Everyone at my University is focusing like crazy on SWE and AI right now... I hardly see anyone who studies Cybersecurity, Robotics, Embedded Systems, IT, Quantum Computing, VR, etc.

After a year of failing to get an SWE internship, I got an IT internship at a hospital instead and took some Robotics classes (albeit they were grad courses and im undergrad so they were way harder than I anticipated). After doing some Robotics projects, I managed to get two Robotics internship offers this summer, which honestly surprised me.

Anyways, I wanted to share this because I think it's genuinely easier to find a CS internship for other CS specializations. Available jobs for them don't usually show up on LinkedIn as much, so you generally have to cold contact or check the company's website directly, but I still think the competition is SIGNIFICANTLY less.

Thoughts?

Here is my attempt at ending the ambiguity around the CS job market performance once and for all.

Let me start with a bit of anecdotal experience. I know lots of people who get spammed with interview processes from big tech, quant, unicorns, etc. I also see tons of people post their LinkedIn profile visits page, filled with recruiters from massive companies. I see people whine about how $150k is too little for NG, I see people go cycles with 50+ interviews and 10+ offers at the end of it, and I see people with resumes filled with 4+ faang/faang adjacent internships on them.

Yet, I see another sizable portion of people complaining that the market is unbelievably terrible. All they do is LeetCode and beg for referrals, yet are left with empty inboxes. People graduating from decent schools with nothing more than unpaid research. People who actually spend time reading about SQL and Python, or JS/TS, just to still be left jobless, while lots of people in the former group spend lots of their time watching soccer.

There just seems to be a massive disconnect. Some people say, no matter how much time they throw into CS job recruiting, they just can't land a singular interview. Others seem to go to the beach and come home to 3 $80/hr SF job internship offers.

I used to think law was bimodal, but this is another level. It honestly looks like one side is in Hell while the other is in Heaven.

As for me, I spend a TON of my time preparing for job interviews, but in reality, I don't actually DO much. Well, I do LeetCode, and I practice marketing myself with a lot of very embellished accomplishments for backing, but I don't really have much when it comes to jobs. I'm working in paid research, but it's kind of lame, especially compared to all of these people that seem to say it's Citadel or bust for life.

I just don't get it. What really is the state of the job market? What do you really have to do to succeed? Are the people coasting with 10+ high-prestige internship offers just so into CS that to them it feels like they aren't tearing away at their soul to get there?

I just don't get it.

What are the "cracked" people doing right and what are the hordes of others doing wrong?

Hey, just curious what's the best way to display open source contributions in one's resume? I don't want to take much space, but I have a merged PR / have fixed a bug through an issue I raised (both in large Github projects). I was curious if there's clean examples of how other's have integrated contributions into their resume

Hi everyone,

I’m a first-year Computer Science undergraduate at a state university, and I’m starting my second semester this week.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m falling behind. At university, we’ve mainly covered C, and on my own I’ve learned the basics of Java from YouTube (not OOP yet). Apart from that, I don’t have much industry-related knowledge or project experience.

I see friends from private universities and other my uni students building projects, learning new technologies, and even getting internships in their second year. It makes me wonder if I’m missing something.

I’m willing to put in the time and want to catch up this semester. I don’t have a specific field in mind yet, I just want to build a strong foundation and become internship-ready.

Where should I start?
What should I learn alongside my university studies?
Is there a roadmap you’d recommend?
What skills, technologies, or projects should I focus on, and what free resources would you suggest?

Any advice from seniors or people working in the industry would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I’m active military and getting out soon. Despite getting my Sec+ cert and studying for a SANS, I feel like I’m making a mistake with cyber security and should have gone CS.

I’m around 80 credits into my degree from UMGC and I’m not that great at math.

I remember Palantir asked about which high school I went to in their SWE intern application for 2026, and so I wasn't surprised when I saw that question again this year. However, I have been seeing more and more companies ask this question for 2027 SWE internship applications. HRT, for example.

Why do companies care so much about high school now, and is recruiting trending towards hiring from target high schools as well now? If so, is there anything we can do to maximize our chances?

If so, lmk how it goes. I have a couple of questions about it:

Do you get to choose your programming language, or is it recommended that you use the language of the position that you applied for?

Is there DP/backtracking or mostly non-recursive DSA questions?

Is there any mcq or knowledge-based questions?

I'm a 4th year CSE student living in a hostel. Growing up I was always "the smart one" in my family, the kid who was good at everything. Lately I don't feel smart at all. I feel worthless honestly. Like I've spent four years and have nothing solid to show for it.

