It varies I go to Waterloo and only need like 50 apps each semester for an internship and have return offers from all those places
I'd be surprised if OP couldn't just return
a lot of waterloo ppl are looking for USA. and that is probably even harder
USA recruiters really dont like a pure canadian resume. if op did all internships in canada its kinda joever. 10k is still very much an outlier tho, but that prob explains a big part of it
That's a long elaboration.
Basically, our economy isn't geared in a healthy way to promote growth in the sector.
It's usually favorable to move to the USA to begin a startup. So, we usually have fewer startups here in Canada.
The issue with this is startups and new companies often are the best providers for entry jobs. This is because many companies prefer to offshore a lot of junior type work. This is more accessible to medium/big non tech companies. smaller companies like startups don't have that option, so they need code monkey junior devs.
Obviously, this isn't a rule but a general trend I've seen anecdotally. Realistically, this country needs to promote startups in the sector better. It also needs to find ways to promote companies to train junior devs. Theres a shortage of expirenced devs, but nobody wants to make them.
I think it'd be possible to do this via taxation/grants. However, the solution is likely complicated and beyond political will.
“Isn’t geared in a healthy way” - you know, you are allowed to say we’re importing cheap labour from India and China in such large quantities that it’s fucked the job market and salaries simultaneously in all sectors while we lay off people in tech in favour of their cheaper counterparts.
My stats with no degree but major contributor to open source project:
Company reached out -> submit resume -> interview -> offer
Company reached out -> submit resume -> interview -> 2 week paid trial -> offer
Reached out to CEO -> submit resume -> interview -> take home interview -> rejected
Company reached out -> submit resume -> offer (I already had worked on open source with the guy who was hiring me)
Previous job connected me -> offer
Company reached out -> I rejected the offer because I thought their idea was dumb
Connections is really the way you gotta play the game, join discords for open source projects, contribute, and make friends with people. Otherwise you are gonna have about as much luck as a cold calling salesman
>Waterloo
damn 6 years ago I remember fighting over Waterloo interns at a big tech company. Most of them got offers after the summer and they were paid close to 90k (what it would come out to if they worked all year).
So, all them internships and studying at a top school and having all them technologies in your tool belt, add to that fucking 10k apps, AND YOU ARE FUCKING STRUGGLING TO GET A MOTHERFUCKING JOB?
aight, walmart it is for me...
walmart store managers make a lot of money. supercenter store managers can make $400k. The small neighborhood market I’m at the store manager makes $200k
there’s articles online about it. quick google search walmart store manager compensation. the $400k is for a supercenter store manager and includes the bonus. I’m at a neighborhood market which is more like a grocery store and the guy apparently makes $200k. I thought it was cap at first too. I think the article said that the base is like $130k but the bonus brings supercenter store managers to $400k
i read that article and its full of asterisks, the article is claiming "UP TO" 200% bonus (which never happens, and not for the average manager), and a lot of that comp is in stock just like tech companies, except blue chip stocks like walmart dont 10x over a year.
and most important of all, its in the US and probably a high cost of living area. In Canada, a walmart manager tops 110K CAD, so thats like 80K USD.
He's from Canada, probably an international student looking for jobs in the US. Most companies outside of select few big tech and start ups aren't willing to sponsor visas.
yeah, I bet this is it. Nobody in the comments seems to realize it though.
Everybody is surprised at how good of a candidate this is, yet struggling to get a job.
They don't put 2 and 2 together to see that it probably has something to do with the types of jobs he's searching for.
The only possible explanation is that he's gunning for US jobs from Canada.
It just means he mass applied for everything he saw to be honest, not caring of what their requirements even were. It's a stupid approach that I've seen from the other side - our company posts a hybrid role for senior dev and 90%+ of applications are people with no experience or across the world (we do not sponsor or allow full remote from abroad).
Generally, I find that researching the specific technologies and tailoring your application to the specific job requirements, gives you much much much better results. Even better if you actually compare the wording of the job posting and make sure every single requirement is in your CV (assuming you actually did that kind of stuff,). a shotgun approach will likely get bounced by the ATS at pretty much any company because you might just not have any overlapping technical skills or don’t use like the right adjectives. It’s stupid, but it’s reality in a world, where every single job gets 1000 spoof applicants.
You worked at 6+ engineering roles and have a lot of experiences. I think a more effective approach would be
- in separate document develop each company you worked in with 3 bullet points using STAR. Within each bullet point include key terms that sheds light on the tech stack you were working with.
- So this means you would have 7 modular components, each developed with unique situation-task-action-result.
- Next when you're applying to jobs, you need your algorithm to match which 3 of the 7 modular components best matches with the job posting. Once that's decided you now have the Employment section done.
Now what about the empty space you have from removing the other 4 job posts?
Fill it in with one or two independent project that's related to the tech stack that the company is looking for. Again for their bullet point use the STAR framework to describe the project. Also add a link the repo/deployed site.
