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

I got a new grad offer from a startup that's undergoing hypergrowth. They're doubling HC and expanding to many verticals. The primary reason why I really want to join this startup is to catch that hypergrowth wave, similar to what Seed did during his time at Klaviyo. However, something that worries me is that by the time I join this startup (in Jun, Jul or Aug 2025), the hypergrowth period will have ended, which kinda defeats the purpose of why I'd want to join in the first place.

What are some good questions to ask to gauge whether or not the startup will continue to grow at the rate it's currently at?

Many people including me struggle to understand large codebases, especially when we start at a new company. It might be due to legacy code or just size/complexity of the codebase.

Alex/Rahul have already advised on talking 1:1 with team members + breaking stuff to see how things work. I would still love to see a live deep dive on few large codebases to learn how you would get familiar with the codebase asap.

Would it be possible to make such a course?

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I've found that while hands-on building is a fantastic way to learn, taking courses from experienced instructors can also offer immense benefits. However, I often struggle with maintaining motivation throughout self-paced online courses, especially since they can be quite lengthy and require significant time commitment.

I'm reaching out to ask for strategies or tips on how to stay engaged and see these courses through to the end. How do you keep yourself motivated and on track in a self-paced learning environment? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

A few days ago, I almost broke production.

Our company doesn’t have any formal CI/CD protocols. When we ‘push to production’ that would mean testing code on our local computers, then going onto our single production machine, clone our changes, test on the production machine, then merge to main. The dev team was incredibly small, but this process started failing when more people worked on the codebase.

My manger strongly prefers merging one large feature all at once as opposed to merging changes bit by bit. Even though I pushed for the ‘one diff, one thesis’ approach, he pushed back on it. He would rather clone my entire feature all at once over making small changes.

A week and a half ago, I finished my main feature. My code successfully worked on the production machine, but my manager kept pushing back on actually landing the code to production. I kept pushing for my manager to push my code but he kept extending the due date. Now that I’m close to my internship, he is asking me to push code.

The issue is that and another dev were trying to push their features to production. The other developer went first since his feature was smaller, then it was my turn. When it came to merging my code, I made errors in resolving merge conflicts, which resulted in errors. I tried ‘undoing’ the commits by reverting changes (when I should’ve done a reset), which caused the commit history to become longer and more complex, making the situation worse. After rolling back commits, somehow even the old code wasn’t working.

My team and I are working to resolve the issue, but I was really upset throughout the whole process.  I’m frustrated at my own incompetence with version control, but I’m also frustrated with my manager for not listening to my suggestions, as I think this would’ve been prevented if I had integrated my code earlier and in smaller chunks.

My team knows that it was a version control issue (as opposed to a code issue), especially since I showed them on two different occasions that my code works.

How should I handle this situation? I definitely feel like I should apologize but how can I make up?

I’ll be finishing my internship pretty soon and I think I feel like I’ve done a good job. I checked in with my manager every 2 weeks (didn’t check in with them for the past 3 weeks expecting this final conversation). Wondering what I should bring up with them in my last conversation with them? I am interested in a return offer (RO). What should I ask them about?

I have some experience in MLOps and was recently contacted by a recruiter from NYT. Reading the job description I had some skills, and the others I never even used before. I really want this opportunity, but want to put my best foot forward. Is there any advice on what I can use to prep on this and really do my best?

So far i discovered this repo and started to read through it. I'm also open to connecting and having sessions with any engineer with this experience.

I recently received an offer from a series D unicorn. They are giving me the option to trade off base salary and sign-on bonus for more equity and vice versa.  I’ve heard conflicting opinions about whether you should optimise for cash or for equity (some say optimise for equity, others say optimise for pay), so I want to get a good understanding of what factors I should consider when trading off pay for more equity?

I'm fortunate enough to have come from a decent background, so I don't need to worry about paying off debt or anything like that. It also happens that I live near family so cost of living isn't too big of an issue. So this is more about maximizing my compensation without having to worry about anything else.

Also, this company told me that they don’t negotiate, but I told them that I had a competing offer that paid me 15K more base. They gave more reasons about why they don't negotiate but said they’d see what they can do. I ended up getting the 15K. In previous calls, they definitely showed that the really wanted me (can tell through their language), so I was wondering if I could’ve gotten more? There’s a lot of factors/details that I left out to preserve anonymity but I’m happy to (carefully) provide any details left out.

Hey all, I am an intern at my company (where I want to return full-time). My work is fully remote and I am meeting my team members in-person for the first time this week for lunch + games (and with some of them I have not even talked with virtually). Want to get some tips on how I can create a great impression (e.g. what things to talk about with them, etc)

Every time I complete a project (regardless of setting), integration (or end-to-end) testing is the task I least look forward to. In my mind, I’ve probably spent weeks building and individually testing each component, sometimes testing 2 or 3 components simultaneously. By the end of the project, I feel tired and just want to work on something new, so I rush to the finish line and call it a day the moment I get all my components working together.

I’ve seen the course on creating a test plan. I tried implementing this, but as mentioned above, by the time I’ve gotten to this stage, I’m so fed up with the project where I just write a couple of basic tests and tell my boss I’m done.

