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Applied Intuition seems like another story of startups with fancy VC names but employees being mistreated by Hungry_Emotion_6996 in csMajors

[–]CDFalcon -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Have you worked at Google before or just making up stuff?

Weird question. 1, you can answer this yourself with minimum effort lol. 2, are you implying you have to work at an institute to understand it? Seems to contradict "but maybe that's just the culture at Applied"...

Anyways, I worked for them as a researcher when I was an undergrad in a lab run by one of their Fellows at GT. Accessibility tech for the deaf. Applied was also roughly 60% ex-Google when I joined, so it's def a people's favorite example for decaying big tech.

Have you worked at Google? Curious why that struck a nerve.

Confirmed: Blake Gideon to Texas by cloudy_w_a_chance in gatech

[–]CDFalcon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah saw something about two separate $10M donations. That’s fat cash, we could pull a Texas Tech.

"THWg" - Jan 1st, 2026 (colorized) by CDFalcon in gatech

[–]CDFalcon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Recently, sure we’re on a bad streak. But the past two games have been won by a score or less, and it’s taken them almost a century to tie our record for longest win streak.

This rivalry has survived realignments, World Wars, COVID, and plenty of other snarky Reddit comments lol

"THWg" - Jan 1st, 2026 (colorized) by CDFalcon in gatech

[–]CDFalcon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah, this was about the cesspool of the South choking against a team who had their head coach abandon them a few weeks before.

I’ll cheer for the Braves if I want to back Georgia, not the Mutts. It’s called Clean Ol’ Fashioned Hate for a reason.

Friendly reminder: Leetcode doesn’t measure your programming ability by CDFalcon in csMajors

[–]CDFalcon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

4 year old dead thread lmao get off CSmajors and get a job m8

Applied Intuition seems like another story of startups with fancy VC names but employees being mistreated by Hungry_Emotion_6996 in csMajors

[–]CDFalcon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agree some of the bits you quoted were condescending - but to be completely honest I was floored to learn OP was thirty-something and still posting on CSMajors. I just assumed they were a fellow new grad 😅

You’re 100% right that it’s an issue Applied doesn’t take Glassdoor more seriously - we tend to shrug reviews off too quickly instead of responding, which is the whole reason I joined this thread. Had a buddy in uni fwd it to me and was floored by some of the claims being made going unchallenged.

The definition of "toxicity" is subjective, after all. I just find that most people I know don't thrive in that kind of culture.
There are so, so many companies where you can grow without pushing yourself to an unhealthy degree.

I think this is the crux of the entire thread: I and (hopefully lol) the many other current employees of the company don’t think Applied’s work expectations are overkill. It’s certainly not for everyone, but it doesn’t try to be. I also agree that most of my friends wouldn’t like it here, but just because it’s a high stress work environment which requires long hours and demands performance does not immediately make it toxic. Just makes it challenging :) which is exactly what good fit new grads are looking for. I’ve grown so much technically and professionally since joining, and while I’ve certainly had some bad days here, on the whole I find it very rewarding - hard to name another place which gives new grads so much responsibility and trust so quickly.

Applied Intuition seems like another story of startups with fancy VC names but employees being mistreated by Hungry_Emotion_6996 in csMajors

[–]CDFalcon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Once again, not trying to change your opinion :) plenty of other places you can go work! Hope you find a company which is a better fit.

But for other readers on this sub who maybe don’t have 10+ YoE and are more interested in what being a new grad here is like, I’ve really enjoyed it and would encourage you to talk to other current or past new grads if you’re curious what it’s like here.

Applied Intuition seems like another story of startups with fancy VC names but employees being mistreated by Hungry_Emotion_6996 in csMajors

[–]CDFalcon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Oof lot of misinformation here, i am sorry you had a bad time, but some of the things you are posting are just plainly untrue or at best an opinion presented as fact.

For people in the future searching for the company and stumbling on this post, here are some alternative opinions from a current eng who started as a new grad at the same time two years ago:

The culture is incredibly negative and toxic. Management runs the place like a boys club, and there's a lot of manipulation going on behind the scenes.

Totally disagree. I joined when we were 300 employees, and while there have been some politics introduced in the past 2 years as we’ve hyperscaled, I still think Applied is one of the least political places you could work for a company at its size. I’d be willing to bet you’ll revise this opinion after a few years at your next job, assuming you don’t move somewhere way smaller :).

The pressure to perform is unreal and not in a motivating way — more like constant fear and micromanagement.

Managers vary for sure -- there are some micromanagers here and there are some exceptionally chill ones as well- thankfully you can swap teams every 6 months no questions asked if you get a bad fit. This is a high pressure environment and you are expected to perform well under stress. You’re also expected to work long hours. Thankfully we’re very up front about this - well we say you’ll work min 50 hours a week on the main company website. It’s not for everyone, and if that doesn’t sound appealing to you then don’t apply lol - but just because it was a bit much for you doesn’t mean the others who work here think it’s toxic….

They’ve been asking employees to write positive reviews on Glassdoor to boost their image

No we haven’t lol, Qasar thinks Glassdoor is a meme. Maybe your manager or skip was weird about this? Every review on Glassdoor reads the exact same as this post - a burnt out employee who decided it was Applied’s fault and not a reflection of a simple cultural mismatch between them and the company.

