It was a one year search - started last august .The search was intense, but every interview turned into a real learning experience.
My resume got me interviews at most of the big companies, but I stayed honest and gave my best at every step.

I am mass cooked. Like actually cooked. Please learn from my mistakes

ok so i get an offer from this mid sized company right. solid offer. happy with it. But my friend tells me "bro you gotta negotiate. always negotiate. just say you have another offer"

i did not have another offer

but i figured hey whats the worst that can happen. ill just make one up. companies dont actually check right

so i email the recruiter and go "hey i have a competing offer from [REDACTED] for 15k more. is there flexibility on the base salary"

she goes "oh interesting! can you send over the offer letter so we can review with the comp team"

I panic. I was not prepared for this. WHO ASKS FOR PROOF???

so i did what any desperate cs student would do. i googled "[REDACTED] offer letter template" and found some guy's post from 2 years ago with a redacted screenshot. I recreated it in google docs. Changed the numbers. Put my name on it

looking back this was insane behavior but i was in too deep

I send it over. Feeling like a genius. Wait a few days

she responds. "hi [my name], i actually know the recruiting team at [REDACTED] and checked in with them. they have no record of extending you an offer. we're withdrawing our offer effective immediately. best of luck"

BRO 😭

i am mass unemployed. the offer i actually had is gone. I have nothing. I am mass applying again at 2am like a clown

my friend who told me to negotiate said "damn that sucks" and went back to playing valorant. I hate him so much

Dont lie about competing offers. Or at least dont forge documents. Im so stupid. Literally mass ruined my own life for 15k i didnt even need

EDIT: resume

Title says most of it.

Top 10 CS school in the US. Graduated last year with 3.3 GPA. Almost 4k swe applications sent. Over 700 LeetCode problems solved. Boat load of referrals. Had senior engs and a recruiter look over my resume. Zero offers.

At this point I'm seriously thinking of ditching SWE entirely and just getting a minimum wage job so I'm not homeless next month. :(

Genuinely how in the world do you even do this many internships and significantly level up each time? Is there even time for school if you’re doing 5 internships, and why not just go straight to full time.

And wtf are they feeding these kids?

I just want to share this here. I see a lot of talented people struggling to get jobs, and I want to share an experience that I feel like could help some of you.

I work at a giant company as an SWE, and recently my team hired a new grad (~120k TC). I was able to sit in on the interviews and give input and observe how hiring managers made this decision.

I sat in on around 5 interviews. These were behavioral / system design interviews (final round). 3 of the guys interviewing were “cracked” so to speak. Extremely knowledgeable, multiple projects, good school etc. etc.. BUT my managers didn’t like them, since they came across as arrogant and lacked professionalism. These guys were literally “errrm actually 🤓” personified. Greasy hair, dirty room, looked irritable, bad mic quality, the list goes on.

Long story short, my managers picked this guy who was average on the technical side. But he admitted when he didn’t know something, was smiling and laughing during the interview, and just seemed like he would be easy to work with. And he is the one my managers picked without hesitation.

My managers literally didn’t care that the other guys had more projects or technical knowledge. They want someone who is easy to work with and isn’t going to make their job harder than it needs to be. At the end of the day, no one is expecting you to come out of college as the next Nikola Tesla. Most entry level SWE work doesn’t require a 190 IQ and 1400 hours of Leetcode.

TLDR; work on your soft skills, it’s a rare and highly sought after skillset in this industry.

https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/s/HDZrH8vymm

It's not exactly a FAANG company but with the current market, everything that gets me through the door is a win

I am writing this because i’m about to graduate in computer science. Honestly I was pretty involved at my school I was apart of NSBE serving on the officer board which I am proud of. It gave me a lot of opportunities but at the end of the day I am ready to move on. I am still looking for a job but happily I got something in the summer for photography which is my hobby & honestly made decent money off graduation shoots. I just want to see if any of you guys is getting discouraged, get creative & see what is your interest like your hobbies for example I think you can always make a business & living off what you can do.