As much as I have an icky feeling shipping something I don’t know is fully working, I also feel so tired and just want to move on to the next thing.

One solution I tried was using automated tests (sort of like TDD to a certain extent) - I’d set up some expected behaviors at the start of the project and run these integration tests at the very end. It’s great if it works - making it automated significantly reduces friction of running the tests, and you get to ‘eat the frog’ by coming up with a more comprehensive set of tests at the start.

The bad part is it only works if you can get automated testing to work. Most times integration testing gets tricky to automate, especially if you can’t mock out stuff like networking code and databases. Automated tests also take time to maintain. As a result I tend to forgo automated testing.

A naive approach is to apply my strategy but instead of doing automated testing, just do it manually. The issue is that it feels painful having to verify correctness manually. And it’s especially discouraging if you manually verify your code to be wrong.

So what are some solutions that can help me get over that last mile? Any suggestions for some low friction ways to set up tests without using automated testing?

A recruiter is offering to interview with me in-person since they happen to be in the area, but they are happy to take the meeting online as well. I’m wondering what would be the better option? I’m leaning towards online but it seems that they’re pushing for an in-person interview.

In my case, I wouldn’t need to travel too far to meet with the recruiter. Wondering what the pros and cons to an in-person interview are, and how it compares to a virtual one?

I was supposed to start my next internship on the beginning of next month. I also have a conference on the 2nd week of my next internship (it would result in me being remote for 3/4 days and working different hours) and an exam on a day of my first week. I really don't want to leave a negative impression for my work because I want to return there full time but the earliest start date now would be end of next month, which would delay my hearing back about a full time offer as well by a month. I think I'm trying to figure out what the best course of action would be in this case - any input would be appreciated!

I got rejected at a mid-sized tech company with ~2000 employees for a security engineering internship after the final round about 1 and a half months ago, but the recruiter said to keep in touch for future opportunities at the firm and also voluntarily gave me feedback in the interview process.

She gave me the biggest reason I was rejected was because there weren't any projects available that fit me at the time. I also have my hiring manager's email as well from the final round interview and he told me at the end of the interview to keep in touch.

Should I reach back out to the recruiter and/or hiring manager to check up on their projects and ask for a potential internship in the Fall or Winter? If so, what should I say in the email?

I know a few companies that have pretty flat corporate structures. A pretty common example of this are quant firms - they usually only make a distinction between regular and senior SWE, with no higher levels. But this also happens at tech. For example, my friend at Palantir said that the hierarchy is pretty flat, so there’s no level distinguishing between them.

I’m currently interviewing with a rocket ship startup and they seem like a great place for career growth, but everyone’s title is SWE. Most of their engineers are ex-FAANG, so talent is top notch. Having talked to multiple engineers there, they all agree that by their first 1-2 years, they’ve taken full ownership of a vertical in their respective teams and some even leading cross-team collaborations. Would this be considered top-end E4/E5 level scope?

My worry with these flat hierarchies is that you’re able to demonstrate scope but you don’t have the title to match up to what you show. And while title is just a string, I worry that recruiters will use your ambiguous level against you? For example, if you’re an engineer with 2 yoe demonstrating E5 level behaviors without the title, how would recruiters level you?

And a more general discussion: how do recruiters figure out how to place you in the correct interview loop? Is there a way to ask the recruiter to move up or down a level?

I want to go the extra mile as an intern and build out additional projects on top of what I've already been assigned. Right now, I'm proposing opportunities and ending messages with "If you want more info, let me know!". Is there anything else I can do?

I completed an internship at a bank last summer. During the internship's end, I received positive feedback from my manager and had expressed a clear interest towards returning.

The recruiter informed us that headcount will not be finalized until January. She said we can contact her after then regarding return offers. In the past year, all the interns received return offers after the new year.

My question is: in January, how should I best approach the recruiter and my internship manager regarding return offers?

I am thinking of writing something along the following lines to my manager, but I am not sure if this is appropriate:

Dear [Internship Manager's Name],

I hope you are doing well! Thank you so much for the opportunity to intern with [Company X] last summer. It was a truly rewarding experience, and I learned so much during my time there.

I genuinely enjoyed working with the team and contributing to [internship project]. Given how much I valued my time at [Company X], I am very interested in exploring the possibility of returning for a full-time role.

Could you let me know the best way to discuss the possibility of returning to [Company X]? I’d be happy to provide any additional information you might need.

Big thanks for reading through all of this - I know it is a very long post and I really appreciate your time!

Hi there Taro people!

I want to mentor an intern, but in order to get one my manager asked me to come up with a few project proposals.

I’m finding that hard to do because I have no idea what could be good intern-level tasks, and to be honest I don’t have many ideas coming to me at all.

Have you ever been through that and could give me some advice?

I have an accountability buddy who I met online. We've been reporting each other on a weekly basis. While I've been able to make progress on the goals I've set each week, I still feel that I'm not getting the most out of the relationship (not his fault though). I think the two failure modes are:

1. Whenever I only partially hit a goal, I come up with excuses like "work's been really busy" or something similar. He's quite understanding and says it's ok to catch up next week.
2. I have a tendency to make really easy goals, like "do a leetcode problem every day" or "apply to a job every day". Like sure, I probably wouldn't have done them without an accountability buddy, but I feel like I could go so much further if my buddy pushed me to set higher goals.

