It feels like almost no one is writing quality software or doing SWE except me in 2025. Every app I write is pure C/C++ w/ Win32, and no one cares. r/win32 has 100 members, no one is writing it. "Software engineering" is mostly art, b/c only UI/UX matters now.

Electron Offenders: Asana, ChatGPT, Claude, Discord, Docker, Dropbox, Figma, GitHub, MS Teams, MongoDB, Notion, Slack, Twitch, VS Code, WhatsApp, WordPress, etc.

If I listed companies using Web Frameworks or Python, the list would never end. There's nothing wrong w/ inefficient technologies/languages. It is just proof that software engineering doesn't exist anymore.

Why I'm Traumatized: As someone who has been programming for a 2-3 yrs (no idea what I wanted to do before college), I've always seen big companies as my role model, and what I should look up to.

After realizing the truth, it has completely traumatized me. It's like discovering that your entire family tree has been doing terrible things.

Accepting that SWE doesn't exist has made me very sad. I've lost motivation and started fantasizing about a life where I was born 30 years earlier, where I would have made so much money selling software that runs smoothy on computers w/ 1 GB RAM.

Also, the opinion everyone has that LeetCode is nothing like SWE is also unfortunate proof that SWE doesn't exist. It just means that no one is doing any software engineering, b/c everything I wrote feels just like doing LeetCode.

Hey everyone!

I’m an incoming international freshman at one of HYPSM, planning to major in CS, Stats, and Applied Math. I want to use the next few months before college starts to prepare for freshman internships, and I have a few questions:

1. What should I prioritize this summer to get past resume screens: projects, GitHub, personal website, competitions, research?
2. What kind of projects actually stand out on a freshman resume?
3. Do employers care if I take advanced CS courses in my first semester or does it not matter?
4. Any examples of freshman resumes that landed decent internships?
5. I feel somewhat confident in my CS and programming skills. I have done competitive programming in the past, but I want to use the next few months to make sure I have a solid foundation. If you had a few months before your freshman year, what resources would you use to prepare for technical interviews?

Thanks!

Folks at mba are dumb in comparision to cs majors and they make a ton of money. They get jobs easier and classes are ez. Whats the right time to jump ships?

I’m currently a CS major and I know the fundamentals of C++, Java, and Python, and I can read HTML/CSS pretty well. Lately, I’ve been learning the Spring Boot framework with Java and honestly, I really enjoy it. The problem is I don’t see a lot of “cool-looking” projects that come out of Java/Spring compared to some other stacks. Most of the stuff I see is more enterprise-y or boilerplate-heavy.

I’m also thinking about joining hackathons soon, but using Java + Spring Boot feels kinda heavy and not really hackathon-friendly. I don’t think I could contribute much beyond basic backend stuff in that environment, especially compared to people using JS stacks.

That got me wondering—should I start learning JavaScript and maybe dive into something like Node.js, Express, or even fullstack stuff like Next.js just to be more job-ready and flexible? My long-term goal is to become a backend SWE and eventually branch into DevOps or Cloud roles.

Would love to hear from people who’ve been in the same boat. Did switching stacks help? Is Spring Boot still worth investing more time in?

So Eigen Labs just announced their Summer FellowShip to master EigenLayer's architecture and AVS Consumer toolkits.

8 weeks — in seattle /Hybrid Style — hackathon style — build insane consumer apps + agents

what u bring:

- all-in attitude willingness to build amazing apps
- high agency and self-direction
- move really fast
- creative thinking

what u get:

- $5k/month
- mentorship from Eigen Labs teams + best minds in tech
- support to ship, promote, scale your app
- unforgettable seattle summer vibes

here's the Link to the FellowShip
if you're interested in more such Opportunities. We've created a Subreddit for the same r/joblessCSMajors
do Join.

I’m 18, gonna be graduating with my bachelors in the fall at 19. I don’t have any huge projects under my belt, only a couple very small scale ones. I’ve also got a couple smaller school projects. I’ve got a couple leadership roles and a couple years of volunteering experience, but no real job. I only looked for internships last year and this year, but I haven’t found anything. I’m still hoping I can get one this summer, but if I can’t, what can I even do?

