Backstory It’s been about 6 months since I was fired from a Fall 2024 SWE internship, and I’ve finally had time to reflect on what even happened. I'm 23, graduated from CS in December. Most of my academic coursework was in C/C++, but my internships and projects were all in full-stack (React, Node, SQL, etc). In March 2024, I got a SWE internship offer from a major S&P500 telecom company for the summer. Around the same time, I also interviewed with a small aerospace company and got an offer there too. I asked to push it to Fall — they initially ghosted, then said they were only hiring for summer but encouraged me to reapply. So I did, and come Fall, I re-interviewed — but this time it was on-site compared to the previous one which was virtual. It was easy — behavioral questions and questions about projects, followed by a simple "Reverse String" problem in C++. I was honest about my lack of embedded systems experience but expressed a strong willingness to learn. Despite this, I was offered the internship. I even had school C++ projects on my resume LOL, I was pretty surprised my responses even worked. # Starting Out When I started, the team was welcoming, but I was clearly outside my comfort zone. Instead of web dev, I’d be working on Arduino/STM32 firmware. My assigned mentor was also my direct manager, which already felt intimidating — I assumed there’d be a buffer between me and upper management. # The First Task That Set the Tone My first task was a bug fix — change a variable to signed so the system could handle negative values using two’s complement. I got it working after reading docs and checking with my manager. When I let him know, he casually said, "You could put it into PlotJuggler, maybe check for rounding issues. I don’t know! Seems fine to me." The ticket didn’t mention anything extra, so I submitted a PR. Come Monday, he was upset I hadn’t added a graph from PlotJuggler. He told me he expected that as proof, and I was confused. That wasn’t clear on the ticket or from what he said. It was my first week, and I was already getting called out over vague expectations. # The Final Task Before I Got Let Go The last task I worked on had three steps. I finished the first two: Step 1 was modifying an Arduino parsing library to support manual input delays while a user typed. It was unfamiliar territory for me, dealing with ASCII and low-level behavior, so I pair programmed with a teammate to get the input parsing working. Step 2 was syncing Arduino and device controls — that went smoothly. Step 3 was where things got murky. Even my manager said during a live code review, "Steps 1 and 2 are solid. Step 3 is turning out more complex than expected." So I thought we were figuring it out together. But suddenly, he told me, "I’ve told you many times to refactor the data filtering for readability." This completely caught me off guard. It wasn’t in the ticket or spec, and if he had asked clearly, I would’ve done it right away. I made the refactor and opened a PR. Then, while I was grabbing water, my manager walked up and said he wanted to talk. # Termination Talk with Manager (Sorta Trigger Warning) So on that Friday, I was getting water and the manager came up from behind me stating, “Oh hey, I’d like to have a talk with you.” I was like oh crap, they caught SOME AI-generated code huh? I was about to admit it. Then, he took me on a walk outside and stated that it would be my last day at that “small aerospace company.” Stating that I was on a trajectory to be unsuccessful as a Software Engineer, and added, “Has anyone ever told you that before?” I was just in shock — I have NEVER had anyone tell me that before. And he proceeded to talk about how I had been performing below his expectations, and how I had not made any sort of improvement since my first day (which is not true). I do admit, I had gone to ask for help on my latest task before I got fired. However, during my weekly one-on-ones with my manager, he did not have any sort of bad feedback to give and stated that internship projects are low priority and that I should not be putting too much pressure on myself. And that asking for help in a job where I am supposed to have a steep learning curve is perfectly normal. He then stated, “This is not something that I expected, from someone with two previous internships before.” So I reiterated that I told him in the interview that I knew bare nothing about embedded, but wanted to learn. Then he looked into his phone and said, “Hold on, I am trying to keep my composure here.” Throughout the whole termination talk, he kept looking into his phone and appeared to be reading off it? Then he talked about how there could be something in my thought process that is making me unsuccessful, and stated, “Maybe it’s because of your anxiety?” and started laughing. Then he proceeded to say that he saw in my dev logs (basically my notes on taking notes of the code base) and how I had taken a lot of notes and yabbed on — while laughing. After 6 months, I still cannot understand what he was saying. During the termination convo, he was sort of stuttering and looking into his phone a lot of the time. After he was done telling me how bad I was, he said, “Now I am here if you need to vent or let out any feelings too.” I’m just like… bruh. I kept my cool too. I mentioned, “If you guys were just going to fire me 3 weeks in, then what was the point of hiring me back there?” He said nothing. I even added, “What was even the point of hiring?” Then he spoke: “Well, we liked your energy, you did well on our easy coding problem. As you can see, our hiring process is not hard.” Basically, when we walked into the office he stated, “You can leave anytime.” He ended with, “If companies reach out to us about you, I’ll give them the same opinions I told you.” I packed up and started leaving. For some weird reason, the manager was following me as I walked out of the office?? I looked back as I walked out like, “What you gonna do?” And just to add on — I had not even walked down the stairs yet — and I got notifications on my phone that my GitHub access to the company was revoked and also my work email was deleted. ??!!!! Is that not sus at all? What angered me at the time was: if you are my “designated mentor” — even though you are the manager — I entrust in you to answer my questions, regardless if I end up being a bit clingy. I was very transparent from the start about my inexperience. Like I would gladly have admitted that I was performing under expectations, but simply saying how I would be unsuccessful in the field and also straight up telling me that he would talk bad about me to future employers just feels so abrupt. I did send a formal complaint to the one and only HR lady and the VP of Engineering — no response, as expected. # Currently At the time, it really struck me hard. My confidence was down, and I had other issues pop up in my life during that Fall. However, after 6 months, I am much better. I am not making this post asking for any sympathy, any “you are trying to make us feel sorry for you” BS, any “oh you are just coping hard or hard lying” post — as one of my former friends told me. This post serves simply as a retrospective on my very peculiar experience in the Fall. It took about 6 months to fully comprehend what even happened at that time. Looking back, I probably should never have gotten the internship in the first place. I only showed a strong willingness to learn embedded systems with basic C++ experience. I am currently looking for 2025 New Grad roles, as I graduated in December 2024 in Computer Science & Software Engineering. Just seeing some roles asking for C++ experience makes me feel like I could’ve at least had applicable bullet points on there relating to that language, despite most of my internships utilizing JS or SQL. As I said, I honor extending myself to help others, and particularly learning any languages or technologies to contribute to teams in need. Thanks for reading this everyone. Regardless, I am doing much better now and I appreciate any thoughts down below. This was just me reflecting from such a weird experience in the Fall. Note: I’ve intentionally kept all names, company details, and individuals anonymous. This post is not meant to "name and shame" but to share a personal retrospective of my internship experience, how I processed it over time, and what I’ve learned. Just wanted to reflect honestly in case others have gone through something similar.