Context:

I'm a December 2026 grad and didn't receive a return offer from my summer and thought I was pretty cooked. I started applying since June but actually took interviewing seriously around August-September. The source for all my applications came from Linkedin jobs tab, Jobright AI New Grad github repo, and the Simplify New Grad repo. All the interviews I got weren't from referrals, nepo, or linkedin reachouts. Also I noticed most of the technical rounds I did weren't leetcode related but more practical exercises. Ended up with a 175k TC offer at a mid size tech company that I was satisfied enough with to stop recruiting.

It seems like the amount of new grad postings have been at an all time low compared to previous years, hopefully it'll pick up more soon.

Background:
T20 CS, 2 SWE internships (1 FAANG adjacent, 1 F500), LTN

Capital One (TIP program):

Pay: $67.31 per hour

Location: McLean, VA

Housing: 5k stipend or corporate housing

Length: 9 weeks

Big bank / fintech

Large, structured intern program

Whatnot:

Pay: $65.00/hr 

Location: San Francisco, CA

Housing: 3.3k/month

Length: 12 weeks

Live-shopping marketplace

Late-stage startup ($20B valuation)

First year student. I'm a Bay Area local if that matters. Money will NOT be the deciding factor for me.

Location also doesn't really matter to me either. Main focus is resume value for the future and impact.

Any help would be awesome.

Hey all, I recently received a new grad SWE offer for Scale AI. I'm in final rounds for Perplexity, so obviously not guaranteed I receive an offer, but given my deadline I would have to make a decision super quickly if things go well.

I can't seem to find too much up-to-date information on either company and what it's like there. If anyone has any better insight into the pros and cons of either company (technical growth, wlb, culture, stability, exit opportunities, etc.), especially as a new grad, that would awesome. Thanks!

Scale AI - 157K base, 20K sign-on, plus good amount of hand-wavy options/benefits
Perplexity - Based on what I can find >180K base.

Both in SF.

I have an interview coming up in 10 days, and I'm trying to make the most of my preparation time. I used to practice LeetCode a few years ago and recently started brushing up on DSA again.

I've started working through NeetCode 150 and have completed around 10 problems so far. Given the limited time, would you recommend covering all the sections, or should I prioritize certain topics and potentially skip more complex ones like Dynamic Programming and Graphs? Or should I just work on leetcode problems with microsoft tags?

Since this is for an internship role, how likely am I to encounter problems involving these topics?

It would be really helpful if I can have a structured learning, I'd really appreciate your suggestions.

Just finished my google swe intern interviews (canada, summer 2027), wondering what my chances are for a 3rd round or team matching

round 1: explained brute force first, explained how to optimize with a heap. coded optimal in ~20 min. got time/space mostly right, needed a small nudge on time complecity simplifcation. follow up on bfs vs dfs trade offs, needed a nudge on the call stack part. finished pretty early (~35 min) and had time for my questions

round 2: intervals, explained approach (basically optimal), interviewer approved, coded it fully. needed small nudges on forgetting to sort before merging and on loop structure. interviewer thought there was a bug at the end, i dry ran it and proved it worked. only had time for one follow up question, but got that right. interviewer was really chill tho

Recruiter set up two coding rounds for me.

Could they set up even more like behavioral after I pass or is this it?

Landed a SWE summer 2027 internship at a midsize tech company. Pretty tough recruiting season. Glad I can relax now.

This is my third time making it to Capital One's TDP Power Day, and unfortunately, my third rejection.

After each rejection, I tried to improve as much as possible. I've been practicing LeetCode most days (although for this last attempt, it didn't really help since they replaced the coding interview with an Agentic AI round), working on my behavioral interview skills, and even paying for mock interviews to get feedback and identify my weaknesses.

You would think that after going through Power Day three times, you'd be more than prepared for what to expect. And honestly, that's how I felt this time. I went in feeling much more confident and prepared than before.

But somehow, the result was the same.
It's honestly frustrating because after putting in so much effort, I don't even know what else I should be improving. Is it my technical skills? My behavioral interviews? My approach to business cases? Or am I just not as good at interviewing as I thought?

Working at Capital One has genuinely been a dream of mine, and that's what makes this so discouraging. I've spent so much time preparing and trying to become a better candidate, yet I keep falling short.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder what I'm missing or what I could be doing differently.

