500 Applications, One Project, One Break

This is from Feb 2026.

500+ applications. Maybe 10 responses. 0 offers.

Until last week.

I just accepted a Software Engineer (Contract) role at The Tinkering Society. That line sounds clean now. Getting there was not.

My last internship ended in February and I started applying “casually.” That lasted about a week. Tailored resumes, personalized cover letters, LeetCode every other day, showing up regardless.

For context: I got my Metry AI internship from Wellfound at around 650 applications in Sept 2025. I had been applying since Oct 2024, sophomore year.

Most days there was nothing back.

What my notes actually looked like

I kept a running list in Keep Notes just to stay honest with myself. It looked like this, over and over:

• OA done, then ghosted
• Assignment done, then ghosted
• Referral sent, no response
• Interview rounds cleared, then rejected
• Shortlisted, then the process vanished

Real entries from that list:

• IBM SWE intern: ghosted
• Amazon SWE intern: OA done, ghosted
• Swift data engineering: assignment + first round, ghosted
• JPMC 2026 SWE program: assessment + video interview, rejected
• Microsoft: referral, rejected
• Airbus: interview went badly
• Multiple smaller companies: assignments submitted, silence

Dozens more. Different names, same thing.

The email I almost deleted

Then I got a message I nearly marked as spam.

“I came across your truth bot on GitHub and would love to talk.”

Not ATS. Not a job board. Someone found a hackathon project I built in September 2025, posted once on LinkedIn and a couple of Discord servers, and mostly forgot about.

I’m now joining a privately funded crypto research group building protocol tools. It’s a contract role, but it’s real work.

What actually happened

500+ applications moved almost nothing. One project sitting publicly on GitHub opened the door.

I’m not saying stop applying. I’m saying that alone wasn’t working for me.

Build something. Ship it. Write two sentences explaining what it does. Leave it up.

You don’t know who’s going to find it six months later.

What’s one project in your GitHub that deserves more attention?

Though, I have to admit, the fact that this project was a fact-checking system might have made it more relevant to the Tinkering Society, which focuses on decentralized fact verification. So maybe it wasn’t just any project, but one that aligned with their mission. Still, the key point is that building and sharing something meaningful can lead to unexpected opportunities.

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Original post: LinkedIn