How did a person who wasn’t even interested in B.Tech go on to work at one of the leading companies in cyber-solutions?
How did this person become SDE-2 from an intern within 2.5 years?
Before answering these questions, I would like to first tell you about people who have impacted my life the most. To begin with, my parents top this list. They always supported my choices. Being uneducated and low on limited financial resources did not stop them from contributing to my success. I mean at a time when parents were forcing their kids to opt for government jobs, my parents always allowed me the ability to make my own decisions.
When I had joined my college, I wasn’t even sure whether I wanted to do B. Tech or B.Sc. The deciding factor was the scholarship of ₹70, 000 per semester that I was offered. Besides, you know that the opportunities are more in B.Tech.
Even after joining the college, I didn’t find anything particularly interesting early on. I continued to limit myself to only the bare minimum till I got exposed to the world of learning opportunities by my friends. We started exploring the field and learning together. Having a study group or competitive friends can make learning quite enjoyable. Besides, seeing everyone work hard pushes you to perhaps do better as well.
Although my friends helped me, my initial disengagement from college did some damage. I was not allowed to sit for college placements. Scaler rescued me during this time with exposure to a lot of opportunities. The online course exposed me to so many things I never learned in college. HLD, LLD, high-level programming, straight up web development were some concepts that I learnt for the first time after joining their online course. Unlike other online platforms, we used to have discussions with industry people which were very insightful.
Even during this time, I had a friend at Scaler with whom I used to practice. We would often compete with each other while solving problems. Because of this, our overall progress was always more. That’s the advantage of learning in collaboration. Once you have people around you with whom you can learn and discuss, it naturally elevates the quality of learning.
Based on the mistakes that I made, I would recommend anyone venturing into this field or even learning you take up one thing and simply focus on that. Doing multiple things at once will do more harm than good honestly. I am guilty of doing this by simultaneously working on data science, machine learning, and competitive programming and eventually mastering none of them. Of course I got the requisite knowledge, but it never felt satisfactory because I never felt that I had an absolute grasp of the topic. Besides, when you keep hopping on from one thing to another, you don’t really get a chance to actually enjoy any.
Also, seek guidance from any experienced individual that you come across. I doubt there’s any engineer out there who wouldn’t want to guide anyone who comes to them. I just shared one of my mistakes with you. Imagine learning about mistakes that other engineers made which you can possibly prevent by being open to seeking guidance.
For me, these tiny mistakes had a significant role in helping me grow as a person as well as a professional. Coming to professional milestones, I interned with Cyware Labs Inc for five months. After that, I was offered the position of SDE-I and within a few months, I got promoted to SDE-II. My professional growth was enabled by my constant habit of seeking guidance and learning from my mistakes. So, well now you know that all my recommendations have indeed stemmed from my own experiences and I wouldn’t want anyone repeating my mistakes!
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