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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Bryan Ho, a 23-year-old junior studying computer science at the National University of Singapore. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I graduated from high school in 2018, I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to study in college.
It was quite a crossroads for me, but computer science was an emerging field at that time. The high starting pay caught my interest, too.
During my compulsory military service, I decided to pick up some programming to get a taste of what it was like. I remember starting with some online courses. I also participated in a “capture the flag” cybersecurity competition with my military bunkmates.
Though we didn’t rank highly in the competition, I still felt great accomplishment. I realized then that I enjoyed the puzzle-solving nature of coding. I was also motivated to see how much more I could learn about computer science and programming.
That led me to study computer science at the National University of Singapore.
Studying computer science was never a shoo-in for employment
There’s been a lot of chatter about the difficulty of landing a job in the tech industry after industry-wide layoffs.
The thing is, I never had the impression that it would be easy for me to land a job as a computer science major.
Before entering college, I already knew that there were quite a number of people in tech and that there would be fierce competition.
Back then, I’d heard stories of how people would drill multiple LeetCode problems daily or polish their resumes meticulously just to land a job.
But my recent internship hunt was tougher than expected
I was midway through my sophomore year when the industry-wide layoffs started last year. I heard about the hiring freezes at some tech companies and got a little worried.
I was applying for internships then and found that getting an offer was very, very difficult.
I felt quite worried because I’d applied to so many companies, but many of them would only interview me for one to three rounds before rejecting me.
It wasn’t just me. My friends, who were also studying computer science, complained about how difficult it was to secure internships. It was quite demoralizing for us because we all tried so hard.
We did hear of a few people who landed internships at Big Tech companies, which only added to our stress. Some of my friends began to doubt themselves, “What are we doing wrong? What are we lacking?”
Fortunately, I eventually secured an internship for the summer.
This year’s internship search was harder
Bryan Ho
However, my hunt for 2024’s summer internships was more challenging. The application cycle just feels tougher than last year’s.
One reason, I think, could be the overall slowdown in the tech industry, which has seen people having their job offers rescinded.
But something else that I noticed was how the online assessments in this year’s applications were harder than last year’s.
Besides testing candidates on the usual topics like data structures and algorithms, they were now asking about other topics such as operating systems and databases. These additional topics made the tests harder.
I applied to some companies last year and found their online assessments relatively simple. However, when I re-applied to the same companies this year, their assessments were more challenging.
If you didn’t take a computer networking class and a question came up, you would probably get rejected since you couldn’t answer it.
I still have friends who landed prestigious internships at Big Tech companies. So it could’ve been an issue on my part — maybe my résumé wasn’t as polished as it could’ve been, or my performance in the online assessments wasn’t as stellar.
I’ve also learned that acing a job interview involves knowing things beyond the standard computer science curriculum. A lot of what we learn in school is mostly theoretical. Companies, however, are more interested in how technology can be used in an actual project.
For 2024, I secured four offers after applying to a hundred summer internship positions. I’ve accepted one and will intern as a cloud engineer next year.
Honing my skills
For now, I’m going to spend most of my time improving my skillset. That would hopefully put me in a stronger position to get a job after graduation.
I’m going to use my internships to explore different areas of tech. I have completed stints in data engineering and full-stack engineering. For my next summer internship, I am going to give cloud engineering a try.
I know that salaries in tech aren’t as high as before, but I think there are still pockets of opportunity for those with in-demand skills.
For instance, there are a lot of job opportunities in AI with the AI boom. You see Big Tech companies investing billions in AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. There are more job opportunities in that sector and higher pay for those positions.
You probably shouldn’t do tech for the money
I would tell my juniors considering computer science to abandon that preconceived notion that getting a high-paying tech job is easy. That assumption doesn’t hold for everyone.
Your decision to major in computer science should come from an intrinsic curiosity of wanting to know how tech works.
If you lack that motivation, it’s going to be a real uphill battle. It’d be too difficult for you if you were just trying to chase the money.
At the end of the day, computer science isn’t the only pathway to success or a way to land a high-paying job.
