Computer Science Career: Depth Beats Breadth for Landing Your First Role

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Why a Computer Science Career Rewards Depth, Not Dabbling

When I first got into CS, I tried to learn everything in sight. React. Python. AI. Backend. Frontend. I stacked tutorials like trading cards and felt smart for finishing another course. But here is the punchline I did not expect. Knowing a little about everything did not help me get hired. It made me look unfocused, and it made my projects look generic.

Think about what hiring managers actually see. They scan your resume for a few seconds. If it screams generalist with no clear specialty, your application blends in with a thousand others. But when your profile says I am great at X, and your projects prove it, you become memorable. People do not hire the person who kind of knows 12 things. They hire the person who is excellent at one thing they need right now.

The moment I chose one lane, my confidence shot up. I could finally explain what I am good at in one sentence. My projects stopped being tutorial clones and started looking like real solutions. Interviews got easier because the questions lined up with what I had actually built in depth. Suddenly my resume was not a scatter plot. It was a clear signal.

Here is a quick story to make it concrete. Two candidates apply to the same role. Maya says, I build backend systems for data-heavy apps. She shows a project that ingests thousands of events per second, includes benchmarks, and explains tradeoffs she made under load. Ben says, I know React, Node, Python, Flask, TensorFlow, and Docker. His GitHub has five half-finished apps. They both worked hard, but only one is easy to trust for a backend role. Depth wins because it lowers risk for the team.

This is also why surface-level knowledge is fragile. Anything shallow can be replaced by an internet search or a quick answer from a tool. What cannot be replaced is judgement under real constraints, the kind you only earn by going deep. That is the skill that gets rewarded.

Go Broad, Then Choose Your Lane

A lot of people get stuck here. They try a little of everything and never commit. I do not think it is wrong to start broad. In fact, you should. You need a quick tour so you can figure out what sparks your curiosity. The problem is staying in that tour forever. That is where burnout and confusion grow because you feel like you need to be an expert at everything, which is impossible.

The fix is simple. Use breadth to discover, then pick a direction and go deep. You do not need a perfect choice on day one. You need a choice that moves you forward. When you focus on one area, even for a few months, your efforts stack. You can show real progress, build real intuition, and open doors that were closed before because you finally look like a fit for something specific.

How to choose a lane without overthinking it

• Follow your curiosity test: Which topics make you forget to check your phone? Backend systems, machine learning, mobile development, security, devops, data engineering, you name it. If you would tinker with it on a Saturday with no deadlines, that is a strong signal.
• Problem pull test: Which problems in the world do you find yourself thinking about in the shower? Latency issues, algorithmic fairness, health data, financial risk, education tools, accessibility. Your brain already likes something. Listen to it.
• Role realism test: Pick a few job postings you respect. Read the responsibilities. Imagine your calendar for a week in that role. If that week sounds exciting, you found a lane worth exploring.

One more story. I mentored someone who felt lost between web and ML. We did a two-week experiment. Week one, they built a small backend service with tests, a Dockerfile, and a simple CI check. Week two, they trained a toy model and built a tiny inference API. At the end, they noticed they loved the debugging rhythm of backend work and hated waiting for training runs. That was enough to choose a path for the next six months. That decision alone saved them months of wandering.

Direction Makes CS Feel Easy

Most people do not quit CS because they are not smart. They quit because they are lost. Without a target, everything feels random. Every tutorial feels disconnected. You can learn a language and build a basic project, but if it is not pointed at something, it does not stick. Once you choose a direction, the hard parts become puzzles instead of walls.

When I say follow your passion, I do not mean chase what is fun for five minutes. I mean find the slice of CS that you care about enough to keep going even when nobody is watching. Passion is not hype. It is direction. It is what makes you open your laptop after a long day because you want to make one tiny thing better in your project.

You can anchor your direction to a company you like, a sector you are drawn to, or a problem that matters to you. It does not need to be perfect. It needs to move you forward. Choose a lane, start small, and let your results guide your next step. That one decision unlocks momentum.

Step-by-Step: How I Am Landing a Job by Targeting One Company

After college, I did not start by blasting applications. I picked one company I actually care about. Not the loudest brand hiring this week. A company whose mission and tech make me want to contribute. Then I studied them like I already worked there.

