As part of a series of posts from people working in F1, I've been asked by the mods to write something about my time as a strategist in F1. Hope you enjoy, and I'll do my best to answer any questions :)
At the age of 14, I decided I wanted to work in F1. I spent the next 7 years working towards that with a lot of focus. This is the story of how I got there, what I found when I did, and why two years later, I left.

What I did

I was part of the Race Strategy team at Mercedes F1 between 2014-2016. The strategy team was (is, I guess) responsible for:

“Running” the race. When to make pit stops, what tyres to fit, what lap times to target, how to approach qualifying, and the plan for unexpected circumstances (safety car, VSC, red flag, puncture, etc)
Doing the preparation work before each race to select the amount of tyres of each compound the team brings to a given race, and to understand what the likely race strategies are going to be, what the remaining question marks are and hence what needs testing on Friday to get answers.
Orienting the rest of the race team and the drivers on a given race based on the results of the simulations and historical races at that track.What is likely to happen? What are the key characteristics of this race going to be? Are safety cars going to be key? Is the undercut something we have to worry about? Is there a warm up curve on the tires that means in fact we have to worry about overcut? What will be the competing strategies?
Doing the post-race analysis of all strategy decisions taken by the team and by all other teams and understanding which decisions were correct and which weren’t.
Competitor analysis. The strategy team is the only “outward looking” department of a Formula One team. Everyone else is trying to make the car quicker. While I’m sure the aerodynamics department spend a lot of time looking at the competition visually, the strategy team were the ones mapping relative performance, setting the team development targets based on this and advising when to switch resources to developing the following year’s car, for example. One of my initial projects was trying to understand the amount of electrical energy various teams were able to recover by studying their GPS traces.
Developing tools to make the job easier. Almost all the work above was much more manual than you’d imagine. When we weren’t preparing for a race or wrapping up from one, we would be writing bits of code to make those biweekly tasks easier. There was very little time for this.
Rule changes. When anything changed (VSCs were introduced during my time for example, or the knock-out quali format at the start of 2016), the strategy team had to figure out the impact and how we should deal with it. We would also be the ones to liaise with the creators of the strategy software to adjust the tools so they could do the job.
Random stuff. From creating a system that allowed us to automatically take pictures of the competition, to writing tools to analyse and compare GPS traces, to counting pixels on pictures to understand competitor ride heights, there was a lot of random stuff that was thrown to us. I even got pulled into a project to assess the effect of different types of success ballast for the Mercedes DTM team.

At the time, the strategy team was based in the UK, with only the chief strategist travelling to all races. The rest of us would rotate around on travelling. In the end I travelled to 2 races (Austria 2015 and China 2016) and quite a few tests (few in Barcelona, one in Austria I think). All of the other event support was done from the “Race Support Room” in Brackley. While you of course have live pictures and intercom to everyone at the track, it obviously isn’t the same being back in the UK. Especially during the races that aren’t on European time, you’d spend a week living on completely the wrong time zone, waking up at midnight and going to bed at 2pm for each race. Race weekend activities took up Wednesday - Monday of the race weekend, and that is excluding all the pre-event and post-event stuff discussed earlier. We would get one extra day off on the non-race weekend following a race weekend to compensate for the previous race weekend. With a race every other weekend at best, you can see how there is very little time for anything other than just keeping up. We’ll get to that later.

How I got the job

I studied Aerospace Engineering at one of the top UK universities, thinking that would be the obvious way into F1. During my final year I worked on a project with Mercedes, which I got because of Professor’s connections. While I was good at it and enjoyed aerodynamics, during my degree I realised that I didn’t want to be somewhere tucked away thinking about a front wing element and still having to go home and watch the race on TV. I wanted to be in the action, as close as I could get to driving the car. So when I was about to graduate, I was on the lookout for something a bit bigger picture than aerodynamics. I applied to Red Bull for a vehicle dynamics position and then saw a position come up at Mercedes in the strategy team. I got offered both, but strategy sounded like exactly what I was looking for, so I went for Mercedes. Halfway through my interview (which was in one of those glass meeting rooms), they started doing a photoshoot with Lewis in the adjacent room. I still wonder whether they scheduled the interview in that particular room knowing that was going to happen as some sort of power move. Of course I acted as if it didn’t faze me at all.
I’m sure I’ll get many questions on advice on getting into F1, etc. Generally I would say the UK probably does help a lot. But a lot of people seem to talk about the “motorsports engineering” degrees you can get in places like Oxford Brookes. I would be very careful with things like that. I would try and get into the absolute best university you can and do as well as you can. Then try to get a year out/summer internship with a racing team or performance car company of some sort. To give you an idea, when I was there Mercedes were only hiring graduates out of Imperial, Southampton, Oxford, Cambridge and Bath/Bristol if I remember correctly. At F1 levels, especially for the top teams, they want to know you are smart, and that you have a dedication to racing. You can catch up on the knowledge on the job. So go to the best university you can, do it in the UK if you can, and do something else that demonstrates your passion. I did an internship at an endurance racing team in GT3 and then a summer internship at McLaren Automotive. That said, I know teams like Racing Point have dedicated places for people that come out of Motorsport Engineering programs so it is a legitimate route in. But as a general piece of career advice, keep your options open. I was obsessed with F1, probably more than any of you on here (quite a statement I know). When I joined Mercedes, I knew more specifics about races in the last 10 years than anyone I ran into. I still decided to quit after 2 years. Had I done a Motorsports Engineering degree from a very average university (good universities don’t do them), I would probably still have gotten into F1 but my career afterwards would have been seriously compromised.

Some memories

I’m guessing a lot of you will want to know about interactions with the drivers specifically. They came into the factory every couple of weeks and being part of the race team meant that they would hang out around our area as those are the people they know best. The rest of the team really has very little interaction with the drivers other than team-wide speeches after race wins. I was very lucky to be right in the action. As many of you will remember, the 2014-2016 years were quite spicy between Nico and Lewis. While they were quite careful to keep the serious politics and drama behind closed doors with the inner circle of Paddy/Toto/Niki, if you were part of the race team you definitely felt it in an indirect way. Even after some of the most controversial incidents, driver debriefs were always very civil and were more of a checklist of things to go through rather than addressing any elephants in the room.
They (and probably most F1 drivers) are a very special, curious breed of people. They’ve grown up with teams of people around them doing everything to help them win and get to the top. If that starts from the age of 8 you’re going to turn into a pretty strange person, and you definitely sense that around them. They are single-minded, focused, are extremely quick to form a judgement on people, and have a very short attention span for absorbing information. Nico and Lewis didn’t seem to like the fact there even was another driver in the team so they avoided coming to the factory on the same day if at all possible. They would even avoid mentioning each other and would talk about “the other car” or “the other guy” if they had to. When they were in the same room, the interactions were just quite childish. Like one of them being overly disgusted if the other sneezed or smirking if the other complained about something in the car they have no issue with.
Lewis
While I saw more of Nico in the factory and he felt more like a “normal” member of the team than Lewis, I actually thought Lewis was the “nicer” guy. He always had attention for people while Nico was happy to look past you if he didn’t know who you were or you weren’t “useful” to him. On my second day at the team, I was reviewing some old races, mesmerised by now being able to hear all the radio comms of these races I had seen as a fan, when someone grabbed me from behind, scaring the shit out of me. It was Lewis, big smile on his face, welcoming me to the team and asking what I do. Seemed very genuine. Later on in the year he took the whole race team paintballing after he won the championship, where I had a few chats with him that were equally down to earth and just chilled out. He described the start of the 2014 Abu Dhabi race to me and how indescribable the pressure was to have to make the perfect start but also not jump the start. How with a twitch of his thumb he could have thrown it all away. Was really cool to see that human side.
Later that day someone shot him in the balls during the paintball which was also pretty funny (he had arrived late and had missed the part where we shoved some cardboard down our trousers to avoid this issue).
Nico
I probably had more interactions with Nico than Lewis over the two years I was there. He would come in more often for simulator work. While at the time he was more involved and probing on the engineering side of everything than Lewis was, he’s still not an engineer of course. Information would have to be presented very succinctly, with confidence, and by a person who he trusted. He came across a bit like a super focused robot if I’m honest. He was extremely driven, very determined and didn’t have time for any distraction. His humour was really difficult to place because he would give you shit with a really serious face as a joke. But then he would quite often also just give people shit with a serious face not as a joke. From an engineer’s point of view he was interesting to work with though because nothing would get past him and he was more able to talk “your language” than Lewis. Doesn’t mean he’s not an F1 driver though! I remember during the Austria test of 2015 I was in the garage and had left the wikipedia page of the F1 season open after compiling some numbers. He came over to me and started looking at the table race results and championship standings. He just stood there for a while and then said something like “it makes no sense does it? I don’t understand how he is ahead”. I didn’t quite know how to reply because we were looking at a table of race results that pretty clearly demonstrated why Lewis was ahead. The way he said it really made me understand how these guys have such a belief in their own ability that they just can’t really compute how someone else can beat them.
Monaco 2015 and 2016
Two of the most memorable races for me are Monaco 2015 and 2016. In case you don’t recall, in 2015 we (the strategy team) threw away a Lewis win by pitting him under a late safety car that dropped him from the lead to P3. In 2016 we won the race by transitioning Lewis from full wet tyres to slicks, skipping over intermediates (with a little help from a messed up RIC pitstop).
Only the chief strategist was at the track for both of these races, while the rest of the strategy team was back at the factory. In both races, the strategic decision came down to a few seconds where we’d have to call into question a pretty direct decision from the pitwall. This is incredibly difficult to do. Despite the direct link to the circuit, there were many conversations on the pitwall we didn’t have visibility of, and so it feels extremely risky to jump into the main radio channel from the UK questioning a decision we’d barely have time to reverse. This is why, in 2015, when Lewis was called in for a pit stop in the last few laps leading under safety car, we all pretty much thought there must be a strong reason we hadn’t heard about for this call to have been made. It couldn’t really be a mistake, it was clear to all of us that Lewis would drop to third and finish there. But with GPS being unreliable in the streets of Monaco, all of us back in the UK were looking at predictions based on car positioning from sector times, while those at the track had left their software in GPS mode. In GPS mode, it looked like Lewis had the gap, while in reality he didn’t. We didn’t question the decision, Lewis came in and that was it.
The next year we somehow found ourselves in a very similar position. Lewis was leading the race with a very fast Ricciardo behind him. The track was wet, transitioning to dry. RIC ended up pitting for intermediates before HAM and immediately started taking chunks out of HAM’s lead. HAM got called in, and again in the race support room in Brackley we were pretty convinced we were throwing a race away. All everyone talks about ahead of Monaco is that you can’t overtake and that track position is everything. And now we were called HAM in to put intermediate tyres on, which mirrored RIC’s strategy too late and hence would lead to us being undercut. This time we did intervene. We only had about 5 seconds. My friend jumped on the radio and said “We are throwing the race away, the only way to win is to stay out and go straight to dries, if we are ahead on track RIC will not be able to get past”. We immediately got shouted down, but a few seconds later the call to box was cancelled, I presume after an exchange on the pitwall. We won the race off the back of that call, pulling off the switch from wets to slicks.
Why I left after 2 years
So why did I leave after just two years? There’s quite a few reasons, among which:

I didn’t want to do anything that wasn’t in the centre of the action, and being in the centre of the action means giving up everything outside F1. It dictates your entire schedule and life. The divorce rate amongst the travelling team is astronomical.
I didn’t want to spend my life living in the middle of nowhere in the UK. 7 of the 10 teams are based in the UK, and not in the most hip and happening areas. I wanted more options.
Related, I realised very quickly that outside of F1 people don’t know where to place your experience at an F1 team. If I did this for 5 years it would become very difficult to leave and do something else later on.
While F1 really is cutting edge when it comes to aerodynamics (although a very niche type of aerodynamics - essentially vortex management), and logistics, prototyping and production, it is (was) definitely not on the cutting edge when it comes to tech. Even in a leading team, the strategy modelling was for a large part stacks of VBA in Excel, very basic monte carlo simulation, and a lot of guesswork from experiences in previous years. There was a huge amount of tedious, manual work and instead of automating it intelligently and in a modern way, they just threw smart interns and grads at it and churned through them. There was little drive or opportunity to change this, as it was working for them (well enough), and the eternal two week cycle between races leaves very little time to invest in building good processes. It was also a wake up call that the guys at the top in the racing (not the design) team are massively experienced in their little bubble, but have had little exposure to how things have evolved outside of F1 in the last 15 years. Hence the spreadsheets.
I’d been lucky enough to have 80% of the experience I wanted in only 2 years. I’d met drivers, travelled to races, had an impact on them, been on the pitwall (during a test!), I’d even driven the simulator. It felt like I could easily pump in another 5 years and yes I’d be on the pitwall somewhere. But would I want to fly from car park to hotel to racetrack for the rest of my career without actually seeing any of these countries? If I didn’t like it, it would be pretty hard to leave at that point. Which is why the senior core race team never really changes. It’s just groundhog day for decades. And they get really good at it of course, but it is very detached from advances outside F1 and at this point is all a bit embarrassingly old school.
You’re very tired all the time. And it’s not a good tired, it’s not tired from thinking hard about interesting problems. It’s tired from pumping in the same mind-numbing tasks week after week, tired from fighting jet lag even though you haven’t gone anywhere.