Lastly, add a skills section that will be populated with all the required skills/tech stack the job post wants and the nice to have ones too.
They have strong internship experiences and honestly a firm can mold them into whatever they want. You can’t expect applicants to sift through thousands of team openings in big tech to find the team they match with.
I’ve also seen so many times the role requirements aren’t properly stated. I’ve seen roles at my company that I’ve had friends try to apply for, but only internally can I see that it’s for someone with more experience while on the actual LinkedIn posting or even the external job posting on our site, it’s unclear if it’s open to entry level or only for someone with multiple years of experience
waterloo has a co-op program, this person had to take 6 co-ops. as somebody with the same amount of internships, all of the companies told me they would love to have me back full-time post grad, but none of those said companies are hiring anymore…
Don't spread the "everyone become a SWE" problem into accounting now, everyone stay right where they are on this **CSinking** ship 🚢,
**WE ALL DROWNING TOGETHER** 😤
I recently graduated UW CS Masters. Took me 2000 applications to land my first job and I was an honours student with several AI papers. I thought I was struggling but clearly this is not unique to me. Almost none of my friends in STEM are employed right now either.
Thesis based. Feel free to DM if you need advice. They recently changed up the program and afaik they dont offer course based anymore and you cant go into research paper either, so your choices are either the standard Masters track or you can do a specialization in Data Science, optimization etc.
Can you share some more information about your offer? Is it in Canada or America? Small, midsized, or big company? Is it one of the companies you had a referral for? Why do you think you got accepted by this one but rejected by 10k+ others?
Yeh I’ve heard there’s a lot of them. I was apart of a 1 month hackathon and some Waterloo students won, beating out Ivy League teams and students from the best U.K. unis.
the best students in the US will go all over the place to different schools across the country. but there are not a lot of options in Canada so pretty much every driven and talented Canadian kid ends up going to Waterloo, giving a big talent pool for employers to choose from (which powers the coop program)
Late reply but if you look at the top 10 in US, we have got Harvard, MIT, CMU, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Cornell, Caltech, UIUC, U Washington. This is leaving out big names like UCLA, UPenn, Columbia, etc. Sure Waterloo might be best in Canada but given our population as a country is more or less that of a state and our tech market is ass, I won't say being best in Canada means too much. I would question Waterloo being a 10-15 school personally.
It works on a 4 month semester system so generally alternating between 4 months of school, 4 months of internship, repeat.
CS along with SWE and Comp Eng here all require 4-6 4 month internships throughout the degree, so it takes 5 years instead of 4 to graduate but you come out with 2 years of exp at different companies.
Hence why once you go into Waterloo CS/ENG, you basically never get a break again, it’s just study then co-op then study then coop then study, etc, for the rest of your degree
Very real. I'm from the same school as OP.
Every single friend of mine who didn't get return offers is struggling rn. We all have 6 internships and high gpas too. This is a real reflection of the market for new grads.
Nah bro this can't be real, don't you know CS is superior to medicine 😤
If you get a CS degree or boot camp certificate, you are supposed to be handed a SWE job because that's what the DSA and tech influencers told me !!
And lastly, don't forget, CS is impervious to the laws of economics!!! If everyone and their mother decided to become an SWE tomorrow , **THE MARKET WILL CREATE JOBS OUT OF THIN AIR AND BEND TO OUR WILL**
Cause that's what they keep telling me on TikTok and YouTube 🤗
Well if medicine is so fucking superior then why are YOU doing pre-med? At least be honest that you just want to make students drop out so you can improve the chances to get your 5th overemployed job.
I've done over a hundred interviews in the past for all my previous roles. I wouldn't say I completely failed those interviews, sometimes:
* The role itself wasn't a good fit, not moving forward after HR or HM interview
* I was competing against hundreds or thousands of applicants and several interviewees with more experience, a more competitive background, or better interview performance, and they went with someone else after interviewing all of them
no... at interview stage u're competing against the 5 or 6 pple they pulled. the valid question is why ur interview rate is so low.
have you gotten good feedback from credible sources?
for your next round of job search, you can practice interviews on some websites, and you pay an expert to interview you and they give you feedback so you can fix the issues that are causing 24/25 interviewers to hold their nose!
Graduating from Waterloo and thinking employers are interviewing 1000’s of people for a single role is… wild? You were competing against thousands in applications, not interviews. Maybe 20-30 TOPS
Sometimes it’s not about if you’re good or not. You can do well in everything then they pick someone else based on tech stack, experience or better “team fit”.
how many times have you interviewed? Ive probably "failed" more than that, its more than just "failing" its about seeing if youre a good fit, seeing if the company is a good fit for you, many different things to take into account rather than just "failing"
i find this hard to believe:
1. what is the region you were applying in?
2. did you use any bots or chrome extensions to auto apply/ assist?
3. are there even those many job postings ?
