Ask HN: Should I practice competitive programming and stop doing side projects
I am a junior undergrad studying CS at one of the top universities. I have co founded a company, participated in Google Summer of Code and done interesting projects (some of which even won prizes).
I applied to some companies like Dropbox, Google, Palantir and Facebook for a summer internship but got rejected from them at some stage in the interview process (even after reaching the host matching stage for Google). I see my friends who were able to get those internships inspite of having almost no software development experience just because they are good at competitive programming and wonder if this is all that companies care about? Should I stop building stuff and improve my competitive programming skills if I plan to get a job after graduating?
I applied to some companies like Dropbox, Google, Palantir and Facebook for a summer internship but got rejected from them at some stage in the interview process (even after reaching the host matching stage for Google). I see my friends who were able to get those internships inspite of having almost no software development experience just because they are good at competitive programming and wonder if this is all that companies care about? Should I stop building stuff and improve my competitive programming skills if I plan to get a job after graduating?