I really, really enjoyed the intensity of my time at Mercedes. It was a dream come true. But I’m even more happy that I was able to realise that dream in the first two years of my career, before moving on to something that I can actually build a life around, something I can do for myself.
It’s also nice to be able to watch the races as entertainment again, even though I have to admit I miss the millions of timing screens, the radio traffic and the split second decisions.

From Depressed Addict to Happy 25 Year old Making 65k/year - How learning Python helped save my life

Hello all,

I am new to reddit, and after reading some posts of people expressing their frustration learning Python, I thought I would write about my own story on how learning Python helped save my life, and perhaps more importantly, gave my life meaning. I will try to be as brief as I can in my back story to keep this as relevant to Python as possible, but I feel it would be a disservice to leave it out completely, as my issues with mental health were a primary driver of the motivation I took advantage of to learn Python. I will post a more detailed description of my backstory later in addiciton or depression_help or something similar. Feel free to skip to the second *** to go straight to when I started learning python, however I suggest you read the whole post because honestly my whole story is relevant. If I hadn't gone through what I went through, I doubt I would have had the motivation to self-teach myself Python.

***

I grew up in a wealthy, extremely homogenous town within an hour of New York City. I went to a public school, but if you saw the way people dressed, it looked more like a private prep school. The vast majority of the kids in my school had parents who were millionaires. My parents were not. I was an only child, and I grew up in a small apartment on the "poor" side of town ("poor" meaning houses/ apartments went for < 750k). As you can imagine, the social structure of the school was entirely based off the wealth of your parents. So the game was rigged against me from the beginning. I had very few friends at a young age, and most people in my middle school probably would have described me as a "loser" or another synonymous term. I was very unhappy and became addicted to video games as a mean to escape my life. During high school, I finally started branching out to meet people from the surrounding towns, who were not nearly as pretentious as the people I grew up with. I made a lot of friends and started to have a legitimate social life. However, with this new social life came a lot of superficiality and drinking/drug using.
Until my senior year of high school, my grades were mediocre at best. Because I hated my social life at school, I hated school in general. But in my senior year, something changed. I won't detail it in this post, but will certainly get into it more in my next post in addiction or depression_help . I improved my grades and went to community college for my first year. I ended that year with a 3.9 GPA and an acceptance to one of the best colleges in my state. I transferred to that college and thought my life from there on out would be perfect. I was wrong.
I hated the social scene of my college. I found it to be very superficial and revolved almost entirely around drinking. Later I realized that while this was true for the people I was surrounding myself with, nobody forced me to surround myself with those people. I did it because I thought that this was the only way to enjoy college, and if I didn't, I would be missing out on the experience of my life. Man, what a load of BS I let myself believe. This expectation set me up for failure, and I blamed myself entirely. I thought I was worthless, a loser, and that all the mean things people said about me in my hometown back in middle school were true. I fell into a deep depression and eventually dropped out.
Towards the end of my time away at this state school, I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed me Adderall and Xanax to treat my depression and learning disabilities. In the beginning, they worked wonders, but they certainly didn't solve the underlying issues, they actually made them worse. After I dropped out, I began to rely on them completely. Before long, I was blacking out all the time as a result of the Xanax, and up for days at a time as a result of the Adderall. It was always one or the other, and I had to use the other to counter the negative effects of one.
For the next few years, I battled with addiction and depression to the point where I felt hopeless. I would get a week or two or three sober, then relapse. Somehow I managed to go back to a local college during this time, but my grades were mediocre, because I would miss a week of school every time I would relapse. Eventually I went away to rehab for four months. This is where I started to learn Python. I was very fortunate to have parents who loved me enough to spend the money to send me to a place for four months. I know not everyone has this privilege, and it is my goal to pay my parents back the money they spent on me.

***

The rehab I went to was basically in the middle of nowhere, and while I was inpatient the first month, the last three months I was in what was essentially a nicer version of a sober house. I worked part- time at a restaurant (~20 hours a week). I had computer access, and I found myself very bored during the first week or two, so I decided to learn something I had always wanted to learn: Programming. I bought a few courses off udemy.com for ~$12/each (NEVER pay full price of a Udemy course. You can always get them discounted), and started learning. Pretty much anytime I wasn't working or going to AA meetings, I was programming. I essentially replaced my addiction to drugs with an addiction to learning. I really enjoyed it, but in hindsight, I overdid it, as any addict does. I came home after four months, and I fell back into old patterns, and relapsed just before I would have been 6 months sober. I will go into more detail about this in my posts in addiction / depression_help .
During my time in rehab, I completed 3 Udemy courses on Python, but honestly I only really learned the fundamentals. I've never been a very quick learner, as I have a processing disorder (I was always the last one to finish tests in school and it always took me longer to do assignments etc). I frequently got frustrated, and rarely took breaks. I would spend 4-8 hours a day practicing coding, but much of that time was obsessing over one thing that I couldn't figure out. This was a big part of why I burnt myself out. Later, I found that if I ran into a problem I couldn't figure out, and forced myself to take a break, 95% of the time I would figure it out within 10 minutes of coming back from a 15-20 minute break. The mind is funny like that.
Fast forward about 6 months and I was back in rehab, this time for only 30 days. I came home and luckily got an internship at a very small investment firm, where they used python to trade stocks algorithmically. There, I had a boss who was a very good programmer, and he gave me real projects to do that required me to think critically. He rarely gave me any help. Most of the time when I asked a question he would say "I know the answer, but you have to figure it out. It's the only way you'll learn". This frustrated me at the time, but looking back it was probably one of the best things anyone ever did for me. I developed resourcefulness and patience, two incredibly imperative skills for any programmer who wants to be worth his/her salt. During this time, I was taking a few classes at a local college to finally finish my degree, and I was working anywhere from 15-40 hours a week at this investment firm, unpaid. I honestly worked a bit too hard, I almost burnt myself out again, but I managed to get through it. I was very lucky in that my parents helped me financially during this time, which allowed me to focus more on school and work. I had a few relapses during this period, but they were short and mild, so it didn't throw me off track too badly.
Over this past summer I finished up my degree (I majored in Business) and started looking for jobs. I was sure to put as much of my accomplishments at the small investment firm that involved python on my resume as I could. Covid was (and is) still wreaking havoc on the economy, so I worked extra hard applying to jobs, making connections, and keeping my skills sharp. I honestly probably applied to over 2500 jobs. I only got maybe 3-4 interviews. I had one during the end of the summer that went to the final round, and I was sure I was going to get the job. I didn't. Instead, the company (according to a connection I had made within the company cold-emailing people) decided to hire people from India to save money. I definitely felt pretty hopeless at that point. But I didn't give up. Maybe a month later, I got an interview for a job at a major company as a Data Analyst. I had three rounds of interviews plus I had to send them examples of some of my Python projects. I didn't get my hopes up like I did last time, out of fear of being disappointed. To my surprise, I got the job. I had asked for a 50k salary. They gave me 60k base plus a 5k bonus contingent on my performance, plus great benefits.
I've been at this job for a little over a month, and I honestly love it. I find myself excited to go to work every day, and the people really like me because I am able to provide real value to the company. In my first month, I worked a lot on automation of otherwise very manual tasks (usually involving excel or emails). I would ask people how many hours per week they would generally spend on such a task and wrote it down. I recently did the math and realized that I have so far saved the company over 750 hours of work per year, and that’s a conservative estimate using a 48 week year (to account for holidays, vacation etc.) and the low end of their estimated range of hours per week. This frees the employees up to work on more value added (and frankly much more interesting) projects. My work there is just beginning, and there are a ton of projects I am really excited about.

### (Please go to the next ### if you have no interest in hearing anything non-Python related)
I can honestly say I am happy now. I have over 4 months sober, and I rarely have any cravings to use drugs anymore. I really think this is largely because I found purpose in my life. That said, I still attend AA meetings often because I know I have to keep my sobriety my first priority. Without it, I have nothing. I also know that life isn't going to be perfect every day. While I do consider myself happy today, I still have bad days. Such is life. I stopped expecting to feel good all the time. Life is not designed that way. Before, I was only "happy" if I had a substance in my system. Also, "happy" to me was a euphoric rush which felt good, but was never fulfilling. Now I define happiness differently. It doesn't mean I feel good all the time. It means that despite sometimes not feeling good, I can appreciate how lucky I am to be alive and how blessed I am to have been given a second chance. Getting out of the rut that I found myself in a few years ago was the hardest thing I have ever done, but it was 100% worth it. At the risk of sounding corny, I really do believe sometimes you have to fall down hard and struggle getting back up to appreciate your life.
###

Learning Python was part of my journey, and it wasn't easy at all. When I started, I had a lot of doubts that I could do it. I didn't think "people like me" would be successful at something like this. Again, I was wrong. While I am certainly not even close to an expert at Programming/Python, I am good enough to be hired at a large company and good enough to make a difference. I'm sure there are people on Reddit and elsewhere that could make me look like I started programming last week. But I try not to compare myself to others. I instead try to compare myself to who I was before, and who I want to be in the future. As I’ve said several times before, I will make another post with more details about my experience with addiction/depression and give my general tips for life there, but for now here are my general tips for learning Python:

I suggest starting with the fundamentals. I used Jose Portilla's Udemy course for this and it was great. I will link it at the bottom along with some other resources.
If you struggle motivating yourself to follow online courses, try figuring out a real project to do that can actually help you in everyday life. This could be automating something you do in your job, for school, or just something you think will be fun.
Work Hard. Don't give up. But don't burn yourself out. Take frequent breaks, especially when you get frustrated.
Ask for help. If you’re struggling with a specific problem, learnpython is great, along with Stackoverflow.com . People have helped me with many problems there.
Trust the Process. Programming is a lot like learning an instrument in my opinion. At first it can be grueling and you won’t be able to do much for a while, but after you learn the fundamentals, it becomes incredibly enjoyable.
Be consistent. This is extremely important. Try to set aside a time every day to practice. Even if it’s only 20-30 minutes.

There are many more tips that I have but those are the most important ones I can think of. Please feel free to follow me as I hope to be quite active on reddit in the future. If you have any questions, please message me. Whether it's about Python, Addiction, Depression, or whatever else. I'll do my best to answer everyone I can.

Thanks.

