u/JGRKing18

Thoughts on AI songs nowadays?

Hello everyone, badly looking for BSME related remote job that is intern-friendly 😄

Just my two cents after firing up an AI research agent recently. You get these amazing docs for both, but the practical reality hit me hard.

Tavily’s docs are gorgeous and they really sell that “RAG out of the box” angle. Damn it, I used half my trial credits in a weekend just trying out queries. It comes back with a ton of results but a lot of the results feel like fluff.

Exa’s “neural” search was much more accurate for my particular use case (searching for niche technical docs). And I only had to make 2 or 3 API calls to actually get the page content that I needed instead of blasting 10 requests.

But the biggest surprise was? It was good for scraping but was being blocked constantly on regular tech blogs. I ended up falling back to Serper for dumb web searches as a cheap stable fallback, and it's been doing the heavy lifting.

This is just my experience, not an endorsement of any of them. Honestly, I’m still playing with the balance. Anyone else running into similar roadblocks? What API stack are you actually leaning on for stability right now?

Just had a brutal Superday. Technically, I was fine. Then a Partner looks at me and goes, "Tell me about a time you personally lost money."

Not the firm. Not a client. Me.

I fumbled it hard because I tried to sound smart. But reflecting on it now, I think he just wanted to see if I could own a bad call without panic-spiraling.

Honestly, if you're grinding prep right now, don't just memorize the LBO. Prep a real, messy story about when you screwed up. Show them you can take the L and move on without melting down.

That's it. That's my realization after a humbling week.

If you’re doing DCFs and LBOs in practice right now you’re only doing half the job. I learned this the hard way on my Superday for a top tier S&T desk.

The tech rounds? Awesome. I got the WACC, the accretion/dilution, and the accounting. I walked out feeling like god. Two hours later, the email of rejection came. I was finished.

Why? In the last chat with the MD he asked me "Tell me about a time you failed" I panicked and gave a generic bullet point answer about a group project in college. He looked at his watch. Thanks. That was all.

Here is the framework I used the next time around (and actually got me an offer):

1. The Pivot “Failure-Recovery
Don't just tell me what was wrong with it. I want to know what went wrong, and exactly what you were thinking when you pivoted. Sell-side MDs don’t want a parrot. They want to know if you can handle the market shitting the bed without freezing up.

2. The Emotional Intelligence Test
Prove that you are self-aware. If you failed a project because you put it off, own it. Then describe how you put blockers in place, tightened your schedule and delivered early on the next project to regain trust. The honesty makes you look safe for business.

3. Link it to “The Desk”
Whatever your story of failure is, end it with how it made you better at handling a specific sell-side task (multi-tasking on 4 deals, handling a stressed client, reacting to a market crash).

https://i.redd.it/3obawbc46gjh1.gif