Software Engineering Intern Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

I know you guys on this platform push learn by doing heavily. I want to learn more on docker and kubernetes but i don't have a project idea right now that needs me to use those tools. How would you suggest me learn? I'm just trying to get off learning everything from a tutorial.

Also I found this platform from twitter and wanted to know what you guys thought of it? since it has labs and technically you're doing... lol

I recently came across this post and wanted the feed back from the community.

I worked in a tech company as an SWE intern summer last year, and have returned to the same workplace in the capacity of a full-time engineer now. My intern-time project was on a completely different line (included ML based libraries and skills such as time-series forecasting that I picked up) while my present work is totally Python-based tooling development. Should I list these two experiences separately in my resume, given the time-periods are different as well?

Hey everyone! I’m finishing up my CS degree at a top university this December and honestly, I'm feeling a bit behind. My GPA isn't great (under 80) and I realize I haven’t focused enough on improving my tech skills over the years.

I'm doing an internship at a cool startup this summer, mostly doing frontend web development, which is what all my internships have been in. But as I look towards graduating, I’m really not confident in my skills. I want to buckle down in the next 7 months and build a solid skill base.

Could you guys suggest a plan for the next 3-6 months that would really help me level up my skills? Should I just focus on churning out as many projects as I can? I'm already putting in the effort at my internship, but I feel like I need to do more.

Also, should I stick to what I know and double down on frontend skills, or should I try to learn some backend too to keep my job options open post-graduation?

Thanks a lot for any advice or tips you can share!

Bonus questions:

1. How much ChatGPT should I use when building my projects? I feel like if I use it too much, I won't develop coding skills as much and also non-technical skills like reading documentation. Opinions?

2. Should I also do Leetcode (I am weak at it too)? Or is it just better to focus on one thing at a time? Or something like - 3 months Frontend, 3 months Leetcode?

Thanks :)

It’s been 5 weeks since I’ve started my internship and it’s been pretty overwhelming trying to juggle many responsibilities. I tried balancing school research, my startup and interview prep along with my internship, but I’ve underestimated how much time my internship has been taking.

I’ll start off with the good news first. I’ve been doing well in my internship and my manager is happy with my progress. I managed to implement a pretty critical part of their system that they’ll need in the future. I’ve also set up infrastructure for them to scale their codebase. I need to integrate my work into prod and implement some basic logging.

The bad news is that my internship has been taking much more out of me than I expected. I find myself spending 9-11 hours working daily and as a result, I haven’t been able to do leetcode, research or my startup. As a result here are the consequences:

1. Leetcode: I’ve started applying for full-time jobs and I bombed my first OA. Having looked at the questions, I feel that I might as well have not applied at all as I can’t even get through them
2. Research: My advisor hasn’t said too much about my research progress but my gut feel is that he thinks it’s slow. I’m in conversation with a big tech company about doing research with them in the fall with the potential for a FT return offer, and my advisor has a say in whether I can do the collaboration/internship. So I definitely need to do well in research.
3. Startup: My cofounders and I have been working hard on sales but feature implementation has been slow. The feature requests are pretty critical in getting paying clients, so one day of waiting may mean a customer can churn.

The worst part is that every time I come back, my body feels so drained and I don’t want to do work any more, but I also kinda have to. I still have another 4 weeks to go for my internship and I’m wondering how to allocate my time.

At the startup I’m currently interning at, there are no automated tests. Miraculously the entire system works. The codebase is small - my guess is around 50K LOC (they manually test everything). Since the engineering culture is pretty free flow, I’ve been able to set up unit and integration tests for code that I write from scratch (eg I can unit test classes I write, etc). I’d say I’ve written about 2000 - 2500 lines since starting in early June with a 60-40 split between code and unit tests. My company doesn’t do diff stacking, but I’d imagine I’d have 3-4 diffs based on the coding velocity course.

However, I’m having a bunch of trouble when I’m starting to integrate my code into production. I get a bunch of nasty linker errors (I work in C++) that require some workarounds and a lot of digging. As a result I’ve had to spend 2-3 days with these errors.

My gut feel is that these errors will continue to pop up as I continue coding, so should I just stop setting up automated tests and just manually verify, or is setting up tests worth the long term payoff? Since I’m interning every second matters.

tldr; friend is working a caretaker job whose employer is a tech lead and is interested in giving her work in 2-3 months. Other option is to take her return offer (RO) from her startup immediately (even though the startup is failing and has ~1 year of runway left). Should she take the caretaker job for 3 months or take the startup job?

