There is a HUGE amount of competition in tech job market nowadays. People are using automation and scripts to mass apply whenever there's a new internship listing or job listing. A lot of students are taking CS, so oversaturation is one of the reasons for this too.
1. FED has restricted the supply of new money (to combat the inflation they created during covid) so loans are very expensive. Tech is a loan heavy industry, so VCs are reluctant to fund anything that won't be profitable in a short amount of time.
2. FAANG companies are trying to keep their stock prices high in a high rate environment. To do this they need to cut costs. They then flood the market with laid off talent, then re-hire at lower salary bands. Facebook is doing this right now.
3. AI is going to make low level coding jobs much easier, companies know they can run a tighter ship.
4. Many people are thinking they want to go into tech and get a fat paycheck while working from home and are enticed by scammy offers from bootcamps. There is a glut of new grads that are going to have a terrible time finding work in the industry.
The problem is that, although you were correct in what you wrote, you used such a pretentious and irritating term for "worker" that I had to intervene.
It's bad enough when programmers refer to themselves in such pompous terms as "software engineer" but "talent" is completely beyond the pale.
I’ll say that I’m also applying to internships as someone with 7YOE. We need jobs. Bad. I don’t know if companies are hiring experienced engineers for internships, but why would you hire some college kid that knows nothing when you could hire someone who’s been doing it professionally for years?
From a buddy of mine who’s a CEO: “I get 100 applicants in the first 12 hours of posting.” When asked how to handle them he just said “I swipe through them like tinder. If something doesn’t stand out then I move on immediately. Referrals are auto-interview. It’s ruthless, but idk how else to handle such a high amount of applicants.”
The key these days really is speed, standing out (somehow) and referrals. [My site updates our listings daily and we focus heavily on startups.](https://talentramp.co)
so, if my friend wants to cold apply for an internship on LinkedIn, what else than luck does he have to need? as I mentioned, he only has one school project but not any personal project so far, does he need to learn more programming languages?
I would recommend networking on LinkedIn. I created a google doc with some LinkedIn DM templates that can help connect with the right people.
Basic steps:
1-go to LinkedIn and click the search bar (Type nothing and hit enter)
2-click “People” in the menu bar
3-Click the advanced filters tab
4-Filter by Current Company = the one you’re applying for
5-Filter by Title = “Software Engineer” or “QA Engineer” or whatever other title matches the job description.
6-I recommend filtering by alums of your school since that’s instantly something in common.
7-Connect with people in that role, from your school, with a message like: “Hey _____, Go {mascot}! I’m thinking about applying for the _______ role that just opened up, but was hoping to learn a little more. Do you have 15-20 minutes to chat this week?”
8-make a friend and ask for the referral
This shit works, it’s not that hard, but 90% of people won’t do it. It’s harder than clicking “EasyApply” but easier than getting told “No” a million times with no explanation.
Unless your friend have a internal connection to the company he/she's applying, or personal projects that stand out, it's nearly impossible, so yea your friend needs to start some coding drills, I recommend leetcode, since the progress there is public for your recruiter to check, and you can put it in your CV too, or just do some small personal project, you don't need to go all out with big'ol project
PS: Full time is wayy more competitive too, companies usually recruit through internship in their company instead of searching a new one, they post it on a job applicant website because they're obliged to do that by the government rules, but the truth, they already have a candidate in the first place. Good luck tho...
Putting your LC ranking in your CV? Would anyone take that seriously?.
For starters, you can just check the existing solutions and copy paste then. You could even make a tool that solves leetcode through copy solutions lol
Oh, my bad... I meant that leetcode as in references for the recruiter? Since I'm hired that way. Then after the first screening, the recruiter would test the applicants during the final interview, if it's aligned with the leetcode progress that they have attached, so it would come back to you eventually if u lie about your leetcode progress. Just based on my experience tho, correct me if I'm wrong.
what are some examples of outstanding personal projects? I don't know if he's creative with solutions or specific problems, and as I said, he only has that school project ongoing on his resume, idk if that's enough.
and no, he doesn't have any strong connections for now, he explained to me that since we weren't born talented, we'll have to do many hard things to be outliers, he's just a normal dude who loves studying so he's trying really hard to break into the market and reach the top.
