A motivational talk
Around 3 months back, one day I was busy with coding on my desk in our Frappe office. Suddenly, Rushabh (the founder of Frappe) got a call asking to give a talk on open source at a Python Workshop organised by IDOL, Mumbai University. The event was after 5 days and unfortunately he had already a plan to visit Kerala on that day. Without even asking me, he promised them that I will give the talk. Rushabh has more confidence in me than myself and he always encourages all of us to do new things and try something out of your comfort zone.
To honour his trust and give myself an opportunity, I did not say much about the decision. Before this, I had given talks twice at our annual ERPNext conference, but this was totally different. At the conference, I had talked about our work, which was in my comfort zone. But here, I have to talk about open source in front of around 150 students and professors. I consoled myself saying I am involved in the open source world from a long time, I can do it. So, I started preparing myself for the talk.
Next day, I got a formal invitation letter from the organiser. Hey! What is this? In the invitation letter, they specified to give a general motivational speech at the valedictory function of this 4-day long workshop. Now, this time it was like a total shock to me. Motivational speech? I had no clue what I should say to motivate those students and audience. I confirmed the topic with the organiser, they told me to say something to motivate students, along with general open source topic.
Generally, I am an average speaker and not a deep thinker. I continuously thought about the topics. One thing I was sure, whatever I would say it must sound authentic and would be based on my personal experience.
After thinking for another day, I decided to share 3 stories (real events) which I experienced in my professional career. To encourage students to start programming at home in their student life. Started my talk with the unwritten rule to become a good programmer.
“You must practice coding for about 10000 hours, to become a good programmer”
As early you start your programming career, you will reach that stage earlier. And there is nothing better than if you start programming in your student life. But unfortunately, the bitter reality is, most students do not care about the coding in their student life. Then I shared my 3 stories with them, which are listed below.
Story #1: Interview vs Career Guidance
In our company, I had been a part of many interviewing sessions with Rushabh. And in those interviews, we have experienced that most of the applicants did not have any previous experience of coding. They just know some theoretical concepts of programming.
90% of those interviews turned into a career guidance session. We generally asked them about their hobbies. Some of them answered music, football or cricket. Then we generally tell them that suppose you want to play football in the state / national team. And one day you go to the state team coach and tells him that you know all the rules of the football, that’s why you want to become a footballer. What will happen then? You have to practice football regularly to become a good footballer and to be selected in the state team. Same is applicable to become a good programmer. If you want to become a programmer, you should start coding as early as possible. So, you should decide what you want, an interview or career guidance session. The choice is yours.
Story #2: A Tata Indicom Salesman
It happened in 2009. One day we were working in our small office at Bandra. Suddenly, a young 20-year guy came into our office, to sell the Tata Indicom data card. While giving the demo, he asked curiously what we do. We told him that we are a software firm and we make open source software. Then he told us that he is also a fresh passed out computer engineer and looking for a job and inquired about any vacancy in our company. We said no, but told him to give an aptitude test, which we generally take while hiring fresher. Surprisingly, he ended the test 15 mins earlier than given time and guess what! He got the 19 out of 20 correct answers, the highest till then. Then we asked him to write a program in any preferred language. And that as well, he executed in a decent way. So, it ended with giving him an offer letter immediately. Later we discovered him as a very good developer, unfortunately, after 6 months, he left our office and joined Infosys. So, my point is, if you know well what you are doing, you don’t have to wait for an interview to get a job. It will come to you from anywhere.
Story #3: Mumbai Hackathon
This is a recent one. Around 8 months ago, we organised a hackathon in DBIT, Mumbai. It was a 2 day hackathon and participants were asked to develop any web/mobile app using any language. The only condition, the app must be published as open source on GitHub. There was 50000 cash prize money as well. There were around 20 teams from the different background, participated in the hackathon. At the end of the event, a 4th-year college guy (one of the winners) took all the attention. He made an entire working mobile application with so many functionalities in those 2 days. After some days, he approached us for an internship and came to our office to meet us. But after talking with him for 10 mins, we offered him a job, instead of an internship. The main reason for hiring was his passion for programming. He had already done many hours of programming in his student life. He is now working with us from last 4 months and we found him so brilliant. So the conclusion is, if you have practiced coding in your student life, an opportunity will automatically come to you, you don’t have to go for it.
This was an awesome experience to me, thanks Rushabh for giving me the opportunity. The stories were well received by the audience at the workshop. I don’t know if it will motivate those students or not, to start coding at their student life. But out of those 150 students, if it motivates at least one, then it will be a great reward to me.
