u/Dear-Radio-2707

I know mileage will vary but I'd like to learn your takes on this.

For the current market, in general, do you think it would be harder for someone with no experience but good projects + college to get their first internship OR someone with 2 internships at that same college to get their first job as a junior (SWE, U.S. east coast)?

Of course, I'm asking this for a selfish reason. I'm a sophomore at a T30 school. I spent last summer building out a full stack application I'm proud of (Django, Postgres, React). Before that I did some light freelancing. I got my first internship for this summer after 40ish applications, starting by filtering on Indeed. I procrastinated until January (partially because I wasn't sure about my chances b.c. of this subreddit, 100% my fault though), did one interview in March which I aced, and heard back two weeks later. I lucked out because it's a small place in my area, the interviewer only really asked knowledge-based technical questions, and we kinda just vibed with each other. I didn't have any connections from this place, and thank god they didn't ask me DSA questions because I need to grind those.

My plan is to get a better internship next summer by taking advantage of this first experience to get past the filters. Next time, I'll actually start early (August), go to my job fairs, and talk to people. After that, the plan is to get a job.

Hi,

I'm a sophomore in college in the U.S. and I'm very fortunate to be graduating debt free. I have my first internship this summer that will pay ~10k after 13-weeks pre-tax. I plan to put this in a Roth IRA, VOO and don't touch it. I'll contribute more next summer and when I have a full-time job.

In terms of earning potential, the median salary for those graduating from my college with my major (CS, though I'm also double majoring in EE) is 97k. I was looking at job listings in my area and that is comparable to the market rate for juniors. I got my current internship in a bad market without any connections, so my hope is that my job search will turn out alright.

For the future, I don't know if I'll be in a relationship or not and where my job will be but for now I plan to stay in my area. After tax, I'd have a little over 6k/month to work with.

If I move out of my parents' house, I've calculated my monthly expenses at approximately $4k, which includes a reasonable rent for my area at $2100. If I stay home, at least for a few years, I can reduce expenses to $1800/month.

I can probably save around 25k/year if I rent, or closer to 50k if I stay at home, as my main expenses then would be my own food, insurance (though I can stay on family plan for some of that until 26 :)), utilities if I help with that, gas, and car payments if I don't save to buy a cheap car (I see listings for Toyota Prius that's around ~18k) with reasonable mileage that'll last a while.

I do not shy away from hard work if it lends itself toward self-improvement. I'm at a great school (T30) and my career looks like it's trending up (slightly). I'm maxing out the credits I take at my university (19) and yet I still have the soft skills and the time to work on side projects and study independently. I don't see that changing when I'm in the workforce.