Interview with Alumni : Nitin Jaiman
Graduated from JECRC in year 2015, Nitin Jaiman is working as a Software Development Engineer at Amazon, Hyderabad. A very humble person, Nitin shared with us his experiences working at a startup and a tech giant, and some interesting insights on grades and college’s value. Read along ! :D
So we’ve heard after you graduated, you didn’t take placement from college, and joined a startup. What factors influenced your decision? How it was like to work for a startup?
When I was interviewed at the startup I was told about what they are building, how its gonna disrupt the logistic industry and what I am going to work on, by the end of the interview I had much clear idea on the kind of work I was going to get, this was not the case when I was interviewed by L&T Infotech, where I got placed from college.
During the service based company interview, they don’t tell about what kind of work you are going to get, usually fresh recruits have to go through 3 months training, post which they put resources in development, testing, business development or on bench.
People say that joining a startup is a gamble however if you look things from a different perspective you may figure out that joining a service based company is the biggest gamble you can ever take with your career since you don’t know what kind of work you are going to get on the contrary a startup or a small to mid-scale company are more transparent with the interview candidates.
How did you get from startup to Amazon? How is the journey for a tier-2/3 college student to get a job at top companies like Amazon?
Recruitment process of top companies is very different from others. These companies don’t rely much on university, grades or stream of engineering. What they rely on is their interview process.
The interview process usually starts with a phone screening or an online coding round, In my case it started with an online coding round post which they decide whether to call you for onsite round or not, the onsite round usually consist of around 5 interviews.
Many people ask questions on how to get that first call for phone screening or coding round. The easiest way is if someone can refer you however you can also directly apply at the website, top companies also organise hiring competition on websites like Hackerrank, Hackerearth, etc, I got call by competing on one such challenge.
What are differences between work culture of giants like Amazon and a startup?
When you work in a startup you get broad exposure, you work more closely with operations, business developers, program mangers etc. The downside of startup is the quality of everything and myopic view, since teams are working in a highly agile environment, they sometimes end up in compromising quality or creating something just to fix a problem for short term.
Big giants emphasis a lot on quality they go slow but whatever you create is going to stay there for long term use hence you are expected to create configurable and extensible solution which can we used worldwide.
During your journey till now, how much did grades matter?
After around a year of experience I stopped putting grades and university in resume and surprisingly no one ever asked.
I think in our college students put a lot of efforts at wrong place, since we are raised in an environment where our efforts are converted into grades and marks through exams and accordingly we get university and engineering stream after counselings. Many students think that the same is going to happen after college, that the one who is having highest grades is going to be recruited by best companies however this is not true, most of the companies rely on their interview process rather than grades, more often than not this process is not inline with the RTU curriculum.
My suggestion to students of JECRC is to work on their overall growth rather than focusing on only one aspect i.e grades.
What is the thing you did in your undergraduate that you are proud of? What one thing do you regret?
During college I took decisions rationally rather than doing what everyone else is doing, for instance I was the only guy who did computer science major and minor project being from ECE, everyone told me that its going to affect my grades and it did but because of this project I was able to get my first job in a startup.
I certainly regret wasting a lot of time, 4 years is a very long period, you can become really good at anything if you remain persistent for 4 years be it sports, engineering or overall personal growth. I am able to realise this when I have reached to a point in my life where I am making use of every single hour of my day, hence when I look back to my engineering years I feel very regretful of sitting idle and doing nothing with my time :D
What are your favourite area(s) of Computer Science?
Design.
So you’ve done quite a bit of competitive programming! Any tips for competitive programmers out there?
I think I am not the right person to give advice on this, I just want to say that don’t do it thinking that competitive programming will fetch you a job, do it if you really enjoy it. If you want to reach to a level to clear interview rounds of top company then you need not be best in competitive programming, being average in competitive programming is good enough to clear interviews.
It’s a general notion that “scope” in ECE branch is decreasing or it’s hard for ECE people to get a software engineering job. What’s your say on that?
False, tech giants and startups don’t really care whether you are from ECE, CS or some other branch as long as you can clear their interview process. However, getting core ECE job is a different ball game altogether, which I think I don’t have enough experience to comment.
Lastly, What advice would like to give to students of JECRC?
One thing where JECRC students really lack is internship, its also the most important thing in engineering. In most of the other universities there is a culture of applying to internships which JECRC lacks, instead RTU students apply for unpaid training mostly in government institutions.
My advice to students of JECRC is to build a culture of applying for internship. Create a solid resume having few projects by the end of 3rd year and apply for internships.
Not just in India but abroad too, getting an internship abroad is relatively easy given that you don’t need working visa for internships in most of the developed countries, you can take this as an opportunity to travel as well.
We’re grateful to Nitin, that he took out time for this interview. Hope our readers enjoyed the interview and learnt something from it! :)
If you wanna know more about Nitin, you can connect with him on LinkedIn.
If you know some alumni like Nitin, whose journey inspires you and think it should be shared, drop a mail at codedocs@jecrc.ac.in .
Keep following our publication for more interesting stuff! Cheers! :D