>and no, he doesn't have any strong connections for now, he explained to me that since we weren't born talented, we'll have to do many hard things to be outliers, he's just a normal dude who loves studying so he's trying really hard to break into the market and reach the top
Your best choice IMHO is to put yourself infront of recruiters who can tie face to a name. College career fairs are your best bet. Company info sessions too.
Applying online is a crapshoot. Too hard to differentiate yourself unless you already have previous internships on your resume.
Tons of competition and not as many openings. Our talent acquisition team has no idea how to handle the massive volume of applicants for internships and junior roles.
It's ridiculously easy to find juniors and internships, but all we get is spam and more juniors filling our inbox for experienced roles. Everyone is holding on to what they have now, and the juniors are flooding the locked gate with little chance of making it past.
Many companies use internships as a way to eventually hire full time junior developers. If there’s no guarantee that interns could be converted into full time employees then a company would be less willing to hire interns (I heard that my company is reducing the size of its intern program and full time new grad program. Really sucks)
No, it was not this hard before. There are way too many people in CS. There are also more jobs shipped to India and the Philippines and lots of work visa abuse since they will work for half the going wage.
It’s not any more complicated than that.
I’m 12 YoE and rate of me getting to the HR screening after an application for a position I’m rather qualified for is about 25% versus 50-75% a few years ago.
LinkedIn mails from recruiters are vast majority trash pay as a contractor with no benefits. Or employee status at a company I’m willing to work for but it’s 20% less than what I get paid now.
I’m super excited to have an interview with everyone on the call being American.
Most companies wrap up their internship recruitment in the late fall/ early winter. Your buddy might just be too late trying to find one for this summer. Their career resource office might be able to help with co-ops if they are willing to take time off during the school year to work
If you look at older posts 6+ years ago. You'd see that people could get internships just by showing off their 2 week shitty cli project from their intro course, basic understanding of sdlc, and resume formatted by a middle schooler.
The concept of hyperoptimizing a resume and sending out 100s of apps was foreign.
i think fields in CS like ML/AI as you said and data science are still good for the future, programming too but not with a huge level of jobs or salaries
but ofc, more competition = more hard work and grinding
Would you rather rampant inflation, even worse like what hit Europe? It's kind of a hard situation after covid with the inflation that spread around the world. The US has done well on that front relative to other countries. Sucks for new jobs availability though.
It wasnt this hard before but relatively not THAT simple either. The 2021 covid zero rates market was a bit... "too easy" as in it was not intended and not normal for it to be that easy. So you have mass layoffs + everyone looking for jobs who are also new to the field with not as many job postings or creation of new SWE jobs. So technically the answer is always that it's a supply and demand issue since that's just the natural law of scarcity but what is causing this limited demand and absurd supply are factors like we are having a tech/ overall white collar recession.
Tech is getting hit extra hard and supply wise it right now is one of the most popular fields still (including globally with offshoring to Europe, South Asia and Latin America being more and more viable) even though the job creation isn't the same as it was mid pandemic. It's still a numbers game but aside from blindly applying you friend should continue to work on personal projects (good projects that has potential to have some success and not just a youtube tutorial of some whatever clone) and show those projects off in career fairs from local / smaller companies. Look at the most common tech stacks for the job postings in your city and tell him to make a project utilizing that stack. Another tip is to literally look for anything tech related and dev adjacent, not specifically SWE. Then IF the market gets better try to make a pivot.
one thing I'd like to point out is: we're both in Brazil, so I think we can both beneficiate from the offshoring jobs through remote work in the future, right now I'm trying to get into a uni and get a swe degree, with plans of moving to the US after reaching "senior level experience", which I think is 8 yoe.
and talking more about my friend, he's a **REALLY** hardworking student, always deep in touch with every single aspect of computers since he loves to study but ofc he feels anxious about the market as well, I hope his merit get rewarded
also, I wonder how things are gonna be in the CS market until the next decade, I really hope it finds its equilibrium until 2030, I wouldn't mind having to work on site if I get to break into 200k/y salaries in the future in hcol states.
i interview interns at my company, a very small tech consultantcy (50-60 employees). we used to get maybe 50 applicants, in 2022 we had about 150, in 2023 we had 300+ applicants, and since we went 100% remote this year we had 500+ applicants.
competition is super high right now so employers can be really choosey. if i see the generic CS resume with only school projects (basic apps in C, Java, python, little to no UI experience, etc) and no external projects making use of modern frameworks then i wont move that candidate on to the next round.
an example specific to my company: we are currently swamped with a ton of work and since ill be the one training and prepping interns for real world client experience i just dont have the time to do a lot hand holding so if a candidate can hit the ground running because they already have experience with react and/or NextJS then im interested in talking to and working with that candidate. this is where bootcampers are able to show their value.
