WASTED My Family's Money - FAILED as a Software Engineering Student

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hey folks we're going to Twitter for an anonymous question and I'm just realizing now that I made a terrible Choice with my shirt color cuz I'm wearing purple and I'm going to blend right into the rest of my room here um okay this one says I've been watching the videos you record while commuting for some time and I've decided to share my story with you uh I'm a software engineering student studying in a foreign country so not the US they say they come from a poor country their family paid for their education and the Hope was that that uh they'd be able to get a good paying job and be able to send money back to home um and I think this is actually a not uncommon kind of thing right I think this is something that happens for sure and uh then they said

that was when the dev Market was a lot better back in 2021 okay then when I got studying the economy got worse and the AI and then AI started coming out making things even harder now I'm in my third year with an average GPA but my projects are better than most of my classmates still haven't been able to get a single internship since I have no family or connections finding an internship is almost impossible uh I have applied to big and small companies tried networking but once they realize I'm a foreigner and then then they say that's my guess uh sorry there's some parenthesis here that's my guess but seeing my classmates who are natives being able to get an internship without putting in any effort I have to assume that uh they either reject me or ignore me even when I offer to work

for free okay I'm thinking about paying for a fake internship just to meet the uh meet the 30-day requirement to graduate scared I wasted my family's money don't know what to do and they said thanks and um I'll respond so if you want your questions answered leave them Below in the comments or if you want to be kept Anonymous like this person feel free to send a message to Dev leader on social media it's my main YouTube channel as well with more polished edited videos mostly tutorials um but if you send them in on social media I'll keep you Anonymous so that you can write whatever you'd like okay lot to unpack here um first of all uh you know definitely a challenging situation for this individual um but there's a couple things I want to address that are going to be probably tough love

and I think I like have to do this I feel like it's my responsibility because I think that when people get into scenarios where they're feeling stuck right um one of the things like it gets frustrating um but then what they end up doing is sort of looking externally and saying well like doing comparisons or doing blame and I wanted to address that first before we get into solutioning things because I think that we have to do a bit of a a mindset shift now this is of course my opinion my perspective I assume this person wrote in because they value that um but I can't sit here and say that this is the only way this is the right way this is going to be my point of view so with that said um we got into this point around being a foreigner and

that their classmates are native and they get internships without putting in any effort I just want to say that um I think that's probably like I said it's going to be some tough love um without putting in any effort I think what's happening here is that someone feels as in this person feels like they are putting in a lot of effort they can't see the effort that goes in behind the scenes for other people right you're not there every step of the way you can't be able to make that claim uh the other thing is that in some sit situations some people get lucky other people get unlucky and that's a factor as well especially with the current market there's going to be people that apply and they may not be the best person for the job but they happen to stick out they happen

to get the interview they happen to interview well and they happen to get it okay there's many factors here but I do not think that it's fair to say that people are able to get internships without effort and I also don't think think that it's helpful so regardless of whether or not it's fair I just don't think that it's helpful and the reason I say that is because that has nothing to do with you it just doesn't it's not it's nothing that's in your control to be able to worry about other people so it's two parts right I want you to be able to realize that it's not a fair statement because you can't see everything that goes on behind the surface and the second part is because it's not in our control like let's let's say you have people in your class that have

really good connections and you're like it's not fair that they had connections and that they were able to get internships yeah that's that does seem unfair that seems like a very unfair Advantage so what like that does not affect you it's not going to help you in any way to try and move forward but this is what I'm saying it becomes a mindset thing where people feel stuck and then they start to focus on these other things putting time and energy into worrying about that is not going to change anything for you I'd also say in terms of being foreign uh I went to the University of Waterloo and I came from a small town that was basically people that just look like me for whatever that's worth and when I went to the University of watero I absolutely felt like a minority in my

classes whether or not that's actually true I don't have stats but that's how I felt for the first time in my life but like that's and there were people that were foreign there are many people that were foreign right that had either um their families were they had gone to Canada and so they had been in Canada for not very long or people that literally their families were still overseas from different countries and they were getting internships and stuff and I felt like I had to bust my ass to get internships right so the comment about not having family and connections here I my family's here but I didn't have connections to anything I still had to go do similar things right in hindsight now that I know a lot more like I probably could have and should have done a lot more networking I

didn't know what I was doing I was just going like at the University of water we have a job portal because internships it's Co-op program so there's an internship system right so you can go apply on the job boards but I wasn't networking by any means I was just applying to stuff on job boards and hoping that I would get an interview now I would say I would approach things very differently but my point to get the tough love stuff out of the way is like we don't control other people's situations and that's that's just the reality of it so if you want to be caught up on that and put energy into that I'm saying you're wasting your time and you got better to worry about that's a starting point so beyond that though let's talk about things that we can do to try

