So, I started back in class 8. And, I started off with working as a data scientist in Artifact which was a US based company. I couldn't sit on campus placement because I didn't have a CGPA. Interviews will be less, then will be something else. Like, what can be there - people are like, I actually started coding. Yeah, so I entered in class 8. So, it was around 13 years of age. I was 13 when I started coding and all. I interviewed at Google Tokyo - I thought that they would take me to Tokyo for the interview. I'm in support with it. I'm not like that one guy, who is DSA vs Development I don't know how gave the referral about Facebook - that What a recruiter told me once - of Google, he said - what's your CGPA. I told him that its not good so, that's why I've not written in the resume. So, then I asked him is it important that how much valuable it is. So, he said that 35 companies just in DevOps I didn't blacklist it. I got words for jobs, so eventually I skipped college and I got eclipse remotely. After that, I left my job even though I had a very good financial stability. So, in today we've 3 guests who're very amazing. One of them is 16 years of old, the other one is 19 years old and the 3rd one is 22-23 years old. And I'm there as well, so we all discussed how hiring scenario has changed in the past few years. If you want to become a software engineer, at a remote company, then what all things do you need how do you need to build your public profile, how important is resume. How much does the CGPA matter? Should we study DSA or not? There're lot of interesting questions that we've discussed. And you'll find multiple point of views from different people. So, its going to be very very very interesting, very important. So, be seated with a pen and paper. Note down important things and yeah, let's the video without any delay. Apart from that our DSA prep courses are live right now you can avail the chritmas offer. I'm announcing early in this video - we haven't put that on our website yet but if you guys are watching this you can just use the coupon code CHRITSMAS and you'll get extra discount on all the courses. You can definitely go, check it out and do buy it. We teach in two-step methodology and multiple tiers are there. Its starts from 1799/- and it'll be even less after gaining the offer. So, you can check the exact prices. We'll teach you everything from DSA basics to advanced and along with it OS, GMMS, OOPS, Computer networks, all these basics will be taught and you'll even make some projects for the resume. There'll be resume-building, we'll teach you how to make a LinkedIn profile and we'll teach you everything whatever you need to become a software engineer to apply to company and then you'll be hired because you've studied very well. So, without any delay let's start the video and let's go! So, hi guys - welcome back to the channel. Today we've 3 interesting guests with us. So, its going to be a very interesting conversation. So, let's directly start with their introduction. Let us know Pratham first, so Pratham please can you introduce yourself. So, Pratham is first. So, Hi everyone I'm Pratham. I'm 19 years old. And I had completed 12th some 7-8 months ago. And since then I've been working at this Blockchain startup called - Eclipse. And its going on since then. Before that I - during the time of Corona I started like programming little seriously, machine learnings, artificial intelligence and I dived deep into Block chain. And as I was doing that, I shared my journey on twitter. So, now I've 1 lakh 54k followers. Nice! And recently in insta as well, its going to be around 20k so, I just shared my journey. And along the way - I made lots of friends. I took lots of jobs eventually, I skipped college and working at Eclipse remotely. Developer relations and software engineering. So, that's my sort of introduction. Great! Next we've Ayush, so he's 16 years old and we can have his introduction now Yeah! First of all, Hi to everyone out there. So, I started back in class 8th I off with working as a data scientist at Artifact. It was US based company. I was working on building IP solutions and I question answering CSS and all sort of things when transformers and all of these things were not even a thing at that time. We were able to build something out of that. And afterwards, I left it and then I joined Zenemen as an ML OPS engineer. So, the technology which I really love till now, so I worked over there. Afterwards, I got a chance to work with replit. which is kind of one of the biggest video company out there. I leaded the whole data science team and along with that - we had - UK government ran a lot of things done over there. After wards, I used to also run core machine learning course & I also started content creation but I'm very in-consistent with that. Because of some reasons, so I started with that - so, yeah after that I left my job. Even though I had a very good financial stability and then I joined Second brain Labs is a co-founder so, Shubham used to come up with me with the Idea and then i was like, very interesting let's work it out. After 6 months, we were able to close the Angel round. And yeah, we're working around that part Thank you! So, next we've Urvashi - so Urvashi is a 2020 graduate. She's working as a Remote front-end engineer, right! So, she'll share more about her. So, hi everyone - I'm the oldest one here - I guess. So, I graduated in 2020 and I started working at HackerRank after that, I switched to UK based startup because I like working in small teams and I really like working remotely as well. And after that I started working at a US based startup and I've been working with React and Beyond Rails mostly. So, now - 3 of you're remote engineers mostly, right! You're working at a remote startup remote company or working at HackerRank as well. So, how did you get that job opportunity, like which year did you start working remotely. So, it was Covid - everything automatically became remote but I started in office as an intern So, I first came to Bangalore because of that internship. So, I think we spent just 1-2 months in office but it was a very fun time in my life. But, when you're doing office, when you're working - then there's nothing else to do you're travelling, you're going to the office and you're working and that's all. So, you guys started working remotely in 2020, right! You guys started during Covid. It was 2021 for me. It was 2021! So, how did you get the opportunity? For you like, how did you reach out to them because you were I think 14 at that time. Correct! So, at the age of 14 years - working for a remote company - finding that opportunity in itself difficult and then convincing them that I can like, work there. I think the 1st thing that you had to convince was take a look at your resume and take you seriously how would you Correct! do that! So, I think its because of I had a good connection with one of the Apple engineers. Akshay Prakash So, I had a good connection with him & he eventually referred me in to one of the company - Artifact so because I used to work with him closely and then, he understood and then eventually referred me over there, so he didn't ask me anything. He just told me, take a challenge and then let's do it. So, I did that and there were lot of guys - the requirement was clearly listed Master Sky, preferred qualifications and all sort of things. So, I eventually ignored that but he had given me a take home challenge. His name was