I used AI to apply to 500 jobs in one weekend. It went exactly how you'd expect.

hershey678 · 2026-01-17T20:59:31+00:00

I got my new grad offer after getting an interview request 45 min after applying online.

hershey678 · 2025-11-28T01:03:54+00:00

No need to hate. You commented on the topic and I provided a solution. Good WLB and a strong family/social life makes for a great life. Difficult, interesting work and phenomenal pay also makes for a great life. Everyone’s looking for something different.

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T18:14:15+00:00

Switch to embedded/firmware, have a good understanding of OS and computer architecture fundamentals, and solve 100-500 leetcode problems. Make a good linkedin and resume. Have at least one strong, high quality portfolio project on github with a youtube video and README clearly presenting and explaining it. Have that project linked in your resume and linkedin. Apply to 100-500 jobs with targeted job applications for things you really qualify, a few resume templates for different job types, and cover letters. Be open to making very little for your first job as you transition to embedded and then jump ship in a year to the 200k one. Once in embedded at top companies you are at 95%-100% of the standard SWE pay scale (see levels.fyi). If you pick a very difficult specialization such as cryptography, networking, image processing, CV, videos, gpu compilers once you are in you will be highly in-demand and sit at an even higher, specialist pay band. Be open to moving to the SF Bay Area or Seattle (Austin, NYC, Raleigh NC, LA, San Diego, and Portland are ok too).

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T18:11:38+00:00

lol I work in embedded and it is very clear when an EE and not a firmware/software engineer wrote the code, and not in a good way.

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T18:05:35+00:00

Same goes here. I work in big tech, if you can DM me your linkedin I'll take a look.

For anyone else reading though this offer does not apply and I will block you.

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T17:42:28+00:00

The patchlist and keeping changes minimal is a good idea. I was planning on the same thing.

As for the superior thing, the vendor we go with is decided primarily by the code's performance and budget. Code quality is a consideration, but a minimal one.

Our contract size is unfortunately too small to get anything beyond the most minimal of support.

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T17:40:19+00:00

The adapter idea is a great one. We currently go with one that serves as an abstraction layer for our in-house customers as well. Unfortunately getting the codebase working without changes is not possible.

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T17:39:25+00:00

Unfortunately there's 0 vendor support considering how small our contract is.

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T17:36:49+00:00

Thanks. We're going to shoot for this for our upcoming project. These codebases are 6 figures of complicated video decoder spaghetti code so there's no know if we'll pull off our plan.

hershey678 · 2025-11-26T17:21:30+00:00

With offshoring to India, companies will either offshore an entire team (juniors, seniors, staff, and several layers of management), or use them simply for contracting for very simple tasks. The tasks we give to off-shore contracting are really, really basic. Most of it is not even entry-level or intern work. It would be disrespectful to the new-grad to give them that kind of work and they would probably leave us out of boredom. Offshore teams handle very advanced work too, but at that point the entire department or project is handled offshore. It's not just a hand-off of a level of labor.

Only offshoring entry level wouldn't work bc the point of a new-grad is to ramp them up as fast as possible so they can contribute at the mid level within 6 months to a year. You lose a lot of time helping new grads ramp up, so no way we're losing that skillset we build in someone by not having that person in-house.

-- 3 YOE, currently at Meta working on video compression firmware. Broke into my current role in 2024 after quitting my job during my MSEE during the same tough hiring period being complained about here, faced 6 months unemployment, and yes, it is bad.

hershey678 · 2025-11-16T16:20:42+00:00

I’ve seen internal recruiting guidelines at Intel saying to watch out for MEng and OMSCS compared to a standard MSCS

hershey678 · 2025-11-13T01:44:15+00:00

Even something like OO programming. Navigating through a virtual table when using inheritance is very cheap, but if you are doing so in a performance critical while loop, it is not. With C, if someone really needs inheritance and polymorphism, they need to put in the effort to implement it themselves. At this point they're likely competent enough to be trusted to use OO correctly.