What I study to mirror a target company

• Stack and tools: I read their engineering blog, job posts, and public talks to list their languages, frameworks, data stores, build tools, and cloud providers.
• Open source repos: I comb through their GitHub. I look at readmes, contribution guides, issues, pull requests, test setups, and even how they name files and folders.
• Conventions and patterns: I note naming conventions, code style, API boundaries, error handling approaches, and how they write docs and commit messages.
• Real problems: I read between the lines. What performance bottlenecks are they hinting at? What customer challenges show up repeatedly? What scale are they operating at?

Then I build a project that could live inside their org. Not a todo app. Not a Netflix clone. Something that fits their mission, tech, and constraints. This shifted how I think about building. I stopped acting like a student following random tutorials. I started acting like a teammate solving their problems.

Examples of company-aligned projects

• Fintech example: If the company processes payments, build a fault-tolerant ledger service with idempotent endpoints, double-entry bookkeeping, retry policies, and a reconciliation job. Include load tests and a short writeup on how eventual consistency influences your design.
• Health tech example: Build a privacy-conscious data ingestion pipeline that de-identifies sensitive fields, tracks audit logs, and enforces role-based access. Show how you test permission boundaries and handle schema evolution.
• AI tools example: Create a retrieval-augmented generation service with chunking, embeddings, and citations. Profile latency. Explain your caching strategy and how you guard against prompt injection.
• Mobile example: Ship a feature-complete screen that mirrors their design system. Match component naming, spacing, and state patterns. Write tests for navigation and offline behavior.

In every case, I mirror their tech and their level of care. I write a readme that sounds like their readmes. I follow their lint rules. I structure directories like their repos. I include dashboards, metrics, or logs if that is central to their work. This shows I can slot into their world on day one.

Story time. I once studied a data platform team that loved event-driven systems. I built a small event bus with producers and consumers, added dead letter queues, wrote operational runbooks, and documented failure modes. When I later messaged an engineer from that team, they immediately got what I was going for. We jumped straight to tradeoffs, not basic explanations. That is the power of aligned projects.

Build Portfolio Projects That Fit the Company Mission

Your project should feel like it belongs on their roadmap. That is what makes it memorable and discussion-worthy. Here is how to make that happen.

A simple checklist for company-fit projects

• Start from a real pain: Pick a bug, bottleneck, or feature they probably care about. You can often infer this from their blog posts, talks, or community questions.
• Match the stack: Use the languages, frameworks, infra, and testing tools they use. Do not switch stacks mid-project unless you are documenting a clear reason.
• Document like a teammate: Add a readme with context, setup, run instructions, a short architecture diagram description, tradeoffs, and next steps.
• Prove correctness: Include tests. Even a small but thoughtful test suite shows you think like an engineer, not a demo-only builder.
• Measure something: Add metrics or logs. Show latency numbers, throughput, memory usage, or a before-after chart for a fix you made.
• Write a post: Summarize what you built, why it matters to that company, and what you learned. This post becomes your networking tool.

Story. A student built yet another notes app for their portfolio. We reframed it for a social platform company they admired. They reworked it into a small moderation queue with simple heuristics, moderation actions, and an audit trail. Same skills, different framing. Suddenly it made sense to people at that company. Their DMs went from silence to conversations.

Networking in Tech That Actually Works

Once a meaningful chunk of the project is done, I post it on LinkedIn. I describe what I am building, why I am building it, the problems I ran into, what I learned, and exactly how it connects to that company. This does two things. It shows I think like their team, and it tells the right people where to find me.

How to write the LinkedIn post

• Lead with the problem: One line explaining the issue, not the tech stack. For example, Reducing write amplification in our storage layer.
• Share the approach: A few bullets on decisions, tradeoffs, and what you measured.
• Tie it to the company: One line connecting it to their mission or recent post.
• Invite feedback: Ask for thoughts from people who work on similar challenges.
• Link the repo and readme: Make it easy for people to dig in.

If someone on the team sees it, you might get a conversation or even a referral without asking. If not, do not sit and wait. Go find engineers who work on related problems. When you message them, do not ask for a referral first. Start a conversation they would want to have.

DM scripts you can adapt

• Initial message: Hey [Name], I built a small project inspired by your team’s work on [specific topic]. Would love your thoughts on [one concrete decision], especially [tradeoff or metric]. Repo and quick writeup here: [link].
• Follow-up if they respond: Thanks for the pointers. I am iterating on [suggestion they made]. If you are open to it, I would love to share a short update next week on what changed.
• When a job opens: Hey [Name], I saw a role opened on [Team]. I have been working on [project] which lines up with [their work]. If you are comfortable, would you consider referring me? Happy to send a 3-bullet summary that maps my work to the role.