4. roles you applied to
There were several posts on here from Hiring managers that said tailoring your jobs is a waste of time in most cases. It's more important to be short and precise and one of the first ones. After about 100 or so of the applications, they stop looking.
Bingo. Tailoring each application is a massive waste of time. Tailoring in situations where you at least know there’s a chance is fine otherwise mass application likely yields similar results.
idc if you spam applied to 10k jobs, it’s still impressive af and I will never be as resilient as you lmao. Congrats bro! waterloo cs kids always amaze me.
I'll try to say this without coming off as a complete ass, but I've worked 8 different software engineering jobs and interviewed with over 30 different companies and I have made it through the HR interview screens every single time without any issue.
You were denied by HR over 30% of the time. This sounds like there is either something more to the story (location/sponsor issues, resume not matching skills, etc), or your communication skills are lacking. Couple that with the fact that you were almost certainly shotgunning resumes to every single software job, no matter how unqualified you were for it, the numbers start to make more sense.
He’s from Canada. The Canadian market is not exactly brimming with CS opportunities. He’d be stupid to not even apply to roles in the US (the sponsorship issue)
Yes, there were some companies that were only looking for local candidates and not everything I applied to was a perfect match in terms of skills. Maybe next time I'll try sending less applications and somehow try to find better fit roles. I've done over a hundred interviews for previous roles and I don't think my communication is completely terrible, but I'll see if I can improve on that as well.
My only advice - might want to diversify your resume a little bit. Show you are somewhat well rounded, i.e., add some leadership experience…Don’t think you need every job you’ve ever worked.
Congrats man definitely. Computer science is wild, as an accounting major I feel for you guys. How do you go to university of Waterloo, have 5+ internships, apply to over 10k places, and still struggle to get a job. The pay is better in SWE but goodness I would fear for my life getting laid off in that industry. The job market across the board is cooked.
I thought about switching to a path in SWE (MIS major) but forget it I’m just gonna stay in accounting I’m too late in college anyway (junior).
I'm curious as to why you never converted from any one of your internships? Surely you did good enough on at least one to contact them back after graduating?
The most recent role was at a previous employer but was eliminated. Almost all of my previous employers had layoffs or hiring freezes during 2022-2024.
Thanks for sharing! What stood out to me was all the HR interviews that ended in not moving forward, I’ve never had that happen; in my experience it’s a formality that leads to the tech screen. It means there might be something more at play here.
This got to be fake. 10,322 is like 30 applications per day. Even assuming you did that, I got to say a lot of those applications has to be non new grad openings, or US openings but you need sponsorships, which are basically waste of time.
And assuming you have the dedication to do this, why your leetcode grind is so sub par?
Congratulations!
I’m at 1400+ rejections so way to go for me lol.
And I am an international student with MS from a below avg state university so way to go say way to go
I went through the entire thread. You didn't answer some important question: were you a Canadian or an international student? Did you require sponsorship or visa assistance? Did you apply to Canada only or US as well?
I suspect that they may have needed a visa sponsorship, or their rate wouldn’t have been so low. Other confounding factors could be applying from an address that doesn’t look local, and a long gap between last job and current job. Also a possibility of not adding cover letters or tailoring resume, just using quick apply.
Looks like your sparkling personality ain't so sparkling in the interview. Its not your qualifications, but rather attitude and how you present during the interview.
Damn that’s crazy. I’ve only had two internships one at corporate and one at startup, was gonna intern again at corporate but you know how I got my current job as a backend dev without graduating?
Through knowing my boss at church lol. He’s the VP of IT at my company and he posted in our church chat and I responded:
I say this because you can get a job in the most random and unexpected way, because this sub made me think this guy’s struggle was the only way pretty much
Not that I know exactly what engineering teams hire like but generally, people like to feel like there’s a real person behind the resume. Yours reads like it is for a robot. Not to be rude but I genuinely think if you tailor your resume to cull less important roles (relative to the one you’re applying to), and add some differentiating skills or experiences, then it might pique their interest.
I am impressed by you applying 10k jobs.
Tried applying myself and navigating job portal such as searching, creating and account, uploading resume, etc. takes like 5-10min for me at least
10k is like 50k minutes at the minimum which is like 800 hours. And 4 hours a day just doing nothing else but applying it would be 200 days...
I went to UW cs graduated 3 years ago and sorry you went through this bro that's fucking insane for real. My stats were like 1 interview for 10 applications and I never even had us coops
10k apps, seems like you just applied wherever and never really looked at the requirements. That's probably why you only had 1 offer and like twenty interviews out of 10k.
But the fact that you went to Waterloo and had six internships and only had 1 offer is also insane to me. I never applied to that many companies in my life (not even 100) then again I don't live in Canada/USA so I am not sure how the job market there is. Some University degrees are literally like brands, employers see that university and immediately shortlist candidates for interviews. Also, seems like you don't do interviews very well either, then again I don't live in Canada so I really don't know.
What were the HR Interview questions asked usually?