Stop paying this dude 60$ when it's already open source. Just get an API key and you're good to go.

https://github.com/Ornithopter-pilot/interview-coder-withoupaywall-opensource

aight a little hopecore for you doomers before i leave this sub for good. I'm 30+ started studying cs by myself got into wgu and found a 200k job in exactly 1 year. keep your hopes up and just continue submitting. dm me if you need guidance or vent. cheers

hi! are any of you interning at spotify this summer in the ny office? I’d love to connect and form a group to discuss housing and other stuff! :)

Hey everyone,

I’ll be interning with Microsoft’s Business & Industry Copilot (BIC) team this summer as a Software Engineering Intern, but I haven’t found much info online about past intern experiences in this area. Since BIC focuses on AI-driven enterprise solutions, I want to make sure I prepare effectively.

For those who have interned at Microsoft in AI or enterprise-focused teams, I’d love to hear insights on:

• What technical skills are most valuable for BIC interns? (Azure AI, NLP, prompt engineering, etc.)
  
• What’s the work environment like?(Collaboration, expectations, coding vs. research balance)
  
• What types of projects do interns typically work on in AI-driven teams?
• Any tips for making a strong impact and increasing chances of full-time conversion?
• Are there Microsoft resources that helped you prepare before starting?
  

Would appreciate any advice or insights—thanks in advance!

Hey, just looking to connect with other TDP interns who will be in Dallas this summer! If there's already a GC or Discord please lmk :)

Got a call from a AMC for a Dev role. It’s been exactly a week since I had the call! Haven’t heard back yet. Should I consider it a reject?

Hello, Im a fresh grad SWE joining Meta end of April (in a few weeks). I’m joining the Singapore office but my orientation will be in the London office. I don’t know anybody at Meta so if anybody is joining Meta Singapore at the same time as me, please hit me up! :) Trying to get to know more people before I go in… Also because idk if I should get an e-sim for the orientation 😭

I bet most of the folks laid off were h1b. Good riddance.

https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/elon-musk-doge-drive-didnt-just-affect-federal-workers-65-billion-pact-gone-deloitte-accenture-among-hardest-hit-11743850130900.html

hey guys. i have been a very avid follower of csmajors for a while, which also means i've been depressed every once in a while haha. my fear of the job market has loomed ever since i completed high school, and internships felt like a very far away thing. i'm a 4.0 student (both high school and university) and have taken courses like harvard's cs50, MANY courses by Code with Mosh, Angela Yu, etc., but i always felt my chances at internships were null because of the stuff i saw here.

fast forward to now, i'm in my freshman year (took a couple gap years after high school) and started applying to internships last year, but very selectively. i didn't want to follow everyone's narrative and apply to 300+ companies. i applied to only 3 last year and got an interview and subsequent offer letter for the summer—i was shocked lol. after only 3 apps? the role wasn't what i wanted tho—quality analyst at a big tech company—so i tried again this year around feb.

after about 18 apps, i landed an interview for a web dev intern position and approached it strongly. today, i've been offered the position! granted, it's a small company (known regionally in the midwest) but it's still completely changed my perspective on how i interact with posts on csmajors.

i realized not many people who succeed post their wins, and this is why csmajors can be so depressing. the successes are drowned out by so many rejection posts that the sub becomes out of touch with reality. i hope this post can lift someone’s spirit and encourage them to apply boldly. after this summer's internship, i plan to apply much earlier in the cycle and approach them with a lot more confidence! will make another post to get advice for my first internship soon!

Let me start by saying that the CS market is definitely saturated; there’s no doubt about that. However, I do think the prevalence of the doomer mentality in this sub isn’t just because of that, it’s because people here just aren’t very competent.

I’ve seen plenty of evidence to support this, but the most jarring of which were comments under a meme post. Basically, the meme was about an interview question regarding finding the minimum number in an array, and the joke was that the person sorted the array and returned the number at index 0.

(Paraphrased) The most upvoted comment: What’s wrong? Can someone explain? The second most upvoted comment: Well there’s no issue with doing this, it just wasn’t what the interviewer was expecting. (No, these comments weren’t jokes)

It wasn’t until I had to scroll through 4 or 5 comments did I find someone actually pointing out how cooked the comment section was. What I’m trying to say is that, the fact that these comments—making mistakes about something so elementary in the CS roadmap—were the most upvoted, truly goes to show how incompetent a large portion of the subreddit is. Yes, getting a job will be difficult, but if this is your competition, then I think you should take a large portion of these posts with a grain of salt.

