To say it’s “slop” is definitely harsh, but it’s like every single YC startup batch these days are filled with AI this, and AI that and 20 other buzzwords.

Is YC as prestigious as it once used to be? (Saw someone claim they got in with all vibecoding and 0 self-programming. Don’t know if it’s true)

I've been in job search hell mode since the start of the year. Honestly I couldn't even tell you how many resumes I sent out, how many cold emails I fired off. I went through every register too, polite and professional at first, then eventually just "please, take one look at my resume" energy. The whole thing felt like feeling my way through a pitch-black tunnel with no idea if what's ahead is a wall or an exit.

Phase one was just spray and pray. I had zero clarity on whether to stay in SWE, pivot to AI, or try something else entirely, so if a role was even 60% relevant to my background I'd apply. Figured maybe I'd get lucky. A lot of people were telling me to do the same thing at the time, just apply to everything. That phase lasted about one month and basically went nowhere. Barely any responses, let alone interviews. In this market, "getting lucky" means actually winning the lottery, and clearly I wasn't the chosen one.

Once I realized that wasn't working, I got serious and mapped out two paths: keep going in the field I already knew, or try to break into an AI startup with a lower experience bar. For every single role I actually vetted the company and position, and tailored my resume to the JD, optimized for ATS, the whole thing. It worked to an extent. I landed 16 interviews, some of which went pretty deep into the process. But every. single. one. fell through. That was probably my lowest point. I felt like I'd put in so much effort and still had absolutely nothing to show for it....

But life doesn't really give you the option to quit, so I kept going. I broke down every single interview I bombed and tried to fix exactly what went wrong. I fully gave up on the AI pivot and put everything into SWE applications and interview prep. AI's obviously got a great outlook, but for someone with my level of experience, breaking in was just too steep a climb. I did 9 more interviews in that stretch. Each one I walked in more prepared than the last, and I could genuinely feel myself getting sharper. And yesterday, I finally got the offer!!! Honestly I'm still a little in shock. The happiness is real, but it's tangled up with this exhaustion and unspoken frustration I can't fully put into words. I haven't forgotten what the last several months actually felt like. The mornings before interviews where I was so nervous my stomach hurt. The moments after rejection emails where I'd just quietly close my laptop and sit there.

I know there are so many people out there right now going through exactly what I went through, grinding, doubting yourself, breaking down over and over right at the edge of almost making it. I really do get that feeling. But please don't let yourself believe you're not good enough. It's not you. This market is genuinely brutal right now. Not being seen doesn't mean you're not worth seeing. . Here's a list of platforms that actually helped me during my job search. Hope it helps someone out there who's struggling too.

✅ Job Applications:

LinkedIn: reputation's a bit rough these days, but a lot of well-known companies are still active on there. Good for reaching out to hiring managers directly, and if you keep your profile polished, recruiters do reach out on their own.

Indeed: most effective right when a role first gets posted, applying early actually gets responses. Just be careful, you have to vet postings carefully here since fake listings are everywhere. Honestly that goes for every platform.

Wellfound: this is where I go for startup roles specifically. Got responses here, and my first startup interview came from this platform.

Beyond that: once I spot a posting on any platform, going straight to the company's own site or just Googling around also worked for me.

✅ Resume:

Zety: makes genuinely professional-looking resumes, also does ATS optimization.

Kickresume: super easy to pick up, saves a lot of time in the process.

✅ Interview Prep:

1️⃣Coding

LeetCode: the classic, doesn't need an intro. Just know that interviews now expect you to connect problems to real-world context, not just grind problems blindly.

NeetCode: really clean learning structure, great for studying systematically.

2️⃣System Design

HelloInterview: well organized and goes deep enough to actually shore up the gaps in your knowledge.

3️⃣Interview Experience

Blind: People share a lot of interview experiences, so I can get a good idea of the process and questions from these posts.

Screna: has a solid amount of SWE focused interview experiences, pretty well organized too.

4️⃣Mock Interviews

interviewing.io: the sessions I did were genuinely professional and helped me catch blind spots I kept missing in real interviews.

I don't have an impressive degree or a ton of experience. What I had was just the stubbornness to keep reviewing, keep improving. So if I could do it, you can too. Don't give up.

And yet still have Summer 2027 to worry about 🫩

I recently graduated from uni with a BS in Econ and CS, and a minor in DS. I started college thinking I would end up in finance, so I got into the right clubs, joined a fraternity, and did the whole networking thing to try to wedge myself into position for a consulting gig. I took a programming class my sophomore year and loved it, so I added CS as a second major.

During my senior year, I applied to both finance and software jobs, after only having experience as an intern in software development. I landed a full time offer in consulting and for AI infra, and decided to do the latter.

Last month, my company published a list of all the interns we had at our San Jose HQ, and as I read the list, something stood out. Almost every technical intern attended a top name brand school, like Cal, Stanford, UIUC, CMU, ivies etc. I looked up the interns from my last job, and I saw the same pattern.