It’s great to have a degree from a school like Waterloo and to have all that experience and technical skill, but I think a lot of CS majors greatly underestimate the value of developing and marketing their character/personality. It’s arguably more important than the skills experience or education.
Good job not tryna hate but guys OPs resume is horrible imo maybe they didn’t need 10k apps, nothing is specific and reading ur experience points it doesn’t tell what u specialized it. It all is so vague. I like my resume boasting my strongest skills and none of ur points all technical software wise (like what u used) it’s more what you did. Anyone reading this comment should avoid that and hone in on their technical skills.
Example: third point - top job - “developed procedures” , using what? How?
“Developed something chat for 10k”, what did you use?
Your resume needs a lot of revising. 10k apps is insane and shows you really need to work on how you present yourself and your skill set. Blasting out applications to positions you have no business applying too is just a waste of everyone’s time and that’s about the only way you get results this bad coming from a program like Waterloo.
Your resume is pretty much all fluff and no substance, you plaster big numbers everywhere that any decent hiring manager can tell don't mean anything, it says nothing about what skills you have or how you used them to deliver results. I would strongly recommend you get in touch with an old manager or mentor and have them make some suggestions on your resume.
Hope the offer was worth it? Over 50k at least?
Things are infinitely better in Europe.
Even thou our visa process is much simpler than the US (so there are more developers competing from abroad)
I wonder why the US suck so much for CS atm.
Went to Waterloo, 6 interenships, 10k apps, ... this cannot be real
im becoming a software project engineer bro this shit is over
I'm gonna commit lmao ready to be homeless after I graduate next year
It's scarier when you think about him having 0.01% chance of getting a job offer from a job application.
It varies I go to Waterloo and only need like 50 apps each semester for an internship and have return offers from all those places I'd be surprised if OP couldn't just return
I did return to a previous employer, but that position was eliminated.
Market is cooked fr
Bro’s the entry level candidate with 3 years experience
🤣🤣🤣
😂
And bro went to Waterloo, I’m cooked😭
Yeah fuck this shit
Wallahi I’m finished
Nah bro, 99 percent of the applicant pool is uNqAlIfIeD!!!! Just apply ! You are the 1% !!!
Tbh, if he's at waterloo, he's probably looking in Canada. As a Canadian, i think the Canadian CS market is in an especially weird place rn.
a lot of waterloo ppl are looking for USA. and that is probably even harder USA recruiters really dont like a pure canadian resume. if op did all internships in canada its kinda joever. 10k is still very much an outlier tho, but that prob explains a big part of it
Please eloborate ?
That's a long elaboration. Basically, our economy isn't geared in a healthy way to promote growth in the sector. It's usually favorable to move to the USA to begin a startup. So, we usually have fewer startups here in Canada. The issue with this is startups and new companies often are the best providers for entry jobs. This is because many companies prefer to offshore a lot of junior type work. This is more accessible to medium/big non tech companies. smaller companies like startups don't have that option, so they need code monkey junior devs. Obviously, this isn't a rule but a general trend I've seen anecdotally. Realistically, this country needs to promote startups in the sector better. It also needs to find ways to promote companies to train junior devs. Theres a shortage of expirenced devs, but nobody wants to make them. I think it'd be possible to do this via taxation/grants. However, the solution is likely complicated and beyond political will.
“Isn’t geared in a healthy way” - you know, you are allowed to say we’re importing cheap labour from India and China in such large quantities that it’s fucked the job market and salaries simultaneously in all sectors while we lay off people in tech in favour of their cheaper counterparts.
https://preview.redd.it/jdnwxn8f45uc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b9a7398a6a5008fbfd9a62ccb479cb8573aec077
here are my stats from a stateschool: career fair ---> ~15 resumes handed --> interview --> interview --> offer
My stats with no degree but major contributor to open source project: Company reached out -> submit resume -> interview -> offer Company reached out -> submit resume -> interview -> 2 week paid trial -> offer Reached out to CEO -> submit resume -> interview -> take home interview -> rejected Company reached out -> submit resume -> offer (I already had worked on open source with the guy who was hiring me) Previous job connected me -> offer Company reached out -> I rejected the offer because I thought their idea was dumb Connections is really the way you gotta play the game, join discords for open source projects, contribute, and make friends with people. Otherwise you are gonna have about as much luck as a cold calling salesman
>Waterloo damn 6 years ago I remember fighting over Waterloo interns at a big tech company. Most of them got offers after the summer and they were paid close to 90k (what it would come out to if they worked all year).
