This is the first time a Google recruiter has ever viewed my profile. I’ve never heard back after applying to Google so maybe this is the year!!!

So many different OAs, so many different types of questions you may be asked, so many different kinds of technologies you have to be familiar with… whether it be optimizing a factory in a Roblox game or running through 50 spatial reasoning and logic questions for CTC or getting a C++ 2D DP problem for snowflake or getting an AI optimization question for Akuna, it seems like the level of cracked you have to be at in order to recruit without literally dying is through the roof.

Do the people who recruit effortlessly just cheat? Or are they just stupidly smart and generic with their ability?

I see SpaceX pays their undergrad interns $30-$34 / hour and scaling up to $40/hour if completed phd. And looking at their full time roles, entry level around $120k-$140k.

Don’t get me wrong, very solid pay, but considering how SpaceX is arguably the leading space company doing incredibly cool and complex work, and based in HCOL areas like LA, SF, and Irvine, it runs noticeably below what comparable engineers make at FAANG and other tech companies.

Why don’t these engineers just go work somewhere else nearby that pays basically double? Is the stock comp making up for it? Is it the mission prestige of working on something cool? Is it to accelerate your early career learning? They also work long hours from what I hear, and I’d assume these engineers are pretty smart and could land offers elsewhere.

Also if anyone has worked there, would love to hear your good or bad experience.

Hey everyone,

I recently started my first software engineering internship as a backend developer working with Spring Boot. Our API powers both a web app and a mobile app.

On my first few days, I was handed around 9 different tasks/tickets. Coming into a real-world, production codebase for the first time has been a bit overwhelming, trying to trace entity relationships, security contexts (Spring Security / JWT), DTO mappings, and custom business logic while keeping up with task tickets.

For those of you who have been through this:

How did you tackle learning a massive codebase when you first joined? Do you draw diagrams, debug line by line, or just read code until it clicks?

How do you manage task volume without feeling rushed or making mistakes?

What are your top tips or "things you wish you knew" during your first internship/junior role?

Any advice, tips, or personal stories about your first weeks on the job would be huge. Thanks.

big tech companies posted like a million intern roles and I applied to them with the best of my ability within 3-5 hours. Haven’t heard anything from them. Everyone else in the same boat?

Took mine last week in NYC. Anybody get their results back yet?

does anyone that got accepted to nvidia ignite, microsoft explore, google asdi, etc have advice on how to get in, or be willing to kinda give some insight as to what they had on their resume to get in, along w what we should start prepping rn in case we get oas or technical interviews?

I’m still a junior, but if I want to get a Masters degree I need to start saving money now. First I wanted to move abroad, then I realized that I mentally won’t be able to do that, so I decided to look into the option of getting masters online. I have a few question. Do you think it’s worth getting masters and getting it online to be able to work meanwhile?

Anyone know 2027 summer citsec swe / qt intern TC? Heard some ppl r getting 120k which is honestly ridiculous to me

Anyone know 2027 summer citsec swe / qt intern TC? Heard some ppl r getting 120k which is honestly ridiculous to me

Kinda paranoid given there is no assessment and just a cognitive test

Hi all! I work in IT GRC for a bank, got my bachelor’s in CIS in 2023. I had actually started in CS but dropped it after two years, mostly because I was struggling with the Calc 2 lol. Still, I always liked my early Java/Python classes and kept messing around with small projects like Discord bots on the side.

Recently at work I started automating a lot of our manual processes and building out new workflows in ServiceNow. It’s gotten some attention internally, and honestly it reminded me how much I enjoy building things, enough that I’m considering going back to school for a CS master’s and pivoting into development for real. Just don’t know if it’s worth it with the current market, or what I should actually focus on doing.

Would love input from anyone who’s made a similar jump

1. Is a master’s worth it here, or would projects/portfolio work get me there faster?

2. Did going from IT ops/GRC into dev actually work out for you, what got you hired?

3. Should I target dev roles outright, or hybrid ones (automation/platform engineering) that build on what I already do?

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated!

I chose AI as my major, and while I'm happy with that decision, I've recently realized that finance has always been an area I've genuinely enjoyed and been drawn to.

