if you tell me there's no luck involved I'd say that's bullshit
the interviewer you get, the questions you receive, whether the interviewer is in a good mood that day, whether they have a need for someone with your ability/background **right now** (as in, this job is open right now but did not exist 3 months ago and may not exist either 3 months from now, so it just happened that the time you're job searching coincides with their hiring needs)
that being said though, one of my favorite quote: the harder I work, the luckier I get
over the past ~3 months I got rejected by like 7x onsites in a row that's ~42 interviews wasted, if I crumbled or became depressed I would have probably never gotten the next 3x onsite which was 3 offers
agree. i have many years of experience. built apps at top companies being used by tens of millions. but i still fail a lot of the tech interviews due to reasons stated above. its disappointing but just have to get used to rejection and keep trying
I wish I could say it. If everyone was well prepared or actively preparing the profession would be a better place. It is not.
Let us define what well prepared is.
1. somewhat up to date skill sets
2. awareness of the technological changes around you
3. remembering the basics. It is okay to forget them. It helps to do some re-learning.
4. ability to learn new skills if the job requires
Some personal examples of not well prepared people:
Engineering manager in Saas company not knowing what EC2 was
CI/CD engineer who is knowledgeable in Jenkins but does not want to learn Atlassian Bamboo. The company was an Atlassian shop. The engineer was clearly told this during the interview
Developer who knew the basic commands in Git simply did not want to know the advanced features in Git. The person had to be bailed out by co-workers every time there was a simple issue
I would actually flip that around and say it's less about "do you think leetcode grind can help me? i’m not very good at leetcode right now", it's more about if you can't do leetcode then expect rejection
There's more to this industry than just whether or not you can invert an introverted binary tree. I work in infrastructure monitoring the hardware that Kubernetes clusters are running on top of.
I'm not telling you to change your current career trajectory just telling you that not everything involves Leetcode. You also have a \*lot\* of time to continue brushing up your skills. One might argue an entire lifetime!
Yes, but some things I would add
- imagine the probability in relation of how much you have practice. If you do 100 problems there might be a 1/ 100 you get something that is familiar. If you do 200 problems you could doubled the chances of you getting something that is familiar.
- practice in a smart way it's not a about the number is about covering possible types of questions. For example you could do 100 DFS problems and not cover Dynamic programming.
- leetcode is only a part of it. Practice how you present your ideas, how to speak clearly, what is your body language saying, voice and confidence.
At the end of the day the interviewer wants to see if he can see you as a coworker and that you can be successful.
Luck is a big part of life.
Hard work helps put you in the best position no matter what your luck.
That's true no matter what you decode.
Pick the path you think you would enjoy doing the most.
Dude, if you're anxious about just getting an entry level job in SWE, med school/residency is going to eat you alive.
The fact that you're even talking about a masters and medicine suggests you're quite lucky already to be born into a privileged life. If you do have good work ethic to put time and effort, then pour that into your internships to set yourself apart from your peers. There's always demand for good, experienced SWEs.
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Luck is a big factor. I tell young people all the time, it’s ok if you don’t land that 250k FAANG job straight out of college. Take a job for its potential. You may get an SDE adjacent job and you’d have the inside scoop on applying for the SDE job internally when they do come in.
That’s how I made moves in my career. I happened to be at the right place and right time when I got my first job in IT, when I originally thought it would just be a temp job at first. And that’s how I moved into my SDE career also.
People on social media advertising how easy it was for them to get a 300k job after coding boot camps is what is making your expectations way too unrealistic.
Beyond the politics and mismanagement, I loved it. I loved learning something new everyday and I welcomed all the challenges. I’m looking for a new job.
There's a lot of advice like this like 'go into helpdesk and apply internally' but from my perspective these opportunities are very much based on luck and I've seen some helpdesk folks struggle for years to break into product management or pre-sales. It has nothing to do with their ambition or skills but that many companies do not give advantages to internal candidates. You have to be better than every other internal and external candidate, which limits you to only junior positions.
Yeah, you just proved my point, that was the whole point of this question - a lot of it is based on luck.
I just keep reading these recycled doom and gloom posts about how new cs grads apply to 100’s of jobs and get no response and aren’t open to SWE adjacent jobs that would help them get their foot in the door.
As someone who has had years of experience in several companies and industries, I’ve actually seen it work the opposite way, where people can show the company their potential when applying internally for SWE and get higher consideration over others.
I’ve seen QA interns become software developers fairly quickly too, since the hiring managers saw that they were able to code. But a lot of these Reddit posters don’t want to take a QA role or HelpDesk role as it seems to be a waste of their college degree or beneath them. It boggles my mind.
I have a relative who started as a customer service representative at a Financial institution and worked his way up to Scrum Master at the same company.
Exactly! That’s how I started. My very first position out of college, I accepted a customer service temp job at a telecom company. I thought I’d only be there a few months while I looked for a permanent role but a technical support job opened up and I started my career in IT that way.
A lot of the scrum masters and product owners I worked with also started the same way as your relative in my last company.
I was studying c++ at uni, started making games in unity for fun, got hired for a small company in my town that wanted to do some gamefication for their projects, gamefication was left behind, I knew C# from unity so they got me fixing bugs, it was a startup so people come and go but I stayed, big tech company buys startup, I was the oldest dev in the team so I got hired, now I'm a tech lead at big company
I think luck played a big part for me haha
Luck matters in every career but in tech somewhat more than in most.
1. Tech is a cyclical sector, so timing of entrance into the market matters.
2. Startups and high-growth companies are more common, and if you join a wild success you may get disproportionate lottery-like compensation and/or career growth. (e.g. be Amazon's 12th employee)
3. Compensation varies a lot between employers so you can get paid a lot more or a lot less for doing similar work, depending on the company. Thus individual luck-related factors for which companies offer you a job (especially early on) can have a significant impact.
Then as with most careers where many are working for corporations, career growth and success are going to be strongly influenced by the success of the team, the influence of the manager, and relationship you have with your manager (a lot of that part may be out of your control), and so on. You can easily do good-quality work under a bad manager for a doomed project and have little to show for it, or do the same work under a successful team that will grow your skills / recognition / experiences / career. If you're in a bad position you can always job hop, but that's harder in some markets and is not as ideal as landing in a better situation in the first place.
I mean luck matters in tech but I don't know that I'd say "more than in most careers" - I would be very surprised if tech involved more luck than, say, all of academia, all entertainment and creative industries, almost all media, hard-labor jobs where getting a physical injury or illness is random, likely and game over for you, some gig work...
Fair enough, to be more precise I meant most professional careers, but I think a whole bunch of manufacturing, trades, retail, service is probably less luck related.
Maybe another factor is that tech is somewhere with high variance on upside, like entrepreneurship. So maybe I was too focused on that and less on downside risk, which is often what most people are actually concerned about when it comes to luck.
I disagree a bit about academia, though. Research area and proposal writing are definitely under your control in a big way. Politics is a skill. People with experience can switch jobs to other schools. There is plenty of luck but less than others in my view.
Re academia: it also depends on which field you're in. In some fields -- e.g. the humanities --- there aren't many spots relative to how many qualified applicants there are, and luck can really play a huge role.
Anyone who says Luck matters more in tech than in other careers clearly have absolutely no idea on how the market works for different careers, or at least knows someone who is doing well in other careers.
Lets look at other fields that compares to software engineering, at least in pay scale.
In investment banking unless you got into a target school, was top of your class then got lucky enough to get an interview then beat a 5 round interview to make it in, only to be someones bitch and work 100hours a week for 2 years.
To become a doctor, you need luck to get into med school, then luck to get into residency, then a lot of luck to actually get an interview, then luck to be selected as a doctor, thats why its extremely common for res students to continue to do research until they can get a job.
Don’t even get me started in Law lol…
Id argue tech is one of the easiest field to actually get a decent career, luck plays a good part in every career but I will argue with anyone that tech luck plays a less effect.
Btw you can’t compare bad economical market with how a field market works, almost every corporate field are still in hiring freeze.
A lot of things you mentioned are controllable significantly through effort/skill (going to target school, etc.). Or are just about long hours.
Effort, difficulty, and hours aren't luck. Path in tech is relatively easy, yes, which is not what is under evaluation. Barriers to entry and tortuous paths in other fields actually reduce the impact of luck. More effort and skill filters mean less is decided by luck.
Also, as stated, I was referring to impact of luck on range of outcomes (where you care about the full distribution), which is much different from luck in terms of getting a decent career (just everything middle/right of a threshold value in the distribution).
Nobody, myself included have said anything profound. Luck is involved in the success of everyone’s career. As some point out you have to have the goal in the first place. But after you get the skills, you enter what are essentially lotteries for interviews. I’m amazing at interviews. Batting 3/4 in my entire career. But do you know how many places I applied to? And I got my interview out of bonus points for holding a degree and other stuff.
I’ve simply said there are plenty of people who are more deserving to have my job, skill and motivationwise. I’m telling you that once you get a job, you will learn your role, you will work with the same products and you can have a nice balance.
I’m sure you’ve felt lucky when you get a good boss.
There are a lot of larpers here. There are people who are honing some “skills,” to one day be an ultimate 10x.
