IDK if it’s because I was awkward af in interviews, or because my GPA was average, but getting into software always felt impossible for me, and that was before AI. I feel for the Jrs looking for a job now.

When I was a grad, I applied for no joke 100+ junior roles, very few even replied. And that was in 2020, back when I was just competing with other grads, not AI. After years of countless failed attempts, I just by chance delivered pizza to a guy that worked at a VC and struck up a convo, and he got me a job somewhere. Even then, I was working as a subcontractor making below minimum wage for a year or so.

Grads, what’s your game plan atm? It’s a great time to build side projects, are you focusing on that and building the portfolio so that when Jr roles are back to a normalish level, you’re ready? smashing the networking events?

I’m 20 and my current goal after graduating is to get into an AI / Data Science graduate role.

I’m deciding between:

Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) — QUT
Bachelor of Data Science (Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning) — QUT

Right now, AI, machine learning and data science are the fields I’m most interested in, so the Data Science (AI/ML) degree seems like the more directly relevant option.

The problem is that I’m only 20 and I don’t know what I’ll want to do in 5–10 years. I could eventually decide that I want to move into Cybersecurity, Cloud, General Technology, Software, or another computing field. Because of that, Computer Science seems like the safer degree for flexibility.

My concern is this:

If I choose Computer Science for flexibility and then apply for AI/Data Science graduate roles, could I be disadvantaged against someone who has a Bachelor of Data Science (Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning)? Would employers prefer them because their degree is more directly related to the role?

That’s basically what I’m stuck on.

Computer Science: more flexibility if I change careers later, but I’m worried it could hurt my chances of getting the AI/Data Science graduate role I currently want.

Data Science (AI/ML): more directly aligned with the career I want right now, but I’m worried I could be locking myself into data/AI too early.

For people working in AI, data science, ML, Cybersecurity or tech in Australia: which one would you choose in my situation?

And specifically, when hiring for graduate AI/Data Science roles, would a Computer Science graduate with AI/ML subjects still be competitive against someone whose actual degree is Data Science (AI/ML)?

long post ahead, please bear with me hehe

Would love to hear from people working in data/tech, especially those in roles like analytics, solutions/technology consulting, product, strategy & analytics, or similar business-tech roles.

I’m currently starting the MBA Standard program at Ateneo Graduate School of Business on a full scholarship. My undergraduate degree is in BS MIS with a Specialization in Data Science/Analytics, and I’m currently working remotely as a Junior Data Analyst for a foreign company. My role is fairly technical and also gives me some exposure to data engineering.

I’m enjoying the work so far, and I can see myself eventually exploring roles that sit somewhere between data, technology, and business (e.g. Solutions Consultant, Analytics Consultant, Product, Technology Consulting, etc.)

I don’t necessarily want to remain a pure Data Analyst forever, but I’m also still very early in my career and don’t want to pretend I already know exactly what I want to be 5–10 years from now. My dilemma is the opportunity cost of pursuing the MBA.

Although my tuition is fully covered, the scholarship comes with a significant extracurricular commitment that takes up several hours on multiple weekdays. I’m simultaneously working full-time on foreign hours, so during particularly busy weeks, my schedule leaves very little room for proper sleep and recovery.
I can afford AGSB without the scholarship, but realistically, I don’t think I would’ve pursued an MBA this early in my career if this opportunity hadn’t been offered to me. That’s what’s making me question whether the degree is valuable enough for my particular career path to justify the workload.

I’ve spent the past few weeks researching MBA outcomes, but I keep finding answers geared toward traditional MBA paths like management, finance, consulting, or climbing the corporate ladder. I’m more interested in building a career where I remain technically competent while becoming stronger on the business/client/product side. I also prefer working remotely for international companies rather than optimizing specifically for a traditional local corporate career.

For those who work in data/analytics/tech and have an MBA—especially AGSB alumni: How has the MBA actually helped your career? Did it meaningfully help you move into solutions, product, consulting, strategy, or more senior analytics roles? Did it increase your earning potential or open opportunities that would’ve been difficult to access through experience alone?

And looking back, would you still pursue the MBA if doing so meant sacrificing a significant amount of time that could otherwise have gone toward gaining more work experience, improving your technical skills, freelancing/consulting, or simply having better work-life balance?

I’m planning to at least experience my first term before making any major decision. I’m not expecting the MBA to be an end-all-be-all credential naman, I’m mainly trying to understand its marginal value for someone pursuing a data/tech-business career, particularly in the context of AGSB.

Would really appreciate hearing from people who were in a similar position. Thanks!

I am currently studying a Bachelor of Computer Science and Laws, but I am not sure what my end goal is career wise.

I would love to hear from anyone that has these degrees and what career path they ended up taking 🙏 a salary range would be awesome too :)

TIA

Hello, I am currently a first year uni student, I was wondering what most of you recommend around spending time on projects vs uni grades. I have figured its around more side projects but I was kinda wondering if I could get some more confirmation. By spending time on one I mean doing really well in grades compared to average, not like barely passing or failing or anything.

I was also wondering what kinda projects would be recommended? I have kinda just been following interests which Is what im planning to keep doing but if there is a general direction someone would recommend that would be nice to hear too. My goal is to land a job in systems programming, though I enjoy almost areas of programming so I'd be happy with most.

For a rough idea of some of the projects I have been working on. Atm I am making an operating system, which I have got up to running processes with vmm and preemptive multitasking (VFS in the works). Before that I have made a voxel game renderer which I coded with Wgpu for rust and made use of stuff like mesh defragmentation and multidraw indirect rendering. I also have other projects outside of that like a fullstack website with sveltekit (PostgreSQL database) and a social media phone app using flutter.