Prem Vishwanathan one of the best managers which I ever had. So, he had given me a take home challenge and after that I it was very - kind of a - comprehensive challenge, right! It was given to each of the people out there. So, I completed the take home challenge. One extra thing which I really did is I - again, every MLOps & back that time, MLOps wasn't even a concept, so I productionized the whole code and all sort of things and then certainly, I had - he called me for an interview. I was like, fair - now its my time for the interview and eventually, I convinced him to hire me. And I think after just a day - he reached out to me and said that you're hired & it was a pretty great deal too. So, in actual I think it was more about referrals. Where, somebody has trusted me and then given me out there. So, referrals is one. But why were you working with an Apple engineer - is my 1st question like, where did you meet the Apple engineer - he referred you, right! So, you must've started somewhere. So, when was the 1st thing. Yeah! So, there was a community on Discord known as Sling Shot. So, I joined that community. And then eventually, they would be giving some tasks or challenges around - I didn't had too much of - I had a lot of time, So I was like - fair enough, let's do one of them. So, I did some of them & eventually recognized the talent - and yeah. Got it! And when did you like actually started coding? Yeah! So, I entered in class 8th, so it was from 13 years of age - I was 13, I started coding and all. So, what was the - like first thing that you learnt - HTML, CSS yeah! So, it was more sort of I spent couple of months in exploring technologies, like I didn't had like - the too much interest in computers and all, so - I was exploring technology which is the best like, HTML - I did web development but eventually - like everyone is doing and I am not having any interest in doing it. And afterwards I saw Data science, Machine learning and I thought fair enough, is this something - little bit hard too because a 13 year old is very un-common and doing something really interesting in to this place. So, I thought - fair enough, this is something which I should take off and If I take off, then certainly there's something to be written off so, I guess from then I decided to go into ML and DL. Got it! And what about you? I have a similar story in some sense - so I remember there was a programming workshop & My mom isn't an engineer, neither my father is but they felt that, I think I had interest - like, in playing games. I had a curiosity that what happens inside when a cursor moves, what is going on in the processor so, there's a workshop - I learned Python, basics, if else, print statements and all and there I got the curiosity that you know, I want to make my own website make my own game, I had a passion to create but parents didn't know, how to do it and even at their time, Internet wasn't there in India right! Means it was very less. Exactly! Like - they used to get 1 GB data for 300/- or 400/- and that would last a month. Right! After that, Jio arrived then got democratized and everyone - then from the internet itself, I looked for resources and all the written form - I just tried to figure out should I memorize the syntax, what should I do - how should I learn. Eventually, I found my way - actually I was interested in Machine learning, so there's a very interesting demo of Google in 2018 - it was like this Ai that could respond to phone calls just like a person. So, that was the very first thing that got me hooked on to it. But in AI also, there were gatekeeping things like, learn Calculus, this and that but when you actually program, you get to know that you can just learn Python and you can all that has been implemented since before - exactly! You need to just take care of it. Exactly! So, its like a black box - means you can build on that. So, when 2020 arrived - in Covid, I went on exploring and the programming got better. And the interesting this, I didn't make a resume until now nor have I applied to any single company. Same for you, I think. Yeah! You guys have not made any resume. Great! So, you also got through community. Like you posted on twitter, so someone reached out to you, right! Yeah! And my first break was in Third-web, it was this company - I had worked in 2021 And I happened to know the founder, so he said, we just talked as we need this kind of person on our team and I joined. I even helped a friend of my join, my friend was 33 years old or something. He left his corporate job to join a startup with me. Now, he's also like, leading a developer relation at a very big crypto-company and I also went on to learn, made some projects, got a $10,000 grand for the projects. Got featured on CMBC, like crazy things were happening. Eventually, Eclipse reached out to me where I got the job and now I'm working. Just yeah! Right! But we're traditional kind of a people, we didn't knew To be fair, means during your time - it wasn't that type of internet like when I was in class 12th, so in 2017 - I was in class 12th. I was in 2016. So, that time we had graduated so, at that time - Jio wasn't there - like we were not studying from the internet at that time. It was proper books. Whatever was taught in class - even my teachers were like, whatever is taught here is enough at home you don't need to we were studying - H.C.Verma and D.C. Pandey for JEE - we had that these are 4 books, you need to study that. The students in class also study 4 books Internet learning was not at all - it wasn't something - means, Internet means at my home Internet was installed in class 12th - and I didn't have that much idea at that time. Because what will I do yeah, we did not explore. We just used to give mock tests - we just knew books at the most. Exactly! So, yeah - like, you guys - had that and took advantage because everyone has it but there're only few people who've actually used it in a positive manner. And they've build profiles on twitter or started contributing to discord communities. So, yeah - its good. So, what about you, like - do you feel in the coming future this is gonna be more important - public profiles will be more important - rather than physical resumes or people will start looking at these twitter, Instagram, Youtube handles - more than your social media - I don't know but definitely, your Github profiles. Github is a yes. Github, I think mattered at our time also and we were if at that time - if you applied for like off campus then Github was something which people used to look at, LinkedIn was something which people used to look at LinkedIn - I don't know but Github, they used to like but if its on-campus then it completely matters. Exactly! CGPA and test - of you're able to crack the test, and CGPA is good then I couldn't sit on-campus for placements because, I didn't have a good CGPA. I did sit on-campus. For intern placements, I got Microsoft off-campus but my first job was through on-campus. I got a referral in Microsoft, I was doing an internship with this one guy - one of them was working in Grofers I think the other one was a Microsoft employee - both of them were trying to build something, so they hired me as an intern. So, he gave me a referral to Microsoft and Microsoft said - NO, at only like 7.5 CGPA Yes! Microsoft had that - they've or not I don't know, but there was a 7.5 criteria when you used to apply for intern or full time roles. I felt surprising, I thought big tech companies - they've moved past that - marks matter some have but some didn't - Microsoft hasn't yet. Google has, it doesn't matter to them - but still I think they've criteria of 7 on-campus. No, In google - I think its more than that - only selectively interview - they don't have a test, I think. They have it on-campus. Yes! It isn't off-campus. If you've a strong profile off-campus, it doesn't matter but on-campus it used to come like - and only 10-12-15 people were shortlisted and they were people with 9+ CGPA I never got an opportunity to sit for Google because my CGPA was in 8 line it was not 9+ so, I didn't ever got that opportunity. It was like that - at college time. Without degree, it isn't possible then Yes, it is - now No, I interviewed at Google Tokyo. I thought they will take me to Tokyo for the interview but then it was scheduled in Bangalore. I was so happy, even if I don't get into it - then I'll atleast go to Tokyo. But that did not happen. I came to Bangalore but - I didn't pass. Got it! But yes, like - as in US, if you've done some bootcamp & you get referral to Google you get a chance to interview - you get the interview opportunity. But yes, you need to take referrals and things like that - its normal. But its there. Like Amazon doesn't care honestly, its like - even if you've a B.Sc. degree - but they need a degree but they don't care about your CGPA or which degree you're from so they'll take you. So, you need the degree in India. You need the degree in India. What a Google recruiter told me once, he said that - what's your CGPA? And I told him - its not good, that's why I have not written in the resume. So, then I asked him - is it important that how much valuable it is? So, he said that - hiring managers are still seniors, the time that they've seen - they still pay attention to it even till today. But is it very hard to maintain the CGPA in college? Like... In good colleges, its relative and there's huge competition. And everybody is studying every single day, so you could either study and get the marks or you could build skills. Exavtly! So, if yu go to an IIT, NIT or a good tier 1 college - the main problem is everyone is smart. You'll have people around you who are smart - so they put in effort, they'll get good marks now, if you're getting 12 marks - and there'll be one person who'll score 20 out of 20. So, you'll have to manage with that if that's relative, then you're screwed - it happens because its a relative grading. So, you'll have to study in and put in hours without working hard, you don't get a good CGPA. And if you're into co-curricular or anything else, you're building on site, then your CGPA will surely be affected because you won't get time to study. Exactly! Generally, I've heard that - college is very chill. It does. Yes! Its definitely, more chill. Its your choice that if you want to focus on CGPA or other things and build a network of people around. Okay! So, for me - mine is 8.5 aggregate in 4 years and I only used to study 10 day before my end sems and one week before my ... Topper! No, I mean - its not about being a topper. I used to hold on to my friends - that what should I study tell me I used to take their notes and then - I used to study diligently for 10 days - I used to get the CGPA. Like, and then Covid helped - last year during covid online exams out of 3 semesters - I didn't get very high because everyone was doing something, so everyone got 9+ I got 8. - something but it was good enough that - it was total aggregate. It had to go above 7. Yes, even for me I went from 6 to 7 because of Covid. Then did you get interviews after 7 or not? So, interview starts when your 4th year starts - so before your 7th semester but covid happened in the 8th semester. So, for her it was different - for me it happened in my 5th semester. Just a little bit. But its okay, like - I got all the opportunities - I actually interviewed at Facebook London - I don't know but someone gave me the referral. But I didn't clear it - in Facebook London - I did not have any DSA - I had no prep, so I couldn't do it. But now, when I think of it - they were such easy questions. I couldn't do it and at that time, if you wouldn't study then you won't know - if you've not prepared - if you'll ask them like, have you guys, studied DSA at all - like even a little, something Just on top.. just from top... what about you? No! Never! So, they'll - if we'll ask them basic merge, Linked List questions they might struggle in that - but its a basic question that you will have to learn. So, its the difference there that if someone is giving interviews, the you'll have to learn these 100-150-200 questions that everyone does. You'll have the basic idea of DSA. And on top of that - you can give interviews and learn more. But, if you start working directly out of - like school, then you'll not - never study because you've developed core skills - for a particular job, right! You've a proper core like, field where you work that, right! So you're expert in that but you haven't explored around it that much. Yes! Means, if anyone tells us to make a web server in JavaScript then I don't know - binary search - its not necessary, exactly! Right! So - in taking architectural decisions or when you go in more depth then you get a little difference, then you might need data structure but in normal web-dev, it doesn't matter that what you're doing. There're basic arrays that you know, even strings as well. Yes, sort - filter but that's means it happens. Its not that you can't do it. I think more than remembering the algorithms the point of doing DSA is - you've that practice to identify that this is the problem, sort of pattern recognition. I think, in Machine Learning - I think DSA at some level is automatically built up yeah! I think its automatically built up for example - as you told about taking architectural decisions or maybe probably going around things or going in depth and optimizing things - and hell lot of things which come around. So, I think its more about if you really see MLOps principles and MLOps is highly based on productionization architects and lot of things out there. So, I think on that part if you really see - MLOps has some set of patterns problems, principle which is already defined - and then you've to build on top of it. To actually productionize your ML code and whatsoever thing out there. So, I think its completely DSA actually helps for problem solving and lot of things as you stated very core and then understanding, the actually it helps but in terms of really, if we see that for Machine Learning engineering role definitely, if you go to Google, Microsoft - they'll ask questions about DSA. They'll start with DSA. But if you really, go to a startup - they don't care about it. They take a - Give you a 'take home challenge' and ask you to solve it. And the way you solved it is what matters. And yeah, One of the startup which I went is Zenemen which for - MLOps engineering role I think they'd given me a simple - a whole project so they they core it everything and they'd given me. They told - productionize it. So, its all about how well in Machine Learning engineering context. How well you're productionizing it - nowadays, nobody cares you writing lengths of code and all sort of things and then going in. That does not really matter now, what really matters is you taking Zero to one & how you're productionizing it. At scale and following your code standards. So, I think it depends like - which role you're applying to? Correct! Means I don't agree that - this will happen for all the roles - like if you're applying for a front-end engineer role. They'll definitely focus on your front-end development skills. Yeaah! If you apply for MLOps engineer, they'll focus on MLOps - if you apply for DevOps, they'll focus on DevOps but if you apply for a software engineering role, generally, then they'll start off with DSA because there's nothing else they can test you on, right! So, they need a basic criteria to test you that's why all these companies test you on DSA skills. 