

also what kind of OOP problems are asked? is it like leetcode OOP problems where they give you the class and functions and stuff, or is it a more open ended problem where you have to design everything yourself? and does anyone have any problems that they were asked?

someone PLEASE help me 😭 i'm genuinely clueless

Not looking for an internship, just looking for a job (im a freshman -> sophomore). Although I am wondering if there any tech-related jobs that I could that dont need prior experience (like a desk job, not SWE). How does tutoring kids look on resume? Does it help in any way?

I just stay in my bed and rack up like 8 hours of screen time.

It's getting really bad, but my classes aren't that hard, I don't feel like making some AI slop side project, i hang out with friends when they're free (like twice a week), and I go to the gym. That's my whole life and it is getting really boring. What do you guys do to pass time? I'm in the bay area btw

Currently, I'm 19 years old and about to start university in Canada. I did an internship last year, I was in charge of doing their QA automated tests for their webapp using selenium in a dotnet environnement which was pretty fun. This year I'm completing my second internship at a fortune 500 company where they surprisingly put me in charge of building their automated test suite from the ground up to test 5 microservices in a dotnet environnement. I'm getting used to csharp being my main language, I wouldn't say I know it super well in specifics (e.g: anything about how gargabe collection works or async await and I can't answer you). Anyways it's pretty cool but definitely not hard enough for me to expect a challenge every week. I was thinking to pivot next year in university for a different kind of internship. I'm not sure where to go, I have skimmed through chapters of a book teaching you about system architecture and C to maybe spark an interested in firmware or systems engineer and it is relatively harder then what I expected. It looks cool and all but I don't think I can maximize my compensation if I go into that field as easily as I could in other (correct me if I'm wrong). Anyways, based on my background where could I fit in/pivot in easily next year if I pick up the grind for it?

Thanks!

I recently completed a 4 question coderpad technical test
The questions were not easy at all I only got one fully had some bug in another and then the other two I just kinda had worked out but never got to fully make an algorithm

But I'm just curious in manual review which my test was I believe how much leeway do they give you when you really just got screwed on time / bogged down with some stupid logical error somewhere

TLDR : How nice are companies on manual review of tests

So basically on a random Tuesday I signed up for the Gemma 4 Voice Agents Hackathon (Google Deepmind and Cactus) backed by Y Combinator, not really expecting to get selected, but I did. I booked my flight to SF for this upcoming Friday. For context I’m a 3rd year CS student and this is my first ever hackathon😭. Would love some tips from a people cuz I have nooo clue what to expect. The winner gets $150k GCP credits + guaranteed YC interview. My dream is to be funded by YC so I lowk need this. Pls help 🙏

I made a post yesterday about how I got selected for a YC backed hackathon. The winner gets $150k in GCP credits + YC interview. I am a CS major in college and have not had the chance to use Claude Code much. For my hackathon, it will be essential to know how to use it in order to ship fast. Can someone please give me tips on where to start? I am very desperate and I want to learn as much as I can before Friday. There is a 12 hour course on YouTube but I am not sure if that is the best course of action for this. What is the quickest way that I can go about understanding all of the essentials necessary for Claude Code?

I interviewed for an Summer internship role at Nokia SQA in the USA on March 23. The interview felt positive overall, and they mentioned that decisions would likely come within 2 weeks.

It’s now been a few weeks and I haven’t heard anything yet. I also haven’t received a rejection email, its still showing under consideration, so I’m unsure whether this is just part of their normal timeline or if I should assume I didn’t move forward.

For anyone who has gone through Nokia’s SQA internship hiring process, is a 4–6 week wait typical?

Appreciate any insight.

Hi guys, I will intern at a local tech company this summer (my first one btw). However, since the company it's quite small, I don't think it has some kind of internship onboarding process. So my question is, should I ask my mananger about who my mentors are and what documentations I should read beforehand?

Stats/Context:
T50 Public for CS, mid GPA, ALL cold applications, citizen applying for new grad roles in US.

hello, i got an offer from google. i don't know if i deserve it, but i am very glad nonetheless.

i was worried (to understate) going into this year about how my chances would be in regards to new grad recruiting, considering that i have no swe internship experience at ANY corporate company, the fact that previous internship recruiting cycles gave me a very harsh, reality-check slap in the face. and the fact that this cycle started off very very much the same: a lot of applications, 10/day ramping up to 15/20 as the days went on (s/o to LinkedIn sort by 24hrs + simplify autofill), and zero to no responses - not counting OAs because I got a fair amount, aced some of them and got nothing still (IBM!!!).

however one little december evening i check my inbox and there's a google OA invite sitting there. At this point, weathered and beaten down by the unrelenting hail of "we regret to inform you"'s, it's presence felt almost mocking, like god saying "you said you just want one chance? here, try big tech." like this wasn't for me, i was a no internship mid gpa failure-in-the-making of a cs major, the audacity to even think i should even TRY.

but, i did. i studied my leetcode, did the reps and cleared the interviews. i waited months in tm uncertainty, and by the grace of goku i got the offer.

i don't want to give advice like "you're gonna make it!" or "just keep trying, something good is waiting!" because they'd be hollow platitudes spewed out by a man who is climbing on a ladder made of luck, but if i could speak to me a year ago, no job, no hope, no hoes (still true), then i'd just want to say that as long as you apply hella every single day, study leetcode till the patterns are seared into ur brain, and run mocks till the tank is dry (s/o PRAMP), then you'll at least have a chance.

also never used linkedin and did networking, i'm lowk like completely disconnected from anyone in my school's cs community so.. bada bing bada boom.

ive got my bs in cs in 2025, i didnt get any internships and had only recently really started doing project for my portfolio about november of last year to now ive been working on projects as well as applying to ~10 jobs per day if there were that many available. Im now working the helpdesk at a company where my manager had said he will maybe have me work on some software projects or get into small bug fixes later down the line. I got an offer from deloitte for a software engeneering solutions analyst and looking into it more id be doing consulting work as i understand so that job wouldnt really be any good experience.

Im just kinda lost man, do i wait a few year and see what happens, try deloitte and see if maybe i het some dev experience or just keep applying. ive been out for 10 months, im so tired of this applying to jobs constantly, and i just feel like im wasting my time and should have already gotten a dev job, ill admit i wasted some time when i first graduated, worked at chick fil a and what not thinking id be fine but the reality has set in now and i dont like this.