Being judged on vague standards where there's multiple "correct" way to do things on an open ended problem and not getting any feedback out of it is a horrible system. This new interview style is basically a blackbox where you put stuff in and virtually do not know if anything good comes out unlike leetcode where you at least know if you did things right because you'd pass the test cases and were judged based on whether you can coherently explain stuff like runtime.

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Is Deep Backend Knowledge Still Worth It in the AI Era?

I'm a 3rd-year CS student exploring AI/ML deeply. I've built backend projects before, but honestly, I mostly focused on making things work without deeply understanding how backend systems work under the hood.

Since AI/ML is booming right now, am I wasting my time going deep into backend along focusing on AI/ML projects? How valuable is strong backend knowledge for internships and placements in today's AI-driven industry??

Rn I'm following Sriniously's Backend from First Principles playlist to strengthen my fundamentals. So thought to take some povs.

A bit of context: I'm 3rd year PhD in CS. I had a few years training for competitive programming but I never made it. The problems seem to be unintuitive to me and I was never able to solve hard problems in either training period or Leetcode.

Always thought Leetcode is just a way for them to gatekeep a well-paid job.

But now I understand.

My Phd requires me to try to solve problems by synthesizing knowledge from academic papers. And I also had a hard time trying to solve it :) (like solving hard problems in Leetcode).

Recently, I've tried to get back into Leetcode to get internships for PhDs.

And the realization comes to that solving Leetcode problems is a really good proxy to see how a person tries to solve hard problems in life. And the results to come with it requires certain skillsets that can be trained to solve harder problems.

Things I've learned to make progress in Leetcode

1. Problem solving mindset: Leetcode are just problems. Try to solve it in many ways you can. It doesn't have to be intuitive. If I read something that can be able to solve the problem, then try it!

2. One problem at a time: Focus on reading solutions and techniques that can help you solve the one I'm doing. If I can't solve it today. I try it again tomorrow. Deep focus on solving one type of problem makes me memorize the pattern and the solution better. Finish what I started is important.

3. Solve in progression: Each hard problem requires a series of small problems that require thoughts and problem solving tweaks to solve it. Leetcode these days breakdown hard problems into easier ones. For example: This easy one is a good stepping stone to help I know the basis nature of the problem. Then when I solve this one, just one or two more ideas or tweaks to make it work for the Medium level. Slowly my skill can start breaking a hard problem down to easier ones and solve each of them.

Just some of my thoughts on my journey through recruiting hell. It's both suffering and joyful. So I try to make the bright side of it more enjoyable.

Been applying to loads of internships, have gotten some nice interviews but failed them all, interviews like: Scale AI final round, DoorDash Final round, Uber, Shopify, and Squarepoint Capital. And it feels like im running out of time for getting that internship for summer, feels like I'm missing out on a lot of nice oppurtunities and it doesn't help now that we are in October. And not going to give up but its very discouraging and I don't know what to do about it.

New grad Canada.
Extremely-Low GPA. Very mediocre projects. Codeforces: Candidate Master
Was really humbling experience. Baruch Hashem

havent seen a single rejection after interview for SWE Intern 2027 role and everyone's saying its survival bias. did anyone get rejected by google after interview for SWE intern 2027? ik it'd be depressing so no need to share ur story just tell it you have.

did i miss it or is databricks yet to release their 2027 swe new grad role

my resume passed for stripe and other top companies is there a reason why databricks swe internship autorejects me (i appleid for winter and summer and the day after got an email saying rejected)

is meta releasing swe new grad this year or are they on a hiring freeze?

As title said - I was lucky enough to pass the interviews, but seems like the real work begins now.

What could be tactics to increase my chance of receiving a match? I've got a good resume, and an offer from a different company I could leverage. Can anyone recommend from their experience regarding filling the questionnaire and what to do next?

Is anyone else’s application link just broken? I can’t even find the apply button

hey all

about to do the OA for roblox’s product management internship. i’m a finance major with a minor in cs, wanted to see if the engineers had any advice on practicing for the OA. i’ve been doing the cats game a little bit, but haven’t started with coding cookies (lowk scared)

any tips appreciated <3

I had a recruiter call for a Shopify SWE role this morning. I haven't heard back yet.
For those who recently went through the Shopify SWE process, how long did it take to hear back after the recruiter call? Did anyone hear back a few days later and still move forward?

Would love to hear your experiences!

Edit: This is for the SWE role in Canada, really appreciate any advices based on your experience :)

Hey guys, I have a technical interview (first round) coming up for the Cloud Developer Intern Position at IBM. Does anyone know what to expect from this? Has anyone interviewed for this position recently or in previous years? Would really appreciate any insight, thank you!

Context: Finished stripe team screen with 3/3 and 20 mins remaining. Then now I’m getting a recruiter screen? Is this normal?

Hi, has anyone done the Jane Street phone interview this year or in the past? If anyone has any advice, please let me know, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks

I'd like to know your guys' thoughts on my recent Google interview I just had. Software Developer Engineer Intern Summer 2027 US.

Round 1:
Graph DFS question:

• went pretty well
• optimal time and space
  • came up with solution pretty quickly
• asked clarifying questions
• explained solution before coding
• did dry runs
• they liked my solution
• talked about shared interests for like 20 mins

Round 2:

Tree question:

• optimal time, bad space
  • i had O(N) --> but they said it could be O(1)
  • came up with solution pretty quickly
• asked clarifying questions
• explained less optimal solution before coding
• did dry runs
• could not come up with the optimal solution in time

Hi All - I have an onsite for SpaceX in Hawthorne coming up. I am interviewing for Starship vehicle software. Does anybody know the types of questions they will ask?

I feel reasonably confident about the presentation but am more worried about the one-on-one questions - are they similar to the technical screen?

There are so many people going to the career fair that instead of actually having conversations with recruiters, the most optimal thing you can do is just scan as many QR codes as you can. The recruiters obviously don't take any conversation you have into mind because they probably have 50 of them a day. Thats the reason why they have QR codes in the first place.

I genuinely think that the most optimal thing to do at a career fair is to not talk to any recruiters and scan all the QR codes you find.

Has anyone given the OA for the Emerging Talent Program Solutions Architect role at AWS? Is it LeetCode or something else? And what is the interview process like?

i got an "interview" from a company. they said theyll schedule one, but never did and its been 3 days. do i lose hope...
i rly want this job

Hey so I am a freshman CS major and a while back I took my frist every midterm test big one for my cs class. Studied really hard and completely bombed it. Now I have 6 days left for my next cs midterm any tips. Like how to review topics and stuff?