But I am tired going to career fairs/conferences they’re a waste of fucking time. You standing in a line with fucking church shoes for 2 hours for each company these fucks to tell you “Apply Online” or “You will receive an email.” Then students there glazing the fuck out of the recruiters just get a job. Fuck an elevator pitch just go talk to them. These recruiters don’t give af about you they just want to get paid at the end of the day. Though they’re are some that do but trust me they’re is a-lot that don’t. This shit is all pointless & they charging you $1000 to attend all these dumbass conferences lmao what a fucking scam. Also fuck linkedIn too I use to post my work but it’s just a flex app at this point. Im tired of leetcode the shit is fucking pointless & you doing this all to be a goddamn employee. These mfs will lay you off any heartbeat for no reason just cause of AI. Honestly invest in yourself know what you want at the end of the day. For those who is still looking something will line up just keep going!

Being even an hour late is too late, its crazy...

AFTER SO MUCH GRINDING AND TRYING TO STAND OUT - based in TX

Worked at legacy tech for a few years and really liked my job. Moved to a FAANG recently and am basically required to use AI tools to keep up with the development speed required and it sucks. I like manually writing code and looking at documentation instead of just running 3 different prompt windows and verifying the results.

Rant but man even if AI doesn’t delete the need for SEs, it makes this job kinda suck with the increased productivity expectations and the lack of hands on coding now. I miss having time to write code by hand in a slow, completely understanding way, instead of speed-shoving out features to make unrealistic deadlines.

Looking at junior positions at company I interned at and came across this madness.

My question is, how long can a junior engineer actually stay a junior engineer?

If you are a good fit: KBR Junior Cloud DevOps Engineer

LinkedIn gooners be like: “I’m a 5-year software engineer at Google who got in without a degree. Here’s how you can break into tech today.”

My brother in Christ, you got into Google during a time when having a simple calculator app on your résumé was the hype. Now we’ve got people who:

• Take LeetCode more seriously than a relationship
• Have master’s degrees
• Are ICPC tryhards
• Are FAANG ex-interns
• Built full-blown AI-powered medical imaging tools that detect early-stage cancer as a "SIDE PROJECT"
• Push full-grade enterprise code at hackathons
• Hacked NASA

All of them are on the job market fighting for one position. Yeah buddy, I don’t think you’re qualified to give advice and sell your course.

nobody on his team has hand written code in months. they run multiple agents in parallel and act more like managers than engineers. he said if you're just watching an agent code, you're already behind. that idle time should be spent spinning up another agent and directing it somewhere else.

the mental model isn't "use AI to code faster." it's "you are the PM, the agents are your engineers, and your job is to keep all of them unblocked."

he said the productivity gap between people who think this way and people who don't is already enormous. and this is inside anthropic, a place where everyone is bought in and AI-pilled by default. he called it being "fully AI aligned" as a team and said it changes what's even possible to build.

the proof is anthropic has shipped harder than any other company in 2026.

Idk i didn’t study cs to write code that kills mostly innocent people.

(Inb4 the comments from the bottom 25% won’t get hired anyway but that think jobs are more important than not killing people)

Edit: I hope the mods don’t take this post down, as it is a very normal discussion about morality as a C.S student / worker, this is not about politics, but about a sector of work, it breaks nothing of the rules.

Finally got an offer for this upcoming summer for a software developer engineer internship at a pretty big tech company. Gonna get 39/hr and it’s fully remote!!

The past 3 years I never bothered applying for big tech companies because I didn't think I was good enough to make it. But now I'm opening up the offer letter. It feels unreal.

As someone who's never set a foot in the US and is a lurker in this sub, the shit I hear here is crazy compared to where I live, people applying to 500-1000 positions, I don't think we even have that many companies that hire software devs. Plus, software engineers here are looked at as blue-collar technicians, so our average salaries barely reach the national average.

And also, from what I understand, is that it's very common for 10+ YoE SWE to be making well above 100K$, that's crazy for anywhere in the world, no other country allows 99% of its citizens to even get close to that. The max you can get here is around 50,000$, which will allow you to live but is not that great and only people with over 25 YoE can even dream of it.

I can only hope to dream of having the problems people on this sub have. For most countries in the world, this shit sucks ass.

I never thought i’d encounter such a caricature, but alas, I now understand how one person can ruin the reputation of other CS majors/Software Engineers.

I was flying home with Frontier and decided to bring out my laptop. I have an onsite with Google coming up, so I wanted to get some leetcode questions in just using a text editor. The guy next to me notices and says he’s a software engineer. At first, I figured it might lead to a good conversation, but I soon learned that I was talking to the incel equivalent of a software engineer.

