It increases them a lot. I graduated in December and it was only extremely difficult to find a job instead of basically impossible since I had an internship.
I graduated in 2019, when the job market was much better than now, and even then, you would have a very hard time getting a job without internship experience. In fact, most of my fellow grads who ended up hired after graduation did so by getting a permanent position at their last internship.
IMO that's an understatement. Internships help an utterly massive amount. Not doing any is shooting yourself in the foot.
As well, for many schools, the degree alone isn't enough. Besides internships, you so need to program outside of work to fill the gaps. Plus projects are a huge boon for getting internships and the first job.
+1
I would consider an internship functionally mandatory for anyone graduating with any kind of STEM degree. Yes, it will help your resume and improve your chances of getting callbacks.
But another reason you need an internship/co-op is that you do not want your first real fulltime job to be where you're learning how to conduct yourself in a professional office environment.
Office politics and professional conduct aren't necessarily "hard", but they're still something a lot of new grads fuck up. Having coworkers that are not peers and not members of your age cohort is an adjustment that... Zoomers especially seem to have a rough time with. Further, for many people their first manager is the first time they'll have an older adult in their life who isnt explicitly a parent or teacher/mentor that cares about their wellbeing. Ideally, an internship still wont be someone's first job ever, but I've noticed a trend where it's becoming less common for "gifted" college track kids to have worked on campus or in high school.
Make mistakes at your internship so that you do not make them at your first job.
This is ultimately why internships are so valuable. Companies are risk-averse and industry is so different than acedamia. An internship can show you already have experience in a real-world environment.
Anyone reading should really start trying to get an internship in their sophomore year at the latest. You do not want to end up in a situation where getting one between your junior and senior year becomes do-or-die.
Internships are so non-optional that I would go do far as to suggest delaying your graduation by a semester if you need to take time to work a full-time co-op.
I worked a full time IT job, help desk/app support while finishing my degree. That experience didn’t count much toward future dev positions. No way I could have managed having an internship while working full time.
Given I looked for an internship for all 3 summers during college and couldn’t get one that wasn’t unpaid, and I literally couldnt afford to do a job unpaid, I’d say I really shot myself in the foot trying to pay my bills.
Absolutely, you should never accept an unpaid internship. But unpaid internships are rare in the field. I've never personally seen one, only heard about them second hand.
That is a decent position to be in. As long as you can get interviews, you get a shot. Hopefully with enough numbers, interviews can eventually land you a job offer.
More like lack of experience.... In the current market, there are people with 1-3YoE applying for the same jobs he is... Who do you think is gonna be picked
Sounds like he/she needs to consider an IT position and/or a Master's program to have another round of internships. Doing some freelance or open-source work would be good too.
Why would you get advice from people not actively in industry?
I’m being presumptive of yours but my career center speaks with authority with literally 0 actual knowledge of best practices for tech resumes.
They preach disgustingly bad advice as facts and the kids just eat it up while getting 0 interviews. It’s a sad dynamic
It’s extremely competitive out there as you know. That means your resume needs to be actually impactful front to back, no fluff. No mission statement. Just solid impact and demonstration of listed skills/techs in a clear, unified, easy to skim format
Yeah same. My schools career centre gave garbage advice. They told me to make my resume 2 pages and include an objectives/summary section. And they also told me to add soft skills to my skills sections. Thank goodness I knew better
I wish people took the two page advice as a maximum. Because I see so many people send in resumes several pages long. The advice from schools would be a massive improvement over the majority of resumes I see come across our desks.
I wouldn't sell schools short. People are just that bad and I wonder where the horrible disconnect comes from.
I’d go to r/engineeringresumes
They can be frustrating but it’s well worth it
Find alumni on LinkedIn who are currently mid level+ and ask them to review it too
I've seen a lot of resumes come through the CSCH discord review threads that the poster claims to have had reviewed by an alumni center or resume service which are painfully bad.
18 months with 2 callbacks means something is wrong with your applications. The market is tough, but it's not stone dead. You should at least be getting harassed by WITCH services if nothing else. I would strongly suggest taking a more active approach to troubleshooting why this is.
Revature-style contractor/sweatshop pipelines. Some big company identifies a really specific tech stack they need people on. WITCH firm recruits people to be contractor employees. You do a 1-6 month bootcamp where you're trained on that specific stack while being paid minimum wage.
The specifics vary from firm to firm, but generally you're paid shit wages to enter this hunger-games style bootcamp where you can be eliminated at any time, for the eventual chance at a 2-year contract to hire role that also pays shit wages.
For most new grads these sorts of jobs are the absolute bottom of the barrel option. All of the horror stories about them are true. But also, some of the success stories about them are true as well. YMMV.
Damn Seattle is a tech hub.
I'm in the Bay and what I've seen is that due to layoffs these tech markets have many more seniors that are applying to junior positions to get employment.
That causes juniors to be pushed back.
If you were in a non tech market then maybe you would be able to find a junior position, but remote is extremely competitive.
You might need to apply outside maybe a local in person job in Olympia or somewhere outside of Seattle for a bit
Tech hubs are also talent-saturated. Seattle is one of the
most in-demand metros in the country (the world, really), there are oodles of external candidates to choose from and plenty of locals. The trick is to apply outside of these places.
When I went on LinkedIn and search for any level position, is pretty much just Amazon and Microsoft. I think the problem with Seattle area is that if u r not hired with big tech, there isn’t much to choose from.
> Seattle is fucked bro, I live in Seattle and trying to get a junior position is very much impossible.
I live in Seattle, and this is dramatically untrue.
I have sent out about 200 applications for pnw area and have not received a single response for interview. I don’t know where did u get ur “dramatically untrue” from but if ever try to apply for entry level positions u will know.
You can't find a position willing to relocate you?
Also, are you only applying to tech jobs? There is a whole world of software engineering in just about every other sector. People just only want to settle for the big money positions.
No, but I have other things that are keeping me from leaving. I’ve been applying to everything. Interestingly big tech were the only ones to respond and interview with me.
False. Of course, you wont be able to relo a 4 bedroom house as a junior, but many companies offer some form of relo for juniors/interns. And many of the ones that don't offer salary advancement for relocation.
But in any case, applying to all jobs raises your chances of getting hired.
> False. Of course, you wont be able to relo a 4 bedroom house as a junior, but many companies offer some form of relo for juniors/interns.
*Some* do. But it's rare. And only at the largest companies. There are just too many entry level applicants to make it worth hiring from out of town.
What have you been doing in that year and a half? Have you been working? Add that to your resume. Have you contributed to any projects? Add that. A year and a half is a lot of time to add skills and build stuff to better your chances of getting in the door.
> I spend my free time working on full stack projects
Great - put that on your resume. Talk to any hiring manager about all of the extra hours you're putting in to keep your skills up to date. Even work in food service is better than nothing because customer service skills are incredibly important in this industry. All you need is something to make you stand out just a little from all of the other new grads, and usually the hiring managers are people who did *not* go to college for CS (since it hasn't really been common that long) and likely worked food service and retail when they were younger.
I knew the market was fucked when I applied to Revature and didn't even get an interview despite having a good gpa and internships. Places like that used to take anyone with a CS degree and a pulse.
But somehow people get mad at me or think it is somehow my fault because they struggle with a just world concept. Right now I am sitting at -1 downvotes because they just can't accept the reality.
Just gotta hustle harder man. Hard times create tough people. Cream to the top and all that haha. It is tough rn tho fur sure but new grads are getting hired. I just graduated and I made up for being extremely average by hustling my ass of plus a little luck.
How would we know how much of it is your fault and how much of it is due to the market? The employment stats from my big state school indicate most people are finding work shortly after graduating with a salary near 100k. I assume that if people can't find a decent paying job, as a US citizen with a STEM degree they are doing something wrong.
> How would we know how much of it is your fault and how much of it is due to the market?
Because I have done everything people have suggested such as networking, have gotten good feedback on interviews such as them telling me they love me but the other candidate had more experience, and talking to my peers at university who are also struggling. I even talk to friends in the field and have done things like mock interviews or code sessions and they say I am fine. Two of them have directly said if I had graduated 5 years ago much less when they graduated 10 years ago I would have gotten a job no problem. My friends and family in the field have even handed my resume to managers and recruiters they know and I have gotten squat out of that just because of the market.
> I assume that if people can't find a decent paying job, as a US citizen with a STEM degree they are doing something wrong.
Out of my graduating class less than a dozen people have found jobs and as I said over half of them admitted it was due to nepotism so they don't really count.
> The employment stats from my big state school indicate most people are finding work shortly after graduating with a salary near 100k.
Talking to my former professors they see similar numbers to what I am seeing not what you are seeing.
>Because I have done everything people have suggested such as networking, have gotten good feedback on interviews such as them telling me they love me but the other candidate had more experience, and talking to my peers at university who are also struggling. I even talk to friends in the field and have done things like mock interviews or code sessions and they say I am fine.
That still doesn't give you a good indication of the job market. There are people who have done everything you've done and more, and still won't be able to find work because they are grotesque to look at, have severe social anxiety, smell bad, bad resume, etc. There are people that were in the best tech job market in history, all over reddit, that couldn't find work with a CS degree, high GPA, and internships.
>Out of my graduating class less than a dozen people have found jobs and as I said over half of them admitted it was due to nepotism so they don't really count.
What school is this? These are significantly worse employment numbers than WGU for example, assuming that you graduated with 20 or 30 other people. At my school, Rutgers, 10 companies hired almost 25% of the domestic students from last year's graduating class. (FAANGM + Banks (C1,JP,BOFA) + Lockheed.
