How I Got a Software Engineering Internship With Bad Grades

in december 2019 i just wrapped up my first semester at university with an average of 59.8 percent looking back i honestly don't know what i was doing and why i didn't work hard because i would spend most of my time either playing video games or i don't know just hanging out with friends however four months later the pandemic hit and everything became online so i decided to take advantage of the new extra time that i had in order to try to turn my life around and for some of the people who watches my videos they probably think that i get good grades or that i always had this planned and they probably don't know that that i was actually in a pretty bad situation about like one year and a half ago and thankfully i was able to turn that around and get to where i am today and for that reason in this video i'm gonna go over exactly what i did to go from a person who had no motivation for coding and had bad grades at university to getting an internship in six months [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so before we actually um get into the details of um exactly what i did i just want to go over a little bit uh about why i had such bad grades on my first year at university so the reason for that is because i wrote my first line of code when i was 16 and throughout high school i actually practiced coding a good amount i would consistently like code once or twice a week and i really enjoyed it i enjoyed it so much that i would like spend a lot of my free time coding um but it wasn't like actual coding i would say because i wouldn't follow best practices i didn't have some of the fundamental um knowledge that it's required and that we learn at a computer science degree but overall i was having fun i had autonomy over how i learned and what i did i was able to choose my schedule and whatever fit best for me and overall even when i learned stuff like uh basic programming low-level languages i was having fun because i was in control of what i was doing and when i came to university like it completely changed because all of a sudden i was being forced to learn from a certain professor whilst i could just go to youtube and try to find a thousand different options that i could just pick and choose because everyone has different styles of learning however it doesn't take away the fact that i was really demotivated and that translated into really bad grades which um i was able to increase a little bit throughout the the semesters i definitely increased my average by a lot however looking back at how i was when i finished my first year at university i was definitely thinking that i was lost and that i would never catch up to my other peers who were with better grades so when kovitz started i decided that i was gonna work as hard as i can to prove that i could learn everything on my own and that i could reach the same level as my friends by just teaching myself everything that they've learned so i came up with a six month plan that hopefully by the end would lend me an internship so the plan went as following i would learn all the most in demand technologies i would get good with systems designs and algorithms and at the end i would hopefully have a really amazing portfolio that demonstrated that i actually knew all of the languages that i put on my resume now back then i knew that many of my friends who had good grades at university weren't actually putting a lot of effort and work outside of of their courses so i felt like if i did this and if i worked hard throughout this i don't know this six month period i would finally catch up and be able to say that i wasn't actually behind so i sat down in my room and i wrote the following in the next four months i'll be actually just focusing on learning technologies building projects to make a good resume and the projects that i would build would be three projects for my resume and one project just to get me started with the technologies after doing some research i found myself wanting to do three specific projects that i wanted to put in my resume number one would be some sort of project that lays out that i know algorithms and data structures so in my case i did a very like cliche uh sorting algorithm visualizer and i used react for that but it was it was cool and all but um i definitely think it's kind of a cliche but like for an employer seeing that um they can see that at least i understand um time complexity i understand how to work with algorithms how to adapt into different technologies that kind of stuff and then i decided that i was going to build some sort of full stack application with real-time data using web websockets which i ended up doing and i've i think i've put that in the past in in a video it was basically an application where you have like a it's kind of a dating application where you can match with someone and when you match with someone you can chat with them in real time using sockets and the final project would be some sort of social media clone that would use a technology that i felt would challenge me and also at the same time impress future employers so in my case i looked at many technologies that i might want to use and i chose to create a project using graphql which looking back it was one of the best decisions because nowadays i love graphql and i also make a lot of videos on it and not only that but because the internship that i ended up getting i worked with graphql so it was really helpful to learn it and in the long run i feel like many companies will end up using it so it was definitely something that helped me overall now this did take me like um four months but my plan was that i was gonna get really good with with those technologies i was going to get pretty good at like presenting myself and having a good resume so that i would get the interviews and then i would spend the last two months just focus on practicing for interview questions and at the same time applying for how many jobs i wanted now looking back this plan does sound crazy because i wasn't it wasn't like it was summer but i was still taking courses i took four like full course loads for both the two two summer terms at my university and at the same time like i had to do everything right i was trying to make money for myself so that i could help pay for my my housing and my university i was trying to learn everything that i didn't learn in the past year and i was trying to pass my