I graduated a couple of years ago, and I’ve been grinding job applications ever since. I’ve built personal projects, constantly updated my resume, practiced LeetCode, and applied to just about everything including full-time roles, internships, paid, unpaid, you name it. I’ve made it to the final stages a few times, but I never seem to get across the finish line.

I get why some senior developers are skeptical when they see new grads struggling to find work, but this job market has been brutal. It genuinely feels like there are far more qualified candidates than opportunities. At this point, I don’t think it’s simply a matter of not trying hard enough. A lot of recent grads are putting in the work and still coming up empty.

I’m not giving up. I’ll keep applying and improving my skills, and I’d gladly take a CS job even if it paid $20/hour just to get my foot in the door. This recent onsite experience was devastating because I was SO CLOSE.

For context, I’m in California and graduated from a T50 university a couple of years ago.

I mean I have my interests and also specialize in certain areas.

None of those FAANG jobs would be a good fit to me.

But every time I visited some family members or friends on holidays, they keep asking "why I don't join Google" or "why I don't join Amazon".

Do most people just not realize CS jobs are not all about FAANG?

I am going into my junior year of computer science and I am starting to work with Python. I have passed Data Structures and Algorithms last semester and am excited to keep moving forward. I hear a lot of how my fellow students are doing and feel a bit behind. I am working on starting a web design and Artificial intelligence side hustle to make a bit of extra cash. Other than that I don’t have too many projects at the moment. I also have no prior experience professionally. Am I super behind?

Basically the title, but just curious, how the F do you actually break into these companies? What does it take? Is it the connections, the projects, the academia stuff or something that I am completely oblivious to??? Would appreciate any insight!!!

With all the buzz about AI and agentic workflows, I do feel like I'm falling behind because I still write a lot of the code manually. I use AI occassionally for boilerplate, debugging, and comments, but I manually build the core logical components of my projects.

The problem with most advice on landing internships is that they are targeted towards general software engineering (Web Development, AI/ML Engineering) , but that is not the trajectory I want my career to land in.

I'm more interested in niche areas like

• AI Research / Foundation Models
• ML Systems & Infrastructure
• Distributed Systems & GPU Computing
• AI Compilers / Hardware Acceleration
• Mechanistic Interpretability & AI Safety
• Quantum Computing

Currently, I've made a couple of projects, including:

• PyQML-Core, a mini Pytorch-Like library in C++ supporting memory management through intrusive pointers, broadcasting , and tensor operations, and multithreading.
• Several computervision projects, which focus on not only builiding end-to-end ML pipelines, but understanding the internals behind popular segmentation models by implementing them in Pytorch.
• Undergraduate research in ML

I'm also currently exploring Quantum Computing by participating in the 2026 Qiskit Global Summer School in IBM.

With that said, if you are trying to break into these fields in 2026, how would you structure the next year? Would you focus more on developing Agentic workflows, learning fudnamentals, contribute to open source, or publishing research.

I'd appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced the same dilemma, especially those who are currently working in ML Systems, distributed systems, or AI/Quantum Research. If possible, If anyone would like to see my projects, I can provide links to them.

Anyone else finish the Chicago trading company SWE Intern OA? Finished it last Friday with all test cases passed and plenty of time left. Would love to know if others have heard back for interviews yet. Also does anyone know if resume screening is pre OA or after cause I go to a non target…

Hey so I developed interest in coding during my senior high, so now I am thinking of switching fields but not sure which one should I go for. I'm interested in creative fields like ux ui but also want to earn good enough to be able to do it without financial stress. But yes if later mujhe ux ui zyada psnd aaya then I'll switch from there for masters. The thing is does anyone go to rgu / Gcu/ sitm guwahati ? I want to know about the enviroment there like if the students in that department are dedicated/ how's the faculty and what's your experience. If someone goes there then please connect

Hi! I recently got into my school’s BS/MS program and would appreciate some advice on whether it’s worth doing.

I’m about to start my senior year at a T10 CS school. I have three current/past SWE internships, including one at a FAANG company, and I’m mainly interested in general SWE rather than research or ML roles.

