Building the #1 community for emerging software engineers.
What is Headstarter?
Our Key Principles
All Areas or None
Just focusing on resume, interview prep, or projects alone won't work. All 9-yards have to be in check, think "all the cylinders in a SpaceX rocket have to be ready for best launch".
Structure Matters
16 years of schooling made us dependent on structure. Add in the exhaust from CS classes, social life, and work - most fail to prioritize (even at best schools).
GOATed Team
Headstarter founders won top-3 in nearly 8 hackathons in a row. Having a team or community motivates students and makes work harder and more enjoyable.
"To become an extraordinary engineer, given some baseline intelligence and grit, you need some guidance/structure but mostly reps in industry feedback and rapid implementation of feedback."
If a student can deliver senior engineer or level-2 engineer work before they are in the market full-time — given they speak well, write well and know how to interview — getting the job is much easier.
Our Thesis
While every CS student's situation is different depending on graduation date, number of hard projects completed and ability to land interviews and pass them we have a general thesis:
CS is broken. Doing only theory for 4-6 years will result in unemployment because a student does not know how to code, how to sell nor how to speak in fast software team environments.
As senior software engineers become more AI-enabled and AI is advancing at a rapid rate, entry-level jobs or new grad "training" programs will be a cost center for most companies.
Companies — big or small — need software engineers to execute their AI initiatives. As such they need "ready talent" and skills which last beyond AI: the ability to communicate, design high-level, talk with customers and technical depth to when ai is wrong.
How Insane Focus Works
Project Sprint
Each sprint a software engineer or AI founder creates a "project spec" that requires a frontend, backend, cloud and AI implementation or solely AI/ML implementation.
7-Day Challenge
Residents have 7 days to deliver code and a demo. The following week, Residents have to do an interview with a software engineer. If passed, the resident's Career Score increases.
Super-Day Interviews
Every month Headstarter will have a "super-day" interview with startups hiring the smartest people in the US for Software Engineering roles in San Francisco or New York City. Anyone part of Headstarter with a Career Capital 85 will automatically be invited for an interview.
Direct Referrals
Headstarter hopes to take "applying to jobs" away from the Resident and become the referral. If the Resident accepts the job with a Headstarter partner, Headstarter will offer a full-refund. Headstarter will also be honored to have become a mentor and pay them.
Special Paths
For Google & F100 Companies
There is a requirement to complete 1 leetcode every 2 days. After 4 Headstarter projects, the focus is only leetcode.
For International Students
We help with the O-1 visa by finding a hackathon to judge, finding a magazine to publish your work, getting a high-salary job in a big tech or startup partner and 5 letters of recommendation from our vetted industry advisors.
Industry Advisors
Learn from top industry professionals with experience at leading tech companies
Career Capital
Career Capital is a score from 0-100 that measures one's abilities compared to a highly-recruited senior software engineer.
Self-Evaluate Your Career Capital
Each month we host "super-day" interviews with startups hiring the smartest engineers in SF/NYC. Headstarters with 85+ Career Capital get automatic interviews.
Self-Evaluate Your Career Capital
Every month we will have a "super-day" interview with startups hiring the smartest people in the US for Software Engineering roles in San Francisco or New York City. Anyone part of Headstarter with a Career Capital 85 will automatically be invited for an interview.
