Resources and Tips for Landing a Job/Internship
Hey SoS!
It’s been a while since Summer and I hope you are all doing great!
Many of you are currently looking to secure an internship or full-time offer for later this year.
Big congrats to those who have already secured a gig - but just a heads up, this post is for those who are still looking. (And if you’ve already got something lined up, don’t forget to pay it forward and help those around you! The spirit of SoS is about NOT doing things alone, and that depends upon those who have “figured it out” to make ourselves highly available)
Getting My First Job
Back in 2014, I graduated without a job and spent the summer hoping to land something. I wrote about that process on my old wordpress website. It took me 126 days after graduating, but thankfully, 2014 was a good year for software engineering. All I needed was a bit of luck and a lot of belief in myself :
2020 was brutal, but 2021 is looking much better for us all.
In 2020, AirBnb had to cancel internships and take on an emergency funding round. Now, they’ve had a smashing debut in the public markets and are doing very well by all accounts.
To help you guys out, here are a couple resources that might be useful:
Litebulb
If you’re looking to land an internship, give Litebulb a look. Their mission is to help students land internships, and make sure they’re properly trained when they get on the job.
Here’s a blurb about Litebulb from their founder, Gary:
Hey everyone! Litebulb is an exclusive network of talented students and new grads looking for software engineering internships across North America. As a member, we refer you and automatically get you to the final round of interviews with our partner companies. One month prior to your start date, we take you through a customized, real-life training program configured by your manager and specifically designed to help you maximize your impact on the job. If you’re interested in applying, please sign up on litebulb.io/interns. We’re looking forward to seeing you join Litebulb!
Entrance to the Litebulb network is granted upon completion of a two-step process:
A coding test
A small project
The project is very similar in scope to the small projects we tried shipping this summer, so if you didn’t ship last summer, this is another way to get your “ship”!
If you’re anything like me, you might have trepidation about doing a coding test, but I encourage you to ignore the risk of failure. In this case, the downside is a slightly bruised ego. The upside is great!
Helping out With Litebulb
And if you already have an internship/job, but are interested in helping Litebulb grow (another way to give back!), then reach out to Gary directly (also a good way to practice those cold email skills): gary@litebulb.io
Make sure to mention that you heard about Litebulb from SoS and pitch him on how you might be able to help.
As a rule of thumb, if you make it easy for people to understand what value you can add, you increase your chance of joining the team.
Hiring Without Whiteboards
Leetcode questions can be intimidating. And preparing for them is basically a full time job. If you feel like you’ve invested a lot into building projects but not enough into Leetcode questions, give this list of companies a look:
Hiring Without Whiteboards - companies that don’t have a broken hiring process. Airtable link for easier viewing
Essentially, most of the companies on this list will use projects as their primary interviewing tool (although some might focus on pair programming/debugging type interviews). While this can be exhausting, this process favors those who have built projects as opposed to preparing for Leetcode.
How to help
If you already have a job, let me know if you’d be interested in helping me curate a list of “new grad” and “intern” opportunities from the list above (by replying to this email). Essentially, we would do this:
Version 1 - 100% Manual - look through companies on the Hiring Without Whiteboards list intern/new grad opportunities. Feel free to add to this spreadsheet
Version 2 - Semi-automated - A web scraper to source jobs that have the words “new grad” or “intern” in them
Version 3 - We’ll reach out to companies to see if they are open to hiring interns/new grads. Basically, present the moral and economic argument for why they should have these programs
Preparing for Leetcode
Now, if your goal is to get a job at a large public company, most likely you’ll need to prepare for Leetcode. This is how the vast majority of those companies interview.
I wrote an article recently as I was brushing up on my own Leetcode skills:
Software Engineering Interview Prep - a list of curated resources (by me) to help you prep
In that post, I have a link the “top 75” Leetcode questions (as determined by some random person on Blind) and a link to useful interview tips (that I found to be extremely accurate).
If the thought of reject is intimidating to you, here are a few lines from Steve Yegge on interviewing at Google: “Get that job at Google”
The thing is, Google has a well-known false negative rate, which means we sometimes turn away qualified people, because that's considered better than sometimes hiring unqualified people. This is actually an industry-wide thing, but the dial gets turned differently at different companies. At Google the false-negative rate is pretty high. I don't know what it is, but I do know a lot of smart, qualified people who've not made it through our interviews. It's a bummer.
But the really important takeaway is this: if you don't get an offer, you may still be qualified to work here. So it needn't be a blow to your ego at all!
As far as anyone I know can tell, false negatives are completely random, and are unrelated to your skills or qualifications
The key is to remember that rejections are fairly random! Don’t let a company rejecting you from affecting your confidence. Everyone gets rejected from somewhere, so don’t worry about it! I’ve been rejected from tons of places.
Conclusion
Recruiting season can be long and tiring. Hopefully some of these resources help.
Looking ahead, I’ll continue to brainstorm solutions that can help people find their footing. First, to get a job, and then to learn skills that will help you flourish.
Stay tuned, and if you find resources that are helpful, do share them with the group! I’ll collect these over time and send them out as an email as time goes on.
Alright, that’s all for now.
❄️🚢 Keep shipping my friends,
Phil