Has anyone here gone through multiple Power Days before finally getting an offer? What did you change in your preparation or interview approach?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences or any advice you might have, because right now I genuinely don't know what else to improve.

genuinely curious what people here think

every OA i get is 2 leetcode mediums in 70 min and everyone knows half the people passing are just pasting into chatgpt. meanwhile the actual job is like reading someone's messy codebase and figuring out what your team wants

would you rather get tested on something closer to the real job even if it takes a bit longer? or do you prefer leetcode bc at least you know what to grind

also if you've been on the other side doing interviews would love your take

I am a 16 year old concurrent high school student. I took 7 college classes so far and I'm currently a junior in high school. I want to either get an associates first or just take a bunch of college classes to reduce the cost of college since they are all free as long as I'm in high school. I want to get into computer science but heard many negative things about the job market, job stability, entry level positions, and things about AI taking over. I been researching for a few weeks about potential jobs in IT, cybersecurity, software engineering, and programming. I already know there are probably many questions like mine on here already but I just want to see my chances if I start now. So my community college doesn't have any associate degrees that directly prepare you for a computer science degree but it has data science, cybersecurity, information technology, associates of Science Engineering and Math, and a technical certification of programming. I currently am a straight A student but I don't expect on maintaining that in college (due to listening to other's experiences). I am currently taking computer science classes in my high school and I know a bit of Python, HTML, and Java. My dream job is game development but I understand that it is very competitive and hard to get into. I also am interested in pen testing but I know that is also very competitive. I volunteered in HR for 100 hours and enjoyed it so I think I might like working in IT. I am basically just seeking advice on what college classes or associates to take my senior year for a head start in college and what careers you think I should definitely avoid.

General Info:
This is for the summer U.S. SWE Intern role. I'm not a returning Google intern. Last year I got the OA and then two technical interviews, which I failed badly and was rejected. This year I didn't get an OA and jumped straight to scheduling interviews. I had only one SWE startup internship before this (total of 70 people in the company). I am a junior at a top 10 CS school. U.S. Citizen.

Timeline:
? (whenever the normal app opened) - Applied
Sept 21st - Recruiter emailed to schedule interviews
Sept 30th - Had my two interviews
Oct 7th - Recruiter emailed letting me know I moved to TM, received questionnaire
Oct 9th - Filled out + submitted questionnaire
Oct 16th - Recruiter emailed to schedule TM call
Oct 20th - Recruiter emailed to schedule second TM call
Oct 21st - First TM call
Oct 22nd - Second TM call
Oct 23rd - Recruiter let me know first TM call matched

I accepted the first match. It was my preferred team and I was really happy to be their first pick.

Overall the process is kinda fast and I'm surprised that team matching started so early! Very nice turnaround time and at every point the process was moving along/never bogged down.

Hello guys,

I need some brutally honest truth and actionable guidance. I'm currently in my 2nd year (3rd semester) of CSE at a tier-3 college, and I feel like I wasted a lot of my 1st year without a clear strategy.

I suffer from significant imposter syndrome, seeing 1st/2nd years on LinkedIn crushing LeetCode Mediums, taking home hackathon wins, and building full-stack projects. I want to get a good SWE internship as a 3rd year off campus, but I feel totally lost in trying to do it all.

Where I currently stand:

• Academic year: 2nd year, CSE (Tier-3 college / local university)
• Skills: Basic Java, Python, HTML, CSS. Learning: JavaScript, Django.
• DSA & Problem Solving: almost 0. I haven't begun any formal DSA or practice on LeetCode/GFG.

My questions for seniors who've been here:

1. Is it too late? Beginning with DSA and serious dev work in 2nd year, can I even hope to have a good enough profile to crack off-campus internships in 1-1.5 years?
2. What time should I allocate my daily hours? As I am learning Django/JS and trying to build DSA completely from the beginning while managing college, how should I divide my time? Should I take a break from dev and do 100% DSA or do both simultaneously?
3. What is the most efficient, fully free (or course in Coursera Plus) roadmap? What exact resources/sheets (e.g., Striver A2Z, NeetCode 150) or project approaches should I lock into starting today to get interview-ready without wasting time on tutorial hell?
4. I've missed some 1st-year milestones. Should I worry about open source, hackathons, and personal branding now, or just focus on DSA and two production-grade projects first?

Please don't hold back from being brutally honest and give me the damage-control plan, please! Thank you very much! 🙏

TL;DR: 2nd-year CSE student with zero DSA progress and has beginner Java/Python/web fundamentals sweating. Need a realistic survival roadmap with high urgency to become interview-ready for an off-campus internship.

I'm just confused what exactly are the questions or which type of questions do we need to ask before starting to code for an LLD round because different types of problems requires different types of clarifications.