Early Wachowski Interview

One of the first interviews after the matrix
ILoveNatPortman: Can you give any information on the sequels, or even confirm their existence?
WachowskiBros: Yes, we are working on them right now. Well, we would be working on them right now except we have to be here in the chat room right now, LOL.
blindrocket: Do you practice Martial Arts?
WachowskiBros: No, we do not, but we watch a lot of Kung Fu movies.
AgentMartin: Why didn’t you both do the commentry on the DVD, time restraints?
WachowskiBros: That’s a two part answer. Part one is that we believe that film is a collaborative media, that’s why we never take a film by credit. We think the other artists who help create a film are important and interesting, and for people who want to understand the process of filmmaking. And the second part is, that we were too tired.
Hiryu: Which Anime inspired you the most and why?
WachowskiBros: We liked Ghost in the Shell and the Ninja Scroll and Akira. in anime, one thing that they do that we tried to bring to our film was a juxtaposition of time and space in action beats.
AgentMartin: Is there anything in The Matrix which you weren’t too happy with, wished you could have done differently?
WachowskiBros: That would require the rest of the chat to answer! But, we’ll answer that in general we’re fairly happy with the way it turned out.
blindrocket: Would you consider yourselves computer nerds?
WachowskiBros: You got the second part right, just nerds! LOL.
AgentMartin: Were you excited about DVD as a medium for your movies to go to the homes of the masses?
WachowskiBros: As a technology, DVD is exciting medium. But like all technologies, it still needs to be developed by the users of the technology.
Enigma: What is the role or faith in the movie? Faith in oneself first and foremost – or in something else?
WachowskiBros: Hmmmm….. that is a tough question! Faith in one’s self, how’s that for an answer?
Peter: Will the be a directors cut of the matrix with any deleted scenes or out takes?
WachowskiBros: Nope, nope!Because we were pretty happy with the way it turned out.
AgentMartin: The two of you seemed to have a great relationship together for the making of this movie. Have you always been very close?
WachowskiBros: We just met actually. Tonight!
Sentinel: What comic books inspired the look of the Matrix?
WachowskiBros: The largest influence from the comic book world on the actual design would be the art of Geof Darrow.
Revenge: What did the humans do to scortch the sky??
WachowskiBros: We’ll answer that question later.
larrikin: How long did it take to film in Sydney? was the entire movie shot in Sydney?
WachowskiBros: 118 days, and yes. [On the screen, Neo is climbing out the window following Morpheus’s `orders’…] Actually, this is Keanu Reeves actually getting out onto an actual ledge, without a stuntman. He does this entire scene without a stuntman, and it’s 34 floors up..
hokeyboy: Were the filmmakers influenced by Alex Proyas’s similarly themed “Dark City”?
WachowskiBros: No, but we thought it was very strange that Australia came to have three films associated with it that with it that were all about the nature of reality. Dark City, The Truman Show and The Matrix..
Enjoythesilence: How would you say Bound and the Matrix are similar?
WachowskiBros: Both films examine the idea of an individual searching for their true selfwhile attempting to escape the box that we often make of our lives.
calla: What do the time 9:18 and the date 9/18 signify? Is this a personal reference?
WachowskiBros: That’s my wife’s birthday.
Inge: How long did the lobby scene take to shoot?
WachowskiBros: It took 112 days to shoot the lobby scene… It took 12 days, not 112!.
dm8: do we set the video to 16×9 or 4×3?
Akira702: you guys are cool. do you know that you are cool?
cecilc: Have you seen any of the fan sites that out there regarding The Matrix? And are there any out there that you think particularly represent the film really well?
Inge: Which scene are you guys most happy with? Favorite? For me it. Neo on his way to Morpheus the first time.
WachowskiBros: If you’re talking about the pill scene, that’s our favorite too.
Sealouse: Why was it filmed in Australia?
WachowskiBros: Costs.
calla: There are quite a few hidden messages in the movie that I notice the more I watch it. Can you tell me about how many there are?
WachowskiBros: There are more than you’ll ever know.
Inge: Did you guys take a nice holiday after the film had open? You deserve it!
WachowskiBros: Thank you very much! And we did.
Sentinel: What do you think of the fans of the Matrix??
WachowskiBros: We love them.
ToiletCommando: Are you prepared to become legends?
WachowskiBros: Legends of what?
MadMatt: You guys BIG Jackie Chan fans??
WachowskiBros: Yes, we love a lot of Hong Kong cinema. Jackie Chan in Drunken Master II is fantastic..
Specter’s question, asked by TheTrinityACMXCL: What about the animals in the Matrix? Are they real animals or just computer-generated images?
WachowskiBros: Sadly, they are all computer generated images.
ToiletCommando: Is it true that you got some of your ideas from the Vertigo comic The Invisibles?
WachowskiBros: We do enjoy that comic, but no.
ThedrickFel: What exacty was the mirror made of? Was it the same stuff they injected into morpheus? Why silver?
WachowskiBros: The mirror is actually a mirror. When Neo sees it it’s a hallucination, but it’s the direct result of the pill Morpheus has given Neo. Reflections in general are a significant theme in the film. The ideas of worlds within worlds..
AgentMartin: Are you suprised by the amount of internet life that The Matrix has spawned, fan sites etc?
WachowskiBros: Surprised? Yes, very, surprised. We are very, completely stupefied by the fan response to the film. [On the screen, Morpheus offers Neo the choice of the two pills…] WachowskiBros: The idea of the reflection, the two Neo’s in Morpheus glasses, is that that represents the two lives that Neo is leading. In the left lens, we see the blue pill and Thomas Anderson, and in the right lens, we see the red pill and Neo..
Jose: What kind of drug does the red pill contain?
WachowskiBros: It’s like a computer virus that’s meant to disrupt Neo’s life signal so that they can pinpoint where Neo’s body is in the power plant..
Renxo: Which is your favourite flick?
WachowskiBros: Too many to answer.
unholyTrinity: When did you think about making this movie for the very first time? Was there a kind of special inspiration given by any event, occasion or something like that??
WachowskiBros: It all happened very rapidly. We were working on another comic book, and a friend asked us if we had any ideas for a new series. And we said no, and then we just started talking about a couple of ideas that we had been working on in connection to cyberpunk fiction. And, a whole idea sort of exploded, over a period of about three days.. [Before they actually responded above, the pod scene was playing on the screen so they commented…] WachowskiBros: We’re pretty happy with the way this scene turned out. Keanu did some amazing work in this scene which included 6 hours every morning of prosthetic makeup. And he had to sit in a freezing cold vat of goo for another six hours..
Renxo: Where were you born?
WachowskiBros: Chicago.
Neo479: What are some of your favorite films from Honk Kong?
WachowskiBros: I was very happy with the Don Davis score in this scene, that included his use of a boy soprano, which I thought was very eerie. Don had a great idea, to use human voices choir in scenes like the power plant and scenes on the Neb to sort of suggest the plight of humanity..
Doc: So, WAS the Japanese animation Megazone 23 an inspiration for the Matrix? The stories seem very similar.?
WachowskiBros: I’ve never seen it. But send us a copy, it sounds good..
theman: How did you guys come up with the idea for the matrix? Playing video games? Shock therapy?
WachowskiBros: No, designer drugs.
Starr22: Are all the religious symbolism and doctrine throughout this movie intentional, or not?
WachowskiBros: Most of it is intentional. [On the screen, Neo is about to be plugged in for the first time ever…] WachowskiBros: One of the things we tried to do with the Neb for when we were shooting “in the real world” was use long lenses to separate the humans from the backgrounds as opposed to when we shot the Matrix we used short lenses to place the humans in specific deep spaces. We also tinted all of the lights blue in the “real world” and green in the Matrix.
Renxo: Do you reflect your personality on NEO’s character? Were you/are you… hackers?
WachowskiBros: We’re probably not good enough to call ourselves hackers, like NEO.. [On the screen… Morpheus shows Neo the desert of the real…] WachowskiBros: There have been many questions about the history that Morpheus suggests in this scene,and we have written the history in a fair amount of detail, and we often have hoped that if we did an anime series, we would tell the story of this history and the story of the first One. Somebody asked us about the liquification of humans, that’s what they feed the people in the pods, the dead people are liquified and fed to the living people in the pods. Always recycle! It’s a statement on recycling..
White_Beezatch: Will there ever be a Matrix video game?
WachowskiBros: Hopefully yes. If things work out the way we want them to, the video game will be released when the next movie comes out, and it will actually have something to do with the movie.
DrBasher: Who came up with the wardrobe, because Trinity’s outfits rocked? So did Morpheus and Neo’s. Was it part of the original script?
WachowskiBros: We described her as a woman in black leather in the script. But, mainly the costumes were designed by Kym Barrett..
Chandler: Since you have worked with the same composer and cinematographer (the great Bill Pope) did you find that it was easier to think ahead about a visual or musical style for the film?
WachowskiBros: Did Bill Pope ask this question? No, but it’s easier to execute them. You develop a shorthand language with people you’ve worked with before. You tell Bill, we need a B move, and he knows what to do..
pomru: My friends and I are wondering what anime you showed the producers to get this movie greenlighted?
WachowskiBros: If only it had been that easy. We had to draw the entire movie and Keanu Reeves had to agree to do the movie before anybody green-lit it.
DrBasher: Also, the special effects rocked, was the script conceived knowing the special effects were available, or were the special effects conceived to make the script possible?
WachowskiBros: Some of the special effects had to be invented, mainly Bullet Time.
yellerdog: What are the odds of the Wachowski’s directing a “straight up” live action adaptation of an anime?
WachowskiBros: I thought we did.
DrBasher: How long did it take to come up with the script, because it’s great?
WachowskiBros: We wrote the script before we had even directed Bound. And had been working on it up until the time of production.
TGee: When did you first think you would have such a huge hit on your hands?
WachowskiBros: It kind of was like a giant art house hit, in that it just kept going and going and people kept talking about it, and there was never a moment where people were like “it’s huge”. People liked it, and it just kept going. [On the screen, Morpheus is fighting Neo…] WachowskiBros: This scene took fifteen days to shoot, and about four months of training…This is all Keanu, this is Keanu running up the pillar and doing the full airborne 360.
ToiletCommando: Are you going to do any projects besides the Matrix?
WachowskiBros: Maybe. If we’re still alive.
ToiletCommando: Is it hard to work as brothers? Don’t you disagree on everything?
WachowskiBros: Mom flies down to the set everyday to settle every one of our arguments.
BigMac: Rumor has it that Cypher is not dead….is this true?
WachowskiBros: If you ask Joey Pants, it is. Joey Pants started that rumor..
garrett: Isn’t it rather ironic that Morpheus and his crew are completely dependent upon technology and computers, the very evils against which they are fighting?
WachowskiBros: Yes! [On the screen, Morpheus’ jump makes Neo go `Whoa’…] WachowskiBros: That shot, where Morpheus jumps up out of frame, we called “The Worst Camera Operator Shot in the World”.
ooo: What is the Matrix?
WachowskiBros: About 2 hours and fifteen minutes long…Those doors are actually made out of wood.
spark: What made you decide on the green tint for being in the Matrix?
WachowskiBros: It was a whole motif inspired by the phosphorous green of old PC’s. [On the screen, Morpheus says, `Freeze it!’ in the Agent training program…] WachowskiBros: People don’t realize how important this scene is. Because we are all staring at the woman in the red dress! There’s actually twins and triplets that we hired in that scene. And all of the clothes are based on black and white costumes, like nuns, chefs, brides, sailors. We had the idea that Mouse just doubled people instead of making originals. But we couldn’t afford to do it digitally, so we ended up hiring as many doubles, or as many twins, as we could find in Sydney. It was kind of like a bad dream on the set.
grey: How did you get the money for “The Matrix”?
WachowskiBros: Begged. And the big-hearted Warner Brothers came through..
Stone: Would you like to direct Jackie Chan?
WachowskiBros: Sure!
Lyn: Have you guys been approached to direct Batman?
WachowskiBros: Yes, but we thought we’d be busy doing the sequels.
AgentMarr: The film’s cast was quite diverse and yet the issue of race was refreshingly not an issue on screen. How did you accomplish this?
WachowskiBros: We’re pretty happy with the way the sentinels turned out. The digital artist that John Gaeta found did some amazing work..
WachowskiBros: Cypher, at the beginning of this scene, is setting up an automated system to allow him to go meet with Agent Smith. EZGuest316: Could you say a little about the sound design which was terrific such as the slomo bullet ripple effects, foley effects?
WachowskiBros: Jane Davis is a genius.. ..Dane Davis is a genius. He built all of these sound effects from all kinds of original sounds. He’d put bullets on strings and whirled them around his studio, he digitized raindrops against windowpanes to create the sound of the Matrix code.. [On the screen, Cypher is enjoying the fake steak…] WachowskiBros: By the way, this steak was one of the best steaks we had in Sydney. We got to eat all of the ones that Cypher didn’t finish.
JediKnight: Have you been approached with any sci-fi scripts and do you have plans to do any?
WachowskiBros: Right now, we’re focusing just on Matrix 2 and 3.
Freethinker: Just out of curiosity, do you guys hold to any religious beliefs?
WachowskiBros: Non-denominational. [On the screen, the breakfast of champions…] WachowskiBros: Several of the cast members actually got sick eating this stuff during this scene..
Astral_Traveler: How did you choose the music?
WachowskiBros: For the most part, we chose the music ourselves. But we hired a consultant DJ in LA named Jason Bentley, a musical whiz kid, who had a lot of swell ideas..
JimmyEO971: Will Joe Pantoliano be the DeNiro to your Scorsese, the Divine to your John Waters?
WachowskiBros: There is a court order against Joe Pantoliano for coming within a hundred feet of us.
biggysmalls: How many bluescreen/greenscreen shots are in this movie?
WachowskiBros: That’s a good question. There’s 450 digital effect shots, but green screen? Probably about 125..
wrygrass: Did ideas from Buddhism influence you in making the film?
WachowskiBros: Yes.There’s something uniquely interesting about Buddhism and mathematics, particularly about quantum physics, and where they meet. That has fascinated us for a long time..
gdreams: Will you use Yuen Woo Ping again?
WachowskiBros: Hell yes!
gtbpitt: Do you think The Matrix will develop a cult following in the decades to come?
WachowskiBros: We hope it’s as big as the Night of the Lepus.
WachowskiBros: This is my wife about to be on the screen here. She comes in right there!…. This kid is great!
letmein: The phrase “paying taxes” comes up a few times. Why?
WachowskiBros: Because we usually couldn’t afford to pay ours. It is an examination of what is and is not certain.
Tank: I am a computer artist and I am very interested in knowing what type of computers and software you used to create the 3D effects?
WachowskiBros: A lot of the guys at Manex wrote their programs with Softimage. We think.. [On the screen… the Oracle] WachowskiBros: Awesome actress!
Wesbran: Is the title “The Matrix” related to the mitochondrial matrix located in cells; the site of cell respiration, the creation of energy in humans?
WachowskiBros: Like the movie itself, there is a lot of word play, a lot of hidden other meanings, a lot of multiple meanings. Besides that, we also like the definition, the mathematical definition of the use of matrix, or the use of it in terms of a woman’s womb.
DVDReporter383: Do you surf fan sites? Do you have the time?
WachowskiBros: We’ve looked at a few. There’s some cool ones out there.
virtualMatrix: What is the significance of Neo eating the Oracle’s cookie?
WachowskiBros: There was a piece cut out of the movie that explained the significance more. It’s hard to explain.
agunn3: Have you ever been told that the Matrix has Gnostic overtones?
WachowskiBros: Do you consider that to be a good thing? I would.
RockyMtnBri: Any chance of novels being written above and beyond the movie, like Star Wars?
WachowskiBros: Maybe.
Freethinker: The Matrix was very-well received by critics, as well. Did that surprise you/How much stock do you hold in critics?
WachowskiBros: There were some critics that really didn’t like it. Did it surprise us that some liked it? You don’t really hold much stock in critics, you tend to make movies for first, yourselves, and second, your audience. And the greatest thing about critics is that sometimes they can help find your audience.
AgentMarr: What was the thinking behind the use of numbers that can be read both ways like 303 on the hotel door where Neo meets his destiny?
WachowskiBros: Like the wordplay, there’s a lot of numbers play in the movie as well.
Mike: What were your fondest moments while filming The Matrix?
WachowskiBros: Finishing! [On the screen… the escape from Lafayette Hotel…] WachowskiBros: This scene, this set right here, the wet wall, is something like forty-eight feet high, and they are actually really worming their way down with wires..
DVDReporter383: Do you surf the net? If so, where do you go?
WachowskiBros: We’re everywhere.
linusa: Do you believe that our world is in some way similar to “The Matrix”, that there is a larger world outside of this existence?
WachowskiBros: That is a larger question than you actually might think. We think the most important sort of fiction attempts to answer some of the big questions. One of the things that we had talked about when we first had the idea of The Matrix was an idea that I believe philosophy and religion and mathematics all try to answer. Which is, a reconciling between a natural world and another world that is perceived by our intellect.
WachowskiBros: That was a hard stunt.
godbox: Confronted with Neo’s choice, which would you choose?
WachowskiBros: Blue pill.
Fuchikoma: What response did you get from established film-makers upon the Matrix’s release? Any unexpected phonecalls etc?
Lincoln: What comment do you have to those who say that the Matrix will probably be recognised as the first C21st film?
WachowskiBros: Well, first we’d be grateful for the comment. Then we’d have to point out the clerical error that it’s in the 20th Century, and not the 21st until 2001..
wrygrass: Did you do camcorder films or other film practice that helped you direct?
WachowskiBros: No, nothing on video, but we did fiddle around with 16 mm film.
Revenge: What is the symbolism of all the analog rotery phones?
WachowskiBros: There’s a couple of meanings. We liked the analog nature of older technology. We liked the suggestion of old original phone hackers. It sort of suggested the big Rube Goldberg device that’s in the mirror scene.
Inge: What was it like seeing the movie with a audience for the first time?
WachowskiBros: Terrifying. [On the screen… Morpheus & the agents …] WachowskiBros: That’s the largest translight ever constructed. (interesting fact) … That is actual mercury in the hypodermic needle, by the way. It was considered one of our most dangerous sets, because we had mercury, it had to be poured into the hypodermic needle.
Stone: Was the Alice in Wonderland theme just whim, or do you guys have a big love of it?
WachowskiBros: Big fan! It is a brilliant book. Many of the themes we tried to echo in The Matrix..
Orange_Crush: I noticed that The Matrix is currently #30 in the IMDB top 250.. that’s quite an achievement. How do you feel about being classified with other legendary films and filmmakers?
WachowskiBros: Lucky.
Wesbran: What happens to all the gadgets in this movie after it is done filming?
WachowskiBros: Most of them are so fragile they break as soon as you’re done filming. And Joel Silver collects the rest.
Sinclair: Why were they only able to jack in through hard-lines, but still able to communicate over cell?
WachowskiBros: Sinclair, good question! Mostly we felt that the amount of information that was being sent into the Matrix required a significant portal. Those portals, we felt, were better described with the hard lines rather than cell lines. We also felt that the rebels tried to be invisible when they hacked that’s why all the entrances and exits were sort of through decrepit and low traffic areas of the Matrix.
The12thMonkey: The guy that played the lead agent was worryingly convincing, did it take a long time to find him?
WachowskiBros: Yes, actually,and that was one of the fortuitous things about going to Sydney, is that it led us to find Hugo.
wrygrass: You said in an interview that string theory might show up in the film, did it?
WachowskiBros: Maybe in the next one, I have just now begun to understand string theory.
whatismyname: whats your favourite music?
WachowskiBros: We love all music.
ZEUS: How did you finaly choose the names of the characters?
WachowskiBros: They were all chosen carefully, and all of them have multiple meanings.
Qualopec: How hard was it to get the kind of budget you wanted for this film?
WachowskiBros: We had to go across the world to secure that budget.
wrygrass: Do you have any funny stories from filming you’d share?
WachowskiBros: That newspaper had to be actually a giant piece of metal with newspaper glued to metal pages. How’s that for funny?
Lincoln: What is your fave line in the movie?
WachowskiBros: Dodge this. And “there is no spoon.” We also liked that one.
Mahy: Do all of the things that happen in the Matrix have some computer-based analogy…or did you just do some of it because it was cool?
WachowskiBros: Yes. We like to try and pack as much stuff as we can in when we do a movie. So some of the stuff we do relates to the narrative, and some of the stuff we do because we like.
biggysmalls: Do you like the Planet of the Apes?
WachowskiBros: Yes, love it! “Get your damned dirty hands off, you stinkin ape!”.
Enigma: The character Neo: Is Neo his real self and Thomas Anderson who he is “required” to be?
WachowskiBros: Neo is Thomas Anderson’s potential self.
Job: Do you realize that your new ideas have changed the way people will see movies in the future?
WachowskiBros: Really? [On the screen, the agents have fallen… “Get up, Morpheus…”] WachowskiBros: The idea of Bullet Time came about because we wanted to shoot an event at incredibly high speed which means slow motion, but move the camera at regular speed, which is impossible. The first theory for Bullet Time involved a rocket camera that was abandoned for safety purposes. Then, John Gaeta suggested a digital solution. Which brought it to the screen.
keanucarrie: Which scene was the hardest to shoot?
WachowskiBros: The subway fight scene. It was incredibly cold and everyone was very sick and it went ten days over schedule. And was particularly brutal to the two actors..
Dogma: Has there been any discusions with comic book companies to publish a monthly-type of comic based on the Matrix, not just an adaptation, perhaps with Darrow illustrating it?
WachowskiBros: We’re going to release another series of stories on the website. Geof Darrow is going to illustrate a couple more short stories written by Andy and I. And, we’ve toyed with the idea of continuing the story in comic book form when the movies are finished..
Trinity303: Do you like John Woo’s movies and style of shooting scenes of action?
WachowskiBros: John Woo was a genius. John Woo IS a genius..
tonka: what do you think about star wars?
WachowskiBros: It was one of the first films that we went berserk over when we were kids.
kr: How long had you been working on writing the story and was there re-writing going on while filming?
WachowskiBros: There was not much rewriting, a little bit. Somebody asked us about the street names in the movie and all of them are significant. They are all based on places in Chicago.
Santayana: I love the casting of this film. Specifically, Hugo Weaving. Why him?
WachowskiBros: We had seen the movie “Proof” and we flew Hugo into LA to meet and he did a phenomenal reading. And was willing to undergo the four months of training. He’s one of the finest actors we’ve ever worked with. .
Hiryu: Did you ever consider doing a cameo appearance in the movie?
WachowskiBros: We’re too ugly! [On the screen…Neo faces off w/ Smith…] WachowskiBros: This shot here, the showdown shot, is an hommage to Sergio Leone.
joe: I am amazed by the physical performance the actors had great training. What do you think?
WachowskiBros: We’re amazed as well. We think all four of them went beyond our expectations.
Revenge: Any influence from Blade Runner?
WachowskiBros: Blade Runner was a benchmark science fiction film, a masterpiece. Of course there’s influence. But we were like the only guys who liked that movie when we saw it, everyone else hated it..
Freethinker: Did you know right away that it would be a trilogy?
WachowskiBros: We knew we had too much material for one movie.
inkman: Do you two feel that sci-fi is overlooked in the “Awards” arena?
WachowskiBros: We don’t put much credence in the “awards” arena.. [On the screen…Neo is fighting Smith…] WachowskiBros: There are some fantastic stunts in this sequence like THAT one! Both the Australian stunt team and the Hong Kong stunt team worked very well together in this scene.
AgentMartin: Do you appreciate people dissecting your movie? Do you find it a bit of an honour or does it annoy you a little, especially when the person may have it all wrong?
WachowskiBros: There’s not necessarily ever an “all wrong”. Because it’s about what a person gets out of the movie, what an individual gets out of the movie..
Vindicator: The whole idea of electronic stimuli of atrophied muscles is great. Did you guys consult any medical experts for accuracy?
WachowskiBros: As a matter of fact, one of our best friends is a doctor. He was the first guy to show us our first autopsy. [On the screen… the market shootout…] WachowskiBros: Watermelons, that was an hommage to Gallagher. On the TV, when Neo goes by there’s an episode of “The Prisoner”.
Action: Am I really watching the movie right now, or am I in…The Matrix?
WachowskiBros: Take another blue pill and call me tomorrow.
rawdogg: Why did you never show Zion?
WachowskiBros: We’re saving it for Matrix 2.
Nebelis: What other projects did the camerman work on and where did you find him?
WachowskiBros: If you mean Bill Pope, he did our first movie “Bound” and the masterpiece “Army of Darkness”.
Pill: Do you plan to write any books about this?
WachowskiBros: There is a “Making Of’ book that’s coming out later this year.
virtualMatrix: Do you believe one day, intelligent machines with AI will actually rule the world?
WachowskiBros: Yes. If they don’t already!
AcesAreWild: Who Invented BULLET TIME PHOTOGRAPHY?
WachowskiBros: The original concept was ours, but the technical execution was from a company called Manex.
AgentMartin: Many take the Make of the Neb, “Mark 3, V.11” and quote it from the bible “Mark 3:11”. Was this intended or is it just the make and model of the Neb and nothing more subliminal than that?
WachowskiBros: The Nebuchanezzer is indeed a biblical reference, from the book of Daniel.
linusa: Will you ever tell the history of the Matrix in a novel?
WachowskiBros: Maybe.
Renxo: Are you doing any personal presentations, anywhere?
WachowskiBros: No.
NIKKI: Who unplugged Morpheus and told him about the matrix?
WachowskiBros: We hope to tell that story in another medium one day.
Neotek: How much of an influence was William Gibson in the production and design of this movie?
WachowskiBros: We’re big fans of William Gibson’s work.
Ronin: Your movie has many and varied connections to mythos and philsophies, Judeo-Christian, Egyptian, Arthurian, and Platonic, just to name those I’ve noticed. How much of that was intentional?
WachowskiBros: All of it.
WachowskiBros: Sorry we could only get to 1 percent of your questions. We do appreciate all of your support. And we’ll see you in three years.

