[Motivational Success Story] How I got a $170k job as an Asian male with 2.3 GPA from a public university

Intro: Hey everyone, I've been seeing a lot of negative posts on here recently, and it kinda sucks since a lot of how I moved up has been partially due to the resources and inspiring stories I've

Intro: Hey everyone, I've been seeing a lot of negative posts on here recently, and it kinda sucks since a lot of how I moved up has been partially due to the resources and inspiring stories I've seen on here. Like most of you, I have also been laid off early on as a direct result of covid-19 hiring freeze/workforce cut, but then I ended up with a very good role at a Big N company. With that said, I want to give back to this community and hopefully inspire/help some of you who are struggling to find jobs in this rough time by sharing a story of how I "made" it. Background: A brief background of myself is that I am a 23 year old asian male who graduated from a public university (it is quite reputable though) with a \~2.3 GPA in CS. I also graduated a semester late due to failing one of my final upper-level class on my final year, which definitely hurt my job-hunting prospect a bit since it was difficult to explain this to my potential employers. Given my stats, it seemed like I had little to no chance of landing a role, let alone a role at a Big N company, and yet, here I am. With that said, here is my story and how I did it. First Job-Hunt: Unsurprisingly, job-hunting as a senior was quite difficult due to my low GPA compared to my peers. I also lacked the knowledge/skill-set/experience that a lot of companies were expecting new-grads to gain since I only had one relevant internship at a non-tech company. The first job I took was a contractor position where I was paid $25/hr, which was fairly comfortable given my cost of living. It was the only offer I received out of the countless applications I sent out during my senior year, and even that job was very hard for me to obtain. After doing well on the on-site interview, I was asked for my transcript and to complete a take-home coding assignment, I was almost ghosted due to my GPA, and I had to keep emailing the director in regards to the position. After many weeks of exchanging emails, he finally agreed to hire me as a temporary worker after seeing my take-home coding assignment (yes, those are actually worth doing if you really need the job). Second Job-Hunt: As my contract was nearing the end, I went back on the job-hunt again. I had a conversation with my manager and he thought I did well enough to convert to full-time. However, when covid started happening, I knew I was at risk of being let go, and sure enough, it happened the day before my interview with my current company (not within my manager's control). Despite the bad timing, I didn't let it get to my head and performed well on the interview. This was also my only offer out of the hundreds of applications I sent out, and it's better than anything I thought I'd ever get, given my background. I didn't even bother negotiating as I was very happy with the 300% salary increase and it was already a very generous offer compared to the others at my level at the same company. Steps I took: First and foremost, I reviewed my data structures and algorithm. I went through a study guide that has since then been taken down (unfortunately), but the second best guide would be the Crack the Coding Interview. I read this mostly for the lessons it provided on each topics. Edit: <a href="https://workflowy.com/s/study-guide/RD5kZ682pWX5oxiE.