and improve the situation because my goal here is not to you know to crap on this person to make them feel bad but I don't just want to sit here and say like that I think some of these statements are necessarily fair I understand where this person's coming from I understand that they're feeling frustrated they feel like they're stuck right but my point is that we need to reframe okay so we're going to start reframing things what is in our control okay um the the foreign part I I think is a total misconception okay if I even on the team I'm on right now I'm pretty sure that most of the people I work with are Indian and that's not like a racist thing or anything like that I'm pretty sure statistically the people on my team are mostly from India like that work with

me locally are from India let not even to say like there's a team based in India or anything like that I'm pretty confident that most people are from India um Maybe not maybe it's almost equal I'm just realizing now that there's some people that are outside of my immediate reports and like um sort of peripheral but there's a like a large Indian population that I work with uh people from we have a team based in China so that's separate um in terms of people that are from China working with us you know locally one right and then I have a bunch of people that report to me that are from Latin America but like so there there's a significant number of people that are foreign that I work with foreign so I just like it's not I just don't think that that's a real consideration

I think that this is a thing that's being invented as a reason like and again not blaming this person for jumping to that because you're trying to logically come up with if I'm doing all the things I think I should be doing there must be a reason right it must be this and we're attributing it to uh being foreign I just don't think that that's a reality um okay so they're struggling to get internships they talk about networking and so I would invite this person to send in their resume to my main Channel um because I do resume reviews there because I would love to see if this resume stands out because when we're talking about getting internships couple things right we're going to have the networking aspect which we can dive into we're also going to have does your resume even stand out they

say that they have uh projects are still better than most of their classmates I don't know what that means do they they might have projects that are amazing are they showcasing that properly on their resume if not doesn't matter right doesn't matter from the perspective of getting that job getting that internship because you could have the most incredible project in the world you have 10 of them and if you're not doing a good job at communicating that articulating that on your resume then no one's ever going to know about it so I I definitely recommend this person is invited to send in their resume uh to my main Dev leader Channel if you're interested or this person's interested if you just look for the resume review playlist you watch the first minute of any video it will explain how to submit a resume that's what

I would recommend to this person I will gladly do a resume review which is funny because it's free free for anyone sending it in and it costs me money to get them edited so I literally lose money to review people's resumés but I'm trying to help so take that offer if you're interested and we can see if this person's resume actually stands out of course you won't know because I'm not going to connect the dots on these things and say that and there's other res rums that have come in so we'll see um my guess though is that this person is not doing a good job showcasing themselves on their resume right I think that's probably the case um and they might feel that they are they might feel that they have a lot of good uh projects they're skilled and they absolutely might be

this is the really challenging part right there's a there's a disconnect often with this stuff because you could be amazing right and the way that you can B yourself on your resume could lose a lot in Translation and the inverse is totally possible you might do a very good job at conveying you know that you are without necessarily lying or stretching the truth too much but you might showcase yourself very well on a rume and compared to someone else in practice you might not have as much experience or maybe your skill level isn't as great but the resume part and job are going to be the thing that at least get you that first opportunity right someone needs to be able to go through your resume in your application to go at least acknowledge that we want to interview this person if you can't get

through that barrier it doesn't matter like you could be the best interviewer in the world and if you can't get your resume in your job application to be able to land you that interview it literally doesn't matter how good you are at interviewing because you won't be doing it right so it's challenging we have to make sure that this person can number one get the visibility on their resume to be able to get the interview and then while they're I I don't know like I'm just want to scan through this again um did they say that they've been having interviews I think they said they haven't I don't think they called that out in terms of no interviews um they still haven't been able to get a single internship so I don't know if it's on the resume front I don't know if their resume

is actually really good and that's standing out and they have awesome projects and stuff that's great but then they go to interview and they don't know how to interview effectively because these are two very different sets of skills they're related in terms of you showcasing yourself but you know for most most uh Developer jobs there's going to be a coding interview question so something like leite code style unfortunately hopefully this changes more and more as we go forward because it's I think it's um so hopefully that changes more but I would say make sure you got that down if you're more Junior like system design questions are a little bit more rare but not not impossible to come up it's just that usually they're not expecting really Junior people to be able to Design Systems like distributed systems and understand them fully but it's entirely

