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

I've begun to notice that some companies are starting to ask less leetcode-y type questions and are asking more OOP-type questions. So for example, a classic question is to ask you to design a class hierarchy for an elevator system or a parking lot. On the scale of abstraction, it's not nitty gritty like Leetcode questions where you need to write the logic for every part of your code and actually run code, but it's not super high level like L4/L5 sys design where you're talking about scalability. It's something like the questions you see or . How do you approach these problems? How are you evaluated on them?

Do you have to have 1:1 with intern manager weekly or is it okay to just send them an email talking about what you accomplished during the week provided you meet with mentor daily.

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 . 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?

I'm heading towards the end of my internship and I'm starting to regret not taking an R&D intern offer I had with an F1000 (think of Dell, SAP, Autodesk, etc.). I signed an offer with a startup and then received the opportunity to do some cool GenAI stuff with the F1000. Looking back I feel like I should’ve reneged the startup for this F1000, but I was too scared since I was going to work with my closest friend group (they’re the ones who pushed very heavily for my case and the ones who sent the offer) at the startup and I didn’t want to burn a bridge by reneging. I also wanted to try doing a software engineering internship since many of my past internships were R&D oriented, where things like code quality and other engineering practices didn’t matter as much. The startup, though young, has reputable investors, an industry veteran as the founder and a successful MVP, so I thought it’d be a good place to grow. The return offer is still up in the air due to visa issues.

I regret declining the F1000 because I feel like I could’ve specialized even more at GenAI, which is what my most recent experience has been. Furthermore, being a F1000, getting an RO might’ve been easier since my visa issue wouldn’t be as big of a problem. Looking at my resume, it’s now a jumble of robotics, machine learning, GenAI, academic publications and now software engineering. While each portion of my resume is individually strong, when you put them all together, it feels like I’m suffering from an identity crisis.

However, I think the internship went fine. I built a distributed database and message streaming system for my internship. The project was pretty open ended so I got to own the whole project following a set of stringent performance requirements. My friends at FAANG considered my intern project to be FAANG mid-level scope, which is pretty cool. I learned a lot about good engineering, system design (read the entirety of DDIA), diving into large codebases to make changes and more.

I think the right answer is just to accept that I can’t change the past and just keep moving forward, but I can’t stop thinking about what could’ve happened if I had taken that F1000 offer. I’ve had trouble sleeping the past couple of nights thinking about it. This is my last internship so it’s pretty important, and I feel like I squandered it by making a poor choice.

So how do you get over mistakes you make in your career? Any different perspectives?

My manager made it clear that my org is not offering return FT offers, but that he would put "incline return" for an internship position if I stayed another year in school (or somehow delayed graduation until 2025).

I could just take random classes or another major to extend my time in school. I also could do a 1-year Masters program which I have already been admitted into. But I am an older student and would rather not stay another year in school. I also feel like I am learning very little in school (I go to a small state school). Compared to the ridiculous amount I learned this summer in the industry, I feel like staying in school for another year would be a huge waste of money and time.

I could potentially work Fall/Spring internships for the next year (so basically a gap year) to artifically delay graduation by a year as well.

Becuase I go to a small state school, getting interviews from Big Tech is extremely hard. We send about 1-3 kids to each FAANG+ company each year and I was only able to get 2 FAANG+ interviews even with refferals to every top company, a 4.0 GPA and relevent experience. Even getting actual SWE engineering jobs is really hard with most CS grads getting jobs labeled "SWE" but that involve very little coding.

Because of that, my worry is this might be my only chance to break into Big Tech for a long time (if ever).

So is it worth delaying my graduation for a shot at big tech? Or should I just graduate and start my career, even if its at a non-tech company (with potentially very little actual engineering work)?

I have a new grad final with Meta and I had a mock interview on . I did pretty badly on the interview as it took too long for me to arrive at the solution and write down the code. The interviewer suggested that I try purchasing a dedicated coaching package for 5 lessons, which is perfect since my Meta interview is in 3 weeks (I take 2 lessons/week). Issue is that it's quite a heavy price tag at around 2.8K. I'm wondering if anyone else has used the service?

Meeting with the hiring manager tomorrow and I’m pretty nervous. Any last minute advice?

Context: It was for a full time role with NYT.

The rounds are recruiter screening, meeting with the hiring manager, technical interview, system design talking about building an example system and what systems you've worked with in the past, then final meeting with recruiter and team.

Hi fellow Tarodactyls! I'm preparing for a call with a hiring manager which it'll be behavioral & my fit with the team; and, at my level (new grad), there are definitely work situations I haven't faced.

That said, I'm wondering how I should prepare for questions on things I technically haven't done (i.e., "Tell me about a time you built a cross-functional feature that influenced other teams"). How do I frame my answer so that it doesn't trigger my interviewer's liar detector, but also open doors for further conversation (instead of an "I don't know" response)?