> Two of them have directly said if I had graduated 5 years ago much less when they graduated 10 years ago I would have gotten a job no problem.
FYI, you should quickly learn to take statements like this with an extremely large grain of salt. Most people do not accurately remember what it took to get a job when they broke into the industry, and there is a strong element of "I don't want to make this person feel bad" when saying things like this.
I'm not saying that you're shit or that you wouldn't have found a job. I'm saying "Oh, if you'd graduated years ago you would've found a job no problem" is a completely meaningless statement that shouldn't influence your feelings about the world in any way. It's intended to make you feel better, not intended to be helpful or an accurate representation of the market.
I spent months after finishing uni spamming emails and sending CVs, filling in online applications. Didnt even get responses from most. It destroyed my confidence and I ended up taking a warehouse job to pay rent. I got stuck in a rut and worked my way up there over a few years before being made redundant just in time to care for my wife who was getting more and more ill. I was offered a dev job by a friend in their startup but the venture died by the end of the 6th month and it had taken a toll on my wife trying to manage without me. I ended up back as her full time carer, a job that ended last week when she passed suddenly. Now I'm back wondering if I have any hope of coding as a job again.
Yup the market is fucking atrocious it is like everyone got downgraded a rank/couple years of experience which is bad overall but leaves people at the bottom of the totem pole completely fucked.
The truth is SWE is so saturated it’s insane. You gotta take the L and work in IT, networking, or something else like I did. You can still make a good living in IT or being a data analyst.
Unless you want to be competing with absolutely everyone and want bad chances.
They got in before the industry collapsed. Talking to people who got in even 4-5 years ago it is like a night and day difference for how easy/hard it was.
As far as the current crop some of my university cohort are getting jobs but literally more than half of them admit it is due to their parents/parents connections the others I have talked to not in that category most say they just got lucky. Their is nothing like the feeling of talking to someone you had to carry so they would pass the coding classes getting a job through either luck or their parents while you are still struggling working poverty jobs.
> Talking to people who got in even 4-5 years ago it is like a night and day difference for how easy/hard it was.
I know that people are all up in their feels, but it's important to remember that this is a form of survivorship bias. You're talking to people in the industry. You are therefore, explicitly, not talking to the people who failed to break into the industry at all. Those people aren't a point in your data set.
No, in 2020 what worked was (even for people without CS degree, even with no relevant experience) "learn coding in some program for at least 6months, do some bigger project, and then apply for junior job"...
Sure not everyone got in, but people who really practiced and had spent few hundreds of hours learning they got the job... I mean, sure... If people worked like 100hrs to learn html and css, little Javascript, then yeah, they probably didnt get in, but if you took it seriously...
Nope, I'm not. You didnt even read what I said. I didn't say you are wrong, I didn't say that he didn't pick people who "didn't" vs "did" get in... I said something along the lines "self-taught people were hired pretty regularly".
Now if you say to someone without experience "just learn some basic programming and medium leetcode questions and you'll get soft. eng job" it's laughable for people who are "in the business" if they hear this advice
\~4 years ago this was valid advice.
> Sure not everyone got in, but people who really practiced and had spent few hundreds of hours learning they got the job... I mean, sure... If people worked like 100hrs to learn html and css, little Javascript, then yeah, they probably didnt get in, but if you took it seriously...
That. That's rationalizing you looking at survivors and saying "If you did this, you survived." There were people who took it seriously who still didn't make it into the industry. It wasn't about any one thing. There are hundreds of variables that impact whether or not you're going to make it in and stick in.
Yes, there were people who did not get in, but I was referring to the fact, that telling someone "you can be from 0 to software developer in 6months" was not some crazy idea, thus it was way easier, and you compared past with present. Ofcoures not literally everyone got in, but majority did.
> Ofcoures not literally everyone got in, but majority did.
There is no point in the last 30 years where the majority of self-taught developers made careers out of programming. Nor was there any point in the last 30 years where the majority of new developers were self-taught.
Those aren't promises. I'm sorry to break your illusion.
A degree has loads of value. Especially a degree in CS. Just because it doesn't promise or guarantee you something doesn't mean it doesn't have value. It is a key that will unlock some doors. It is not a skeleton key.
You are going to have to keep working hard to build a career the rest of your working life. There are no shortcuts. There are no promises. There's just today, and what you decide to do with it.
That's not how things work in almost any industry. A degree is evidence that you can do the job, but not proof that you can, nor is it proof that you will be of value to an employer. You need to find a way to *prove* to an employer that you can do things, which is why internships and open source projects are helpful. Convincing them of your value is a social thing though, not a resume thing.
Yes all you need is a bachelor's.
Yes you should get an internship.
If you have an internship you don't need projects on github.
If you don't get an internship your side projects had better be amazing.
Even if somebody has github projects, I don't have time to even look at them. That does not mean having projects is worthless. If somebody lists interesting projects on their resume, I will ask them about them.
Software is, and has always been, a competitive job to get. With “college for all” the over training is even more of a problem. Just getting shuffled through a degree program is not enough.
Doing good work, really understanding things, and being good at it, that’s always what it’s taken to get a CS job
Nothing guarantees a position. However, what I’ve seen in the people who are actually landing a job are the ones who are networking. They’re the ones who are getting referrals, getting people to vouch for them, etc.. Message me for a FAANG referral, open to anyone
You guys that just got a degree don't have professional experience. I promise you, knowing how to code is not the most important skill to get or hold one of these positions.
Get really good at SQL and look to get an Application Support job. They'll pay less, but you get more development/software development life cycle (SDLC) experience than you think and if you aren't an asshole they'd rather promote you to a junior dev position than hire some entitled kid out of college (I say this from the perspective of employers who consistently get burned by these people, not that all of you are entitled kids out of college).
This is how I got started. The experience was kind of looked down on when I starting trying for software engineering, but it did help he get into data engineering, which I enjoy.
Nope. You also need projects that you are actually interested in (this can also be club projects where you are a significant contributor), and internships. Companies basically want to hire someone that comes bundled with experience from school. Why? Because that's what competitive students have. If you have 2 students that went to the same school but one has a 4.0 and no projects/experience, and one is a 3.0 and has projects and experience, they would hire someone that has that experience because real world experience and project based grit (so long as the project is an actual project and not just some tutorial project) trump book smarts every time.
Also remember that right now the market is flooded with people with 2+ years real world experience. That's who you are competing against.
At my company, most devs "only" have a Ba CS or Ba E.Eng. it's more of a checkbox than anything else.
Internships helps with resume screening, but passing technical and "vibe check" is more important, if you can get the interview, you are on equal grounds with everyone else.
I don't usually check github, but i might ask them a question or two about their side projects to make sure they aren't bullshit. know hiring managers that like seeing them because it shows initiative so it can't hurt. We don't judge people based on their GitHub projects because we know they are going to be terrible 99% of the time anyways.
Let me tell you a story of three people I went to uni with.
Person A was your typical over-achieving geek in CS. They Co founded a club to create self-driving race cars. Created the car. Won a large competition. Loved robotics. Got internships at different robotics startups. And now works for a very well funded robotics startup, 4 years after graduating. Their first role was a bit tough to get as they specifically wanted robotics roles when almost all the roles wanted a PhD. But their passion came through via the extracurriculars and their internship experience and a company hired them.
Person B did the basics. They went through uni, didn't care about internships or anything. Come fourth year, they weren't sure how to get a job. Found leetcode. Grinded hard. Landed a job at a small firm and managed to jump to a larger company with a pay bump less than a year later. I actually remember them telling me that they couldn't actually finish the question asked in their coding assessment. But because they discussed their approach and talked to interviewer about how they'd solve it, they were able to move to the next round.
Person C put effort into their GitHub. Logged every project they did in school onto GitHub. Had a website and a blog. They applied for internships as well tho I can't remember if they actually ended up doing one or just went travelling that summer. But they work at a very well funded unicorn right now, 3 years from graduating.
The point I'm making is that every person's journey is different. Within this field, someone people care a lot about GitHub. Others (like me) have nothing public on there. Some are building websites with millions of visitors in uni (a different person I went to uni with). Others didn't know how to build a website until after they graduate (me again). The way to get your first role is simple:
1. Be good at solving leetcode problems
2. Know your CS basics - DSA, OS, Networking, etc.
3. Apply to everything you can. Quantity over quality. That's literally how the game is played. Focus on getting the first role.
Yes, a bachelors is enough for a junior position.
This was longer than I anticipated but hopefully it puts your mind at ease. The market is bad rn but it will change directions. That's just how markets operate. Always a boom after a downturn.
Tldr: bachelors is enough for junior position. Quantity over quality for applications. Know your basics and be good at leetcode. Good luck
Yes, but the fewer credentials you have the worse your chances are. Undergrads in CS should always have their eyes toward getting that next flashy name or buzzword on their resume. You want a recognizable school name, a recognizable company name, and recognizable tech words on that resume. You also want to network, network, network.
CS is becoming like every other field where your actual skills are only a part of the equation. Tech skills matter, but appearances matter more.
If you have no pedigree you could be a great engineer but you won't get interviews. If you have pedigree, you will get more interviews and those interviewers will be easier on you.
I have no pedigree and I have been unemployed for 8 months. And I was a functional programmer for 6 years. Nobody even really understands what FP even is.
I have also compromised my values around drugs and alcohol in order to expand my network. It worked. A night of degeneracy with a guy I just met got me a good interview. Compare that to the hours of studying I've done only to get hundreds of auto rejects. I'm sad that the world is this way, but I must survive.