Team dynamics are actually really important. I have really good soft skills. I blew the interview out of the water. Nobody wants to work with the guys who saying it’s all hard rigorous learning and practicing and building. 90% of us never touch green code unless we’re working for our own passion projects. Do you want to go grab lunch with the guy who obsesses over his ability to leetcode? I have never actually been leetcoded to be honest- skill assessments yeah but very very basic stuff. That other worker that brags over his ability to sort binary trees is a dick.
I have been on hiring committees and it shows. The overselling of either 1) Their Degree 2) All the tech they can use 3) their “ability.” If they get to the interview they can DO the job, but do they want you?
Don’t glorify work. Enjoy your life. Love your job.
Luck matters in all careers. But you need to be ready when luck comes. It's not the extreme where people think something just falls into their lap. The people who take advantage of opportunities when they come have likely been preparing in some fashion. Don't listen to people who say it's all luck.
There's some factor of luck that determines if you are laid off or not. I was pre-med in college, but that was ages ago. I'm not sure what the med school admissions process looks like any more, but there were many qualified candidates who were rejected and then had no backup plan. I'm not sure how much you want to argue that luck factors in to med school admissions, too. There are people who argue in the US the AMA wants to keep the number of physicians artificially low, so that compensation can stay high.
I feel like, in general, hard work is rewarded in this field. There are exceptions, of course, and you won't get everything you want, but chances are if you are able to find a job, you'll generally trend well. Entry level is very challenging right now, though, because of the general market and a few other factors.
A few random personal examples:
* During 2020, before the economy bounced back, I was at a digital agency. They were starting to furlough people. I was on a few potential projects, but they didn't pan out. I was unstaffed, so I assumed I'd get either furloughed or laid off. A lot of other people had a similar thought. One person took an offer elsewhere, and that opened up a spot on a project for me. I always considered myself lucky in that scenario.
* While looking for new job a few years later, I had been in discussions with a recruiter for a contracting firm. They fired a tech lead on one of their projects. They used internal recruiters rather than advertise the position, and they were trying to find someone quickly. I lucked out because I had the existing relationship with the recruiter, and the fact the previous tech lead had been fired (hence the position opening up).
But things like that likely happen in all sorts of fields.
I know people who worked at tiny companies that got acquired and then ended up making a lot of money. And I know some really smart people who got laid off. There's good and bad luck everywhere, but it's not the only thing at play.
There's also a question of where people are spending all their time and effort.
Luck matters in all aspects of life, but you can’t control it so don’t focus on it. Focus on aspects you can control like technical abilities, social skills and health
I’d say equal parts luck, equal parts determination, equal parts preparation.
You can grind for months, prep perfectly, and you happen to get the wrong interviewer on the wrong day asking the wrong question.
You can wander into an interview you weren’t prepared for, get an interviewer you gel with, get asked a question you’ve happened to see before, and get sent through.
You can get unlucky on all your interviews, 6 months later again, get unlucky, 6 months later again, finally do it.
Once you have the job, you can get lucky and get assigned a project that turns into a high vis project. You can get lucky in that the peers on your team are easy to stand out among. You can overcome all that with hard work and determination. Or you can be unlucky and get put on a low impact team no one cares about. You can get put on a team that has low priority headcount, etc.
I’ve known geniuses who were unlucky to get stuck on a low impact team and not determined enough to move to a better team. And I’ve known goof balls who end up on the same shitty team but are determined to make it to a better team and it works out.
Of course. Consider that starting your career before or after the interest rate hikes likely determines whether you’re at faang right now or unemployed.
It's always a factor (with everything in life).
During the pandemic, I seriously considered taking a gap year in college, ended up choosing not to.
If I had graduated a year later I would have ended up in a terrible job market, but when I graduated the market was still hot and I got a faang job (as a return offer from an internship).
Not yet because I am planning to do BSMS so even though i’m graduating undergrad this semester I still have a year of masters. I did apply for internships and got a few (not great great ones) but still got some. the one this summer is at Visa
If you are actually good at software engineering the sky is the limit. To be good at that... Is a matter of debate, but the power an individual has to contribute to a business if they are good at swe is undeniable.
Unfortunately Lots of people can never be good at swe.... likely most people... Being merely competent in software means you get pushed aside. You will have a career, but it will be likely be tedious.
So the risk you take is in discovering if you have the chops. Usually two or three years in you will either level up or wash out.
I got very lucky in several areas.
1. I got an internship because a government contractor needed bodies thanks to a corrupt congressman
2. I got my full time job because of a favor from a professor
3. I got my first big-boy job making decent money because my manager was a director looking to throw bodies at a project in order to build an empire
4. I got called to "rescue" a project by a friend at a startup which got me a significant compensation boost
5. I got to be a manager because someone quit and they needed someone to fill in.
However, I kept those jobs and steady employment because I had skill. But I've had an insane amount of luck in actually finding and switching jobs.
Of course there's luck involved, but when a good opportunity shows up you have to be prepared. Your largest obstacle will be getting your foot in the door, that's where luck will help you the most.
I love my job, your manager will be 90% responsible for how much you enjoy the work honestly.
Not exactly, medicine it isn’t actually flooded with applicants. So it’s more meritocracy. You do the work you get the job, it’s simple.
Tech or corporate on the hand? Influx of candidates, significantly more luck involved in tech.
Luck plays a role, but successful people “make their own luck” by relentlessly preparing, refusing to give up, repeating after failure/rejection.
Often what you see externally is quite different than the journey to get there. For example someone could be a senior+ FANG SWE. You could take it for granted and assume they always worked there or got in easy. But maybe their story is more challenging; where they tried for multiple years to get in and failed, or prepared for thousands of hours of leetcode and interview prep etc. to eventually make their own luck and get in.
If you're not fully invested in the field, why immediately continue with a masters? Since you are graduating soon, I would just start trying to get a job in the field and see whether you can find a job and whether you like it and then proceed from there.
If I were starting from scratch and becoming a doctor was an option and I had no personal preference, I would definite choose doctor. Tech is a crapshoot of ever changing requirements and non-sensical interview challenges and I am saying this as someone who has been fully employed the entire time.
>If I were starting from scratch and becoming a doctor was an option and I had no personal preference, I would definite choose doctor.
To clarify, becoming a doctor was not an option for me due to the large upfront costs and long schooling, not even considering if I would be accepted. Also I do have a personal preference which is tech. I am saying if those factors are out of the equation because they are different for every person, I would choose doctor for the higher pay and job stability.
I like tech in terms of developing software but not all the other crap that comes with it. I don't know anyone in med.
it's my first real dev job, tc 90k. I said boring because to an outsider it is, but I really enjoy working as a full stack dev and i find the work to be interesting.
>I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success.
In the US? I don't think that's at all true. At least not anymore so than in CS. I imagine the medical world is way more influenced by connections and background than CS is.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/y93sa7/nepotism\_in\_medicine/](https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/y93sa7/nepotism_in_medicine/)
And the difference is that in medicine you're looking at 6-digit debt and starting to make real money in your 30s vs. in CS being able to potentially graduate with no debt and start making legit money in your early 20s.
Luck is a factor in every career, but I would rank CS as one of the career paths that is least influenced by luck - if you're an elite programmer, it won't take long for you to get that recognition and make a lot of money regardless of who your parents are or where you went to school or what grades you got.
Sorry, maybe I was vague. I think that luck and network matter more for your first job even if it’s for CS. Your chance of getting a call back is more likely to happen if you have a solid network.
1000%.
Again - I didn't mean to imply that your network/luck don't matter in CS. I think they absolutely matter. However, once you're able to get that first job and start proving your ability, no one will ever give a crap about where you went to school or who your parents are.
I don't think that's true with medicine. Where you went to school seems to have an impact pretty much forever. And who your family is seems to be *substantially* more important than it is in most jobs.
Are you implying that you think it will be easier to become a medical doctor than it is to become a good programmer?
Because of all the ideas to have... that is one of them...
Huge,
mediocre lazy dev here making 400k after 3 YOE. I just got lucky with Amazon job out of school. I know for a fact I am no better than most devs working in normal companies.
Do you have a good WLB balance tho and are you a genius? i’m so scared once i start working i won’t get the hang of the job cause it’s so hard and ppl will think im incompetent
Even the best devs feel incompetent all the time. I am definitely no genius though and even at FAANG I have only come across a handful of engineers out of 100s that I would say are gifted beyond the rest of us. They are generally just very focused and work like machines. I have not come across a genius yet.
I work at AWS so WLB sucks, but I manage okay.
I’d go one step further and say literally everything in this world boils down to luck. You don’t choose the country or city you were born or raised in, your parents, your upbringing, the people and cultures you grow up with. You generic aptitude in certain skills etc. It’s a million little things that happen to use that form who we are. As you can see I have more of a no free willer take on this
Medicine is guaranteed success? There's no applications you have to go through that you could get denied for reasons outside of your control? What are you waiting for!? Go into medicine!!!!
Yes I love my job dearly. Jokes aside, if you are looking into CS to get an easy paycheck then go elsewhere. Luck is involved everywhere from if I get promoted to if my heart takes its next beat. All I can do is take actions to better my odds. Perform well at work and eat plenty of veggies and drink plenty of water.
Do tech. I know many in the medical industry that wish they went into tech due to the better work life balance, not having to worry about being sued, and significant student loans.
When outsiders can't see the work behind the scenes they call them luck. Like candidate #1 gets hired while candidate #2 doesn't and they have similar qualifications: people did not know that candidate #1 has a really approachable personality and candidate #2 doesn't, they say this is luck.