Understanding the Hiring Process (so you can make it work for your)

[Table] r/buildapc — I'm the owner/founder of PCPartPicker. Celebrating 10 years of PCPP + /r/buildapc. AMA (pt 1/2)

Source
Note: other employees' answers were occasionally included, but are by no means complete.

Questions	Answers
PC Part Picker. Where do I start. First of all, thank you so much for all of the help you guys have given me. If not for your team and your website I might not have built the PC I have now. I am very grateful to you guys for making such straightforward software with so many options. You guys are on top of everything, and I’d just like to thank you for all that you’ve done for the PC building community. That being said, onto the questions! 1. What are your favorite PC Parts? What’s your ideal/dream PC part list? 2. I’ve been having this problem recently because things are out of stock. When I make a parts list I often have to go into the page for the part to determine the actual cost for the part when it comes back in stock from the major retailers. When displaying the price, could you also add in parentheses something like: Price: $265 (Lowest: $200)	Thanks for the kind words! I'll defer to Alex/Ryan on their favorite parts. For me I'd just like to get hold of a 3080 one day but I'm not in a rush. I'm still happily running this build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c99djX
	On the stock / pricing issue, we might be able to look into something like that, but I can't make any guarantees.
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Downmented: It's a bad time to be GPU shopping when the founde owner of PCPP can't even score a 30 series GPU BDsBiggest: This was my thought, how does he not have one?	I honestly don't really need one and there are people who play way more intensive stuff than I do. I'm ok to wait.
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On that note, what do you play?!!	I still really enjoy Minecraft of all things. My oldest son started playing Skyblock and so that became a bit of a time sink. Used to play a decent bit of Civ and other Sid Meier stuff a long time ago. I'm just not that much of a gamer though. I'm legitimately terrible at FPS games, so I don't really enjoy them all that much. Minecraft lets me just piddle around and experiment with different creations, architectures, etc. And it's something I can play with my kids which is great until they trash my island.
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As a fellow Minecraft buff, what are your thoughts on the best CPU for Minecraft at the moment? I know it depends more on CPU performance than GPU, at least in Java edition.	I'll have to defer to the other guys on staff or the community because I honestly don't know. I'm playing on an i5-6600k/980 ti which has been more than enough.
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Thanks for the response! How long have you had that build for?	Roughly four years. I need to upgrade the GPU though because where I work in my house it's getting cold and ThoughtA is outpacing me on Folding at Home.
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Do you have a rebuild planned for when the 3080 is back? Or just upgrading the current rig?	It'll probably be a new build, but I'm not sure what it'll be. If 3080s come back in stock where I can get one, then I may start with that and plan the rest around it. Especially if it's something with a particular aesthetic or color scheme that I want to match.
Thank you for your site and all the countless hassle it saved me from. What do you guys and gals think is a thing our community could help you with ? Is there something like a roadmap for pcpp and what are you personally most excited about ? How should people give feedback to you and the other team members? Which channels are you preferring ? On which channels can I send my monthly thank you very much for your service messages ?	Re: what buildapc can help with - this community has helped us so much over the years that I have no asks whatsoever. Just thanks. Thanks for letting us be a part of the community.
	We don't have an official roadmap - I run the dev timeline like a software engineer who is terrible at time estimates. Things I promised eight years ago are still undone while other stuff jumps ahead. I'm most excited for benchmarking. I love performance analysis, and what we're building should be super cool. Lots, lots, lots of data, all in tightly controlled environments. The hard part is how to present relevant bits without overwhelming people with data.
	For feedback, feel free to ping us on our site forums, our contact page, or on our discord channel. Discord is probably the least formal if it's something small, though I'm not on discord all that often these days (Ryan and Alex are though).
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Ah, "agile" development.	Nope! None of that. No agile practices here thanks. Just software development structured along my capricious demands...
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IMHO, "we don't have a project management philosophy" is the best project management philosophy. As long as progress is being made and people are happy, management theory would just get in the way.	For a while I was working on a codebase of several million lines of C++ in an org with 100+ other really smart engineers. I participated in an effort to modularize part of it, and I failed pretty badly. One of the most important things I learned was from an old Windows NT dev presentation that talked about Conway's Law. That really reshaped how I viewed architecture, teams, responsibilities, and communication patterns.
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Did you consider licensing/sharing benchmarks from other hardware review sites, rather than developing a (presumably not-profit-generating) benchmarking competency? Alternatively, if you do want to generate benchmarks, have you considered monetizing them via a blog?	We're planning on benching at a scale that most review sites don't do. Like an order of magnitude more pairings, runs, etc, with a bit more detail on each as well in terms of current consumption, temps, etc. All that all recorded on identical software setups for comparability. No one right now is doing that at the scale we want.
	It's definitely not a profit center, and that's ok for me. I love benchmarking. Before PCPP I was part of a team working on optimizing compiler stuff. I loved writing compiler optimizations and testing the performance changes. So that whole side of things - determinism, accurate measurements, etc, I just really enjoy it. So PCPP in a way helps fund my desire to do that work whether it is profitable or not.
	That being said, I do think it's a complementary feature set to add. While it may not monetize directly, I think the value it adds to the site will (hopefully) result in an incremental change in traffic/revenue.
So how does it feel to have a side project or yours become as popular in the computer world as google? You've become the only place I recommend newbies to go (other than reddit) for pc building help, and your site has become the most useful tool I've ever used outside of my daily IT work. You've created something not only powerfully useful, but well designed, smoothly operated, and pleasing to the eye. I don't really have much of question more just taking the opportunity to say thank you for creating a fantastic tool for the community. If a bigger company offers you millions to sell it I'd understand if you did, but please don't, I can't imagine the site being run any better than by it's original team!	Thanks for the kind words. I gave my mom a shirt. A couple years ago someone recognized the shirt in rural east Texas. Like, she lives 30 minutes from the nearest town of 5,000 people. That was pretty wild. My mom was pretty excited lol.
	I love having something that I helped build be a useful thing for people. That's immensely satisfying. (And it's a team effort, not just me by any stretch at all. The whole team helps every bit of what you see on the site).
	On the other hand, I don't want or like to be out front. I'd rather be behind the scenes working on something and not really be noticed. I think that gets reflected, probably negatively from a business-first standpoint, in how I run things. I don't really push branding hard, don't push social media (Twitter, Instagram, etc), because I personally don't want to be out front there. I can engage here on reddit because I feel like I'm a part of the community here rather than some corporate/redditor relationship. From a business standpoint, I think there's a lot of growth possibility that PCPP hasn't tapped into because I want to avoid various social anxieties and whatnot.
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Just know that if a company offers big bucks (and they probably will eventually) it is because they see an opportunity to leverage the base you built to make money and it most likely will be by selling the customers who trust you. They will probably do something like partner with large manufacturers or sellers and push their own products while if ignoring what is best for the people looking to create their own best build.	Yeah that makes sense. We've made some decisions that probably wouldn't last long - not running ads, not selling user data. So really there seems to be two options: either we run this out until it dies on its own and we get to keep our ideals/positions, or we run out of energy and sell. I don't want to sell. I don't plan to sell. But I'd be lying if I said there weren't days where I feel so tired and just want a break for a bit. It's trying to find the balance of doing a job I love maintaining principles I value and also not destroying myself physically/emotionally/etc in the process.
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Oh cool! If you don’t mind me asking, what area of East Texas? Did you grow up out here? I’m from out in Van, approx 30 min from Tyler. My close friends and I love PCPartPicker. I just used it to build my upgraded rig a couple of weeks ago.	Nice! I grew up in Tyler (edit: but my mom currently lives 30 minutes east of Center, TX - basically on Toledo Bend reservoir and the TX/LA border). My electronics teacher in high school (Mr. Ray) was from Van. He was formative for me in pursuing electronics seriously by introducing me to VICA and electronics competitions.
Benchmark integration timeline when 🍿	Probably mid-2021. We're almost done with a building renovation where they bumped our building service from a 400A service to a 1200A service. Added AC capacity. That 800A is going toward bench... it's going to be fun. This is what I'm talking about https://imgur.com/a/rffuVin. Can't wait to get this all up and running.
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I have a massive transformer that’s the size of a fridge I can’t seem to sell if you guys want it. It was meant for a Bitcoin farm but was never used. Cost $5000 I just want it gone it’s so heavy lol	LOL thanks but we're good. They actually delivered the 1200A from pole mounted transformers. MEP guys were surprised, but the power company said they could do it. Sure enough they did. Old vs new pre-hookup: https://imgur.com/a/ODQlACV
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Dude, you do AWS, dev, hiring, project direction, and building management? Your operation must be crazy efficient.	Oh no I offloaded all the building management stuff to Jack. He's handled almost all the renovation work, which has been an absolute life saver for me. I just come in and throw wrenches in things by adding last minute requests for extra conduit runs from here to there, replace those windows, change that paint color, etc. Jack handles all communication and followups with the GC, subs, etc.
	The other stuff I do do though. AWS (our infrastructure isn't that big really, a couple dozen EC2 instances, RDS, Redis, CloudSearch, Cloudfront, etc). Daniel handles the bits of Lambda that we use. I kinda enjoy the deployment / devops side of things, and I think it's important to have my fingers on the pulse of that whenever I'm designing new features. Helps me have a better feel for what kind of query impact different code or modeling decisions will have.
	The hiring isn't much - we've averaged about one person a year and that's usually someone in our existing network of relationships. And project direction is pretty small right now since we shut down our cycling site. Back down to just one website makes it a lot simpler. We talk about what we want to do as a group a lot, so (I think) everyone has a pretty decent picture of where we're headed despite timelines not being nailed down strict.
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What kind of benchmarks would you be running? Have you considered pulling data from places like passmark?	Anything we can run deterministically and automated and that has license terms that allow unfettered publication of result data. We won't be pulling data from anywhere, passmark included. All the data will be from runs we do in-house.
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May I ask why the focus on internal metrics vs just pulling them?	Mainly because we can control all the variables and make them consistent across all our result pairs. We have some absolutely phenomenal performance analysis engineering expertise in house.
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Unfettered publication of result data. Wow. Nice. As someone who likes playing with freely available datasets, I really appreciate this. Hard to learn data science without freely available data sets that regular people can have some level of subject matter expertise over to start to learn how to put data-driven stories together.	Sorry, what I meant was that the license terms of the benchmark software have to allow us to publish the benchmark results without restriction. There is a popular benchmarks out today that requires the benchmark results be vetted by them first before publication. We'd have to manually send over bench results if we weren't using their bench platform (we're not, we have our own). Then wait for them to approve, and then we could publish. That's not viable when we're testing at the scale we plan to - it'd need to be automated at least but they couldn't offer that. And for benchmarking prerelease hardware under embargo, it'd mean that we would have no ability to publish data right when the embargo lifted. We'd have to wait however long for their manual review.
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How will you be able to benchmark hard-to-get hardware? e.g. RTX 3090, Radeon 6800xt, and Ryzen 5000? Will the manufacturers send them to you? Or do you have to buy them?	I think it's a mixture of both. On new release hardware it's helpful to have bench data when embargoes lift. But I also want to have store-purchased hardware as the main part of our hardware pool, however long it takes to acquire that. We can flag the benchmarks that come from manufacturer review samples - that way people know the source and can factor in review sample binning.
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So once upon a time, I was gonna write a program that would pull benchmark and pricing data to build a list of best value parts, such that no part in the list had a better performing part at a lower price. A sort of definitive do-buy list to make it easier to pick parts. Once benchmarks are done, pcp would have all the infrastructure in place to make that happen in some form on the site, perhaps as a filter for picking parts or as a warning on the part/build pages?	Yep.
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sorry, I'm not sure what you're saying that to, I should have actually posed a proper question: Will you be implementing that?	That's our intent, yeah. It may take us a bit to get there though.
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There is...a lot... of metal shavings in that box. Ah I’m sure it’s fine it’s only 1200A.	Oh at that point it was still all being hooked up. It's cleaner for sure.
	Check this out - relative size difference between old and new...
	https://imgur.com/a/xQD1fEY. (That's one Barry for scale.)
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But how do we know how big Barry is if he's not holding a banana?	Barry is approximately the same height as one marinelli.
A lot of people seem to think that you only host sellers that provide you affiliate kickbacks. Is there any truth to that? Have you ever allowed or disallowed a seller on the basis of affiliate money? How do you decide whether to host a seller or not?	That's not true. We list several retailers without affiliate agreements. Affiliate relationships are often much much easier because they almost always already have price data access. That's the main thing we need.
	Our choice on hosting a retailer largely depends on whether we feel they are good for users or not. If a retailer is being abusive to users or doing highly manipulative stuff, we'll remove them even if they're profitable. We've done that several times in the past. If a retailer also has highly inaccurate pricing, we'll delist for that too.
Yaaatttttt: Not sure if you are allowed to reveal this but what retailers have you delisted in the past? LightningProd12: They delisted MicroCenter in the US ~~because they had too many in-store only deals and no way to tell the difference on PCPP's end. And not everyone can go to one, if you live in the Northwest the closest one can be 800-1000 miles away.~~ Edit: This is mostly false, look at the comments below.	ThoughtA: This isn't true at all. We want to have them on the site. We had some discussions with them, but they stopped responding.
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Oh ok, I remember suggesting it a few years back on the forums and getting told they were delisted. EDIT - Forum post link: https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/309304-request-add-microcenter-to-the-list-of-merchants I falsely remembered there being a reason but was told they were removed from the site.	We did actually list their in-store deals. I put in a decent bit of code for that so that they only showed up if you were within a configurable radius of one of their locations.
	It's a long story, but the gist of it is that we were waiting on some stuff that never came and things went silent. We reach out from periodically but nothing. It stinks - we'd be happy to list them.
	You never know what you reception you'll get from retailers. Some are beating down the door to get on board - that's awesome. Others we have to prove that we're worth their time - that's not unusual. A few will say they want to work together, we get 80% of the way there, and then... silence. Or the key person you were working with takes a job somewhere else. And then some retailers basically say not just no, but h*** no. I'll never forget that one. For some retailers there's a strong aversion to something we do, whether it be price comparison or something else. But just know that if there's a retailer that is reputable and treats customers well, we're more than happy to work with them and get them listed.