Breakout startups are basically startups that have found product-market-fit and are growing at an incredible pace. So think of the OpenAIs and Databricks of the world. Back in the day these would've been baby Google and baby Facebook. Here's a link for more examples:

Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz and a few others strongly suggest people in any stage of their career to join these startups.

I revisited Taro's course on picking a company, and there doesn't seem to be much info on them. The course does talk about startups but I feel that startups have so many stages that it's hard to make generalizations across them.

From my understanding, it seems like breakout startups are a great place to join:

Pros

1. You get incredible career growth since you're a part of a rapidly growing company
2. TC is usually pretty competitive with FAANG (with a caveat)
3. These startups usually have very strong engineering culture and network, with most people being Ex-FAANG

Cons:

1. Work life balance seems to be worse than big tech on average since there's so much stuff to do (like 20-30% worse on average?)
2. The equity portion of your TC is still paper money, so there's a chance the IPO flops and your TC basically halves
3. Brand name is not may not be as good as big tech, though this is heavily dependent on the company (like you'd definitely interview someone from OpenAI, but I doubt many have heard of Helion). A question I have is how big is the difference in the brand value between your average breakout startup and a big tech? Is it negligible?

The Taro course suggests new grads to pick big tech. Funnily enough Sam Altman laments that someone picked big tech over a breakout startup. I'm not saying that these two pieces of advice are contradictory, but what factors should you consider if you're deciding between big tech and breakout startups?

I recently declined an offer from a company and the recruiter is asking me why I declined and where I’m heading to next. I’m wondering if there’s any benefit (or harm) to disclosing this info? I would love to talk with them again in the future but I don’t think this company is the right choice for me at this moment.

I just had my onsite interview for Meta and I found it really strange that my interviewer only asked me behavioral questions for 30 mins. I used the STAR approach when describing my projects and experiences and I couldn't catch any red flags when talking about my experiences, so I'm surprised that it only lasted for 30 mins and I'm a little worried as to why it was so short. I cross referenced my answers with the junior level interview performance and it matches up with what Alex described. I did fill the remaining 15 mins with questions based on what Alex suggested. Does anyone have any thoughts?

I'm grateful to have received a return offer as a backend engineer. However, my long-term career goal is to transition into a machine learning engineering role within the company.

• As a recent graduate, what are the most effective strategies to prepare for this transition?
• While I understand that my immediate focus should be on excelling in my backend engineering role, I'm keen to explore how I can simultaneously build my skills in machine learning during my free time. Could you offer any advice or insights on balancing these two objectives effectively?

I’ve had trouble with this historically, my output per day is inconsistent. I’ll have days where I grind for 12 hours, and other days where I don’t really do anything.

Here are some of the ways I have unproductive days:

• “I’ll just watch this YouTube video”
• “I’ll just grab this snack”
• “I’m blocked by this person”

I recently interned at Microsoft, and I was able to get a return offer for another internship for the same team. I'm back at school now, and my goal is to nail the return internship so I can get a return offer to work full-time. In my spare time while at school, how can I best prepare myself to hit the ground running for my return internship? For context, I worked with Azure APIs during my internship, being more of a back-end developer.

I got offers from Meta, several top hedge funds (Citadel, Millennium, etc.), Series E unicorn and a series C robotics startup and I want opinions on who to move forward with.

From a SWE’s perspective, Meta wins, but 10 years down the line, I don’t see myself as a SWE. I see myself doing (1) a startup, (2) going into VC or working in (3) product management or a more business-focused role. For the first 3-4 years of my career I want to get engineering training, position myself to do interesting and impactful work, networking with a talented team and building the skills that’ll set me up for the 3 career paths that I’ve discussed. I’ve listed companies in order of preference :

1. Series E Unicorn
   1. Company is customer-focused (engineers always talk to customers) and engineers wear many hats. These are skills for building startups.
   2. Getting startup experience is great for going into VC.
   3. I’m working on one of their core products, so there’s a lot of chances for growth. High performers become PMs in 2-3 years
   4. 30-40% ex-FAANG and lots of MIT, Berkeley and Stanford alum
2. Meta
   1. Meta trains you to become a great SWE, and you need to be a great builder for startups
   2. Meta doesn’t seem to prep me for the VC world, but the brand name alone will help get your feet in the door
   3. I have the optionality to climb the corporate ladder to do product management
3. Hedge funds
   1. Hedge funds don’t really train you to be a great SWE or a great VC, but the brand definitely helps
   2. I work really close to PnL for a division that is undergoing hypergrowth, so lots of interesting things to be done
   3. Can also break into management relatively quickly
4. Series C robotics startup
   1. I’m a SWE and the place that makes the money are the robotics engineers, so not really positioned to make a huge change

Unicorn > Meta/HF > robotics startup

I want to join the unicorn since it aligns well with what I want to do in the future, but the brand of Meta is really hard to pass on (only brands I have is MS from T5 CS and BS from T10 CS). On one hand I have a long career down the line, and this is one of many decisions I'll make, and if the unicorn doesn't work out, then it's not a big deal. On the other hand, I feel like if I don't choose prestige and the unicorn fails, I'd have a much harder time in life. It's like messing up an RPG build.