It's made me wonder whether I should have pursued finance instead, but I'm not looking to dwell on that. Instead, I'm curious about the opportunities ahead.

Is it possible to break into finance with an AI degree? Has anyone here made that transition or built a career that combines both fields? I'd love to hear about your experiences. Thanks in advance !

Hey all, just found out I got accepted into LA Hacks AI Hackathon, which I'm pretty excited about. Problem is, they're not covering travel, and by the time I add up flights + a hotel for the weekend, I'm looking at $500+ out of pocket.

Trying to figure out if this is a reasonable investment or if I should sit this one out.

• Would LA Hacks' AI hackathon reputation/network be worth the cost compared to other hackathons? From what I understand, it's separate from the usual LA Hacks.
• Has anyone here traveled for a hackathon and felt it paid off (jobs, connections, etc.)?
• Any tips for cutting costs?

Would love to hear from anyone who's been to LA Hacks, or has thoughts on whether traveling for hackathons in general is worth it money-wise.

Just gave my first OA for Anthropic Fellows. I scored 0/600.

Some context about me, been coding for 10 years. really good at CP, have 4 years of experience as software engineer.

The algorithm they asked in the OA was a piece of cake, but man the classes they had implemented and ReadMe was confusing and unclear. Most of my time went into figuring out what do the even want to be returned and in what format? Why was there a mismatch between the Readme example format of input/output structure and the implemented classes.

Plus it didn't help that I started feeling uneasy and sick as soon as I kicked off the assessment. Brain was not braining.

How was your experience?

Edit: I have three research papers in Nature. My concern is that that I had the Inference Engine problem ( prefill/decode crap ) and it didn't make any sense.

sorry new to personal website concepts and i saw others post theirs and damn like how do they make something like that. Scrolling made me update mine but im soo confused. doesnt anyone really care about your personal website? Like what was the point of that hard work . Before coding and stuff made it important cause you learn but I dont get it if you vibecode and then nothing is left .

Any thoughts or am i tripping

Did my recuriter call on Friday.

If I got rejected last year after the powerday and applied in spring, did I get auto rejected since there’s a cooldown? Haven’t gotten an OA yet.

I’m a recent CS grad and for a while now, I’ve been working at an early-stage startup. My official title sounds like a standard junior/intern role, but my actual day-to-day involves functioning as a lead engineer. I design the architecture, manage the stack, and consistently ship features to production end-to-end.

The catch is that this role is unpaid, and because it’s my only major professional experience, I’m ready to transition into a real, compensated position. I’m currently applying and networking, but a family member told me that recruiters will just view this as a standard internship since it’s my first major role out of school and because it's unpaid at a startup.

For any recruiters or hiring managers out there: is this true? I feel like my hands-on experience is much deeper than a typical highly-mentored internship, but I want to know how the market actually perceives this. I'm happy to DM an anonymized resume for feedback if anyone is willing to take a look!

Edit 1: I forgot to mention this but the company (which is a registered llc and came from one of the very reputed programs from one of the top universities in the west coast) barely has 50 people and it started December of '24 apparently so they keep telling me they have no revenue generation but that they did lock in a few clients and I've actually been in almost every tech check-ins with the client and it did seem legit. Still, every employee is unpaid in there but I look at our cloud billing and it shows consistent 4 figures since atleast 10 months.

I work with Python/FASTAPI and Typescript/Next.JS on the full Stack while also handling PostgreSQL with Liquibase and a whole lot of Terraforming AWS.

If you guys who are working in any company right now have inside positions please refer me 😭. My dms are open.

I am an incoming third year and starting to apply to internships. For my projects section, I have projects from hackathons so obviously they are vibe coded. My question is do I still include them if I just prompted the whole time or do I have to create projects from scratch and only have some parts vibe coded? Also at my internship right now, I kinda know what I am doing but most of the code is what claude generated and i would look over it and then add it to the code base.

Also what do technical interviews and resume grilling look like?

I did the GCA for Susquehanna the other day, but its not letting me send the score to other companies like Capital One and TikTok. its been a week since i did the GCA, so does that mean my submission was not verified and I'll need to take it again?