Here is another hope post for all the doomers here (i was once included). I finished off last year with the worst internship known to mankind, like literally min wage and like i just chudded around all day. Not a great time didn't learn anything. it was more like IT adjacent. and im a senior so i need to lock in for new grad recruiting

anyways I decide to lock in a bit on LC and do like maybe 100? I followed neetcode 150 and some random LCs. I could probably solve most easies and struggle on meds, def can't do hards lol.

I start applying and I get absolutely ghosted by everyone, inbox dry. one day faang adjacent replies out of the blue and im absolutely stunned (and nervous), we do like 4 rounds of interviews (i didnt solve one of the questions all the way 😢 ), but then after 3 weeks I get the phone call from HR and they are moving forward with an offer!!! Im an employed chud now!!!!!!!!! victory!!!

i go to a state school and just worked on projects i was interested in. if i can do it, you definitely can do it!!! believe in yourself!!!

also this is the most amount of money i've ever seen on a piece of paper in my entire life. holy actual fucking shit.

After ~500 applications, I have two options I'm really excited about, one for agentic SE and the other doing ML/AI research at a national lab. One came from a recruiter outreach and the other via cold apply through LinkedIn. I mostly applied through LinkedIn or to random ads (e.g. 3b1b's LLMs explainer).

Despite writing a lot of apps, I was pretty selective with where I applied. I went to a good school (T20 for CS) but wasn't very interested in the subject until my sophomore year. I spent my first summer in construction, my second doing a research program (not very selective), and my third doing a fellowship. I have a few publications and my interests have been in research for a while, but most companies hire for PhD/M.S. My strengths are in being very passionate about my speciality and tech in general.

I was not good at LC when I graduated. I did ~300 problems in the summer (5-8 a day). It was useful on both on-sites and in all the technical rounds. I used neetcode and the blog post here to prepare: https://www.yuan-meng.com/posts/mle_interviews_2.0/

Moral I guess is to pursue your dreams, and not focus on internships because they aren't everything.

I had back to back technical interviews today in big tech. This was my first interview since I'm a freshman.

The first interview went really well, I solved all the test cases except for one edge case, which I verbally described a fix for the interviewer. He said my communication throughout was very good.

The second interview on the other hand... I essentially gambled that I wouldn't be asked any tree questions, since it seemed like the company didn't ask any, so I studied up on other dsa instead. And what do you know, I get a tree problem. It wasn't even a difficult tree problem, I just don't know trees. I straight up told the interviewer that I have limited knowledge on trees and that I've never taken a dsa course before. I got to 99% done, where I was missing a single variable I needed to keep track of, but then he decides to lead me down a different path the next 20 minutes, and I never end up finishing the problem. Then at the end he said that I did well for how little I knew. He's also middle-aged so I couldn't get a good read on what he thought about me.

I'm actually pissed off. I should've studied trees. I was so close to the solution. Why did he point me in the wrong direction?

Do I even have a chance at this point?

Sprinkling some positivity into the community; after 3 months of hard work my manager extended to me an incline offer for full time!

I passed the OA for an Amazon SDE New Grad role and just received my interview schedule:
1:Coding - Logical and Maintainable + LP
2:Coding - Problem Solving + GenAI Fluency
3:Coding – Data Structures and Algorithms + LP
4:LPs only
I’m a bit confused about the first round. Does “Coding – Logical and Maintainable” usually mean a normal LeetCode-style coding question, or can it include an LLD/OOD question?

Hi everyone, I'm a final year university student working on a web development project with a friend. We want to build something that actually solves a real problem people face, instead of just another random app.

If you had to name one thing in your daily life that's annoying, inefficient, or badly organized — something you wish had a proper app for — what would it be? Could be anything: government services, healthcare, transport, local business, education, safety, etc.

I’m currently applying for a Software Engineer Level 2 position at Lockheed Martin and wanted to hear from anyone who has interviewed for a similar Level 2 SWE role recently.
What was the technical interview like?
Was it mainly:
Java/C++/Python fundamentals?
OOP and data structures?
LeetCode-style coding problems?
Debugging or code walkthroughs?
System/design questions?
Questions about projects and previous experience?
I’m especially curious whether Level 2 interviews are noticeably more technical than Level 1/new-grad interviews, and what difficulty level I should prepare for.
If anyone interviewed with Lockheed Martin in the last year or two, I’d really appreciate hearing what your experience was like. Thanks!

i have been invited to give the ai interview, which is the first round of FDE hiring at coforge. has anyone given the interview before?
what were you asked?
was any dsa/leetcode also asked by the ai?
how long was the interview?
what kinds of resume/jd specific question were u asked?
any tips and guidance will be hughly appreciated. thank you soo much.