possible so I would say brush up on that but then there's behavioral interview questions and this is something that I think a lot of developers struggle with and a lot of the time especially as like you know entry level like the behavioral stuff is generally people are trying to figure out how you work well in teams in reality right like tell me about a time when and then they they're using your past experience to try and predict what you will be like to work with and this is even for people that have had years of experience in the industry this is hard stuff for people to answer and it's hard because I think I don't know like I think it's like developer mindset people will say tell me about a project just to give you an example here tell me about a project where um

you know you were leading it and you had some interpersonal conflict with another team and then the person who's responding to the question will say okay no problem got this really cool project I was working on and then they go into like 10 minutes of all the technical details and the interviewer is like like it's just the framing for the scenario I'm trying to hear about how you solve the conflict with the other team right minimal amount of time on the technical details you don't need that that's not what the point of that question is but a lot of developers don't understand this or they're not understanding they might get that but they're not understanding what the question's trying to get out of them or they haven't practiced the scenarios right they're not they haven't practiced like rehearsing different experiences and reflecting on these things

so then they get asked a question and it's not that they don't have experience like that but they're like it's kind of like having a you drawing a blank in an exam like I know that I've done this but like my brain's just not turning on right now so it's a really common thing to screw these things up in interviews and maybe that's happening for this person I don't know it's really difficult for me to know if it's the resume front or the interview part but these are things that are in this person's control right to be able to improve the resume and to be able to improve their interviewing abilities now what's not in their control is that the volume of applicants that are coming in it's ridiculous right now there are tons of people applying for roles right with remote work we have

the ability if there's a remote job that people from anywhere can go apply for it so instead of it just being the people in the area and there's a lot of competition too right so you got all these people in a similar situation and it can be like across the world there's going to be a lot of competition you have to stand out even more now so I'm not saying it's easy it's not the takeaway here the takeaway is that we have to focus on what you can control and yeah with the amount of volume I think there's going to be a bit of randomization unfortunately now this person did say they've applied to big and small companies and that's good because I would say especially with the big companies they're getting more volume just by Nature right people applying to Microsoft where I work

there's going to be a lot of people applying to Microsoft why because the name is very welln because it is Big Tech comp a lot of people gravitate towards Big Tech but that's not the only answer right that's not the only Direction forward for people there are tons of Engineers that will never work in big Tech because it's not a good fit for them and they're not interested and that's the right thing for them for sure tons of people like that so you don't have to be applying to Big Tech or huge companies there are so many places you could be applying to and I'm just saying this out loud because if you're in a similar situation to this person and you're like yeah but I've only been applying to like Amazon on in Facebook and Google because if I don't get that I'll never

be successful man there are tons of other places tons I legitimately in my career I never thought that I would work at a big tech company because I just really wasn't that interested for what it's worth okay so it was never like when I graduate school I'm going to go do that like nope never crossed my mind not for a long time so if this person is exploring other opportunities that are at smaller companies I think that's great I think that's what they should be doing as well especially for increasing um the likelihood of being noticed just because the volume of applicants will be lower statistically um networking this may the last part that I want to touch on I don't know how this person's networking right um some people will say I am networking and I go okay well how are you doing that

well I started adding people on LinkedIn and sending them my resume nope don't do that that's not networking that's spamming people with your resume networking is something that takes time it is not a Sprint it is a marathon you need to invest time into it and it's another thing that's like it's simple but not easy so what can you be doing well if you want to focus online like technically this person sent me a message on Twitter they are literally starting to network with me right in my particular case it's a little bit unique because I have this channel when I recommend people message me but let's assume I didn't have this Channel and I just post stuff online right or I have this channel but I'm not taking people's questions I'm just sharing my experiences and this person was like Hey like I want

to connect with you and ask questions about this stuff because I'm asking for people to send me messages it's a little bit different but the thing thing to consider when you're networking with people is that if you come out of the gate and you're asking for things like other people are busy right this is why I feel like when people send a message and they're like hi I'm so and so here's my resume can you review it it's like man I got so much to do and I would love to help you but like I can't even help myself right now I don't have time to do that now I've made exceptions now cuz I'm turning it into content that was my way to get around that but like no I don't have time to just like I I don't have time for other things

and other PE I'm not saying I'm special other people are in this situation too people are like I work my full-time job I want to spend time with my family I can't afford to make time to go reviewing resumés or reviewing your projects some people can but my point is that going like leading with that expectation like hey can you review this for me or people will say like out of nowhere like hi I'm so and so can I schedule a 15-minute call with you it's like no no you can't and the reason for that and I've learned this the hard way is because people will say things like that but they've spammed 300 other people and I go make the time and they don't show up I'm not doing that anymore so when you're trying to start networking don't lead with asking for something

