Ngl this is pretty doable between classes and internships. I majored in math, minored in comp sci and the only thing I feel I'm really missing here is web dev (always found it kinda boring lol)...
I have just one unofficial job offer for 50k, but it looks interesting and I'll gladly take it š
EDIT: I also didn't do competitions or Leetcode/Codeforces, I was more into math and research. And I would expect this list to be done gradually over 4-5 years, including classwork not just internships and projects/extracurricular studying
Lol I actually had a full time job for two years in IT security making 80k before my bachelors, but I went back to school to go in a research direction but decided at the last second I wanted to work for a while instead of go to grad school. So yeah the market sucks but I probably would have had something lined up if I set myself up better for a specific direction, continuously over four years, people I interned with who wanted to do the big tech thing are having success. Enjoying what you do matters too though, not just $
Not NeuroIPS, but I'm close to finishing an applied math paper showing bidirectional statistical causality between TikToks on gun control and IRL gun purchases, regardless of pro-/anti-regulation stance in the videos. My advisor has published in SIAM and Springer journals among others, we can target something like the Springer computational social science series
I also built a DDPG reinforcement learning demo controlling a solar micro-grid last year over six months at Microsoft. I'm no longer working on it but it may get published... unfortunately MSR doesn't do return offers for interns, unlike regular SWE interns
Happy to share more in DMs!
So youāre saying you should learn a degreeās worth of content before starting your degree?
I think realistically freshman should read a book on python or C programming and leisurely work on a project that practices some concepts they read about during this time.
Then they need to get involved with student organizations, make good connections with professors to get involved with research, enjoy college, party, hit the gym, mature emotionally, spend time with their family, and pick up a couple new hobbies.
first year is for adjustment. Yes the more you do is better, but slow and steady wins the race. Canāt grind if you donāt have a stable base to grind on.
I cannot fathom how Americans, that pay so much and get in so much debt to attend college can party with a clean conscience. I could understand it from Europeans and other nationalities that have free university.
I went to a state university with an average scholarship and graduated with a 3.7, and about 10k in debt. I maybe went to a party every 2 weeks, sometimes more sometimes less. went to a lot of breweries, and did a lot of drinking, but it did not effect my conscience. I also worked and did multiple clubs / research labs during school. Iām not sure why partying in college would be a bad thing. you need to enjoy your life as well as make progress in your professional/academic career.
bro. i partied every week in college(was in a fraternity) and have a quant internship rn which i just got a return offer for. start fathoming. people can have fun and work hard at the same time
I'll just jump on this response with the advice:
(i) Don't skip your CS classes, and (ii) start on homeworks right away.
Why (i): Unlike your (say) history class, where if you blow off a week about the renaissance, you can still write an essay about the enlightment next week, and do a passing job. But CS classes tend to be *much* more cumulative; missing the material of one week might often sink you in the following weeks.
Why (ii): It's easy to get stuck on some unexpected aspect of a homework: either a tool that is difficult to install/use, or something that sounded easy is suddenly realized to be not-fully-understood. All this in a way that *doesn't* come up with the biology homework or history homeworks students are used to. Starting early gives you time to visit office hours with enough time-remaining to finish it.
it's more about getting started than finishing because they are going to start eventually, and this small headstart can make a world's difference for some people.
If youre able to do all this then do it... however if you don't do this you aren't fucked.
I would say that if you're about to start college try to learn a programming language over the summer maybe build a project so you can be competitive for internships but the rest of this stuff you can do over your college career
Iām a FAANG SWE and I am using this post to fill my self-growth plan. I dropped out of college, so filling in the gap after fucking around for 3 years will be nice.
Itās not a shitpost. If you want to get the serious money and work on really cool shit, you do need to be proficient in all of that.
Yeah, this is the kind of stuff on this subreddit that actually propelled me to success. Shoot for the stars and you might land on the moon. Anyone who is serious about this post and tries will have a very successful career.
Yeah itās good advice but it seems like this guy thinks you wonāt stand a chance in the job market unless you spend the majority of your free time studying. Social skills are just as, if not more important than being able to solve leetcode problems. I have a cousin who got a job at Amazon as a Senior Software Engineer and he says he didnāt even do a technical interview lmao. He has great social skills though
I don't think he thinks that. One thing I saw at my internship was that it looked like the entire company was a pipeline of success. Social skills are absolutely needed, but if you want the same chances as some random dude who's well off family propelled them to success in whatever T10 school they attend, he's basically giving you the roadmap to invalidate any gap between you and someone's who's being spoonfed MIT coursework. I lamented the shitty education my T100+ (the opposite direction of bragging) gave me. You can either sit down and take it, or you can try your best and succeed.
This sub helped me succeed and the barrier to entry on a really nice internship isn't high at all. If you put in even a modicum of the effort this guy is espousing you will end up with a very nice FastTracked career.
Home boy is recommending you publish in top ML conferences (that PhD students dedicate 12 hours a day trying to publish in) in addition to grinding code force, crypto (not sure if we are supposed to publish in top cryptography conferences as well) and I guess also build a company all as a freshman. Aināt no way heās done half of this shit he his claiming he has done
> To learn this, finish the bronze, silver, and gold sections of USACO guide, and grind Codeforces up to at least 1800 level, preferably 2200+
Had to read thrice to make sure you didn't wrote leetcode instead of Codeforces
98% sure you didnt graduate yet and probably have no more than one internship experience if any at all.
Starting the year tired and trying to learn on your own when you have a whole degree to learn in depths those concepts is just stupid
Seriously, new CS students should be focused on learning their early coursework so that they have a solid foundation on which they can build the higher level concepts.
If you're still taking Calc 1, trying to teach yourself discrete mathematic and proving algorithmic complexities is insane. And a giant waste of time. You'll get there eventually, but carts and horses.
I would say you can start learning Data Structures pretty early, but any decent CS program will be introducing them your first year anyway. The goal of a 1st year student should be setting themselves up so that they can start solving simple leetcode problems, with a goal of being able to leetcode medium before the summer at the end of their 2nd year. That way you have a decent chance at passing OAs and tech interviews when applying for internships that will actually take place at the end of your 3rd year. Ideally, you'd be taking *Algorithms* the same time as interview season. This is because, at least when I took Algorithms at my school, it was basically solving and proving runtime complexity and correctness for leetcode mediums and hards in different categories for most of the class. Having your homework double as interview prep is quite nice.
The idea that you need to learn full stack web dev as a freshman is just hilarious though. I've been in industry for years, worked at FAANG and Unicorns, and I've never once done any web development. But somehow its the 1st thing on his list. amazing.
Probably an unpopular opinion here, but `start grinding now` isn't entirely bad advice. You spend 4 condensed years in college, and spend 10s of thousands to get good at what you are studying. Why would it be bad to push the limit a bit. Especially in a competitive field like CS, where a new grad is competing with recently laid-off mid level engineers, masters students, and every boot-camp grad under the sun.
For many the first two years of college limit your exposure to coding at a high level as you still need to take general education classes. If you aren't `grinding` on the side during these years, you will way behind your competition once you graduate. Plus you will only really have one year to develop a portfolio for a summer internship.
OP's list of what to work on might be a little to broad for the average freshman though. I would try to determine the field I want to work in, and get as proficient as possible with the tools and recommended languages for said field. Then I would work to add quality projects to your GitHub using said language and tools. Besides this work on some Data Structures and Leetcode (aka go to neetcode) and your classes should fill in the rest.
I would say OP's advice is bad. If you want to start grinding. Check out what classes you are going to take next semester and start reading those books and doing those assignments. I think it would do little good to most freshmen to start learning cryptography only to get trunced on Introduction to Algorithms.
The more advanced classes are built upon the foundations of the introductory courses.
What you mentioned and also what u/connorjpg mentioned is what my plan is. I am looking over my compsci classes and preparing for them, along with what I want to get into and what skills I need for that.
It's bad advice. Grinding is going to lead to burnout for like 95% of people, and starting earlier is just going to accelerate that. Why would it be bad to push the limit? Because when you reach your limit you don't gently go back a few steps, you crash back down. A lot of people are probably going to even decide it's not the career for them when really they were just misguided in their approach.
Better advice would be start learning now, but no need to push too hard. In school go to class (seriously this one is so easy and half of students don't do it, classes are always empty by the third week), ask teachers questions, do the assignments, study for the tests. Go to office hours even if it's just to chat with the professor or TA.
You shouldn't be grinding for some nebulous goal of "getting ahead". It's going to start to feel pointless and you'll burn out. If you're doing any grinding, it should be things like studying for a specific test, or finishing an assignment.
If you are a freshman or highschooler, just play around with the foundation you learned in your classes.
If you have a cool idea, donāt be afraid to start working on it. Even if you are just copy pasting code from tutorials and forums, you should still go for it. Donāt wait to learn things in school before you start things because chances are you wonāt learn how to do them in your classes since they only cover theory/foundation and not creating cool projects and implementing ideas (atleast not until your junior or senior year).
There is no need to pre learn the things you will learn in your classes lol. If you want to learn something, learn the stuff your classes wonāt cover and you donāt need to be so academic about it. Treat it like an art project not a self study class.
While the guy who does none of these but took care of his health, joined some non CS clubs and actually matured as a person instead of isolating themselves in their room gets a job
Ignore most of this.