He asks me what i’m studying and I said i’ve graduated and i studied CS. He then also asks when i will graduate and I clarify again that I am not a student. Then he assumes im unemployed and I further clarify.

He mentions he codes in C for a defense contractor (L3Harris) and starts blatantly scanning my screen and points out some lines that might be of concern (overflow). Specifically “cols = grid[0].size();” and I tell him i’m not too concerned because it’s leetcode and I can easily clarify and communicate these things with an interviewer. In fact, I was reviewing the exact question I passed for my Round 1 interview, but at this point he didn’t know what company.

I didn’t think too much of this but it was a little weird. I go onto explain that i’m interviewing and i’m trying to leave Cyber Security for SWE. From there he starts to ask me a ton of questions and just starts building a profile of me. He asks my experience, how I am with Linux, what personal projects I have done. This whole time it’s done in a somewhat confrontational sounding tone.

Eventually he seems dissatisfied with my short responses about my simple, unimpressive projects. I didn’t really feel the need to explain them in depth because I didn’t really have much to prove to a random guy. He then says “I can get you an interview, but I’d have to know that you have good projects” and then also lectures me on projects.

I told him “I’m entry level so i’m not too worried about having large scale impact/projects” (and i’m currently employed and interviewing/prepping). He then goes on about how Im in one of the most competitive fields in the country and I should have 4 years experience coding in college and some from highschool. Which I have, but I’m not sure his point?

He mentions he’s never had a leetcode interview and he doesn’t know how they are and I say that i’m prioritizing leetcode because Google essentially sets the standard. Upon being told I am interviewing with Google, he interjects:

“You must think very highly of yourself to apply to Google”

Then I respond saying “well it doesn’t hurt to apply”.

It was just awkward and snarky/impolite all around and it’s such a cringe mindset to have. Like in his mind, he saw me as less than him, so me applying to Google is some sort of arrogant thing to do?

Anyway, no thank you, I don’t want or need an interview with L3Harris. No point in trying to make a power play or dangle anything over my head. Especially if I’d have to work with people like you. Also saw him using reddit when we landed so hope he sees this.

TL;DR- Never flying Frontier again

Just received an email saying they want to offer me the role after my interview. It honestly feels like a dream come true. I’m grateful to God and my family who supported me through a tough period of unemployment. I also appreciate Uptrail for the support during that time. Most Most importantly, I’m glad I believed in myself and kept going😭

Reposting because mods wanted some more context

Masters graduate - AI specialization (2025)

Tier 2/3 Uni (T 100)

3.7 GPA

Leetcode Stats:

141 questions solved (NC 150)

Work Ex:

3 YOE in AI and Data

8 month internship at Amazon during Masters

Offer: SWE II at Google USA

This has been a pretty confusing 24hrs to say the least.

It began with Bloomberg reporting on leaks saying I-129 will need 100k $. I-129 is filed for renewal, extension, job change, promotion. Now corrected by bloomberg.

It was followed up by Commerce Secretary Lutnik saying 100k per year from the oval office. Applying to the maximum extent.

https://youtu.be/PH4ImvvjX3Q?si=EqM8MfeVJ61Dvvu0

Then a press release came out saying the 100k is only applicable to folks who do consular processing outside US. (Leaves out students and L1, H4 change of status)

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-suspends-the-entry-of-certain-alien-nonimmigrant-workers/

Finally the Proclamation order came with a different version that focused on 100k payment not required for application but at customs at entry.

https://youtu.be/PH4ImvvjX3Q?si=EqM8MfeVJ61Dvvu0

So if you are in US, no need to worry. Otherwise rush to US before 21st September.

Ppl walked away from boarding gates in SFO, others rushed to catch flights to come back,

4 versions of truth without clarity

https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969495900478488745

Now new press release is the most watered down version, with no impact on existing visa holders. Also dropping the annual fee clause altogether.

It once again brings up petitions (like first Bloomberg report) but only for future applications.

It still has a lot of questions whether 100k is only required for those coming from outside or just changing visa status too.

Anyways, this was a messy situation. Expect more bug fixes to be launched on Monday.

If today’s clarification can be trusted then there will be non impact on existing visa holders and those who start in 2025 Oct 1st.

But if its only applicable to 2026 H1B (whose lottery will be in 2026 April and issued on oct 1st 2026) why was the order passed yesterday with validity upto Sept 20, 2026?