An Interactive session with Harsh Bhardwaj at Youstart : How to land great Jobs.
As a part of on-going tradition of interactions with past Alumni and Industry mentors, we organized a session with Harsh Bhardwaj on 5th June 2018, as part of Summer Training and Internship Program. Harsh works at PTC, which is known for its Internet of things (IoT) and augmented reality (AR) platform for partners and developers. PTC has six core product families: Creo, Windchill, Mathcad, Integrity, Servigistics, and ThingWorx.
Harsh has taken out some time from his busy schedule during his visit to Jaipur. Harsh has been a part of the Youstart family and always helped young coders to learn and work on new technologies by being an active volunteer at college club. He is continuing the same role via these activities — even after joining the Industry. Most of the session was Q & A, which went over an hour to discuss various topics related to students life and career. Here are the key elements :
How was your interview experience at PTC and other companies?
Most of the interviewers asked about some problem to check your problem-solving attitude and not syntax and semantics. If they have given a problem then you have to provide an efficient approach to solve it — and keep optimizing it over the discussion. They want to see how you think about a problem in a real-life situation. They want to analyze your thought process, as you will be working with them on day-to-day work. I am talking about interviews of good companies; a mass recruiter might not be interested in providing so much time to each candidate.
Most of my interviews went for more than 1 or 2 hours in which we discussed a single problem at hand. Most good companies allow you to think on pen & paper or a whiteboard. They don’t want your code — as the code is an obvious thing which anyone can write.
How was life after college?
Life in college was a bit of struggle for me — it was enjoyable but hard. You have to go through many courses and exams. In between, you want to work on good internships too. But, it is hard to get a good internship, especially in a non-IT city like Jaipur.
I remember a boy with an injured leg and traveling almost 20KM to complete internship works. It was me!
But I wanted to do that, it was not a burden for me. I worked on many internships in which I was not paid any stipend — but all was the experience.
Life after joining PTC has been fun. I work on real-life problems with like-minded people. I get some extra money to spend than in my college days. I can work on exciting new things.
I remember a boy with an injured leg and traveling almost 20KM to complete internship works. It was me!
What is the role of training/internship in engineering?
You need not do any training if you can learn these things on your own — the internet is a big resource for learning new things. If you need guidance approach a good mentor — who has industry skills and has worked in the relevant industry. There are a lot of coachings but most of them are focused on certificates, not on learning real industry practices. I think training or internship should be done where you are actually working in an industry environment under the guidance of people who know how the industry works.
I didn’t have many certificates when I was sitting for placements. Even though I had completed many training and internships but I was not interested in collecting those certificates. I was rather interested in working and get some new skills.
I remember a guy sitting beside me during placement time having a lot of certificates but did not have any knowledge of current technologies. I was selected after that interview, based on my knowledge and skills — he wasn’t.
Certificates with no knowledge are of no value.
How did you start with coding and other things?
I worked on many internships — as I said many of them did not pay anything. I was not working for certificates or stipend but for the experience.
I think all of it was used somewhere in my journey — you can’t say exactly where it will be useful but somewhere it will be.
I attended node.js Summer Bootcamp at Youstart and that came to use in one of the rounds in PTC interview. Also, my current profile and work of full stack developer started recently — there we had to learn these frameworks quickly and I am finding it familiar as I have already learned Nodejs here. So you never know when it will be useful — but real knowledge never goes away.
Is it worth going to software development field, nowadays?
Yes, it is a quite exciting field. You can create new products. You can work on new ideas. You can create things which people use. You get to work with people who are helpful, friendly and have similar visions as you. Finding such an environment is difficult in any practical sector. The software industry is still the top choice of making a career. Also, it is flexible — you can work from anywhere — you get work from home. you don’t need big machinery. Everything you need is your system and will to work on given problem.
One should do master’s or go to software development company? Which is better?
It completely depends on your interest If you are interested in academics or research then go for further studies i.e. Master’s degree.
If you want a big job master’s degree may be helpful for that too but it is not worth to spend 2 years to join master’s degree and then work in software development after that.
Now you can apply to any country across the globe if you have the required skill set. It is better to have 2 years of working experience in the software field.
But if you are focused on government jobs, teaching jobs or some similar options, master’s degree can be helpful. But in software development, it is not so.
You can always go to a better company in 2 years or less than that by improving your skills and good coding practices.
Is it worth learning MEAN Stack?
MEAN Stack is a framework in which you can create applications. There are many such frameworks.
Initially, companies are not worried about the platform you use to solve a particular problem.
If you can solve a problem, no one worries about the platform. However, MEAN stack is a good platform. Many companies are adopting it. It is quite popular in the current industry. I am also working as a Full Stack Developer. But you have to always think that technologies will come and go — you have to be an engineer first who can solve any problem given to you. Technology and frameworks will change but you have to prove yourself in any given task. That’s why I have learned in my college days — whatever task is given to you, complete it with full dedication.
How to prepare for placements?
If you are thinking about campus placements — you don’t have to prepare a lot just read some traditional books to prepare aptitude and tech questions. If you are thinking of a good company — prepare data structures well, read about object-oriented programming concepts — not syntax. Know about SOLID principle and practice programming question on some online forum.
You should have a good profile on GitHub, and other code platforms.
How important is percentage or marks for placements?
I had a backlog — I was not able to sit in many companies during my campus placements. Ultimately I had got a better job than others. Do I need to say any more about marks and percentage? If you want to go to masters and higher studies — might be useful to have higher grades but otherwise — no one will ask.
How you faced tech interviews with basic knowledge of JAVA and other things?
Companies are not checking in-depth knowledge of Java or any framework. You can survive with basic knowledge if you have the problem-solving attitude with you.
What do you think about future of mobile application software development?
Future is bright for mobile and all smart devices which will come. You can already see that people are using mobile as complete computing systems. There are lots of work going on in this field.
What is a product company and how it is different from a service company?
Product company has there own product -like windows by Microsoft — they work on the product, maintain it and improve it. Service companies — generally work on products of other companies and make them possible using their developers — Like Infosys. They create products for other companies who are their clients. Generally, people want to work in product company as they can have a ownership of some product — but at times you can be bored on working on the same project. But you can switch if your company provide flexibility to switch teams and products.
These were excerpts from talk of Harsh, if you want to be a part of growing community of coders and hackers at Youstart, you can join our facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/youstartlabs .
