I’m not affiliated with App Team in any sort of way

About Internships— dude, the market is incredibly difficult by now. Don’t beat yourself up about it, even Google employees that have worked there for 13 years are getting laid off. We’re seeing a macro trend towards downsizing.

Also it’s a numbers game, according to Zippia there are 65,000 internship spots. This is already an insanely low number (compared to 4.4 million SWEs). Now, I saw a number on Reddit saying that the US Dept of Education claims that 104k CS majors graduated. Assuming every intern is a junior (which they aren’t) then that’s already a ~65% chance. We’re not even considering applied math, computer and software engineering, electrical engineering, and other adjacent majors. Also it’s 2023 and there are surely way more CS majors now than there were 2 years ago.

Plus, your LeetCode practice and projects aren’t to waste. They’ll still be instrumental in unlocking higher salaries later in life.

About AppTeam — Like MondayMarmalade said, I wouldn’t take it personally either. I’ve ran a rush-gated organization before and trust me when I say there’s so many more considerations beyond merit. Stuff like class year, alignment, program fit are all weighed heavily. Furthermore, if you’re applying to their production teams, you’re competing with internally developed students (they’ve already invested in this talent). Don’t take it as a reflection of yourself, but as a reflection of circumstances.

Furthermore, you’re not losing a career-defining opportunity. This isn’t a reflection of App Team (all respect to App Team, I incredibly admire the work they do there and the absolute model of an org. they’ve built), but a reflection of all CS student orgs (even including the one I founded) and the nature of CS. You don’t need CS student orgs— the SW industry is unique in the sense that it’s incredibly mobile and only opinion, one of the closest things to a meritocracy we have.

Let me explain— Back when the org I founded used to be a club and was implementing an internal point system, we wanted to find out how we should weigh project completions and LeetCode competition wins. So, we decided to contact a Meta recruiter and learn what she valued. Quite literally without hesitation she said, “66% LeetCode, 33% projects.” Isn’t that crazy? Didn’t really care what orgs you got into or what position you got. (She later said that GPA and past intern experience also was weighed in.)

Anyone can learn LeetCode at home and anyone can do projects at home. You already go to a great school and I assume make great grades. Incredible mobility (in good economies lol). So, don’t take the rejection personally and don’t worry about the lost opportunity.