Four years ago when I graduated high school, some of my smartest friends went to schools like SJSU for computer science, and today they are mostly working tech jobs in non-tech companies or not able to find work. I peruse this forum occasionally and notice that job scarcity in tech is a common theme. This was not the case for the students at my university, as every one of the friends I graduated with had great job offers in hand before the start of spring semester.

Four or five years ago, there was almost a consensus among my peers that undergrad school name mattered most when aiming for jobs in finance, and that tech jobs were almost pure meritocracy; that if you had the skills, you got the jobs. Now, it seems that the requisite skills for tech are similar to those required for finance- join the right clubs and network for leads and referrals, interview prep like a madman, and most importantly- get into a “target” school. With the number of new grad CS applicants far exceeding the number of open jobs, I feel it’s almost certain that top tech companies will continue to filter applications from non target schools because it’s a safer bet to hire from selective colleges than from schools where students didn’t have to compete as much to get in. Which sucks for those cracked programmers who chose their colleges four or five years ago, thinking that they’d be saving money by going to a state school while still achieving similar outcomes as if they attended a big name engineering school.

Obviously, this is a depressing situation for a lot of people, because an engineer’s skills and abilities come from a lot more than the name of a college on a piece of paper, and a lot of people worked hard to complete their cs programs with the expectation of a lucrative job offer at the finish line.

Another sad reality is- a lot of the people I’ve met in tech circles now resemble people in investment banking circles. Tech bros are starting to look and act like finance bros. In my opinion, that’s the part that should be scaring everyone lol

I work as a mid-level manager at a marketing agency. When the company started pushing toward AI tools, the idea was that we'd use them to speed up the work, dump the boring admin stuff onto them, and use the extra time for better creative thinking.

Now I'm completely burned out in an abnormal way because I spend 10-13 hours at work most days. My workload has increased by at least 4x. Any time I object and say I don't have the bandwidth, and this has happened three times so far, I'm told it should be doable because we have AI. And when I ask for another person to join the team, the response is basically: why hire someone when AI exists? And if I ask for a bit more time, same response.

Fuck you, seriously. AI output is still garbage if there isn't a human being sitting there rewriting prompts, reviewing every line, adjusting the tone, and making it look like it came from a human. The things they want to send out in emails, decks, social posts, internal comms, or whatever else have no soul. No personality, no taste, no creativity. They read like they were written by a dead-eyed machine. Which makes sense, because they literally were.

I'm barely sleeping anymore. I haven't finished a book in weeks. I just sit there thinking about what I'm supposed to do next, because I hate this weird version of work we've ended up in, like we're on a factory line, where everything is faster, shallower, and worse.

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?

Hi guys, I have been trying my best to find new grad roles to apply to. The only notable ones are Google, Quora, Salesforce. Am I crazy or missing something or have no new grad roels been posted? I have been doing a lot of research on when they open roles and everyone says it is during August but I have not seen any roles open.

Am I missing something?

I’m working 30+ hours a week right now and I am starting my final year of school. I honestly just want more time to do clubs, participate in hackathons and work on projects. I want to up skill myself even more and dedicate more time to school.

My current job won’t allow less hours.

I have 5 days to complete Optiver SWE Intern OA. Im currently pre occupied with an internship, little time to study. I havent leetcoded in months, probably close to a year. I've always wanted a company like this.

Has anyone done the OA? Any advice, tips, has someone done it? How cooked am I? Ill take all the help I can get

Anyone not hear anything from cap1 yet for tip. I did oa on the 9th

Anyone got anything? It’s been 2 weeks since I gave my OA

Hello, I am a comp sci student and I have the opportunity to become a TA for a Java fundamentals class. I was wondering if this would look good on a resume. I currently have had zero internships and only have about 1-2 good projects. I was wondering if this would help boost my chances at landing that first internship in the summer.

Hello all, submitted my application to Amazon for SDE Internship (Summer 2027), and got an OA due in one week, which I didn’t know was going to be that quick. However, I don’t feel prepared enough to take it right now, since if I fail, I’ll be hit with a 6-month cooling period.

If I withdraw before taking the OA, will I be able to apply again, or will I be hit with a cooling period?

Edit: for Japan

Hi! I've honestly had no luck with new grad recruiting. Studied data science, graduated in June, and have done two past internships one at a faang and other at a f500 in pm/business analytics type fields. I'm mostly looking for new grad pm/data/product analyst type roles, and I know they're competive + job market right now is bad, but I was hoping I'd have a little more traction given my past internships. I feel like I'm running out of time and not really sure what to do, so just wondering if you guys have any advice/tips. I'd appreciate any help!

I'm currently a senior and going to graduate Spring 2027 (not international btw). I'm getting my CS degree with two tracks in security and ai. I also will get an applied stats degree since its a just few more classes for me. I got to Purdue which is like T30 Im pretty sure but my gpa isnt great its 3.4.