90% of the jobs are software development engineer - like, I was working as IOS engineer then they shifted me to a back-end role, now I'll shift to some front-end role, so you can work anywhere, if you've like - you can learn everything, right! Yeah! It takes one to 2 months to get good at something. If you've basic idea. Correct!! So, for general role - you'll have to learn DSA is what I feel. And honestly, how to efficiently evaluate a candidate in half an hour, its very difficult. Exactly! So, DSA makes proper sense and its a game that you learn means practice it. I feel, you know - I've started LeetCode a little - I think lot of these principles its like, for example you talked about MLOps so, in MLOps you need to sometimes clean the data - there's a technique that you can use, so there, DSA is used because in data - you need to search where's where so, a complexity arose and that too is a part of DSA. So, I think as you become a better software engineer - you yourself get the concepts of DSA. That quality is in build - like, they won't ask you to write a binary search on that but often when you're working in a core, if you're working directly with C++ at OS level. Then you'll have to write your own code. Correct! Because for an X case, if you've to prove it that this is the X case that you aren't getting more numbers than this or anything else. Then you can optimize it directly if you know the algorithm. Right! If you'll just use dot-filter or dot-sort then you can not tweak it much. Definitely makes sense - as I agree with you on this. Only thing, I'm not against DSA, I'm in support with DSA I'm not like that - one guy who says DSA vs Development focuses on development. Yeah! There was lot of controversy around DSA and development - I won't go in that and people keep asking same question - it has already been answered. If you don't want to do, don't do it. The things is, you've more job opportunities if you learn DSA means in development, getting those job opportunities is a little difficult. Directly, not everyone knows how to do open source, not all have done it. But after DSA, they straight away go to LeetCode - do 500 questions. The 3 month roadmaps. Exactly! I mean if anyone is giving you a direct path then why're you fighting that no, I'll not find. Like, I want to do front-end so, is it necessary in it? No, its not but if you'll do 200 questions, then it won't do any harm means you'll have multiple roles that you can apply to. You can apply more. Exactly! It will work in front-end as well, sometimes - if you need to optimize the filter or loop it comes handy. Yeah! If you're not writing it - that you've rendered 10k to 20k items, so its slow You know this better than anyone else - means, optimization - DSA is everywhere, so why oppose it. You should study basic, like they just want someone to tell them, you don't need to do it. There's an easier path, they don't want to do the hard work that - I have to solve questions, they're just that - there should be something even if I don't do they get the validation. Validation! That if they're saying, they would be right! So, what do you think like - people are saying that - now DSA interviews will be less frequent? There will be something else, like - what can be there? People are like, HLD/LLD rounds might start more. But when you're in college, until you've actually worked on systems HLD you can study theory - you won't be able to actually understand what's going on? Again it'll be the same problem that - people are memorizing that, they're telling me to do I'll just memorize everything. That happens if you ask them, then there're like 10 system design patterns - do for a video there're common app sites. Do for a video, another for social media did video, streaming platform, then did for cabs - exactly! There're only 5-6 - you'll learn the system design. You've the basic idea. That - what cashing is - what load balancer is then you can just go split out. so, like people will figure it out anyways - they'll do something but what's your take on that, like how are your interviews actually when you've given? Its interesting. So, yeah - I'll take because I was mostly working with a guy for specific roles and specifically, into certain startups and all sort of things. Definitely, it was kind of the given - take home challenge - which I've to complete And then we had an interview, explaining that take home challenge in the last questions - that if you've done or copied. Correct! So, yeah! It was more sort of that interview - though, as you stated that DSA is required for more set of profiles because its not everyone is going to get that one job in the startup. For DEVOPS, even if you don't apply for ML but if you apply for DevOps, so they'll just ask you basic basic DSA - Linked List, Merge - add a note to a Linked List or you divided - basic - because I know a guy who has cracked like, 30-35 companies just in DevOps. They didn't blacklist him? No! Means - he was doing it for fun. He was just doing it to get that number - yes, for fun. Company interview speed run challenge! Right! But he got 35 offers like, he has cracked 35 companies just for DevOps. But he didn't join any. So!! He's cool! So, that's something - they don't ask DSA in it - actually they don't ask - very less. So, that's the core skill - like DevOps is a core skill. You just have to work on those systems - you've to do that - so there you don't need DSA much. And how was your interview? So, my Third-web interview - it was actually - I had already met the founder. That's why it was for a developer relations engineer role which is less technical more of - like communication yeah and can you just make things. So, JavaScript, TypeScript - I had experience so, actually next I did React, so - that was like, the first interview. But the 2nd interview for Eclipse So, at that time I was working with Celestia. So, the program in which I entered was itself a very prestigious out of 400 like really qualified software engineers, 10 were selected and I was one of them. Means I was the youngest there, so I guess a barrier, like a competency proof, just got destroyed. And
then there was a leet code type question, I don't remember it well, I never formulated from DSA, but I was able to do that question. So that was done. And a little bit of crypto knowledge, like blockchains, like consensus mechanisms, how they work, I asked something in
smart contracts or something like that. And then there was like a general, like you know, what are your aspirations, what kind of work you want to do, why are you interested in crypto? So that happened. And that's how I got the job. So I don't think this is very different. I mean, you can't do this, you know. It makes sense. This was the problem. We generally do the same thing, there will be like three to four rounds. If you apply