courses which mostly were math courses that had nothing to do with programming and learning all of this technologies that i'm just going to show over here these are all the technologies that i learned in order to apply for my job so like i've learned more after but this were the ones that i put on my resume and being able to feel comfortable with all of them in four to five months is is not unattainable if you actually put a lot of effort into it and the best part in my opinion is that everything was free through either youtube or documentation or just by work experience for react for example i remember i just searched on on youtube a 10 video series um which basically just laid out the basics so like how to install it into your computer what are components what are props that kind of stuff and like from that i i didn't i didn't continue watching tutorials because i don't think that's a good idea what i did is i told myself okay i'll build something very basic and react and if i find myself being blocked i'll just dig into documentation just struggle through it until i actually learn everything in my mind because the minute you put yourself in a position where you need to solve a problem your your brain starts working better and you start understanding everything more clearly then for the back end i remember i just built a social media kind application where um artists could like post their artwork and um and it was pretty bad honestly i looked back and i wrote everything in a single file and if i could have done that again obviously i would have done it better but i was just happy that i was able to do something and i was making progress which i honestly think is the most important part and in three months i went from basically not having anything in my resume to having three semi-okay projects that would be good enough for applying and i also decided that i was going to build a website as like a portfolio website and i honestly recommend that if you're applying because um it does show like that you put some effort and sometimes it is better it is easier to look at a website than a resume so i would definitely recommend making a portfolio website and one tip that i could give as well is back then um i think it was like august or july i started looking for part-time jobs in the programming like industry that i could work in order to gain some experience and at the same time try to put something into my resume and i know that finding a job is hard so i did something that i wouldn't do nowadays which is i desperately just applied for jobs offering like a very very low like pay just so that i could get some sort of experience and be able to learn as much as i could i knew my time was worth more than that and i know that like every programmer should know their worth and how much they should be paid per hour um but at the time i didn't care i just wanted to learn as much as i could and i wanted to have something good in my resume so i found a startup and i got a position as a backend engineer for an app and honestly i learned so much with that like just working on a startup you get to do a lot of stuff and it definitely helps out so if you can find a startup or any other like simple job even if they don't pay um work there for like a month or two months you have no idea how much you can learn in that amount of time i worked there for six months and i barely got paid um so i needed money to help sustain myself so i found another thing which it was amazing in my opinion for for getting in my internship which was basically i decided to tutor react.js for beginners and by using a freelance website like fiverr not only that allowed me to make money but also it allowed me to put that in my resume which believe me it is really good to have in your resume that you're a professor on the topic because the more you teach the more you learn so what i would do was when i would only accept clients and and students that i knew that i could provide some value so i wouldn't like i wouldn't pretend like i was an expert in react you know back then and i would just say like okay you have a doubt in this you want to learn this i feel comfortable with this so i'm going to try to teach you and if you don't feel like i taught you good enough you can just re i'll refund you and it's all fine um hopefully i never got any refunds and that looked really good in my resume so if you guys want to find a part-time job or you guys want to make some extra money fiverr is actually a pretty good idea finally i started applying for jobs i got everything that i've done in the summer i put everything into my resume which by the way make sure it's only one page and you're not using something like latex you need to put as much keywords as you as you can so that it passes through the resume bots and you can actually get an interview so i spend some time researching on resumes and i try to make mine as good as possible you can just check them out by the way um but it's on my website and it's on my linkedin um but that's that's basically what i did and for every company i applied i would use a service called airtable which by the way there's not they're not sponsoring the video although it would be awesome if they did and with airtable i was able to just organize every application i i did by put by separating them based on which stage i was in so um some applications i would put as like i would i just applied some i would put that i got a coding challenge some would be in the interview stage and hopefully some would be on the offer stage and that helped me organize a lot because when applying for internships it's almost like a numbers game so i applied to about like 150 like positions and i didn't get a reply from like 90 of them so feel like be ready to be ignored be ready to uh not like not not actually get anyone looking at your resume because that happens a lot then i knew it was the time that i was dreading all along which was uh just like practicing for interviews so i started doing two to five like practice lead code interview questions a day and this was one of the toughest parts of the whole journey because now my second year at university started and i wasn't going to treat my second year as my like my first year so i was actually putting a lot of effort into harder classes and i was where i was studying completely full time doing four courses a semester whilst working on my startup and at the same time i was tutoring fiverr and i