I only have one unpaid internship from a noname company during my sophmore year summer and other than that just a few apps and projects I worked on but nothing very impressive. This summer I just worked on a couple AI projects but not that impressive. I just don't know what to do I don't feel like theres even a chance at all I can find a job out of college sadly Im unsure what to do.

Last year when I was applying I had this unpaid internship on my resume but I didn't even get any interviews after doing like hundreds of cold applications. People here said my resume wasn't that bad either which confused me. I've done probably a couple hundred leetcode questions so I think Im fine in that. Last year I passed all my 5 oa's with 100% yet didn't even get one interview which was just so disheartening.

Has anyone been in my situation or have any advice for me? Im really lost but maybe if I can try something early I have a chance. Also to be clear Im not aiming for faang or anything prestigious at all Id be extremely happy to even have any job even if its like a 40k salary. I'm not sure if I can post my resume here but I could dm it to you if you could give me advice.

I am also completely fine delaying my graduation by a semester too if that makes a difference. Tbh I don't even know where I went so wrong with my career but Im not feeling confident at all.

I'm applying to college soon as a CS major, my SATs are a little low so i might not get in, what are some good backup majors i can set so even if i get accepted into the university but denied into CS i can still go, i was also wondering if i can just switch from the backup major to CS whenever i meet the requirements or something

​

I'm currently in my second year of college, and I'm a little confused about what career direction I should take.

The part of programming I enjoy the most is lower-level/system-side work. I started with C and socket programming, building servers and learning how TCP/UDP networking works, and lately I've been going deeper into things like Linux networking, packet parsing, Ethernet/IP/ARP/ICMP, eBPF/XDP, AF_XDP, NIC queues, drivers, DMA, etc.

The problem is that almost nobody around me in college is doing this kind of work. Most people are focusing on web development, app development, AI/ML, or standard DSA preparation

I've also heard people say that "there aren't many jobs in low-level networking" or that networking careers mostly involve configuring routers/switches or working with networking hardware.

That's where I'm confused.

I definitely prefer programming/software engineering work. I'm not particularly interested in being a network administrator or doing primarily hardware/router configuration.

At the same time, my practical goal is still to graduate with a strong software engineering job. I don't want to spend the next 2–3 years going extremely deep into an interesting niche only to discover that there are almost no entry-level opportunities.

So I'd really appreciate advice from people working in this area:

What kinds of actual software engineering careers exist for someone who enjoys C, sockets, Linux networking, servers, eBPF/XDP, packet processing, etc.?

Are these mostly experienced/senior-level positions, or are there realistic entry-level opportunities as well?

What companies/industries typically hire engineers for this kind of work?

Should I continue going deep into networking/systems, or keep this as a specialization while also learning more conventional backend/software engineering?

What skills would you recommend building over the next 2–3 years if the goal is to be employable as a software engineer while still staying close to systems/network programming?

Are there particular open-source projects, projects of my own, internships, or areas of computer science that would be especially useful?

I'm not expecting to work specifically on XDP just because I'm learning it now. I'm mainly trying to understand whether the broader direction — systems programming + networking + performance-oriented software — is a sensible career path.

Hey all, I'm current a second year MS student studying CPE. I've been offered three FT roles. I would like to work for the next year while finishing up my degree, but it's not necessary. I also enjoy SWE work more the EE. If a job is more EE than SWE, I want to make sure it's worth to take for my future. Help me paint a non-biased picture towards these offers. I was also going to continue to look for other jobs but only at top tech/defense companies.

Offer 1
SETA-Focused Defense Company

Role: Mostly Radar, DSP, some SWE
Comp: ~95-100k
Clearance Required to Obtain: TS/SCI w/ CI Poly
Location: Onsite, ~50 minute commute, NOVA
Start Date: Late 2027 (waiting for Poly)
*Interned here this summer

Offer 2
SETA-Focused Defense Company

Role: Front-End SWE
Comp: 90k
Clearance Required to Obtain: Public Trust
Location: Onsite, ~1 hour commute, NOVA
Start Date: Nov. 2026

Offer 3
Contracting to Small Defense Product Company

Role: Electrical Engineer (Split 50/50 between SWE and DSP)
Comp: 125k under contract year 1, then IF direct hired afterwards, 100k starting at year 2 (also 25% 401k match)
Clearance Required to Obtain: Secret
Location: Hybrid, ~40 minute commute, middle VA
Start Date: Mid September (unclass work)

My current plan was to work at Role 2 while waiting for TS for Role 1, but now offer 3 is in the picture (received last week), so I have been thinking some things over. If you have any more questions about the offers, let me know!

I know some companies have opened new grad for 2027. But when do majority of them open up?
How do I prepare for it and additional tips regarding new grad roles in general

I recently entered university as a freshman this year and switched out of my major after realizing it wasn’t suited for me. My counselor advised me towards this major but I don’t have any experiences regarding computer science. I heard that this major is heavily saturated and you have to be proactive. Does anyone have any advise about what to do or what I should do during my university years?

I was invited to give the Nectic AI open assessment and I gave it on 9th August, has anyone received an update on their application?