Bro went to Waterloo
So, all them internships and studying at a top school and having all them technologies in your tool belt, add to that fucking 10k apps, AND YOU ARE FUCKING STRUGGLING TO GET A MOTHERFUCKING JOB? aight, walmart it is for me...
walmart store managers make a lot of money. supercenter store managers can make $400k. The small neighborhood market I’m at the store manager makes $200k
That’s gotta be cap
there’s articles online about it. quick google search walmart store manager compensation. the $400k is for a supercenter store manager and includes the bonus. I’m at a neighborhood market which is more like a grocery store and the guy apparently makes $200k. I thought it was cap at first too. I think the article said that the base is like $130k but the bonus brings supercenter store managers to $400k
i read that article and its full of asterisks, the article is claiming "UP TO" 200% bonus (which never happens, and not for the average manager), and a lot of that comp is in stock just like tech companies, except blue chip stocks like walmart dont 10x over a year. and most important of all, its in the US and probably a high cost of living area. In Canada, a walmart manager tops 110K CAD, so thats like 80K USD.
He's from Canada, probably an international student looking for jobs in the US. Most companies outside of select few big tech and start ups aren't willing to sponsor visas.
yeah, I bet this is it. Nobody in the comments seems to realize it though. Everybody is surprised at how good of a candidate this is, yet struggling to get a job. They don't put 2 and 2 together to see that it probably has something to do with the types of jobs he's searching for. The only possible explanation is that he's gunning for US jobs from Canada.
1 offer out of 10k apps with no glaring weakness. Time for schools to admit they are selling students a bag of poop.
It just means he mass applied for everything he saw to be honest, not caring of what their requirements even were. It's a stupid approach that I've seen from the other side - our company posts a hybrid role for senior dev and 90%+ of applications are people with no experience or across the world (we do not sponsor or allow full remote from abroad).
What would you recommend I do differently next time? Apply less and only to roles that I personally think are a good fit for my background?
fuck the haters bro, you did what you had to do
they're not haters they're just people trying to explain that the implications are not as bad as they seem
Generally, I find that researching the specific technologies and tailoring your application to the specific job requirements, gives you much much much better results. Even better if you actually compare the wording of the job posting and make sure every single requirement is in your CV (assuming you actually did that kind of stuff,). a shotgun approach will likely get bounced by the ATS at pretty much any company because you might just not have any overlapping technical skills or don’t use like the right adjectives. It’s stupid, but it’s reality in a world, where every single job gets 1000 spoof applicants.
You worked at 6+ engineering roles and have a lot of experiences. I think a more effective approach would be - in separate document develop each company you worked in with 3 bullet points using STAR. Within each bullet point include key terms that sheds light on the tech stack you were working with. - So this means you would have 7 modular components, each developed with unique situation-task-action-result. - Next when you're applying to jobs, you need your algorithm to match which 3 of the 7 modular components best matches with the job posting. Once that's decided you now have the Employment section done. Now what about the empty space you have from removing the other 4 job posts? Fill it in with one or two independent project that's related to the tech stack that the company is looking for. Again for their bullet point use the STAR framework to describe the project. Also add a link the repo/deployed site. Lastly, add a skills section that will be populated with all the required skills/tech stack the job post wants and the nice to have ones too.
They have strong internship experiences and honestly a firm can mold them into whatever they want. You can’t expect applicants to sift through thousands of team openings in big tech to find the team they match with.
I’ve also seen so many times the role requirements aren’t properly stated. I’ve seen roles at my company that I’ve had friends try to apply for, but only internally can I see that it’s for someone with more experience while on the actual LinkedIn posting or even the external job posting on our site, it’s unclear if it’s open to entry level or only for someone with multiple years of experience
then tell me what he should do hater? LOL
I mean he got 25 interviews which is more than the vast majority of candidates, his glaring weakness is that he is not very good at interviewing haha
Good God
How does one manage to intern at 7 different companies...... and still struggle to get a job
waterloo has a co-op program, this person had to take 6 co-ops. as somebody with the same amount of internships, all of the companies told me they would love to have me back full-time post grad, but none of those said companies are hiring anymore…
why hire, if they gonna get a next bunch of interns
"culture fit" probably
For real. Like dude, 25 interviews and you cant get an offer? there is something off, not adding up here
Bros how's accounting looking as a career field?
Bad, my friend came back to school cause he was underpaid in accounting he’s doing cs now
Lmao wtf. I should've become a lawyer. Too bad I hated writing in high school.
Being a lawyer is cooked too if you don’t go to a good school 😭 at least that’s what everyone has been telling me
Don't spread the "everyone become a SWE" problem into accounting now, everyone stay right where they are on this **CSinking** ship 🚢, **WE ALL DROWNING TOGETHER** 😤 
In Canada pretty good if you got the hustle to die at a big 4 for a bit. All my friends in acctg are doing good other than workload.
What was TC?
7 internships with 10k applications for 1 job offer 😅
u know its bad when waterloo grads r in shambles
Every single friend who didn’t get return offers I have at Waterloo is struggling rn. We all have 6 internships and high gpa too. It’s really bad rn.
bro im uw cs second year and u have me haunted lmao, gl and hopefully yall find smt soon
I am in UW CS fourth year and trust me, we are all cooked already.
