Connect with Salil here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salil-monga/

If you're trying to make the jump into AI engineering, join Parsity: https://parsity.io/ai-dev

Salil Monga had a 4.0 GPA, applied to over 1,000 jobs, and landed three interviews. Not one of the jobs he actually got came from those applications.

I sat down with Salil, now CTO of Cupe Connect, to dig into how you actually get hired in a difficult market: warm connections over cold applications, fundamentals over chasing the "golden stack," and why he walked into an interview thinking JavaScript was Java and still walked out with the offer.

What we get into:

- The 1,000-applications, 3-interviews reality, and why the applications were the wrong game to begin with

- How every job he landed came from a professor or a peer, not a job board

- Getting emotionally wrecked by applications, and the strategic mindset that fixes it

- Using AI to actually learn instead of copy-pasting answers, and how he taught students to do the same

- Why there's no golden stack, and how he shipped an iOS app having never built one before

- Why fundamentals and problem-solving beat the framework of the month

- How LeetCode quietly came back as a hiring filter, and how to treat it like one instead of hating it

- Treating interviews as a game of chance you can tilt in your favor with rapport

- Cube Connect: his no-algorithm, 50-meter-radius iOS app built to get people talking in real life again

Salil is one of the more generous guests I've had on. He literally offered to review resumes and talk shop with anyone who reaches out, so go take him up on it.