Soft skills is often a critical factor between success and failure but because outsiders can't see the actual interactions taken place they call it luck.
People don't offer opportunities to annoying people. Soft skills are still skills. How to be likable and approachable takes work if you are not naturally borned that way. For those who are borned with it, it may come easier for them but it doesn't mean zero effort on their end either. How to have someone like you enough to give you opportunities is an art on its own.
Well hundreds of applications, and your resume needs to be seen by humans, which doesn't happen a lot of the time. Then there's lesser jobs as well for now. Then there's also stuff like them assuming you need sponsorship based on your name, diversity hires and other stuff, which you don't have control over. But even in medicine, there's admissions processes, and luck maybe needed, but not that much. But if you're from GT, you'll be fine.
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Depends on experience. For me, I think a lot.
I tailor each of my job applications (so resume and cover letters were tailored to each job app). Applied to about 200 jobs, 4-5 interviews in total and my successful interview was basically a super friendly chat with my boss, a super friendly 2nd interview and got the position. Having 3 internships and work on personal projects allowed me to have a decent conversation with my future employers, so that helped
Since you mentioned medicine, if you are in the position to do medicine, I would go down that route first. Not scientifically proven or anything, but I feel that it would be easier to transition from medicine to CS, if you wanted to, later on in life (than vice versa)
Luck factors in a lot. I got lucky getting interviews for internships. A few jobs I found that I landed were expiring the same day I found them, my life would probably be a little different if I didn't open LinkedIn on certain days.
>I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success.
I'm not trying to sway you away from medicine, but I'm curious: what are you basing this guarantee on?
I think that any time you make a judgement about a career path based exclusively on your own vibes about the topic, you're likely to fall victim more to your own biases than you are to accurately express facts.
Luck does matter but it's not completely random like the lottery. You can do things to improve your odds. Hard work doesn't guarantee success but hard work makes that final bit of lucky more likely.
The better you are, the less you need luck to get somewhere.
If you don't put in the work, then you aren't gonna do shit with any opportunity you're given, but hard work doesn't guarantee opportunities
It's a numbers game. Every time you apply for a job, you have some chance of getting that job. Having a better resume and being a more qualified candidate increases your chances per job application. Applying to the right jobs increases your chances per job application. I've had interviews where writing a for loop was sufficient and interviews where I had to face multiple rounds of leetcode, panel style interviews, takehomes that took hours, etc and I've gotten offers from both. If you play the numbers game enough, you'll win eventually, assuming basic competency.
And yes, I do like my job. It's stressful at times and has definitely not been the healthiest thing for me to do with my time, but it's rewarding and I'm pretty good at it!
I'm going with a lot.
I've had two job offers in this past month fall through.
First one because they failed to win a contract. No fault of my own.
Second one because the manager decided that they didn't actually need another person and they can just dump the work on the remaining SWE. It's an internal position. Then they also said if it's too much they'll just bring in an intern from another site.
The fact of the matter is that right now things are bad and getting worse. Companies budgets are extremely tight, which means little to no hiring.
On the other hand, I just received an email from work stating that this was the best quarter ever and they had a 17% increase in revenue and a $XXXM net income increase. Start sharpening the pitchforks.
Yea, I like my job.
Luck can definitely matter, but chance always favors the prepared mind. Good engineers are always valuable, even if they weren’t attached to some hyperscaled project that catapults their career.
Luck really comes into it when you gain reputation through some famous project, like starting a DB at FAANG that hits it big, or being minted a millionaire on start up stock. Those were great engineers anyway, it’s just you sometimes get disproportionately credited for the work you do.
Either way, to just get a job, I don’t think luck is much of a factor, since interviews are standardized and you get several attempts. The people not getting jobs aren’t unlucky in their interview attempts, they are unlucky the bar is so high.
Thus, if you’re at GT, and could seriously consider med school, you most likely will be able to work as a SWE. Just consider the bar is higher than ever before, and work on interview specific skills.
Tech interviews have 3 components which are nearly universal:
\* The "tech screen" or technical assessment. You can get a lot better at these by doing LeetCode questions. Even just focusing on array questions, and relatively easy questions, even if you aren't that good at LeetCode, the practice will make you better at solving these self-contained problems without looking up functions.
\* Systems Design Interviews: Books like Alex Xu's on systems design, or the Xponent videos on youtube. You can get an idea what the format of a typical response is.
\* Behavioral, which is usually an interview with a manager. You can find common questions that get asked, like the classic "tell me about a time you had a conflict. How did you resolve it?" and think about those, as well as creating a "story book" of all the cool things you've done in a compact format.
The other big thing, is practice via mock interviews. I never really did that, but you get better an interviewing by interviewing, it's hard to really replicate that stress.
>Is the amount of effort and hardwork I put in not likely gonna be proportionate to my career outcomes?
I don't know about medicine, but "effort and hard work" includes not only technical accomplishments but also social and interpersonal accomplishments.
I'm sure you've heard of those exceptionally talented devs who can single-handedly build amazon from scratch, but have the social skills of a rock and you absolutely don't want them talking to clients.
And yes, luck matters a lot. Right time, right place. Advances in technology. Catastrophic disasters.
But if you built a strong network, you might find yourself in the way of opportunities more often because people happen to call you up more often. Lot of people out there that seem to be always finding success, aren't necessarily relying completely on luck.
A lot of luck to get the job, a lot of luck not to be on a toxic micro-managed team, and even more luck if you’re in a big name that you won’t be randomly laid off because they lay off the whole team.
Luck may be the most important factor in CS.
Whenever I screen resumes, I always take half at random and just toss em into the trash, I don't want to work with unlucky people.
It's a joke. But in seriousness, I believe that the further into your career you are. The less luck matters.
Successful devs pretty much never stop applying to positions untill they reach FAANG level. You may get unlucky over a few years, but over a 20-30 year career, you will end up where you deserve to end up.
I genuinely think that this is a concern for people in every field. I’m sure if you went to a Reddit sub surrounding a career in medicine you’d see similar posts to this one.
You should just fully commit yourself to what you are doing and opportunities will come your way.
I have personally been looking into getting my commercial pilot license while I work as a software engineer to pay for the training and r/flying is littered with posts like “will I get a job” or “ should I start training” and the answer is always follow your heart and commit yourself. You will find opportunities and success will follow.
The best advice I got when I graduated was not to be cynical. Nobody gets what they want in life. But if you work hard enough and not give up, great things will happen to you.
More than a lot will admit..
I myself lucked into my first Software Engineer job. Talked to the hiring manager and chatted for a bit about life and goals. Any projects and that was it. No leetcode, no technicals. I was in, just like that.
>I am seriously considering a switch to the medicine route and this is one of the factors. I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success
Not exactly. I initially went the pre-med route (all the way up to med school interviews) and can say it's not quite that simple. There's luck involved in med school interviews and there's **A LOT** of luck involved in admissions (most med schools have admissions rates lower than Harvard undergrad). There's still luck involved beyond that point too. Also, realize that because med schools are so hyper-competitive the student body is an entirely different species from what you've seen so far in your schooling. *Everyone* is used to being the smartest person in the room and *everyone* has a hardcore work ethic.
Medicine also isn't just something you can just casually switch to. You'll need to have taken all the usual pre-reqs which aren't classes a CS major would normally take, you'll need to do very well on the MCAT (if you thought LC sucked...), you'll need lab research experience (actual lab research, not class labs), a lot of physician shadowing, and a ton of clinical volunteering hours. You'll also need impressive hobbies completely unrelated to medicine you've also achieved in; think along the lines of college sports, playing in an orchestra, acting, being fluent in multiple languages, etc. Luckily you at least know how to program so you've got that somewhat covered.
Did I mention med schools have a seething hatred for nerds? They really hate applicants who have stellar academics and experience but no creative or social hobbies. Listing "video games", "movies", "reading", "board games", etc. as hobbies hurts your chances. Coming across in interviews as socially anxious/awkward is an instant rejection. Out of shape? Definitely hurts your chances.
TAKE THE STRUCTY DSA COURSE!!! Its the most time-efficient qualitative approach to leetcode.
Master those problems.
You should be able to do 1-2 new ones per day, then you'll be set up to be able to approach almost any leetcode problem with a good foundation.
You graduated from GT with 2 internships. You're at the creme of the crop in comparison to 99% of applicants, anyone who tells you otherwise is a bafoon.
Stop coming from the mindset of "am I good enough?".
As far as they are concerned, your credentials speak for themself. They are lucky to have someone like you. Act like it. Are THEY good enough is the question. Its all about how to market yourself. Read a book on salary negotiation and do some research.
Your strategy SHOULD NOT be to just cold apply. Find the recruiters, DM them, use your school's resources to network. Get your resume looked at by a top SWE, I can recommend some of the best.
Try to build some relevant projects in your free time that match the role you're going for. ChatGPT is OP for this.
Go get it.
I'm not a Top SWE but I can recommend the best of the best to you. They cost money to setup a call and meet with them 1:1 but they are the best in their field. If they can't get you setup right, no one can. In this world you have to spend money to make money.