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Ohh ok, that sucks. On a side note, is there a story behind the "h*** no" retailer?	They're, eh, no longer in business. Honestly probably dodged a bullet there.
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Maybe this was asked already but still: are there any timeline/plan to add more countries to the country list? I am leaving in Austria and I have to use Germany to see the prices and availability of the parts. Moreover, I see German retailers and prices but not Austrian ones.	We're continually adding new countries and retailers. Adding a country is just a few lines of code on our end - we do that when we have a retailer to add in a country we don't currently support. So really it's a matter of finding and adding retailers. If you have any you'd like to see, send us a note on our contact page and we'll take a look at it. Jenny reaches out to the retailers to see if we can get them on board. It usually takes a while to get in contact and get good data access.
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I already raised this issue to him several years ago - because it was blatantly in the open for users in Germany. You would get amazon affiliate links as "lowest" price, even though there are several other stores that are cheaper... He got angry quickly and gave me the same bs excuse. The top sellers with the top user ratings were never listed as cheapest even though they were.	We list the buy box winner for Amazon. If you're saying we prune results for various marketplace sellers, well, you're wrong.
How's the team handling COVID? Is everyone working from home? What kind of challenges are arising?	I sent everyone home in March. We haven't met as a group since. It's been ok - we just meet on video conferencing when we need to. Jack and Barry are up at the office overseeing the renovation which should be done mid-January. I'll probably be up there from January to April to do the benchmark network cabling and office rewiring (from cat5 to 6a+fiber) because I kinda enjoy cable crimping and punch downs. :)
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The transition from cat5 to cat6 is worth?	Yeah. We're not running 5e, just 5. It's what was in there from when we bought it. So that's not where I'd like it to be for good 1Gb.
Any chance we'll ever see some more filtering options for SSDs? It would be really handy to have the following * Filter by the primary storage type SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC/Optane/etc * Filter by whether the drive has a DRAM cache or supports Host Memory Buffer (HMB)	I'd love to, but I think it'd cause a fissure I'm not sure how to fix. Right now we have SSDs and platter drives in the same category, but the specific filtering for each is different. To apply the really detailed SSD filters, I think they need to be their own category. Same with the HDD types. I don't know if splitting them up is the right path though, so I've been continually punting the issue down the road until we're forced to decide one way or the other.
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Tsk tsk, don’t accumulate technical debt there	Oh, no, it's quite the opposite really. Parametric part additions record the type and filter selections. Those added to a part list stay there forever - we never throw them away. So any filters we add never get removed even if we don't show them. Because of that, I try to be very deliberate in what we add and what we don't. Once I add a new part category or filter type, if I decide later it was a bad idea then it means I get to write lots of migration code. That's no fun.
Super excited for the an app version. Are you guys considering price tracking so that users can set alerts for when hardware drops to a desired price?	Yeah. We have that on the site already with email alerts. But the PWA provides them via browser push notifications (on platforms that support that). I have that all working in a beta test mode (for staff only) right now and it's feeling pretty solid.
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As a front-end engineer, what's your stack look like for the PWA?	Basically built on top of our existing responsive site (Python, Django). I didn't want to spend a lot of time migrating to another framework, so instead spent the time kind of standardizing our own API-ish setup and then handling the caching or offline modes for that as needed. We went responsive with PWA to avoid maintaining three separate codebases (web, iOS, Android), but it's looking like we may go native in the end anyway. This buys us some time at least.
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So not iOS?	Right. :(. I understand there are some workarounds to get push notifications through wallets and whatnot, but that feels pretty hackish to me. We might end up going native on iOS at some point to get good notification support there.
How hard is it keeping up with and adding new item releases (not only the new 3000 series graphics cards from nvidia but also possibly unknown stuff like network cards, etc)? Are there any items you decide not to add or do you try to list everything you can?	New GPUs are pretty easy. CPUs are ok, sometimes a pain depending on the chipset/bios situations. Motherboards are terrible, especially the last few years. Cataloging all the M.2 ports, their constraints (PCIe in this slot disables that SATA, etc) is a major pain.
	There's some stuff, particularly on cases, where there are compatibility constraints that are not economically viable to model. We know what the constraints are, but to model them all across 30k+ parts would make data entry so slow that we'd never finish.
	We try to hit the main product categories, but we'd love to expand that. It's really an issue of how time consuming and costly it is to do the data entry for it versus how often it's used.
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So Wikipedia seems to be crowd sourced, and works pretty well. Maybe some of the more laborious data entry parts could have a crowd source entry option, but be flagged as such when people bring up anything containing those results (a disclaimer)..	It's just not reliable enough. It has to be super accurate, and it's not something I'd ever feel comfortable outsourcing.
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Have you tried asking the manufacturers to get involved? You might just be big enough.	When new releases are coming out we sometimes get data ahead of time. Cases are pretty common. Motherboards are a lot harder, because of embargoes and even BIOSes and manuals not finished days before release. Some of the constraints we see are pretty one-off situations that make it hard to provide some sort of standardized input form for though.
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what if you let companies input their own data for their products.	I don't trust that to be accurate enough. We routinely find bad spec data even on manufacturer sites.
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I imagine that PCPP is large enough now to direct traffic to or away from various retailers in volumes they will care about. Like how Google went from small to large. Given that, probably PCPP should begin leaning on retailers to provide product data in an ingestable format, making data entry moot.	We work with retailers to provide the right data in feeds for sure. But the hard part is that not all retailers have the technical expertise on hand to do it (or for smaller retailers, the margin and profitability to pay for that expertise). The back-and-forth to get updated feed frequency, proper part numbers, stock status, etc - it's non-stop. Brent and Jenny bear the brunt of that.
I know you've been vocal about not opening up a merch store for personal profit, but would you ever consider a merch store where all proceeds go towards your well building charity?	We did this once. My accountant was like, "please don't."
	Basically if we buy a thousand shirts and give them away it's super easy - they just get marked as a marketing expense and we give them out however we see fit. But as soon as any of them are sold, you have to track inventory, cost basis, etc. It's a lot more tedious and last time it was maybe a couple shirts a week - enough to invoke packaging and transport overhead but not enough to be efficient. So we instead just give them away at various bapc milestones and donate from our affiliate income instead.
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Kinda funny reading this while wearing the hoodie! It’s easily the comfiest hoodie in my closet.	Oh, major props to Phil for that. He picked it out. I love mine too. We printed some smaller ones for kid sizes and my oldest son tries to sleep in his.
transam617: Philip, Thank you for 10 years of your indispensable help. Over that time, there were probably millions of visitors to your website who have had their PC building experience improved or made possible through the use of your wonderful tool. But specifically: Since 2014, our little corner of reddit (now 10K subs) cabalofthebuildsmiths, has been more effective, and has helped more people as a direct result of your website tool, than from any other tool we have available. We pride ourselves on giving builds to customers where they can reliably buy every part we pick, and be sure they will work as expected. This process takes research and a lot of effort, but the highly accurate, effective communication of pcpartpicker (for all the countries you cover) is the foundation of our process. Thank you for making the messy world of PC parts a little more bearable, thank you for making it all possible, and a big thanks from us, cabalofthebuildsmiths. transam617 kokolordas15 dmz_dragon danyulz bramblexd	Thanks for your kind words, and thanks for all the work you all do to help builders!
What happened to the youtube channel? Loved the build videos and interviews you had while it was still running.	We moved buildings a couple years ago, and decided to pause on them while we renovated the new space for filming and benchmarking. The renovation is finishing up likely mid-January - it took waaaay longer than we originally thought. If we had known it'd be that long we probably would have figured out some interim plan. So once that reno is done, we'll probably start ramping up content again. I'd guess mid-2021 or so.
[deleted]	My first computer was a an AMD K5-133. That was late 1996 I think and I was in college. My friend and I ordered our mobo+CPU off an ad on a magazine page. I bought his old case and an 80MB HDD off of him. Ran Windows 3.1. We played Warcraft 2 across a null modem cable - that was probably the most fun I've ever had with PC gaming. Floating point on that thing was terrible though. Playing a 64kbps MP3 chewed up like 60% of the CPU.
	My roommate introduced me to Quake 2, specifically Action Quake 2. Loved that game. I started running a website on the dorm network on it that got pretty popular. But queries on the db would tank my Q2 framerate so I put in code to disable queries while I was playing.
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tiger direct?	No, it was some small place out of the northeast. I mean, that was pre-internet-shopping days. Wrote a check, hand wrote what we wanted on the order form, mailed it, and waited weeks. No phone calls, no email confirmations, nothing. My kids have no idea what that was like.
Fun fact, I got banned from PCPartPicker for adding a purple dildo from Amazon to my build.	Yeah that'll do it. User code of conduct / ToS and all.
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Boooo. Thats kinda weird, especially for private/personal builds.	Most of the retailers we partner with have as a part of their terms that our site not contain NSFW material. I get some people think it's funny but it can get us shut down, and I'm really not ok with that.
I've used your site so many times and I even met some of the team in Austin outside Dreamhack. Thanks for all you do! Who has the most powerful computer on the staff and what are they running?	I think most powerful computer probably goes to manirelli right now.
Do you have any career opportunities at the company? I have a couple years of marketing experience, but I can’t find a job in these tough times. At least I’ve been learning python so I can get better at data management.	Unfortunately we're not hiring right now. :(
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Mind if I ask where you typically post jobs when you are hiring? Greenhouse.io, LinkedIn, Indeed, all of the above?	Usually it's someone we have an established relationship with. We haven't ever posted a job listing to date.
Are you going to work on an official PCPartPicker API so people don't have to break ToS by scraping?	No. I'd prefer to offer sufficient service that people don't need to scrape.
	Most scrapers use up a lot of resources or don't even do cursory things like follow robots.txt crawl delay specs. It's really frustrating. I'd like to spend my time focusing on user benefitting features than blocking abusive crawlers.
gordonv: A cached CLI/SDK that draws from a CDN (not your web server) would be cool. You'd provide sufficient service, reduce processing cost, and get usage stats. The best way to defeat crawlers is to defeat their purpose. Make scraping look idiotic. Heck, mock scrapers in your HTML with an URL to your API. Add a little wit to that wisdom. Add AWS Cloudfront and now you have 200+ servers in the USA distributing your CLI with authentication to 3 million calls for $20 a month. Some leet stuff. Just noticed a sprinkle of posts calling for an app. If you spec CLI/SDK along with app development, killing 2 birds with 1 budget stone.	We're rolling out a PWA (hopefully) before the end of the year.
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invisi1407: Perhaps a better question is, why is there a need for scraping? Could that need be satisfied by new/improving features on PCPP? MLG_G0D: Because integrations with PCPartPicker would greatly benefit the PC building community. Constantly navigating to websites can get tiresome, especially on low spec machines. Automation is great. invisi1407: I understand, but exactly which integrations are people looking for? I get it, but I also understand why PCPP isn't interested in having a public, free API. MLG_G0D: I was thinking about integrating PCPP functions into a reddit/discord bot. invisi1407: Not unresonable, but you do understand how it takes away any earnings from advertisements and what have we on their website, yeah? It seems like they are a small company spending an enormous amount of time on the data they are presenting, so I don't think you'll ever see a free public API anyway. Perhaps a paid one, but I don't suppose many would be interested in that anyway. MLG_G0D: Seems reasonable. I'm just a massive fan of companies being open to their userbase, but I guess PCPartPicker hasnt quite grown to the point where thats economically feasible.	There's more to the picture. On pricing data: We're not the source of pricing data as that comes from the retailers. We have various agreements in place where they give us that data to display on our site or to market their products in ways they allow us to. We don't have permission to then hand that data to a third party to do whatever they want to. If we make it available to someone else via an API, we're breaching terms of our agreement, which in turn makes us lose our affiliate deal and price access. Boom, business is dead. Basically if you need that data, go to the source (the retailers) and negotiate with them.
	For product data: We've invested a lot of man years to build our data set, and some of that data helps us maintain a competitive advantage over copycat sites. Making it easier to retrieve that data isn't something I'm keen on. There are other sources of product data available that are more expansive than what we have anyway. I'd suggest pursuing that if you want to build your own hardware related site stuff.
	On API stuff for partlists and markdown: If you just want a discord bot, I'd be happy to chat through what it is you're looking for to see if that's something we could support officially on our end. We have our own discord server bot that uses an internal API to do partlist embeds.
	Last bit - publishing an API adds an additional thing for us to maintain. It's a maintenance and support burden. Even an unofficial API is. It becomes something that I have to test and not break any time I refactor code around it. We're a small company, and that's not really an area I want to allocate resources around if it's not a revenue generating thing.
Thanks a lot to you guys! With your site, I managed to make 3 separate lists, and now my dream of building a PC is coming true. Maybe you could add recommendations based on what the person has on their list, such as a cheaper but better graphics card, etc	I think recommendations are a possibility once we have our in-house benchmark data in place. But that'd be a ways down the road.
Thanks for your work, and since this is an AMA, simple question: Which is the best flavor of ice cream and why?	Amy's Ice Cream here in Austin. Belgian Chocolate. It's just wonderful but I haven't been there in almost a year now.
	manirelliPCPartPicker: I will second Amy's but I'm partial to the Mexican Vanilla flavor.
Wow. What a cool thing to see on Reddit. This is the first AMA I’ve ever replied in/commented on. I’m brand new to PC (3 year macbook user here, and besides a brief stint with a windows Hp laptop on which I played Rollercoaster tycoon and club penguin with “back in the day” I have never had need for the site. Until last month). I’m grateful the site exists, and it’s quite intriguing to me how you manage to create and maintain (emphasis on maintain) such an EXTENSIVE database of parts. I know it’s part of your life, however it astounds me to see these parts that seem so very minuscule, always appear. Have you considered, or maybe there already is and I simply am blind or don’t know about it. Have you considered adding any sort of personal or user based rating system regarding parts? Or a warning system for parts with known issues out of the box?	Our ratings are from users, but we only allow ratings/reviews from completed builds. That way we know that the review is from someone who actually built with it (versus say a 1 star review from someone mad they couldn't buy it).
	We do offer some warnings on known issues, but it's something we may expand in the future.

