800 Applications, 15 months, 700 LeetCode questions later, my job search is complete!

Hello all, I've been waiting for my day to post a success story and here it is. Full transparency on my search, my background, and any other questions you might have. If anything isn't answered here f

Hello all, I've been waiting for my day to post a success story and here it is. Full transparency on my search, my background, and any other questions you might have. If anything isn't answered here feel free to comment and I will provide the answer. I am a U.S. male citizen. I completed my BS in Electrical Engineering from UW-Milwaukee back in December of 2021. Current AI student at SJSU (3.94 GPA) I started as an embedded firmware engineer, but realized I did not want to do embedded, I wanted to do pure SWE. I got laid off in October of 2024 and then I came to the conclusion that embedded SW and pure SW are two radically different fields. I learned about the Leetcode grind, full stack development, and I also enrolled in a part time Master's program at SJSU for Artificial Intelligence. I applied to \~800 jobs total in the span of 15 months and in total landed 3 offers, 2 from the same company one year apart (If you go through my post history you can probably find that offer.) I did close to 700 LC problems and attended 3 hackathons. I made it to the final rounds of Apple, Meta, DigitalOcean (x2), and eGain(x2). I got rejected from Meta as it was an L4 position and I really struggled with the system design even after doing multiple mock interviews through platforms like HelloInterview and connections on LinkedIn. Apple I just didn't know enough to pass. Leetcode style questions were not a problem for any of my onsite interviews. OAs are wayyyyy harder and my thinking is that the interviewer needs to understand the questions anyways, so they wouldn't be asking insane stuff. I interviewed with DigitalOcean in June, but the position was closed due to budget reasons, and then got the opportunity to interview with them again the past few weeks. I accepted their offer and could not be happier!! I've attached a link to my resume and a Sankey diagram to visualize the search. The part of the journey that I absolutely despised were the OAs. They are a massive time sink for the vast vast vast majority of companies that end up sending out generic rejection letters even with perfect performance. I think it's outright disrespectful to the candidates time. 800 applications to land a job is just insane too. I cannot believe what this field (and others) have come to. Overall, I don't think there are any "tricks" to getting into tech right now. I applied with referrals, tried networking, tried going to hackathons, everything you can think of, but unless you're a super student with 4+ FAANG internships that goes to CMU/Berkeley/Stanford/etc. we're all in the same boat. It's a game of numbers and eventually you'll get something as long as you keep trying and putting in the effort. Resume https://preview.redd.it/zwjqwxfruu7g1.png?width=1984&format=png&auto=webp&s=45ac74f54670bdef8cd99c0c01d10a380eac3f26