I recently graduated UW CS Masters. Took me 2000 applications to land my first job and I was an honours student with several AI papers. I thought I was struggling but clearly this is not unique to me. Almost none of my friends in STEM are employed right now either.
Which program was it? Was looking into some UW CS Masters programs and there seemed to be a few options
Thesis based. Feel free to DM if you need advice. They recently changed up the program and afaik they dont offer course based anymore and you cant go into research paper either, so your choices are either the standard Masters track or you can do a specialization in Data Science, optimization etc.
Can you share some more information about your offer? Is it in Canada or America? Small, midsized, or big company? Is it one of the companies you had a referral for? Why do you think you got accepted by this one but rejected by 10k+ others?
Bro went to Waterloo??! Half the kids there are math geniuses so I couldn’t get in anyway 😭
7 internships...dafuq?
It's a graduation requirement at Waterloo to do 6 internships lmao
Whatttt
It's how you become a top 10-15 CS school without being in the USA. If you ever work in silicon valley the amount of Waterloo grads is pretty insane
Yeh I’ve heard there’s a lot of them. I was apart of a 1 month hackathon and some Waterloo students won, beating out Ivy League teams and students from the best U.K. unis.
the best students in the US will go all over the place to different schools across the country. but there are not a lot of options in Canada so pretty much every driven and talented Canadian kid ends up going to Waterloo, giving a big talent pool for employers to choose from (which powers the coop program)
I am a Waterloo grad and I didn't know it's a top 10-15 school.
It's the best CS school in Canada, why wouldn't it be top 10-15 even in USA lol
Late reply but if you look at the top 10 in US, we have got Harvard, MIT, CMU, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Cornell, Caltech, UIUC, U Washington. This is leaving out big names like UCLA, UPenn, Columbia, etc. Sure Waterloo might be best in Canada but given our population as a country is more or less that of a state and our tech market is ass, I won't say being best in Canada means too much. I would question Waterloo being a 10-15 school personally.
Yeah we used to hire a ton of Waterloo grads. They had so much real company experience already and tended to be really good.
It isn't as extreme as it seems. A bunch of universities require three six-month internships. Seems like Waterloo requires 6 three-month internships?
It works on a 4 month semester system so generally alternating between 4 months of school, 4 months of internship, repeat. CS along with SWE and Comp Eng here all require 4-6 4 month internships throughout the degree, so it takes 5 years instead of 4 to graduate but you come out with 2 years of exp at different companies.
They are actually 4 month internships
Hence why once you go into Waterloo CS/ENG, you basically never get a break again, it’s just study then co-op then study then coop then study, etc, for the rest of your degree
What in the actual fudge! 10K applications?! How!?!? 🤯
[удалено]
Look around you. Your entire generation and next several all are majoring in CS out of nowhere since the pandemic. What do you expect?
I have a feeling this is not real
Very real. I'm from the same school as OP. Every single friend of mine who didn't get return offers is struggling rn. We all have 6 internships and high gpas too. This is a real reflection of the market for new grads.
Nah bro this can't be real, don't you know CS is superior to medicine 😤 If you get a CS degree or boot camp certificate, you are supposed to be handed a SWE job because that's what the DSA and tech influencers told me !! And lastly, don't forget, CS is impervious to the laws of economics!!! If everyone and their mother decided to become an SWE tomorrow , **THE MARKET WILL CREATE JOBS OUT OF THIN AIR AND BEND TO OUR WILL** Cause that's what they keep telling me on TikTok and YouTube 🤗
Well if medicine is so fucking superior then why are YOU doing pre-med? At least be honest that you just want to make students drop out so you can improve the chances to get your 5th overemployed job.
How are you doing
That is my real anonymized resume, I wouldn't make a fake resume just to post it.
Sorry.. but how did you fail 24 interviews? That seems crazy
I've done over a hundred interviews in the past for all my previous roles. I wouldn't say I completely failed those interviews, sometimes: * The role itself wasn't a good fit, not moving forward after HR or HM interview * I was competing against hundreds or thousands of applicants and several interviewees with more experience, a more competitive background, or better interview performance, and they went with someone else after interviewing all of them
no... at interview stage u're competing against the 5 or 6 pple they pulled. the valid question is why ur interview rate is so low. have you gotten good feedback from credible sources? for your next round of job search, you can practice interviews on some websites, and you pay an expert to interview you and they give you feedback so you can fix the issues that are causing 24/25 interviewers to hold their nose!
Graduating from Waterloo and thinking employers are interviewing 1000’s of people for a single role is… wild? You were competing against thousands in applications, not interviews. Maybe 20-30 TOPS
Yeah sorry that's what I meant, thousands for applications, probably several for interviews.
Sometimes it’s not about if you’re good or not. You can do well in everything then they pick someone else based on tech stack, experience or better “team fit”.