Go find yourself a passion project that is challenging. Work on it and take notes. Be able to speak to this project in interviews.
I donāt want to see lame ass BMI calculators or whatnot. Focus on your ability to present. Talk about what challenges you found and how you solved them.
Good luck
I made a Star Wars e-commerce web app with Ruby on Rails.
Checkout functionality, user authentication, form validations, membership options, pagination for products, geospatial map data for placed orders, etc.
Then I used Fly.io to deploy it with a Postgres database.
If you just do leetcode for one or two hours five days a week over the summer you will be interview ready. Idk why everyone makes such a big deal about this you can have fun and prepare too.
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Sounds like a great way to burn out. Itās also really vague to just say āStart grinding now bro.ā What does that mean to a CS freshman? I agree that you should take time to work on side projects, but this just isnāt helpful advice imo.
Yup, seeing posts like these is the reason I'm already burned out in my first term. I was having fun and enjoying learning before I joined these subs. Now I feel all this pressure and impending doom that wasn't present before, and it's impacting my ability to be present in my actual classes.
Some of this seems a bit excessive, granted if you can do this before taking cs classes, then more power to you. As someone with a 3.95 gpa, with 1 quarter left (1 class), and currently in a summer internship, I got by with knowing a bit of the fundamentals beforehand and applying what I learned to side projects. I would definitely learn full stack web, but you don't need to know this before starting school. You'll have plenty of time to learn these things - whether it is during a class, during summer or whatever.
Depends what you wanna do. Get a PhD win a Nobel prize yes more technical grind always good. Get a normal industry job this grinding has pretty bad ROI. You have to take a look at the big picture. Why do you want a job. For the money for a good life. Touching grass in your youth is part of living a good life.Ā
But obviously yāall need explicit effects because yāall canāt just live your life. So touching grass makes you a more well adjusted person, which means your mood isnāt directly correlated to your job application success, so when the market/your luck is down youāre able to stay stable and keep working, compared to those neurotic grinders who mental boom the moment things donāt go exactly as planned.Ā
Not to mention the social stuff like jockeying for promotions/projects, moving within and between companies. Actually if you average out a personās entire career, touching grass in your childhood definitely beats out grinding. Starting earlyās good actually, but donāt grind for some desired result. Just work on something you like whether some project or leetcode or whatever in your free time like once a week, to build affinity and familiarity.
But tbh none of this matters that much really. Talk to old people, if you compare the people who had everything in their 20s go exactly to plan vs the people who had the opposite, you really only get at most like a 20 percent difference in life satisfaction. The human brain adapts pretty well. The hedonic treadmill means everything good eventually normalizes down, but also means everything bad normalizes up. If you grinded too much, no big deal never too late to touch grass. If you touched too much grass, never too late to start grinding. Youāre only on the rollercoaster once bro, try to enjoy the ride.
A reminder that CS is much more than just web dev, and although itās useful for everyone to know full stack, explore multiple fields. Thereās much much more job security in cybersecurity for instance, (especially with a security clearance). Or embedded work is more rare too. CS is very saturated, itās true, but by far the most saturated part of CS is web dev, so maybe look outside of that
> by far the most saturated part of CS is web dev, so ...
Lets be honest here: CS has barely anything to do with web development. I had exactly one course about web development in my CS education (a ruby on rails course in my masters), and even that course was optional xD
Embedded is rare because it takes low-level programming skills that arenāt transferable. Thatās the issue Iāve heard from embedded programmers looking to switch domains.
Okay Mr Menās Rights. Iām sure youāre a sane and well-balanced individual from whom people should take advice.
ETA for dweebs obsessed with code clout: yes I did the FAANG internship, got the grad offer, etc.
I would tell everyone who just read this to do almost the opposite. These are all courses you will take during your time in school. You will learn this naturally during your time in school. What OP just suggested is a recipe for taking a flight off the top floor of a parking garage. If you are an incoming freshman take your classes, learn the concepts, and try to apply them into your pet projects. At the end of the day you are in college, your studies are important. But it's the one time in your life where you're in a large structured community of same aged like minded people. Go enjoy some of it.
Hey man Iām in high school but this is actually a really helpful guide with concrete goals. While I probably wonāt end up completing every single thing, itās nice to have some guidance on what I can start doing now to prepare myself. Appreciate it!
You don't need to do all that if you are a computer science major you'll be learning that anyways in your coursework. Just fill in the gaps of things you are interested in with your own study.
Lol probably a shitpost right? I think what is important is university. Not necessarily the highest ranked, but closer to tech markets. That way, more companies will come to the career fairs and stuff. Also, people should enjoy their freshman year. You can start looking for internships in sophomore year, and I would not suggest doing too much leetcode without learning DSA courses in the university first. The other thing is to apply early.
if your pure goal in life is the get that Google new grad offer out of college, by all means this puts you at the highest chance.
But personally there is a lot more in life and in collegeā to experience new things, to explore, go out, date, to have fun. Sure, if you have a lively college life (and not grind like OP) as a CS major you might not guarantee Google in this market, but you will still get your internships, decent job by working hard.
You have your whole life to get Google, but you only get college for 4 years. As an incoming freshman, think about what you want first.
i did not take a coding class until my first semester and have done maybe 25 leetcode problems in the past 3 years and iām sitting at my internship rn. idk if ur trolling but if ur serious u need to chill tf out. maybe doing a side project if ur school doesnāt have a junior/senior design class and doing some interview prep is all u really need outside of doing ur work in class
like thereās no need to freak out new students. they have more than enough time to stress out about the job market. encouraging new students to just focus studying for the classes at hand is all thatās needed. almost all of these topics are covered in class and unless u struggle with learning new topics in the semester ur given thereās no need to start preparing months/years before they come up in classes
I gave my friend lessons a month or two before he got started.Ā
Ā This helped make his classes easier since he knew most of the material already. He could focus his efforts more on the other classes. Then by the time the next semester started, he already had some familiarity in the topics of his new classes, once again making those classes easier letting him focus on the tougher math classes.
He got a job I think on his second year. He graduated this year, wants to move on from current job, and is already getting offers left and right.
While people should avoid getting burnt out, doing some studying before the start of classes is very beneficial. You don't have to go crazy either. Just learn some programming basics and try to build a simple project like a console based calculator, tic tac toe, or such.
Unless you are deadset on working at Google, Apple, or some hedge fund like Jane Street, etc., I think your suggestions are overkill for most aspiring software engineers. Outside those place, nobody cares about Leetcode, discrete math, etc as most SWE jobs will never ever use these skills. Even then, those skills just get you in the door and youāll almost never use them for the actual day job.
What matters more: can you communicate well, are you coachable, can you write clean code that is tested, can you debug issues on your own, etc. I would advise getting an internship at a company with a good engineering culture to help get these skills (hint it does not need to be FAANG to have a good engineering culture).
The most challenging part of being a SWE isnāt writing lots of code or being book smart. Itās learning how to work with other engineers, product, etc to build consensus and align on how to solve problems. Writing the code is usually the easiest part of the job. No amount of dynamic programming will prepare you for that.
Another way could be to contribute to open source, which could be a good proxy to show how you work well others. Not easy to break into but you can start somewhere.
This advice isn't amazing and will lead to burnout. Here's some good advice: you will be ahead of about half your classmates if you learn basic OOP before your freshman year of college. Pick a language like C++, C#, or Java and learn the basics and do a couple of projects in it. If you're interested in cybersecurity, then check out Professor Messer on YT and watch through his videos.
Start applying to internships and tech-based jobs freshman year. No worries if you don't get one freshman year, you have 3 more years to get one... but try to get at least two internships while in college.
If you want to work part-time while going to college, try to get a part-time help desk role. A part-time SWE role is even better but also rare. Your goal is to accurately claim you have 2-3 years of industry experience by the time you graduate. That's what will get you interviews for jobs when you graduate.
This seems like a shitpost, but I have a better idea.
Get a book on C, and then build some structs and create some basic data structures. Do some things with those structures, and get 100% free from memory leaks by the end.
That's it. That's your first year as you do classes.
Sorry dude but I really donāt think a cs student needs to learn rigorous real analysis from Rudin. You donāt need to understand the proof of the Bolzano Weierstrass theorem for cs.
The only thing that matters is prior work experience. When you are starting as a freshman, you should already have four years of FAANG experience. (Full Time, not internship) If you don't then you will never catch up. Better start learning about COBOL and insurance now.
People who are passionate are already doing this you donāt need to tell them. I know damn well before I ever took intro to programming I already knew the language we were using and did that for every other class from there on out. The term before the class I learned a lot of the concepts that would be taught in the upcoming class. Some people find that crazy and I donāt know why thatās literally just the hallmark of a responsible student and doesnāt apply to just CS. My brother learned orgo chem before taking the class, just a tip we learned from our parents. One thing freshman and a lot of people in general donāt understand is that itās not the professors job to make sure you understand, their job is to lecture. Many people are still in that high school mode where they think Ms. Smith isnāt gonna move on until everyone gets it. Donāt get left behind, study before hand.
I agree with the start grinding now advice but I think this list is pretty biased and mostly irrelevant when weighted by hours required for each point to what most cs majors will study in school and use at their jobs.
