Building your own path
This is my first blog post. No one knows me till now, so I should start by introducing myself. I am Shubham Gupta, you guys can just call me gupta.
I am currently working as Backend Developer or in more technical terms Member Technical Staff at Nutanix Technologies. I am a 2015 year pass out from KIET. I am writing this to explain my college journey and how a guy with 65% in B. Tech got one of the highest placement from college. So, lets begin:
Background and Admission:
I came from a family where I am the first child in my whole relations who went out of town to study. I got into KIET by some trick i.e. management quota and wanted to get enrolled in Electronics and Communication as one of my cousin’s friend told me that EC has more scope. But they didn’t have seats in EC, so they gave me Computer Science. So, the admission is done and I came to college.
the first year:
The first year was smooth, I am in CS branch and didn’t know anything about computers and was surrounded by people who knew how to code from past 2–4 years. I learned what teachers taught us, attended lectures, and making project files and all that, and in this the first year finishes. So, what I learned from Ist year is that the things you will learn in one semester, you will forget them in the second, and when we will be passing out of college, we will remember 8th semester and when we will join any company, we don’t remember anything, then why someone hire me, if I have knowledge like a 12th pass student
Second year:
Now, I was looking for something to do extra than the college education. And one day, I saw the notice board with a pamphlet of the c Club, telling us that you can learn good programming there and it is free. I went there and there were two fourth year students(Abhishek and Gaurav) telling us about C and Linux in the technical things and also what will happen to us, if we don’t learn these things like most other folks in college i.e. placements in mass recruitment companies like TCS, Tech Mahindra, etc. But what surprised me the most, was what they were teaching there i.e. C and Linux, and what you can do with just these two things. So, I started going to these classes, doing some coding and more Linux things at home. Coding basically C didn’t interest me at that time(but now, I love it), that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. But Linux, I loved that technology. I started working on that and learning the internals, how things work, and what you can do with it. And, it is true, if something interests you, everything else doesn’t matter for you. There were problems like low attendance(very low ;) ), low marks and because of these things, your parents start losing trust in you, and that also makes you feel bad but you know what you are doing is right. So, with good grasp in C and the best Linux guy in batch, I completed my second year.
Third year:
When we came in the third year, I started with projects on Linux like OpenStack setup, learning different monitoring tools, about various servers like DNS, Kerberos, DHCP. Also, learned concepts of networking, like various layers in Networking stack and how these things work, routing of the packets. The good part in third year was that we convinced the HOD that we(Vedansh, Rachna and me) are doing the correct thing, and we also got a room in our department with two systems. But the problem of attendance and marks increased in this year, with HOD knowing all the things, he sent low attendance notice to my home, what he said to me when I asked him to not send the letter was that he can’t stop the notice but can talk to my father that we are doing the correct thing. Learning from this is that the college administration is bad and there is no power in the hands of HOD. Now it was nearly the end of third year and we were actively looking for an internship. So, at that time a company named One.com came into college and wanted a group of 5–7 students who can work on their Linux-based project. With HoD knowing me and Vedansh, he asked us to give names of the students who can work on this. We gave the name of the people, we two and our friends. Why he selected us instead of the flattering toppers because there was a internal competition between CS and IT, and he wanted his department to do well. So, with two teams in IT and one team in CS, and the only working guy in my team, I kicked the ass of the other two teams. With the various emotional session from my father, the third year and the summer project got finished. After the summer project, I was mostly sure of placement in One.com.
Fourth year:
In the starting of fourth year, got a call from Abhishek sir, to join his startup as an intern for sometime. Now, I had to choose between placement drive or internship in a startup where you can learn new things. I choose the later one and went to Bangalore. Worked on few real life projects like setting up their API server, writing the notification engine. I thought that I didn’t learn much there but when I came back to college, I was better in talking to people, now I can communicate things more accurately and with working on real life projects, I was better in technical skills and my confidence level increased(also with 5kg extra weight ;) ). I didn’t appear for any company that came to the college except One.com, as I didn’t want to join them, so why waste your time in those. In December, got a job offer from One.com and was very happy and very excited when I told about it to my parents. In February again got a call from Abhishek sir and again went to Bangalore for the intern. After one and half month came back to college, with working on more real life things. And
This was my college journey, don’t think that I was just a nerd and didn’t had fun in college. I enjoyed a lot and did full on bakchodi in college and also had a girl friend.
Here’re some of my takeaways:
- Don’t get distracted because of low attendance, low marks, etc. as long as you are working hard on what you like.
- Look out for the long run benefits.
- Try to maintain healthy relations with the faculty even when you hate them.
- Try to work in a group or a team, it will help you not to loose your tempo. Do not quit.
Stay hungry. Stay Foolish.