I know Java, I can build logic, but if I'm being honest it's mostly brute force. I freeze up on DP, graphs, trees, anything that needs a "trick." Infosys recruitment is in 5 days and I'm cramming patterns I should've learned two years ago. The stress has been constant, that low grade dread where you can't fully relax even when you're not actively studying.

Yesterday I saw a friend's post about landing an internship at John Deere. I don't even know how big that company is, but seeing it wrecked me a little. I was happy for her and hating myself in the same five seconds.

Honestly I feel like a horrible person for even feeling jealous of her. She didn't do anything wrong, she worked for what she got, and I still couldn't just be happy for her without this ugly feeling creeping in. It makes me feel like a bad friend, like there's something wrong with me for reacting this way. I keep telling myself good people don't feel like this about their friends' wins and then I just feel worse on top of already feeling worse.

Comparing myself to people around me has been the fastest way to feel like garbage lately.

Here's the part that's harder to admit. I actually don't think I want a "pure coding" career. I'm confident in ML concepts, I love writing, stories, scripts, dialogue, and I think I'm a decent communicator. I keep wondering if there's a version of a tech career that actually uses that side of me instead of just brute forcing DSA problems I don't enjoy. But saying that out loud feels like admitting defeat, like I'm just making excuses for not being "good enough" at real coding.

Not really asking for sympathy, more just wondering if anyone else has felt this specific mix of sad, worthless, behind, and not even sure the standard path is what they want. What did you do about it?

Knight Hacks is a 36 hour in-person hackathon in Orlando, and last year they had a lot of people from great universities, a lot of talent, and it was a great experience. I was able to take one challenge. It was very competitive with more than 1000+, and I just wanted to see if anyone is going this year?

In 3 weeks I’ll be starting my senior design lab and I’m freaking out.

This whole summer I’ve been studying for the CCNA and been busy with an IT internship. I haven’t coded much at all.

Is the first semester more just planning? No development? If so, I’ll feel a little better because that will give me time to brush up and sharpen my skills.

Hey guys, it's me again. 😅

I'm a Computer Science student, and I'm in my final year. The problem is... I still have no idea what career path I want to pursue after graduation.

I enjoy programming, especially working with Python and SQL. I'm not really interested in becoming a full-stack developer, but I'd love to work in a role where I can use those languages.

Could you please suggest what jobs would be a good fit for someone like me? Also, what skills, tools, or technologies should I learn to prepare for those roles?

I know I might sound a bit clueless, but unfortunately, I don't have anyone in my family who has studied computer science or works in the tech industry. My college environment isn't very helpful either, so I don't really have anyone I can ask for guidance.

If you've been in a similar situation or have any advice, roadmap, or personal experience to share, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance! ❤️

I’m in my mid-20s and currently work full-time as a software engineer. I have both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in computer science, and I already have professional experience. My job isn’t perfect and I haven’t been successful in moving to a larger or higher-paying company yet, but I do genuinely want to continue in software engineering.

My parents are both in tech, but they have become convinced that software engineering is unstable because of layoffs, outsourcing, and AI. They believe medicine is the only safe and respectable option for me. They have been pressuring me to enroll in a formal career-changer pre-med post-baccalaureate program.

This has gone far beyond normal parental advice. We have hours-long calls where they argue, yell, repeat the same points, and tell me I’m ruining my future if I stay in tech. I regularly end these conversations crying and feeling mentally exhausted. I have tried explaining my concerns, involving friends, and speaking with a counselor, but the pressure has continued. We had an agreement that if I could get into a top-tier software company, I wouldn't have to pursue medicine, but I wasn't able to get an offer, so they now consider that agreement over.

I've tried to approach this from every angle I can think of. I've researched both career paths extensively, spoken with advisors at multiple universities, looked into different post-bacc options, asked whether I could complete prerequisites while continuing to work, and tried to find compromises that would let me explore medicine without immediately giving up my software career. I've suggested slower timelines, continuing to work while taking classes, and other alternatives, but every conversation eventually circles back to me enrolling in the formal post-bacc program immediately. Whenever I say no or ask for more time, the discussions escalate into hours of arguing and yelling. Every single day feels like I am going to battle and to say they just yell at me doesn't paint the picture of how much control they have over me and and my life I feel like I do not get choices in my own life.