I was talking to a friend who’s in a strange situation right now and I’d like some advice. The story is basically

1. She got an RO from her startup but no other job offers. While she likes her coworkers, she doesn’t like the startup itself as it’s doing poorly. She expects the startup to have 1 year’s worth of runway. The return offer is flexible - if she asks HR that she wants to come back then she can show up the following week to work. There is no deadline for this RO
2. Besides the RO, she got this job as a caretaker and her employer is a tech lead at a stabler company. She’s already signed the contract for this job. The tech lead said that they’re actively hiring and that they have some data analysis work that needs to be done that matches her skillset well, but the data needs to go through some compliance that lasts for a couple of months.

She has several plans right now:

Plan A:

• Work the caretaking job + take her return offer as a remote position (need to negotiate for lower pay since startup doesn’t really like remote work), apply to jobs on the side

Plan B (Assume that she can’t negotiate remote work)

• Work the caretaking job + apply to jobs + do side projects + interview prep aggressively

If her caretaker employer doesn’t have an opening by 3 months, she goes back to her full time job.

At least from my analysis, here’s the worst and best case analysis:

Worst case: She doesn’t find a new job in 3 months, her caretaker employer doesn’t have a job for her - she returns back to her startup

Best case: She finds a new job or her caretaker employer gives her the job - goes to that job instead

So the worst case doesn't seem that bad, whereas the best case can get really good. So would skipping out on 3 months (5 month gap since graduating) of professional experience really hurt her candidacy for future jobs?

Wondering if this is a viable strategy, or if there are better ways to approach this?

Hi, I recently completed a product management interview with a company. I believe I can articulate some of my answers more succinctly via email. (this was not a strict coding style interview and thus I think more open-ended in nature). Do you think I should followup?

The company's feedback timeline seems to be a couple of weeks. While I respect their process, I assumed the evaluations were on a rolling basis, prompting me to expedite my interview, potentially at the expense of some polished responses.

When probed about potential hesitations regarding my fit for the role, I received a neutral response, leaving me uncertain about my standing.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for your guidance!

Hello everyone,

I'm preparing for a potential career transition as I join the MS CS program at Georgia Tech this fall, while also working full-time. Given the uncertain job security at my current company, I am proactively looking to strengthen my position in the job market in the United States. Here is a brief overview of my background:

1. Current Role: 2 years in a distributed systems role utilizing TypeScript and Rust.
2. Education: Joining Georgia Tech for an MS in Computer Science; previous non-CS engineering degree in a tier 1 university in India.
3. Internships: Completed two internships with local town US companies ( didn't learn much there).
4. Publications: Co-authored an Android Dev (Kotlin) + AI/ML-based paper published in an ACM journal and presented at a conference.
5. Research: Collaborated with professors on projects related to security, networking, and HCI.
6. Side Projects:
   • Pet Marketplace and Grocery eCommerce Android App - Java
   • Multi-threaded mathematical solver and Sudoku helper in C/C++
   • DDQN-based AI game for an RL course project - Python
7. Programming Proficiency: TypeScript (Node.js), Rust (p2p Networking), C/C++ (Operating Systems & DSA), Java (Android Development)

I had earlier applied to lots of companies in 2022 & 2023 when I was looking for jobs in the States. I had applied to around 300 companies each for internships and jobs. Only 10 reached out, I could only convert one then which is my current job. I had a really poor profile then with a non-CS degree outside of the United States. I had cold applied then. I do not want to end up in that same situation again. I have tried my best to improve my profile since then.

I'm seeking advice on how best to approach internship applications now with an improved profile. Specifically, I am wondering:

• Is it more effective to reach out directly to hiring managers rather than recruiters, especially for internships?
• What strategies can I employ to increase my visibility and chances of getting hired, beyond cold-applying and asking for referrals on LinkedIn?
• What can I do beyond brushing up my DSA skills and Dev skills in the tech stack I am proficient in? [ My degree will also help me catch up on my basic CS foundation. ]

Any insights or advice beyond the scope of the questions would be greatly appreciated too!

For high level decisions such as designing a database schema, system design, deciding tech stack, etc., I have a tendency to spend a lot of time figuring out what the "best" design is. For example, today I spent hours figuring out what the best data schema would be for some structs I plan to store in a database. Another time, I spent hours figuring out what websocket library to use.

For these high level tasks, I spend most of my time browsing online figuring out the tradeoffs between different libraries are. For example with the websocket libraries, the language I work in has 3 well-known websocket libraries. I spent hours through Reddit and Hackernews to see what people's experiences were with latency/throughput of each websocket, what the developer experience is like and how easily integratable the library is into existing systems.

I think the issue is that switching libraries midway through development costs a lot of time when you discover the library isn't what you wanted. So I spend a lot of time trying to get it right the first time. This is unlike code where I write a lot of code, get it working, then refactor as necessary.

I wonder how people get over analysis paralysis for these high level decisions, and what are some strategies to mitigate risks when you make a mistake (choose wrong architecture, wrong database, etc.)?