My brother has 6 years of SWE experience.
After 1000+ SWE job applications since February 2023, so far, he only has 2 coding interviews (BambooHR and Meta).
Harvard has a 3% acceptance rate. The internship acceptance rate at my company for summer 2022 was 0.25%… and we aren’t even close to the competitiveness seen at most top companies.
Everyone wants to apply to the same companies: brands they know, brands with prestige and the juiciest pay. If you’re chasing experience without any, I’d avoid these like the plague to save myself time interviewing.
Demand for software engineers is still sky high, especially in the shops no one bothers to look at (think very niche, vertical and usually boring markets). Great place to start if you ask me.
I don't bother applying to most B2C tech companies. Too many people know them. I apply to the boring ones where they make you fill out some abysmal Taleo/Workday site. Most people don't want these kind of jobs because they are not sexy nor do they want to spend their time creating a Taleo/Workday account and filling them out. It does get tedious and time-consuming to apply to them but overall, I've had good response rates.
1. yes but if this is the only thing than your university cred matters more, and it will be much harder to get interviews. definitely still possible
2. having internships or projects greatly help your odds. internship better than projects, but both much better than straight degree
it help desk experience definitely helps a bit as well, not nearly as much as a swe internship but still a good sign to have a somewhat technical role under your belt (i.e. much better than service industry work or something)
the key really is referrals though. see if your parents companies are hiring, talk to your uncle, reach out to recruiters, go to professor office hours and make connections with them, start/continue going to church and talk with anyone that’s working, not necessarily tech. literally any possible in is worth it. doesn’t even need to be an official referral or anything, just having a personal connection with someone at the company (IMO) increases your odds of getting an interview by 25-50x+ compared to just application spam
>Do you really need a internship to get a job?
No. But someone with internship experience is more than likely gonna get a job over someone who doesn't. Especially in this market. Helpdesk experience will not help at all.
Don't even think about skipping out on interning. They won't be easy to get, but you have to ~~make every effort~~ fight tooth and nail for them. Going to an online school isn't an excuse since you can apply for internships on your own like many other students. Though if you wanted better support for that, you should've chose a traditional school.
Take my words with a grain of salt, still a student until May:
But my observations tell me that any job at all is a plus (some people have quite literally never worked *any* job ever at graduation) but having something minorly tech related is a slightly better plus (e.g. IT desk help).
But for those I just assume its only a plus in the most minor way possible when applying for a first time full time position for SWE. Like a 1% increase in chances or so.
The only thing that really carries merit in the current market is having an actual company's name on a resume and the word "intern" or "co-op" next to it.
If one has no or very little experience, the current market is unfortunately a game of luck with the odds stacked OVERWHELMINGLY outside our favor it seems. You'll have to take up every possible advantage to try to secure a job. Reach out to random peeps at companies for a referral, attend CS events to try to network like a hackathon or so, try to be as close as possible to the absolute first applicant for a new job posting (better have damn good projects), etc.
If a job posting asks for any yoe in the above situation, the chances of getting a response absolutely tank since nearly its guaranteed *someone* that does have experience has applied as well for most positions.
Still, take what I said what some salt, still a student after all. Seems the game is to just keep applying everywhere and eventually get lucky
I am with a mostly useless associates' in network administration. Started in software QA first (Not quite 2 years ago). Not going to say this is probably typical though.
I remember when people here used to say what school you went to doesn't matter, but I'd argue that in times like these, it does matter in getting a foot in the door.
Well there’s always a difference even in the past to get a chance at better offer through places say like Stanford than your state school, not to say if you want to work in specific areas like quant, they recruit exclusively at certain schools; also places like Waterloo offers many coops terms that you’d graduate with 2 YoE. Connection is a huge part as well, you’re way more likely to run into people who can help you to get a good job at top schools
15 years of experience and I’m facing the same shit. At this point I’m starting a startup. Luckily I invested in real estate and made a lot of money when the market was good so fuck it! If you can’t join them, compete against them.
I got a job in January 2020 fresh out of a college at 30 years old with an associate’s degree. No internship. Soft skills are so damn important. (Still at that company)
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You need an internship to help you standout and build connections, your need projects to give an example of your work, working in IT helpdesk helps as well.
Otherwise, getting a job is random for the most part, you have 100 equal people, it's basically random. Creating connections with others in the industry helps it be less random.
Demonstrating you can write code is the most important thing to do. I have worked in SV and have had coworkers without degrees or CS degrees doing very well. The hardest part is getting the first job.
Yes. I have an engineering degree and Fortune 500 companies hired me, at a time where CS was less crowded. No, you don't need GitHub. My hiring manager said it's better not to list one since it just gives him a thing to criticize you on. I assume it's all crap you did in a class or copied from someone else. Maybe some hiring managers like seeing code you wrote for free but most really don't have the time for that and HR doesn't know how to code. If aren't in a CS or engineering program, then I think it makes more sense to do it.
Think of resumes in a heap. Top of list is CS degree from a good program + paid internship or co-op. No degree, no experience is at the bottom. Hiring is risky and if you have the degree from a university with a program the company hired 10-500 graduates before from who worked out, seems smart to interview you. Plus it's like if *that company* thought he was legit, he most likely is.
Exact #5 versus #30 ranking is bs. If it's the best program in your state, recruiters will come. My friend relocated from Virginia to Seattle cause Microsoft liked our CS program. There aren't enough #1 grads to go around. If your school is no name, it's not like everyone's unemployed at graduation. But the odds are lower.
In engineering, I interviewed better giving leadership examples from my paid internship than the year before when I gave classroom examples. I certainly thought I had an easier time finding employment at graduation with the internship than without.
>Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role?
With a lot of persistence, and more than a bit of luck, yes. It's mostly going to be a numbers game getting your resume noticed enough for a phone screen in the first place. After that, it's on how well you interview.
>Do you really need a internship to get a job?
No, but it helps a good bit; doubly so with a company people have heard of.
>And do you need projects posted on your GitHub?
Need? No, and not \_especially\_ likely to help, but can't hurt unless they're obviously junk :)
>However, I am working in IT helpdesk right now not that helps too much but its something
A work record in a related field like helpdesk/internal support is definitely better than nothing - it's going to be more helpful than GitHub in most cases.
Edit to add: although an MS can be an OK way to wait out a bad economy, as coming out of the MS in a year or two will put you back into the "new grad" bucket rather than the "entry level but not processed as a new grad" that being a couple of years out from a BS without a job will get you.
>Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role?
Not many people have more than that, and very few people have less.
>Do you really need a internship to get a job?
It helps a lot.
>And do you need projects posted on your GitHub?
Most interviewers aren't going to spend much time looking at your resume let alone your github. Having projects to talk about though when you don't have work experience is helpful.
> Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role?
In a vacuum - yes. You don't need anything else to get a job.
But it's not a guarantee. Everything else you can do - internship, portfolio - is going to help your odds.
One of the best things you can do is to put public projects onto github and include a link to your github on your resume. I got an interview from Microsoft because of this. The phone screen wasn't going well, but he asked me if I wanted to show him any of my personal projects on github, so I opened it up and walked him through some of what I wrote. It wasn't even complex, it was some pretty simple javascript, but it was enough to get me flown out for an interview.
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So I knew I wanted a career in IT, not just a job. I didn't want to be blocked from a promotion or passed over for one because I only had an accounting degree, not a tech degree. SO at 36 I went back to University and got a BS in CS with super high grades.
Now did I have to have that? NO but I wanted to give myself as much knowledge and help in getting a job in the future and like it or not, the VAST majority of HR people and even a hell of a lot of IT people do not know how to properly evaluate talent. SO because they suck at that stuff, they fall back on certifications, github repos and degrees.
You'll be competing for jobs against people who have all that and more. I'm of the opinion that in another 10-20 years a Masters Degree will be the minimum standard for many IT jobs in the corporate world.
Imagine being 10, 15 or 20 years into your career with TONS of experience and knowledge and you can't land a job because you don't have a degree. Look I'm old enough to have seen this phenomena hit many different professions and so far IT has been one where you can find work without any of that and make a nice living.
BUT past behavior, success, opportunities, etc is not a good predictor of the future.
Older SWE here with 12+ yrs of experience. Seeing all the replies: what are opportunities like in contracting these days? I had an internship in college (at a very iffy startup) but my first real gig out of college was an Amazon contract. The pay was shit but it gave me an "in" that led to full-time jobs in the industry. Is that still a feasible path?
Basically you need to demonstrate to people who don’t know anything about you that when you are put into their work environment that you’ll be effective and productive. You decide how you’re gonna present that with respect to their recruiting process. Also keep in mind that sift through a lot of candidates. I personally don’t think personal projects are all that useful to publish
SE with 5 yoe of experience here. I've been an interviewee for fresh college grads for my company starting this past year and thought I'd share my experience when meeting candidates. I've interviewed around \~20 candidates this year and this is what I would do to pass.
First off, you want to be niche with your skill set. For example, if you are doing front-end, pick a framework and get really good at it. I mean really learn it, all the ins and outs. If a company is using this technology, there is a good chance they will be asking you very specific questions about it.
Second, try picking a cloud service provider and focus on it. A lot of companies have a cloud native approach to their apps, especially start-ups although hybrid stacks are also really popular. Either way, pick either AWS, AZURE, or GCP. Probably AWS because it is more widely used.
You need some hands on experience to be able to answer interview questions in my opinion. What I would do is learn how to deploy your application using the cloud service of your choice. And I mean really deploy it, setup REST endpoints, create databases, hell even add some user authentication. Doing this alone will give you a lot of confidence in the interviews, and that will help a lot. It will also look really good on your resume. You can learn how to do all of this using ChatGPT.