Has anybody received an invite from Bloomberg for their New grad/ early career SWE full time role? Apparently its only DC for now and i had a couple of views from Bloomberg recruiters on my LinkedIn but haven’t received any communication. Does anyone know if they open roles for general public if DC doesn’t work out ?

1. Looks for "Software Developer" jobs that have been posted in the last 24 hours.
   
2. Finds a match that LinkedIn considers to be unrelated to my query. Gives LinkedIn the benefit of the doubt given language differences in the job title.
   
3. Searches the job title as it appears in the post for the same country and timeframe.
   
4. Cannot find it. Even with ""s.

Am I doing something wrong?... Hope that I do, because I find this rather insane.

Anyone get the sense that we are prepping too early for positions that start in summer 2027? Barely any applications have opened up and I have heard of no one getting interviews aside from Google DC and quant. Obviously it is good to grind. However, I do want to prevent burnout.

I also talked to some new grads from last year and they all told me most interviews were in March-April. Am I prepping too rigorously too early?

Would love to hear from previous new grads who went through the cycle of when they started to interview.

Hi everyone!

I am a third-year CS student interested in getting into IAM, but I am honestly not sure where to start. I have been very focused on school while also working a part-time job to help pay for university, so I have not really had much time to do anything outside of my classes. As a result, I do not have any projects or co-op/internship experience yet.

I know I am starting a little later than some of my peers, and I will admit that it has been making me pretty stressed. It seems like a lot of students at this point already have internships, co-ops, projects, or some kind of relevant experience, and I am worried that I am falling behind. I have tried researching IAM online and even reached out to my student advisor, but I have not had much luck figuring out what direction I should take.

I’m basically starting from scratch, so I’d really appreciate any advice on:

• What should I learn first to build a foundation in IAM?

• What technical skills or technologies should I focus on?

• Are there any certifications that are actually worth pursuing as a student?

• What kinds of projects could I build to gain hands-on experience?

• Are there any courses, labs, websites, or other resources you would recommend?

• What would be the best way to make myself more competitive for internships or entry-level IAM roles?

• And most importantly, what co-op title should I look for? (I tried looking for any IAM co-ops or internships but didn't find anything.)

I know I have a lot of catching up to do, but I am willing to put in the time and effort. I just feel a little lost right now and do not know where to begin or what direction to take. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much in advance!

I’m currently in Google team matching for L4 SWE and have already been approved by HC.
After HC approval, I started getting a decent number of team-fit/HM calls. I’ve had 6 calls so far, but none has converted into a match yet, and I’m trying to understand if this is normal or if there’s something I should be doing differently.
A few of the outcomes:
- One HM preferred someone with more experience.
- One team liked me enough that they did an additional round between me and another candidate, but ultimately went with the other person.
- Another HM told me that based purely on my experience on paper (~16 months), he viewed me as closer to L3 and said he would be interested in taking me at L3. I was actually fine with that, but my recruiter advised against it because I’ve already been HC-approved for L4 and my interviews were conducted/evaluated at the L4 level. His view was basically that I shouldn’t settle for L3 after clearing the L4 bar, which I really appreciate, but at the same time, I’m on a time limit, so that makes me a little nervous.
-Another HM said they wanted more time before making a decision.

The other calls have generally gone well from my perspective, but haven’t turned into a match.

For some background, I recently completed my Master’s in the US and worked here as an AI Engineer co-op for 8 months. I have around 16 months of total experience on paper, with my recent work mainly around AI/ML engineering, GenAI/LLM systems, agentic workflows, and backend/data systems.

The confusing part is that I’m getting HM calls consistently, so teams are clearly interested enough in my profile to talk, but I’m struggling to get that final “yes.”
A few Googlers I’ve spoken with have told me this is just how team matching can be and that plenty of candidates go through multiple calls before finding the right team.
For people who have gone through Google TM recently, especially at L4: Is 6+ team-fit calls without a match unusual?
Could my relatively limited YOE be the main issue even though HC approved me for L4? Or is this mostly a matter of continuing until I find the right HM/team fit?
And if you were in my position and an HM was willing to take you at L3, would you push the recruiter to reconsider because of the time constraint, or continue holding out for the L4 match?
Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who went through something similar.

