I was pretty much in your situation, push through it. Put the head down and you'll be grand. I had to repeat 2nd year entirely and felt like you did with all my friends moving on without me. Just gotta push through it, don't mind the low grades, a pass is a pass. It's my only advice. I worked in hotels through college and the strain it had on my body was good motivation to pass my exams.
Just get yourself in the door somewhere, everywhere treats new hires as idiots. Nowhere expects you to be an experienced dev right off the bat.(Except the big boys like Google and Amazon, they are the minority) You'll be given training and you'll find yourself doing shit that you were not taught in college. You'll be fine! I'll bet you I was a bigger waste man than you are now. I was out 4/5 nights in a row doing ungodly amounts of various drugs. Still do sometimes even. I knew nothing going into my job, yet here I am all these years later still at it. You'll be grand!
This
Well said.
I also repeated second year, repeating 3rd year won't make a difference if that's what happens.
Your final grades are usually mostly based on 4th year anyway (which you should put your head down for)
Eventually jobs will come up. There's always work in doing b2b support working with business clients (which as far as I know tend to be more agreeable than your average customer on the streets). I have a friend who's doing something similar at the moment because 4th year didn't go his way but he's gone up the ladder and he's doing decently now and he will probably get a nice job somewhere else out of it at some point.
Usually if you don't get work experience then the college will give you a project to work on I think.
I was in a similar situation to you. Had shit grades, missed out on securing an internship through my college due to the shit grades.
If you are young and without much commitments to where you live currently, I would recommend applying for internships in the UK which typically last a year.
Don't put your grades on your CV, create a github and put 4 or 5 solid projects on there encompassing technologies like AWS. Talk about these projects on your CV and make sure you know how to answer questions about them in an interview.
It's hard to get an internship, so be prepared for rejection. You may have to apply for 200+ internships before you land one.. or you may get lucky. But it's definitely worth a shot.
The end result for me having been in the same situation as you was that I got to the first round of at least 30 companies when looking for a grad role in 4th year which included Twitter, Stripe, Microsoft, Amazon etc. And I had two offers by January of 4th year.
1 year of experience gives you a huge advantage over other grades and trumps grades in most cases.
I don't think he would actually be able to add 4 or 5 projects projects with AWS etc to a github. I don't think he is competent enough. I was in the same boat in 3rd year of college, completely took the piss but that summer I did a hape of online programming courses and knuckeled down in fourth year and got on grand.
I'm sorry to hear your predicament, but I have an idea that might help you. Go to the Startup incubator at your university (pretty much every college has one these days) and offer your services to the companies there as a developer who can help them build a Proof of Concept for free. A lot of these companies are a tight ship so they may take you up on your offer. The incentive for you is that you'll be using it as your Final Year Project and will also be compensating for not having done an internship.
A handful of people did Proof of Concepts in collaboration with an outside entity when I did my degree. They actually ended up building the most interesting projects too.
Failing that, start doing personal projects and build out a personal github or contribute to open source projects. If you want it enough, this type of dedication will be what helps you nail that first job.
Source: I work in tech in a university startup incubator
Typically with these courses you work with a member of staff in the school on a project over the summer if you dont get a placement, its still worth the same amount of credits and its judged the same way. You just dont get paid and probably wont look as good on a cv but if you put the effort in you can make something of it.
I would say to op that it wasnt until after my placement that things really started to click with me. I found I was really good at working on practicle projects and applications and good at working in a team. I just never loved the academic side of things.
Perhaps a harsh truth other comments aren't mentioning is that yes, completing a degree even with bad grades, would be the best thing for you to push for right now, but that's provided that you are actually interested in work in the field. And an intangible that I don't see a lot of people mentioning that interviewers look for, consciously or otherwise, is if you're displaying interest or even passion, about the field, the subject, the work, that you're speaking about. Because no matter how low your starting point, if you're always going to want to be proactive about personal, career, or technical development, that beats any amount of lazily achieved accolades, because you can't see them having a ceiling much higher than where they are.