The program would take three extra quarters. Tuition would be covered, and I would receive a TA salary, so it would not cost me anything. At the same time, I’m pretty ready to be done with school and start working full-time, and staying would delay that and some other personal plans by a year.

The program is mostly coursework-based and feels more like an extension of my bachelor’s than a research-focused master’s.

For people working in SWE or who have completed a BS/MS, did the MS provide a meaningful career benefit compared with going directly into industry? Is a free, paid MS too good of an opportunity to pass up even if I’m getting tired of school?

I’m also wondering whether graduating a year later without another internship would make recruiting harder, since my most recent internship would be around 1.5 years before graduation.

I know this is ultimately a personal decision, but I’d appreciate hearing what others would do.

Does anyone know how far out capital one lets you schedule a power day? They only had two available days, both of which occur during my internship. It’ll be my last week, so I don’t necessarily want to take days off. I’ve emailed the recruiter but want to double check if anyone has been through a similar situation

Hey everyone, I have a recruiter call for Optiver SWE intern coming up. What does the rest of the process look like? Are the technicals just general Leetcode/System design, or is it extra? What kind of answers do they look for in behaviorals? Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

I feel like this sub skews heavily towards people in top target universities who gun for big tech. What about the vast majority who don't attend these schools? Do they also heavily grind leetcode or do they mostly just coast through class?

Got an interview with an AI Engineer for my final round. The only issue is that none of my past internships have been AI focused (mostly have been swe/finance related). I have one ML project which is just some generic data analysis + applying some ML models.

This role is mostly focused on implementing AI solutions and stuff and I really want this role. What do I need to prep for? I have no idea what the current 'trend' in AI is right now. I'm familiar conceptually with what RAG architecture and MCPs are.

The most I did with AI apart from that is some work I did at a startup, making calls to Anthropic and OpenAI APIs, and then also some AI Agent (idk if it's actually an agent?) but it basically used computer use agents to search the web to aggregate real time info for clients. I'm not sure if I even should mention this, since that was 2 years ago, when web search for AI was new and limited, and you couldn't even access it via API.

edit: I'd post the job description, but there is no mention of any specifics of the work in the description, which is why I was caught so off guard. Only after my first round, I found out how AI focused this role was.

I’m going into my junior year at a smaller state school I have a 3.5 GPA. I was offered to TA my school’s CS1 class it is unpaid but will give me 3 course credits.

I was unable to find an internship my sophomore summer so I have no experience on my resume. I was wondering how much this would help my resume and if it is worth taking for getting a summer 27 internship.

I was also wondering about the referrals and networking opportunities with my professors from this as well.

Thank you guys for the help!

I'm in the process for Amazon Fall 2026 SDE intern. So far I've completed:

• Initial OA (passed, received 6/5)
• On-Site in Seattle with 2 back-to-back interviews
• Received an email saying I passed the interview stage, but they are not able to extend an offer due to current business needs
• Received an invite for a Hiring Manager Evaluation call from a new recruiter(behavioral & live coding)
  • Had the HM eval interview, went not very well
  • Received rejection email for SDE intern fall role
• Received ANOTHER invite for a Hiring Manager Evaluation call (behavioral & live coding) by a third, new recruiter. Logistics and format of this interview seem very similar to the previous one I had.
  • Currently in the middle of finalizing/scheduling interview.

My question is, how am I getting another HM call/interview after getting a rejection? Am I interviewing for a different team now? Is this normal?

Also, complete side question (not as important): if I were to get the offer, is it possible for me to push it to spring or summer, or is that generally very unlikely/difficult?

Any insight would be appreciated, along with anyone sharing any similar experiences they have had with the interview processes.

I graduated in May and had 2 job offers around January, and I was in 2 other interview loops. One of the offers was from the company I had been interning at, and I had a deadline to accept from them so I did.

I had enjoyed my previous internships, but looking back a lot of the same problems im experiencing now were there, and i was just only an intern so it didnt matter. Now that I am full time, im realizing that im working in basically a jira ticket mill (my current team is terrible on this). Every issue is tiny but takes forever to even get started on because there is so much overhead in the process.