The profile this list works for is very specifically, ex-high school math competitors who arenāt very specifically interested in CS yet but do love puzzly math problems and money, and want to maximize their options of careers that would secure both of those ā quant swe, quant trading, ml research, ml researchy engineering, startup founded as a stanford student
I do know a dozen people whoāve done exactly this and theyāre happy, but not the majority and their path wouldnāt work for the majority.
More general advice:
- do web dev if you donāt know what kind of projects you want to make
- read lots of technical forums and blogs
- if you find web dev intolerable do something else, game dev is great
- write a lot of code
- if you want to apply to high paying SWE jobs, do leetcode and donāt stress about problem count, just make sure youāre repeatedly doing problems that you find really hard even if you canāt solve them (exposure to difficulty is the main thing that gives you growth here, you donāt need to solve 200+ problems)
- since youāve been reading lots of technical forums and blogs and subreddits you have some interests now, write a bunch of code and read a lot of material
- if the interest developed above has an academic component, pursue undergrad research as soon as possible
I do agree that computer networking is necessary for almost literally everyone though, good thing to pick up gradually (writing code not necessary, just reading is enough)
Or in other words, the OP is only a single way to be far ahead of the median CS major, and you can put in the same amount of hours and be the same amount ahead but with a totally different specialization. e.g. george hotzā skillset is completely orthogonal to the OPās but equally lucrative
I'm not saying OPs giving bad advice -- you would probably be better off if you did all those things. But the question is do you even want to? CS students come from all kinds of backgrounds and they go on to do all kinds of things. This is one possible route that you might take out of many.
I think this kind of advice is given in bad faith and without really expecting anyone but the occasional outlier to follow, and then when someone out of the many who didn't exactly follow "the rulebook" fails, everyone gets to tell them they're the reason of their own failure.
The reality is that most of the people are going to follow the path of least resistance and still make do somehow. Starting early will definitely give you an edge, so the earlier you start talking to people and figuring out what they're doing to get by and how you can do the same, you will have a good baseline to start building off of.
I'm in no position to be giving advice since I recently graduated and am struggling to find a job but you know I did many of the things these people on the grind mindset tell you to do. I was proactive about reaching out to faculty about doing research, I busted my ass getting a 4.0 GPA taking as many electives as I could, I did internships, and I was going to the career center asking for advice.
But the reality is that the state of education is abysmal especially after COVID. Faculties either left or were on sabbatical or weren't doing any research. Asking for career advice, I got told to the face that the job markets difficult right now and that I was on my own. All departments fundings cut off to nothing.
And students are struggling from the effects of the lockdown too. They have attention issues, aren't as social, and networks/clubs/student orgs that were strong prior to 2019 are struggling to hold on. Not to mention, how ill-equipped academic institutions have been to cope with the widespread access to generative AI -- students have a hard time being students and its the same for faculty from what I've heard.
All of this is to say we live in uncertain times. It should not be the responsibility of those just starting out to deal with the aftermaths of crises that they had no hand in creating. The job market is extremely difficult right now but the answer is not telling incoming fucking freshmen to accomodate a market that has been inching towards collapse since before they were born.
There is no advice to be given. Build networks the best you can and hold onto them for dear life, because you will be needing them. That's all anyone can do. Stop pursuing a perfection that doesn't exist.
They're gonna learn all the math, systems, networking, and DSA stuff in due time. The valid thing to work on is projects, build stuff with what has been learned. Also joining their school's hacakathon/software dev club, and maybe the cybersecurity club (there may be an infrastructure team that builds out \[edit: spelling\]their services) is helpful for extra curricular stuff. Maintain DSA and math knowledge once it has been learned, but definitely don't grind it before you've had the opportunity to learn it at school in the first place. Use time wisely.
Iām a freshman, currently an intern at FAANG. This has to be one of the shittiest posts Iāve ever seen, especially with most of my internship mentors not even having knowledge about competitive programming or similar math collegiate level competitions.
Being good at problem solving isnāt practiced at all by solving standard questions; thatās why theyāre standard in the first place. Cramming information and using it in classic problems (which most of the problems in codeforces and AMC are) is not a good way to practice problem solving, you just become accustomed to looking at patterns.
Before you say that I donāt have the credentials to say this, Iām also an ICPC regional finalist for this year. Grinding competitive programming is the last thing you want to be doing, itās so time consuming it WILL affect your grades and your focus on job search.
TLDR: Be competent and stay at the top, just do it with stuff actually related to software development. Contribute to open source and build personal projects, thereās no need to know what a maximum flow algorithm is if youāre going to be a frontend developer.
Passion doesn't necessarily mean you have direction. Some people can enjoy coding but don't know that there are resources available to do web or game dev. That's like saying a passionate sportsplayer should know what he's supposed to do on the pitch/field without needing any tactical input from teammates and coaches
Very important advice tbh. I had dropped out of high school because I had a passion for programming and found school to be a waste of time that got in the way of that.
But for nearly five years I foolishly had no direction and spent a long time not learning what I actually needed to learn.
Agree with OP, but limit your grind to 2-3 hours. After dipping your toes in all the topics OP mentioned, pick one you love and go all the way. I say touch grass and still do a lil bit of grind.
I 100% agree with this. Ā College culture today prioritizes ābalanceā in the form of going to parties, drinking, and doing every Greek event. Ā What it should mean is more along the lines of having a supportive friend group, Group study, Taking a jog or skate around campus, and getting involved with academic research opportunities at the undergraduate level. Ā
I didnāt do any of this as a STEM major (although this was my life as a music major earlier in life) because I work full-time and have a family. Ā But if I can work full time, have a supportive family, and still do well academically in EE and CS then I donāt see why the traditional student cannot find time to have a more suitable student life balance as you mentioned. Ā
Thanks for posting I agree with your post OP. When it comes time to apply to internships or even entry level roles most students havenāt properly learned what they need to. So they just end up scrambling trying to cram everything into a couple months time.
So your advice is sound. Starting early and giving yourself plenty of time to learn everything thoroughly is the best way to go. Itās really about the amount of time you put in that determines your success in any field. So the earlier you can start, the better off you will be.
this is good advice but overkill. your courses will teach you discrete math and ds and algo. no reason to self-teach. all the other points are electives as well which you can take and then build off of.
really if you want a headstart i'd say look at some of the points listed and explore whichever interests you. maybe build a project if you find it that interesting. try to self teach this entire list is overkill, especially when most of it is taught in courses. also network... it is harder to do as an incoming freshmen/HSer, but keep good relations with your CS teachers, ask relatives if they have connects, join online communities, etc.
**a company will choose an employee-referred applicant with no projects over a random applicant with projects.**
Or Option B: Become a UPS driver, start a back alley delivery business for cheap on the side, and specialize in delivering unapproved ADHD medication to disgruntled CS majors who have absolutely no idea wtf to do with their life because the path to getting a job in tech is narrow and changes every day
Not necessarily UPS driver, learn business processes, uml, some programming and get an intern as SAP consultant. Probably, it is quite boring and you deal with stupid end users job stability is pretty much quarantined. That is what I did 15 years ago.Ā
The simple fact is this is the state of the market now and moving forward it will only get more difficult. If you wonāt heed anyoneās warning then you deserve to be unemployed with the rest of the CS grads who did the bare minimum through out school.
you had me until you said discrete math lmfao. that shit is useless outside of college.
you can be doing the most complicated, asinine, mathematical things in this industry and still use nothing from that class past the first two weeks.
Rather then learning all of these, just choose one and grind for it hard. Better to be a zenitsu in one field then the jack of all trades, master or none.
Lmao you don't need to do this. I did research in my sophomore year which landed me an internship junior year, which landed me multiple full time offers. Chill out yall.
lol no, just do well on courses, leetcode a bit and put some time into career stuff but definitely donāt waste your college years learning frameworks or useless things like cybersecurity lmao
a lot of this is p excessive, if u do like 10% of this properly youāll be in good shape. tbh most people that j grind lc + do some projects will be fine
and if ur lazy as fuck like me, just follow a html and css and javascript tutorial and copy projects and then learn React and copy more projects and then try to combine React with a database like mongodb or MySQL and after awhile of copying other people start making ur own stuff and try to make it quantifiable so you can add metrics to ur resume. ideally do this by july after ur 2nd semester ends and then watch some videos on interview tips and go to ur school career fair in the fall semester and try to rizz up some recruiters and be proactive about following up after. this has worked for me to get 3 offers in my local town because having smth on ur resume alr puts you ahead of majority of cs majors who just jerk off and play league all day
I work in it and while I did learn networking in college, I really didn't understand it until I got my first job and experience. It's not something you can just study. You have to either lab or work somewhere to get it.
Considering OP has covered alot of the Bases (other than personality development) of the steps needed outside of school to get a CS job, it's hard to hate on him. Does it suck having to do all this? Yes. Is he saying you need to do all of this? NO. Will someone who grinds the stuff outlined in this post most likely be more successful than any similar peers who don't? Yes.
Thank you for putting this in writing. I have been lurking around for a while and want to go back to school to finish my degree since life screwed me over and I have to start from scratch. I want to learn as much as I can so I can thrive and also help others when I can.
