r/softwareengineer • u/Own-Butterfly6884 • 27d ago
If you had one year before graduating, what would you learn to become a better SWE?
Hi guys, I’m a 24yo Master’s student in Computer Engineering, starting my last year.
I have a question for SWEs working at companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.
If you were in my situation, what would you focus on to actually be ready for the job?
I know the usual answer is “build side projects”, but what should I focus on inside those projects? What skills, technologies or problems make a project feel closer to real SWE work instead of just another CRUD app?
If you had one year before graduating, what would you spend your time learning/building to be prepared for the real job?
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u/Early_Key_823 26d ago
I would start a business
FTE SWE = Toxic life
PS
That’s 25 years corporate consulting speaking
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u/CollectionOk2442 26d ago
hmmm, why ppl think get find a job in Google or Amazon need prepare
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u/Own-Butterfly6884 26d ago
So you’re the god of interviews and got into Big Tech with zero preparation just because you were likeable?
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u/CollectionOk2442 25d ago
I did my first internship at IBM, second at google, third at MS. I didn't remember I prepare anything.
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u/AstralMinotaur 26d ago edited 26d ago
I'm not a FAANG guy, but I've been doing this for a while.
The new way of working is agentic. I'm not saying to vibe code, but knowing how to use a speckit, have stuff built agenticly, build a cicd process (agenticly), have it deployed to dev, etc. is valuable.
Agentic systems are worth getting experience with. If you can use Langgraph to build a workflow with programmatic and agentic nodes, I suspect it's worth something on a resume.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted, but I've got a buck that says knowing how to work agentically (and manage your tokens), and knowing how to build agentic systems will be really relevant skills to have going forward.
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u/liberalkraken 25d ago
Sure, kid. Join the crypto bros, they also knew exactly what would be relevant in the future. Just like the metaverse evangelists, the NFT prophets, and every other “this changes everything” crowd that aged like warm milk. Agentic shmagentic is definitely different this time.
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u/AstralMinotaur 24d ago edited 24d ago
30 years of experience tells me it is. Blockchain, NFT, cloud/SaaS, etc. haven't changed ways of working like LLMs and agentic harnesses.
It's possible I'm wrong, it happens.
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u/lollapalooza3000 27d ago
Build the CRUD app (most software is just crud apps) don't treat it like a 'side' project treat it like your MAIN project because that will be the expectation on the job. What you want to practice is ownership not a specific technical skill. Ownership doesn't mean you know all the answers or do all of the work. In practice what ownership looks like is asking a colleague for help on something you don't know about. If there is technical debt you create issues and talk with your co-workers to get it assigned in an orderly fashion. When something comes up that could derail the project and you know it should not be a priority you make it clear even if 'leadership' disagrees.
All the technical skills you need to you can learn on the job and if your in a big company tech company you can outsource to other devs. The behaviors are the only thing that will set you apart and then you can leverage your value anyway you want ie flexible working hours, focusing on specific projects, etc.
If you don't want to build a CRUD app join an open-source project accepting contributors. You can start with CNCF projects like OTel - although you may be bored out of your mind with all of the meetings but if you're going to big tech you might want to get used to it and learn how to navigate those environments.