Don't Wait for the Internship

What I'd do if I were a computer science student who couldn't land one

I’m not much for taking part in Facebook groups, but I saw a post that caught my eye from a mother concerned about her son being able to find an internship in Computer Engineering. I scrolled through the comments of parents commiserating and offering up their advice. Much of the advice consisted of “Keep grinding...”, “Use your network...”, “Have you tried applying to...”.

As a parent of a college student myself, I understand the concern. After investing tens of thousands of dollars, accumulating student loans, and burning the midnight oil to make grades, the feeling of dejection for the student and their parents is palpable.

I myself majored in Computer Science and from what I know about Computer Engineering, it marries Electrical Engineering and Computer Science into a single degree. While I cannot offer much advice on the electrical engineering side of things, I can offer my candid take on the computer science end of the spectrum.

Artificial Intelligence and work-at-home culture have had a tremendous impact on our field. Gone are the days of employers snatching up kids with computer science before they graduate. Many are looking for experienced engineers that require minimal training and oversight. After all, how do you train a junior level employee when nobody works in the office?

Not too long ago, if a new employee joined your team they would be able to hop in someone’s cube or office and ask questions. Because they were standing there they couldn’t be ignored. Now they’re relegated to Slack or some other chat platform where they can be easily ignored or they may feel uncomfortable asking rookie questions.

The problem has been compounded by the advent of AI coding agents such as Claude Code. Code that was once written by junior employees can now be farmed out to AI agents, which is much cheaper. There will be those who claim “the agents aren’t good enough yet”, but the truth is the agents are better than most junior to mid level employees.

Knowing this, what is a student searching for an internship or their first job supposed to do?

Computer science is a creative discipline, and the job of software engineers and developers is to take an idea and make it come into existence. You don’t need an internship to do that. You can start today by brainstorming, building, contributing and sharing. If I was a student looking for an internship or job today, here is what I would do.

Step 1: Get on GitHub. I’d create myself a GitHub account. This is where the world shares its code and a great resource for learning. It’s also a place to put your code and share it.

Step 2: Build a portfolio site. The next thing I would do is create myself a blog or portfolio site that I can use as a piece to market myself. Use a GitHub Pages site because it’s free and it requires you to build the site. Be sure to buy yourself a domain name and learn how to add a custom domain to your GitHub Pages. Don’t know how to build the site or don’t know what to build? Research it, then build it. Use AI tools such as Claude and ChatGPT to ask questions, but do not let it write your code. Take time to learn the craft. Document everything you do, we’ll use that in the next step.

Step 3: Write about everything you learn. At this point, you have a portfolio web site that has very little content. Now it’s time to create content. What content should you create? Document and explain everything you learn. There’s a great book by William Zinsser called Writing to Learn. In it Zinsser makes the case that writing, thinking and learning are the same process. Start by writing about how you set up your blog/portfolio, how you purchased the domain name, why you selected it, how you configured it to point to your GitHub Pages web site.

Step 4: Build something real. Now that you have a medium to share what you learn, and some base content on your site it’s time to build. Pick something and build it. Maybe it’s a dynamic social networking site with Ruby on Rails or an application for your iPhone written in Swift. Pick something that interests you and build it.

At this point you’re saying “I don’t have any real world experience yet. How am I supposed to build something?” Many of the companies that are household names today were started by college dropouts. Microsoft, Apple, Meta were all founded by people who never finished their college degree. Instead they decided to build. They put their nose to the grindstone and built something wonderful. You don’t need to be the next Zuckerberg, but the principle is the same: nobody gave them permission to build, and nobody needs to give you permission either.

Step 5: Share your work and join the conversation. As you build your software, document everything, write about it, and post it on your web site. If you have questions, look for online communities to join, ask questions and build relationships. Connect with other developers and share what you’re doing on X. Treat this effort as if it were your summer internship or job. Don’t build something small, build something that seems unachievable and out of your comfort zone. Build something you could sell! Be creative and learn!

At the end of this, you may not have built the next Microsoft, Apple or Facebook, but you will have learned a great deal. Your web site will be your resume. Your GitHub repositories will document your progress. The communities you join will be your advocates. The work you have done will give you something to share on a cover letter and provide you with material to talk about during interviews. Above all, you will have a piece of software you created that you can talk about to prospective employers, explain the challenges you had, and how you overcame them.

Don’t waste this summer. Build.