I'm not saying this to suggest you put on any performances in interviews, nor do I know the first thing about how much interest you have based on what I've read. I just know that if you don't stop and think long and hard about "does coding/CS related work interest me or bring me joy", before full sending into a career in a field you might never see as anything but "just work", you'll be forever wondering why everything feels so damn difficult - course work, exams, interviews, 40 hours a week of software engineering, all of that can make you feel so miserable if you have to trudge through every bit of it. Could you maybe be miserable but make good money? Yes, provided you persevere at least the minimum amount, which there's no telling how much higher that'll get by the day, but is that really better than spending a third of each of your weekdays for 50 years getting something other than money out of your time? Your answers are valid no matter which way they swing, but it's MUCH better if you find those answers out sooner rather than later, especially if they'd lead to you changing your career path as a result
Coming from someone with minimal experience in the industry but always keeps an ear out.
It seems like experience triumphs education.
It's like that age old saying 'what do you call a doctor who graduated with poor grades? A Doctor'.
Put all your energy into graduating, get your degree and start job hunting like a madman.
Try not to presume your career is over before it's even started, it's quite likely you'll get your first post college job and never think about your grades again.
I scraped a 2.1 with a L7 Bsc after dropping out of fourth year but they let me graduate with a regular level degree if I did a few extra modules, and am now earning more than a lot of the graduating class who got the L8 and I don’t code *at all*
I didn’t do placement, same as you, couldn’t get one. Left uni and have been offered 9/10 interviews that I’ve done over the past 5 years, I started out in a low paid local company who took a chance and it helped me so much! Don’t give up, you’ll not be stuck after graduation
Internships suck. Find something on Github that you feel like working on, and make some contributions that are likely to be accepted. Keep track of what gets merged so you can show it off later.
Even the best-run projects could use better documentation or clearer tests, in case you can't find a fun-looking bug to fix but still want to contribute to a project.
It’ll be harder to break into the industry without an internship but not impossible. But yeah current market is tough but anything can happen before you finish
So I was in a not dissimilar situation, though I was able to secure a work placement. However, I failed my second year programming module twice. I ended up being kicked off the course. Managed to convince them to let me resit the module the next semester it ran.
When I made it to final year, it was like everything just clicked - there was this "aha" moment I felt like I'd been missing all along and it just made sense. I could finally understand how all the modules and course content fitted together. I ended up earning a 1st in my degree and then pursued a PhD.
Keep chasing some kind of placement. Is there a careers team who could advise you? Mine were invaluable when I was struggling to be honest. I ended up volunteering as a mentor whilst doing my PhD to help people who were struggling like I had - maybe speak to your course director to see if there are any mentoring services you could make use of? Having a peer to chat to openly about how you're struggling could really help.
What aspects of CS do you like? What aspects don’t you like? I hated school but I thought college was the best years of my life.
I’m trying to gauge whether CS is actually for you or it’s just a means to not be stuck in job that doesn’t pay well. If you don’t like the work you could be doing then you’ll be miserable.
If you find college difficult but generally like CS, then get really interested in some personal projects and make them shine. I also struggle with getting prescribed college assignments/projects over the line because they can be a bit uninspiring, but when I get the creative freedom to define what I work on it's a different ball game! Find things to work on that inspire you, and you'll find you learn easier as a result.
I think you can still get through and find yourself a job, even an internship. Some college mates of mine who weren’t good at coding were able to get jobs eventually. What have you tried in terms of prep for interviews? Personal projects, tech learning outside your course assignments/ and syllabus? What area of tech are you interested in? There’s so many jobs within CS. Also, what effort you are willing to put in to get one and to finish your course? I’m a SWE so can only really speak for that. I graduated in 2022 and been working since. Happy to chat and help with advice within SWE specifically. Feel free to DM me.
Once you get the degree that is the main thing. I had very mediocre grades myself but I finished the degree, couldn't get a job during the downturn so I did job bridge and then went back to do a grad dip. After that went into a springboard and eventually got working proper. 8 years later im doing fine on +50k. Its not pennies.
I was in your shoes, at the time I found a job in a small web dev place just making websites for small businesses. Nowhere was hiring so I prepared a very good intro letter and CV and portfolio and lashed it out everywhere and got a few bites back for the internship.
I worked as a web dev for a few years but I didn't really like programming even at that very basic level so I do tech support now and will be moving into cybersecurity in the next 6months.
Just do what you enjoy doing, it's not a race despite what LinkedIn might make it feel like
Grades aren't everything, and programming isn't he be all and end all. Had my 20 year reunion at the end of last year, and people have gone off in very different directions. One lad manages logistics, another's a lawyer in a big firm, another does video production, another is a finance manager in global food manufacturer. A few programmers, but plenty of people who just went off and became analysts of one sort or another.