A /r/cscareerquestions College Survival Guide

A /cscareerquestions College Survival Guide

With our final school year beginning, we were reflecting on how lost and confused we were when we first started university. We made a lot of mistakes (still am) along the way, but we’re in a much better place after learning from them and constantly putting ourselves out there. In hopes of shining some light and helping others, we decided to make a comprehensive guide for university students – based on our knowledge/experiences - on how to start your successful CS Career (or gain the wisdom to avoid CS altogether, more on this later).
rishiss Background: I am a 4th year student at UC Irvine majoring in Software Engineering. I am an incoming Software Engineer at a F100 company (received return offer after interning this summer). Before that, I interned at an R & D center for space, a small cloud company, and a small IT company. I have a 3.65 GPA, won a few awards at startup competitions/hackathons, and remain pretty active in my schools CS organizations.
chaitu65c Background: I’m a 4th year student at UC Irvine majoring in Computer Science. I’m currently a SWE Intern at a Unicorn and just wrapped up my 2nd internship at a Live Streaming Company(you can most likely tell who they are if you browse my history LOL). Before this, I interned at my school’s IT department, did research under a professor, and worked on a few small startups that other UCI students were building. I have a 3.3 GPA, won some awards along rishiss and was pretty active in my school’s CS clubs.
Disclaimer: “But rishiss/ and chaitu65c, you don’t work at a Big N, go to a target CS school, why should I take your advice?” You’re absolutely right; we are, by no means, ‘up there’ like some other folks on this sub. And, you don’t have to take our advice! Simply close this tab and do whatever else you want 😊. Our intent is to guide and prepare uni students for a CS career they enjoy, not work at Big N or get the highest TC. Life is much more than a dick-measuring contest, and the earlier you learn that the better.
We have also created a guide with our own personal advice/stories

Please, take this advice with a grain of salt. we’re not Tony Robinson or Tim Apple, we’re just two random reddit users.

Is CS Right For Me?

The way we see it, there’s 3 types of people pursuing CS.

Those who know CS isn’t for them – They’re in it for the money, to appease their parents, for a minorequirement, some external factor. They hated programming while taking the introductory CS course and just try to get done with their class/degree ASAP.

