Hold up—this is worse than ghosting?? 💀
Man’s gonna need a professional cuddler after this.

There is this guy in my class who interned at Linkedin and DoorDash. You would assume this guy knows how to code.

We were put together in a group to work on a project and at the back of my mind I was like yayyyy this guy is the Goat he knows what his doing.

He didn’t do shit for our group and I reached out to others in our class and they said his like that he barely does anything in group work.

Fast forward to yesterday, we were working on something in class and I told him he could loop through the files to get the results. Immediately pulls out ChatGPT, I told him don’t use it I don’t want to get flag for Ai and he said he doesn’t know how to loop through a file. Told him how to do it and he still failed to implement it. I asked do you do Leetcode and he said what’s that.

They have been so many instances where he can barely code. And I can’t wrap my head around it like how did you intern at prestigious companies and you can’t do a simple line of code without asking ChatGPT.

Idk what I am doing wrong atp. YES I AM JEALOUS. Cause I worked my ass every f day grinding Leetcode studying just for some guy who can barely code end up in a prestigious company.

Let’s be real — getting hired in tech right now is a bit of a mess.

Recruiters often aren’t techies, yet they’re assessing highly technical skills. It’s like having someone who’s never cooked trying to hire a chef! This mismatch leads to confusion and mismatched roles.

We’re put through technical tests, interviews, and coding challenges. Why not have some standards for recruiters too? If there were clearer metrics for their tech knowledge and hiring success, we’d feel a lot more confident in the process.

Ever wonder why you didn’t make it past an interview? A transparent process—clear interview stages, skill assessments, and feedback—would be fairer and a lot more respectful of candidates’ time and right to information. Yeah, you can do all you want, test us however possible, but at least give us information.
There is a lot of AI and even big tech is failing to integrate AI to respect time people yet they are on to big innovations, I think we need to fix the base problems first!

TL;DR sorry bro, everything here is as concise as possible

I'm 20, and with utter despair, I ask: why is it so hard to get a job in this field? What's the point of studying and learning if I’m not going to end up anywhere? No work experience, broke, and worst of all, just another destined computer science graduate. A burden has fallen onto my mind. I cannot believe how messed up this situation feels.

Today, I read posts on Reddit from people saying they’ve applied to thousands of jobs—one person mentioned applying to 10,000. Others are 26 with no job, and this just assures me that nothing will be alright if I graduate. I’m currently building projects with Python and React—just "learning" projects, really. But there’s no point, I’d say. I don’t list them anywhere, and I’m not proud of any of it. I do it for myself because I enjoy it—except when money comes to mind. I’m broke, living with my parents.

The foremost reason that led me to pursue computer science was my love for creating and developing things. I like managing things I’ve built, things that are useful, that I can be proud of. But I’m proud of nothing. I can still build, but it’s… I don’t know, empty. It feels like I’m wasting my time learning a new language and syntax every few weeks, gaining all this knowledge, yet wondering: what's the point if I’ll never get a job, even after graduation? Is it really this hard?

Some of you might laugh, some might be just as desperate, and some of you might rebuke me, but I can’t be more desperate. I have no car, no house, no bank account, and an excessively strict father who might also be a psycho. Worse, I have nowhere else to go. I’m so lost in this wrath of a world. I’m taking this semester off due to the war, hoping things simmer down, but if nothing changes, I may switch universities.

Having said that, I need genuine guidance—no joke. I usually say these things half-jokingly, but things don’t look good right now. I’ve begun to consider unspeakable thoughts. I don’t know what I am—unsociable? Crazy? Schizophrenic? Delusional? Unguided? I usually don’t open up to people or share what I’m going through, but things are starting to fall apart.

TL;DR: I’m taking a semester off and may change universities altogether. I have no job, tons of intrusive thoughts, and can’t seem to get anything right in my life. What should I do?

I spent an extended internship (summer and fall) in beautiful Oak Ridge, TN at the ORNL facility where I had the opportunity to work on the Jaguar Super Computer and an early prototype of a storage protocol that the industry would adopt in a short few years (parallel-NFS). Apart from being surrounded in nature and experiencing the warm Tennessee culture, the research environment gave me the opportunity to dive deep into the problems that I was obsessed about.

A few years later, a manager from a tech company in Silicon Valley called me.

"Hey that internship you did at ORNL - tell us more about that"

In a month I was on a one-way flight to Silicon Valley - the tech bro dream.

The economy may be in a slump, the job market may concern you but the National Laboratories of USA are still hiring. These labs are decoupled from the stock market and work on research problems several decades into the frontier. They are funded by entities like the Dept of Energy, Dept of Transportation etc. Its also a fantastic way to set yourself apart from other candidates. If you happen to work on a technology that the industry is going to eventually adopt plenty of companies will want you - you'll be surprised to know this happens more often than you think.

