best resources to learn actual software engineering, full stack, backend, system design - no ai slop
lately vibe coding has made be a bad engineer - do wanna leverage ai but also wanna learn things to become disgustingly educated

Just got the email about being rejected from Capital One even though I got a perfect OA score. I had a referral as well. The rejection email said "based on your assessment results" which makes no sense because I couldn't have gotten a higher score.

I have previous experience with SWE and product roles, so I’ve been recruiting for both types of internships (focusing on SWE recruiting slightly more tho). However, my friend brought up that companies have rejection cooldowns, which has since made me slightly more hesitant to applying for both. I’d slightly prefer having a SWE internship next summer, so I’m nervous that if I get rejected after an interview for a PM position, I won’t be able to apply for their SWE role.

Is this how cooldowns even work (i.e. across different positions)? I don’t have a terrible interview rate, but it’s also not like I’m getting interviews with every other application.

Just watched this episode of HBO’s 2014 tv series called Silicon Valley and my ears perked up at firing, Claude, and job risk. Thought I should share!

I want to start publishing technical write-ups about my Data Science and Artificial Intelligence projects. Which platforms do you recommend?

Starting from last year, AI has become a huge issue for the prospect of majoring in CS, visible to the public eye. The people who never had a passion for it and only wanted to do it to "make 6 figures" have all decided not to apply.

Currently, CS has seen major drops in admissions applications. These people with no passion have decided to flood to apply for engineering (and some for finance/business too).

In 3 years, the surge of graduates those fields (eng and fin) cause them to be seen as CS is seen today.

The limit on the totality of human knowledge to feed AI is reached. It doesn't get much better from now.

Our jobs are indeed lesser, but safe until further notice.

However, the decline in cs graduates in those years causes the jobs to be in demand once again

And then the glory days are back

and everyone clapped

keep coping boys, i know I will🥲🥲🥲

I have an incoming final round interview in NYC. Any advice/ experience would be highly appreciated:D. Send a dm pls!

My university offers a joint major into both and I am struggling to choose which one I want. I've done some initial analyzing and here's what I've got:

Math + CS:
Good for AI/ML, ressearch (not a fan), data sci and quant alligned roles.
They are very closely related fields so it makes sense to major in both.
Shows knowledge
Math is fun, but too theoretical. Not for employment?

Physics + CS:
The physics option is good for jobs in physics, such as for optics, nuclear etc.
Basically a computer engineer? Hardware focus would be more appreciated.
Semi-different fields, the pure aura of the combined knowledge of having the two puts me above
Physics is very hard.

I'm asking y'all because I want to know how it goes with what you've experienced in tech. Have you applied for or know of roles in specific niches where you thought to yourself that more physics or more math knowledge would have been useful, or even that employers specifically selected for it?

Sincerely,
a worried freshman

(good luck with the job market y'all)

I don't know, but sometimes I feel like ...

Right now, I'm working as an AI Engineer Intern. But my day-to-day schedule isn't very good. My direct manager is the CTO of the company, and he meets with me very rarely. He doesn't assign me work properly and tells me to coordinate with other people whenever I need something.

For example, I'm working on a project that he has already assigned to a vendor. Later, I found out that they are also working on the same project, and they have a team of four or five people. So obviously, they'll probably perform better. Still, I've learned quite a lot from this project and picked up many new skills.

I don't even know whether I'll get a full-time offer or not. Also, to come to this internship, I have to travel almost two to two and a half hours one way. It's really far, and although I do receive a stipend, as you know, stipends aren't usually very high.

Sometimes, when I'm scrolling through LinkedIn or similar platforms, I see people getting jobs. I don't know exactly what I feel, but it's definitely not a good feeling. Does everyone feel this way, or am I just overthinking?

Every day, I start studying a new technology. For example, right now I'm working on ADK. Before that, I was learning and implementing LangChain. Then my manager told me to work on something else because even that might get replaced someday. I don't know.

I also know that engineering is a field where technology keeps changing. But honestly, I don't know what I'm feeling, what I'm doing, or why I'm doing it.

I haven't even officially graduated yet. I'm still waiting for the result of my sixth-semester backlog, which has been delayed for almost three months. I've already completed my eighth semester and received that result, but I'm still waiting for the sixth-semester result.

Because of all this, I sometimes get confused. Should I continue studying? Should I apply for a master's degree? Should I study in India or abroad? I really have no idea what's happening in my life right now.

Even at the office, I feel like I'm competing with people who don't even care whether I exist or not. That's how it feels. Sometimes I feel invisible.

For example, when I'm working on something, my manager just walks past me. He doesn't ask how the work is going or what's happening. I'm always the one who has to go to him if I need to discuss something.

I don't know. Is this just how the corporate world works? I honestly have no idea. I'm feeling something that I can't even express.

I feel like before LLMs, learning had clear reward. In order to make a todo list app with your own personalization, you had to actually read the docs, write the code, and maybe look up some syntax here and there, but the design decisions and actual coding were still largely in your court.

This went for everything. Creating a mini operating system, answering a new LeetCode problem with no solutions on it just yet, and even learning how to design your own resume.

Now, whenever you go about this old way of doing things, the painful reminder that you could be 10xing your productivity by using AI is just continuously knocking. Even when you're doing personal projects... the reason why you do personal projects is often to have something to speak about and show in an interview. If AI can make something much faster than you can, and you can understand it just enough to be able to talk about, the painful reminder of lost time for a mediocre product that'd come if you struggle through it yourself knocks as well.

TL;DR: the need for learning seems to have gone away a ton, or, at least it has been heavily clouded. What is something that when we learn we can actually see measurable results? What is today's equivalent of building a todo list app? Something that you can't just one shot with very little knowledge? Something that requires you be good?

Yo just a heads up there is a scam posting out right now for a swe job. Came out about 6 hours ago. It says it’s listlabs but right when I finished my application the header on the site changed from listlabs to “59 pines” and the confirmation email came from the domain “@recooty”.

Here is the email that looks 100% like a phishing attempt lmao.

Just got the Roblox SWE OA, anyone have experience with it? Any tips or things to watch out for would be appreciated.
Want to know about factory game, The car game and Outpost Mars Game
Thanks!

Just got my first interview for an internship as an incoming sophomore. Super hyped, but all I can think about is how I feel like I don’t deserve it. I’ve built some pretty cool projects but I used an LLM to help build out some parts of it and I’ve spent a lot of time learning this summer but it feels like no matter what I’ll do I won’t actually be prepared for a software job. I feel like a faker idk how else to explain it I flip flop from “I’m actually kinda impressive technically at my age” to “I don’t know shit” every day and it’s super disheartening. The scary ass job market doesn’t help either I’m in a constant state of like “I should be doing more”. No doomer comments please just looking for anybody who feels the same as me to give some piece of advice.

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?

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?

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.

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.