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Back in 2020 it was harder for me to find an internship than a job. (Never found an internship) I almost landed one made it to the final round but someone beat me with actual work experience while I was in school… wild. Not sure now though
Entry level and internships have always been a challenge for obviously reason low skill level low communication level and little to no network. Bad markets like these make things much much worse
I couldn't get an internship back in 2008-2012. Everything worked out fine for me, eventually. It was always very hard to get one if you weren't in a known school or had connections. And it was basically impossible to get a paid one without nepotism, lol.
I got a job instead of an internship when applying just at the end of COVID19.
I must've applied for atleast 100 internships and got no callbacks, so I just started job hunting instead
There is a HUGE amount of competition in tech job market nowadays. People are using automation and scripts to mass apply whenever there's a new internship listing or job listing. A lot of students are taking CS, so oversaturation is one of the reasons for this too.
1. FED has restricted the supply of new money (to combat the inflation they created during covid) so loans are very expensive. Tech is a loan heavy industry, so VCs are reluctant to fund anything that won't be profitable in a short amount of time. 2. FAANG companies are trying to keep their stock prices high in a high rate environment. To do this they need to cut costs. They then flood the market with laid off talent, then re-hire at lower salary bands. Facebook is doing this right now. 3. AI is going to make low level coding jobs much easier, companies know they can run a tighter ship. 4. Many people are thinking they want to go into tech and get a fat paycheck while working from home and are enticed by scammy offers from bootcamps. There is a glut of new grads that are going to have a terrible time finding work in the industry.
Anyone who says "talent" when they mean "employees" is a sweaty-palmed, compulsive masturbator.
Anyone who doesn't engage with what I said and instead nitpicks particular words is wildly unremarkable.
The problem is that, although you were correct in what you wrote, you used such a pretentious and irritating term for "worker" that I had to intervene. It's bad enough when programmers refer to themselves in such pompous terms as "software engineer" but "talent" is completely beyond the pale.
I don't think it's pretentious to argue some people make better engineers than others
Nor do I. And nobody is arguing that since it is self-evidently true. Tell us, how do you think that is relevant here?
Omg shut the fuuuuuckkk uppp
Does your mom know you're on the internet, kid?
Does your mom know that you're triggered by the word "talent" and computer science degree holders having engineer titles?
So when onlyfans girls like you refer to themselves as "sex workers" instead of "whores" its not an improvement?
Holy non sequiturs, Batman!
Found the edge lord!
Some occupations that require talent: * tap dancer * jazz pianist * novelist * landscape painter. Some occupations that merely require competence: * corporate computer programmer (including JavaScript clerks) * mechanical engineer * carpenter * nurse
Glazing over the fact that you projected your habits onto that guy because a word triggered you
Projection? Pfft!
I’ll say that I’m also applying to internships as someone with 7YOE. We need jobs. Bad. I don’t know if companies are hiring experienced engineers for internships, but why would you hire some college kid that knows nothing when you could hire someone who’s been doing it professionally for years?
I thought internships were usually restricted to upcoming or recent university graduates? Did you go back to school for a graduate degree?
From a buddy of mine who’s a CEO: “I get 100 applicants in the first 12 hours of posting.” When asked how to handle them he just said “I swipe through them like tinder. If something doesn’t stand out then I move on immediately. Referrals are auto-interview. It’s ruthless, but idk how else to handle such a high amount of applicants.” The key these days really is speed, standing out (somehow) and referrals. [My site updates our listings daily and we focus heavily on startups.](https://talentramp.co)
It’s been this way for years though. I use to get 2500 applicants for 12 interns back in 2016.
so, if my friend wants to cold apply for an internship on LinkedIn, what else than luck does he have to need? as I mentioned, he only has one school project but not any personal project so far, does he need to learn more programming languages?