I'm an intern and I have around 3 weeks left in my internship. I'm not too sure what to do with this because I'm aware that maybe I didn't leave the project at the optimal pace and he said he would "take it from here" but there is still time. I've tried to ask my mentor if I should do anything and they said I should coffee chat with people but I don't think this is going to look good when I'm presenting to VPs next week. Any feedback would be appreciated. My manager & skip is on vacation this week as well.

I got a verbal offer from Applied Intuition and I’m really excited about the opportunity. It’s a good company with strong financials, and the many engineers I’ve talked to have all mentioned being able to attain E4/E5 level scope a year or two into joining the company. While it’s a good company, I know that it’s not as prestigious as the FAANGs or OpenAIs of the world, and I should keep on hunting, but this is where I feel conflicted.

Job hunting as been a major time sink for me. My focus and productivity has reduced significantly, and as a result, it has put quite a big strain on my professional relationships, such as my research advisor, coworkers and more. My grades have also took a hit, but I suppose that’s less important. My time sink and dip in productivity was at least somewhat justified initially - the job market is so tough for new grads, so it’s understandable that you need to put a lot of effort. But now that I have my first offer, it’s a lot harder to justify my loss in focus.

Right now I have final rounds with a quant firm and Meta. I’m planning to take them in early November. My understanding is that companies (FAANG and FAANG-adjacent) will recruit throughout the year, so should I keep applying to places, or should I stop? On one hand, I read the thread on how, and the overall sentiment is that it's “good but not great”, but it sucks to feel like I’m settling for something less. On the other hand, my gut feel tells me that I should stop.

I did a postmortem on my job search for a new grad 2025 role. As part of this effort, I compiled statistics on my job search. Specifically, how many resume screens I passed (call it the pass rate). More details can be found in the comment section.

My pass rate is around 7%, but a large part of it is from quant, and I think the fact that I interned at a small quant firm this summer skewed it. Putting all quant interviews, my rate is more like 5.8% on average. I ended up with 2 offers from high-growth unicorns. My first question is:

Is a 5.8% pass rate good for a new grad?

I’m wary of posting my resume online, but I’m happy to share it with Alex and Rahul and a few others privately if it makes things easier. The only things really noteworthy are T5 MS and T10 BS.

Rahul and Alex both mention that jobs aren’t one-way doors, but I feel that these stats reveal how difficult mobility is, thus jobs are becoming more like one-way doors with little to no exits, especially if you don’t have brands. From this experience, I worry that in the future, it’ll take months of prep and applying to only get a minuscule chance at moving to a better opportunity. I’m excited to be working at a unicorn, but I’m also worried about when I leave, it’ll be hard for me to find something better down the line.

It’s unfortunate that I graduated in a tough market, but I’m grateful that I got a decent job. How do position myself to have as many options as possible when I inevitably leave my first job?

What's up everyone, thanks for taking the time to read this.

Over the next year and a half, I’m aiming to take my skills as both a developer and an interviewee to the next level. I’m currently a senior majoring in computer science and statistics, and I'll be graduating this semester to pursue a one-year master's in CS. My goal is to work at a FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company, gain new skills, and make connections in a major city (a bit cliché, I know).

Background: I’ve spent approximately 1.5 years interning at a Fortune 500 company, working on Cloud/SWE projects, and this summer, I'm a Machine Learning Engineering intern at a mid-sized company.

I'm trying to figure out how to most optimally put in my time for success this interview season. Outside of work and lifting, I try to spend. ~10 hours per week on LeetCode, ~7 hours on system design and ~7 on building projects.

I'm mostly looking for tips someone at my stage may not realize in software. For example, there are really ~15 patterns that once you have the hang of coding interviews become a lot easier than doing 50 array and sliding window questions.

Here are my main challenges:

1. Securing Interviews: Last summer, I managed to get quite a few interviews but none from FAANG or similar companies. I also applied to data science and engineering roles, which increased my interview count but weren’t exactly what I’m aiming for. I’m keen on MLE, cloud engineering, or backend roles. Although I had referrals to a handful of tech companies, most were not software engineers. What strategies have worked to get interviews for you, or what would prompt you to give an intern an interview?

2. Understanding Concepts/Designs: What resources (books, lectures, etc) have been invaluable for your interview prep, becoming a better developer, or learning fundamentals?

There's a pretty long post, thanks for any advice you can offer.

I was going to ask what is the best way to approach recruiters from each company and what type of questions would you ask? Also what type of conversations would you try to have with the recruiter as well? Overall I was really looking to know how to get the most value out of a career fair as I can.