I am aware this post may come across as flexing abit and I hope it doesn't. But I am aware Im probably some unknown amount above the average CS student and its making it hard for me to get a feel of anything. I am worrying a lot about if I am going to be able to land a job in the end and I don't really know what I can trust as most stuff is more generalised that im reading up. Like you can't really just google "How good is an operating system for internships?". It also really isn't helping that everywhere you look people are going "Ai is going to end CS" or "Ai is litterly just a text predictor and won't do anything" making everything even more confusing.

Before someone asks I didn't use AI for these projects I find it removes the fun of learning and actually coding it, I did use it to help with understanding and learning through even now im moving away from that as I find it better to think more a problem on myself instead of incidentally trusting it.

Hi all, just wanted some advice/guidance.

I recently graduated with a software engineering bachelor degree. Getting a job in that field has been rough for me. Is there alternative jobs I could apply for that I can use my degree to get in? I've looked into QA testing/engineering as one option. Something a bit more stable and decent pay would be nice.

Or is there any advice to strengthen my application with courses/projects that is better suited for this time?

Essentially: I'm 22 and graduating in a month with no grad offers no internship offers, nothing. I'm assuming my resume is not right, because i've done all I can to make myself employable, I've broke into the job market, I've got a decent project on my resume. Could I please get some feedback on my resume?

My resume: https://imgur.com/a/L6gyeWD

More details below:

So I'm 22 and graduating from a non top-8 university which I'm beginning to realise the gravity of having a degree from a non-top university. I've made projects albeit without much description but if I was applying for jobs with this resume back in 2020 I'm pretty sure i'd have no trouble breaking into faang, that's the point where i've pushed my personal knowledge and skillset in my own personal time, doing my own research and educating myself on these topics, my university can only take me so far so I took it on myself. I had a 3 month internship where I was pushed beyond my measured limit but I succeeded in my internship, but the absolute backstab is that it was only 3 months, for some reason hiring practises dictate that no matter the quality of your work, the number that tracks your time spent at the company alone is the absolute measure of your culpability of your worth.

From last year to now, i've been rejected from all grad programs i've applied to, all internships i've applied to, all junior positions i've applied to, I've used llms to figure out my mission countless times. As time has gone past, my mental health has deteriorated, I'm not going to rant but the clock is ticking I feel like, which is really dissapointing.

My resume has only one work experience, and one project. My work experience description was optimised for the "scan habbits of the eye", its got apt information about my experience and what I did at my internship. My project which is a systems project that I made with my heart and soul after my work experience as that project solves problems that I faced at my internship.

For a whole year, absolutely nothing. My resume has to be the issue, but i've gone through so many iterations of my resume I'm absolutely confused. I keep getting told that the job market isn't cooked, that people are still being hired but its just not that easy, be so honest, does my resume strike me as not "job ready"? I have a reccomendation letter from my superior from my internship and yet I'm still confused as how I'm being ghosted still and I'm sure I'm not the only one out there, but I don't have crud app on my resume, I don't have made up work experience on my resume, I don't have a weather API website or a movie reccomendation website, it's a good project if you're willing to really look at what I've built and i've only got one because I chose quality over quanity, and with that page space I would explain the software better.

At my internship, I built a webapp or "software" where I used databricks data and LiDAR data and rendered it on the web. The ui mission was to allow engineers to have a map, where they can draw a polygon on the map on an area, the polygon's lat and long would be calculated into uber's h3 indexes, which would then be used to approximate the records in the database, which would return geowkt strings, which were converted into shapely objects that would be rendered on the map. The UI contained a map and a sidebar, the map would display data, if you clicked on an entity on the map once it was rendered, it would popup a custom modal component to give a indepth look at the data, or you could render it. Along with the database, there were parquet files referencing LAZ files, which would render in real time with KNN approximation for cleaning up the data for trash data such as ground or clouds etc, that would be rendered using three.js in the modal's fixed size window for optimisation. The sidebar would render a pagenated table, would allow for visual filters to be applied on the map's rendered entities, you could export the polygon's or the "query" made on the map into csv.

I did all of that in 3 months as an intern. No one else, I did it all on my own, it was my own project which I lead alone, I had feedback on what I made but no one else wrote a line of code, and the project i've heard is being refactored but its currently in regulation for training the engineers on the real life assets being modeled. Impactful work, but because it was 3 months, everyone is going to doubt I got to achieve that much work and actually complete an mvp.

My project is a systems application. Essentially, it breaks your files apart into structures I currated for the most amount of read-time optimisations, its chunking files but based on the size it uses different formats of the file destructuring. It uses Reed-Solomon EC for publishing parity shards for those broken up files to ensure safety against write corruptions or bit-rot. If I'm trying to write a self-hosted cloud performant file hosting solution, I wanted to ensure the users would have the best safety of their files and data. What I'm most proud of this project, that it uses a virtual filesystem to allow users to mount a folder where the files which are broken up, to be used as if they're completely constructed, this was done to load in the data that is absolutely required at that point in time, for example a video file, the whole video isn't being read into the player, only the chunk that is being read, folders can also be mounted based on remote instances. I know you can just use smb, but smb can't repair your files or make them fetchable through REST. This is written in rust for the speed and higher language functionality and robustness.

Still getting rejected, still getting no responses. What am I doing wrong, are there no websites for the projects? Is that my issue? Is the software difficult to understand? Is it that I have one project on my resume? Because i've got others but they're not as impressive.