I am a Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) student studying in India. Generally people join Engineering in India because it can provide them some CRUD / consultancy type of job, better paying as compared to other disciplines. But I was interested in CS and programming before I joined. I also had a good score in qualifying exams which helped to join an "above-average" institute.
Turns out that I had vastly overestimated the quality of CS education and recruitment here. The companies which recruit in on-campus placements are mostly outsourcing / "enterprise" consulting companies. Education is also kind of primitive that I am thinking along the lines of additional self-study and following my own career path instead of depending on a screwed education system and on-campus placement process.
I have heard about how exciting workspace Google was in the past. But judging from lot of negative PR surrounding Google these days, it appears Google is losing that charm of an engineer's dream workplace.
Which companies ("BigTech" or not), are preferred by bright undergrads these days? Is it mostly FAANGs (minus Netflix) or are there some interesting places that are preferred by talented engineers?
Also, if I want to do internships as college requires, are there any good opportunities in those companies?
Sorry for vague wording, English is not my first language.
To your point, nobody owes you a job, you need to get good. Part of that comes from being immersed in an environment that helps. 50 years ago this might have been the biggest hurdle. Not so much anymore. It's easier, but still an obstacle, I agree, but if you try harder you can easily get really good. Let me know if you have questions I can help you with. Here are some resources,
On personal development: https://sivers.org/book/SoGood On building a hacker mindset: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#attitude On programming: https://dev.to/, https://hackernoon.com/ On competitive programming for interviews: https://www.topcoder.com/community/competitive-programming/t..., https://www.codechef.com/