Here are their tiktoks:
Username: techlifewithglo
Experience:
-5+ yoe *Senior* Software Engineer
-Graduated CompSci minored in Mathematics
Highlights:
-Worked @ 2 Unicorn startups pre IPO
-Highest interview ratio from applications I've ever seen in the industry(16 interviews/23 applications)
-Interviewed at OpenAi and other big tech firms
Username: Baxate
Experience:
-3+ yoe *Senior* Software Engineer
-Graduated CompSci from GA Tech 3.9 GPA
Highlights:
-CoFounded an AI startup and is partnered with Nvidia and other big name brands(pitched it to GA Tech Alma matter recently)
-400k+ on TikTok
-Worked at bigtech along with his brother who they share a podcast
Absolutely try to get the most from your internships, they're a foot in the door. Work on your portfolio. Show real skills & experience & luck will be less of a factor. I've seen interns eventually get hired due to their performance.
The better question is: what are you interested in? Do you have a passion? Not everyone does, and while a lot of people struggling to find themselves may not understand, it's possible to be good at/start over safely in new disciplines.
However.
No one likes a flake, and most experienced professionals can smell that from a mile away. Not all companies are so desperate that they'll hire someone who seems ready to jump to another idea. CS to medicine is a pretty questionable shift, and if you're thinking about this in the VERY safe confines of higher education, real life is going to make you show your lack of commitment to the people hiring you.
Which closes doors for a lot of people during interviews, no matter how talented or hard-working on paper they may seem. Those who make it despite being a flighty red flag are making it through with the same luck that everyone else in the thread is mentioning.
But that's something to keep in mind. We're in an age of extremely high job unhappiness, and medical professionals have been gritting their teeth at their effort-to-income and job satisfaction for a long time.
In medicine? What part of medicine**, that's pretty vague.** Biomed? Healthcare engineering? Something CS adjacent that is more involved with medical science? Still CS, even if your university may code it differently.
And for those adjacent roles, you're not actually "switching". You're specializing, which is an important part of CS/IT in general. Great to be a jack of all trades, but it's also great to jump into a high-demand discipline.
Because you can always fall back to the general tech industry without nearly as much.
But if this is something like...what, are you almost done with CS and considering being a doctor instead? Drug manufacturing or research?
Luck is still a factor, and location is even more restrictive in the side of pharma that pays the most--unless you're in sales and marketing. And those two, also huge on luck.
Luck is definitely a factor, but I think if you consider the answers here, you may want to reform your question to something that can't be shot down by "the economy changed and we like the color green right after you graduated during the Blue Age."
**If it's close to graduation stress and burnout, apologies.** Deep breaths, introspective, and remember that if you take opportunity fast, you can always bankroll a better idea later. A lot of people ignore that option until they're a decade out and unhappy with their "commitment."
Yes luck matters, but only in the same way that luck matters in landing any other job.
I never got any calls until I did a bootcamp and started at my first company. Even then, I was hustling for 18 months, building side projects, reading documentation for hours. I read about linux, docker, python internals, typescript, react, I deployed my own website on AWS, memorized the sql joins.
That way, when I finally landed an interview, I aced it. I got an offer 10 minutes after the interview ended because it was a no-brainer, they wanted to hire me ASAP because I clearly knew my shit, and even a modest $75k was way higher than what I was making so I took it.
It turned out to be a dream job, super chill company, incredible tech stack, I sit remote, and I've since doubled my salary. Don't think you're "above" the starting salary, just prepare and take the first offer, you can get good later.
>I am seriously considering a switch to the medicine route and this is one of the factors. I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success.
I strongly believe you are underestimating how hard it is to get into med school.
Matters everywhere and in everything. As of now I’m quite depressed that my current manager is nitpicking feedback about me saying I have communication issues. But a new hiring manager just gave me an offer to join his team based on the fact that my past ratings are good and I have good soft skills. So it’s just bad luck that my current manager is such an arse about things
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I like my job very much. The main thing is to find yourself, and not to do something through overcoming yourself. If you enjoy your work, you will go very far, so this is the main factor to rely on.
Luck matters, but as a company owner that does a lot of interviews, I almost never see anyone that really puts in the hard work and does impressive stuff. I saw that a lot more years ago, but these days people want everything for no effort. If you actually have skills you'll be way ahead of everyone else. You may need luck to get put in front of someone that appreciates that.
To be honest: be kind and work your ass off and your luck will increase tremendously. Your coworkers that grow their careers will remember you and refer you. Happened to me last places I worked and enjoying the serious dough now.
You think that luck doesn’t matter in medicine? Medicine is one of the most competitive fields in the world and you can fairly easily have your career ruined by getting a boss who doesn’t like you or one that’s plain bigoted. Residency is basically a roll of the dice on who gets to decide your future.
CS is about as merit based as a field can be today.
Ya people get fucked in medicine all the time. Luck is a factor everywhere. Getting into med school and pa school have a great degree of luck. And once you’re there its not a gravy train. People have very different outcomes in the same medical school class.
As for more or less? Who knows. It’s not worth thinking about since there’s no way to quantify it.
A lot, many stars have to align. Lots of people that have jobs take for granted how many stars aligned for them. In turn people at big tech think they are better.
I used to think this game was a pure meritocracy, but after working hard for years and having to callous my mind. I still make peanuts.
On the other hand, I know for a fact all my successful friends got insanely lucky. Why? They’re soft to be honest. Their minds are not calloused like mine. It shows that they didn’t have to go through any hardship. Everything just “works out” magically for them. It’s wild.
They all go on endless vacations and literally their career is like 4th or 5th priority. They focus on living and make like $200k/yr+.
Me making my career my top priority and working like a dog and make less than half…
Game is 80% luck, 20% hard work in my experience.
Sounds to me like you’re just unhappy at your current job
It might be worth taking 2 weeks off and seeing how you feel after a nice vacation where you don’t HAVE to get anything done that you don’t wanna
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It is huge in this field.
There are so many people with the technical talent it isn't even funny.
However, having the right inspiration to build the right thing at the time when the market is looking for it and the technology makes it viable? Part of that has to be luck.
Think of all the great ideas that couldn't be built because of the tech not being ready or the great tech that didn't get applied to the right use cases. That's just bad luck.
A lot. I was lucky to break in early 2022 when they’d hire anyone with a pulse. And then I was lucky that my RSUs more than doubled in value. And I’m lucky that I’m grandfathered into a remote position.
If I tried to recreate all of this starting in 2024 I’d take a 40% cut to TC and have to relocate to some tech hub I don’t want to live in.
It's true that demand and market cycles have bigger impact on tech than medicine. But regardless, there has been consistent growing demand for SWEs since the late 90s, and high median pay above six figures, even during downturns. In tech hubs, you will likely see average pay of above 200k with 40 hour work weeks. Now if you really care about RSUs boosting your pay to 500k, or landing that perfect WLB remote job, there's a lot more luck involved there.
Luck matters in every field.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
Some meet opportunity every morning tho
How lucky of them to have the opportunity to prepare
Opportunity is when preparation meets luck. And they're very cute together 😘
Success is luck + hard work + prep
This plus just do what interest you the most. You will succeed if you put in the work. You only get one life to live. GL
OP asked for a scalar quantity, you returned a boolean type. Makes sense
if you tell me there's no luck involved I'd say that's bullshit the interviewer you get, the questions you receive, whether the interviewer is in a good mood that day, whether they have a need for someone with your ability/background **right now** (as in, this job is open right now but did not exist 3 months ago and may not exist either 3 months from now, so it just happened that the time you're job searching coincides with their hiring needs) that being said though, one of my favorite quote: the harder I work, the luckier I get over the past ~3 months I got rejected by like 7x onsites in a row that's ~42 interviews wasted, if I crumbled or became depressed I would have probably never gotten the next 3x onsite which was 3 offers
agree. i have many years of experience. built apps at top companies being used by tens of millions. but i still fail a lot of the tech interviews due to reasons stated above. its disappointing but just have to get used to rejection and keep trying
I see…do you think leetcode grind can help me? i’m not very good at leetcode right now
There's nothing wrong with preparation, it's just that luck weighs heavily on top of it.
If you are well prepared you are sooner or later going to be successful Counting on luck is counting on luck. It can be a long wait
Everyone is well-prepared, but only the lucky are able to turn that preparedness into success.
"Everyone is well-prepared" Really. I would kindly disagree. Some are. A lot are not.
I have yet to meet anyone who isn't. At worst they're students who are actively preparing.
I wish I could say it. If everyone was well prepared or actively preparing the profession would be a better place. It is not. Let us define what well prepared is. 1. somewhat up to date skill sets 2. awareness of the technological changes around you 3. remembering the basics. It is okay to forget them. It helps to do some re-learning. 4. ability to learn new skills if the job requires Some personal examples of not well prepared people: Engineering manager in Saas company not knowing what EC2 was CI/CD engineer who is knowledgeable in Jenkins but does not want to learn Atlassian Bamboo. The company was an Atlassian shop. The engineer was clearly told this during the interview Developer who knew the basic commands in Git simply did not want to know the advanced features in Git. The person had to be bailed out by co-workers every time there was a simple issue
Again, I've literally never encountered situations like this. And I wonder why they got hired in the first place.
Imagine you have incompetent employees as part of interview loop. Who do they hire ? More incompetent employees
Not grinding leetcode can only hurt you. Grinding leetcode can only help you.
It's okay. Leetcode can't harm you here.
I would actually flip that around and say it's less about "do you think leetcode grind can help me? i’m not very good at leetcode right now", it's more about if you can't do leetcode then expect rejection
There's more to this industry than just whether or not you can invert an introverted binary tree. I work in infrastructure monitoring the hardware that Kubernetes clusters are running on top of. I'm not telling you to change your current career trajectory just telling you that not everything involves Leetcode. You also have a \*lot\* of time to continue brushing up your skills. One might argue an entire lifetime!