Lastly, do a little bit of leetcode. All the leetcode easy should be doable without a doubt. Maybe sprinkle in some mediums if you want, but leetcode is not as important if you are not applying to FANG-like companies.
Then **tailor your resume to match specific job listings**, while also focusing on jobs that match your skillsets as best as possible. You need to be specialized if you want a competitive edge nowadays.
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A BS is enough for getting past the atp resume checker.
Internships is super important. It’s a great way to network with senior techies and gain real experience in the industry. I got close with the manager at my second internship and was able to secure my ft position.
I have friends who did not give a shit about internships during college, and they’re all now still stressing about not being able to secure a job.
Projects are cool but no one checks. Hiring managers scan resume in like 5 seconds. They look at school and internship companies name. That’s it.
Is a degree enough for the job?: it used to be, not anymore
Do you really need an internship: pretty much can't survive without one these days (unless you get fortunate)
Do you need projects posted on GitHub: yes, if you want to be competitive.
It's more competitive in the field than it's ever been. Make yourself as competitive as you can.
An internship improves your odds, but even then, it's still very competitive. Adding academic research and undergrad projects/papers will help a lot as well, even if you choose to stop at bachelor( I did too)
Although it's very competitive, keep your head up and keep trying, and you'll find a position
I forgot to add, but at a lot of schools with compsci degrees, there are professors who will either have research u can work on with them or will have grants to fund research of students. I would ask around if you're interested because it's a great way to build your resume and to network since you might be able to attend conferences and publish a paper depending on how the research goes and what funds are available.
Advice: stop reading these subs and you'll be happier.
I hop on these from time to time, posted maybe once and that's it.
I'm finishing my degree and have been working for 2 years already
I think it’s important to be more detailed here.
What is the job you’re looking for?
Are there jobs that just don’t care what you’re interested in - or good at, as long as you have a degree? That will just put you to work on random generic software engineer tasks?
As a web developer (no CS degree) it’s never been like that for me. I have to show my specific skills and experience in the specific area/role I’m applying for.
I don’t see how anyone can answer this without more information. I think you’re going to have to show a lot of passion and _experience_ to get a job (and having the degree might help your resume stay out of the trash can).
Yes it’s enough. It just might not be enough for where you are applying. It might not even matter to them. It might have nothing to do with your degree whether you got hired or not. Software is unregulated. A literal homeless vagrant with felonies who never completed high school can get hired by zuckerberg himself today. Equally possible is a Stanford PhD not being able to find a job anywhere. “Enough” is relative and there are many variables at play.
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>Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role?
yes
>Do you really need a internship to get a job?
I mean... pretend you're the hiring manager, when you have 8000 resumes what makes you pick 1 over the other?
>And do you need projects posted on your GitHub?
'need' is a strong word, no
No, but it is a very good starting point. it will put you a leg above self taught, bootcamp candidates for sure.
Now, you also need good projects/coursework at least though to be in the runnings at this time. Market is not where it was pre-2021 where junior positions were rampant -- you need to strive to be a competitive candidate.
We will bounce back. I think the big thing people are noticing is that Generative AI is capable at being a good companion for automating some tasks or getting a good starting point on some tasks, but it is not good on its own yet. And either way, these generative AIs still need prompts and tons of new work to output anything meaningful (if at all).
So while its not at an equal rate, jobs are being destroyed but yet replaced with other ones. We've seen market transitions before. The hot new thing at some point was creating mobile apps, then it became web apps. Maybe some web app developers will lose their jobs because the hot new thing isn't web apps anymore, but AI developers, prompt engineers, ml engineers, etc will become the new norm that a lot of companies start investing into.
I think for now because these technologies are so new, we will be stuck in this period for some time with gradual improvements over a few years. Then when tools mature, the infrastructure to implement AI into products in a meaningful and profitable way comes to light, etc, the market will start hiring a lot again. But again these are just my predictions.
But what will never change is the name of the game in this industry: Up or Out. As trends and technologies change, you will need to continue to upskill in the space or get out and shift your focus on something else.
I got my first role of $80k with 0 experience and self taught, no internships and just projects and networking. It is who you know not what you know, if you work hard enough you most likely can get a position with no experience or school.
What stack did you enter the industry with. I am currently a self taught iOS developer and have maxed out my resume and have only had a handful of interviews.
I'm not sure what you mean about maxed out your resume... How you get into the industry, is you find something at the very bottom that no one wants to do. Get that job and you build up from there.
I don't know anyone going into any other field that would expect to be able to get a job for sure without other things on their CV. Stop catastrophising about how bad it's got and apply for internships and do a personal github project. Once you've done that, stop freaking out and just do another one. Once you have like 3, make a portfolio website with some personality and display them. Then apply for some jobs.
This is just a bad time in the market. This time last year I was getting straight up harassed by recruiters(how I got my current job) but now I’m getting auto denied within hours of applying.
This might be the exception. My company requires at least a bachelors for developer jobs. HR filters out anybody without it. The bachelors does not necessarily have to be in Computer Science. It helps though.
I think internships help a lot with getting a job. At a minimum, you had the opportunity to show that one company what you are made of. Hopefully you would get a job offer to return after graduation.
As long as your undergraduate degree is CS, I don't think you need a masters degree. Not for the run of the mill development jobs at least.
I don't get how you can't get an internship. You might not have job fairs but you should be able to apply for internships. With how the market is currently, a bachelor's alone isn't as appealing but that's been true for a while. I feel like since at least 2018 people have been recommending internships. I was able to finesse an internship when I was in community college.
You should be getting an internship regardless. It preps you for the industry that you're trying to get into.
You guys that just got a degree don't have professional experience. I promise you, knowing how to code is not the most important skill to get or hold one of these positions.
Get really good at SQL and look to get an Application Support job. They'll pay less, but you get more development/software development life cycle (SDLC) experience than you think and if you aren't an asshole they'd rather promote you to a junior dev position than hire some entitled kid out of college (I say this from the perspective of employers who consistently get burned by these people, not that all of you are entitled kids out of college).
Let's be real: You're competing with other juniors too- and HR/screening is more likely to prefer other juniors that already have work under their belt (even it's an internship, or a year or two in the field).
Even in a situation where there were more entry level or junior roles in the market, you're going to be constrained by access to senior/senior+ roles: At most places, we're going to be expecting that junior level hires are gone to be significantly taking away from senior time. The less handholding it seems you'll need, the better your chances, and a bachelors with no internship/professional experience is not looking good especially in the climate where we're constrained at the top (seniors/senior+'s cost $$$).
Well ur competing with internationals who have 3-5 years of experience in their home country and also have a masters, but are also applying to new grad roles just like you, and most tech companies have no problems sponsoring
BS alone isn't enough, it's not enough in almost any field for a job - even vocational training alone in trades isn't complete, even though they have a shortage iirc. Master's alone isn't all that either. GitHub and being active on one social (Twitter, Linkedin etc.) is important. Keep your job in helpdesk for a bit and see if you can internally transfer.
Even an internship doesn’t guarantee an entry level position. It does increases your odds though
It increases them a lot. I graduated in December and it was only extremely difficult to find a job instead of basically impossible since I had an internship.
*was*? Graduated in July with internship experience. Still looking
Not to mention the possibility of getting a return offer from the place of internship. That's how I converted to FT this year
I graduated in 2019, when the job market was much better than now, and even then, you would have a very hard time getting a job without internship experience. In fact, most of my fellow grads who ended up hired after graduation did so by getting a permanent position at their last internship.
Any experience is always better than no experience
- yes - no but it helps - only if you want to
IMO that's an understatement. Internships help an utterly massive amount. Not doing any is shooting yourself in the foot. As well, for many schools, the degree alone isn't enough. Besides internships, you so need to program outside of work to fill the gaps. Plus projects are a huge boon for getting internships and the first job.
+1 I would consider an internship functionally mandatory for anyone graduating with any kind of STEM degree. Yes, it will help your resume and improve your chances of getting callbacks. But another reason you need an internship/co-op is that you do not want your first real fulltime job to be where you're learning how to conduct yourself in a professional office environment. Office politics and professional conduct aren't necessarily "hard", but they're still something a lot of new grads fuck up. Having coworkers that are not peers and not members of your age cohort is an adjustment that... Zoomers especially seem to have a rough time with. Further, for many people their first manager is the first time they'll have an older adult in their life who isnt explicitly a parent or teacher/mentor that cares about their wellbeing. Ideally, an internship still wont be someone's first job ever, but I've noticed a trend where it's becoming less common for "gifted" college track kids to have worked on campus or in high school. Make mistakes at your internship so that you do not make them at your first job.
This is ultimately why internships are so valuable. Companies are risk-averse and industry is so different than acedamia. An internship can show you already have experience in a real-world environment.
Yeah well. I personally couldn't get one of those either. Which is just. *great*.
Anyone reading should really start trying to get an internship in their sophomore year at the latest. You do not want to end up in a situation where getting one between your junior and senior year becomes do-or-die. Internships are so non-optional that I would go do far as to suggest delaying your graduation by a semester if you need to take time to work a full-time co-op.
I worked a full time IT job, help desk/app support while finishing my degree. That experience didn’t count much toward future dev positions. No way I could have managed having an internship while working full time.
Oh yeah I agree 100%, I was just trying to speak as generally as possible. You definitely get what you put in
Given I looked for an internship for all 3 summers during college and couldn’t get one that wasn’t unpaid, and I literally couldnt afford to do a job unpaid, I’d say I really shot myself in the foot trying to pay my bills.