I would recommend networking on LinkedIn. I created a google doc with some LinkedIn DM templates that can help connect with the right people. Basic steps: 1-go to LinkedIn and click the search bar (Type nothing and hit enter) 2-click “People” in the menu bar 3-Click the advanced filters tab 4-Filter by Current Company = the one you’re applying for 5-Filter by Title = “Software Engineer” or “QA Engineer” or whatever other title matches the job description. 6-I recommend filtering by alums of your school since that’s instantly something in common. 7-Connect with people in that role, from your school, with a message like: “Hey _____, Go {mascot}! I’m thinking about applying for the _______ role that just opened up, but was hoping to learn a little more. Do you have 15-20 minutes to chat this week?” 8-make a friend and ask for the referral This shit works, it’s not that hard, but 90% of people won’t do it. It’s harder than clicking “EasyApply” but easier than getting told “No” a million times with no explanation.
Unless your friend have a internal connection to the company he/she's applying, or personal projects that stand out, it's nearly impossible, so yea your friend needs to start some coding drills, I recommend leetcode, since the progress there is public for your recruiter to check, and you can put it in your CV too, or just do some small personal project, you don't need to go all out with big'ol project PS: Full time is wayy more competitive too, companies usually recruit through internship in their company instead of searching a new one, they post it on a job applicant website because they're obliged to do that by the government rules, but the truth, they already have a candidate in the first place. Good luck tho...
Putting your LC ranking in your CV? Would anyone take that seriously?. For starters, you can just check the existing solutions and copy paste then. You could even make a tool that solves leetcode through copy solutions lol
Oh, my bad... I meant that leetcode as in references for the recruiter? Since I'm hired that way. Then after the first screening, the recruiter would test the applicants during the final interview, if it's aligned with the leetcode progress that they have attached, so it would come back to you eventually if u lie about your leetcode progress. Just based on my experience tho, correct me if I'm wrong.
if any student is reading this DO NOT put your leetcode stats on your Resume. The hiring manager, HR, Or Recruiter will not care.
what are some examples of outstanding personal projects? I don't know if he's creative with solutions or specific problems, and as I said, he only has that school project ongoing on his resume, idk if that's enough. and no, he doesn't have any strong connections for now, he explained to me that since we weren't born talented, we'll have to do many hard things to be outliers, he's just a normal dude who loves studying so he's trying really hard to break into the market and reach the top.
>and no, he doesn't have any strong connections for now, he explained to me that since we weren't born talented, we'll have to do many hard things to be outliers, he's just a normal dude who loves studying so he's trying really hard to break into the market and reach the top Your best choice IMHO is to put yourself infront of recruiters who can tie face to a name. College career fairs are your best bet. Company info sessions too. Applying online is a crapshoot. Too hard to differentiate yourself unless you already have previous internships on your resume.
Tons of competition and not as many openings. Our talent acquisition team has no idea how to handle the massive volume of applicants for internships and junior roles.
It's ridiculously easy to find juniors and internships, but all we get is spam and more juniors filling our inbox for experienced roles. Everyone is holding on to what they have now, and the juniors are flooding the locked gate with little chance of making it past.
Talent overflow Too many unemployed people looking for jobs.
[layoffs.fyi](http://layoffs.fyi)
Many companies use internships as a way to eventually hire full time junior developers. If there’s no guarantee that interns could be converted into full time employees then a company would be less willing to hire interns (I heard that my company is reducing the size of its intern program and full time new grad program. Really sucks)
No, it was not this hard before. There are way too many people in CS. There are also more jobs shipped to India and the Philippines and lots of work visa abuse since they will work for half the going wage. It’s not any more complicated than that. I’m 12 YoE and rate of me getting to the HR screening after an application for a position I’m rather qualified for is about 25% versus 50-75% a few years ago. LinkedIn mails from recruiters are vast majority trash pay as a contractor with no benefits. Or employee status at a company I’m willing to work for but it’s 20% less than what I get paid now. I’m super excited to have an interview with everyone on the call being American.