| Area | Breakdown | Weight | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resume | Rate your resume 0-10... 3-4 personal projects get +3. For every proper SWE or ML exp +1. TA, fellowships, bootcamps and non-swe work do not count. For every year of full-time SWE / ML exp +3. | 3% | 0-10 |
| Starter projects | Up to 5 personal projects beyond youtube tutorials? Class projects do not count. | 14% | 0-5 |
| Interview Prep | Have you done 450 Leetcode? Many Headstarter industry advisors who work at Google + alums who work at Meta / Scale AI + neetcode himself did 450. | 12% | 0-450 |
| Advanced projects | Up to 48 projects reviewed by a senior engineer. Open-source, personal projects with code reviews or production projects with users. Software/ML internships count as 3. 1 Year of SWE/ML counts as 6. Hackathon wins, TA for CS: 1, ML research: 2. Non-US exp: 3. | 43% | 0-48 |
| Network | Up to 25 Recruiters, employers, senior engineers or hiring managers who respond urgently to your calls because you built a valuable relationship. | 14% | 0-25 |
| Collaboration | Can you sell well, communicate clearly? Team player, proactive, self-starter? Adapt quickly and take action? Up to 40 points (start with 5 + technical team evidence). | 14% | 0/40 |
| TOTAL | 100% | TOTAL |
Technical & Personal Evaluation Metadata
We would like Headstarter to evolve where you as an engineer do not have to apply to jobs. We will be your ultimate referral. You build at a world-class level, show off your wit and creativity in real-life problems and we will line up companies who want to hire you. That is our goal.
Personal Brand Narrative
Technical Narrative
Past Projects
New projects created every 2 weeks by industry software engineers based on relevant news.
Project Structure
Each Headstarter Residency project is designed as a task for "work" as a new grad or intern. Often what would take an intern to do in 8-weeks over the summer a senior engineer can do in a day.
Requirements for Project Creators
- •Be an industry software engineer (ideally senior) + or AI founder
- •Design high level specifications for a new grad or intern under them - 5min video
- •Require full-stack implementation (FE, BE, cloud, AI) or machine learning implementation
- •Create 3 tiers of challenges / difficulties to span different proficiencies or dedications
- •Provide a longer video implementation of solving the project (given week 2)
Residency Weekly Schedule
Monday - Friday
- Monday
• Project drop (due Sunday)
• Live call: project drop + high level ideas
- Tuesday
• Share high level design
• ETA on project draft and final
- Wednesday
• Update resume + interview list (due Friday)
- Thursday
• Live call: networking / cold emailing / interviewing feedback
- Friday
• Project Report (A-C rating from industry engineer)
• Career capital assessment
- Sunday
• Submit project draft or final
- Daily
• Leetcode practice
• Mon/Wed/Fri/Sun: Public standup on Slack
For Everyone
- Monday
• Live call: implementation / discussion of project
- Tuesday
• Draft post for LinkedIn
• Names of 5 recruiters to DM
- Wednesday
• Headstarter Platform Feedback
- Thursday
• Live call on networking series + resume roasts
For Those Who Submitted Week 1
- Monday
• Recording of implementation
• Option to re-submit (due Sunday)
• Schedule "mock interview" with industry advisor
• Access to all previous week's projects
- Tuesday
• 1 peer call feedback after industry advisor meeting
The Headstarter Network
Over 100 roles are being actively recruited by 30+ startups in SF and NYC. These are usually multiple exited founders or founders from the best universities (MIT, Stanford, Waterloo etc) who raised anywhere from Seed to Series C. Majority of startups have a much higher bar than entry-level roles at Google etc. Many startups also do not ask Leetcode questions. We tell them most technical recruiters with liberal arts degrees do not know AI, we make recommendations from data and personal connections to deliver superior results.
We make hiring recommendations in the following priority:
- 1Former Headstarter Team members
- 2Headstarter Network or family (friends of founders and network of 400 senior engineers)
- 3Headstarter Industry Advisors (current or past residency programs)
- 4Headstarter Alumni (residents who completed the paid or fellowship projects)
- 5Linkedin Inbound or specific affinity groups i.e. NYC specialized HS/Waterloo grads etc
The "network" initially started as friends of the founders who are interviewers or managers at many fortune 500 companies. As Headstarter grew, many of the networks also grew and launched successful startups.
As Headstarter went viral last summer, many reached out to Headstarter for hiring needs. The past summer fellowship had 45+ members of the Headstarter Network and 24+ hiring opportunities. You can see them in the Fellowship Wiki.