Advice: The majority of people who fall under this usually burn out quickly, as they aren’t motivated enough to learn the material and to apply themselves. This usually leads to them cheating and getting kicked out of their major, minor, or university altogether. Even if you manage to earn a degree, we've seen a large number of these folks endure a 'pre-mature' mid-life crisis or simply get fired from their jobs. Before you even start this major, you should definitely understand that this isn’t going to be easy, and you do have to put in a lot of effort to succeed. If this isn’t your cup of tea, definitely look into switching into another major you like.
Some folks are really passionate about technology, but don't want to pursue an entire Computer Science major or see themselves as Software Engineers. That's completely ok! Try looking into related majors or minors. We know many students who switched from CS to majors like Informatics, Business Information Management, and Economics and are thriving in tech-related roles like Data Analytics, Product Management, UI/UX Design, and Technical Recruiting. CS is not (and should not be) for everyone, and there is no shame in having the wisdom quit and move on.

Those who don’t know if CS is for them – Where most of the CS community is IMO. These folks (like me, rishiss) are riddled with something called Imposter Syndrome: “the constant feeling of not being good enough or knowing enough to do your job well.”

Advice: For students, really take the time to learn and be open to anything you go through. Try sticking it out until you've taken a Data Structures course, one of the harder, more important courses out there. If you're not understanding the material or just aren't having fun with it, it’s definitely ok to switch majors/careers. Otherwise, CS just might be the career for you! Give it your best shot!
Admittedly, it's hard to provide stronger insight to overcoming Imposter Syndrome, as I am afflicted by it as well. For me, my IS derives from constantly comparing myself to others and confusing inexperience with incompetency. As such, I continue to work and focus on myself and take baby steps towards smaller goals I set out for myself. Knowing that I've put the effort to improve myself by just 1% everyday has made me a lot more confident.

Those who know for a fact CS is for them – The diamonds in the rough. Learning and practicing CS material gives them a euphoric high.

Advice: Broaden your scope and learn new areas of CS! Who knows, you might find another new field that you really want to work in. Other than that, definitely make new friends regardless of whether they’re a CS major or not. Even try pursuing other hobbies like weightlifting, reading, dancing, or even public speaking. Don't limit yourself!

Freshman Year

We recommend not taking more than 3-4 classes in your first quartesemester, as you shouold keep an ample amount of time to go to professional/social events, make new friends and hang out with them, and pursue your interests.
We've seen a lot of freshmen (and upperclassmen) CS folks get cooped up in their dorm rooms playing video games and watching TV. We understand that these two are a passion for many, but please be cautious to not get consumed by them.
You have the privilege of pursuing higher education, making valuable connections/memories, and setting up your CS career in the trajectory you want. This year is the best year to take advantage of all that university has to offer; make the most of it.
One of the best ways to get involved in your school’s/region’s CS community is by joining clubs like ACM and WICS and participating in hackathons (see ‘Hackathon’ section below). Try pursuing internships and positions in these organizations and events as well!
One, major issue we see with freshmen (even upperclassmen) is their ignorance on all the avenues available in the CS Industry. So we’ve tried to narrow it down (not exhaustive).

Cyber Security Engineer
Front-End Web Developer
Backend Web Developer
UI/UX Designer
DevOps/Cloud/Site-Reliability Engineers
Mobile Engineer
QA Engineer
Product Manager
Data Scientist (Machine Learning/AI)
Embedded Software Engineer
Systems Administrator
Database Administrator (The Wizards)
Networking Engineer
Hardware Engineer
OS Developer
Video Game Developer
Solutions Architect/Sales EngineeTechnical Account Manager

As a freshman, definitely take the time and see if you can picture yourself doing any of the listed fields. You should open yourself to all facets of CS and not just the “hot field” like Data Science and Machine Learning. Choosing a field because it’s “exciting” will usually lead to bad results as usually, other people are thinking just like you and will lead to over-saturation.
Our recommendation is to select the top 5 fields that have piqued your interest and experiment with the field. For example, if you are interested in Mobile App Development, try learning how to build an Android app from the ground up. A simple weather app or alarm clock is completely suitable for a first project/prototype. This lets you understand what skills you would need for this field and can serve as a forecast as to what your career would look like.
You should definitely look for an internship. Ignore the people that tell you to wait until you’re a junior, as it’s going to be very hard to get an internship if you don’t have any experience. Common places that most students don’t realize are available are usually IT departments at your school and even research with professors. Researching is highly recommended as you can definitely learn more about a field you can be interested in and if you’re interested in graduate school, that’s going to be a letter of recommendation that you can ask for.
If you’re considered a minority in Computer Science, look into first and second year internship programs as they’re meant to help you succeed. Here’s some programs that come to mind:
Google STEP
Microsoft Explore
Amazon Future Engineer
Uber STARInternhip
Facebook University
Another way to get internships is to research into smaller companies in your area. If the company is very small (<100 employees), consider reaching out to the CEO on LinkedIn. They might be able to help you! Also, take advantage of university recruiting websites like Handshake to see companies that directly hire from your school. More info on how to get an internship in the ‘Searching for an Internship’ section.

Sophomore Year

Now that you have basic programming knowledge, create your own website or GitHub account and start contributing to them with small personal projects. Nobody expects you to make a full-stack MERN project hosted and scaled on AWS at this stage. Focus instead on clean code, learning a framework or two on a language you like, and creating a small, robust feature. Grow from there!
If you weren’t able to find an internship/research opportunity as a freshman, community involvement, projects, and hackathons become especially important, as they are a great way to make you stand out on your resume and to recruiters when you reapply. As you brush up on your skills, apply again, and try your luck out.

Data Structures and Algorithms

In addition, you are most likely to take a Data Structures and Algorithms course this year. Make sure you are focusing on this class and writing good notes; you will need this knowledge when interviewing for internships and full-time jobs in the near future. Here is a link to our DS and A course (in C++) for reference

Junior Year

As a junior, companies are more willing to hire you for an internship, as they are likely to convert you into a full-time employee after graduating. This transition process is much easier than interviewing, and they'll usually offer you a higher compensation package if they want to convert you to a full-time employee. As you now should have knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms, we highly recommend looking into coding interview prep sites like LeetCode and HackerRank or purchasing a prep book like CTCI or EPI (advanced).
Continue to attend hackathons, remain active in clubs/organizations, and grow your portfolio.
Classes will be much harder; expect the time for completing projects to double and the content covered to be much more difficult. We recommend taking no more than 2-3 upper-division CS courses and balancing your load with 1-2 GE classes. You should not be taking more than 16 units (assuming 4 units per course).
Start to get an idea of what field in CS you would like to pursue. Research what it takes to be successful in that field. You can do so by looking up job postings with that title on LinkedIn and looking at the requested skill set or take a look at Roadmap.sh. If you want to learn more about a related skill set and your school doesn't offer a course, consider picking up a class on udemy.com.

Senior Year

Focus heavily on your senior capstone, project classes, etc. as they're the last thing you can put on your resume before applying for full time. By now, you should have at least 3 polished, working projects on your GitHub that you can easily talk about with your recruiter. Preferably, they're aligned with the CS field you wish to enter.
If you were able to get a return offer from an internship, congrats! However, don’t immediately sign the offer. Once you have an offer, you should still try to interview at companies that you’re interested in by the deadline of the time to accept the offer. A good way of doing this is to reach out to a University recruiter for that company and explain the deadline you have. Usually, they’re really helpful and can potentially help skip interviews that you were supposed to do!
In addition, if your friends were able to intern at places you’re interested in, definitely ask for a referral or to send your resume to their recruiter. This usually reduces the risk of being ghosted by that company and increases your chances of getting hired!
Once you finally sign, definitely take the time to relax and enjoy. Just make sure you pass your classes and stay out of trouble

Classes:

What Classes should I take?

Should Already be Required:

Programming in Java/C++/Python (OOP): This is how you’re gonna start coding.
Boolean Algebra/Discrete Math: Teaches you some background knowledge to CS.
Data Structures and Algorithms: Teaches you some ways data is stored and retrieved. Very important as you’re going to be using them a lot.
Low Level Programming /C: Teaches you what coding used to be like in the old days.
Computer Architecture: You learn what makes a computer a computer including things like logic gates, registers, memory, and more.

Must Take:

Computer Networks: Highly recommended as it helps you understand Web protocols like HTTP, TCP, UDP, etc.
Operating Systems/UNIX: Most important class. Teaches you important things such as the kernel, Threads vs Processes and Process Schedulers.
Databases/SQL: It’s very likely that your job as a software engineer will be to interact with databases. It’s really good to understand what they are before you enter the industry.
Programming Languages: Teaches you trade offs between languages like C and Python. It definitely helps when you need to pick up brand new languages!

Good to Have

Full-stack web dev (pref MERN stack, our school offered both LAMP and MERN)
Very deep understanding of at least one language. (You’ll be surprised to learn how many students who graduate fail to do this)/
SemesteYear-Long Capstone course (pref working with a company) if your school supports it: an internship where you get school credits instead of money.
Compilers: Teaches you how programming languages are implemented 'under the hood.'
Human Computer Interaction: If you weren’t able to learn Full-stack web dev.

How do I succeed in these classes?

rishiss: You’re more than likely coughing up hundreds, if not thousands, to attend university. It makes no sense to not take full advantage of the course and course staff.

Do the readings beforehand – Dr. K explains how studying before class is an OP mechanic, also highly recommend this video on how to study by him as well
Attend EVERY lecture, sit at the front of the class – I’ve seen a metric fuck ton of students in the back of the class with their laptops shopping, trading stocks, scrolling through Reddit, even watching lesbian hentai. By sitting in the front of the class, you’re forced to stay engaged (and close your porn tabs).
Take notes– People have many, different ways of taking notes; stick with what works for you.

The way I take notes: I learn from examples; I want to enter my code into the IDE to see what happens. I do a three way split; Google Docs on the left, IDE on top right and terminal (to compile, see output, make new file, etc) on bottom left. I note down the date and topic of the lecture and write questions I have in the comments on Docs. I make sure to highlight important information and possible test questions. I even share the link with friends!

Make a study guide, even though the professor does not give you one – Using my Google Docs notes, I compile the highlighted information into a summarized study guide. It’s a fantastic review tool. I’ve even shared the study guide with professors/classmates and gotten their feedback and extra information.
Go to office hours and become close with 1-2 professors – Some jobs and most masters/PHD programs require letters of recommendation. While you could get reccs from your work, its great to get a letter from someone in academia, especially if they’re established in the field you are pursuing. Get your ass to office hours and show professors that you are curious and motivated by asking questions about assignments, career, or even personal interests. They provide a cornucopia of opportunities, including research, letters of recc, or even the opportunity to pursue a PHD under them.
Make friends! - Classes are a great way to meet new people with similar interests and expand your professional network. They can especially be a saving graves if you miss a class, don't understand a topic, and need motivation to prepare for an exam. Don't be afraid to say hello!
START EARLY ON ASSIGNMENTS – I can’t count the number of times starting an assignment early saved my ass. Starting early gives you time to deal with the unexpected: the family emergencies, the late night hangout with friends, the memory leak on line 74. Procrastination is like playing Russian Roulette with your CS career, don’t take the chance. A helpful video on procrastination

In the quarters where I followed the steps above, I never got a grade lower than an A-.

Dealing with Bad Professors

During your time in college, you’re likely going to have at least one bad professor that might make it worse if you have to go to class. If that’s the case, it’s definitely fine to not go to class (as long as it’s not mandatory). However, if you do decide not to go, you must make sure you learn the material, so you won’t be behind on the coursework and studying for tests. In addition, you should be doing something productive on the side. If you don’t go to class and spend the time watching Netflix or playing video games, you’re losing time that you can spend on something that might be fun and can help you in the long run.

You can take Graduate Courses!?

chaitu65c: A highly underutilized set of courses you can take would be graduate courses. Graduate courses are usually very specialized in certain fields. If you were able to take all the undergraduate courses you wanted and still have spare classes to fill out, I'd recommend researching into taking Graduate courses! They’re a good way to build out your specialization and learn new, cool stuff! In addition, if you’re looking for classes to reach the required number of CS courses needed, your CS department might allow you to make the course count towards your degree!

Projects

They're super important.

How do I succeed in class projects?

Reading the Project Requirements: Before starting to code, read the requirements and understand what you need to do in order to finish. Too many students ask for help that can easily be found in the requirements which wastes the student’s time.
Learn to Debug: Learning how to debug saves you countless hours trying to read through code you might not understand.
Learn to write Clean Code: With this and being able to debug, you’re going to be able to write very efficient code and to debug issues easily, thus not making you only successful in lab assignments, but also making you a better programmer.
Plan your work out: This allows you to simplify the logic you are writing and this usually leads to clean code.
Ask for help: If you ever get stuck on something and no matter how much you Google and you can’t figure it out, ask for help. It’s definitely fine to ask for help and is HIGHLY recommended you do so. Take advantage of the lab tutors and TA’s either through in person or Piazza/Canvas; they’re there to help you.
Draw Pictures: If your project involves multiple things (AWS, Databases, Servers, etc), it’s definitely a good idea to draw a picture that shows you each thing interacts with and how it comes together. This is important especially when you enter the industry and build software for companies.

