Don't give up it, get's much easier

I graduated from a very average CS program in 2021—just in time for the job market to tank. I sent out 100s of applications and landed only one interview (which ended in rejection). Afterwards, I moved back home, ran through my savings, and got daily lectures from my parents about finding jobs in finance or consulting.

Out of nowhere, I got roped into a startup building a system that automatically generated race videos using trackside cameras. For a year and a half, it showed promise (was able to pay myself a salary of 30k), then fizzled. So I returned to the good old LeetCode grind.

By late 2022, I had zero interviews from FAANG, but got a few interviews from Fortune 500s and high-frequency trading firms, only to be rejected right before final rounds. Eventually, I scored an offer from a Fortune 500. It was well-paid but painfully bureaucratic, with big offshore teams that introduced a lot of problems.

To keep growing, I started doing hackathons, winning a few big ones from companies like Microsoft, Databricks and Docker. About a year later, I tried FAANG again with no luck. Either the job market started to get better or my hackathon wins started to add up, and eventually recruiters started reaching out. A pretty large startup offered me 50% more base pay plus equity, so I jumped on it. Now, recruiters message me at least twice a month, and I finally feel secure in my CS career.

I never touched a FAANG office, and my degree isn’t from a top 10 school. Offshoring and AI might create big changes in CS (I could write an entire separate post about this), but both are almost useless on large complex codebases. If you are passionate and keep pushing, doors will open. Don’t give up on CS if it is something you truly enjoy.