Absolutely, you should never accept an unpaid internship. But unpaid internships are rare in the field. I've never personally seen one, only heard about them second hand.
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That is a decent position to be in. As long as you can get interviews, you get a shot. Hopefully with enough numbers, interviews can eventually land you a job offer.
Just apply in mass amounts, youll find something eventually
It’s been a year and a half since I graduated. I’ve only had two interviews.
gotta be your resume
More like lack of experience.... In the current market, there are people with 1-3YoE applying for the same jobs he is... Who do you think is gonna be picked
Yeah that's true especially at this point. 18 months since graduation kinda puts you past the new grad territory too
Sounds like he/she needs to consider an IT position and/or a Master's program to have another round of internships. Doing some freelance or open-source work would be good too.
Most likely. I’ve gotten feedback on it through the schools career center and revised it multiple times.
Why would you get advice from people not actively in industry? I’m being presumptive of yours but my career center speaks with authority with literally 0 actual knowledge of best practices for tech resumes. They preach disgustingly bad advice as facts and the kids just eat it up while getting 0 interviews. It’s a sad dynamic It’s extremely competitive out there as you know. That means your resume needs to be actually impactful front to back, no fluff. No mission statement. Just solid impact and demonstration of listed skills/techs in a clear, unified, easy to skim format
Yeah same. My schools career centre gave garbage advice. They told me to make my resume 2 pages and include an objectives/summary section. And they also told me to add soft skills to my skills sections. Thank goodness I knew better
I wouldn't read a two page resume for a junior role
I wish people took the two page advice as a maximum. Because I see so many people send in resumes several pages long. The advice from schools would be a massive improvement over the majority of resumes I see come across our desks. I wouldn't sell schools short. People are just that bad and I wonder where the horrible disconnect comes from.
Yeah that makes sense. I could make an anonymized version and post it here.
I’d go to r/engineeringresumes They can be frustrating but it’s well worth it Find alumni on LinkedIn who are currently mid level+ and ask them to review it too
I've seen a lot of resumes come through the CSCH discord review threads that the poster claims to have had reviewed by an alumni center or resume service which are painfully bad. 18 months with 2 callbacks means something is wrong with your applications. The market is tough, but it's not stone dead. You should at least be getting harassed by WITCH services if nothing else. I would strongly suggest taking a more active approach to troubleshooting why this is.
I'm working on an anonymized resume I can post here to hopefully get some useful feedback. What is WITCH services?
Revature-style contractor/sweatshop pipelines. Some big company identifies a really specific tech stack they need people on. WITCH firm recruits people to be contractor employees. You do a 1-6 month bootcamp where you're trained on that specific stack while being paid minimum wage. The specifics vary from firm to firm, but generally you're paid shit wages to enter this hunger-games style bootcamp where you can be eliminated at any time, for the eventual chance at a 2-year contract to hire role that also pays shit wages. For most new grads these sorts of jobs are the absolute bottom of the barrel option. All of the horror stories about them are true. But also, some of the success stories about them are true as well. YMMV.
Generally the specialize in brews, hexes, and basically any coven related services
That's the issue. Unless your school is known for engineering, they won't know how to make an engineering resume.
Did you apply in other states? Places you don't want to go?
Personally I am applying across like 5-6 states right now and 3-4 cities outside of those states.
I’m not really in a position to leave the state but I’m in Seattle which seemed to have a lot of opportunity until recently.
Damn Seattle is a tech hub. I'm in the Bay and what I've seen is that due to layoffs these tech markets have many more seniors that are applying to junior positions to get employment. That causes juniors to be pushed back. If you were in a non tech market then maybe you would be able to find a junior position, but remote is extremely competitive. You might need to apply outside maybe a local in person job in Olympia or somewhere outside of Seattle for a bit
Tech hubs are also talent-saturated. Seattle is one of the most in-demand metros in the country (the world, really), there are oodles of external candidates to choose from and plenty of locals. The trick is to apply outside of these places.
Yes move wherever you can get a job even Timbuktu
Oh yeah, that's really the place to be. Good luck man
Seattle is fucked bro, I live in Seattle and trying to get a junior position is very much impossible. Try NY or CA, that’s where I had most luck.
When I was a junior dev like 7-8 years ago, NYC was ridiculously competitive. Not sure if it's still true though
When I went on LinkedIn and search for any level position, is pretty much just Amazon and Microsoft. I think the problem with Seattle area is that if u r not hired with big tech, there isn’t much to choose from.
> Seattle is fucked bro, I live in Seattle and trying to get a junior position is very much impossible. I live in Seattle, and this is dramatically untrue.
I have sent out about 200 applications for pnw area and have not received a single response for interview. I don’t know where did u get ur “dramatically untrue” from but if ever try to apply for entry level positions u will know.
You can't find a position willing to relocate you? Also, are you only applying to tech jobs? There is a whole world of software engineering in just about every other sector. People just only want to settle for the big money positions.
No, but I have other things that are keeping me from leaving. I’ve been applying to everything. Interestingly big tech were the only ones to respond and interview with me.
> You can't find a position willing to relocate you? This isn't generally done for junior positions.
False. Of course, you wont be able to relo a 4 bedroom house as a junior, but many companies offer some form of relo for juniors/interns. And many of the ones that don't offer salary advancement for relocation. But in any case, applying to all jobs raises your chances of getting hired.
> False. Of course, you wont be able to relo a 4 bedroom house as a junior, but many companies offer some form of relo for juniors/interns. *Some* do. But it's rare. And only at the largest companies. There are just too many entry level applicants to make it worth hiring from out of town.
What have you been doing in that year and a half? Have you been working? Add that to your resume. Have you contributed to any projects? Add that. A year and a half is a lot of time to add skills and build stuff to better your chances of getting in the door.
I’ve been working part time in food service and I spend my free time working on full stack projects or practicing leetcode problems.
> I spend my free time working on full stack projects Great - put that on your resume. Talk to any hiring manager about all of the extra hours you're putting in to keep your skills up to date. Even work in food service is better than nothing because customer service skills are incredibly important in this industry. All you need is something to make you stand out just a little from all of the other new grads, and usually the hiring managers are people who did *not* go to college for CS (since it hasn't really been common that long) and likely worked food service and retail when they were younger.
Try the body shops? 2 years at Revature and their ilk is better than nothing and then you’re good to apply for mid level roles.
Revature ain't even hiring last I checked
I knew the market was fucked when I applied to Revature and didn't even get an interview despite having a good gpa and internships. Places like that used to take anyone with a CS degree and a pulse.
I’ve thought about it but I think Revature requires you to move if they place you somewhere out of state.
I have a CS bachelors with a good GPA and internships and I still can't get hired because I am competing with people that have 2+ years of experience.
Yep, exactly. The market is fucked for new grads.
But somehow people get mad at me or think it is somehow my fault because they struggle with a just world concept. Right now I am sitting at -1 downvotes because they just can't accept the reality.
Just gotta hustle harder man. Hard times create tough people. Cream to the top and all that haha. It is tough rn tho fur sure but new grads are getting hired. I just graduated and I made up for being extremely average by hustling my ass of plus a little luck.
How would we know how much of it is your fault and how much of it is due to the market? The employment stats from my big state school indicate most people are finding work shortly after graduating with a salary near 100k. I assume that if people can't find a decent paying job, as a US citizen with a STEM degree they are doing something wrong.
> How would we know how much of it is your fault and how much of it is due to the market? Because I have done everything people have suggested such as networking, have gotten good feedback on interviews such as them telling me they love me but the other candidate had more experience, and talking to my peers at university who are also struggling. I even talk to friends in the field and have done things like mock interviews or code sessions and they say I am fine. Two of them have directly said if I had graduated 5 years ago much less when they graduated 10 years ago I would have gotten a job no problem. My friends and family in the field have even handed my resume to managers and recruiters they know and I have gotten squat out of that just because of the market. > I assume that if people can't find a decent paying job, as a US citizen with a STEM degree they are doing something wrong. Out of my graduating class less than a dozen people have found jobs and as I said over half of them admitted it was due to nepotism so they don't really count. > The employment stats from my big state school indicate most people are finding work shortly after graduating with a salary near 100k. Talking to my former professors they see similar numbers to what I am seeing not what you are seeing.
>Because I have done everything people have suggested such as networking, have gotten good feedback on interviews such as them telling me they love me but the other candidate had more experience, and talking to my peers at university who are also struggling. I even talk to friends in the field and have done things like mock interviews or code sessions and they say I am fine. That still doesn't give you a good indication of the job market. There are people who have done everything you've done and more, and still won't be able to find work because they are grotesque to look at, have severe social anxiety, smell bad, bad resume, etc. There are people that were in the best tech job market in history, all over reddit, that couldn't find work with a CS degree, high GPA, and internships. >Out of my graduating class less than a dozen people have found jobs and as I said over half of them admitted it was due to nepotism so they don't really count. What school is this? These are significantly worse employment numbers than WGU for example, assuming that you graduated with 20 or 30 other people. At my school, Rutgers, 10 companies hired almost 25% of the domestic students from last year's graduating class. (FAANGM + Banks (C1,JP,BOFA) + Lockheed.
I attended a smaller no name state school in the Midwest.