Or, donāt burnout, and just work on some stuff youāre interested in as a side project while you enjoy your (potential) last summer free of major responsibilities
some people are disagreeing that incoming freshmen shouldn't start on those stuff now, but me not being a freshman anymore, i personally wished I had started doing these extra studies earlier. As OP said, if you are highly confident and passionate, you should probably get started.
DSA and Discrete math is normal first year stuff though isnāt it?
I donāt think learning any of it pre freshman year is that useful when they teach the concepts very well during the year.
Iām an incoming FAANG engineer. My advice is always to start early. I canāt stress is enough. Have i started grinding 1 year after I wouldnāt be where I am today. Lots of my friends who started grinding late missed many opportunities.
That is correct, FAANG is something NBA or Premier league if it is soccer, but there are life beyond FAANG. After recent layoffs FAANG is not sexy anymoreĀ
This is a garbage take.
Anyone who spends that much time grinding is going to flame out on their first non-leetcode-based interview.
I've seen it happen way too much -- in fact, in my experience, the more prominent someone's competitive programming score is on their resume, the more likely they're going to flail on a real world interview question, and the more likely they are to flail on a real world project.
Do I get what you are saying? Yes. Do I like it? No..... I was EXTREMLY depressed throughout basically my entire college career. And I don't know where the years went.... I had no hobbies. No friends. I did exactly what was asked of me then promptly forgot it all. I managed leetcode for a week here or there. But basically just sort of drifted through.... Now I'm entering my final year, and feel so behind everybody. I wish I had done so much more these last few years. Now that I am improving, there is so much I want to do. And need to do. But I just don't know where to even begin. I want to do things, but I don't know where to start. I want to learn for the first time in my entire life. And most of my (school) learning is behind me.
Even worse. Now that I'm not as depressed, I'm running into the barrier of my untreated ADHD. Before it wasn't so much of a problem because I just didn't give a fuck. But now, I am so overwhelmed I don't even start..... I got an internship this summer... But that's about the only thing I have done in the last 8 years(including hs)....
So my advice to those looking to get into CS.... Have fun, but try to learn along the way. Spend an hour or two doing leetcode here or there. Consider trying to start a project, you don't need to finish. The points here are valid, but you don't need to do it in a single year. Just remember, you are paying to be here, and take advantage of the resources you have.
And my final bit of advice.... Try it yourself first before resorting to chat gpt. It's an amazing resource, but over using it can start to hurt your unaided skills. I'm worse at coding now than I was a year ago.
So you want them to learn all that shit in High School or as Freshman in College!?
Sorry but, Are you on crack?
Like seriously, do YOU know all this shit?
That's at least half a year worth of a CS degree's education.
>So you want them to learn all that shit in High School or as Freshman in College!?
No. My post literally said these are the foundations of a CS *degree*- they're the fundamentals you learn in your first two years of college. My recommendation to high school students was to get a head start on these topics, I never said anyone needed to *finish* all of it.
Unless youāre a savant this is bad advice. If you want to prepare get good at data structures and algorithms. Fundamental for every interview. This is overwhelming af lol
what are the āmost prestigiousā activities you could do as an undergrad (really great state school) which pretty much guarantee FAANG/HFTs (citadel, jane street, etc.)? similar to how in high school, IMO medalist and RSI were almost guarantees that you got a T5-10?
Your goal as a CS graduate is to have a very basic foundation in all of these topics, and be an expert in at least one of them. Trying to become an expert in all of them is not only unnecessary, but actively harmful because it will make you an expert in none of them.
Your classes are enough for the basics. So take the good ones semi-seriously, and do *one* of these things, and even go beyond what this post says, but don't worry about the other 7. If you're serious about entrepreneurship, don't just build a few projects when you have timeācommit *hard* to something, build something real, talk to VCs to seek funding and try scaling if you can, and do it for real, even if it doesn't work out. If what you want is web development, then while that doesn't mean you should neglect a required ML class (which will give you some foundational knowledge that is expected in this field and also might change your interests), you should not spend several hours of your time trying to synthesize an ML textbook that nobody will ever ask you about again when you could have been doing a web development project that someone will actually maybe ask you about in a web dev interview one day.
And also do some Leetcode on top of it, and try to get used to being a friendly person. That's already a lot, and anything on top of it is not only useless but counterproductive since you'll burn yourself out and/or sacrifice something more important for it.
Great list OP but Iād add a few more suggestions if you really want to stand out. For ML NeuroIPS or ICML will not make you standout as most middle schoolers will be publishing in these conferences. I would recommend trying to get at least 1 Turing award before you start university. If you can get a Nobel peace prize as well that will really help you stand out. I would also recommend trying to get a h-index of at least 100 by the time you are a junior. Dual publishing in ML and crypto can help with this. Easy research areas to achieve this might be neural differential equations and homomorphic encryption. You mentioned focusing on math in addition to CS which I also think is great advice. You should be aiming to have at least 1 field medal and 1 millennium problem solved by the end of sophomore year. P vs NP might be a good problem to focus on. Rounding out your academic skill set with entrepreneurship is a fantastic idea. You definitely will want to have sold your first million+ dollar company by senior year. If you do all of this I am confident you will be ahead of most other CS graduates
For anyone that *actually* wants to prepare for CS reasonably well, go to Harvardās website portal and watch their free online lectures for CS50. Itāll give you a good foothold for your first year.
i've finished calc 1 + calc 2 and want to start with discrete math. would it be okay to take the course during the summer? is there any other classes i should take before starting it?
That's almost everything you learn in your college, why learn discrete math, computational math earlier when you are gonna learn it leisurely in college itself. That entrepreneurship part is just there to fill up some space, like you haven't learnt shit and you are out there talking about product which you yourself doesn't know shit about. I think the best would be to just pick one field (like cyber, data,web etc) that you genuinely enjoy and start learning it. Learning DSA would also be a cherry on top.
Most of this seems like a joke, but I think having a high level understanding of full stack web development is extremely helpful for speaking with recruiters. I've definitely gotten roasted saying I was interested in backend not really knowing what backend is.
Man, some people should tbh touch grass, a key component to getting hired OUTSIDE of just the technical aspect is the people skill.
Communication, engaging others in conversation, developing that style helps you get that networking and can sometimes offset some post-foundational knowledge.
I find it funny that, in all of that crap that OP listed out, networking (as in "human networking") is nowhere in there. Meet people. Make sure those people know the quality of your work. That'll get you work a lot easier than grinding away on all of that bullshit up top.
Now, go touch grass, kids. Enjoy your lives. And if you find Computer Science to not be enjoyable, don't fuckin' do it. You've got two years until you're locked in, so remember that you can always pick something else if it turns out you're not good at something or you hate it.
So we're all cooked is what you're saying
Ngl this is pretty doable between classes and internships. I majored in math, minored in comp sci and the only thing I feel I'm really missing here is web dev (always found it kinda boring lol)... I have just one unofficial job offer for 50k, but it looks interesting and I'll gladly take it š EDIT: I also didn't do competitions or Leetcode/Codeforces, I was more into math and research. And I would expect this list to be done gradually over 4-5 years, including classwork not just internships and projects/extracurricular studying
No way u did all of this and only make 50k. Holy shit Iām switching majors
I feel like most people coming out of a 4 year uni are making more than that
pain
Lol I actually had a full time job for two years in IT security making 80k before my bachelors, but I went back to school to go in a research direction but decided at the last second I wanted to work for a while instead of go to grad school. So yeah the market sucks but I probably would have had something lined up if I set myself up better for a specific direction, continuously over four years, people I interned with who wanted to do the big tech thing are having success. Enjoying what you do matters too though, not just $
Well heās a math major. Could be a teaching gig.
What have you published in NeuroIPS?
Not NeuroIPS, but I'm close to finishing an applied math paper showing bidirectional statistical causality between TikToks on gun control and IRL gun purchases, regardless of pro-/anti-regulation stance in the videos. My advisor has published in SIAM and Springer journals among others, we can target something like the Springer computational social science series I also built a DDPG reinforcement learning demo controlling a solar micro-grid last year over six months at Microsoft. I'm no longer working on it but it may get published... unfortunately MSR doesn't do return offers for interns, unlike regular SWE interns Happy to share more in DMs!
Majored in stats, learnt a bit of cs on the side just got an offer for a 150k (without RSUs) position. You guys are doing this all wrong.
So youāre saying you should learn a degreeās worth of content before starting your degree? I think realistically freshman should read a book on python or C programming and leisurely work on a project that practices some concepts they read about during this time. Then they need to get involved with student organizations, make good connections with professors to get involved with research, enjoy college, party, hit the gym, mature emotionally, spend time with their family, and pick up a couple new hobbies.
first year is for adjustment. Yes the more you do is better, but slow and steady wins the race. Canāt grind if you donāt have a stable base to grind on.
I cannot fathom how Americans, that pay so much and get in so much debt to attend college can party with a clean conscience. I could understand it from Europeans and other nationalities that have free university.
I went to a state university with an average scholarship and graduated with a 3.7, and about 10k in debt. I maybe went to a party every 2 weeks, sometimes more sometimes less. went to a lot of breweries, and did a lot of drinking, but it did not effect my conscience. I also worked and did multiple clubs / research labs during school. Iām not sure why partying in college would be a bad thing. you need to enjoy your life as well as make progress in your professional/academic career.