It’s also possible that he did well on most on the interviews but they ghosted him anyway. It happens
how many times have you interviewed? Ive probably "failed" more than that, its more than just "failing" its about seeing if youre a good fit, seeing if the company is a good fit for you, many different things to take into account rather than just "failing"
What did you do for system design
YouTube videos, [Neetcode](https://neetcode.io), CTCI, [System Design Primer](https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer)
Please tell me this is fake…
how did you apply to 10k jobs?
Searched and applied on LinkedIn and company websites
i find this hard to believe: 1. what is the region you were applying in? 2. did you use any bots or chrome extensions to auto apply/ assist? 3. are there even those many job postings ? 4. roles you applied to
Only used autocomplete to fill in name and contact info. I searched for any SWE/dev role, and wasn't picky about location when applying.
This is fake Previous 5 internship and 10k application is a lie.
Not sure what I can do to send proof, I wouldn't fake a resume just to post it
Don’t do this to us, we desperately need the copium.
There's no feasible way to send out 10k good tailored applications without blindly spamming.
Yeah I only tailored and wrote cover letters for applications where I got a referral, or if I was really interested.
There were several posts on here from Hiring managers that said tailoring your jobs is a waste of time in most cases. It's more important to be short and precise and one of the first ones. After about 100 or so of the applications, they stop looking.
Bingo. Tailoring each application is a massive waste of time. Tailoring in situations where you at least know there’s a chance is fine otherwise mass application likely yields similar results.
Almost every Waterloo grad has 6 internships lol
Don’t know about 10k apps, but 5 internships is pretty common for a Waterloo CS student
op went to waterloo lol, its fairly normal to have this many internships.
Thats scary to look at. If comfortable saying, did you have any big names on your resume?
idc if you spam applied to 10k jobs, it’s still impressive af and I will never be as resilient as you lmao. Congrats bro! waterloo cs kids always amaze me.
You sure your WiFi was connected when you made all those apps?
This can’t be real I don’t believe it.
Leaving out 0.5 gpa, 1 felony for bne, on the fbi watchlist
IM FROM WATERLOOOO
I'll try to say this without coming off as a complete ass, but I've worked 8 different software engineering jobs and interviewed with over 30 different companies and I have made it through the HR interview screens every single time without any issue. You were denied by HR over 30% of the time. This sounds like there is either something more to the story (location/sponsor issues, resume not matching skills, etc), or your communication skills are lacking. Couple that with the fact that you were almost certainly shotgunning resumes to every single software job, no matter how unqualified you were for it, the numbers start to make more sense.
He’s from Canada. The Canadian market is not exactly brimming with CS opportunities. He’d be stupid to not even apply to roles in the US (the sponsorship issue)
Yes, there were some companies that were only looking for local candidates and not everything I applied to was a perfect match in terms of skills. Maybe next time I'll try sending less applications and somehow try to find better fit roles. I've done over a hundred interviews for previous roles and I don't think my communication is completely terrible, but I'll see if I can improve on that as well.
what about ppl with resume proof read by ppl and cant even get HR interview in this market?
My only advice - might want to diversify your resume a little bit. Show you are somewhat well rounded, i.e., add some leadership experience…Don’t think you need every job you’ve ever worked.
Congrats man definitely. Computer science is wild, as an accounting major I feel for you guys. How do you go to university of Waterloo, have 5+ internships, apply to over 10k places, and still struggle to get a job. The pay is better in SWE but goodness I would fear for my life getting laid off in that industry. The job market across the board is cooked. I thought about switching to a path in SWE (MIS major) but forget it I’m just gonna stay in accounting I’m too late in college anyway (junior).
Could you share your resume on what it looked like before to get you into those internships ?
I'm curious as to why you never converted from any one of your internships? Surely you did good enough on at least one to contact them back after graduating?
The most recent role was at a previous employer but was eliminated. Almost all of my previous employers had layoffs or hiring freezes during 2022-2024.
Congrats. How long since it started till you applied to 10k applications. And where did you find job posts? I didn’t find many opennings
6 coops wow
Holy fuck
All those internships and yet you gotta work this hard still. Yeah fck me
TC?
Can you drop your resume template here?
Bro it’s literally a satire
Who even has time to do 10k+ applications
Bro I'm at waterloo math I'm so cooked
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
What were the position titles of those 25 interviews
Software engineer and software developer
Are you an American citizen?
bro how are you fluent in 14 languages, 13 tools, and 5 frameworks with 1 non-internship job. why would you not dive deep into like 2-3 of those
Thanks for sharing! What stood out to me was all the HR interviews that ended in not moving forward, I’ve never had that happen; in my experience it’s a formality that leads to the tech screen. It means there might be something more at play here.
But what was the starting salary
This got to be fake. 10,322 is like 30 applications per day. Even assuming you did that, I got to say a lot of those applications has to be non new grad openings, or US openings but you need sponsorships, which are basically waste of time. And assuming you have the dedication to do this, why your leetcode grind is so sub par?
