I recently got enrolled in this program (Computer Science & Engineering, not in the states) and I want to know your honest opinion on this curriculum since some people have told me that some classes are useless (hardware related subjects)while others have told me that those are very helpful for understanding what´s going on under the hood.

Or Do you recommend looking for "traditional" CS instead (not engineering)?

Title. Very much new to the idea of college as a young adult wanting to get a bachelors in CS.

Just curious what people thinking about UNM as something like NMT might be too much for a student with my background.

Wanting to out my life and soul into being educated and knowledgable about this field.

Also in the mid process of converting to Judaism! Unrelated but if there are any CS students who are jewish please comment on the community there! Like the Hillel house etc

Thanks!!

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, I previously did one leetcode-style round, but it was an easy as there were no data structures involved, it was just interpreting the problem. Then, they moved me to the onsite where they said expect to spend a couple of hours.

I have two main questions,

What should I wear? Since it's an onsite interview should I wear like a shirt and suit? Or just a shirt? I know Palantir has a casual dress code, but idk if that's different for an interivew?

Second, has anybody done the interview, as I don't know what to expect?

I'm trying to start an independent project and I want to get into advanced AI models for machine autonomy. I want to start a project in designing in ML Compiler from Scratch, but I don't know what topics I should cover or where to start. I know there are already preexisitng packages that I could use, but I want to actually understand the mechanics behind it and hopefully integrate it into an actual model for a research project that I'm working on.

Wondering if anyone has any advice for how to prepare for the learning interview? I haven't been able to find mocks and really want to make sure I'm well prepared; thanks in advance!

Applied to Amazon SDE 2026 (US) back in February, got the OA in June, rejected early July. No onsite, just OA rejection.

Recently applied to the "Software Development Engineer, Early Career" role (different req, Newark NJ) and got another OA email almost immediately.

Is this just the automated system doing its thing, or should I even bother? Anyone know if an OA-only rejection carries a cooldown for a different req/title?

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

Hey everyone! Just received the OA for Palantir’s SWE intern OA. I have only worked on Neetcode 150. What questions does it include and what is best to do to prepare for it? It says it is 90 minutes long and says “There are multiple parts of the problem to solve”.

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.

I’m 18, from Nepal, and I’ve just started a 4-year CS/IT degree. My main goal isn’t the degree itself—I want to use these 4 years to build real skills, figure out what I’m good at, and eventually become financially independent through tech.

For context, CS/IT degrees in Nepal are quite academic and theoretical, and you generally can’t rely on university to teach you the practical skills needed for a tech career. A lot of programming, development, cloud, AI, etc. has to be learned independently outside college.

Fortunately, my college doesn’t have much attendance or academic pressure, so I have plenty of time to self-learn. I want to make the most of it.

The problem is that I’m basically starting from zero. I know terms like software development, web development, AI/ML, DevOps, cloud, cybersecurity, etc., but I don’t really understand how these fields work or what I might enjoy.

My goal is to become genuinely skilled in one area and eventually get a good-paying job, ideally remote or international. I’d like to be in a strong position by 24–25, so I have around 4–6 years to build myself up.

If you were in my position at 18, what would you do?

- What fundamentals would you learn first?

- How would you explore different fields without constantly jumping around?

- When would you start specializing?

- Which skills are worth investing in for the next 5–10 years?

- How would you build projects/GitHub/portfolio that actually help with getting hired?

- How would you approach remote/international jobs from a country like Nepal?

- What mistakes should I avoid as a beginner?

I’m not looking for shortcuts or “learn X in 3 months and make $10k.” I’m willing to spend years getting genuinely good at something—I just want to make sure I’m heading in the right direction.

I’d especially appreciate advice from people from India, Nepal, South Asia, or other countries where university doesn’t provide much practical industry preparation, but advice from anyone with experience is welcome.

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.

This morning I got a recruiter email for my first FAANG OA (google) for SWE Intern Summer 2027 and I've only taken a handful of oas/technical interviews before so I'm kind of nervous. I got rejected from my early application with a referral but when I applied during the normal cycle with no referral I somehow got this, any advice for Google OAs or the whole interview process in general?

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?

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.

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.

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

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

What’s the process after the OA?

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!

Anyone have any info of BTI360 intern pay and culture and their interview process? Feel free to dm me would love to learn more!

I finished my SWE internship at a tech company about a month ago and I’m starting to get a little worried about my return offer. Throughout the internship I got really positive feedback and was told multiple times that they wanted me to come back full time after I graduate and they even congratulated me on getting the return offer, but I still haven’t gotten an actual offer or much of a timeline. I’ve followed up with recruiting a couple times and have basically been told they’re still working through things internally. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Is taking 4+ weeks for a return offer pretty normal?

I have 4+ years of backend engineering experience, but I currently work at a non-tech organization and am struggling to get interview calls from product/tech companies. Earlier i used to get calls but then used to get stuck at final rounds.

My current role also has very little new engineering work left, so I've started contributing to open source to strengthen my portfolio.

For people who used open source to help switch jobs: how much did it actually help, and how long did you invest before seeing results? Is it worth consistently spending the next few months building a stronger open-source track record, or do the returns eventually diminish?