it for a software development engineer, SGE, so there will be three to four rounds, mostly it will be all DSA. If you solve them before time, like if you do it in 45 minutes, you solve it in 30-35 minutes, then in 10 minutes they'll... No, sometimes they ask second question, but either they'll ask, what's the optimized version? If you're done with everything, they'll
ask some questions around your resume. If this is the project,
explain this project, or what else you have done. Something
from your resume they'll start asking, to explain the project,
why you did that, that. Do you get HR type questions? No? No, we don't. It's for higher roles. I mean, I didn't have
any HR in all three of my interviews. I gave the one for Curefit, I didn't have any HR in that. I gave for Samsung, I gave for Atlassian, not Atlassian, Arsysium and GS. I had it in GS, I didn't have anything else. Everyone was DSA only, like proper DSA, the last five to seven minutes, one project was done. So I did a bit of blockchain in my college, I worked in a bit of solidity, smart contracts, I did a bit of projects, I went to hackathon, so I built on that, so that project was mostly done. So I used to choose that, I was like, do this, and I went for smart India hackathon, so I won that. So one project was on that. So I used to start talking on one of them, and the interview was done on that. That's what I did for my final year project, so everybody used to do fourth year project, whether it was ML or AI related, or NLP, they'll do. So we decided, we didn't study, and the usual way to do that in college was, go and associate yourself with a professor, only then you can learn it. Otherwise, online there, I think still, maybe there are more now, we didn't want to go and go after the teacher. Was it in 2017? No, no, 1920. The workshop was just starting. Yes, so that was it. Or you do, I think, people were
doing research internships and stuff. So we decided to do on WebAssembly. Oh, WebAssembly. It was also relatively new only, then not a lot of material. Even now, I am still not able to find it. I quit doing it because
I couldn't find more material then. Only Mozilla's
official one or two blogs were available. It was in that. But even now, I tried to find, but I couldn't find much. But now, like Figma is using, Canva is using. WebAssembly addressed or any, what language specifically did you see? I was just
seeing WebAssembly and how to do C++. No, no, no, not the assembly code, but I used to work with JavaScript, right? How to run C++ code inside of JavaScript, how
to run JavaScript inside of C++ code tag. So we built a project around that, that teachers
won't be able to ask any questions. This used to happen in college, that if you pick up a project
that doesn't belong to any professor, then they can ask any question. If you ask something and tell them anything,
then they... What will they say if you are saying right? They have to agree that yes, it's right. If you say something with confidence, then they will say yes,
you are saying it right. Everyone has, like, when you do engineering, you have BTP, your bachelor thesis project. So when I was graduating, there were two. We had to
do in 7th semester and 8th semester also. We had to do two. So we did half of the first one and asked the same teacher,
who is going to do it? So we did same project, two semesters. And that
project was also my friend's brother. He graduated
in 2019 or 2020 from IIT Allahabad. So he did that project, we improved it a bit and that's where the project started. Because COVID was going on,
no one cared that much. Everyone was like,
okay, do whatever you want. So we used to sit
one week before the final presentation. We used to sit, we used to fix it, we used to finish the presentation. Some code of honor, ethics,
all that doesn't make any difference. No one goes anywhere,
they have to print such a big book. There was some page limit,
how much should it be? It has to be explained
in full and you just have to give that. It's a formality, no one cares about it. The books go to waste the next year. They destroy it in the college. In our college,
it was that you will only get maximum A, or you will get once it's published. So the people who were
actually into NLP and machine learning, they published their own. We had it published. Actually, because our second one,
there was a condition. If you guys will publish it,
like if this gets published, then only I
will do it with you because she wanted... Professor. Professor wanted my name to be in it. So she was like,
if you publish it, I will do it. So we had to write a research paper. We wrote like 3-4 pages of
research paper on that particular topic and it got published. So that actually happened. What I heard in my university days was that people used
to mix 3-4 papers and write a new paper. You just have to explain it in a better way and you can add some more examples to it. Now, if you mix 4 papers, I
can't even imagine how people will write. No, plagiarism. Yes, I mean how can you write now. But in that, you had to check plagiarism. Yeah, yeah. And you had to put a certain percentage. Like, no problem. So we used to use turn it in and you had to check if it's greater than... 10%? Less than... No, yes, yes. 8-10% was acceptable. How many times have you
copied and then you're doing it again. 8-10% were like proper definitions. You can't make them up. So I had to write that word openly. At that time, it was a bit like chart
GPT that we'll give them and copy them. So all this... Now, everything is much easier. But it's also worse in a way. Because people don't learn chart GPT. I tried to hire for a
technical content writer on Internshala. When I was in university,
I used to apply there. I was like,
maybe one or two people have done it. At least one out of 100 to 100. But I gave them a topic. I think it was on React Query. So what did everyone do with chat GPT? First, none of them submitted. It was difficult. I think 5-6 people submitted. And from that, everybody
just copied it off of chat GPT. The normal length of it is the same,
same structure, same topics. They won't
even know what they're writing about. I think it's gotten worse. One or two people
submitted old React Query or something. They don't even know. One guy, what he did was,
he went to the website of React Query. He copied everything. He didn't even make the effort to. Because it has icons and stuff. So if he pasted it,
it became square and square. He did that. Such a waste of time. People just don't want to put in effort. They just want everything that easy way. Then they cry that they can't get it. That's the major problem. No one wants to put in effort. Everyone just wants to get it. Because if you put in effort in anything,
you will do something for sure. A little bit of smart work is enough. Exactly. A little bit of smart work is needed. But hard work is needed for sure. Yeah, that's bad. Right. Last question. All three of you are
working as a remote software engineer. How can you apply to those roles? For you both, it was mostly community. But if you have to apply directly, then which websites, if you know any, if you want to, some sort of template, if someone wants to text,
someone wants a referral, then how will you approach that? Open question. But we can go one by one. We will start with Urvashi. She has more experience in this. So the first remote job that
I got was completely cold applying on. It used to be well-found. It was Angel List. Now it's well-found. So there
daily I used to apply to new positions. Again, like