Apparently there is a way for foreign workers to get a greencard quickly by making a case that them getting a greencard is in the nation's best interest and they have "extraordinary ability" in their field.

I was curious why a bunch of [insert nationality here] at my place of employment working regular IT jobs were all obsessing over GenAI and talking about publishing papers in that field. These are regular corporate IT folks doing regular meat and potatoes IT work like maintaing CI/CD pipelines and writing CRUD websites for internal use and such. Everytime there is a company hackathon the ones participating are almost exclusively [insert nationality here].

I wonder if this will start affecting (or has already started) the quality of papers being published. Wonder if there is now a cottage industry of organizations built specifically to make publishing papers easier for green card purposes.

One of the guys was talking about being accepted to be a speaker at some event and I had never heard of that organization and the topic of his paper was something super generic.

Well i love coding and programming, but my uni only offer these 2 programming or cs related courses. The advantages of a software dev degree is more time while i study to learn on my own, and i can work while i study more easly and the advantage of the engineering degree is well the engineering title

Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering

Year 1

• Summer: University Life Induction Seminar
• Semester 1: Calculus I · Report Writing & Oral Expression · Software Globalization · English I · Computer‑Aided Drafting · Introduction to Computation Theory
• Semester 2: Calculus II · Introduction to Software Engineering · Introduction to Chemistry · Calculus III · Programming Principles · Teamwork & Leadership

Year 2

• Semester 1: Ordinary Differential Equations · Physics I (Mechanics) · Data Structures & Representation · Software Programming I · Requirements Engineering · English II
• Semester 2: Higher Mathematics for Engineering · Database Implementation I · Physics II (Electricity & Magnetism) · Algorithm Analysis & Design · Software Architecture & Design · Human–Computer Interaction

Year 3

• Semester 1: Statistics with Computing Support · Software Programming II · Numerical Methods for Engineering · Software Quality · Computer Organization & Architecture · Database Implementation II
• Semester 2: Environmental Engineering · Operating Systems · Web Engineering · Computer Networks · Software Maintenance & Testing · Formal Languages, Automata & Language Processing

Year 4

• Semester 1: Software Project Management · Mobile‑Platform Software Development · Topics in Panamanian Geography & History · Computer Graphics & Visualization · Information Management · Communication Protocols
• Semester 2: Digital Animation & Production · Software Application Security · Special Topics I · Engineering Research Methodology · Entrepreneurship · Graduation Project I

Year 5

• Semester 1: Graduation Project II · Applications for Distributed Environments · Professional Health & Wellness · Professional Internship in Software Engineering · Special Topics II · IT Policy & Legislation

Bachelor of Science in Software Development & Management

Year 1

• Summer: Basic Mathematics · University Life Induction Seminar
• Semester 1: Information & Communication Technology · Software Development I · Mathematics Fundamentals I · English I · Oral & Written Communication · Personal Development
• Semester 2: Teamwork & Leadership · Mathematics Fundamentals II · Software Development II · Data Structures I · English II · Databases I
• Summer: Panamanian Geography · Professional Ethics

Year 2

• Semester 1: Software Development III · Mathematics Fundamentals III · User‑Interface Design · Data Structures II · Databases II
• Semester 2: Software Development IV · Applied Software Engineering I · Software Development V · Statistics & Probability · Computer Organization & Architecture I
• Summer: General Ecology · Panamanian History

Year 3

• Semester 1: Research Methodology · Applied Software Engineering II · Software Development VI · Software Development VII · General Accounting
• Semester 2: Software Development VIII · Computer Networks · Applied Software Engineering III · Operating Systems · Labor & IT Law
• Summer: Workplace Practice in Software Development

Year 4

• Semester 1: Innovation & Entrepreneurship · Special Topics I · Software Development IX · Secure Software Development · Applied Software Engineering IV · Graduation Project I
• Semester 2: Special Topics II · IT Project Management · Managerial Information Systems · Management of ICT Resources · Financial Management · Graduation Project II

TikTok: site reliability (SRE) team in TikTok US data security (USDS), unsure about project yet

Patreon: Android mobile dev project + maybe (not guaranteed) some backend work; direct manager used to work at a couple of the big techs

How should I pick? My internship goals are:

• resume padding for a backend new grad role ideally at FAANG
• learn good engineering practices

Anyone with experience interning at either company?

