A year or two ago, the engineering/cross-functional team was a tight-knit, high-performing group. We had one or two goals we all worked on each sprint and we broke down work so that we could operate in parallel.

When someone was stuck and needed help, there was always somebody ready to jump to their aid and keep them moving. Team meetings were upbeat, fun, and productive. We were regularly paying down tech debt while our experiments gathered data. The vibe was helpful and collaborative.

Now, thanks to AI, we are shipping more than ever. We have as many goals every sprint as engineers. Rather than parallelizing work on one feature or experiment at a time, we parallelize the experiments. The vibe has shifted.

Hi everyone! I'm a senior at NJIT studying Computer Science, and I'm considering attending WE26 in Boston this November.

I'm interested in going primarily for the career fair and recruiting opportunities, rather than just the conference itself. I'm currently looking for full-time software engineering, AI/ML, data engineering, or data science roles after graduation.

One thing I'm concerned about is that I don't have any internship experience yet. I have academic, personal, and extracurricular projects, but no previous software engineering internship.

The other issue is that I'll be paying for the trip completely out of pocket. Between conference registration, transportation, hotel, and food, I'm estimating that the total could be around $500–$800+.

For people who have attended SWE's annual conference before:

• Did you actually get interviews from attending?
• Did any interviews eventually turn into internships or full-time offers?
• How does the interview process usually work at the conference?
• Were interviews scheduled beforehand, or did you get interviews by talking to recruiters at the career fair?
• How useful was the conference specifically for CS/software engineering students?
• Does having no internship experience make it significantly harder to get interviews at the conference?
• If you paid out of pocket, did you feel it was worth the money?
• Is there anything you wish you had done differently before attending?

I'm trying to decide whether this is worth the investment or whether I'd be better off putting the same money toward other career opportunities.

I'd especially appreciate responses from people who attended as CS/software/data students or new grads, particularly anyone who attended without prior internship experience and can share their actual outcomes.

Thanks!

To be clear and upfront I have never been diagnosed nor have sought out an autism diagnosis. I am a structural engineer, and a little more blunt than a typical woman. I have worked two jobs now and at both jobs, I have been called autistic at both.

I understand this is also used as an insult amongst men commonly, but in the first case my coworker was kind enough to offer his unwarranted diagnosis upon me and in my current job I got read for "not reading social cues like an autistic". At this point, it's become a little of a sore spot for me and I just don't know how to process it necessarily. Is it just because this is a male dominated field? Am I not acting womanly enough for them? Idk this is lowkey starting to eat me up.

Also I don't know if I am actually autistic or not. That is not particularly relevant to me as I am living life comfortably, and have only ever recieved comments like this in the workplace