Notice the order. You earn trust by building something relevant and inviting feedback. By the time you ask for a referral, you are not a stranger. You are already acting like a teammate. That is why the ask lands differently.

Story. I once cold messaged an engineer with a thoughtful question about retry policies for idempotent endpoints after reading their team’s post. They replied with a nuance I had missed. I updated my code and shared the before-after. Two weeks later, a role opened. My message was not hey can you refer me. It was, I shipped this improvement based on your guidance and saw a 37 percent drop in duplicate writes. Would you be comfortable referring me? They said yes.

Stop Scrolling, Start Building - Your 48-Hour Plan

Motivation fades fast. Do not let this be the article you read right before an hour of shorts. If you feel even a little spark right now, use it. Here is a simple 48-hour plan to turn motivation into momentum.

Day 1 - Decide and design

• Pick a lane: Backend, ML, mobile, data, or another area you are drawn to. Write it down.
• Pick one company: Choose one that you actually care about. No job posting required.
• Study for 90 minutes: Read their blog, job posts, and public repos. Note stack, conventions, and common problems.
• Define a project: One sentence on the problem, one on the constraints, one on success metrics.
• Design a tiny milestone: What is the smallest demo you can ship tomorrow that proves the core idea?

Day 2 - Ship and share

• Build the milestone: Keep it small. No feature creep. Prove one thing works.
• Write the readme: Context, setup, how to run, what you measured, what is next.
• Post on LinkedIn: Share why you built it and invite feedback from engineers working on similar problems.
• DM two people: Pick engineers at the company who work on related topics. Send the message that invites feedback, not a favor.
• Schedule the next milestone: Add one improvement you can finish in 3 to 7 days.

Repeat that loop for a month. By the end, you will have a project that looks like it belongs on their team, a public record of your learning, and real connections. That beats 20 half-watched tutorials every time.

What Depth Looks Like in Practice

Depth is not a mystery. It looks like repeating a loop with care. You build, you measure, you reflect, you improve. You keep a changelog of decisions. You can explain failure modes. You can defend your choices with data or constraints. That is what separates a real engineer from a tutorial finisher.

Signals that you are going deep enough

• You can explain tradeoffs: Not just what you chose, but what you did not choose and why.
• You measure: You have numbers for latency, throughput, accuracy, or memory, and you use them to guide changes.
• You test: You write tests that catch the failure you once shipped and never want to ship again.
• You document: Your readme can onboard a stranger in minutes, and your commit messages tell a story.
• You handle errors on purpose: Timeouts, retries, idempotency, backoff, and how to observe them in logs.

Story. Early on, I had a service that worked locally and collapsed in production-like conditions. I added naive retries and made things worse by hammering the same hot shard. That pain was my teacher. I learned backoff with jitter, tuned timeouts, and added idempotency keys. The next run held up. That is depth working in the real world. It sticks because you earned it.

How This Makes Your Resume and Interviews Stronger

When you go deep in one lane, your resume changes tone. Your bullet points stop being built app in React and start being reduced p95 latency from 420 ms to 170 ms by rewriting query and adding read-through cache. That is the kind of detail that makes a recruiter pause and a hiring manager lean in.

Translate depth into resume and interview wins

• Resume bullets: Lead with results and metrics. Mention the constraint and the decision. Use numbers.
• Portfolio: One or two projects that look like real work at your target company beat eight random demos.
• Interview stories: Prepare 3 stories. One about a tough bug you hunted, one about a tradeoff you made, and one about a time you improved something you did not break.
• System design: Use your project as the canvas. Describe bottlenecks you hit, back-of-the-envelope math, and what you would change at 10x scale.
• Code walkthrough: Be ready to explain one gnarly function line by line, and why it is written that way.

Hiring managers do not need you to know every tool. They need to see that you can own a problem, learn fast inside constraints, and make things better without being babysat. Depth is how you prove that.

Pick Something Today - It Does Not Need To Be Perfect

You do not need permission to start. Choose a lane. Choose a company. Choose a problem. Give yourself two weeks to go deep enough to feel the rhythm. If it feels wrong, you can switch. You will still keep the focus muscles you built. The only way to find your lane is to move.

If you are still here, tell me what lane you are picking and which company you are aiming at. I am considering spinning up a small community, maybe a Discord, where we can share progress, ask questions, and trade feedback. If that is something you want, say the word. The goal is simple. Keep each other building.