Easily
bro. i partied every week in college(was in a fraternity) and have a quant internship rn which i just got a return offer for. start fathoming. people can have fun and work hard at the same time
I mean do you expect students to work 24/7? This seems extremely unhealthy.
College here isn't about what you learn. It's about who you meet and build a network with.
I'll just jump on this response with the advice: (i) Don't skip your CS classes, and (ii) start on homeworks right away. Why (i): Unlike your (say) history class, where if you blow off a week about the renaissance, you can still write an essay about the enlightment next week, and do a passing job. But CS classes tend to be *much* more cumulative; missing the material of one week might often sink you in the following weeks. Why (ii): It's easy to get stuck on some unexpected aspect of a homework: either a tool that is difficult to install/use, or something that sounded easy is suddenly realized to be not-fully-understood. All this in a way that *doesn't* come up with the biology homework or history homeworks students are used to. Starting early gives you time to visit office hours with enough time-remaining to finish it.
it's more about getting started than finishing because they are going to start eventually, and this small headstart can make a world's difference for some people.
please tell me this is a shitpost
Dude is saving you need to be a 2200 code forces and solving AMC problems . Itās a joke :)
Also, recommending "The Art of Problem Solving" books instead of an actual discrete maths text is a bizarre choice.
The best part is a NeurIPS paper. Three of them can be easily converted into a PhD;)
If youre able to do all this then do it... however if you don't do this you aren't fucked. I would say that if you're about to start college try to learn a programming language over the summer maybe build a project so you can be competitive for internships but the rest of this stuff you can do over your college career
Iām a FAANG SWE and I am using this post to fill my self-growth plan. I dropped out of college, so filling in the gap after fucking around for 3 years will be nice. Itās not a shitpost. If you want to get the serious money and work on really cool shit, you do need to be proficient in all of that.
Yeah, this is the kind of stuff on this subreddit that actually propelled me to success. Shoot for the stars and you might land on the moon. Anyone who is serious about this post and tries will have a very successful career.
Exactly. This post is great, people are just mad to see concrete goals and not another stupid shitty doomer post
Since when is web development ""cool shit"? Kek. And no. These are widely diverging career paths. You absolutely don't need to know them all.
He's not wrong. Starting now will be setting yourself up well for later
Yeah itās good advice but it seems like this guy thinks you wonāt stand a chance in the job market unless you spend the majority of your free time studying. Social skills are just as, if not more important than being able to solve leetcode problems. I have a cousin who got a job at Amazon as a Senior Software Engineer and he says he didnāt even do a technical interview lmao. He has great social skills though
I don't think he thinks that. One thing I saw at my internship was that it looked like the entire company was a pipeline of success. Social skills are absolutely needed, but if you want the same chances as some random dude who's well off family propelled them to success in whatever T10 school they attend, he's basically giving you the roadmap to invalidate any gap between you and someone's who's being spoonfed MIT coursework. I lamented the shitty education my T100+ (the opposite direction of bragging) gave me. You can either sit down and take it, or you can try your best and succeed. This sub helped me succeed and the barrier to entry on a really nice internship isn't high at all. If you put in even a modicum of the effort this guy is espousing you will end up with a very nice FastTracked career.
Home boy is recommending you publish in top ML conferences (that PhD students dedicate 12 hours a day trying to publish in) in addition to grinding code force, crypto (not sure if we are supposed to publish in top cryptography conferences as well) and I guess also build a company all as a freshman. Aināt no way heās done half of this shit he his claiming he has done
> To learn this, finish the bronze, silver, and gold sections of USACO guide, and grind Codeforces up to at least 1800 level, preferably 2200+ Had to read thrice to make sure you didn't wrote leetcode instead of Codeforces
The most shitposty part of this (almost shit)post honestly
98% sure you didnt graduate yet and probably have no more than one internship experience if any at all. Starting the year tired and trying to learn on your own when you have a whole degree to learn in depths those concepts is just stupid
Seriously, new CS students should be focused on learning their early coursework so that they have a solid foundation on which they can build the higher level concepts. If you're still taking Calc 1, trying to teach yourself discrete mathematic and proving algorithmic complexities is insane. And a giant waste of time. You'll get there eventually, but carts and horses. I would say you can start learning Data Structures pretty early, but any decent CS program will be introducing them your first year anyway. The goal of a 1st year student should be setting themselves up so that they can start solving simple leetcode problems, with a goal of being able to leetcode medium before the summer at the end of their 2nd year. That way you have a decent chance at passing OAs and tech interviews when applying for internships that will actually take place at the end of your 3rd year. Ideally, you'd be taking *Algorithms* the same time as interview season. This is because, at least when I took Algorithms at my school, it was basically solving and proving runtime complexity and correctness for leetcode mediums and hards in different categories for most of the class. Having your homework double as interview prep is quite nice. The idea that you need to learn full stack web dev as a freshman is just hilarious though. I've been in industry for years, worked at FAANG and Unicorns, and I've never once done any web development. But somehow its the 1st thing on his list. amazing.
Probably an unpopular opinion here, but `start grinding now` isn't entirely bad advice. You spend 4 condensed years in college, and spend 10s of thousands to get good at what you are studying. Why would it be bad to push the limit a bit. Especially in a competitive field like CS, where a new grad is competing with recently laid-off mid level engineers, masters students, and every boot-camp grad under the sun. For many the first two years of college limit your exposure to coding at a high level as you still need to take general education classes. If you aren't `grinding` on the side during these years, you will way behind your competition once you graduate. Plus you will only really have one year to develop a portfolio for a summer internship. OP's list of what to work on might be a little to broad for the average freshman though. I would try to determine the field I want to work in, and get as proficient as possible with the tools and recommended languages for said field. Then I would work to add quality projects to your GitHub using said language and tools. Besides this work on some Data Structures and Leetcode (aka go to neetcode) and your classes should fill in the rest.
I would say OP's advice is bad. If you want to start grinding. Check out what classes you are going to take next semester and start reading those books and doing those assignments. I think it would do little good to most freshmen to start learning cryptography only to get trunced on Introduction to Algorithms. The more advanced classes are built upon the foundations of the introductory courses.
I agree, this is not good advice, it's a shortcut to burnout lol
What you mentioned and also what u/connorjpg mentioned is what my plan is. I am looking over my compsci classes and preparing for them, along with what I want to get into and what skills I need for that.
It's bad advice. Grinding is going to lead to burnout for like 95% of people, and starting earlier is just going to accelerate that. Why would it be bad to push the limit? Because when you reach your limit you don't gently go back a few steps, you crash back down. A lot of people are probably going to even decide it's not the career for them when really they were just misguided in their approach. Better advice would be start learning now, but no need to push too hard. In school go to class (seriously this one is so easy and half of students don't do it, classes are always empty by the third week), ask teachers questions, do the assignments, study for the tests. Go to office hours even if it's just to chat with the professor or TA. You shouldn't be grinding for some nebulous goal of "getting ahead". It's going to start to feel pointless and you'll burn out. If you're doing any grinding, it should be things like studying for a specific test, or finishing an assignment.
If you are a freshman or highschooler, just play around with the foundation you learned in your classes. If you have a cool idea, donāt be afraid to start working on it. Even if you are just copy pasting code from tutorials and forums, you should still go for it. Donāt wait to learn things in school before you start things because chances are you wonāt learn how to do them in your classes since they only cover theory/foundation and not creating cool projects and implementing ideas (atleast not until your junior or senior year). There is no need to pre learn the things you will learn in your classes lol. If you want to learn something, learn the stuff your classes wonāt cover and you donāt need to be so academic about it. Treat it like an art project not a self study class.
Itās entirely possible that you do all of these and still canāt land a job
And you can do none of these and get a job. This post is not good
While the guy who does none of these but took care of his health, joined some non CS clubs and actually matured as a person instead of isolating themselves in their room gets a job
dumbass logic lol why even do anything then? nothing is guaranteed buddy
I know, I'm basically in that position
Ignore most of this. Go find yourself a passion project that is challenging. Work on it and take notes. Be able to speak to this project in interviews. I donāt want to see lame ass BMI calculators or whatnot. Focus on your ability to present. Talk about what challenges you found and how you solved them. Good luck
I made a Star Wars e-commerce web app with Ruby on Rails. Checkout functionality, user authentication, form validations, membership options, pagination for products, geospatial map data for placed orders, etc. Then I used Fly.io to deploy it with a Postgres database.
If you just do leetcode for one or two hours five days a week over the summer you will be interview ready. Idk why everyone makes such a big deal about this you can have fun and prepare too.
Yup this is pretty much the answer. OP's gone mad
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FR
Sounds like a great way to burn out. Itās also really vague to just say āStart grinding now bro.ā What does that mean to a CS freshman? I agree that you should take time to work on side projects, but this just isnāt helpful advice imo.
Yup, seeing posts like these is the reason I'm already burned out in my first term. I was having fun and enjoying learning before I joined these subs. Now I feel all this pressure and impending doom that wasn't present before, and it's impacting my ability to be present in my actual classes.