I am a representative of the company "COMPANY". At COMPANY, we work on windows ---- not the OS, but the glass rectangular things on buildings. We know the CS market is very bad now, but fear not ---- we have an internship opportunity, and the best part is, it does not require 20 years of experience!

Description: Currently at COMPANY, we are creating our website and are planning to have the code be written in assembly x86. Unfortunately, our entire software engineering team walked away 3 cycles ago, so for your internship, you will create our entire website in assembly. The internship lasts 156 months and is located at our headquarters in the beautiful capital of Illinois: Chicago. The internship provides a good WLB as it is a 9-to-5(9 am to 5 am).

Qualifications: To be considered for this internship, you must have 19 years of experience writing assembly. You must also be a citizen of Illinois and be currently pursuing a BS in AI at MIT (Michigan Institute of Technology).

Compensation: We are very high tech, so we will provide a total compensation of $800M in a cryptocurrency of your choice. However, as our budget is limited, you must first give us $810M at the start of your internship, so we can pay you the $800M.

Interview: In order to test your assembly skills, you will only be asked to write the line "movq $2, %rdi". However, the challenge is that you must handwrite this using a quill. Furthermore, we will tie you to a chair and gag you, so you must be able to control the quill without using your hands, feet, or mouth. And you will be placed in a room where a vacuum is slowly sucking out all the oxygen, so you must complete the task in under 30 seconds. We do this in order to emulate our working conditions.

We are excited to interview you for our company! If you are interested, please let us know via carrier pigeon.

Got in contacts with recruiter for summer 2025 internship and she sent me the OA 5 weeks ago which I aced. She then said she would send up the final round and would like the move forward but still hasn’t. I sent a follow up 2 weeks ago to which she replied that the hiring manager had a family emergency so that’s why it’s getting delayed. Now I sent another follow up a few days ago and no reply yet. It’s been 5 weeks now, are they leading me on ? Could they just ghost me or are they actually delayed.

I'm going to graduate next year with no internship experience. If I take a year or two after graduation to work some random unrelated job and get some really good projects done, can I succeed? Like if I make some really cool functional games and websites, make a github and make YouTube content about them, will I be able to get a job?

i have 2 years of experience and a BS in computer science but as you guys know the job market is absolute shit. here are some tricks that not a lot of people know about.

Slack communities are very under-rated. Join slack communities of people in your industry, in my example (Startup SWEs in SF). Those types of communities are amazing, you network with people directly.

GitHub is also very under-rated. If you are looking for internships there are many github repos that have lists of jobs you should look into. Simplify's big github repo is a very good example. Moreover, there are many github open source projects that in the end of the readme have a "we are hiring". If you search github for "hiring", etc they will come up!

Company blogs are also a very good place to find jobs. If you look at some blog posts from a company, especially technical blog posts, they will have a "we are hiring" link. Moreover, you can see the person who wrote it, that is usually the hiring manager. Reach out to them, and you know exactly what to talk about, the article!! Usually those roles are less competitive as well because they are not being advertised as heavily.

You have to apply to a ton of roles. There is not getting around that. 100s is the minimum now. The job market is absolutely brutal especially for those early career people. Download the Simplify extensions and all your manual applications should go through them. Furthermore, use a ApplyheroAI to have it automatically apply to the jobs for you. There is not way around this, you won't stand a chance applying to 5-10 roles in this market!

Use advanced search features on Google: site:*.edu | site:*.org | site:*.gov -inurl:(login | sign up) "job opening". If you type what's inside the ``, into google you will see if finds edu, org, and gov job openings for you. Those roles are so much less competitive that you stand a way higher chance. Ask chatgpt on more queries on how you can do this for tech etc, it works extremely well.

i hope those tricks help! i wanted to give me to the reddit job communities because i actually learned a lot of tricks from them on my job search. Most of these tricks I learned from reddit! let me know if I can help with anything else :)

never heard anyone talk abt the utm cs co op and how it compares to other unis should I go to utm for prestige or would I simply be better off going to somewhere like Carleton, mac,queens or western to get a job at a big tech company or a startup.