My 2025 In Review

2025 in Review

2025 was one of the greatest years in terms of learning for me.

Honestly, at the beginning of 2025 I was super worried, I was a sophomore with no prospective software engineering internship. At this point, I maybe had one real project that I was proud of and wasn't motivated to build much. I kinda just went to class, did my work, applied to internships even though I was applying late and with an unoptimized resume.

I wasn't necessarily unhappy though. At the start of the year I went to New York City and realized I want to end up there after graduation (this is important later). I met a lot of friends in this school year and did a lot of fun things like go to concerts, got into rock climbing, and played lots of basketball. TBH, I definitely don't regret it and wouldn't have traded these moments to get a good internship.

My First Internship

Midway through my spring semester, I got an internship at a small company called Nexus. I wasn't sure what to expect, a part of me honestly expected it to be a slow-moving and boring company. I was definitely wrong (lol). I had worked on projects before but at this company I had to learn their codebase and their company practices.

It was a lot at first and I was definitely given some menial tasks at the beginning of my internship. I mainly just worked on frontend bug fixes and small features. Later I was tasked with more backend tasks and I really got a good sense of system design at this point. I'd never really worked much with large databases and didn't even know what a linking table was. I kept trudging along and got pretty quick and learned how to ship quality features. I think I built most of my agency regarding my career at this internship.

One of my favorite projects was an internal tool I had full ownership of. I was given a product spec and built out everything in around 2 weeks. I got pretty good feedback and was proud of my work. After this big project, my internship was mostly smooth sailing and I had lots of fun learning how a software company actually runs.

Junior Year of School Begins/Interview Season

I knew I had to lock in this year. I loved my internship but I wanted to go to a big tech hub this summer, that was my only goal this year. In all honesty I skipped a lot of classes. I spent that time reworking my resume, applying to every internship I came across within the day they came out.

I got a Capital One powerday interview and solved everything correctly in each round. I definitely fucked up though by just being super nervous; I'd never had an interview for a company that was well known and paid well. I'm definitely laughing at myself now. I honestly think confidence in interviews gives you a leg up and can almost guarantee you an offer as long as you're an average candidate intelligence-wise. I ended up getting rejected and was pretty beat up about it. My luck changed though and I knew I couldn't fumble another opportunity.

I applied to Google with no real hope in late August. I luckily got the OA in mid September and completed it the day of. I knew I aced the OA so I just prepped my LeetCode skills from September-October. I got news that I passed the OA and scheduled my interviews on October 2nd, where I did both interviews on October 7th. I felt really confident in them and received notice that I passed and was in the team matching stage on October 14th. When team matching started I was worried since this year was super competitive, but I ended up with a call in December.

When I passed my Google interviews, I really wanted a position at their Mountain View, CA office. I wanted to experience the Bay Area since I've been to New York twice, but never California. I honestly just assumed I was going to be placed in California since it's known that NYC was rarer to get and was seen as more 'selective'. This made me super surprised when my intern host's location was NYC. It was definitely bittersweet at first since I wanted to experience the Bay, but after more reflection and realizing the severity of monoculture in the Bay, I was really happy with an NYC offer.

The whole Google process was honestly painstakingly long but worth it. It taught me to always be prepared and reminded me of a Blue Lock panel.

I was definitely lucky in the fact I even had an opportunity, and this really just set in stone that luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Reflecting on the Process

Through this process I also had an offer at ___, and I still have that offer. However, with my Google offer, I'm actively looking to renege this summer offer to gain more startup experience; I want to learn and grow as much as possible. At this point, my agency has been as high as it's ever been. I've never been hungrier despite being at the position I dreamed of being at in 2024.

Also, if you're reading this as a CS major at a non-target school, get off LinkedIn. I swear LinkedIn is useless for finding a job.

Also went snowboarding for the first time.

Here's a picture of me snowboarding for the first time on top of a black diamond (I was on my ass for 1/3 of the run).