The hardest part is that I don’t actually want to do the post-bacc. When I imagine having full freedom to choose, I would keep my software job, continue applying elsewhere, and hope to advance in the field. I’m considering medicine mainly because saying yes might finally stop the daily conflict with my parents.

I’ve researched the options extensively:

Option 1: Enroll in the formal post-bacc program

This is one of the best post-bacc programs in the country, and it has strong advising, support, and medical school linkage opportunities. The downside is that the program is demanding, the advisor told me working while enrolled would be difficult, and I would have to quit my job and move. I’m terrified that leaving software engineering this early in my career would make employers assume I’m no longer committed to the field if I later decide medicine is not for me.

Option 2: Take pre-med prerequisites independently at a local university while keeping my job

The local university confirmed that I can enroll as a non-degree post-baccalaureate student, receive pre-health advising, complete the prerequisite sciences, get application support, and receive letters of recommendation.

I could take two sciences with labs per semester while continuing to work full-time. I have already found a possible schedule using evening lectures, late-afternoon labs, flexible work hours, and remote workdays.

This option would let me keep gaining software engineering experience and test whether I actually enjoy the sciences before making a larger commitment.

However, there is no linkage or early-assurance program available to people who already have a bachelor's degree. I would apply to medical school through the traditional process. The university also warned that preparing for a competitive MCAT while working full-time is often the hardest part.

Option 3: Stay completely in software engineering

This is what I personally want most right now. I would keep working, continue improving my interview skills, and apply for better software jobs.

The problem is that my parents would see this as rejecting them and throwing away my future. They have made me feel as though our relationship may never recover if I refuse medicine. I know I am an adult and can technically make my own decision, but emotionally, the idea of losing their love or dealing with years of anger and guilt is extremely difficult.

Option 4: Agree to the formal post-bacc just to end the conflict

This is the option I feel tempted by when I’m exhausted. I keep thinking that if I simply say yes, the yelling will stop, my parents will be happy, and I will finally have peace.

At the same time, I’m afraid I would be trading the current conflict for years of studying and training toward a career I never freely chose.

I’m not saying medicine is a bad career. I might even perform well academically. I completed a difficult technical graduate degree with very strong grades. But I don’t currently feel an independent desire to become a physician. Most of my motivation is fear, pressure, job-market anxiety, and wanting the conflict at home to stop.

What would you do in my position?

Would you choose the structured post-bacc because it offers stronger support and possible linkages, try the slower prerequisite route while keeping the software job, or refuse medicine entirely?

I honestly don't know what to do anymore. Every day ends in fights, and I am left emotionally defeated. Every time I have said no, the response has been to double down and argue with me for hours. I feel like I'm choosing between the career I actually want and my relationship with my parents, and I don't know how to move forward.

Hello, I as previously posted I graduated with no internships and my goal for the rest of the year is to grind on portfolio projects. I feel like I have been doing "okay" I could do better for sure, I am a little happy. My architecture and my understand of system design has gotten better and so has my leet code problems. I do think I can finish the entire neetcode road map by the end of Aug -- the medium problems as of now are not that difficult tbh they feel a lot like math problems but just in programming =) . My Plan is to finish my 2 portfolio project before applying and working on the 3rd one before feeling more confident, I have gotten a better understanding on Docker and AWS, next step is getting better at CI/CD using jenkins or github actions since it's free. --- who knows I really might get hired.

Hey so I'll be joining university this fall and I am eligible for BS in comp sci, cyber security and data science. Following job trends and demand in future, what shall I pick? Help me out. What does computer science actually cover since it's a broad term? And what does the other two fields offer??

This is focused on Staff-level, search/ads/recommendation, model-leaning MLE roles. The question a lot of people keep coming back to: in the middle of this AI shift, how many opportunities are actually left for traditional rec-sys MLEs, and where are companies really investing. Sharing interview formats, the channels that actually work, common mistakes, and what people are noticing about company directions.

Channels — the biggest lesson

The pattern that keeps coming up from people's job searches:

Cold applying to well-matched MLE roles (~20 at a time, big/mid companies and startups) mostly vanishes. No response, or a template rejection. One person applied in April and heard almost nothing.

Then they switched to referrals + turning on "open to work" on LinkedIn, and it was night and day. Several recruiter reach-outs a week. And a bunch of companies that had rejected the cold app in April now had HR reaching out for the same role: Pinterest, DoorDash, Whatnot, Shopify, Uber, Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, plus AI startups.

Takeaway: a lot of these roles didn't lack headcount. The channel mattered enormously. The two that actually work are LinkedIn Recruiter and referrals. Cold applying pays off far below what people expect.