their qualifications are 2 plus years. Sometimes I would ignore that I know so much,
so you can test me, whatever. So luckily they got in touch with me and then the interview was done,
so everything went fine. The second one was,
again, networking is very crucial. So I got that reference. But yeah, you can use well-found now. Angel List used to say well-found,
you can try. You will find remote opportunities there. What about you? I think this is I give a specific framework to my students the way to step by step. So it's kind
of targeted specifically for startups not like MNCs out there. I am keeping that aside. I am targeting those startups who are funded who are like international startups who pays really
well and all sort of things remotely. So for the first step which I ask my students is that you have to actually devote the time and actual effort into this Don't expect it. That's why out of 10 people,
only 3 people get a job because
of the effort which this method requires. So first of all you have to search for
the sector which you are interested in you can simply go to Product Hunt and maybe somewhere it's not always Angel List,
you will find lots of jobs. YC also has a job board. You can just go there and then find the companies which are there. Some companies are recently funded and they are really looking
out for hiring and all sort of things. Even at Second Brain Labs,
you are continuously hiring for front-end engineers and being good over there too. So these startups are looking out for those scouting those talents who are good enough. So first of all what I really ask first of all search for the
companies which you want to really apply and they are actively hiring and then try to understand what niche they are in and then use,
basically I have a GPT template where you can get the set of projects by giving a description of the website and all sort of things you will get in. 10 projects personalized to that company along with the hiring chance. You develop that project and then what you do, you simply take
that and write an email to the companies because it's a small company,
you will be having that so you say that, hey listen,
I built a personalized project for you and ok, blah blah whatever, you are video resuming you are infographic and all sort of things you just give it to them. Next, what you should do is for example you got rejected first. What you should do, you should
simply publish it on some blog-a-thon you are easily getting $100 out there from easily from just document the project and publish it. You learn by doing this you earn by doing this and certainly you have nothing to lose if you get hired, fair enough. So it is more about
you are dedicating time to the company and out of 10 companies,
most of the companies will reply because they have seen that your parent refers into that and then getting there. I think this effort really works but if you are really really hardworking guy that's why I push my students, fair enough you have to do this otherwise
I will get you out of my course. So this is one of the strategy which I use. Makes sense, if you are building a specific project for their company then they must be solving some problem. So if you are
able to solve their problem without even actually knowing that much about the company internals then it's good they will
definitely want to give you a chance. Correct, and one of my student so they solved a github open issues Zenim is an open source framework so they solved crucial issues over there some of
the github issues and they written a blog on analytics vidya about Zenim. The founder of Zenim reached out to one of my students stating hey very nice article let's talk, let's chat and they actually had a chat and then call and all
sort of things so I think it's more about the creating the network effect and then going. That's open source way like if you apply if you want
to apply to any company then open source start
from their open issues you start applying and once you do that you will get like eyes on you they will start looking at your profiles and if you do that for a long time then they might reach out to you Open source is professional projects only you are just not getting paid for it even if you are doing it it's still a valuable experience Exactly, so you can do that to find remote jobs and you
can also call reach out to founders of these initial rounds but I tell everyone is that if you are not able to find a job do one thing check in the last month which
companies like India they have got funded so they must be looking for people to work right they will need someone to expand their teams so just do that mail their CEO CTO's co-founders everyone and if you do 10 cold emails one by one they will reply and if you have skills you can crack it but you need to be at a level that you are able to clear interviews At secondary labs you are continuously getting a lot of emails we have to ignore that there is no chance that we are going ahead and seeing every email what really made me feel people are just going to charge JPD because I can easily understand it it's kind of a rhythm you can't even have an effort to write it via hand and don't apply it to my job because it requires effort you couldn't even write an email and also I
think it's more about being smart enough to write with JPD when I write it I like it very personally instead I use flawed not JPD I say that
act in a simple Indian English language write in a plain English or use it as a starting point correct exactly so I think all of the students they really
have hundreds of companies to apply then they can feed their own tones and all sort of things and create a custom GPT give your sample how you write, how you speak and you can build on top of it but even if you get something you have to tweak it I have seen emails that the company name is Playsoldier I have seen the wrong name they just send it to everyone many times I am a sir at your hiring committee and they just say hi and everything copied from chat JPD why do you think that person is a guy hi please skip joke once this guy wrote the entire email in the subject itself and I have had the opposite also that he wrote from chat GPT so chat GPT gave subject colon that and body that so he
copied entirely that in the body itself so I have seen both you can do a personal story I have this background I have done this project then I get to know about the company you actually have to just write that when you
are reaching out to anyone on LinkedIn you don't have to write a fancy one or two page thing and nobody cares what you can do you just tell them what you have done that I am hardworking I am this like everyone is hardworking you will see hardworking everyone is hardworking everyone calls themselves as a fast learner hello sir are you in the pic of health I hope you are explaining the whole story just get to the point what you have done when you have done what degree you have done if you have
built some projects add those projects if you have
some achievements add those achievements that someone won hackathon or you got some grant or something if you are doing it for a referral give the job id if you are not if you are applying
for referral reaching out to a founder then say
if you have any opportunities let me know I think more what I really like somebody sends me I was talking to Ali Ali is the founder of RepLaid I was also talking to Prem Vishwanathan I wanted to