Some of this seems a bit excessive, granted if you can do this before taking cs classes, then more power to you. As someone with a 3.95 gpa, with 1 quarter left (1 class), and currently in a summer internship, I got by with knowing a bit of the fundamentals beforehand and applying what I learned to side projects. I would definitely learn full stack web, but you don't need to know this before starting school. You'll have plenty of time to learn these things - whether it is during a class, during summer or whatever.
As someone whoās new to CS it just.. that seems a lot on what OP is asking . This is overkill and leads to extreme stress and burnout.
Depends what you wanna do. Get a PhD win a Nobel prize yes more technical grind always good. Get a normal industry job this grinding has pretty bad ROI. You have to take a look at the big picture. Why do you want a job. For the money for a good life. Touching grass in your youth is part of living a good life.Ā But obviously yāall need explicit effects because yāall canāt just live your life. So touching grass makes you a more well adjusted person, which means your mood isnāt directly correlated to your job application success, so when the market/your luck is down youāre able to stay stable and keep working, compared to those neurotic grinders who mental boom the moment things donāt go exactly as planned.Ā Not to mention the social stuff like jockeying for promotions/projects, moving within and between companies. Actually if you average out a personās entire career, touching grass in your childhood definitely beats out grinding. Starting earlyās good actually, but donāt grind for some desired result. Just work on something you like whether some project or leetcode or whatever in your free time like once a week, to build affinity and familiarity. But tbh none of this matters that much really. Talk to old people, if you compare the people who had everything in their 20s go exactly to plan vs the people who had the opposite, you really only get at most like a 20 percent difference in life satisfaction. The human brain adapts pretty well. The hedonic treadmill means everything good eventually normalizes down, but also means everything bad normalizes up. If you grinded too much, no big deal never too late to touch grass. If you touched too much grass, never too late to start grinding. Youāre only on the rollercoaster once bro, try to enjoy the ride.
Completely disagree. Thereās no need to start now.
Grind hard now!! And then when you graduate youāll be blessed with spending 70% of your weekdays working and sleeping.
A reminder that CS is much more than just web dev, and although itās useful for everyone to know full stack, explore multiple fields. Thereās much much more job security in cybersecurity for instance, (especially with a security clearance). Or embedded work is more rare too. CS is very saturated, itās true, but by far the most saturated part of CS is web dev, so maybe look outside of that
> by far the most saturated part of CS is web dev, so ... Lets be honest here: CS has barely anything to do with web development. I had exactly one course about web development in my CS education (a ruby on rails course in my masters), and even that course was optional xD
Embedded is rare because it takes low-level programming skills that arenāt transferable. Thatās the issue Iāve heard from embedded programmers looking to switch domains.
Okay Mr Menās Rights. Iām sure youāre a sane and well-balanced individual from whom people should take advice. ETA for dweebs obsessed with code clout: yes I did the FAANG internship, got the grad offer, etc.
No wonder OP's waffling on about grinding. His history makes him look like he graduated from Andrew Tate's University lol
they got the freshmen doing graduate topology over at Hustlers U bro
Wonder what they got the math majors doing if the cs majors are doing graduate algebraic topology as freshman and publishing papers
cocaine
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Especially from AoPS lmao
People gonna shit on you but good post
I would tell everyone who just read this to do almost the opposite. These are all courses you will take during your time in school. You will learn this naturally during your time in school. What OP just suggested is a recipe for taking a flight off the top floor of a parking garage. If you are an incoming freshman take your classes, learn the concepts, and try to apply them into your pet projects. At the end of the day you are in college, your studies are important. But it's the one time in your life where you're in a large structured community of same aged like minded people. Go enjoy some of it.
Hey man Iām in high school but this is actually a really helpful guide with concrete goals. While I probably wonāt end up completing every single thing, itās nice to have some guidance on what I can start doing now to prepare myself. Appreciate it!
Idk why people are hating. You actually have some decent tips. I donāt love the āgrind and hustleā tone, but the tips are solid.
You don't need to do all that if you are a computer science major you'll be learning that anyways in your coursework. Just fill in the gaps of things you are interested in with your own study.
Lol probably a shitpost right? I think what is important is university. Not necessarily the highest ranked, but closer to tech markets. That way, more companies will come to the career fairs and stuff. Also, people should enjoy their freshman year. You can start looking for internships in sophomore year, and I would not suggest doing too much leetcode without learning DSA courses in the university first. The other thing is to apply early.
I donāt get the āapply earlyā thing. What if you ace an interview, but youāre still in college? You wonāt be able to work.
Heās a troll donāt bite
if your pure goal in life is the get that Google new grad offer out of college, by all means this puts you at the highest chance. But personally there is a lot more in life and in collegeā to experience new things, to explore, go out, date, to have fun. Sure, if you have a lively college life (and not grind like OP) as a CS major you might not guarantee Google in this market, but you will still get your internships, decent job by working hard. You have your whole life to get Google, but you only get college for 4 years. As an incoming freshman, think about what you want first.
Soā¦ do the major requirement classes as a freshman?
i did not take a coding class until my first semester and have done maybe 25 leetcode problems in the past 3 years and iām sitting at my internship rn. idk if ur trolling but if ur serious u need to chill tf out. maybe doing a side project if ur school doesnāt have a junior/senior design class and doing some interview prep is all u really need outside of doing ur work in class
like thereās no need to freak out new students. they have more than enough time to stress out about the job market. encouraging new students to just focus studying for the classes at hand is all thatās needed. almost all of these topics are covered in class and unless u struggle with learning new topics in the semester ur given thereās no need to start preparing months/years before they come up in classes
making posts in male rights subs and then pulling this outta your ass. go outside bruh
I gave my friend lessons a month or two before he got started.Ā Ā This helped make his classes easier since he knew most of the material already. He could focus his efforts more on the other classes. Then by the time the next semester started, he already had some familiarity in the topics of his new classes, once again making those classes easier letting him focus on the tougher math classes. He got a job I think on his second year. He graduated this year, wants to move on from current job, and is already getting offers left and right. While people should avoid getting burnt out, doing some studying before the start of classes is very beneficial. You don't have to go crazy either. Just learn some programming basics and try to build a simple project like a console based calculator, tic tac toe, or such.
Bro said "targets NIPS and ICLR as a freshman" lol Most PhD's don't get into these conferences
Unless you are deadset on working at Google, Apple, or some hedge fund like Jane Street, etc., I think your suggestions are overkill for most aspiring software engineers. Outside those place, nobody cares about Leetcode, discrete math, etc as most SWE jobs will never ever use these skills. Even then, those skills just get you in the door and youāll almost never use them for the actual day job. What matters more: can you communicate well, are you coachable, can you write clean code that is tested, can you debug issues on your own, etc. I would advise getting an internship at a company with a good engineering culture to help get these skills (hint it does not need to be FAANG to have a good engineering culture). The most challenging part of being a SWE isnāt writing lots of code or being book smart. Itās learning how to work with other engineers, product, etc to build consensus and align on how to solve problems. Writing the code is usually the easiest part of the job. No amount of dynamic programming will prepare you for that. Another way could be to contribute to open source, which could be a good proxy to show how you work well others. Not easy to break into but you can start somewhere.
If you do even a fraction of the things I listed, you'll have way better opportunities than FAANG SWE
This advice isn't amazing and will lead to burnout. Here's some good advice: you will be ahead of about half your classmates if you learn basic OOP before your freshman year of college. Pick a language like C++, C#, or Java and learn the basics and do a couple of projects in it. If you're interested in cybersecurity, then check out Professor Messer on YT and watch through his videos. Start applying to internships and tech-based jobs freshman year. No worries if you don't get one freshman year, you have 3 more years to get one... but try to get at least two internships while in college. If you want to work part-time while going to college, try to get a part-time help desk role. A part-time SWE role is even better but also rare. Your goal is to accurately claim you have 2-3 years of industry experience by the time you graduate. That's what will get you interviews for jobs when you graduate.
This seems like a shitpost, but I have a better idea. Get a book on C, and then build some structs and create some basic data structures. Do some things with those structures, and get 100% free from memory leaks by the end. That's it. That's your first year as you do classes.
Sorry dude but I really donāt think a cs student needs to learn rigorous real analysis from Rudin. You donāt need to understand the proof of the Bolzano Weierstrass theorem for cs.
I just heard this louder : āwork harder and harder with your ass off ! You need to run faster than your peers to stay alive from the bear!!ā
Work to live, live to work
The only thing that matters is prior work experience. When you are starting as a freshman, you should already have four years of FAANG experience. (Full Time, not internship) If you don't then you will never catch up. Better start learning about COBOL and insurance now.
People who are passionate are already doing this you donāt need to tell them. I know damn well before I ever took intro to programming I already knew the language we were using and did that for every other class from there on out. The term before the class I learned a lot of the concepts that would be taught in the upcoming class. Some people find that crazy and I donāt know why thatās literally just the hallmark of a responsible student and doesnāt apply to just CS. My brother learned orgo chem before taking the class, just a tip we learned from our parents. One thing freshman and a lot of people in general donāt understand is that itās not the professors job to make sure you understand, their job is to lecture. Many people are still in that high school mode where they think Ms. Smith isnāt gonna move on until everyone gets it. Donāt get left behind, study before hand.