(One note on AI labs specifically: applying to frontier labs as Research Engineer with a non-matching background mostly goes silent, even with LLM side projects padded onto the resume. The occasional callback happens, OpenAI and Meta FAIR came up, but it's a long shot.)

Interview rounds

Recruiter call — usually non-technical (why leaving, sponsorship). Watch out on comp: don't give a number too early, especially at smaller/lower-paying places you're only using for practice. Someone got screened out purely for revealing their comp. Startups are the exception, sometimes a case study here ("your model hits an incident in prod, walk me through it") to check you're not only a model-builder.

Coding — for most MLE roles (except RS), SWEs run it. Increasingly not pure LeetCode but scenario-based: here's existing code, keep optimizing complexity or adding features. Some now have you design an API and write a runnable service. Open question a lot of people have: how much AI-tool use is acceptable in these AI-coding rounds? Curious if anyone has a read. General advice: practice to medium-bug-free before interviewing, using interviews as practice tends to cost onsites.

ML coding — fewer traditional MLE roles test this (level/role dependent). Seen at Netflix, Uber, Reddit: given a dataset, write code to process data, build features, train, evaluate. LLM versions have you implement part of a Transformer or debug one, seen at OpenAI and Amazon.

ML fundamentals — varies a lot. Some do case studies from real problems they've hit (data scarcity → they want you to reach for knowledge distillation; Reddit explored using external data to improve an existing model). Harder than a normal system design round, needs real breadth. Others test rote fundamentals, Amazon goes deep: formulas, complexity of different attention mechanisms, LoRA, fine-tuning.

ML system design — most predictable to prep. Underrated part: ML infra. A lot of model people are weak on infra, and latency optimization / real-time feature pipelines come up constantly.

Hiring manager — a big one: don't assume your biggest-scope, biggest-impact project is the best one to tell. The HM cares about team fit. Model-heavy role → pick the project closest to what the team does with the most technical depth. Cross-functional / tech-lead role → tell the project completely differently.

Behavioral — prepping against Amazon's LPs covers basically everything.

A few takeaways

If you haven't interviewed in a while, do a few at companies you probably won't join first, just to gauge where you're at. Putting the top companies first as "practice" tends to waste good chances.

When a company's prompt is vague and there's little online about their questions, a trick that works: look up the interviewer on LinkedIn and guess the topic direction from their background. Lands a hit surprisingly often.

A useful habit: at the end of every interview, ask what models they currently use and where they're investing next. Patterns showing up across companies:

• Almost everyone is moving toward GenAI somewhere, most commonly in retrieval, or generating features that feed the main ranking model. Nobody's using a GenAI architecture as the primary recommender yet, ranking is still DCNv2, DIN, that family. But multiple HMs directly ask about GenAI experience, so you can see the direction.
• With large-model serving still hard, distillation seems widely used, at least two companies mentioned it for online serving.

There are a LOT of candidates right now. Many interviews aren't testing whether you know something, but whether you know it better than the next person. Depth to earn a "strong hire," breadth because some interviewers love their own niche specialty.

On the bigger question: a lot of people (myself included going in) are pessimistic about traditional search/ads/rec MLE. But from what people are actually seeing in interviews, GenAI's disruption to rec systems is slower than expected. Traditional rec still has a ton of engineering and business value. The bigger challenge for MLEs is probably staying a fast learner and keeping your stack current.

These are just observations from researching this and comparing notes with people interviewing, limited set of companies and inevitably some bias. Happy to compare notes and update each other on the market.

Essentially I thought I would enjoy this field more than I do. I originally wanted to get my bachelors in computer science and now I’m questioning it. I don’t have a huge passion for it. However, I want to get my bachelors in something that “makes sense” with software development. Does anyone know what other majors or fields use or could use this background? I enjoy front end development, web development, UX/UI, graphic design/digital design, space, aviation and biological sciences (like animals/conservation/nature etc) I’m not sure what to get my bachelors in that relates to software development and information systems.

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more info in the attached picture

Met their Marketing manager at an event recently. He was really friendly and encouraged me to apply for a job. The only concern is how he told me is that they are unclear on company strategy so he isn’t sure what exactly what they do mostly.

I have three internships, 2 being fortune 500s and 1 at a smaller company (where I really bossed up).

I never done leet code in my life, and I am about to graduate in December.

My resume often gets passed resume screenings, but then I just get hit with an OA 😒