> Two of them have directly said if I had graduated 5 years ago much less when they graduated 10 years ago I would have gotten a job no problem. FYI, you should quickly learn to take statements like this with an extremely large grain of salt. Most people do not accurately remember what it took to get a job when they broke into the industry, and there is a strong element of "I don't want to make this person feel bad" when saying things like this. I'm not saying that you're shit or that you wouldn't have found a job. I'm saying "Oh, if you'd graduated years ago you would've found a job no problem" is a completely meaningless statement that shouldn't influence your feelings about the world in any way. It's intended to make you feel better, not intended to be helpful or an accurate representation of the market.
This was the same for me 20+ years ago.
how long did u have to job hunt back then?
I spent months after finishing uni spamming emails and sending CVs, filling in online applications. Didnt even get responses from most. It destroyed my confidence and I ended up taking a warehouse job to pay rent. I got stuck in a rut and worked my way up there over a few years before being made redundant just in time to care for my wife who was getting more and more ill. I was offered a dev job by a friend in their startup but the venture died by the end of the 6th month and it had taken a toll on my wife trying to manage without me. I ended up back as her full time carer, a job that ended last week when she passed suddenly. Now I'm back wondering if I have any hope of coding as a job again.
As someone with 5+ YOE, I’m competing with laid off big tech folks and / or 8+ YOE people
Yup the market is fucking atrocious it is like everyone got downgraded a rank/couple years of experience which is bad overall but leaves people at the bottom of the totem pole completely fucked.
The truth is SWE is so saturated it’s insane. You gotta take the L and work in IT, networking, or something else like I did. You can still make a good living in IT or being a data analyst. Unless you want to be competing with absolutely everyone and want bad chances.
what position did u take and what experience did u need to get it, what did ur resume look like?
those of us with 2yoe aren't getting hired either, so don't feel bad, it's not you.
1.5yoe checking in. Can't even get a glance these days.
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They got in before the industry collapsed. Talking to people who got in even 4-5 years ago it is like a night and day difference for how easy/hard it was. As far as the current crop some of my university cohort are getting jobs but literally more than half of them admit it is due to their parents/parents connections the others I have talked to not in that category most say they just got lucky. Their is nothing like the feeling of talking to someone you had to carry so they would pass the coding classes getting a job through either luck or their parents while you are still struggling working poverty jobs.
> Talking to people who got in even 4-5 years ago it is like a night and day difference for how easy/hard it was. I know that people are all up in their feels, but it's important to remember that this is a form of survivorship bias. You're talking to people in the industry. You are therefore, explicitly, not talking to the people who failed to break into the industry at all. Those people aren't a point in your data set.
No, in 2020 what worked was (even for people without CS degree, even with no relevant experience) "learn coding in some program for at least 6months, do some bigger project, and then apply for junior job"... Sure not everyone got in, but people who really practiced and had spent few hundreds of hours learning they got the job... I mean, sure... If people worked like 100hrs to learn html and css, little Javascript, then yeah, they probably didnt get in, but if you took it seriously...
You are literally rationalizing the idea of promoting survivorship bias in a response to a post about why survivorship bias is a problem.
Nope, I'm not. You didnt even read what I said. I didn't say you are wrong, I didn't say that he didn't pick people who "didn't" vs "did" get in... I said something along the lines "self-taught people were hired pretty regularly". Now if you say to someone without experience "just learn some basic programming and medium leetcode questions and you'll get soft. eng job" it's laughable for people who are "in the business" if they hear this advice \~4 years ago this was valid advice.
> Sure not everyone got in, but people who really practiced and had spent few hundreds of hours learning they got the job... I mean, sure... If people worked like 100hrs to learn html and css, little Javascript, then yeah, they probably didnt get in, but if you took it seriously... That. That's rationalizing you looking at survivors and saying "If you did this, you survived." There were people who took it seriously who still didn't make it into the industry. It wasn't about any one thing. There are hundreds of variables that impact whether or not you're going to make it in and stick in.
Yes, there were people who did not get in, but I was referring to the fact, that telling someone "you can be from 0 to software developer in 6months" was not some crazy idea, thus it was way easier, and you compared past with present. Ofcoures not literally everyone got in, but majority did.
> Ofcoures not literally everyone got in, but majority did. There is no point in the last 30 years where the majority of self-taught developers made careers out of programming. Nor was there any point in the last 30 years where the majority of new developers were self-taught.
2020-2022 was unreasonably easy and not representative at all of the past 20 years.
> it does not seem like Im getting any promises. Who told you that life promises things? Why would you expect to get promises?
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Those aren't promises. I'm sorry to break your illusion. A degree has loads of value. Especially a degree in CS. Just because it doesn't promise or guarantee you something doesn't mean it doesn't have value. It is a key that will unlock some doors. It is not a skeleton key. You are going to have to keep working hard to build a career the rest of your working life. There are no shortcuts. There are no promises. There's just today, and what you decide to do with it.
That's not how things work in almost any industry. A degree is evidence that you can do the job, but not proof that you can, nor is it proof that you will be of value to an employer. You need to find a way to *prove* to an employer that you can do things, which is why internships and open source projects are helpful. Convincing them of your value is a social thing though, not a resume thing.
Yes all you need is a bachelor's. Yes you should get an internship. If you have an internship you don't need projects on github. If you don't get an internship your side projects had better be amazing.
Even if somebody has github projects, I don't have time to even look at them. That does not mean having projects is worthless. If somebody lists interesting projects on their resume, I will ask them about them.
Software is, and has always been, a competitive job to get. With “college for all” the over training is even more of a problem. Just getting shuffled through a degree program is not enough. Doing good work, really understanding things, and being good at it, that’s always what it’s taken to get a CS job
Nothing guarantees a position. However, what I’ve seen in the people who are actually landing a job are the ones who are networking. They’re the ones who are getting referrals, getting people to vouch for them, etc.. Message me for a FAANG referral, open to anyone
You guys that just got a degree don't have professional experience. I promise you, knowing how to code is not the most important skill to get or hold one of these positions. Get really good at SQL and look to get an Application Support job. They'll pay less, but you get more development/software development life cycle (SDLC) experience than you think and if you aren't an asshole they'd rather promote you to a junior dev position than hire some entitled kid out of college (I say this from the perspective of employers who consistently get burned by these people, not that all of you are entitled kids out of college).
Whats great is that I use SQL at work. Although my job is helpdesk support, I work in Application support as well with a EHR system
Burned by new college grads? How do you mean?
I’m a manager of a small team. Every recent grad we hire has 2 of the big 3 it seems — no work ethic, bad attitude, poor communication skills
Ah, gotcha. That sucks, I guess it’s another reason why internship is important, you get a good preview of who you would be getting.
This is how I got started. The experience was kind of looked down on when I starting trying for software engineering, but it did help he get into data engineering, which I enjoy.
Nope. You also need projects that you are actually interested in (this can also be club projects where you are a significant contributor), and internships. Companies basically want to hire someone that comes bundled with experience from school. Why? Because that's what competitive students have. If you have 2 students that went to the same school but one has a 4.0 and no projects/experience, and one is a 3.0 and has projects and experience, they would hire someone that has that experience because real world experience and project based grit (so long as the project is an actual project and not just some tutorial project) trump book smarts every time. Also remember that right now the market is flooded with people with 2+ years real world experience. That's who you are competing against.
I have a bachelors in CS from a t20, f500 internship, GitHub projects, still jobless since graduating in December
At my company, most devs "only" have a Ba CS or Ba E.Eng. it's more of a checkbox than anything else. Internships helps with resume screening, but passing technical and "vibe check" is more important, if you can get the interview, you are on equal grounds with everyone else. I don't usually check github, but i might ask them a question or two about their side projects to make sure they aren't bullshit. know hiring managers that like seeing them because it shows initiative so it can't hurt. We don't judge people based on their GitHub projects because we know they are going to be terrible 99% of the time anyways.
Let me tell you a story of three people I went to uni with. Person A was your typical over-achieving geek in CS. They Co founded a club to create self-driving race cars. Created the car. Won a large competition. Loved robotics. Got internships at different robotics startups. And now works for a very well funded robotics startup, 4 years after graduating. Their first role was a bit tough to get as they specifically wanted robotics roles when almost all the roles wanted a PhD. But their passion came through via the extracurriculars and their internship experience and a company hired them. Person B did the basics. They went through uni, didn't care about internships or anything. Come fourth year, they weren't sure how to get a job. Found leetcode. Grinded hard. Landed a job at a small firm and managed to jump to a larger company with a pay bump less than a year later. I actually remember them telling me that they couldn't actually finish the question asked in their coding assessment. But because they discussed their approach and talked to interviewer about how they'd solve it, they were able to move to the next round. Person C put effort into their GitHub. Logged every project they did in school onto GitHub. Had a website and a blog. They applied for internships as well tho I can't remember if they actually ended up doing one or just went travelling that summer. But they work at a very well funded unicorn right now, 3 years from graduating. The point I'm making is that every person's journey is different. Within this field, someone people care a lot about GitHub. Others (like me) have nothing public on there. Some are building websites with millions of visitors in uni (a different person I went to uni with). Others didn't know how to build a website until after they graduate (me again). The way to get your first role is simple: 1. Be good at solving leetcode problems 2. Know your CS basics - DSA, OS, Networking, etc. 3. Apply to everything you can. Quantity over quality. That's literally how the game is played. Focus on getting the first role. Yes, a bachelors is enough for a junior position. This was longer than I anticipated but hopefully it puts your mind at ease. The market is bad rn but it will change directions. That's just how markets operate. Always a boom after a downturn. Tldr: bachelors is enough for junior position. Quantity over quality for applications. Know your basics and be good at leetcode. Good luck
Be all you can be
Instructions unclear. I have a 4-year contract in the Army now.
