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

Sometimes I ask people for referrals and they take some time to respond. Some companies, like TikTok, have a referral link for people to apply, so I’m blocked on waiting a referral until that person responds. Wondering if it’s better to wait for a referral, then apply, or if it’s better to apply without a referral (even in cases like TikTok)? If the former, how long after a job posting should I wait before applying?

In cases of linked-based referrals, is it possible for the referrer to refer me after I applied? If so, how does that usually work? What should I tell my referrer?

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 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 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).

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.

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?

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)

When is the best time to quit software engineering and pursue an influencer career (like Rahul did)? Do you recommend having a decade of corporate experience first before becoming an influencer?

I really want to build a personal brand and build a coaching/info product business. I am not a big proponent of working for someone else; I am in my job just so I can pay my bills, not necessarily because I love the job (which might be detrimental when I will be pushing for senior/staff promotions because my "passion" will be lacking?).

I have seen influencers making six figures (if not millions) in 1 - 3 years of starting their business. That is what inspires me - as the growth is exponential compared to a SWE career.

(Context: I go to a top university, and have done few internships. Thinking if I should pursue SWE full-time after graduation, or just create an influencer business right away. My long term goal is to have my own startup and I believe having a personal brand will help.)

Preface: I might sound a bit critical at some points, but I’m asking this question with the intention of learning, not to demean others as this question has been on my mind for a while.

A big reason why people join startups is that at startups you learn faster than you would at big tech. What’s not clear to me though is how this actually translates to having a successful career (especially when transitioning to big tech). Specifically, how does “learning more” in startups/getting more scope in startups translate to “materialistic” rewards such as TC, getting into big tech, getting senior swe faster etc.?

I've seen Seed’s presentation about . He’s clearly achieved amazing things at Klaviyo, but at least from his LinkedIn profile, he joined Meta as an L5 (senior swe) with 4 yoe - couldn’t you achieve this result simply by working at Big Tech for just as long? If that’s the case, then what’s the point of joining a startup?

I’ve watched Taro’s masterclass on choosing a good company (and many other startup-related videos on Taro), and for the pros for startups - specifically getting more scope - seems very superficial. Similarly, the cons for big tech (the inverse of startup pros- harder to find scope) seems also superficial.

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?

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)?

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.

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 have an internship in the fall with a F1000 and I'd like it on my resume for the brand name. The internship will start in early Sept. Wondering if this is too late for new grad roles? I still don't feel good enough at LC to ace interviews. On the other hand, I have heard of roles sometimes opening in July then closing out in Aug.

My goal is to target FAANG/big tech/top unicorn companies. If everything goes well with my current internship, I at least have a backup, but I'd much prefer to be at big tech.

For new grads, do you recommend starting career and living in California, despite the high living costs and high taxes?

In the resume course, Alex mentioned doing great work is a prerequisite to having a great resume. I would like to see some examples of great work.

Let's say my domain is frontend web development. What would be considered "great" work -

a) in side projects
b) in my internship/job

One obvious one is a high number of users using the product. What are some other examples?

Would also appreciate if you could include some low effort, high ROI examples as well (if they exist).

Thanks!

I've seen Taro's videos on building side projects, and Alex's advice was to not monetize and focus on getting users.

Prior to joining Taro, I've been running a B2B startup for almost half a year. Recently, I've been able to get clients who are multinational corporations. Think of places like the Four Seasons group, Coca Cola, Mercedes Benz, etc (and I got clients just by cold emailing). If I keep pushing, I should be able to rake in at least (this is conservative) 50K in ARR by the end of the year. My startup also got interviews at YC and Sequoia Arc - I got passed on since the market I'm working in is quite small despite having everything else right (funny that both Sequoia and YC gave the exact same feedback).

So essentially, I've done the complete opposite of what Alex advises - build a product where big companies are willing to pay you big bucks for your product. I'm wondering if this would still be as impressive as something like Alex's random name picker? What percentile of applicants would this project place me? Is it good enough to stand out? If not, should I change my approach (though my gutfeel is to keep doing what I'm doing)?

I have 4 main tasks that I have this summer but I don’t know if I’m allocating the right amount of time into them and I’d like some help on figuring out what to prioritise. 

Before we get into them, I want to list my goals this summer to motivate the 4 tasks I came up with (from most to least important).

1. Get a return offer - pretty self-explanatory. It’ll take a lot of stress off this next job-searching season. I'm working at a small startup and amongst all early-mid stage startups, I’d probably take this one over them (assuming pay is around equal). With that being said, I’d much much rather be in big tech, which leads me to…
2. Be interview and resume ready for the upcoming season. I think this decomposes into 2 parts
   1. Have very strong resume points about what I did. My project has reasonable scope and I think I can push to expand scope. Not sure if a recruiter cares about impact though. (Especially for new grads), would appreciate any insight on this (e.g, would a recruiter really care if you built a fully distributed KV store that helps the company store terabytes of data/day vs building a simple CRUD app)
   2. Be interview ready. Grinding Leetcode right now and I feel like I have a long way to go. On a good day I can pass a phone screen but I have trouble with on-sites. 
3. Have research output for grad school - I’m in a grad program right now and I need to do work for the summer. During the Fall I have another research internship lined up with a well-known company (wouldn’t really call it big tech though). Part of this internship is showing my supervisor that I can handle the load of doing research while maintaining internship responsibilities. I also need to finish up my thesis.
4. Personal project - I run a startup and I have a few big corporations reach out for a trial. Product is mostly built so mostly the work is talking to customers and fixing bugs

Heard this phrase many times, but would appreciate some elaboration/insights. Let's say I don't have ANY frontend experience in the past, but somehow get hired at a FAANG as a frontend dev. We know onboarding is already tough - meeting new people, understanding new codebase, etc. In the first few weeks especially, how do you manage so many things? You have to go through the onboarding challenges, and on top of that also ramp up on frontend. Isn't that too much to take on?

How to make sure I am performing well and learning new things quickly?

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.

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 :)

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!

Hello Community,

I've been struggling to get interviews for a while now. Here are some things I've tried.

• Cold Applying
• Cold emailing recruiters
• Applying with referrals
• Networking

Nothing seems to be working. What can I do/improve to land more interviews?

Hi everyone! I've been struggling with problem-solving, not just in coding challenges like LeetCode, but also in day-to-day activities such as figuring out new places, playing chess, or solving puzzles in escape rooms.

People often say that to get better at something, you just need to do it more. For example, solve more coding problems to improve in LeetCode, or travel more to get better at finding your way. But I'm wondering if there's a simpler, overall way to boost problem-solving skills that applies to various situations. Are there any general brain exercises or techniques that could help make problem-solving easier across the board? It feels a little disheartening to constantly see other people being smarter than me when learning new things or navigating things on the fly.

This question might seem a bit broad for a software engineering group, but I'd really value any advice or tips you could share. Thanks a lot!