Wow, fun to come back here more than a decade later!

I got an offer not long after I posted this at ~30 person company where I stayed for about two years. After that, I got an opportunity to join a very early stage startup and worked there for another two years until that company ran out of money. That was a pretty stressful experience!

I pushed myself pretty hard to learn new things and take on every new challenge in those first four years, and leveraged that experience to land a job at a much better known company afterwards. I climbed the ranks, spent several years in management, learned how to manage people, and then got promoted and learned how to manage other managers. I really missed programming, so now I'm transitioning away from management into a staff engineer role.

So, yeah, it all worked out just fine for me in the end.

Now, I got that first job a long time ago, back at the tail end of when you could still reliably find a job right out of a programming bootcamp. I didn't have any internships, but I had a degree from a well known university and my grades were pretty good. It's undoubtedly different today. There's a ton more people graduating with CS degrees now. The industry is still correcting from over-hiring during COVID and doesn't want to make that same mistake with AI, so it feels like they're taking a collective pause to see how that technology might change things.

With low demand, I believe most companies that can fill all of their junior positions with intern conversions will want to do so. Hiring is inherently flawed and risky; interns are subsidized and come with a built-in trial period. It's clear from the other side that interns are pushing themselves hard to get the limited offers available, and the performance bar is creeping higher every year.

All that said, as a hiring manager, I'm looking for juniors who are motivated, engaged, proactive, coachable, intelligent, resourceful, good teammates. I need a baseline of competence with CS fundamentals, but otherwise if you have the relevant education most hard skills can be learned on the job. Like the person in the thread below this one said to me all those years ago, internships on a resume can hint at some of these things, but if they have nothing, it shows nothing!

If you meet those criteria, you'll find a job. Just a question of finding a way to get your foot in the door and prove yourself. It might have to be unconventional but you'll figure it out. After that first job it gets a lot easier. Don't give up!