Personal Projects and your CS Career

rishiss: Projects are your saving grace, especially if you are lacking work experience. They show technical aptitude, willingness to take initiative, and leadership. I’ve seen people with only projects on their resume get positions at the Big N. Projects are good ways to expand your knowledge of CS as the possibilities are endless! It is best to have a variety of projects dealing with a variety of technologies. As such, you can open yourself up to more positions and have more talking points during the interview.
I tend to edit the ‘Project’ Section of my resume with relevant projects and technologies. For instance, if I made a full stack web application and applied to a DevOps organization, I would highlight my AWS, CI/CD, and Terraform experiences more than my React/Node js work.
It is recommend the project is about something that motivates you and are passionate about e.g. video games, movies, books, sports, etc., as it is very easy to give up half way due to stress or lack of motivation/interest.
Like anything else in Computer Science, projects require you to break it down into smaller pieces. Start with the end in mind and draw out the intended architecture/functionalities. Start with what you know and research on the parts you don't know after that. You will be using these skills often in industry for any project/feature planning.
Spending 15-30 minutes a day is all you need to make a successful personal project. Don't make excuses and get coding!

Open Source Contributions

If you’ve ever noticed popular github repositories such as torvalds/linux, these are repositories where people from all over the world can report issues with it and someone can fix it. If you are able to make a contribution to a huge open source repository, it looks really good on your resume.

Hackathons

What are Hackathons?

Hackathons are large scale coding events, where students from around the area come together and collaborate - usually in teams of 4 (but you can go solo or with a partner!) - to build some software. Companies like Amazon, Northrop Grumman, Google, and Twilio sponsor awards related to best use of their technology. After 24 - 48 hours of intensive coding, participants submit their projects, whether it be an Android video game, Chrome Extension, productivity web app, etc. Submissions are shared with the companies and other hackathon organizers, where they select the best projects and award teams with swag like keyboards, gift cards, and even summer internships at their company.
Participating in hackathons are one of the best ways to hone your coding skills, network with companies and other students, and get free comfy T-shirts. It is also one of the best ways to gain industry knowledge, as representatives from these companies and hackathon organizers create numerous workshops and answer any questions you may have. Winning awards at these hackathons are also great resume boosters and talking points during interviews.
The biggest hackathon organizer is Major League Hacking. Visit their website, and you can see all the hackathons (remote or local) they are partnered with. Make to be on the lookout for application release dates from the hackathons and apply early.
With Covid, you may miss out on the free goodies and the in-person networking with students and professionals. However, most hackathons are accepting many more applicants due to it being virtual/remote this year.

What Should I Do At Hacakathons?

Take advantage of the resources available at hackathons. You’re attending a mini CS conference and should be, besides coding, networking with professionals, learning about the different companies, attending workshops, asking technical/non-technical questions to mentors, and getting as much free shit as you can get. Besides T-Shirts, companies give out vouchers to their services, applications to their internship and full-time positions, pillows, notebooks, water bottles, sweaters, and even backpacks.
If you’re looking to get an award, judges at hackathons care a lot about the pitch and the idea rather than the actual execution of the idea. Having an idea beforehand is also helpful, so you can spend your time focusing on the MVP.

Friends and Networking

chaitu65c: I think it’s definitely useful if you have two different friend groups: One dedicated to career and Non-Career Group.
Career Group - When making a friend group dedicated to career, try to be the dumbest person in the group, you’re definitely going to learn a lot from them as you soak up knowledge! Best ways of meeting friends who are career-driven can be through major specific orientation (actually how I met rishiss), courses, major related clubs, etc.
Non-Career Group - While having a group that motivates you for your career is important, it’s also important to have another friend group that can help you relax and to enjoy your time! A really good way to find these friend groups can be anywhere from your hall to General Education courses, social clubs like Circle K, fraternities/ sororities(if that’s your cup of tea) and others!
This is what has worked for us; no need to follow this exact format.

Resume

rishiss: Here are the few take-aways on writing a resume that gets through the ATS.

Make your resume accomplishment driven, not just a list of your responsibilities – This guy puts it best TL;DR: Your bullets should be in the format -> Accomplished X by doing Y as measured by Z.
Don’t put school projects that every other CS student in your school has completed. Recruiters are able to figure it out and will look down upon this a lot, as it shows you’re not doing anything outside the classroom to forward your career. Capstone projects are perfectly okay.
Make it a simple, one-column that recruiters can easily read through. There’s no need for pictures, graphics, colors, fonts, etc; the ATS can't parse this! Overall, keep it simple; the content should be carrying you.Exceptions: The company you are applying for is small, you’re going to a career fair and you know your resume will be hand-read, you’re a UI/UX person or a Graphic Designer.
Have at least 3 minimum (I aim for 4-5) per work experience/project; it makes no sense when you have such amazing experience and only put two bullets.
If you have a GPA lower than a 3.0, do not bother keeping it on the resume. If you have a 3.5 +, make sure to keep it.
Make formatting consistent. This should be a no brainer, but I still see folks’ resume with different fonts, spacing, etc. It’s annoying; don’t do it.
Focus on individual contributions and leadership, not the team. Recruiters are looking for self-starters and leaders that can see a project throughout the life-cycle, not just another code monkey.
Expect to be tested on anything you put on your resume. If you don’t think you can answer questions about a skill, tech, or experience on your resume, don’t bother putting it in.
Make sure to add these items in your resume: Name, School, GPA (unless its less than 3.0), Work Experience, Projects, Skills (one line for languages, one line for tools/platforms are what I’ve seen the most), relevant links (GitHub, Website, Portfolio).
Take out any old or irrelevant experience. Nobody cares about that Tic Tac Toe game you made in high school.
Get your resume reviewed multiple times by experienced people in tech. /csMajors and /cscareerquestions also has a weekly resume roast thread that you can take advantage of.

Searching for Internships

Searching for internships in CS is really different and harder from searching for internships in other professions. CS internship interview processes are often longer and much more technical on what you have learned as a CS major. We've prepped 2-3 months beforehand on CS concepts, whiteboarding, etc.

Timeline

This timeline primarily focuses on large, non-government/defense companies or competitive startups. This also assume you are applying for a summer internship.
August - September: Applications are opened to the public. Make sure to look out for positions and apply early, as most companies admit students on a rolling basis. A site that we used often is Apply.fyi. After applying, you may receive an automated (< 48 hours) invitation to complete an Online Assessment, consisting of multiple choice and/or coding questions about Data Structures, Algorithms, and Run Time Complexity. You will have usually 1-2 weeks to complete the assessment. Please that you may be rejected if you are not able to pass 90% of the questions on the assessment: Please also note that you may be instantly rejected due to things out of your control like years of experience, cancellation of internship, internal corporate issues, and more. Don't take rejections too seriously; just keep applying!
October - November: After passing the resume screen and the OA, you will be contacted by the company's recruiter for a phone screen. During the screen, you will probably be asked a few confirmation questions about your resume, sponsorship, years of experience with X, etc. and minor behavioral questions like what made you apply for this position, what are you pursuing outside of class, etc. You may also receive questions about your CS fundamentals e.g. what is a hashtable, whats the difference between a process and a thread, what is the runtime complexity of sorting a string, etc. As long as you're cool and confident (and not cringe/edgy), this part should be a breeze.
November - Mid January: If you made it through the two Thanos snaps, you will be invited to an onsite “Power-Day,” where interviewees attend 2-4 whiteboard interviews while being grilled on their technical skills and projects. Some companies make applicants go through a panel interview, where a team of 2-5 Software Engineers grill you on technical questions and your resume. You are often pampered with free travel, food, stipends, etc.
December - February: If you were deemed a good fit by the hiring committee, you will be extended an offer to intern at the company during the upcoming summer for 10-12 weeks. Remember, nothing is final until you receive an offer letter in your inbox. Some companies may also place you on a wait-list and offer you a spot if someone were to reject their offer letter.
For government orgs, defense companies, and smaller organizations, the recruiting season starts in February/March and usually ends in April and May. After applying online and passing the resume screen, you will usually be immediately pushed to an on-site interview. Most likely, you will be interviewing with your future boss/co-worker.
Please note that internships are not only offered in the summer, they are provided in the Fall, Winter, and Spring (rare) as well. The competition for these internships is usually lower, and the process usually starts 3-4 months beforehand.

How to get the Interview

Besides following resume tips, make sure to apply to as many places as you can. To get our first internships, we recall applying to approximately 250-300 places before we secured our internship plans for that summer. Also, if you do get ghosted, don’t take it personally, usually, university recruiters often spend so much time reviewing a lot of applications.
Other precautions to take to get noticed are to try attending career fairs if you can, you might be able to get an interview(worst case, free swag!). Other than that, try reaching out to upperclassmen or friends you know that interned and ask for referrals. It’s one of the best ways to get noticed!

What to expect

As part of the interview process, there’s 4 types of interviews that you should make sure you know.
Behavioral Interview: These interviews ask you questions about culture fit such as “Why are you a good candidate” and “Tell me about a time when you ...”
Coding/Technical Interview: These interviews ask you questions similar to what you see on Leetcode and Hackerrank. These interviews are designed to test your Data Structures and Algorithms knowledge.
System Design: System Design involves the interviewer testing your building to design a service/software and test your knowledge of understanding what things to use for the task and how you will integrate them together. You’re definitely not expected to know this and it’s not likely you’re gonna get asked this. Places that could ask you this are Unicorns, Trading Companies and Hedge Funds, and Big Established Companies.
Concurrency/Low Level Interviews: If the company’s biggest product involves low level principles such as networking principles and kernel stuff, there’s a possibility you can get asked this. Places that come to mind are hardware companies and trading firms.
Some companies may adopt only one of these interviews and some may adopt all.

How to Ace the Interview

It’s highly recommended that you look up the interview experiences that other students have faced so that you can potentially filter out companies with red flags and know what questions to expect. Common sources to search up on this would be Reddit (csMajors and cscareerquestions), Jumpstart (Relatively new portal for students), Glassdoor and maybe Blind (Aside from the toxic TC or GTFO culture, they do give good advice on interviews). With that said, here’s some advice we have when you approach each kind of interview we’ve seen.

Advice on Behavioral Interviews

Use the STAR method when describing your experiences. Being quantifiable with the impact of your actions will impress the interviewer.

Advice on Technical Interviews

Begin by reviewing your notes from the Data Structures and Algorithms class. Do not proceed further until you know how to implement these DS and As from scratch with the language of your choice(If you do know python, it’s recommended as there’s a lot of builtin features!). After doing so, we highly recommend a book like CTCI and EPI to gain a review on programming language details and your DS and As. Then, visit sites like LeetCode to practice real questions from major companies. A Facebook Engineer completed 600 LC problems and compiled the most important ones into a list here. During the interview, make sure to talk out loud about possible approaches and tradeoffs before whiteboarding. It is perfectly acceptable (often recommended) to ask the interviewer to ask questions about the problem and get clarification. Once you have an idea in mind and have talked about it with your interviewer, begin whiteboarding. While you talk about the final idea you want to use, write out pseudo code and comments about all the steps you need to implement in order to finish coding your solution. After that, start coding. Make sure to have proper function headers, syntax, spacing, classes/structs, imports, etc. After coding your solution, give a brief explanation and attempt to make it run with less space and in less time (if your solution is not as efficient as you think it can be).

Advice on System Design

These are somewhat hard to approach if you don’t have experience ever doing it. If you do have experience designing and building services in your spare time and as part of your work experience, definitely rely on your experience. An important thing is to definitely ask clarifying questions. There might be hidden requirements you didn’t think about that could drastically change the way you approach the solution.

Advice on Concurrency/Low level

Understand basic principles such as Processes vs Threads (A lot of people don’t know the difference!)TCP vs UDP and how to make an application thread safe. Other than that, it’s recommended that you familiarize yourself with basic OS concepts such as Deadlocks, locks that you can utilize to make an application thread safe, etc.

Searching for Full Time Jobs:

The big bucks.
The process for finding a Full-Time Job is usually very similar to finding an Internship. There’s three main differences are:

Harder Questions. Ex: Google usually asks Leetcode Mediums to Hards + the special Leetcode Hard question that Google asks it’s applicants (they create a new one every year).
More Rounds of Interviewing: For example, Microsoft makes interns do 2 rounds while New Grads do 4 rounds during the onsite part of the process.
Compensation: Interns usually get an hourly rate and, possibly, a housing stipend. New grads, however, are given a yearly salary and, possibly, a sign-on bonus, stocks, and benefits e.g. health insurance, vacation days, etc.

The process for finding a Full-time Job won’t really change as much as finding an internship, but keep in mind that the bar is higher. This is probably the biggest reason why you should look into interning early; by getting an offer at the place you like, you don’t need to go through the daunting process of finding a full-time role.
Get as many offers as you can this time around, so you can negotiate and select the position, company, compensation, and location that works best for you.

Negotiation

Negotiation is a really powerful tool that you can use in the interview process, even as an intern. There’s a lot of guides to negotiation and we recommend Nick Singh’s guide (Look at his LinkedIn and newsletters) for more.

Final Thoughts

University is a probably the most important time of your life and a foundational block of your CS Career. Like any foundation, it must be sturdy and takes a tremendous amount and energy of time to develop. Take advantage of all the resources (like this one) you can get your hands on. Definitely learn from the mistakes people have made and make sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes.
‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish’ - Steve Jobs

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Top 50 Automation Anywhere Interview Questions & Answers

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Realising the teenage dream: My experience working as an F1 strategist