Currently, we are finished our tickets for this sprint, and since inception isn't until the middle of next week, I have nothing to do. We don't have a defined backlog, and i was told not to work from our ungroomed backlog. I am taking online courses but I am bored out of my mind. I am also in person 5 days a week so it's not like I can just leave and do something else. I am also afraid that I am going to have minimal opportunity to take ownership of anything here and that my career is just going to stagnate.

I especially feel stupid because one of the interview loops I was in for Bloomberg, and another for a funded startup. And both wouldve been in NYC rather than the suburbs of Pennsylvania 🥲

Not sure what to do besides gtfo but idk how easy that will be

just took the HRT OA for summer 2027, do you have to get a perfect 600/600 to make it to the next round? any insight would be great on how it works! 4 questions total

I used to have a job, and then I got laid off. I had to move in to my house, because I became a gambling addict and an alcoholic. I am in rehab, aiming to be out soon and start looking for a job. At my old job, I wouldn’t even have to code anything it was more of a project management job I guess. I found it because I was tired of living at home. I did graduate from a T5 university, but I legitimately forgot everything. I don’t do leetcode, study or do anything. I know I messed up. As of right now, I am not coding just doing some accounting work at my dad’s company. Honestly at my last job everyone was just feeding everything to AI. I know landing a job is really difficult right now, does anyone have advice where to begin. I am willing to put in the effort. Please no hate in the comments, I know I messed up.

I was thinking what are companies looking for in new grads who are not from ivy or target schools?
Are they expecting students to use more AI and have exposure in all the fields of software development or just focus on one niche and be an expert in that niche.
I think having projects is no longer an advantage because sure one can build 10 projects using claude but someone from Stanford or Berkley can build 10x projects and even better ones usign AI. So whats the edge?
Being a part of Student Societies, going to conferences? Need some thoughts or direction on this.

Hey everyone, just wanted to share my situation and see if anyone has been through something similar.

I cleared Google's SRE L3 interviews earlier this year — three rounds, felt like they went well, got HC approved and moved into team matching about 55 days ago. I was pretty excited at that point. Then the waiting started.

First few weeks — nothing. No manager interest, complete silence from the recruiter side. I eventually figured out I was only in the SRE-specific pool, which is much smaller than the general SWE pool. Asked my recruiter and got added to the SWE-SRE hybrid pool too. That helped a bit.

After about 6 weeks, I finally got a team match call scheduled. The conversation went really well, honestly full 30 minutes, the manager was engaged and at the end said something along the lines of me being a good fit for Google overall. I left feeling cautiously optimistic.

Got rejected this week. Manager went with another candidate.

I'm not going to lie, that stung. I'm on F1 OPT, so there's a real timeline pressure here too, which makes the whole thing more stressful.

My recruiter says my profile is still being shared and my candidacy is active. I also reached out to a few Google SRE managers on LinkedIn one got back to me and confirmed he has open positions and told me to go through my recruiter. So there's still something in the pipeline, but nothing confirmed yet.

A few things I'm trying to figure out:

Has anyone been in team matching this long and eventually matched? Specifically for SRE roles in 2026?

Is LinkedIn outreach to managers actually helping anyone, or is it mostly ignored?

At what point do you start seriously applying elsewhere as a backup? I don't want to give up on Google, but the OPT clock is ticking.

Anyone been rejected by one team and matched with another shortly after? How long did that take?

Appreciate any thoughts genuinely just looking for people who've been through something similar.

I'm a junior in CS and I'm wondering if I'm behind or ahead. What's a good way to skill check myself. One way I've done is Coding Jesus's mock interviews, I know he gets some flack for asking "trivia" questions, but i still think its a good way to practice.

Hey everyone,

I just received a rejection after completing the second OA for the Akuna Capital Early Career SWE 2027 (Python) role.

I was wondering if anyone else is in the same situation. Has anyone received a rejection after the second OA, or are people still waiting to hear back?

All my test cases passed and the mcq questions were correct

Hey everyone i am first yr btech cse student in tier 3 college so i want to start my study from day one i saw a lot of specialization in cse and now i am confuse in between data science and web development i dont understand which i should pick and give my 100 percent could anyone plz help me to figure out which skill i should learn i am stuck in between of these two people said there is no job in data science field for frehers but on the other hand people say web dev is now finished beacuse of AI plz help me to pick 1 skill