So I'm wondering how I can make it such that I get away with less bs, or have him be "meaner" to me? I've thought of some solutions like sharing my job app tracker with him, my leetcode practice diary, etc. But I can definitely think of some things that are harder to share (for example work related stuff).

I’ll be heading into a recruiter screen for a company that my friend referred me to. I’m pretty sure the company will ask me something like ‘why this company’. I feel that I can leverage my friend’s experiences to craft unique responses to the behavioral questions. For example something like ‘my friend did X Y and Z in the company and I feel that this aligns with my goals as I’ve done A B and C’.

So I’m wondering what questions I should ask my friends to get ‘ammunition’ for the recruiter screen? On the top of my head I’m thinking:

1. What they worked on
2. Learning opportunities
3. Team culture

Not sure if anyone can add more to the list. The goal is to come up with the smallest set of questions that provide the most amount of value, since I don’t want to be too bothersome with my friend.

I recently started working as an SDE contractor at a FAANG. This morning, I wasn’t feeling well (I had a bad cold and a mild fever) so I asked my advisor if I could skip our call. I took some medicine and a nap, and after about an hour of rest, I felt much better. Since I didn’t want to fall behind, I decided to go to the office.

The problem is, I forgot to let my advisor know that I was feeling better. When he saw me at work during a team meeting, he assumed I had lied about being sick. I tried to explain what happened, but he didn’t seem to believe me and said it’s not possible to recover that quickly.

I feel terrible about this because I really love working with my team and want to prove myself here. Is there anything I can do to clear the air and fix this misunderstanding?

I’m in the interview process with a robotics company that asked me to prep a 9min self introduction that can include anything. I’m in the process of drafting my self intro. My intro consists of lightly touching upon 10 robotics/SWE experiences, then wrapping up with why I want to join the company and how my skillsets align with the company’s trajectory.

I realized that summarizing 10 experiences makes each experience a little superficial. On the other hand they each contribute a little to my story of how I’ve been involved in robotics over the years, so what’s the best way to go about this?

I am currently interning at a mid-sized tech company for the winter season. At the beginning of the internship, I was informed by the recruiter that the manager will assign the intern project at around week 2-3 of the program.

During the third week, I politely approached my manager regarding the intern project. The manager replied that the details of the project are still being finalized, as it involves a lot of dependencies across teams.

As of now (fifth week), the project has not yet been assigned. In the meantime, he has advised me to continue working on Jira tickets in my team's codebase.

I really enjoy my assigned tasks and definitely appreciate this opportunity to make contributions to a large codebase. However, I am a little concerned that I will not have sufficient time to finish the project or that my project's impact may not be significant enough. If I understand correctly, the project impact as well as timely completion are pretty significant factors towards intern return offer.

My question is: should I let my manager know about my concerns regarding the project, or would it be a better idea to wait until the manager assigns me the project?

Big thanks for reading through all of this - I know it is a very long post and I really appreciate your time!

First, I would really like to thank Alex for taking the time to record the video series regarding the .

I just watched the section regarding working with my intern manager. I understand that it is important to have a weekly 1:1 with my IM. I am wondering if it is necessary to also have a weekly meeting with the engineering manager as well. If so, what would be some good topics to bring up during the meeting?

Topics I am thinking of include: project updates, feedback, career advice/planning. I would love to hear any thoughts on this.

Every time I work on a project, the amount of progress increases logarithmically. This means I start off really strong and I end off really weak. I’ve noticed this for a majority of projects that I work on.

I think a big reason why this happens is because when my project is able to get 50-60% of cases (ie it works but don’t touch it), internally my brain feels like it’s done and I don’t want to work on it anymore. When I start off a project I get huge boosts in dopamine when I finish a part and get it to work. Over time there are fewer and fewer things to do and I don’t get as big a dopamine hit when I gradually finish up remaining features. This gets really ****bad when I try to think of edge cases, because it’s not entirely clear what needs to be done, and I don’t even know what edge cases exist.

This has affected the quality of my work and I would like some strategies of keeping high output even towards the later stages of a project which involves less excited parts of work.

I think this somewhat relates to Alex’s video on “sweating the details”, but I feel that the hard part is that I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t know where edge cases may. On a component level it’s not too bad, but when you’re doing integration testing and when the space of possible inputs is extremely high, it feels like you’re put in the middle of the ocean.

As an example, recently I was tasked with writing a bot to draw an ordered set of lines, curves and arcs on a canvas. The input a vector representation of the drawing and the output is an mp4 recording.

First 3 days went pretty well. In fact, I pretty much built the entire system and integrated everything. The annoying part comes to solving edge cases from integration testing. For the next 7 days I spent days kind of just sitting around, testing my system, and getting bored. I was waiting for my partner to finish his part of the system.

What strategies are there to make my output more consistent? I tried doing a test plan but they tend to be really shallow because I don’t know how the system looks like/what edge cases look like until I’ve actually built the product.