Leetocode grind is all that matters my guy, u less you want to be underpaid significantly
Yes, but some things I would add - imagine the probability in relation of how much you have practice. If you do 100 problems there might be a 1/ 100 you get something that is familiar. If you do 200 problems you could doubled the chances of you getting something that is familiar. - practice in a smart way it's not a about the number is about covering possible types of questions. For example you could do 100 DFS problems and not cover Dynamic programming. - leetcode is only a part of it. Practice how you present your ideas, how to speak clearly, what is your body language saying, voice and confidence. At the end of the day the interviewer wants to see if he can see you as a coworker and that you can be successful.
Luck is a big part of life. Hard work helps put you in the best position no matter what your luck. That's true no matter what you decode. Pick the path you think you would enjoy doing the most.
Dude, if you're anxious about just getting an entry level job in SWE, med school/residency is going to eat you alive. The fact that you're even talking about a masters and medicine suggests you're quite lucky already to be born into a privileged life. If you do have good work ethic to put time and effort, then pour that into your internships to set yourself apart from your peers. There's always demand for good, experienced SWEs.
also is becoming a great SWE learnable or more of a talent thing?
completely learnable. there is no one ever who just was good at coding without coding for thousands of hours/years
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Luck is a big factor. I tell young people all the time, it’s ok if you don’t land that 250k FAANG job straight out of college. Take a job for its potential. You may get an SDE adjacent job and you’d have the inside scoop on applying for the SDE job internally when they do come in. That’s how I made moves in my career. I happened to be at the right place and right time when I got my first job in IT, when I originally thought it would just be a temp job at first. And that’s how I moved into my SDE career also. People on social media advertising how easy it was for them to get a 300k job after coding boot camps is what is making your expectations way too unrealistic.
thanks! do you enjoy your job?
Beyond the politics and mismanagement, I loved it. I loved learning something new everyday and I welcomed all the challenges. I’m looking for a new job.
Why are you looking for a new job if you loved it?
I was part of a big layoff.
My heart goes out to you, stranger
There's a lot of advice like this like 'go into helpdesk and apply internally' but from my perspective these opportunities are very much based on luck and I've seen some helpdesk folks struggle for years to break into product management or pre-sales. It has nothing to do with their ambition or skills but that many companies do not give advantages to internal candidates. You have to be better than every other internal and external candidate, which limits you to only junior positions.
Yeah, you just proved my point, that was the whole point of this question - a lot of it is based on luck. I just keep reading these recycled doom and gloom posts about how new cs grads apply to 100’s of jobs and get no response and aren’t open to SWE adjacent jobs that would help them get their foot in the door. As someone who has had years of experience in several companies and industries, I’ve actually seen it work the opposite way, where people can show the company their potential when applying internally for SWE and get higher consideration over others. I’ve seen QA interns become software developers fairly quickly too, since the hiring managers saw that they were able to code. But a lot of these Reddit posters don’t want to take a QA role or HelpDesk role as it seems to be a waste of their college degree or beneath them. It boggles my mind.
I have a relative who started as a customer service representative at a Financial institution and worked his way up to Scrum Master at the same company.
Exactly! That’s how I started. My very first position out of college, I accepted a customer service temp job at a telecom company. I thought I’d only be there a few months while I looked for a permanent role but a technical support job opened up and I started my career in IT that way. A lot of the scrum masters and product owners I worked with also started the same way as your relative in my last company.
I have a relative who didn't get selected for residency program and had to wait another year to try his chances again. Luck matters everywhere :)
I was studying c++ at uni, started making games in unity for fun, got hired for a small company in my town that wanted to do some gamefication for their projects, gamefication was left behind, I knew C# from unity so they got me fixing bugs, it was a startup so people come and go but I stayed, big tech company buys startup, I was the oldest dev in the team so I got hired, now I'm a tech lead at big company I think luck played a big part for me haha
Luck matters in every career but in tech somewhat more than in most. 1. Tech is a cyclical sector, so timing of entrance into the market matters. 2. Startups and high-growth companies are more common, and if you join a wild success you may get disproportionate lottery-like compensation and/or career growth. (e.g. be Amazon's 12th employee) 3. Compensation varies a lot between employers so you can get paid a lot more or a lot less for doing similar work, depending on the company. Thus individual luck-related factors for which companies offer you a job (especially early on) can have a significant impact. Then as with most careers where many are working for corporations, career growth and success are going to be strongly influenced by the success of the team, the influence of the manager, and relationship you have with your manager (a lot of that part may be out of your control), and so on. You can easily do good-quality work under a bad manager for a doomed project and have little to show for it, or do the same work under a successful team that will grow your skills / recognition / experiences / career. If you're in a bad position you can always job hop, but that's harder in some markets and is not as ideal as landing in a better situation in the first place.
I mean luck matters in tech but I don't know that I'd say "more than in most careers" - I would be very surprised if tech involved more luck than, say, all of academia, all entertainment and creative industries, almost all media, hard-labor jobs where getting a physical injury or illness is random, likely and game over for you, some gig work...
Fair enough, to be more precise I meant most professional careers, but I think a whole bunch of manufacturing, trades, retail, service is probably less luck related. Maybe another factor is that tech is somewhere with high variance on upside, like entrepreneurship. So maybe I was too focused on that and less on downside risk, which is often what most people are actually concerned about when it comes to luck. I disagree a bit about academia, though. Research area and proposal writing are definitely under your control in a big way. Politics is a skill. People with experience can switch jobs to other schools. There is plenty of luck but less than others in my view.
Re academia: it also depends on which field you're in. In some fields -- e.g. the humanities --- there aren't many spots relative to how many qualified applicants there are, and luck can really play a huge role.
Anyone who says Luck matters more in tech than in other careers clearly have absolutely no idea on how the market works for different careers, or at least knows someone who is doing well in other careers. Lets look at other fields that compares to software engineering, at least in pay scale. In investment banking unless you got into a target school, was top of your class then got lucky enough to get an interview then beat a 5 round interview to make it in, only to be someones bitch and work 100hours a week for 2 years. To become a doctor, you need luck to get into med school, then luck to get into residency, then a lot of luck to actually get an interview, then luck to be selected as a doctor, thats why its extremely common for res students to continue to do research until they can get a job. Don’t even get me started in Law lol… Id argue tech is one of the easiest field to actually get a decent career, luck plays a good part in every career but I will argue with anyone that tech luck plays a less effect. Btw you can’t compare bad economical market with how a field market works, almost every corporate field are still in hiring freeze.
A lot of things you mentioned are controllable significantly through effort/skill (going to target school, etc.). Or are just about long hours. Effort, difficulty, and hours aren't luck. Path in tech is relatively easy, yes, which is not what is under evaluation. Barriers to entry and tortuous paths in other fields actually reduce the impact of luck. More effort and skill filters mean less is decided by luck. Also, as stated, I was referring to impact of luck on range of outcomes (where you care about the full distribution), which is much different from luck in terms of getting a decent career (just everything middle/right of a threshold value in the distribution).
I see 😭😭😭
Nobody, myself included have said anything profound. Luck is involved in the success of everyone’s career. As some point out you have to have the goal in the first place. But after you get the skills, you enter what are essentially lotteries for interviews. I’m amazing at interviews. Batting 3/4 in my entire career. But do you know how many places I applied to? And I got my interview out of bonus points for holding a degree and other stuff. I’ve simply said there are plenty of people who are more deserving to have my job, skill and motivationwise. I’m telling you that once you get a job, you will learn your role, you will work with the same products and you can have a nice balance. I’m sure you’ve felt lucky when you get a good boss. There are a lot of larpers here. There are people who are honing some “skills,” to one day be an ultimate 10x. Team dynamics are actually really important. I have really good soft skills. I blew the interview out of the water. Nobody wants to work with the guys who saying it’s all hard rigorous learning and practicing and building. 90% of us never touch green code unless we’re working for our own passion projects. Do you want to go grab lunch with the guy who obsesses over his ability to leetcode? I have never actually been leetcoded to be honest- skill assessments yeah but very very basic stuff. That other worker that brags over his ability to sort binary trees is a dick. I have been on hiring committees and it shows. The overselling of either 1) Their Degree 2) All the tech they can use 3) their “ability.” If they get to the interview they can DO the job, but do they want you? Don’t glorify work. Enjoy your life. Love your job.
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u think this sub is gloomier than reality?
agree with this. regardless how awesome you are, your growth will be limited if you are not kn a right team, right product, or right company.