Hey Everyone,

I’m currently working on an iOS application, that has already been deployed on the App store. I’m still experimenting with it internally with a few friends, but I noticed that for some of them, when the app is installed it is just displayed as a blank screen or with missing icons or default font colors.

The app passed through App store screening before it was deployed, but I suspect that there is a compatibility problem. I was wondering if anyone has suggestions on what the cause might be, and how I may resolve it.

Link to see the screenshots of the normal and buggy versions of the app:

Link to download app:

A little about the application --> It is a security surveillance iOS app that aims to minimize criminal illiteracy by providing citizens with technology for staying aware, secure, and connected. It includes features such as direct messaging, rapid alert system, sensory data monitoring, and a siren observability module.

I'm open to sharing my code too for a review, but only privately. Thank you so much in advance!

I am invited to an onsite with a company that would like me to do their final round interviews at their HQ. They are around 3 hours away from where I live. I haven’t confirmed but I think that given how far I live from them, they should be understanding enough to offer an online option. I know that interviewing in person significantly increases your chances. I’m not a huge fan of the company but given the job market, I feel like I kinda have to do it if it means it’ll increase my prospects on getting the job.

I’m currently in the interview process with a few other places that are arguably more prestigious. Is there a way to leverage this so that me choosing to interview online doesn’t negatively affect my candidacy? Is it even worth doing the interview in person?

I graduated in January 2024 with a Masters in CS and am still looking for my first full time job. I've been doing an unpaid Frontend internship since march and have been volunteering as a Software Engineer (C# and Unity) during my spare time at a local university. Can I include either or both of these experiences to the Work Experience section in my resume? Will having two current work experiences be a red flag? Is it better to remove the Lab work because it isn't directly related to what I want to work on in the future (Full stack web dev)?

I’ve noticed sometimes that companies will ask something like ‘what do you want to work on?’ Or ‘what do you think you’ll be working on?’ I often struggle with these questions because I don’t really know what teams exist within the org so it’s hard for me to l tell the interviewer what I want when I don’t even know the options. In fact, I don’t really mind what I get assigned to, and sometimes I know what I don’t want to do better than what I do want to do (for example, I definitely don’t want to do front end, but other than that I don’t really mind which part of the backend I get put into)

I’ve thought of answering back with something like ‘I don’t have a huge preference, but I’d like to work on whatever will be most impactful for the companies based on my skillsets. If you really have to make me choose, then I’d do …’, but I don’t know if that makes me sound unconfident.

so how do you go about answering these questions?

I watched the DS&A course on Taro and I thought the video on what a "yes" and a "strong yes" mean was really helpful.

I was wondering if the same analysis can be done for what a "weak no" and a what a "weak yes" mean? I think this comparison would be helpful since it gives us an understanding of the small details that can push someone between passing and failing territory.

Another question I have is that I've finished questions with optimal time complexity but I still fail the interview. So under what circumstances would candidates get a "weak no" (or even "no") even with an optimal solution? This is obviously a super broad question, so I tried breaking it down into several categories:

Communication:

• Clarifying questions
• Explaining thought process

Problem Solving:

• Needing hints
• Time/Space complexity analysis

Coding:

• Debugging
• Code quality

Verification:

• Test suite composition

As an intern undertaking my first industry-relevant experience, I often find myself drawn to continue working on projects beyond my scheduled work hours. Should this extra time be considered overtime and discussed with my manager, or is it expected to be unpaid and regarded as a personal choice?

Hello everyone! I've been building my career in software development, but I'm now looking to pivot into product management. I'm curious about the best strategies to make this transition and would love to hear your insights or experiences.

Here are a couple of options I'm considering:

Internal Transfer: I could ask my current employer (where I'm interning) about the possibility of moving into a PM role. However, I've only been with the company for a month, and I'm concerned that it might be too soon to request such a shift. Should I wait a few more months to build more credibility before making the ask?

External Opportunities: Alternatively, I could start applying to PM positions, highlighting my relevant skills and experiences on my resume. Another path might be pursuing an MBA to strengthen my credentials for a product management role.

Which approach do you think would be more effective, or is there another route I should consider? Thanks in advance for your advice!

Bonus question - is there a "Taro" for Product Managers? Where people give advice on career growth, etc.

I will be interning at Meta as a Software Engineer. However, it seems the team I'll be joining is more focused on compliance and regulatory issues, which I would think is probably more politically-driven compared to teams that are more consumer-focused.

While I’m confident the team will be great to work with, I'm uncertain if this is an area I would be interested in working in moving forward. What would be the typical process for team matching during the transition from intern to full-time engineer?

I have gotten an offer for a security engineering internship from Amazon for Summer 2025. However I have already signed an offer with a unicorn. I was wondering if I could move this Summer internship to Spring so I can have the potential to get experiences in both?