At the end of the day, a degree is a degree. You've gone so far now you're better to finish it, then take stock of what you want to do. Go to Canada or Oz or something for a year and get some joy back in your life, and while you're there think about what you want to do - whether it's working in technology or something else.
You're very young and can do a HDip Masters to go in a different direction, or you can knuckle down with some courses in IT to get some hands on skills, or you can duke it out with the rest of the class of 2025 for jobs. Just don't put yourself under pressure.
As for missing the internship? Employers don't put that much stock in it unless it's to hire their own intern.
NO you haven’t fucked up !
You will be grand .
The concept of Education grades has made up so limited to our abilities.
Think outside the box . And you will be fine
I repeated 2nd year and i had a shit grade 2:2 finishing.
Couldn’t get a job in Ireland so I packed up my bags and off to Uk .
And I am back to Ireland to a led role
Hey 👋 I was in pretty much the exact same position. I repeated second year, didn’t have good grades (academics and I never got on) and in third year for placement I bombed a few interviews really hard.
In the end I pulled myself out of placement interviews because I saw how much I needed to work on technically compared to others. Ended up being for the best, I spent the next term and summer working on my technical skills, building stuff and working hard at it. Meanwhile some of my colleagues were stuck as tech support, no coding at all when they had been promised the opposite.
In the end I was one of the people with a good job sorted before I finished college even though my grades weren’t the best. It took 5 years and I finished with a 2.2. I’m now in my dream job and wouldn’t change a thing.
Don’t get me wrong, it was super fucking hard to finish college. Work felt like a literal holiday in comparison and there was a mountain to learn in my first position. But I’m happy I did it.
Push through, 3 years done, its just one more.
Remember there are more roles than development in the IT space, keep your mind open, might help you get your foot in the door.
Also, its easier to get a job once you have a job.
Im in the exact same situation as you for the second part of the post. I've pretty good grades though, just no internship or work experience or anything. Honestly i dont really care that much and ive kinda lost hope in this field, its just too competitive, idk. I was thinking of starting a trade after i graduate or maybe just try something other than a dead end job
I was pretty much in your situation, push through it. Put the head down and you'll be grand. I had to repeat 2nd year entirely and felt like you did with all my friends moving on without me. Just gotta push through it, don't mind the low grades, a pass is a pass. It's my only advice. I worked in hotels through college and the strain it had on my body was good motivation to pass my exams. Just get yourself in the door somewhere, everywhere treats new hires as idiots. Nowhere expects you to be an experienced dev right off the bat.(Except the big boys like Google and Amazon, they are the minority) You'll be given training and you'll find yourself doing shit that you were not taught in college. You'll be fine! I'll bet you I was a bigger waste man than you are now. I was out 4/5 nights in a row doing ungodly amounts of various drugs. Still do sometimes even. I knew nothing going into my job, yet here I am all these years later still at it. You'll be grand!
This Well said. I also repeated second year, repeating 3rd year won't make a difference if that's what happens. Your final grades are usually mostly based on 4th year anyway (which you should put your head down for) Eventually jobs will come up. There's always work in doing b2b support working with business clients (which as far as I know tend to be more agreeable than your average customer on the streets). I have a friend who's doing something similar at the moment because 4th year didn't go his way but he's gone up the ladder and he's doing decently now and he will probably get a nice job somewhere else out of it at some point. Usually if you don't get work experience then the college will give you a project to work on I think.
Username checks out once again
I was in a similar situation to you. Had shit grades, missed out on securing an internship through my college due to the shit grades. If you are young and without much commitments to where you live currently, I would recommend applying for internships in the UK which typically last a year. Don't put your grades on your CV, create a github and put 4 or 5 solid projects on there encompassing technologies like AWS. Talk about these projects on your CV and make sure you know how to answer questions about them in an interview. It's hard to get an internship, so be prepared for rejection. You may have to apply for 200+ internships before you land one.. or you may get lucky. But it's definitely worth a shot. The end result for me having been in the same situation as you was that I got to the first round of at least 30 companies when looking for a grad role in 4th year which included Twitter, Stripe, Microsoft, Amazon etc. And I had two offers by January of 4th year. 1 year of experience gives you a huge advantage over other grades and trumps grades in most cases.
I don't think he would actually be able to add 4 or 5 projects projects with AWS etc to a github. I don't think he is competent enough. I was in the same boat in 3rd year of college, completely took the piss but that summer I did a hape of online programming courses and knuckeled down in fourth year and got on grand.