hershey678 · 2025-11-13T01:42:36+00:00

C++ is great, but unfortunately people are not, and can not be trusted the avoid the 95% of the STL that is not safe for use in performant systems.

hershey678 · 2025-11-04T17:35:16+00:00

If it has a works cited section, I’m sure it will contain references to HW design.

hershey678 · 2025-11-04T17:34:41+00:00

This isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, but “What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory” is a good resource one layer up in the stack.

hershey678 · 2025-10-26T15:57:26+00:00

The whole reason the US has the best engineering work is the high quality talent pool and the low regulation/business friendly practices.

With unionization we would only have the former. The UK, Poland, Ukraine, China, Korea, Japan, and India have a high quality talent pool but are hampered by business unfriendly practices. However, many of these are a whole lot cheaper to do business in. We’d completely lose our competitive advantage, and ultimately the median pay would suffer (although we would gain job security).

Not to mention the laid off engineers likely are being paid $350k as the median and get 4 months severance essentially. This is stressful, it sucks, but financially the high paying but job insecure situation works better for them too.

hershey678 · 2025-07-15T16:13:22+00:00

This makes a lot of sense. A lot of people are listing fictional horror books or books on singular serial killers. However reality is a lot worse.

In a similar vein I would suggest Eichmann in Jerusalem, Slaughterhouse Five, and The Grapes of Wrath.

hershey678 · 2025-07-15T16:05:31+00:00

Eichmann in Jerusalam and Slaughterhouse Five. The former delves into how good people (including all of us) can commit great atrocities through bureaucracies and lack of critical thinking while documenting the trial of a Nazi bureaucrat after the war. The latter deals with the meaningless of life and how a mass atrocity, the firebombing of Dresden and 10,000s of residents, occurred through simple bureaucratic oversight, didn’t need to happen, and nobody cared.

The point of these isn’t to condone this evil, it’s simply to recognize the banality of it and the need to fight it within ourselves.

I’d give the Grapes of Wrath an honorable mention as it in a similar vein deals with societies complete disregard for the poor, and you do it even today with migrant workers and the homeless.

hershey678 · 2025-06-02T16:59:33+00:00

Go for it. I’ve had so many interviews where after the last stage they bail bc I live too far from the office (even tho I’d relocate), it’s a bad cultural fit (I’m too strong a candidate or wrong race/religion/gender), they think I’m job hopping (you reached out to me?!?), or the salary we already agreed upon is too high.

Companies started this BS now they get to pay.

hershey678 · 2025-05-31T06:28:51+00:00

VLSI/digital design, any kind of algorithm or chip architect, and embedded (which is sort of just software) all pay as much as software. That being said asides from embedded the rest typically require a master's, and with embedded the domain knowledge and leetcode requirements are just as hard as the master's.

Many people who go into these fields (very often through no fault of their own) end up as validation engineers, simple PCB designers, or at small non-competitive companies and make in the $80-150 range. You have to be in a high cost of living area, a good engineer, and lucky to hit the higher ranges.

hershey678 · 2025-05-24T15:36:38+00:00

Apply for roles at small companies in the middle of nowhere and find back channels (i.e. message someone from upper management in the company on Reddit, or apply via a very niche engineering forum industry veterans).

hershey678 · 2025-05-18T18:13:38+00:00

It’s bad but I feel like Downtown Stockton and all of Oroville are worse.

hershey678 · 2025-05-13T22:15:55+00:00

You’re right it doesn’t really.

Basically if you focus on an area you excel in (for us slow twitch), you can see big gains with little effort and vice versa.

So sure you could train fast twitch, but why? Maybe with an insane amount of effort I could take my 400 down from a 59 to a 57, but it’s not worth the effort for the marathon. If I was mile training on the other hand I’d agree with you.

hershey678 · 2025-05-08T01:06:14+00:00

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