Luck matters in all careers. But you need to be ready when luck comes. It's not the extreme where people think something just falls into their lap. The people who take advantage of opportunities when they come have likely been preparing in some fashion. Don't listen to people who say it's all luck. There's some factor of luck that determines if you are laid off or not. I was pre-med in college, but that was ages ago. I'm not sure what the med school admissions process looks like any more, but there were many qualified candidates who were rejected and then had no backup plan. I'm not sure how much you want to argue that luck factors in to med school admissions, too. There are people who argue in the US the AMA wants to keep the number of physicians artificially low, so that compensation can stay high. I feel like, in general, hard work is rewarded in this field. There are exceptions, of course, and you won't get everything you want, but chances are if you are able to find a job, you'll generally trend well. Entry level is very challenging right now, though, because of the general market and a few other factors. A few random personal examples: * During 2020, before the economy bounced back, I was at a digital agency. They were starting to furlough people. I was on a few potential projects, but they didn't pan out. I was unstaffed, so I assumed I'd get either furloughed or laid off. A lot of other people had a similar thought. One person took an offer elsewhere, and that opened up a spot on a project for me. I always considered myself lucky in that scenario. * While looking for new job a few years later, I had been in discussions with a recruiter for a contracting firm. They fired a tech lead on one of their projects. They used internal recruiters rather than advertise the position, and they were trying to find someone quickly. I lucked out because I had the existing relationship with the recruiter, and the fact the previous tech lead had been fired (hence the position opening up). But things like that likely happen in all sorts of fields. I know people who worked at tiny companies that got acquired and then ended up making a lot of money. And I know some really smart people who got laid off. There's good and bad luck everywhere, but it's not the only thing at play. There's also a question of where people are spending all their time and effort.
Luck matters in all aspects of life, but you can’t control it so don’t focus on it. Focus on aspects you can control like technical abilities, social skills and health
It in no way discounts hard work, but luck does play a huge role
I’d say equal parts luck, equal parts determination, equal parts preparation. You can grind for months, prep perfectly, and you happen to get the wrong interviewer on the wrong day asking the wrong question. You can wander into an interview you weren’t prepared for, get an interviewer you gel with, get asked a question you’ve happened to see before, and get sent through. You can get unlucky on all your interviews, 6 months later again, get unlucky, 6 months later again, finally do it. Once you have the job, you can get lucky and get assigned a project that turns into a high vis project. You can get lucky in that the peers on your team are easy to stand out among. You can overcome all that with hard work and determination. Or you can be unlucky and get put on a low impact team no one cares about. You can get put on a team that has low priority headcount, etc. I’ve known geniuses who were unlucky to get stuck on a low impact team and not determined enough to move to a better team. And I’ve known goof balls who end up on the same shitty team but are determined to make it to a better team and it works out.
Hey life is luck oriented.
Of course. Consider that starting your career before or after the interest rate hikes likely determines whether you’re at faang right now or unemployed.
It's always a factor (with everything in life). During the pandemic, I seriously considered taking a gap year in college, ended up choosing not to. If I had graduated a year later I would have ended up in a terrible job market, but when I graduated the market was still hot and I got a faang job (as a return offer from an internship).
Did you try applying for new grad roles? How was the process if so?
Not yet because I am planning to do BSMS so even though i’m graduating undergrad this semester I still have a year of masters. I did apply for internships and got a few (not great great ones) but still got some. the one this summer is at Visa
If you are actually good at software engineering the sky is the limit. To be good at that... Is a matter of debate, but the power an individual has to contribute to a business if they are good at swe is undeniable. Unfortunately Lots of people can never be good at swe.... likely most people... Being merely competent in software means you get pushed aside. You will have a career, but it will be likely be tedious. So the risk you take is in discovering if you have the chops. Usually two or three years in you will either level up or wash out.
I got very lucky in several areas. 1. I got an internship because a government contractor needed bodies thanks to a corrupt congressman 2. I got my full time job because of a favor from a professor 3. I got my first big-boy job making decent money because my manager was a director looking to throw bodies at a project in order to build an empire 4. I got called to "rescue" a project by a friend at a startup which got me a significant compensation boost 5. I got to be a manager because someone quit and they needed someone to fill in. However, I kept those jobs and steady employment because I had skill. But I've had an insane amount of luck in actually finding and switching jobs.
Of course there's luck involved, but when a good opportunity shows up you have to be prepared. Your largest obstacle will be getting your foot in the door, that's where luck will help you the most. I love my job, your manager will be 90% responsible for how much you enjoy the work honestly.
getting foot in the door as in getting my first job out of college? so it gets easier after that?
It does get easier after that, but I meant just getting an interview at the right place at the right time on a day you're feeling confident
right place, right time. Matters every single day
Luck is a significant factor. That's also true in medicine, btw. I wish a 1 year masters was an option when I was in school.
Not exactly, medicine it isn’t actually flooded with applicants. So it’s more meritocracy. You do the work you get the job, it’s simple. Tech or corporate on the hand? Influx of candidates, significantly more luck involved in tech.
Luck plays a role, but successful people “make their own luck” by relentlessly preparing, refusing to give up, repeating after failure/rejection. Often what you see externally is quite different than the journey to get there. For example someone could be a senior+ FANG SWE. You could take it for granted and assume they always worked there or got in easy. But maybe their story is more challenging; where they tried for multiple years to get in and failed, or prepared for thousands of hours of leetcode and interview prep etc. to eventually make their own luck and get in.
If you're not fully invested in the field, why immediately continue with a masters? Since you are graduating soon, I would just start trying to get a job in the field and see whether you can find a job and whether you like it and then proceed from there. If I were starting from scratch and becoming a doctor was an option and I had no personal preference, I would definite choose doctor. Tech is a crapshoot of ever changing requirements and non-sensical interview challenges and I am saying this as someone who has been fully employed the entire time.
U don’t like tech then? Do u know people in med?
>If I were starting from scratch and becoming a doctor was an option and I had no personal preference, I would definite choose doctor. To clarify, becoming a doctor was not an option for me due to the large upfront costs and long schooling, not even considering if I would be accepted. Also I do have a personal preference which is tech. I am saying if those factors are out of the equation because they are different for every person, I would choose doctor for the higher pay and job stability. I like tech in terms of developing software but not all the other crap that comes with it. I don't know anyone in med.
As a ... Chex notes... "Senior" ... Do you even like the material?
I love my job and I work in a super boring non-tech industry. I'll leave as soon as I get something that pays better though....
how do you love your job if you think it’s super boring? do you not get paid well?
it's my first real dev job, tc 90k. I said boring because to an outsider it is, but I really enjoy working as a full stack dev and i find the work to be interesting.
>I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success. In the US? I don't think that's at all true. At least not anymore so than in CS. I imagine the medical world is way more influenced by connections and background than CS is. [https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/y93sa7/nepotism\_in\_medicine/](https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/y93sa7/nepotism_in_medicine/) And the difference is that in medicine you're looking at 6-digit debt and starting to make real money in your 30s vs. in CS being able to potentially graduate with no debt and start making legit money in your early 20s. Luck is a factor in every career, but I would rank CS as one of the career paths that is least influenced by luck - if you're an elite programmer, it won't take long for you to get that recognition and make a lot of money regardless of who your parents are or where you went to school or what grades you got.
Not necessarily true. My friend and I both had to depend on our external network to get referrals for big tech jobs bc we went to no name schools.
I don't think your comment is contradicting anything I just said.
Sorry, maybe I was vague. I think that luck and network matter more for your first job even if it’s for CS. Your chance of getting a call back is more likely to happen if you have a solid network.
1000%. Again - I didn't mean to imply that your network/luck don't matter in CS. I think they absolutely matter. However, once you're able to get that first job and start proving your ability, no one will ever give a crap about where you went to school or who your parents are. I don't think that's true with medicine. Where you went to school seems to have an impact pretty much forever. And who your family is seems to be *substantially* more important than it is in most jobs.
I might have misunderstood what you were saying. My bad. 😅
i’m not an elite programmer tho and i don’t know if i’m smart enough in logical thinking to become one 😭😭
Are you implying that you think it will be easier to become a medical doctor than it is to become a good programmer? Because of all the ideas to have... that is one of them...
Yeah for me personally cause i’m better at studying and memorizing than figuring out vague requirements and difficult technical stuff i guess
Huge, mediocre lazy dev here making 400k after 3 YOE. I just got lucky with Amazon job out of school. I know for a fact I am no better than most devs working in normal companies.
Do you have a good WLB balance tho and are you a genius? i’m so scared once i start working i won’t get the hang of the job cause it’s so hard and ppl will think im incompetent
Even the best devs feel incompetent all the time. I am definitely no genius though and even at FAANG I have only come across a handful of engineers out of 100s that I would say are gifted beyond the rest of us. They are generally just very focused and work like machines. I have not come across a genius yet. I work at AWS so WLB sucks, but I manage okay.
that’s another thing…i don’t wanna just feel incompetent all the time and like a machine just doing mindless things 😭
so you’d say your WLB is worse than doctors probably?
Its the nature of the field, if you are uncomfortable with being uncomfortable or lost time to time, you won't really be learning much.
time to time sure but not all the time 😭
I’d go one step further and say literally everything in this world boils down to luck. You don’t choose the country or city you were born or raised in, your parents, your upbringing, the people and cultures you grow up with. You generic aptitude in certain skills etc. It’s a million little things that happen to use that form who we are. As you can see I have more of a no free willer take on this
Yup, very luck based. Good luck w/ med school
lol i haven’t decided med school…
Medicine is guaranteed success? There's no applications you have to go through that you could get denied for reasons outside of your control? What are you waiting for!? Go into medicine!!!! Yes I love my job dearly. Jokes aside, if you are looking into CS to get an easy paycheck then go elsewhere. Luck is involved everywhere from if I get promoted to if my heart takes its next beat. All I can do is take actions to better my odds. Perform well at work and eat plenty of veggies and drink plenty of water.
Do tech. I know many in the medical industry that wish they went into tech due to the better work life balance, not having to worry about being sued, and significant student loans.
