<aside> 👋 Hello! I’m Elliot Klein, a current senior studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan. In this guide, Mbogo and I will provide our best tips and advice for landing a software engineering gig (especially at a startup) as an intern or straight out of college. Let’s get right into it 🚀
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<aside> 👋 Hey! I’m Mbogo Mwangi, a senior studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan. Elliot and I compiled some of our best advice for finding SWE role at startups — here it is! 💯
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The work that you do as a software engineer will vary based on the team size, company stage, and current product needs.
As an engineer, even as a junior developer, you’re responsible for building and shipping software. This might be for a user-facing product or backend infrastructure. You are accountable for the quality and rate at which you ship as well as the scalability, performance and reliability of your code. You will wear different hats (e.g. PM, design, support) and have a lot of firsts — which is typical of the startup environment.
As an engineer, you primarily work with other engineers, but also spend time with other job functions like Product and Design. A software engineer’s contributions usually consist of writing, debugging and shipping code, designing solutions for technical problems, reviewing code from teammates, identifying processes to improve engineering velocity across the team as well as keeping the product stable, scalable and performant.
— https://blog.tryexponent.com/should-i-be-a-product-manager-or-a-software-engineer/
Pursing software engineering at startups has led me to many unique opportunities that I would never have had at a larger company, including: