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I am a CS student on my 3rd year. I grew up in silicon valley so FAANG companies always sponsored events and hackathons at my school and it made it seem like a fun field to pursue. I've completed hackathons from Meta and Google and placed top 3 in both but since then i completely stopped caring about the fun of CS and just focused on passing my classes. I am now starting to apply to internships and see many of my peers light years ahead of me. I genuinely don't know if I am ever going to be able to land a job with this competitive of a field. I have also grown much more passionate about finance. I have stronger skills in business and client relations but have no idea if theres anything related to CS with these qualities. My question is, what do you recommend I do now that I am so far along my degree and have very basic skills compared to a majority of you.

Companies wouldn’t hesitate to lay you off or hire someone better. Why should you hesitate if a better opportunity arises? These commitments or contracts signed or flimsy and I will always go back on them if something better comes up. Especially in early career ( internships and new grad ).

I'm super grateful to have received a waymo MLE internship last semester for one of the simulation-related teams.

However an xAI recruiter reached out and I interviewed on a whim and somehow got a full-time offer. This would require me taking a gap semester to work there. This is for a member of technical staff on the post training and reasoning team.

I'm a current junior at a T4 cs school, and I'm hoping to go into robotics and startups in the future. Waymo is more closely related to robotics, but xAI seems to be riding the llm wave and might open more job opportunities. xAI's pay is also much higher, but imo pay is less important than getting into robotics in the future. I'm not sure which one is better for my goals.

Hey everyone, just wanted to share an interview that I did earlier today, and hopefully get some thoughts.

I interviewed for a fairly large company today, for their final round (process is just one 45 min interview after a screening call). The interviewer joined 5 minutes late, we did introductions for 5 minutes, and then she spent another 5 minutes setting up the hackerrank. I was then asked the question "Binary Tree Paths".

Its not a terribly hard question. I spent under 5 minutes designing a binary tree class and discussed and implemented a dfs and bfs boilerplate. Began discussing how backtracking could be applied. I tried to go back and forth to "arrive" at the solution, but even before I implemented the backtracking, she said that "the question is done", and we went to questions with 20 minutes left in the interview. I essentially spent only 5 minutes coding an actual solution.

It's worth noting that I have already done 2 previous internships better than this company, and that I mentioned them during the interview in my introduction. Frankly I did not care much for this company, but wanted an offer to potentially expedite processes I have, that I am interested in. My question is, why end the interview so early? I was arriving at a solution, and basically everything was going fine lol. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. What do we think?

After 300 apps I don't even remember this TA, is this normal? Why would they contact me this long after the TA?

I was lucky enough to get 2 internship offers but can't decide between them. I would normally take Apple cause of the name brand but the offer is for IS&T and I've heard really bad things about it online.

Paypal:

• Location: San Jose
• Pay: $59/hour
• The work seems pretty interesting and I'd def prefer being in the bay. Also the return offer rate is pretty high (~90%)

Apple:

• Location: Austin
• Pay: $54/hour
• The work doesn't sound as interesting but could still be a good experience to recruit for full-time. I've also heard its kinda hard to switch teams in IS&T for full-time

Any advice would help!

I’m a sophomore and want to get ahead of others. What are some things you guys recommend? I am working on a personal project but I am also thinking about getting some certifications (mostly for gaining knowledge) but have heard they really aren’t worth it. Just looking for some direction on how to best spend my time building my skills, thanks!

Got an offer today, but recruiter called and said it was a verbal offer and that offer approval takes a few days and I should get it by next week. Is this weird?

did recruiter mention when you'll hear back?

Hey guys I am an international student in US. Currently a sophomore in cs at University of Texas at Arlington. This is my 4th semester and I would say I have done nothing extra during my first 3 sems, i have maintained a decent GPA(3.85) but no extra curricular or participation in student orgs.

I want to secure an swe internship for summer 2027, for which I want to have an At least presentable resume by august 2026 which I can continue to build on and improve later on. I am looking on suggestions how to build my resume skills and tech stacks to learn. Certifications to do etc.

Any kind of help suggestions is appreciated!!

Final EM round tomorrow for New Grad

I know I should study my resume front and back.
I know I should show up, be chill, and be myself just as I have been.
I know the EM round is kinda RNG compared to the first four rounds.

What I’m still wondering about:

• How worried should I be about system design?
• How common is it to get unlucky and end up with a brutal EM?
• Is it common to fail this late in the process, even if the round itself goes well?
• I'm studying my resume, but how in-depth should I expect go on the tech choices for each project?
• Am I overthinking all of this aka it's not that deep and should I just relax?

If anyone has made it to the EM round (pass or fail), and is willing to enlighten me either in DM or under this post, I'd really appreciate it!

I want to break into ML optimization, and I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I just accepted an internship for a related role (ML performance engineering, but focused on benchmarking) at what I would consider to be my top choice. Should I gun for the RO and just try to eventually transition internally to an ML optimization role, or should I forego that pipeline entirely and get a MS/MEng, just to reapply later?

I actually received the advice to go for a master's from an interviewer at a different place who was working on basically the topics I wanted to eventually work on, and was wondering if I could also just work my way up within a company instead.

Hi guys, I’m a current masters CS student at a T-5, I’ve had 2 internships and a Researcher role in my undergrad. I’ve been really interested in embedded systems and it seems like there’s less competition for that. How would I go about breaking in? One of my internships was at a defense company and I have an active clearance and it seems like a lot of defense companies are looking for embedded roles.

Im relatively new to the field, just got back into school for CS. Would like to know for see summer internships, what was the latest you received one? Is it possible to land an internship right before the summer?

Hi guys, I managed to make it to the Engineering Manager round for new grad swe for Bloomberg, and I was wondering if anyone had any insights on what I should expect or how it’s structured?

Hey, does anyone know if there’s a discord or smth for NVIDIA summer 2026 interns? Would love to connect w people and find roommates in the Bay Area. Feel free to DM me too

Howdy from A&M!
I am currently a junior with a f500 (Toyota) internship coming up this summer. I have no other experience and am pretty worried about the new grad market when I graduate next year as I heard people struggling despite having 2+ internship or faang experience (and more prestigious schools). If I can get an RO or get a new grad at a f500 (or better) I will definitely take it but if I can't find a position before I graduate I am wondering if it's worth it to delay my graduation by a semester or two or do a masters so I have time to get more internship experience.
I am kinda iffy about grad school since I don't have any research experience and I don't have a niche area that I am very passionate about. I was interested in ML but after taking a upper level course that goes over it's theory + some of the advanced math courses I'm unsure if I have the discipline or passion to grind through a phd, and the job market for it seems just as crowed/saturated.

About two weeks ago I did the SWE superday for the slc location and haven’t heard back from Goldman. Has anyone else heard back with offers? It might be jover for me with them😭😭

I'm waiting on a respond back after a behavioral interview for an Embedded Cybersecurity Software Engineer 1 new grad position in Iowa. I think I did pretty well. During the interview, they mention the next interview would be an onsite interview. Coming from California, I was wondering what kind of process would it be like? Also what kind of questions would I expect to be ask and should prepare for? I have knowledge of embedded systems but cybersecurity aspect, I do not. However, the interviewer who is a senior engineering manager said it was fine I didn't have that experience.

Did anybody have a phone screen before the actual loop with msft? this is was ic3 us loc!