understand how exactly they used to hire Prem Vishwanathan was I think director of ML at IBM and then he shifted to Artifact and then he is having own company he is in the USA as of now I talked to him and then we came up with a template of emails it's very simple you start with hey this is me and as you
stated please write a small description it shouldn't be like I am hard working fuck that nobody cares 3 lines is enough where are you from what you have done you don't even have to add your university after experience you don't need that correct after write
the description after that you show that fair enough for my students like I develop a personal project for you and then you say fair enough this is my intro graphic resume this is my video resume that you can listen me how I am talking because talking
is one of the most important thing when you really see and after that some of the personal project github link and your LinkedIn profile and then after that you end the email by saying
hey if you want me to hire please hire that's it and then that's it that's enough and after that if they want they
will check out your project that's it if they don't like it they will not reply you should not follow 10-20 emails one time I think it works like maybe in 2-3 days you just follow
up once if they might have missed it because there are many emails or you have sent
it over the weekend so it got cluttered but after one it shouldn't be like you are following up in every 2 days some people start abusing me after following up they start abusing me reply why are they so dirty so I think it's be very professional otherwise you don't know who is seeing your email that's kind of opposite if you want someone's
help then why are you abusing me they will reply so ya last part of it just one suggestion from each one of you if someone is
in their school they want to quit their college or if someone has completed their college like us and they want to get a job what would be your advice so I am very careful I am not saying this because you don't want
to go to college or you want to drop out I think most people should go to school and should go to college my situation was very different or it was very different that ya I got a job my interest aligned my following was there so I had like and I did my maths if I didn't
get a job then can I survive on my own so after
thinking all that I didn't go to college so first of all don't skip college or school just because I did evaluate your situation and see how your life goes and other than that I would say please follow your interest there are many resources on the internet to learn if you want to learn if there is a will there is a way make friends who support you in your journey and talk to more people it becomes learning becomes much more fun opportunities if you like something showcase it on the internet so opportunities will keep coming that's my experience that's the advice I give school dropout, college dropout successful percentages that we talk about and it's pretty less honestly many people
do it but not everyone is successful like Pratham and Ayush obviously you
guys are successful at this point of time but everyone is aiming after college you guys are already doing it you are
working at a remote company earning a lot and you have your own you have your own startup you worked on 2-3 things you have
worked remotely you have done everything what people want to do so not everyone does there are a lot of people who fail and having a degree or graduation is just that you have a fall back if it
doesn't happen here then something else will happen to me I think one is career, financial goals but other than that it's passion I was very lucky that I got my passion both got intercepted at the same time but I don't think everyone should expect that 19 years old knows what to do you change, you get interested today the programming is looking good the day after tomorrow I will have a bad day but keep exploring it's not like that you are not fixed to something I think this career thing used to happen when dad started you have to do it for 10-15 years now people are more flexible if you don't like something try out another job or another field if it's not good then try something else and fall
back to the first when nothing happens because you have experience in that you can always do it I think from my side see I will tell you according to situations as you said for your interest I am quite against that reason there is some reason behind it if somebody is in a situation like when I was before where you have to uplift your family
or you have lot of responsibilities and hell lot of things then you also have interest of going to party just like other friends are going you also have lot of interest going around this kind of lot of interest you have you cannot go and then pursue that interest that interest should align with your goals and what you need to do for example when I
was starting off with whole data science and machine learning and hell lot of things when I was actually starting off I also had an interest to go down and enjoy party and also
with my brothers and all sort of things but eventually I think data science was also hard for me I could have been going ahead with other technologies
which might be little bit easy but I know that if I do it then this is what the outcome is so it's all about you should understand what you need to do instead of also aligning with interest if that's enough that's good enough but even though if you really think that that really works out well then good enough go ahead with it secondly which I think is the phase of downfall so as I say that phase of downfall is like
this when you start learning a technology your motivation
is like this and after a certain time it continuously goes like this and for the next set of months for 8 months it can go continuously like this but the one who is actually cracking things up is one who is consistent in that downfall era and if you survive in the downfall era okay fair enough you're not able to understand A no worries learn that again and try to understand them as much as you can go in depth and after a certain
point you'll understand fair enough you actually got an opportunity because I'm kind of a believer in destiny and you reach to that by continuous efforts
you cannot say okay fair enough become a data scientist in 2 months no that's not going to happen
if that's happening that's a scammer who's telling you so yeah that's the phase of downfall do what is needed after you have money you can do what your interest lies in right so for example for me my interest if you want money then you have your own interest correct and also when I spoke about interest I didn't mean interest like party or whatever I meant career wise interest like you have an interest in finance or are you interested in programming so I mean when money comes in I mean if you know
that you have more money in data science then obviously
you'll be more interested in data science so it makes no no makes sense I completely
agree with you on that part for me I was making good enough money
from my data science machine learning working at ZenML we played and over there I was making money but I think my actual interest really lied in bedling businesses out there and I think that's what I wanted to do and it's not
like that when I come to my business my money fall down it's not like that it gradually increased because I had a backup option which is Anton so I think you just contradicted that at the