had to find some sort of time in my day to do my legal questions and i did you know why because i feel like we all have so much time and we don't realize it so i like i was just pushing through it was just two months and if i got my internship i would be happy and settled for a lot more time i honestly didn't feel comfortable with doing even like medium lead quote questions until like december so like in the last month so if you're starting out practicing uh like practicing interview questions you're gonna be hit so hard with so many hard questions in the beginning you'll probably not be able to do most of them and i had done like algorithms and data structure courses before so it wasn't something new to me it was just that it is so much different than what you're used to and you need to memorize so much stuff you need to get like make your brain start thinking like algorithmically that it's just hard in the beginning and it's all about practicing and doing it consistently so definitely start as early as i could if i were you guys i soon started receiving like responses back many of them were rejections many of them were coding challenges and i think it was like in november i received a coding challenge from twitch which was one of the companies that i really wanted to to get an internship with and it was actually the first company that i actually like i ever applied and then luckily like between november and january i went through all the interview process for twitch i went through all the work all the interviews everything and i ended up getting an offer after six months of coding 10 to 12 hours a day on top of also studying i finally got to where i wanted and it just made me feel like there is actually a formula to getting to where you want in the software engineering industry i'm trying not to be cliche but like if i could see myself working and putting that much hours nowadays um i feel like i would feel so burnt out and that's why i'm not recommending you to do what i did i i'm actually recommending the opposite if you could start right now and never screw up like i did in the beginning your life will be a lot easier getting that offer from twitch was amazing i i almost cried when i heard it because it was like taking so much weight out of my shoulder and i finally felt like i wasn't an imposter anymore and felt like i was in the same level as my friends who were getting like good grades at university since they started and as many of you guys know interning at twitch was one of the best things that ever happened to me like was when one of the best summers ever i highly recommend everyone applying for their program in 2022 um each year it gets better and next year like this year was amazing next year it's probably gonna be in person i can't say for sure but i'm just gonna say you guys should apply um because it's actually really good now some of you guys might be asking where does youtube fit in all of this because if you go to my youtube channel i was posting all this time so everything that i've mentioned previously i did and i also posted almost every day for like seven months i started my youtube channel in april or in may or something like that and yeah i don't know i don't know how i was able to to put that much like work in such a small amount of time but i'm going to tell you guys something if you're really serious about applying for a job or you're really serious about programming or something like that and you want to do what i did i would highly recommend creating a youtube channel it looks so good in your resume and it teaches you so much like i if it wasn't for this youtube channel i wouldn't be even near the level i am today i i'm constantly forced to learning new stuff because i want to make videos on it and just spending some time trying to come up with an easy way to explain a topic just makes me feel so much confident more comfortable with that topic that helps me on the long run 100 now some might think that i got the internship because of my youtube channel but that's not actually true because i didn't even put my youtube channel when i applied for twitch i applied for twitch in like november and at that time i had just hit a thousand subscribers so i wasn't gonna put it on my resume and my videos weren't even that good in my opinion but i did mention it in my interviews because i felt like um it might be something that differentiated me from other applicants and i honestly think it was it was one of the reasons why i got it i got accepted so even if you don't want to become a tech youtuber just post some videos on youtube like eight to ten videos explaining some sort of topic that you like and if you enjoy what you're doing just continue doing it because with time uh like programming tutorials are evergreen content so it will always get views right but even if you don't want to be a youtuber now you have a good portfolio of you just explaining topics and proving to employers that you actually know what you said you knew on your resume but overall looking back i'm really happy that i put all the work in and i really hope you guys do it too because it is worth it at the long run and yeah i hope you guys got value from this video if you did please leave a like down below and comment what you want to see next um just subscribe if you want to as well and make a lot of tutorials and i would really appreciate if you guys could do that and if you have any questions just ask them down below i'm also going to link in the description every single like research that helped me including like legal questions that i did my little profiled um like the list of companies i applied maybe um maybe my resume i'll list out everything that may help you guys and yeah that's that's basically it i really hope you guys enjoyed it and i see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: PedroTech

Views: 4,535

Keywords: computer science, crud, css, databases, javascript, learn reactjs, programming, reactjs, react js, pedrotech, traversy media, traversymedia, tech with tim, freecodecamp, deved, pedro tech, internship, swe internship, faang, how to get an internship, software engineering interview, leetcode, how to pass coding, how to pass coding interview, computer science internship, computer science interview, intern, google, microsoft, amazon, facebook, computer science for beginners, computer science major

Id: 8Ak-4tvKiTA

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021