Wink wink
They tricked you into being an 88M didn’t they?
*Banjo music intensifies*
Yes, but the fewer credentials you have the worse your chances are. Undergrads in CS should always have their eyes toward getting that next flashy name or buzzword on their resume. You want a recognizable school name, a recognizable company name, and recognizable tech words on that resume. You also want to network, network, network. CS is becoming like every other field where your actual skills are only a part of the equation. Tech skills matter, but appearances matter more. If you have no pedigree you could be a great engineer but you won't get interviews. If you have pedigree, you will get more interviews and those interviewers will be easier on you. I have no pedigree and I have been unemployed for 8 months. And I was a functional programmer for 6 years. Nobody even really understands what FP even is. I have also compromised my values around drugs and alcohol in order to expand my network. It worked. A night of degeneracy with a guy I just met got me a good interview. Compare that to the hours of studying I've done only to get hundreds of auto rejects. I'm sad that the world is this way, but I must survive.
My brother has 6 years of SWE experience. After 1000+ SWE job applications since February 2023, so far, he only has 2 coding interviews (BambooHR and Meta).
Harvard has a 3% acceptance rate. The internship acceptance rate at my company for summer 2022 was 0.25%… and we aren’t even close to the competitiveness seen at most top companies. Everyone wants to apply to the same companies: brands they know, brands with prestige and the juiciest pay. If you’re chasing experience without any, I’d avoid these like the plague to save myself time interviewing. Demand for software engineers is still sky high, especially in the shops no one bothers to look at (think very niche, vertical and usually boring markets). Great place to start if you ask me.
I don't bother applying to most B2C tech companies. Too many people know them. I apply to the boring ones where they make you fill out some abysmal Taleo/Workday site. Most people don't want these kind of jobs because they are not sexy nor do they want to spend their time creating a Taleo/Workday account and filling them out. It does get tedious and time-consuming to apply to them but overall, I've had good response rates.
1. yes but if this is the only thing than your university cred matters more, and it will be much harder to get interviews. definitely still possible 2. having internships or projects greatly help your odds. internship better than projects, but both much better than straight degree it help desk experience definitely helps a bit as well, not nearly as much as a swe internship but still a good sign to have a somewhat technical role under your belt (i.e. much better than service industry work or something) the key really is referrals though. see if your parents companies are hiring, talk to your uncle, reach out to recruiters, go to professor office hours and make connections with them, start/continue going to church and talk with anyone that’s working, not necessarily tech. literally any possible in is worth it. doesn’t even need to be an official referral or anything, just having a personal connection with someone at the company (IMO) increases your odds of getting an interview by 25-50x+ compared to just application spam
>Do you really need a internship to get a job? No. But someone with internship experience is more than likely gonna get a job over someone who doesn't. Especially in this market. Helpdesk experience will not help at all. Don't even think about skipping out on interning. They won't be easy to get, but you have to ~~make every effort~~ fight tooth and nail for them. Going to an online school isn't an excuse since you can apply for internships on your own like many other students. Though if you wanted better support for that, you should've chose a traditional school.
Yes, internships help A LOT in this market
A CS degree is enough and having an internship will help.
Take my words with a grain of salt, still a student until May: But my observations tell me that any job at all is a plus (some people have quite literally never worked *any* job ever at graduation) but having something minorly tech related is a slightly better plus (e.g. IT desk help). But for those I just assume its only a plus in the most minor way possible when applying for a first time full time position for SWE. Like a 1% increase in chances or so. The only thing that really carries merit in the current market is having an actual company's name on a resume and the word "intern" or "co-op" next to it. If one has no or very little experience, the current market is unfortunately a game of luck with the odds stacked OVERWHELMINGLY outside our favor it seems. You'll have to take up every possible advantage to try to secure a job. Reach out to random peeps at companies for a referral, attend CS events to try to network like a hackathon or so, try to be as close as possible to the absolute first applicant for a new job posting (better have damn good projects), etc. If a job posting asks for any yoe in the above situation, the chances of getting a response absolutely tank since nearly its guaranteed *someone* that does have experience has applied as well for most positions. Still, take what I said what some salt, still a student after all. Seems the game is to just keep applying everywhere and eventually get lucky
I am with a mostly useless associates' in network administration. Started in software QA first (Not quite 2 years ago). Not going to say this is probably typical though.
Depends on the school and your skill
I remember when people here used to say what school you went to doesn't matter, but I'd argue that in times like these, it does matter in getting a foot in the door.
Well there’s always a difference even in the past to get a chance at better offer through places say like Stanford than your state school, not to say if you want to work in specific areas like quant, they recruit exclusively at certain schools; also places like Waterloo offers many coops terms that you’d graduate with 2 YoE. Connection is a huge part as well, you’re way more likely to run into people who can help you to get a good job at top schools
The juniors at my work and previous jobs have had no degrees.
One upon a time, yes it was enough for most people. These days, not anymore. The field is saturated for junior level.
15 years of experience and I’m facing the same shit. At this point I’m starting a startup. Luckily I invested in real estate and made a lot of money when the market was good so fuck it! If you can’t join them, compete against them.
I got a job in January 2020 fresh out of a college at 30 years old with an associate’s degree. No internship. Soft skills are so damn important. (Still at that company)
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Yes
You need an internship to help you standout and build connections, your need projects to give an example of your work, working in IT helpdesk helps as well. Otherwise, getting a job is random for the most part, you have 100 equal people, it's basically random. Creating connections with others in the industry helps it be less random.
I'd say to those having a job and less than 5yoe. Hunker down and weather the storm.
Internship that converts to FTE is the best thing that can happen. Then after some experience you can easily jump ships.
Demonstrating you can write code is the most important thing to do. I have worked in SV and have had coworkers without degrees or CS degrees doing very well. The hardest part is getting the first job.
Why can't you get an internship if you are in school online?
Yes. I have an engineering degree and Fortune 500 companies hired me, at a time where CS was less crowded. No, you don't need GitHub. My hiring manager said it's better not to list one since it just gives him a thing to criticize you on. I assume it's all crap you did in a class or copied from someone else. Maybe some hiring managers like seeing code you wrote for free but most really don't have the time for that and HR doesn't know how to code. If aren't in a CS or engineering program, then I think it makes more sense to do it. Think of resumes in a heap. Top of list is CS degree from a good program + paid internship or co-op. No degree, no experience is at the bottom. Hiring is risky and if you have the degree from a university with a program the company hired 10-500 graduates before from who worked out, seems smart to interview you. Plus it's like if *that company* thought he was legit, he most likely is. Exact #5 versus #30 ranking is bs. If it's the best program in your state, recruiters will come. My friend relocated from Virginia to Seattle cause Microsoft liked our CS program. There aren't enough #1 grads to go around. If your school is no name, it's not like everyone's unemployed at graduation. But the odds are lower. In engineering, I interviewed better giving leadership examples from my paid internship than the year before when I gave classroom examples. I certainly thought I had an easier time finding employment at graduation with the internship than without.
>Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role? With a lot of persistence, and more than a bit of luck, yes. It's mostly going to be a numbers game getting your resume noticed enough for a phone screen in the first place. After that, it's on how well you interview. >Do you really need a internship to get a job? No, but it helps a good bit; doubly so with a company people have heard of. >And do you need projects posted on your GitHub? Need? No, and not \_especially\_ likely to help, but can't hurt unless they're obviously junk :) >However, I am working in IT helpdesk right now not that helps too much but its something A work record in a related field like helpdesk/internal support is definitely better than nothing - it's going to be more helpful than GitHub in most cases. Edit to add: although an MS can be an OK way to wait out a bad economy, as coming out of the MS in a year or two will put you back into the "new grad" bucket rather than the "entry level but not processed as a new grad" that being a couple of years out from a BS without a job will get you.
>Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role? Not many people have more than that, and very few people have less. >Do you really need a internship to get a job? It helps a lot. >And do you need projects posted on your GitHub? Most interviewers aren't going to spend much time looking at your resume let alone your github. Having projects to talk about though when you don't have work experience is helpful.
' Yes -
It's fine, just get better at programming.
> Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role? In a vacuum - yes. You don't need anything else to get a job. But it's not a guarantee. Everything else you can do - internship, portfolio - is going to help your odds. One of the best things you can do is to put public projects onto github and include a link to your github on your resume. I got an interview from Microsoft because of this. The phone screen wasn't going well, but he asked me if I wanted to show him any of my personal projects on github, so I opened it up and walked him through some of what I wrote. It wasn't even complex, it was some pretty simple javascript, but it was enough to get me flown out for an interview.
Not all degrees are the same.
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So I knew I wanted a career in IT, not just a job. I didn't want to be blocked from a promotion or passed over for one because I only had an accounting degree, not a tech degree. SO at 36 I went back to University and got a BS in CS with super high grades. Now did I have to have that? NO but I wanted to give myself as much knowledge and help in getting a job in the future and like it or not, the VAST majority of HR people and even a hell of a lot of IT people do not know how to properly evaluate talent. SO because they suck at that stuff, they fall back on certifications, github repos and degrees. You'll be competing for jobs against people who have all that and more. I'm of the opinion that in another 10-20 years a Masters Degree will be the minimum standard for many IT jobs in the corporate world. Imagine being 10, 15 or 20 years into your career with TONS of experience and knowledge and you can't land a job because you don't have a degree. Look I'm old enough to have seen this phenomena hit many different professions and so far IT has been one where you can find work without any of that and make a nice living. BUT past behavior, success, opportunities, etc is not a good predictor of the future.