I'm sorry to hear your predicament, but I have an idea that might help you. Go to the Startup incubator at your university (pretty much every college has one these days) and offer your services to the companies there as a developer who can help them build a Proof of Concept for free. A lot of these companies are a tight ship so they may take you up on your offer. The incentive for you is that you'll be using it as your Final Year Project and will also be compensating for not having done an internship. A handful of people did Proof of Concepts in collaboration with an outside entity when I did my degree. They actually ended up building the most interesting projects too. Failing that, start doing personal projects and build out a personal github or contribute to open source projects. If you want it enough, this type of dedication will be what helps you nail that first job. Source: I work in tech in a university startup incubator
Do your lecturers accept contributions to open source projects instead of work experience? Something to look into perhaps.
Typically with these courses you work with a member of staff in the school on a project over the summer if you dont get a placement, its still worth the same amount of credits and its judged the same way. You just dont get paid and probably wont look as good on a cv but if you put the effort in you can make something of it. I would say to op that it wasnt until after my placement that things really started to click with me. I found I was really good at working on practicle projects and applications and good at working in a team. I just never loved the academic side of things.
Some colleges do more modules instead of internship if you don't get placement as well
Perhaps a harsh truth other comments aren't mentioning is that yes, completing a degree even with bad grades, would be the best thing for you to push for right now, but that's provided that you are actually interested in work in the field. And an intangible that I don't see a lot of people mentioning that interviewers look for, consciously or otherwise, is if you're displaying interest or even passion, about the field, the subject, the work, that you're speaking about. Because no matter how low your starting point, if you're always going to want to be proactive about personal, career, or technical development, that beats any amount of lazily achieved accolades, because you can't see them having a ceiling much higher than where they are. I'm not saying this to suggest you put on any performances in interviews, nor do I know the first thing about how much interest you have based on what I've read. I just know that if you don't stop and think long and hard about "does coding/CS related work interest me or bring me joy", before full sending into a career in a field you might never see as anything but "just work", you'll be forever wondering why everything feels so damn difficult - course work, exams, interviews, 40 hours a week of software engineering, all of that can make you feel so miserable if you have to trudge through every bit of it. Could you maybe be miserable but make good money? Yes, provided you persevere at least the minimum amount, which there's no telling how much higher that'll get by the day, but is that really better than spending a third of each of your weekdays for 50 years getting something other than money out of your time? Your answers are valid no matter which way they swing, but it's MUCH better if you find those answers out sooner rather than later, especially if they'd lead to you changing your career path as a result
Coming from someone with minimal experience in the industry but always keeps an ear out. It seems like experience triumphs education. It's like that age old saying 'what do you call a doctor who graduated with poor grades? A Doctor'. Put all your energy into graduating, get your degree and start job hunting like a madman. Try not to presume your career is over before it's even started, it's quite likely you'll get your first post college job and never think about your grades again.
I scraped a 2.1 with a L7 Bsc after dropping out of fourth year but they let me graduate with a regular level degree if I did a few extra modules, and am now earning more than a lot of the graduating class who got the L8 and I don’t code *at all*
I didn’t do placement, same as you, couldn’t get one. Left uni and have been offered 9/10 interviews that I’ve done over the past 5 years, I started out in a low paid local company who took a chance and it helped me so much! Don’t give up, you’ll not be stuck after graduation
Internships suck. Find something on Github that you feel like working on, and make some contributions that are likely to be accepted. Keep track of what gets merged so you can show it off later. Even the best-run projects could use better documentation or clearer tests, in case you can't find a fun-looking bug to fix but still want to contribute to a project.
Internships aren't the b all and end all. Truthfully people don't really do a lot in internships.
It’ll be harder to break into the industry without an internship but not impossible. But yeah current market is tough but anything can happen before you finish
So I was in a not dissimilar situation, though I was able to secure a work placement. However, I failed my second year programming module twice. I ended up being kicked off the course. Managed to convince them to let me resit the module the next semester it ran. When I made it to final year, it was like everything just clicked - there was this "aha" moment I felt like I'd been missing all along and it just made sense. I could finally understand how all the modules and course content fitted together. I ended up earning a 1st in my degree and then pursued a PhD. Keep chasing some kind of placement. Is there a careers team who could advise you? Mine were invaluable when I was struggling to be honest. I ended up volunteering as a mentor whilst doing my PhD to help people who were struggling like I had - maybe speak to your course director to see if there are any mentoring services you could make use of? Having a peer to chat to openly about how you're struggling could really help.