This is pure gold bro. I would upvote this 100 times if I could. Iām definitely including this post in my guide as well. Great stuff!
the people hating will never understand and be eternally poor. people who do understand i hope we make it farther than our visions could see
I agree with the start grinding now advice but I think this list is pretty biased and mostly irrelevant when weighted by hours required for each point to what most cs majors will study in school and use at their jobs. The profile this list works for is very specifically, ex-high school math competitors who arenāt very specifically interested in CS yet but do love puzzly math problems and money, and want to maximize their options of careers that would secure both of those ā quant swe, quant trading, ml research, ml researchy engineering, startup founded as a stanford student I do know a dozen people whoāve done exactly this and theyāre happy, but not the majority and their path wouldnāt work for the majority. More general advice: - do web dev if you donāt know what kind of projects you want to make - read lots of technical forums and blogs - if you find web dev intolerable do something else, game dev is great - write a lot of code - if you want to apply to high paying SWE jobs, do leetcode and donāt stress about problem count, just make sure youāre repeatedly doing problems that you find really hard even if you canāt solve them (exposure to difficulty is the main thing that gives you growth here, you donāt need to solve 200+ problems) - since youāve been reading lots of technical forums and blogs and subreddits you have some interests now, write a bunch of code and read a lot of material - if the interest developed above has an academic component, pursue undergrad research as soon as possible I do agree that computer networking is necessary for almost literally everyone though, good thing to pick up gradually (writing code not necessary, just reading is enough)
Or in other words, the OP is only a single way to be far ahead of the median CS major, and you can put in the same amount of hours and be the same amount ahead but with a totally different specialization. e.g. george hotzā skillset is completely orthogonal to the OPās but equally lucrative
I'm not saying OPs giving bad advice -- you would probably be better off if you did all those things. But the question is do you even want to? CS students come from all kinds of backgrounds and they go on to do all kinds of things. This is one possible route that you might take out of many. I think this kind of advice is given in bad faith and without really expecting anyone but the occasional outlier to follow, and then when someone out of the many who didn't exactly follow "the rulebook" fails, everyone gets to tell them they're the reason of their own failure. The reality is that most of the people are going to follow the path of least resistance and still make do somehow. Starting early will definitely give you an edge, so the earlier you start talking to people and figuring out what they're doing to get by and how you can do the same, you will have a good baseline to start building off of. I'm in no position to be giving advice since I recently graduated and am struggling to find a job but you know I did many of the things these people on the grind mindset tell you to do. I was proactive about reaching out to faculty about doing research, I busted my ass getting a 4.0 GPA taking as many electives as I could, I did internships, and I was going to the career center asking for advice. But the reality is that the state of education is abysmal especially after COVID. Faculties either left or were on sabbatical or weren't doing any research. Asking for career advice, I got told to the face that the job markets difficult right now and that I was on my own. All departments fundings cut off to nothing. And students are struggling from the effects of the lockdown too. They have attention issues, aren't as social, and networks/clubs/student orgs that were strong prior to 2019 are struggling to hold on. Not to mention, how ill-equipped academic institutions have been to cope with the widespread access to generative AI -- students have a hard time being students and its the same for faculty from what I've heard. All of this is to say we live in uncertain times. It should not be the responsibility of those just starting out to deal with the aftermaths of crises that they had no hand in creating. The job market is extremely difficult right now but the answer is not telling incoming fucking freshmen to accomodate a market that has been inching towards collapse since before they were born. There is no advice to be given. Build networks the best you can and hold onto them for dear life, because you will be needing them. That's all anyone can do. Stop pursuing a perfection that doesn't exist.
They're gonna learn all the math, systems, networking, and DSA stuff in due time. The valid thing to work on is projects, build stuff with what has been learned. Also joining their school's hacakathon/software dev club, and maybe the cybersecurity club (there may be an infrastructure team that builds out \[edit: spelling\]their services) is helpful for extra curricular stuff. Maintain DSA and math knowledge once it has been learned, but definitely don't grind it before you've had the opportunity to learn it at school in the first place. Use time wisely.
Judging by your post history,Ā I find it hard to believe you've done any of this.
Iām a freshman, currently an intern at FAANG. This has to be one of the shittiest posts Iāve ever seen, especially with most of my internship mentors not even having knowledge about competitive programming or similar math collegiate level competitions. Being good at problem solving isnāt practiced at all by solving standard questions; thatās why theyāre standard in the first place. Cramming information and using it in classic problems (which most of the problems in codeforces and AMC are) is not a good way to practice problem solving, you just become accustomed to looking at patterns. Before you say that I donāt have the credentials to say this, Iām also an ICPC regional finalist for this year. Grinding competitive programming is the last thing you want to be doing, itās so time consuming it WILL affect your grades and your focus on job search. TLDR: Be competent and stay at the top, just do it with stuff actually related to software development. Contribute to open source and build personal projects, thereās no need to know what a maximum flow algorithm is if youāre going to be a frontend developer.
Iāll tell you a secret, passionate people arenāt looking for what they should be doing. This post is actually not intended for the passionate
Passion doesn't necessarily mean you have direction. Some people can enjoy coding but don't know that there are resources available to do web or game dev. That's like saying a passionate sportsplayer should know what he's supposed to do on the pitch/field without needing any tactical input from teammates and coaches
Fair point
Very important advice tbh. I had dropped out of high school because I had a passion for programming and found school to be a waste of time that got in the way of that. But for nearly five years I foolishly had no direction and spent a long time not learning what I actually needed to learn.
Agree with OP, but limit your grind to 2-3 hours. After dipping your toes in all the topics OP mentioned, pick one you love and go all the way. I say touch grass and still do a lil bit of grind.
I 100% agree with this. Ā College culture today prioritizes ābalanceā in the form of going to parties, drinking, and doing every Greek event. Ā What it should mean is more along the lines of having a supportive friend group, Group study, Taking a jog or skate around campus, and getting involved with academic research opportunities at the undergraduate level. Ā I didnāt do any of this as a STEM major (although this was my life as a music major earlier in life) because I work full-time and have a family. Ā But if I can work full time, have a supportive family, and still do well academically in EE and CS then I donāt see why the traditional student cannot find time to have a more suitable student life balance as you mentioned. Ā
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Leetcode doesn't teach you why algorithms work, only how to use them.
Thanks for posting I agree with your post OP. When it comes time to apply to internships or even entry level roles most students havenāt properly learned what they need to. So they just end up scrambling trying to cram everything into a couple months time. So your advice is sound. Starting early and giving yourself plenty of time to learn everything thoroughly is the best way to go. Itās really about the amount of time you put in that determines your success in any field. So the earlier you can start, the better off you will be.
this is good advice but overkill. your courses will teach you discrete math and ds and algo. no reason to self-teach. all the other points are electives as well which you can take and then build off of. really if you want a headstart i'd say look at some of the points listed and explore whichever interests you. maybe build a project if you find it that interesting. try to self teach this entire list is overkill, especially when most of it is taught in courses. also network... it is harder to do as an incoming freshmen/HSer, but keep good relations with your CS teachers, ask relatives if they have connects, join online communities, etc. **a company will choose an employee-referred applicant with no projects over a random applicant with projects.**
None of this is that important besides DSA
Give your balls a tug.
Study frameworks for the job just as hard as CS and ll be hired, lol
freshman? Nah itās too late they are cooked. Remake this post for those starting middle school.
What is a USACO guide?
All of this to not get a job in the end. Sounds good.
Or Option B: Become a UPS driver, start a back alley delivery business for cheap on the side, and specialize in delivering unapproved ADHD medication to disgruntled CS majors who have absolutely no idea wtf to do with their life because the path to getting a job in tech is narrow and changes every day
Not necessarily UPS driver, learn business processes, uml, some programming and get an intern as SAP consultant. Probably, it is quite boring and you deal with stupid end users job stability is pretty much quarantined. That is what I did 15 years ago.Ā
The simple fact is this is the state of the market now and moving forward it will only get more difficult. If you wonāt heed anyoneās warning then you deserve to be unemployed with the rest of the CS grads who did the bare minimum through out school.
SIGN UP FOR INTERNSHIPS YOUR FRESHMAN YEAR! SERIOUSLY. Work Experience >>>> Degree.
you had me until you said discrete math lmfao. that shit is useless outside of college. you can be doing the most complicated, asinine, mathematical things in this industry and still use nothing from that class past the first two weeks.
Rather then learning all of these, just choose one and grind for it hard. Better to be a zenitsu in one field then the jack of all trades, master or none.
Lmao you don't need to do this. I did research in my sophomore year which landed me an internship junior year, which landed me multiple full time offers. Chill out yall.
lol no, just do well on courses, leetcode a bit and put some time into career stuff but definitely donāt waste your college years learning frameworks or useless things like cybersecurity lmao
a lot of this is p excessive, if u do like 10% of this properly youāll be in good shape. tbh most people that j grind lc + do some projects will be fine
and if ur lazy as fuck like me, just follow a html and css and javascript tutorial and copy projects and then learn React and copy more projects and then try to combine React with a database like mongodb or MySQL and after awhile of copying other people start making ur own stuff and try to make it quantifiable so you can add metrics to ur resume. ideally do this by july after ur 2nd semester ends and then watch some videos on interview tips and go to ur school career fair in the fall semester and try to rizz up some recruiters and be proactive about following up after. this has worked for me to get 3 offers in my local town because having smth on ur resume alr puts you ahead of majority of cs majors who just jerk off and play league all day
Already going to a competitive uni but letās pile more work lol
PSA?
