I got hired straight out of college by a company that made software for banks. They were just starting on a windows version of their consumer lending product (

I got hired straight out of college by a company that made software for banks. They were just starting on a windows version of their consumer lending product (banks move slow. very slow), to be written in c++. The regional VP at the company was kayaking buddies with the professor who was my advisor for my senior project. The VP asked the prof if he had any good graduating students for an entry level job, and I was recommended. From what I can tell, this is one of the better ways to get a job out of school. My first assignment was helping a senior guy track down a bug in some multithreaded C communications code for handling ATM machines. Legacy stuff from the company that had been bought by a company that had been bought, etc., that no one completely understood any more. I had no idea what I was doing, at all, and it was a great situation to be in professionally. Worked for that company for 5 years, then it got bought and I was laid off because I was still the newest member on the team. Very stable group, learned a huge amount from them. I got lucky.