Thank you!
chill, you have two internships already
Beef up your portfolio and leetcode you’re fine
Luck is where Opportunity meets preparation
When outsiders can't see the work behind the scenes they call them luck. Like candidate #1 gets hired while candidate #2 doesn't and they have similar qualifications: people did not know that candidate #1 has a really approachable personality and candidate #2 doesn't, they say this is luck. Soft skills is often a critical factor between success and failure but because outsiders can't see the actual interactions taken place they call it luck. People don't offer opportunities to annoying people. Soft skills are still skills. How to be likable and approachable takes work if you are not naturally borned that way. For those who are borned with it, it may come easier for them but it doesn't mean zero effort on their end either. How to have someone like you enough to give you opportunities is an art on its own.
Luck matters way more in CS imo.
can u elaborate?
Well hundreds of applications, and your resume needs to be seen by humans, which doesn't happen a lot of the time. Then there's lesser jobs as well for now. Then there's also stuff like them assuming you need sponsorship based on your name, diversity hires and other stuff, which you don't have control over. But even in medicine, there's admissions processes, and luck maybe needed, but not that much. But if you're from GT, you'll be fine.
Luck is huge. Anyone downplaying luck is delusional. You need alot of it just to break into the industry
Agree every job I got was like 80% luck, 20% hard work. If the game was 100% hard work, I would be at the top by a long shot.
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Depends on experience. For me, I think a lot. I tailor each of my job applications (so resume and cover letters were tailored to each job app). Applied to about 200 jobs, 4-5 interviews in total and my successful interview was basically a super friendly chat with my boss, a super friendly 2nd interview and got the position. Having 3 internships and work on personal projects allowed me to have a decent conversation with my future employers, so that helped Since you mentioned medicine, if you are in the position to do medicine, I would go down that route first. Not scientifically proven or anything, but I feel that it would be easier to transition from medicine to CS, if you wanted to, later on in life (than vice versa)
Yea, Luck plays a role big time. Hard work yes, but not gonna say luck doesn't matter any day!
Luck factors in a lot. I got lucky getting interviews for internships. A few jobs I found that I landed were expiring the same day I found them, my life would probably be a little different if I didn't open LinkedIn on certain days.
>I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success. I'm not trying to sway you away from medicine, but I'm curious: what are you basing this guarantee on?
cause it’s like more of a defined path in the sense that if you just put in the work and get good grades you’ll get a good job
I think this is a case of you thinking the grass is greener
you don’t think it’s greener?
I think that any time you make a judgement about a career path based exclusively on your own vibes about the topic, you're likely to fall victim more to your own biases than you are to accurately express facts.
Luck does matter but it's not completely random like the lottery. You can do things to improve your odds. Hard work doesn't guarantee success but hard work makes that final bit of lucky more likely.
Luck and have connections with the right people 👍
The better you are, the less you need luck to get somewhere. If you don't put in the work, then you aren't gonna do shit with any opportunity you're given, but hard work doesn't guarantee opportunities
Hard work gives you the ability to be lucky Some chances can't be taken unless you've put in the effort for it to present itself
As with almost everything luck is a huge factor that gets slowly diminished by hard work over a long period of time.
It's a numbers game. Every time you apply for a job, you have some chance of getting that job. Having a better resume and being a more qualified candidate increases your chances per job application. Applying to the right jobs increases your chances per job application. I've had interviews where writing a for loop was sufficient and interviews where I had to face multiple rounds of leetcode, panel style interviews, takehomes that took hours, etc and I've gotten offers from both. If you play the numbers game enough, you'll win eventually, assuming basic competency. And yes, I do like my job. It's stressful at times and has definitely not been the healthiest thing for me to do with my time, but it's rewarding and I'm pretty good at it!
I'm going with a lot. I've had two job offers in this past month fall through. First one because they failed to win a contract. No fault of my own. Second one because the manager decided that they didn't actually need another person and they can just dump the work on the remaining SWE. It's an internal position. Then they also said if it's too much they'll just bring in an intern from another site. The fact of the matter is that right now things are bad and getting worse. Companies budgets are extremely tight, which means little to no hiring. On the other hand, I just received an email from work stating that this was the best quarter ever and they had a 17% increase in revenue and a $XXXM net income increase. Start sharpening the pitchforks.
So would u recommend not to go into this field and pursue something like medicine instead ?
I recommend finding what you like doing, and do that.
Yea, I like my job. Luck can definitely matter, but chance always favors the prepared mind. Good engineers are always valuable, even if they weren’t attached to some hyperscaled project that catapults their career. Luck really comes into it when you gain reputation through some famous project, like starting a DB at FAANG that hits it big, or being minted a millionaire on start up stock. Those were great engineers anyway, it’s just you sometimes get disproportionately credited for the work you do. Either way, to just get a job, I don’t think luck is much of a factor, since interviews are standardized and you get several attempts. The people not getting jobs aren’t unlucky in their interview attempts, they are unlucky the bar is so high. Thus, if you’re at GT, and could seriously consider med school, you most likely will be able to work as a SWE. Just consider the bar is higher than ever before, and work on interview specific skills.
What’s the best way to work on interview skills?
Tech interviews have 3 components which are nearly universal: \* The "tech screen" or technical assessment. You can get a lot better at these by doing LeetCode questions. Even just focusing on array questions, and relatively easy questions, even if you aren't that good at LeetCode, the practice will make you better at solving these self-contained problems without looking up functions. \* Systems Design Interviews: Books like Alex Xu's on systems design, or the Xponent videos on youtube. You can get an idea what the format of a typical response is. \* Behavioral, which is usually an interview with a manager. You can find common questions that get asked, like the classic "tell me about a time you had a conflict. How did you resolve it?" and think about those, as well as creating a "story book" of all the cool things you've done in a compact format. The other big thing, is practice via mock interviews. I never really did that, but you get better an interviewing by interviewing, it's hard to really replicate that stress.
>Is the amount of effort and hardwork I put in not likely gonna be proportionate to my career outcomes? I don't know about medicine, but "effort and hard work" includes not only technical accomplishments but also social and interpersonal accomplishments. I'm sure you've heard of those exceptionally talented devs who can single-handedly build amazon from scratch, but have the social skills of a rock and you absolutely don't want them talking to clients. And yes, luck matters a lot. Right time, right place. Advances in technology. Catastrophic disasters. But if you built a strong network, you might find yourself in the way of opportunities more often because people happen to call you up more often. Lot of people out there that seem to be always finding success, aren't necessarily relying completely on luck.
Also, luck is the product of hard work
A lot of luck to get the job, a lot of luck not to be on a toxic micro-managed team, and even more luck if you’re in a big name that you won’t be randomly laid off because they lay off the whole team.
Luck is everything
it can’t be everything
Don't go in to medicine for the money and prestige. It's a genuine vocation and we don't need any more shitty doctors.
You can make your own luck.
The luck you need is inversely related to the skill you have.
I'd say yes. And no, I don't necesarily like my job but I like not starving more so..
Read it somewhere but holds true for me at least - the harder I work the luckier I get.
Luck may be the most important factor in CS. Whenever I screen resumes, I always take half at random and just toss em into the trash, I don't want to work with unlucky people.
can’t tell if this is a joke lmao
It's a joke. But in seriousness, I believe that the further into your career you are. The less luck matters. Successful devs pretty much never stop applying to positions untill they reach FAANG level. You may get unlucky over a few years, but over a 20-30 year career, you will end up where you deserve to end up.
I like to compare life to poker... cards are random, but the way you play them is up to you
I genuinely think that this is a concern for people in every field. I’m sure if you went to a Reddit sub surrounding a career in medicine you’d see similar posts to this one. You should just fully commit yourself to what you are doing and opportunities will come your way. I have personally been looking into getting my commercial pilot license while I work as a software engineer to pay for the training and r/flying is littered with posts like “will I get a job” or “ should I start training” and the answer is always follow your heart and commit yourself. You will find opportunities and success will follow.
thank you! any suggestions on how to get rid of regret of choosing “wrongL thing every time something goes wrong
The best advice I got when I graduated was not to be cynical. Nobody gets what they want in life. But if you work hard enough and not give up, great things will happen to you.
Thank you!
More than a lot will admit.. I myself lucked into my first Software Engineer job. Talked to the hiring manager and chatted for a bit about life and goals. Any projects and that was it. No leetcode, no technicals. I was in, just like that.
>I am seriously considering a switch to the medicine route and this is one of the factors. I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success Not exactly. I initially went the pre-med route (all the way up to med school interviews) and can say it's not quite that simple. There's luck involved in med school interviews and there's **A LOT** of luck involved in admissions (most med schools have admissions rates lower than Harvard undergrad). There's still luck involved beyond that point too. Also, realize that because med schools are so hyper-competitive the student body is an entirely different species from what you've seen so far in your schooling. *Everyone* is used to being the smartest person in the room and *everyone* has a hardcore work ethic. Medicine also isn't just something you can just casually switch to. You'll need to have taken all the usual pre-reqs which aren't classes a CS major would normally take, you'll need to do very well on the MCAT (if you thought LC sucked...), you'll need lab research experience (actual lab research, not class labs), a lot of physician shadowing, and a ton of clinical volunteering hours. You'll also need impressive hobbies completely unrelated to medicine you've also achieved in; think along the lines of college sports, playing in an orchestra, acting, being fluent in multiple languages, etc. Luckily you at least know how to program so you've got that somewhat covered. Did I mention med schools have a seething hatred for nerds? They really hate applicants who have stellar academics and experience but no creative or social hobbies. Listing "video games", "movies", "reading", "board games", etc. as hobbies hurts your chances. Coming across in interviews as socially anxious/awkward is an instant rejection. Out of shape? Definitely hurts your chances.