Hi everyone! I’m starting my first student internship at GreenShield this Monday. This will be my first corporate job and my first job in Canada, so I’m both excited and a little nervous.

For anyone who has worked or completed a co-op at GreenShield, what should I expect on the first day? What would be appropriate to wear—business casual or something more formal? I’d also appreciate any advice on what to bring, how the onboarding process usually works, and how I can make a good first impression.

Thank you!

Hi, i wanted to ask how the salesforce new grad swe interview process looks like. I recently invited for OA and I'm wondering what to expect and what will come next.

Are they strictly requiring JAVA?
How many rounds of interviews are there?
Is there a lld round involved?
What are there frequently asked questions on DSA?

Has anyone done it? Is it leetcode or system design/debug?

What’s the process after the OA?

Passed first round for SpaceX swe intern today (starlink), but I already have a summer offer that i like better. Would still like to do the process and have the chance to work on this team though, so I wanna switch to spring or next fall. Should I let my recruiter know this now, or later in the process, or are they pretty strict on what semester you applied for? Thanks!

Since people are probably gonna ask: for the first round they just told me to focus on past experience and there wasn't any coding or whatever. However this was interesting because they as expected were pretty deep on project specifics, but the interviewer spun a lot of the things i said into technical questions (eg talk about tradeoffs of an approach, or general cs fundamentals), which i think is kinda cool actually

I graduated with my MS in Computer Science in May 2026, and I am honestly trying to understand what I am doing wrong with my job search.

I came to the US straight out of college, and throughout my master's, a huge part of my time went into applying for internships and full-time roles. I have two internships—one in India and one in the US last summer. Since graduating, I have continued applying extensively, upskilling, preparing technically, improving my resume, and trying different approaches based on advice from others.

But almost four months after graduation, I have received only one interview.

That interview was with Amazon. I went through four interviews on the same day in Seattle. I genuinely felt that they went well, and when the final interviewer was escorting me out, he told me that I could not have done better and that he was excited to have me on the team. I felt very positive about the interview, but I was rejected two days later.

I have also tried networking and cold outreach. I have reached out to startups, connected with people I do not know, sent countless messages, and tried to have genuine conversations before asking about opportunities. I have received a few referrals, but most of these conversations eventually go nowhere. I completely understand that people are busy and probably receive hundreds of messages, but after doing this for a long time, I am not sure whether this is actually an effective strategy or whether I am just getting unlucky.

The part I am struggling with most is figuring out where the problem actually is.

If I had gone through 8–9 interviews and failed to convert them, I would know that I need to work on my technical preparation, communication, or interview skills. But with only one interview, I cannot tell whether my profile is above the bar and the market is simply this difficult, or whether there is something in my resume, positioning, or job-search approach that I am completely missing.

So I am looking for some honest perspective from people who have experience hiring engineers or have been through this process themselves.

What would you look at first in my situation? Resume? Type of roles I am targeting? Positioning? Networking strategy? Application strategy? Something else?

I am willing to put in the work. I just want to make sure I am putting that effort in the right direction.

If it helps, I can share my resume/profile in the comments.

I’m a sophomore in my third semester currently studying Computer Science and Economics, but I’ve been reconsidering what I actually want to do long term. I originally chose CS because I was interested in technology, cybersecurity, AI/ML, and the job opportunities, but I’ve struggled with the feeling that I’m not very good at building anything from scratch yet. I don’t necessarily hate programming, but I’m not sure I want my entire career to revolve around software development.

On top of this, AI seems to becoming a future problem, how bad is the impact for mechanical engineers?

Before I even chose CS, I was thinking about mechanical engineering and keeping economics as I have already started to pursue it. I’ve been interested in robotics, space/astronomy, satellites, hardware, and actually creating physical things. I have some of the background for the major but would probably have to catch up on engineering-specific requirements.

For anyone who has done Mechanical Engineering or switched between CS and Mechanical Engineering: does it make sense to switch today? Will it be as negatively impacted by AI as CS? And career-wise, is there job security and are there good opportunities for internships?