How to get into SWE as a new grad

Written 1 day ago

This is how I got into the Software Engineering (SWE) industry in 2026 as a newly-grad: and no, I can't do LeetCode to save my life. I am writing this for new graduates or college students who are considering going into SWE: I hope if this is you, it helps you. This is not written by AI.

TLDR:

  1. Do things that don't scale (Cold email, ask for jobs, don't be shy)
  2. Keep trying (be OK with getting experience for lower-than-optimal pay)
  3. Immerse yourself in the world of whatever you're interested in

I will back up why I think these points are important with my own personal experience: in more detail than I think other people cover it.

You can find my resume here for reference. Keep in mind that I am just one datapoint, you should consult many other datapoints. I currently work in a startup in San Francisco with $230k TC. Obviously, this is not a flex but just an overabundance of data: I will share more data in excessive detail.

  1. Do things that don't scale

Paul Graham, a co-founder of Y Combinator, a prestigious startup venture capital firm, said that to be successful, you need to do things that do not scale. In my own words, I take this to mean "do unconventional things." In my summer of junior year, I was unable to secure an internship: I applied to 96 positions. My GPA was 3.6. I heard from a SWE professional that people often apply to 400 positions for their real jobs. A friend who is very successful of mine applied to 4,000. I received only three OAs, and only one interview with a real life person who proceeded to not even show up to the interview at all (Ampure Charging Systems!). This is a 4.2% interview rate. Out of all of those, I did not get to the second round. I was ghosted by 62.5% and rejected by the rest. One summer camp did accept me though: but it was clearly not a SWE job.

During June, when most of my friends already had internships, I started cold emailing out to YC startups via the YC startup directory page. I got a surprising 10-20% reply rate: it is a numbers game so I sent out a lot of emails. You just have to go into their website and, nine times out of ten, their names or Calendly link will be on the website. One company interviewed me twice and rejected me within a week. Another interviewed me for four rounds and I was in San Francisco. The next year, my other cold email was picked up by a Claude Code agent -- the CEO asked Claudius Codus to sift through his emails and find good recruits -- and I was interviewed and given a position at another YC startup.

Competition is often fierce at these startups. A company I worked at had over 400 applicants and just one opening. Some vibe-coded programs which were similar to the company's product just to show during the interviews. Unfortunately none of them were hired: they did not fully understand the interview questions given to them by the company. I'll talk more about interview questions in the next section.

The logic behind this is that startups are very volatile companies: go from initial contact to hire/no-hire decision within two weeks on average (from my experience). I never had a startup ghost me after an interview. Founders are taught to be extremely proactive, responsive and risk-prone as that's what is required to succeed in the startup field. This is why I believe so much in cold emailing, especially to startup founders. Cold emails are trending down, as I've been told by a founder in SF, as more AI agents flood inboxes with spam.

Learn the importance of a killer cold email: personalize the first sentence, and end it with a Calendly link and a call-to-action. The easier it is for a hiring person to 1) find how you generate value from them and 2) proceed to get you, the higher your chances of success. The subject is created to maximize attention for them to click and open the email. The email must be incredibly short too (5 sentences max) or else people will not read it.

Here is a cold email that landed me a position:

subject: Unpaid intern?

Dear [founder names]

Hi, I love your product at [company name] and wanted to learn from the greats. Do you have an unpaid internship position?

For context, I am a rising fourth year Computer Engineering student at UCLA. I've grown my own startups to attract Fortune 500 companies and generated $20k in revenue. At UCLA, I've led engineering teams of 10+ people in neurotech, cube satellite and AI labs and organizations. Please find my resume attached.

Can I schedule a call with you?

Best,
Chai

UCLA

Sometimes, sheer controversy can land you a reply. This landed me a reply (but no interview).

subject: [competitor's name] just told me to rotate my API keys

[competitor's name] just told me rotate my AI provider keys because of a security incident.

I want you guys to build something better than them. I’ve interned at two YC startups -- [name 1] [name 2]-- both in SF and have a startup of my own making $30k ARR. I will graduate next month with a BS in Computer Engineering at UCLA. 

I'd love to work with yall, would you be down for a 5 min coffee chat?

[Calendly link]

Best
Chai
[LinkedIn link]

=====
subject: Re: [competitor's name] just told me to rotate my API keys

Great outreach! What’s the future plans for your own startup?

[CEO]

  1. Keep trying

I initially worked at a internship in Thailand (my home country) which I was nepo'd in and I made around $180 dollars by the end of two months. This was far, far lower than the average pay in America, but I still was happy to do it. In my third internship, I was offered $6k per month as a graduate (I was one quarter away from graduating!) for three months: I took it. It is better to do something than to do nothing and wait for the right opportunity. Not only do you have to do unscalable things: you need to do A LOT of it.

From talking with CEOs in startups, I learned a lot -- I would usually send them requests to talk with them over LinkedIn. These usually are low conversion rates and nothing happen from them though. Some people will say they might offer you a job verbally but unless they are a go-getter startup, they will often times not respond. To contradict this point, that's how I got the company that I am currently in: through a LinkedIn message, then a call and then an on-site and then an offer.

It is also a skills based game: you must know what you're doing. I heard from a YC founder friend of mine that LeetCode is the highest ROI activity you can do. I never did it, but because startups specialize in more architecture problems, I did not need to learn it. I'm sure if you want to go into Big Tech, you need to know it. I had three interviews with startups. I was asked to create a persistent (filesystem-based) key-value store. I was asked to debug a Python weather app. Both without the use of AI but with Google. The third company asked me: "how do you design a coding agent?" No coding was required and I sketched out my answer using Excalidraw: no AI nor Google was allowed for that. Obviously, more experience you have, the better your chances of getting a position and the higher your compensation. Therefore, the earlier you start trying to get experience, the better.

  1. Immerse yourself in the world of whatever you're interested in

I am very interested in startups. I have my own startup which I scaled by myself. I obsess to a pretty high degree: I try to go on sources which peers in my first startup go through (HackerNews, Hugging Face Papers, etc.). I looked at the first internship's code in a lot of detail and studied terminologies they talked about (service oriented architecture, declarative vs. imperative functions, etc.). Try to put yourself as much into the popular culture of the niche you're going to as much as possible: try to talk to others who are already in industry. Oftentimes, you'll realize how far behind you are and try your best to catch up. That's how i learned about Cursor -- one of my friends who had an internship introduced it to me. You'll pick up new concepts that make your skills even better.

Think of yourself as a craftsperson: for coding, learning Vim is akin to improving your craftsmanship said a colleague of mine. You should read the code that Claudus Codus creates because you can learn from it. Do it for the love of the game. When you get into an internship, move as fast and as early as possible. A good first impression is key.

If you have a hobby, you probably know what is like to obsess over something to a high degree. I know people who play chess who know not only all the technical details of the game but they know grandmasters' names and popular culture in the chess world: like Magnus Carlsen's wedding for example. Even though you may know news which are unrelated to being a good programming, sometimes immersing yourself in that community leads you to become a better software engineer or at least be able to talk to the interviewer and seem intelligent.

It must be recognized that in this era of AI that the frontier moves extremely fast. Half a year of lag could kill you. I see many undergraduate labs trail severely behind the frontier of industry: labs and research are only good for your industry-oriented career if you're grad/PhD students are in industry in my opinion. Some do not use git even and just email source code around. You MUST use AI. You SHOULD try the latest tool or gadget -- it is literally pressing buttons on a screen.

In the end, computer science is a made up job that if you told a person from a hundred years ago "oh I look at a screen and press buttons" they'll think you're dumb. Something something scale something something helps humanity. The end. Good luck.