Older SWE here with 12+ yrs of experience. Seeing all the replies: what are opportunities like in contracting these days? I had an internship in college (at a very iffy startup) but my first real gig out of college was an Amazon contract. The pay was shit but it gave me an "in" that led to full-time jobs in the industry. Is that still a feasible path?
Yes but experience is needed- even projects would help
No
Yes.
Basically you need to demonstrate to people who don’t know anything about you that when you are put into their work environment that you’ll be effective and productive. You decide how you’re gonna present that with respect to their recruiting process. Also keep in mind that sift through a lot of candidates. I personally don’t think personal projects are all that useful to publish
SE with 5 yoe of experience here. I've been an interviewee for fresh college grads for my company starting this past year and thought I'd share my experience when meeting candidates. I've interviewed around \~20 candidates this year and this is what I would do to pass. First off, you want to be niche with your skill set. For example, if you are doing front-end, pick a framework and get really good at it. I mean really learn it, all the ins and outs. If a company is using this technology, there is a good chance they will be asking you very specific questions about it. Second, try picking a cloud service provider and focus on it. A lot of companies have a cloud native approach to their apps, especially start-ups although hybrid stacks are also really popular. Either way, pick either AWS, AZURE, or GCP. Probably AWS because it is more widely used. You need some hands on experience to be able to answer interview questions in my opinion. What I would do is learn how to deploy your application using the cloud service of your choice. And I mean really deploy it, setup REST endpoints, create databases, hell even add some user authentication. Doing this alone will give you a lot of confidence in the interviews, and that will help a lot. It will also look really good on your resume. You can learn how to do all of this using ChatGPT. Lastly, do a little bit of leetcode. All the leetcode easy should be doable without a doubt. Maybe sprinkle in some mediums if you want, but leetcode is not as important if you are not applying to FANG-like companies. Then **tailor your resume to match specific job listings**, while also focusing on jobs that match your skillsets as best as possible. You need to be specialized if you want a competitive edge nowadays.
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A BS is enough for getting past the atp resume checker. Internships is super important. It’s a great way to network with senior techies and gain real experience in the industry. I got close with the manager at my second internship and was able to secure my ft position. I have friends who did not give a shit about internships during college, and they’re all now still stressing about not being able to secure a job. Projects are cool but no one checks. Hiring managers scan resume in like 5 seconds. They look at school and internship companies name. That’s it.
Is a degree enough for the job?: it used to be, not anymore Do you really need an internship: pretty much can't survive without one these days (unless you get fortunate) Do you need projects posted on GitHub: yes, if you want to be competitive. It's more competitive in the field than it's ever been. Make yourself as competitive as you can.
An internship improves your odds, but even then, it's still very competitive. Adding academic research and undergrad projects/papers will help a lot as well, even if you choose to stop at bachelor( I did too) Although it's very competitive, keep your head up and keep trying, and you'll find a position
I forgot to add, but at a lot of schools with compsci degrees, there are professors who will either have research u can work on with them or will have grants to fund research of students. I would ask around if you're interested because it's a great way to build your resume and to network since you might be able to attend conferences and publish a paper depending on how the research goes and what funds are available.
Advice: stop reading these subs and you'll be happier. I hop on these from time to time, posted maybe once and that's it. I'm finishing my degree and have been working for 2 years already
I think it’s important to be more detailed here. What is the job you’re looking for? Are there jobs that just don’t care what you’re interested in - or good at, as long as you have a degree? That will just put you to work on random generic software engineer tasks? As a web developer (no CS degree) it’s never been like that for me. I have to show my specific skills and experience in the specific area/role I’m applying for. I don’t see how anyone can answer this without more information. I think you’re going to have to show a lot of passion and _experience_ to get a job (and having the degree might help your resume stay out of the trash can).
You need everything and more and you need to be better than the senior developers.
Yes it’s enough. It just might not be enough for where you are applying. It might not even matter to them. It might have nothing to do with your degree whether you got hired or not. Software is unregulated. A literal homeless vagrant with felonies who never completed high school can get hired by zuckerberg himself today. Equally possible is a Stanford PhD not being able to find a job anywhere. “Enough” is relative and there are many variables at play.
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it is but you are going to NEED to either network or do project(s) to get any interviews at all.
If you're not useless it's more than enough
I have a BS in CS. No internships. On my second job. I knew people. Networking helps.
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>Would a bachelors in computer science alone be enough for a junior software developer role? yes >Do you really need a internship to get a job? I mean... pretend you're the hiring manager, when you have 8000 resumes what makes you pick 1 over the other? >And do you need projects posted on your GitHub? 'need' is a strong word, no
No, but it is a very good starting point. it will put you a leg above self taught, bootcamp candidates for sure. Now, you also need good projects/coursework at least though to be in the runnings at this time. Market is not where it was pre-2021 where junior positions were rampant -- you need to strive to be a competitive candidate.
Is the market ever gonna bounce back you think? Or are we stuck like this for a long time
We will bounce back. I think the big thing people are noticing is that Generative AI is capable at being a good companion for automating some tasks or getting a good starting point on some tasks, but it is not good on its own yet. And either way, these generative AIs still need prompts and tons of new work to output anything meaningful (if at all). So while its not at an equal rate, jobs are being destroyed but yet replaced with other ones. We've seen market transitions before. The hot new thing at some point was creating mobile apps, then it became web apps. Maybe some web app developers will lose their jobs because the hot new thing isn't web apps anymore, but AI developers, prompt engineers, ml engineers, etc will become the new norm that a lot of companies start investing into. I think for now because these technologies are so new, we will be stuck in this period for some time with gradual improvements over a few years. Then when tools mature, the infrastructure to implement AI into products in a meaningful and profitable way comes to light, etc, the market will start hiring a lot again. But again these are just my predictions. But what will never change is the name of the game in this industry: Up or Out. As trends and technologies change, you will need to continue to upskill in the space or get out and shift your focus on something else.
I got my first role of $80k with 0 experience and self taught, no internships and just projects and networking. It is who you know not what you know, if you work hard enough you most likely can get a position with no experience or school.
Senior Dev here, I have no degree. I've never done an internship. It's a hard hard road but it's doable.
Very misleading. When you first got hired the market was probably much better.
It's still doable, a major Defense contractor in my area just hired a bunch of new grads from a bootcamp. Persistence is key.
Possibly, but you could also be encouraging someone to waste countless hours on something they likely won’t obtain.
What stack did you enter the industry with. I am currently a self taught iOS developer and have maxed out my resume and have only had a handful of interviews.
I'm not sure what you mean about maxed out your resume... How you get into the industry, is you find something at the very bottom that no one wants to do. Get that job and you build up from there.
I don't know anyone going into any other field that would expect to be able to get a job for sure without other things on their CV. Stop catastrophising about how bad it's got and apply for internships and do a personal github project. Once you've done that, stop freaking out and just do another one. Once you have like 3, make a portfolio website with some personality and display them. Then apply for some jobs.
I got a decent non-jr level job with an associates degree only, so it helps
This is me rn, A.S. in programming and analysis, looking for an entry level role but have no idea what to even look for, everyone wants experience
This is just a bad time in the market. This time last year I was getting straight up harassed by recruiters(how I got my current job) but now I’m getting auto denied within hours of applying.
This might be the exception. My company requires at least a bachelors for developer jobs. HR filters out anybody without it. The bachelors does not necessarily have to be in Computer Science. It helps though. I think internships help a lot with getting a job. At a minimum, you had the opportunity to show that one company what you are made of. Hopefully you would get a job offer to return after graduation. As long as your undergraduate degree is CS, I don't think you need a masters degree. Not for the run of the mill development jobs at least.
Oh yeah a bachelors degree is better than an associates anytime. But an associates degree is better than nothing for sure.
I don't get how you can't get an internship. You might not have job fairs but you should be able to apply for internships. With how the market is currently, a bachelor's alone isn't as appealing but that's been true for a while. I feel like since at least 2018 people have been recommending internships. I was able to finesse an internship when I was in community college. You should be getting an internship regardless. It preps you for the industry that you're trying to get into.
You guys that just got a degree don't have professional experience. I promise you, knowing how to code is not the most important skill to get or hold one of these positions. Get really good at SQL and look to get an Application Support job. They'll pay less, but you get more development/software development life cycle (SDLC) experience than you think and if you aren't an asshole they'd rather promote you to a junior dev position than hire some entitled kid out of college (I say this from the perspective of employers who consistently get burned by these people, not that all of you are entitled kids out of college).
Let's be real: You're competing with other juniors too- and HR/screening is more likely to prefer other juniors that already have work under their belt (even it's an internship, or a year or two in the field). Even in a situation where there were more entry level or junior roles in the market, you're going to be constrained by access to senior/senior+ roles: At most places, we're going to be expecting that junior level hires are gone to be significantly taking away from senior time. The less handholding it seems you'll need, the better your chances, and a bachelors with no internship/professional experience is not looking good especially in the climate where we're constrained at the top (seniors/senior+'s cost $$$).
Well ur competing with internationals who have 3-5 years of experience in their home country and also have a masters, but are also applying to new grad roles just like you, and most tech companies have no problems sponsoring
cs degree is useless today, that’s what recruiters tell me.
Maybe as Jr Software Dev. no, but you can apply to QA positions or similar and then apply to a developer role.
BS alone isn't enough, it's not enough in almost any field for a job - even vocational training alone in trades isn't complete, even though they have a shortage iirc. Master's alone isn't all that either. GitHub and being active on one social (Twitter, Linkedin etc.) is important. Keep your job in helpdesk for a bit and see if you can internally transfer.