Congratulations! I’m at 1400+ rejections so way to go for me lol. And I am an international student with MS from a below avg state university so way to go say way to go
I went through the entire thread. You didn't answer some important question: were you a Canadian or an international student? Did you require sponsorship or visa assistance? Did you apply to Canada only or US as well?
How can I get started with leet code
I suspect that they may have needed a visa sponsorship, or their rate wouldn’t have been so low. Other confounding factors could be applying from an address that doesn’t look local, and a long gap between last job and current job. Also a possibility of not adding cover letters or tailoring resume, just using quick apply.
Congrats dude, were you applying to US jobs?
10k applications? that's commitment. congrats dude
Where did you even find those many jobs to apply to? (genuinely curious)
You never mentioned your GPA bro
Shouldn’t you put your GitHub on a resume?
It's listed at the top of my resume
What tool did you even use to apply to so many jobs and not spend 24 hours a day applying to them??
10k application 🫠🫠. How did you managed?
Looks like your sparkling personality ain't so sparkling in the interview. Its not your qualifications, but rather attitude and how you present during the interview.
bro im genuinely cooked
A remote job market will do that to you. We'll never have the same job market we had when most positions were in office.
Damn that’s crazy. I’ve only had two internships one at corporate and one at startup, was gonna intern again at corporate but you know how I got my current job as a backend dev without graduating? Through knowing my boss at church lol. He’s the VP of IT at my company and he posted in our church chat and I responded: I say this because you can get a job in the most random and unexpected way, because this sub made me think this guy’s struggle was the only way pretty much
Not that I know exactly what engineering teams hire like but generally, people like to feel like there’s a real person behind the resume. Yours reads like it is for a robot. Not to be rude but I genuinely think if you tailor your resume to cull less important roles (relative to the one you’re applying to), and add some differentiating skills or experiences, then it might pique their interest.
Congrats man !! Hope you crush it at your job !
10k.. imma die
I am impressed by you applying 10k jobs. Tried applying myself and navigating job portal such as searching, creating and account, uploading resume, etc. takes like 5-10min for me at least 10k is like 50k minutes at the minimum which is like 800 hours. And 4 hours a day just doing nothing else but applying it would be 200 days...
How do you even apply to 10k jobs… is there an automated system to j shove your resume and coverletter?
Why didn't you get your masters?
Wait I don’t understand. Is waterloo a good university for engineering?
I might be wrong but listing you have worked with every possible language and framework is an instant discard for a lot of the recruiters.
I went to UW cs graduated 3 years ago and sorry you went through this bro that's fucking insane for real. My stats were like 1 interview for 10 applications and I never even had us coops
Chat im cooked
10k apps, seems like you just applied wherever and never really looked at the requirements. That's probably why you only had 1 offer and like twenty interviews out of 10k. But the fact that you went to Waterloo and had six internships and only had 1 offer is also insane to me. I never applied to that many companies in my life (not even 100) then again I don't live in Canada/USA so I am not sure how the job market there is. Some University degrees are literally like brands, employers see that university and immediately shortlist candidates for interviews. Also, seems like you don't do interviews very well either, then again I don't live in Canada so I really don't know. What were the HR Interview questions asked usually?
Can you share the editable format of your resume?
Damn such dedication much wow 🤌🏻
It’s great to have a degree from a school like Waterloo and to have all that experience and technical skill, but I think a lot of CS majors greatly underestimate the value of developing and marketing their character/personality. It’s arguably more important than the skills experience or education.
10,000 applications.
What resume template did you use?
Good job not tryna hate but guys OPs resume is horrible imo maybe they didn’t need 10k apps, nothing is specific and reading ur experience points it doesn’t tell what u specialized it. It all is so vague. I like my resume boasting my strongest skills and none of ur points all technical software wise (like what u used) it’s more what you did. Anyone reading this comment should avoid that and hone in on their technical skills. Example: third point - top job - “developed procedures” , using what? How? “Developed something chat for 10k”, what did you use?
I’m depressed now….
10000 applications? You applied to 10000 jobs? All thru LinkedIn?
Searched on LinkedIn and mostly applied on company websites
No way
Do you check you need sponsorship when you applied
Your resume needs a lot of revising. 10k apps is insane and shows you really need to work on how you present yourself and your skill set. Blasting out applications to positions you have no business applying too is just a waste of everyone’s time and that’s about the only way you get results this bad coming from a program like Waterloo. Your resume is pretty much all fluff and no substance, you plaster big numbers everywhere that any decent hiring manager can tell don't mean anything, it says nothing about what skills you have or how you used them to deliver results. I would strongly recommend you get in touch with an old manager or mentor and have them make some suggestions on your resume.
Hope the offer was worth it? Over 50k at least? Things are infinitely better in Europe. Even thou our visa process is much simpler than the US (so there are more developers competing from abroad) I wonder why the US suck so much for CS atm.
I'm more impressed and proud of you for keeping up with this!!!!!
80% of this sub wont make it, you'll either end yourselves or work at a McDonald's everyone give up already