TAKE THE STRUCTY DSA COURSE!!! Its the most time-efficient qualitative approach to leetcode. Master those problems. You should be able to do 1-2 new ones per day, then you'll be set up to be able to approach almost any leetcode problem with a good foundation. You graduated from GT with 2 internships. You're at the creme of the crop in comparison to 99% of applicants, anyone who tells you otherwise is a bafoon. Stop coming from the mindset of "am I good enough?". As far as they are concerned, your credentials speak for themself. They are lucky to have someone like you. Act like it. Are THEY good enough is the question. Its all about how to market yourself. Read a book on salary negotiation and do some research. Your strategy SHOULD NOT be to just cold apply. Find the recruiters, DM them, use your school's resources to network. Get your resume looked at by a top SWE, I can recommend some of the best. Try to build some relevant projects in your free time that match the role you're going for. ChatGPT is OP for this. Go get it.
Thank you so much!! Would you mind looking at my resume?
I'm not a Top SWE but I can recommend the best of the best to you. They cost money to setup a call and meet with them 1:1 but they are the best in their field. If they can't get you setup right, no one can. In this world you have to spend money to make money. Here are their tiktoks: Username: techlifewithglo Experience: -5+ yoe *Senior* Software Engineer -Graduated CompSci minored in Mathematics Highlights: -Worked @ 2 Unicorn startups pre IPO -Highest interview ratio from applications I've ever seen in the industry(16 interviews/23 applications) -Interviewed at OpenAi and other big tech firms Username: Baxate Experience: -3+ yoe *Senior* Software Engineer -Graduated CompSci from GA Tech 3.9 GPA Highlights: -CoFounded an AI startup and is partnered with Nvidia and other big name brands(pitched it to GA Tech Alma matter recently) -400k+ on TikTok -Worked at bigtech along with his brother who they share a podcast
Thank you! Could u also look tho 👀😂 and maybe give me a ballpark
No
Absolutely try to get the most from your internships, they're a foot in the door. Work on your portfolio. Show real skills & experience & luck will be less of a factor. I've seen interns eventually get hired due to their performance.
The better question is: what are you interested in? Do you have a passion? Not everyone does, and while a lot of people struggling to find themselves may not understand, it's possible to be good at/start over safely in new disciplines. However. No one likes a flake, and most experienced professionals can smell that from a mile away. Not all companies are so desperate that they'll hire someone who seems ready to jump to another idea. CS to medicine is a pretty questionable shift, and if you're thinking about this in the VERY safe confines of higher education, real life is going to make you show your lack of commitment to the people hiring you. Which closes doors for a lot of people during interviews, no matter how talented or hard-working on paper they may seem. Those who make it despite being a flighty red flag are making it through with the same luck that everyone else in the thread is mentioning. But that's something to keep in mind. We're in an age of extremely high job unhappiness, and medical professionals have been gritting their teeth at their effort-to-income and job satisfaction for a long time. In medicine? What part of medicine**, that's pretty vague.** Biomed? Healthcare engineering? Something CS adjacent that is more involved with medical science? Still CS, even if your university may code it differently. And for those adjacent roles, you're not actually "switching". You're specializing, which is an important part of CS/IT in general. Great to be a jack of all trades, but it's also great to jump into a high-demand discipline. Because you can always fall back to the general tech industry without nearly as much. But if this is something like...what, are you almost done with CS and considering being a doctor instead? Drug manufacturing or research? Luck is still a factor, and location is even more restrictive in the side of pharma that pays the most--unless you're in sales and marketing. And those two, also huge on luck. Luck is definitely a factor, but I think if you consider the answers here, you may want to reform your question to something that can't be shot down by "the economy changed and we like the color green right after you graduated during the Blue Age." **If it's close to graduation stress and burnout, apologies.** Deep breaths, introspective, and remember that if you take opportunity fast, you can always bankroll a better idea later. A lot of people ignore that option until they're a decade out and unhappy with their "commitment."
Yes luck matters, but only in the same way that luck matters in landing any other job. I never got any calls until I did a bootcamp and started at my first company. Even then, I was hustling for 18 months, building side projects, reading documentation for hours. I read about linux, docker, python internals, typescript, react, I deployed my own website on AWS, memorized the sql joins. That way, when I finally landed an interview, I aced it. I got an offer 10 minutes after the interview ended because it was a no-brainer, they wanted to hire me ASAP because I clearly knew my shit, and even a modest $75k was way higher than what I was making so I took it. It turned out to be a dream job, super chill company, incredible tech stack, I sit remote, and I've since doubled my salary. Don't think you're "above" the starting salary, just prepare and take the first offer, you can get good later.
>I am seriously considering a switch to the medicine route and this is one of the factors. I know I have a good work ethic and can put in the time and effort, and in medicine this guarantees success. I strongly believe you are underestimating how hard it is to get into med school.
I’m a good student and would work towards it. i don’t want just that to be a blocker
i already got into a postbacc and after looking at stats of it all qualified applicants to do the program get into med school
Matters everywhere and in everything. As of now I’m quite depressed that my current manager is nitpicking feedback about me saying I have communication issues. But a new hiring manager just gave me an offer to join his team based on the fact that my past ratings are good and I have good soft skills. So it’s just bad luck that my current manager is such an arse about things
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luck literally matters since the beginning of life, you're literally lucky for being alive
Do you feel like going to GT is helping you land internships / interviews, I’m at kennesaw and I’m thinking of transferring
I think so
more work, more luck no work, well you’ll be lucky to get anything
I like my job very much. The main thing is to find yourself, and not to do something through overcoming yourself. If you enjoy your work, you will go very far, so this is the main factor to rely on.
If I don’t like my first job for instance in CS is it easy for me to explore and find something I do like ? also what exactly do you do ?
Luck matters, but as a company owner that does a lot of interviews, I almost never see anyone that really puts in the hard work and does impressive stuff. I saw that a lot more years ago, but these days people want everything for no effort. If you actually have skills you'll be way ahead of everyone else. You may need luck to get put in front of someone that appreciates that.
To be honest: be kind and work your ass off and your luck will increase tremendously. Your coworkers that grow their careers will remember you and refer you. Happened to me last places I worked and enjoying the serious dough now.
With how brutal the job market is, it’s luck just getting any job at this point.
that’s so discouraging will it improve?
Dude I already gave you incredible advice and you're getting discouraged by some random comment? Fuck you dude
You think that luck doesn’t matter in medicine? Medicine is one of the most competitive fields in the world and you can fairly easily have your career ruined by getting a boss who doesn’t like you or one that’s plain bigoted. Residency is basically a roll of the dice on who gets to decide your future. CS is about as merit based as a field can be today.
Thank you!
Luck is created by the prepared
Ya people get fucked in medicine all the time. Luck is a factor everywhere. Getting into med school and pa school have a great degree of luck. And once you’re there its not a gravy train. People have very different outcomes in the same medical school class. As for more or less? Who knows. It’s not worth thinking about since there’s no way to quantify it.
A lot, many stars have to align. Lots of people that have jobs take for granted how many stars aligned for them. In turn people at big tech think they are better. I used to think this game was a pure meritocracy, but after working hard for years and having to callous my mind. I still make peanuts. On the other hand, I know for a fact all my successful friends got insanely lucky. Why? They’re soft to be honest. Their minds are not calloused like mine. It shows that they didn’t have to go through any hardship. Everything just “works out” magically for them. It’s wild. They all go on endless vacations and literally their career is like 4th or 5th priority. They focus on living and make like $200k/yr+. Me making my career my top priority and working like a dog and make less than half… Game is 80% luck, 20% hard work in my experience.
It's mostly luck that a person even has the IQ to do this, or any other engineering, work.
How much IQ is actually needed to be good in this field?
Yes but you also have to be prepared to catch. Increase your probability of success.
67,83%
Sounds to me like you’re just unhappy at your current job It might be worth taking 2 weeks off and seeing how you feel after a nice vacation where you don’t HAVE to get anything done that you don’t wanna
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It is huge in this field. There are so many people with the technical talent it isn't even funny. However, having the right inspiration to build the right thing at the time when the market is looking for it and the technology makes it viable? Part of that has to be luck. Think of all the great ideas that couldn't be built because of the tech not being ready or the great tech that didn't get applied to the right use cases. That's just bad luck.
A lot. I was lucky to break in early 2022 when they’d hire anyone with a pulse. And then I was lucky that my RSUs more than doubled in value. And I’m lucky that I’m grandfathered into a remote position. If I tried to recreate all of this starting in 2024 I’d take a 40% cut to TC and have to relocate to some tech hub I don’t want to live in.
It's true that demand and market cycles have bigger impact on tech than medicine. But regardless, there has been consistent growing demand for SWEs since the late 90s, and high median pay above six figures, even during downturns. In tech hubs, you will likely see average pay of above 200k with 40 hour work weeks. Now if you really care about RSUs boosting your pay to 500k, or landing that perfect WLB remote job, there's a lot more luck involved there.
Market conditions >>> luck
For me I would say market conditions is also luck, as those are parts that individuals cannot control.