of other people like I said this situation is different because of how this channel set up it's not blaming this person for doing this or you if you want to send me questions and stuff I literally invited you to do that right so my point is that when you're networking with other people I would start by being genuine with the connection hey I saw what you were posting and talking about and I wanted to ask you questions about that right you don't even have to start by messaging them just start engaging with their content like you can ask them questions in the comments you can be curious you can be sharing what you're doing that's related just start interacting just be a be a human being right you wouldn't go up to a stranger on the street and say hey review my resume you just

wouldn't do it so start by normal interaction and that's why I'm saying this stuff takes time and then after a little while you know you could be saying hey like I'm really interested in the space that you're working in like could you tell me a little bit more about what it's like to work in that role you know keep these conversations going hey thank you so much for all your insights you've been sharing like do you think that you'd have a moment to be able to review my resume if I sent it over but like this could be after days weeks months but if you're doing this and you're investing time into networking then you have a couple of different Avenues it's not like one person that you started talking to now how do you make this even more well this I was giving you

examples of networking online in my head I was thinking LinkedIn there's Twitter there's LinkedIn there's people on Reddit but what about in person what about meetups this person's at University which is going to be my final point that I want to talk about or University or college right but you could be going to meetups and stuff and like I I I know like I'm very introverted the thought of doing that is like uh kind of not great for me but like if you're trying to network that's where people are go do that that's something that's in your control all right maybe your classmates didn't have to do that because they had connections sucks but like you can start building connections so go to meetups if you're comfortable with it it's an option okay last part on College University stuff um this is something I absolutely

didn't take advantage of whenever I talk about these things I kind of kick my own ass for like not being more proactive about this I I always say like stupidly I feel like and it's like a hard thing to admit I probably thought I was like better than that whatever that means um like oh it's just like just a nerdy thing to go like join some like robotics team or whatever like that's for you know like only super nerds do that like that's ridiculous like I'm I'm cooler than that I don't know I don't actually know but I feel like that was probably something in my head which is ridiculously ironic because now I film YouTube videos about software engineering like who's the nerd now right um if you have clubs teams whatever available at college and university absolutely try to take advantage of those

things this is a great opportunity to network it's a great opportunity for exposure it's a great opportunity to have experiences you can put onto your resume that will stand out because not a lot of other people have that everything about it is awesome the reason I feel ridiculous for not doing it is I have so many classmates so many classmates from my here that have gone on to do ridiculously awesome stuff in their careers like many of them are founders of companies doing totally cool things I'm not saying that my career has been bad by any means but like I look at what they're doing and I'm like G like like why was I not trying to like do more networking even with my classmates like it's just it feels silly so do that the final thing I'll say is that um like hackathons these

are another awesome opportunity go look for hackathons to participate in when I was working at a startup before Microsoft I worked there for eight years and we would go sponsor hackathons and we would set up a booth there right and we would have students coming up we would be talking to them about job opportunities taking in resumés um depending on the years and stuff we would also be judges so we'd go around we' be uh mentoring and judging so we go help people they'd be like a overnight hackathon so we're like we're there at like 4 in the morning like going around checking out people's stuff and then judging stuff right like we were there doing it from the other side go do those things that's just another opportunity where you can have that on your resume something that stands out it's going to be

networking it's going to be real experiences that you can be building stuff in teams there are plenty of things that you can and should be doing if you're trying to stand out more and you're feeling stuck these are all things that are in your control not saying it's easy I'm not saying it doesn't take time it's simple doesn't mean it's easy and it takes time but you can do these things and I encourage you to and there's probably plenty of other things that are adjacent to this that I haven't even touched on and my goal and my hope is that by talking about this stuff it gets your gears turning where you're like he didn't even mention whatever like this guy's this Nick gu is an idiot he didn't even mention whatever and I'm like great like you thought of it perfect go do that

you know what I mean like these are just opportunities for you to go do other things focus on what's in your control get it on your resume send in your resume for me to review practice your interviewing by the way if you need help with behavioral interviews on dome train I'm not going to put links because this is just too much effort on this channel doet tr.com if you look for my courses Nick centino on do train I have behavioral interviewing as a course if you're interested in that you can check it out that is paid for if you don't want to pay for courses that's totally cool just go watch my other videos and read my content because this kind of stuff comes up all the time so I hope that helps I wanted to say thank you so much for this person to

writing thank you so much to this person for writing in words are hard I don't mean to be an like I said some tough love and I honestly wish this person tons of success that's why I'm telling them to send in their resume I want to be able to help it's not easy but I know they can do it take care and I'll see you next time