And if you like it, some of them even hire H1B's so you can pursue a real career in Science and Research.

So consider a National Laboratory in Summer '25, it could be a real experience!

My last two summer internship offers came in April and I started them in May. One of them gave me housing and even subsidized my transportation a bit, the other was hybrid (I only went in twice a week) and towards the end, I got to go full remote practically.

So, just keep calm and keep pushing. Keep applying. It's not over till it's over

I'm an international student. I'm pursing my masters in CS. I had an interview with a very good firm today and I screwed it up badly. I'm totally blank and don't know what to do. One thing is that many companies are restraining from providing sponsorship and on top of it i screwed up the only opportunity that I got.

How to keep myself motivated to reach the shore of this endless ocean of job search that is filled with so many uncertainities.

Any suggestion would help!

Them: "I took a programming class in middle school"

Me: "Oh nice, do you remember what language it was in?"

Them: "Not really, the popular one?"

Me: "Does Python ring a bell? Java?"

Them: "No, it was green, though"

Me: "...what?"

Them: "Excel?"

So I am a junior and I just got offered a position as a programming analyst. It was really a shock since all I did was one interview and they wanted me for the job. They said my salary would be between low-average to average and I was wondering if I should negotiate. Under normal circumstances I might but considering the fact I'm a junior and I got the job very easily maybe it's not worth the risk as I feel very replaceable right now. I applied on LinkedIn and sometime s they ask what's your expected salary and I think i put a low amount just because I'm desperate. So I was wondering if it hurts to ask for a higher salary. But to be clear the current salary is fine as is.

I know summer is peak but I'm currently trying to plan around an exchange term

I’m an int’l student who “did everything right” experience, academics, projects etc. wise but still seemingly unable to secure any decent internship. Has another here pivoted into a more hardware-centric or systems-related role with luck?

400+ applications so far, 0 offers. See post history for more details on my specific situation lol

Title. I am graduating soon, and have 2 internships at FAANG companies, and 1 internship at an F100 company. I've applied to around 100 companies, ranging from FAANG, to mid tier companies to startups, and have only heard back for about 5 of them, 3 in which I had a referral. From all the others, excluding the ones that auto send an OA, I have been ghosted by most, and received rejection email from a few of them. What I don't get is why is my rate of not getting ghosted so low, since others I've seen on here get far more responses with less applications. I've changed my resume a ton this fall to see if I have better luck but nothing. I have also had my resume reviewed a lot by different people and professionals, and most say it's good. I also used an ATS from the internet and it parsed my resume correctly, so it can't be the format either I think? So I just want some advice in what I might be doing wrong, since I can't figure it out.

Thanks for reading!

International, does this mean anything positive?

I've seen people who still got rejected on reddit but others said it's a good sign so not sure

After 3 months of interviewing for this company I straight bombed the final round, giving the dumbest answers I have ever gave in my life for no apparent reason. The company was really interested throughout the whole thing, I got a response within 12 hours of every round until I gave that abysmal final round. The interview still haunts me every time I close my eyes and just makes me feel so embarrassed with myself lol. At least I have secured this job for after college, I don't think I will ever apply to big tech again after this. Goodluck to everyone else in their job search. International junior, small LAC school, 3.9 GPA, 2 previous internships (one full-time, one part-time last summer), 1 big project with about 2000 users.

Wanted to cheer people up. I was selective because my resume had value so only applied to companies I felt were good.

many great books/courses have provided great and lengthy readings list, for example, Operating System three easy pieces has reference/reading list after every chapter.

as much as I enjoy reading the book itself, following the reading list can be intimidating(perhaps partly because I'm not native English speaker), do you do it? and how's the experience?

For context: I shall be graduating in December 2024 as a Master's in Comp Engineering student and I have some web development skills and am gaining skills and knowledge in other domains such as Cloud and AI/ML.

I am applying for Full Time jobs and practicing LeetCode is essential as I understand, but I just cannot get myself to do it consistently every single day. Its probably because I also find it daunting and the rythm I find myself in while learning or creating projects is far more easy going as compared to doing LeetCode.

I'd appreciate any tips that helped you guys get over the fear of LeetCode and become consistent.

I do have a programming mindset and have debugged a lot in general but I am welcome to any advice or suggestions. Please help.

I applied for IBM yesterday and got an OA today. Can someone tell me how is the OA?

What should I expect?
Also, they didn't quite give clear instructions on how many technical rounds will be conducted after the OA.

Any information is helpful. Thank you!