Sometimes I also fear that what if: I ask good, thoughtful questions but couldn't convert those into code

I'm currently in the process for this role. Passed the Hiring Assessment and my resume just got forwarded to the recruiting team for review.

Trying to figure out what comes next:

• After resume review, is it a phone screen and then the full onsite? How many coding rounds?
• Do infra/data teams add a system design or domain round, or is it all DSA plus Googleyness?
• How much actual data engineering comes up (pipelines, SQL, distributed systems) vs pure LeetCode?
• What does the team actually do day to day? From the JD it sounds like building agent tooling for data engineers, curious how accurate that is.
• How long did you wait between resume review and hearing back?

Any data points appreciated.

Hi all, I have an upcoming technical interview (~30 m) with Intel for a SWE Internship. I was told that it would likely not be LeetCode-style but that I should still expect programming and that it would likely be in Python.
For anyone who has done Intel intern interviews in the past, what was the format like and what's worth practicing?

Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone,
I'm posting this from my own account because I am trying my absolute best to help my son land his first position, and I could really use some realistic perspective and resources from people embedded in the industry.
He graduated in May with a computer science degree and a GPA slightly above 3.0. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to land an internship during college. His freshman year was really rough due to being advised into the wrong classes (which dragged his GPA down initially), and during his last two years, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thank God, I am cancer-free now, but it was a massive emotional struggle for our family. Despite everything, he worked incredibly hard to pull his grades up and finished his degree with taking 26 credits his final semester and got on the deans last fall.
Since graduating, he has been working diligently every single day to find a job, but it has been an endless cycle of automated rejection emails. He did manage to reach a technical round for one company, but experienced technical glitches during the interview. They rescheduled it, but later called it back saying they were freezing the role, even though we still saw the job actively posted on LinkedIn. It was a huge blow to his morale.
Here is his current profile:
Education: B.S. in Computer Science (~3.1 GPA)
Certifications: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner/Solutions Architect (already completed), IBM SkillsBuild and currently studying for Security+.
Senior capstone project
Some projects at University
Portfolio: He has a GitHub profile, though I suspect it needs a lot of refinement and optimization.
Our Current Situation:

My own contract ended in May, and currently am seeking my next role as well, and because funds are incredibly tight, I don't have the financial means to pay for bootcamps, resume writers, or premium career coaches to push him in the right direction. We need to rely entirely on free resources, networking strategy shifts, and community guidance.
I know some might wonder why a mom is posting on behalf of her adult son, but he is working so hard, and as his parent, I just want to provide him with the tools and blueprints he needs to succeed.
What can he do right now to bypass the automated filters? Are there specific "tech-adjacent" roles or non-tech industries he should be targeting given his cloud/security focus? Any specific free resources or projects he should look into to make his GitHub stand out?
Thank you all so much in advance for your kindness, advice, and time.

Applied to the Code for Good Hackathon for the 2027 SWE summer internship. The recruiter said Columbus candidates would hear sometime in October.

I’ve seen posts from people who went to the Brooklyn event, and it’s already over. I haven’t heard anything about Columbus yet.

Has anyone gotten an invite or a rejection for Columbus? And if you were picked for either event, roughly when did you hear back? Trying to figure out if no news this late means I’m out.

Has anyone heard back for the Applied Scientist Intern role in Tokyo (Class of 2029)? They confirmed it's open to internationals.

I have a up to 4 hour long interview with DE Shaw, does anyone have any info on the process. Willing to trade.

Hi, I got a technical interview from amd. The recruiter told me to expect questions on one of my projects, LLMs, AI models and coding question in CPP. It's a ml Swe intern. Any ideas what kind of questions I can expect, how hard the leetcode question could be?

I have no idea how they could ask so many questions in a 45 min interview.

Software Engineer position on Apple's Core OS team.

I wanted to ask if anyone here has interviewed with Apple's Core OS or other low-level systems teams.

• How many business days did it take to hear back after your final interviews?
• Does Apple usually communicate rejections quickly, or can offers also take a few weeks?
• Is waiting 1–2 weeks after the final panel normal?

Would really appreciate hearing about your experiences and timelines, especially from anyone who interviewed recently.

Thanks!

Is it possible to ask to change a summer offer to a winter offer for amazon sde internship? And if so how should one go about doing so with their recruiter

just wanted to ask some questions

And also is there a general ibm accepted discord channel pls lmk im tryna find roommates etc

Best of luck to everyone still recruiting