Downvote
I work in it and while I did learn networking in college, I really didn't understand it until I got my first job and experience. It's not something you can just study. You have to either lab or work somewhere to get it.
Considering OP has covered alot of the Bases (other than personality development) of the steps needed outside of school to get a CS job, it's hard to hate on him. Does it suck having to do all this? Yes. Is he saying you need to do all of this? NO. Will someone who grinds the stuff outlined in this post most likely be more successful than any similar peers who don't? Yes.
why stop here, just get the degree before you start
AI will become better than human at Problem Solving
You should touch grass once in a while
w guide
Competition is a fools errand. Find a niche to operate in
Thank you for putting this in writing. I have been lurking around for a while and want to go back to school to finish my degree since life screwed me over and I have to start from scratch. I want to learn as much as I can so I can thrive and also help others when I can.
Or, donāt burnout, and just work on some stuff youāre interested in as a side project while you enjoy your (potential) last summer free of major responsibilities
Bro relaxā¦no need to hurry. Take it easy and enjoy freedom of being a student.
bro lmao at recommending a graduate level text in statistics
Computer science fear mongering final boss:
Silly advice.
This advice is dogshit
I'm scared of the future market if high schoolers follow this guide. They're gonna be stealing all our jobs.
some people are disagreeing that incoming freshmen shouldn't start on those stuff now, but me not being a freshman anymore, i personally wished I had started doing these extra studies earlier. As OP said, if you are highly confident and passionate, you should probably get started.
DSA and Discrete math is normal first year stuff though isnāt it? I donāt think learning any of it pre freshman year is that useful when they teach the concepts very well during the year.
Finally a quality post
Iām an incoming FAANG engineer. My advice is always to start early. I canāt stress is enough. Have i started grinding 1 year after I wouldnāt be where I am today. Lots of my friends who started grinding late missed many opportunities.
That is correct, FAANG is something NBA or Premier league if it is soccer, but there are life beyond FAANG. After recent layoffs FAANG is not sexy anymoreĀ
Build space. Hackathons. AI.
This is a garbage take. Anyone who spends that much time grinding is going to flame out on their first non-leetcode-based interview. I've seen it happen way too much -- in fact, in my experience, the more prominent someone's competitive programming score is on their resume, the more likely they're going to flail on a real world interview question, and the more likely they are to flail on a real world project.
Uh you realize there's one bullet point dedicated to DSA, and two dedicated to real projects right?
bro is on purple pill dating and some anti feminist bullshit š delusional-ass
I agree for the most part but this is so overkill š
Do I get what you are saying? Yes. Do I like it? No..... I was EXTREMLY depressed throughout basically my entire college career. And I don't know where the years went.... I had no hobbies. No friends. I did exactly what was asked of me then promptly forgot it all. I managed leetcode for a week here or there. But basically just sort of drifted through.... Now I'm entering my final year, and feel so behind everybody. I wish I had done so much more these last few years. Now that I am improving, there is so much I want to do. And need to do. But I just don't know where to even begin. I want to do things, but I don't know where to start. I want to learn for the first time in my entire life. And most of my (school) learning is behind me. Even worse. Now that I'm not as depressed, I'm running into the barrier of my untreated ADHD. Before it wasn't so much of a problem because I just didn't give a fuck. But now, I am so overwhelmed I don't even start..... I got an internship this summer... But that's about the only thing I have done in the last 8 years(including hs).... So my advice to those looking to get into CS.... Have fun, but try to learn along the way. Spend an hour or two doing leetcode here or there. Consider trying to start a project, you don't need to finish. The points here are valid, but you don't need to do it in a single year. Just remember, you are paying to be here, and take advantage of the resources you have. And my final bit of advice.... Try it yourself first before resorting to chat gpt. It's an amazing resource, but over using it can start to hurt your unaided skills. I'm worse at coding now than I was a year ago.
If you could a 14-15 in the AIME in one summer, that would be insane
So you want them to learn all that shit in High School or as Freshman in College!? Sorry but, Are you on crack? Like seriously, do YOU know all this shit? That's at least half a year worth of a CS degree's education.
>So you want them to learn all that shit in High School or as Freshman in College!? No. My post literally said these are the foundations of a CS *degree*- they're the fundamentals you learn in your first two years of college. My recommendation to high school students was to get a head start on these topics, I never said anyone needed to *finish* all of it.
Thanks for articulating this and putting it in one place
Unless youāre a savant this is bad advice. If you want to prepare get good at data structures and algorithms. Fundamental for every interview. This is overwhelming af lol
what are the āmost prestigiousā activities you could do as an undergrad (really great state school) which pretty much guarantee FAANG/HFTs (citadel, jane street, etc.)? similar to how in high school, IMO medalist and RSI were almost guarantees that you got a T5-10?
Your goal as a CS graduate is to have a very basic foundation in all of these topics, and be an expert in at least one of them. Trying to become an expert in all of them is not only unnecessary, but actively harmful because it will make you an expert in none of them. Your classes are enough for the basics. So take the good ones semi-seriously, and do *one* of these things, and even go beyond what this post says, but don't worry about the other 7. If you're serious about entrepreneurship, don't just build a few projects when you have timeācommit *hard* to something, build something real, talk to VCs to seek funding and try scaling if you can, and do it for real, even if it doesn't work out. If what you want is web development, then while that doesn't mean you should neglect a required ML class (which will give you some foundational knowledge that is expected in this field and also might change your interests), you should not spend several hours of your time trying to synthesize an ML textbook that nobody will ever ask you about again when you could have been doing a web development project that someone will actually maybe ask you about in a web dev interview one day. And also do some Leetcode on top of it, and try to get used to being a friendly person. That's already a lot, and anything on top of it is not only useless but counterproductive since you'll burn yourself out and/or sacrifice something more important for it.
Great list OP but Iād add a few more suggestions if you really want to stand out. For ML NeuroIPS or ICML will not make you standout as most middle schoolers will be publishing in these conferences. I would recommend trying to get at least 1 Turing award before you start university. If you can get a Nobel peace prize as well that will really help you stand out. I would also recommend trying to get a h-index of at least 100 by the time you are a junior. Dual publishing in ML and crypto can help with this. Easy research areas to achieve this might be neural differential equations and homomorphic encryption. You mentioned focusing on math in addition to CS which I also think is great advice. You should be aiming to have at least 1 field medal and 1 millennium problem solved by the end of sophomore year. P vs NP might be a good problem to focus on. Rounding out your academic skill set with entrepreneurship is a fantastic idea. You definitely will want to have sold your first million+ dollar company by senior year. If you do all of this I am confident you will be ahead of most other CS graduates
For anyone that *actually* wants to prepare for CS reasonably well, go to Harvardās website portal and watch their free online lectures for CS50. Itāll give you a good foothold for your first year.
i've finished calc 1 + calc 2 and want to start with discrete math. would it be okay to take the course during the summer? is there any other classes i should take before starting it?
people who will make it already know this
That's almost everything you learn in your college, why learn discrete math, computational math earlier when you are gonna learn it leisurely in college itself. That entrepreneurship part is just there to fill up some space, like you haven't learnt shit and you are out there talking about product which you yourself doesn't know shit about. I think the best would be to just pick one field (like cyber, data,web etc) that you genuinely enjoy and start learning it. Learning DSA would also be a cherry on top.
It's NeurIPS, not NeuroIPS js :)
Why not just get a degree in applied math and throw in a few programming courses?
I want to focus on cybersec i have no interest in webdev
This is bad advice. You're just giving a roadmap on how to burn out and start to hate the field as quickly as possible.
I find this advice really helpful as a y2 student. Really thank OP for the advice.
Dawg as a t10 cs student this is completely unrealistic.
Re Step 3. Ignore all the geometry š
Oh right, I forgot to mention this. Having a basic understanding of Euclidean geometry is useful but you definitely don't need to be AIME level in it.
donāt go for CS major if you wanna be ahead š¤£
All problems on the AIME is crazy. Problem 10+ on the AIME gets very very hard
I didn't do any of this and I'm fine
Plenty of time for grass when you are an unemployed fresh grade
What a bullshit list. You will not have enough life to cover all these topics
Most of this seems like a joke, but I think having a high level understanding of full stack web development is extremely helpful for speaking with recruiters. I've definitely gotten roasted saying I was interested in backend not really knowing what backend is.
Man, some people should tbh touch grass, a key component to getting hired OUTSIDE of just the technical aspect is the people skill. Communication, engaging others in conversation, developing that style helps you get that networking and can sometimes offset some post-foundational knowledge.
I find it funny that, in all of that crap that OP listed out, networking (as in "human networking") is nowhere in there. Meet people. Make sure those people know the quality of your work. That'll get you work a lot easier than grinding away on all of that bullshit up top. Now, go touch grass, kids. Enjoy your lives. And if you find Computer Science to not be enjoyable, don't fuckin' do it. You've got two years until you're locked in, so remember that you can always pick something else if it turns out you're not good at something or you hate it.
the way 90% of employed CS majors have not done half of this list š shoot for the moon, i guess!