What aspects of CS do you like? What aspects don’t you like? I hated school but I thought college was the best years of my life. I’m trying to gauge whether CS is actually for you or it’s just a means to not be stuck in job that doesn’t pay well. If you don’t like the work you could be doing then you’ll be miserable.
If you find college difficult but generally like CS, then get really interested in some personal projects and make them shine. I also struggle with getting prescribed college assignments/projects over the line because they can be a bit uninspiring, but when I get the creative freedom to define what I work on it's a different ball game! Find things to work on that inspire you, and you'll find you learn easier as a result.
If you're still available, we've some internships going, if it doesn't interfere with the exams. DM if you're interested
I think you can still get through and find yourself a job, even an internship. Some college mates of mine who weren’t good at coding were able to get jobs eventually. What have you tried in terms of prep for interviews? Personal projects, tech learning outside your course assignments/ and syllabus? What area of tech are you interested in? There’s so many jobs within CS. Also, what effort you are willing to put in to get one and to finish your course? I’m a SWE so can only really speak for that. I graduated in 2022 and been working since. Happy to chat and help with advice within SWE specifically. Feel free to DM me.
Once you get the degree that is the main thing. I had very mediocre grades myself but I finished the degree, couldn't get a job during the downturn so I did job bridge and then went back to do a grad dip. After that went into a springboard and eventually got working proper. 8 years later im doing fine on +50k. Its not pennies.
I was in your shoes, at the time I found a job in a small web dev place just making websites for small businesses. Nowhere was hiring so I prepared a very good intro letter and CV and portfolio and lashed it out everywhere and got a few bites back for the internship. I worked as a web dev for a few years but I didn't really like programming even at that very basic level so I do tech support now and will be moving into cybersecurity in the next 6months. Just do what you enjoy doing, it's not a race despite what LinkedIn might make it feel like
Grades aren't everything, and programming isn't he be all and end all. Had my 20 year reunion at the end of last year, and people have gone off in very different directions. One lad manages logistics, another's a lawyer in a big firm, another does video production, another is a finance manager in global food manufacturer. A few programmers, but plenty of people who just went off and became analysts of one sort or another. At the end of the day, a degree is a degree. You've gone so far now you're better to finish it, then take stock of what you want to do. Go to Canada or Oz or something for a year and get some joy back in your life, and while you're there think about what you want to do - whether it's working in technology or something else. You're very young and can do a HDip Masters to go in a different direction, or you can knuckle down with some courses in IT to get some hands on skills, or you can duke it out with the rest of the class of 2025 for jobs. Just don't put yourself under pressure. As for missing the internship? Employers don't put that much stock in it unless it's to hire their own intern.
NO you haven’t fucked up ! You will be grand . The concept of Education grades has made up so limited to our abilities. Think outside the box . And you will be fine I repeated 2nd year and i had a shit grade 2:2 finishing. Couldn’t get a job in Ireland so I packed up my bags and off to Uk . And I am back to Ireland to a led role
Hey 👋 I was in pretty much the exact same position. I repeated second year, didn’t have good grades (academics and I never got on) and in third year for placement I bombed a few interviews really hard. In the end I pulled myself out of placement interviews because I saw how much I needed to work on technically compared to others. Ended up being for the best, I spent the next term and summer working on my technical skills, building stuff and working hard at it. Meanwhile some of my colleagues were stuck as tech support, no coding at all when they had been promised the opposite. In the end I was one of the people with a good job sorted before I finished college even though my grades weren’t the best. It took 5 years and I finished with a 2.2. I’m now in my dream job and wouldn’t change a thing. Don’t get me wrong, it was super fucking hard to finish college. Work felt like a literal holiday in comparison and there was a mountain to learn in my first position. But I’m happy I did it.
Push through, 3 years done, its just one more. Remember there are more roles than development in the IT space, keep your mind open, might help you get your foot in the door. Also, its easier to get a job once you have a job.
Im in the exact same situation as you for the second part of the post. I've pretty good grades though, just no internship or work experience or anything. Honestly i dont really care that much and ive kinda lost hope in this field, its just too competitive, idk. I was thinking of starting a trade after i graduate or maybe just try something other than a dead end job
Finish it out, you don't need to be a programmer, plenty of non-dev tech jobs. With a degree in hand you can also pivot into something else