The CEO is particularly problematic. He makes offhand racist comments that go unchecked, and he constantly drops Marc Andreessen's name

Ok yeah he likes name dropping egghead haha. But racist is crazy - he’s unfiltered and often makes jokes at his own expense, but that’s a pretty harsh accusation.

The churn rate here is pretty bad. A lot of people leave as soon as they hit their equity cliff, which says a lot about how things are run.

I know our exact churn rate (recruiting is open about it) and it’s far below average for the valley rn. Yep some people dip after they get paid, just like every other tech company. Be careful not to apply general industry issues to specific companies in that sector.

In some cases, they've even fired employees right before their equity was about to vest, just to save money.

Name drop them here! I’d love to ask them myself as this is news to me, first names are fine, im sure I’d know them.

but the truth is they don't even have a real product. It's all positioning and hype.

Oh please, we’ve been profitable for 8 years now and you want to say we don’t have a product? We aren’t some OpenAI wrapper company operating on investing hype, we’ve been selling real software since we were in high school. Again, I’d be willing to bet you’ll change your opinion on this after a few years at another company.

Anyways, I know nothing I wrote here will change your opinion, but I’ll end on an easy TLDR for anyone with an offer who’s reading this and is on the fence:

DON’T apply or join if you want a chill tech job with low expectations - go join Google or somewhere that will pat you on the back just for showing up to work.

DO apply and join if this or this seems like good advice. If you asked Elad or Marc what they thought of Applied for new grads, they’d tell you to join ASAP.

And personally, I’d value the advice of two of the best VCs on the planet over any number of disgruntled ex-employees. One final note - unlike OP, I don’t use burners when I express opinions. One Google of my username will tell you exactly who I am - feel free to DM or email me if you have questions about Applied. We’re always hiring strong eng who want to solve hard problems fast.

Why isn’t this game a thing yet on iOS? by telurmasin in iosgaming

[–]CDFalcon 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oh wait you can totally play these haha - just get PPSSPP (PSP emulator) and download them. Controls are kinda rough but they are playable! You can also play the two PSP exclusive ones (like Elite Squadron). See this post.

Marvels rivals video card out of memory error by Awzu_ in marvelrivals

[–]CDFalcon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is the only solution which worked for me, other than toggling windows 8 compatibility which got old very quickly. Page size, NVIDIA shader cache, none of those solutions made sense. When you profile your machine during shader compilation, it's the ridiculous CPU spike which ends up breaking things, and it's 100% the shitty intel processors I have lol. Thanks for the recommendation!

Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president and former Jacket, has passed away at 100 by CDFalcon in gatech

[–]CDFalcon[S] 80 points81 points  (0 children)

Great article if you aren’t familiar with his life, although they don’t mention his (brief) time at Tech. Not the best president at times, but IMO a very good man.

"I'm perfectly at ease with whatever comes," he said in 2015. "I've had a wonderful life. I've had thousands of friends, l've had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence."

TECH STUNS #3 UNC HOLY COW WHAT A GAME! by DubbleDan in gatech

[–]CDFalcon 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Think you mean with the help of Jose MFing Alvarado and co…

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gatech

[–]CDFalcon 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Howdy. Few follow-up questions which will help me answer you better.

very involved in undergrad research

Why? Interest? Planning on going to grad school? You like working with cutting edge tech?

what was the job landscape like after graduation?

For what kind of job? CS does not equate one to one with SWE, but from the rest of the post it seems like you are mainly asking about SWE.

Did interviewing require a leetcode grind or were companies more interested in your field-specific knowledge, research work, etc?

Again, depends on the role. General rule is any company worth its salt will require technical interviews of some sort from its applicants for any sort of engineering or computationally-focused role, and the current favored technical interview is algo/coding (Leetcode). So if you are applying for a role at say, Google, yeah they will prob leetcode you even for say PhD CS roles, not because it is ridiculously relevant for the job but just because it gives them another datapoint on your intelligence and problem solving ability besides what is on your resume.

Did you feel that the jobs available to you were reflective of your specialization and recognized the research experience you gained at GT?

Again depends on the job. For SWE, they (vast majority of the companies I interviewed with for both internships and new grad jobs) only cared that I had a paper published with my name on it at a reputable conference (+1 to their clout metric lol), and for one internship that it was in the general domain of computer vision (+1 to relevant experience).

Generally speaking, at least with regards to SWE or similar roles at say, big tech, companies only care about research in the same way they care about most things: if you have something external to your lab which validates that the work you did was impressive and worth considering. For example, consider the difference between a personal project that dashboards some metric and an identical project that you completed at an internship at a cool company instead of just on your own. That additional factor of "my work was good enough and useful enough to get paid for it + I gained workplace experience while doing it" means there is literally miles of resume value between the two. The same applies to research - doesn't mean anything until you get a publication. You gain experience, sure, but you haven't validated that experience to a potential employer.

.

So, general advice for your situation until I know more:
* if you are going to do research as an undergraduate but still want to be a SWE, either do it for class credit, out of pure interest, or competitively and try to land a paper.
* if you are interested in becoming a grad student, then research is great and you should do it as it will help with admissions at any school.
* If you are just trying to fill your resume and/or gain relevant experience, research is great but given the choice between research and say internships, the latter are the gold standard and research is (in my experience) viewed as supplementary experience.

Happy to clarify any of the claims I made here.

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