start you told me not to follow interest correct now you're saying I had interest in that but I didn't but after having a fall back after having a money yeah you have a money I had a money in my bank account I can go ahead and then do whatever I want then you can take those risks so it's just evaluation how to balance interest and goals correct yeah but goals also motivate your interest so it's interlinked it's not that if interest is interest and you don't work hard on it or if you don't
want to say it then it won't go anywhere it will just remain as interest you need to work hard on that and you don't have to pay what I believe is if you put time and effort into something if it doesn't
seem interesting now then eventually there will be a point where it will start becoming interesting for me it is like the things that I hated in university that they are forcing me to study maybe some point in my life I naturally got interested into it so then I'll do it myself but that too after putting the time and effort after going after that hard phase that I'm not able to figure things out but then everything starts clicking all that is exploration you know you try lots of different things and after that you get to understand what kind of person you are what you want to pursue at least I yeah and also interest aligns with your actual value for me it's money it's fame fame is now over interest so sorry money and I think I could achieve that goal by following something known as building
businesses out there it's completely okay I'll fail it out that's okay but what if it passes enough like you have the you build a generational wealth not one crore in a year but instead one crore in a day that's a very big difference and I know this
is something fantasized so I was talking to Subramanyam so he was telling me one really interesting thing let's see every entrepreneur who's sitting and saying that fair enough we are working
towards building public welfare that's not true that's not true bro you have a on paper if you see the valuation of a guy it's touching like in crores and it is not even like it's kind of the output which you get out of the whole thing is much more than anything I'm not saying that you should go and become an entrepreneur no see fall back you should have a fall back correct backup plan so I was in I PES University
I was speaking something around it I don't
know there's some principle of creating a backup
plan what was that I'm not remembering but it was a principle of creating a backup plan a revenue generating thing if you're a middle
class if your father is not mother is not working then first you have to create your own backup plan and make it that money is coming around for me it's my course I'm telling openly I earn from my course I earn from my firm I earn from the royalties I this is what I'm getting from them from here I'm trying to create in the next in the long term in the next two to three years what's going to happen if for example the next round we
have raised the angel round for the next round
if you raise around our target is around 3 million our valuation is 30 million can I invest yeah though we have
we have a board to talk about that but the valuation so now if you take so I can't name the
stake which I have but if you take the stake of 30 million it's more than what I could earn in that obviously yeah so
I'm not saying to do but who will sell it who will buy the stake you can't you don't have to that is wealth return when you get acquired or if it goes public and it's also what you can take loans that's what people do they take loans on the basis
of the stock options and all sort of things and that's one of them and I'm not saying that you should become an entrepreneur you should be what you do but I wanted to become fantasize my thing which I wanted true capitalist fair enough I agree with you if you like everyone is
working for money if you are working at a company you are working for that paycheck you will get at the end of the month right if you are working
for yourself if you are an entrepreneur greater
good will happen that you are working towards but first if you have some money in your bank then only that you will be able to not everyone can follow their passion I'm not scamming anyone that's what I'm saying end goal is one of the part is money you are doing
this podcast the end goal is also coming money right I'm not saying we are also working towards welfare we are sharing our experiences that's what
valuing them and also without them paying us we are getting the money on behalf of us it can be indirectly
too there's somebody coming and buying my course that's getting me money right that's openly that's that's what I say so I think exactly somebody coming and criticizing my course I mean don't take it right this always happens they are like why are you selling my course why are you watching my content for free the first thing is free courses are like a hit cause I give full refund because free zero refund get the joke yeah yeah when I am putting some course out then that's my thing I'm earning money from it and yeah he's paying some person to build it for him and time is also valuable but he's putting his time if you don't like it then ask for a refund ask for it I'll give you a refund of 30 days if I and don't buy it there's plenty of free content you use that that same money for a pizza they'll be like let's go party we'll spend 1000, 2000, 3000 no problem but we can't take a course here cause it's for free cause it's for free but they still won't do it for free so with free content there's a lot of distractions like starting a YouTube video if you don't get a premium then you have to fill the ads I don't understand people who are earning good money why don't you have YouTube free yeah I have I have YouTube free I don't understand why are you not it's very cheap for a family yeah exactly for a family you'll see ads all day yeah if you watch 5000-6000 hours of videos 20% ads time is wasted and same money if you're giving it for a course you're getting structured content fast tracking if you're getting
everything then what's the problem and it's not that anyone is asking for 50,000, 1 lakh, 2 lakh that's a different thing 5000, 4000, 3000, 2000 people are like we won't pay for this but we'll pay for xyz university yes let's go to university but you'll pay for for example anything you like They'll buy Iphone I tell my students that my course is free I give you resources go and study if you study then I'll give you 1 lakh if you study then all of my videos are on YouTube unlisted so a student asked me this can be leaked content is available if it's free then they can do it but TLDR I think the conversation was that and on risk management I remember a good quote there's this guy he's the CEO of Mercedes so he said if you're okay like if you can cope with the worst case in any situation then it's a calculated risk so it's very important like I did in college after a lot of thinking calculated risk like Ayush said he had to do it, he had to do it you had the option to go to college and just get a job so it depends on the situation which situation you're in self analysis self analysis is important if you're in any situation thank you so much for taking your time it was a really interesting conversation I loved it talking to everyone and Ayush in the end Ayush danced it was good Thank you everyone, see you next in video. You can follow them on their social media accounts. I'll link everything down in description