I’m curious what people’s thoughts are and what things I’m not considering?

Background: Just graduated with CS degree, did internships, have couple years of living expenses saved. Very interested in entrepreneurship/building my own thing, specifically B2C products and viral apps. My goal is achieving freedom (time, location, money) and eventually moving towards building something truly meaningful.

Location Context: Based in Canada, can't move to the US due to visa constraints. Local job market is tough right now with very few top tech companies hiring. This means most available opportunities would be at lesser-known companies.

Current Situation: Parents and peers are pushing hard for me to get a traditional tech job ASAP. I'm resisting because I don't see how climbing the corporate ladder aligns with my goals. My reasoning:

1. In a tech job, I'll be too focused on technical implementation to learn crucial business skills. While I'll gain deep technical knowledge, I won't learn entrepreneurial skills like distribution, product-market fit, or scaling a business.
2. Jobs don't create leverage - my time investment today doesn't reduce work needed tomorrow. In contrast, building products creates compound returns (code once, earn repeatedly).
3. I have an opportunity to partner with an experienced entrepreneur who's strong in distribution. While I might get lower equity since I'm new, I see it as paid learning - I contribute technical skills while learning business/distribution firsthand.

My View: The traditional path (get job → save money → maybe start something later) seems especially inefficient given my location constraints. Why spend time at a non-top-tier company when I could be building my own thing and learning entrepreneurship directly? Direct entrepreneurial experience, even with mistakes, provides faster learning and better aligns with my end goal of freedom through leverage.

Question for the community: Given my goals and circumstances, what crucial factors am I missing in this analysis? For those who chose traditional jobs despite entrepreneurial ambitions, what benefits did you gain that I might be overlooking?

Particularly interested in hearing from people who've successfully made the transition from corporate to entrepreneurship - what would you do differently if starting over?

Wanted to know if anyone here has purchased and was it worth the $90?

I’m choosing between three different options for organizations to join as an undergrad in CS. I’m an incoming Amazon SDE Intern and looking to focus on maximizing prepping for the internship and future opportunities.

First, a group working (paid part time, associated officially with college) on a student facing grading tool used actively by 8000+ students. Java/Spring Boot tech stack. Large code base with full-on github style pull and merge contribution style. Ex TikTok SWE told me it’s the closest they’ve experienced to industry style SWE at my college.

Second, various student-led groups with focuses in quant finance, data science, etc. Some doing projects with companies like quant companies like Millennium, Sig, etc. Some doing app projects used by thousands of students on campus (dining hall, game tracking, etc)

Third, focusing on my own growth and development. Setting more time aside for interview prep/side projects.

I believe this discussion would be very valuable to any undergrads because this dichotomy of choice is common. Personally, since Alex emphasizes the importance of contributing to large codebases like in open source then I see the first option as the leading candidate. But I’ve been running with the third option of solely focusing on my interview prep and it seems to have yielded well.

Here are my Top 3 priorities:

1. Career growth - I want to become a senior/staff engineer as soon as possible.
2. Exciting product space - To have challenging work and growth opportunities.
3. Compensation - If I’m truly achieving the Top 2, this should come naturally.

Here are the options I'm thinking of:

• A medium sized public company like Samsara
• A pre-IPO company (e.g. Airtable)
• A Big Tech company like Meta or Amazon

Hi everyone, I'm about to graduate from a pretty rigorous computer science program at a top university, but my results haven't been stellar. I often struggled to keep up with the workload, and I’d sometimes skip parts of assignments just to manage everything. On exams, I’d usually be around the mean/median of the class rather than at the top, and I’d rate my overall performance in the low 70s out of 100. I also didn’t do much coding on the side, so I worry that I didn’t build the same technical skills or ‘grind character’ that a lot of people in top tech roles seem to have.

My goal is to start at a top company, but I’m concerned about whether I’ll be able to handle the workload and thrive in a rigorous environment like FAANG. I know people who started with lower GPAs but did really well in these roles, usually because they did a ton of coding outside of class, which I didn’t.

For those of you who’ve been there or have mentored new grads in similar situations, do you think I’d still have a shot at succeeding in a top tech role? If you were in my shoes, what would you prioritize in these last couple of months before graduating to set yourself up for success?

Another question - should I still target FAANG as my first job, or build my way up by first working at a startup? I am afraid I might not have the technical skills to thrive at a FAANG, yet.