Most companies wrap up their internship recruitment in the late fall/ early winter. Your buddy might just be too late trying to find one for this summer. Their career resource office might be able to help with co-ops if they are willing to take time off during the school year to work
If you look at older posts 6+ years ago. You'd see that people could get internships just by showing off their 2 week shitty cli project from their intro course, basic understanding of sdlc, and resume formatted by a middle schooler. The concept of hyperoptimizing a resume and sending out 100s of apps was foreign.
Basically capitalism is brutal and FED policy has wrecked what was one of the few places an average person could still earn a good salary.
so, basically CS is not an average people's job anymore
It was a place where someone with decent intelligence and grit could get an above average salary. Now you have to be in AI or find a new industry.
i think fields in CS like ML/AI as you said and data science are still good for the future, programming too but not with a huge level of jobs or salaries but ofc, more competition = more hard work and grinding
Would you rather rampant inflation, even worse like what hit Europe? It's kind of a hard situation after covid with the inflation that spread around the world. The US has done well on that front relative to other countries. Sucks for new jobs availability though.
It wasnt this hard before but relatively not THAT simple either. The 2021 covid zero rates market was a bit... "too easy" as in it was not intended and not normal for it to be that easy. So you have mass layoffs + everyone looking for jobs who are also new to the field with not as many job postings or creation of new SWE jobs. So technically the answer is always that it's a supply and demand issue since that's just the natural law of scarcity but what is causing this limited demand and absurd supply are factors like we are having a tech/ overall white collar recession. Tech is getting hit extra hard and supply wise it right now is one of the most popular fields still (including globally with offshoring to Europe, South Asia and Latin America being more and more viable) even though the job creation isn't the same as it was mid pandemic. It's still a numbers game but aside from blindly applying you friend should continue to work on personal projects (good projects that has potential to have some success and not just a youtube tutorial of some whatever clone) and show those projects off in career fairs from local / smaller companies. Look at the most common tech stacks for the job postings in your city and tell him to make a project utilizing that stack. Another tip is to literally look for anything tech related and dev adjacent, not specifically SWE. Then IF the market gets better try to make a pivot.
one thing I'd like to point out is: we're both in Brazil, so I think we can both beneficiate from the offshoring jobs through remote work in the future, right now I'm trying to get into a uni and get a swe degree, with plans of moving to the US after reaching "senior level experience", which I think is 8 yoe. and talking more about my friend, he's a **REALLY** hardworking student, always deep in touch with every single aspect of computers since he loves to study but ofc he feels anxious about the market as well, I hope his merit get rewarded also, I wonder how things are gonna be in the CS market until the next decade, I really hope it finds its equilibrium until 2030, I wouldn't mind having to work on site if I get to break into 200k/y salaries in the future in hcol states.
Why? Because the current market is bad.
i interview interns at my company, a very small tech consultantcy (50-60 employees). we used to get maybe 50 applicants, in 2022 we had about 150, in 2023 we had 300+ applicants, and since we went 100% remote this year we had 500+ applicants. competition is super high right now so employers can be really choosey. if i see the generic CS resume with only school projects (basic apps in C, Java, python, little to no UI experience, etc) and no external projects making use of modern frameworks then i wont move that candidate on to the next round. an example specific to my company: we are currently swamped with a ton of work and since ill be the one training and prepping interns for real world client experience i just dont have the time to do a lot hand holding so if a candidate can hit the ground running because they already have experience with react and/or NextJS then im interested in talking to and working with that candidate. this is where bootcampers are able to show their value.
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It was hard before, now it's very hard, but soon it will be extremely hard. Key is to get on the monkey floor as soon as possible.
Back in 2020 it was harder for me to find an internship than a job. (Never found an internship) I almost landed one made it to the final round but someone beat me with actual work experience while I was in school… wild. Not sure now though
Entry level and internships have always been a challenge for obviously reason low skill level low communication level and little to no network. Bad markets like these make things much much worse
I couldn't get an internship back in 2008-2012. Everything worked out fine for me, eventually. It was always very hard to get one if you weren't in a known school or had connections. And it was basically impossible to get a paid one without nepotism, lol.
I got a job instead of an internship when applying just at the end of COVID19. I must've applied for atleast 100 internships and got no callbacks, so I just started job hunting instead