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Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

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Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#21

Post by liquidise »

amandavinci wrote: post #15
liquidise wrote: post #13

You have already mentioned the top one for me: passion. Colleges rarely teach you what you need to know professionally - they can't, tech moves too fast. Instead, they teach you how to learn what you need to know. This is an important distinction because it should inform your approach to your professional growth. 1. Stay passionate both about software and your own growth/education in it. 2. Start some personal projec…

I'm following the first two points earnestly and I'll start with the third one as well. And the mentor aspect is what I'm missing right now. So, I have planned to contribute to open source and/or apply to GSOC '17. Any other ideas how to find suitable mentors?

You are well on your way. The fact that you are posing the question already speaks highly of your drive, so hold your head high.

I'm sure others will have better advice than i do about finding mentors. In my case my first CTO out of school was a major impact. I should also say that mentors may not be above you, but peers. Even in college i became close friends with other developers who, collectively, influenced one another with our learnings and opinions. A rising tide raises all ships, as it were.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#22

Post by amandavinci »

glangdale wrote: post #19
amandavinci wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I have an interest in games and AI / ML, I would still consider being a good software engineer first. I'm aiming for a strong foundation and expertise in one field: AI or anything related. Being a fresher, I believe I won't get to work straight at these. And by "at par", I meant the same opportunities that a top school student gets.

My opinionated version is that you should bail out on games and focus on AI/ML, then try to get into the best grad school you can and get really good at difficult things that other people can't do (even better, things that they can't do and don't want to do). Games fail that test because too many people want to work on them. Becoming a good software engineer seems to come from working with people with good taste (on…

Indeed. After talking to other people and thinking hard about my options, I have come to same conclusion. But finding good people to work with or under seems really hard. I really don't know how to find good mentors other than contributing to open source and hoping someone senior likes my contributions.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#23

Post by praneshp »

Possibly unpopular opinion here on HN. I almost went to VIT in 2007 (shockingly got into NIT Trichy instead).

1. Focus on becoming a good programmer (ie, SPOJ/Topcoder/Directi). That'll help you clear interviews, and get good at thinking about algos and data structures. I'd even prioritize this over other CS fundamentals.

2. Keep your GPA up and get into a good grad school. I disliked both the interview process and the classism (ie, recruit from top schools) of Indian companies when I interviewed there.

3. If you don't want to go to grad school, make sure you don't touch TCS/CTS/Wipro/ with a 100-foot-long- pole. Given your passion, and assuming you use the next two years to become a strong programmer, you will find a good place to work in Bangalore. You might have to pay your dues, but please don't pay them at the above mentioned places.

And people who look at you as second class undergrads can fuck off (esp the professors at IIT Madras :) ). I know several friends at IITs that preferred to pot-smoke-away their time there. If you're near Chennai I'm happy to chat with you.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#24

Post by seesomesense »

If you are at Vellore (VIT appears to be Vellore Institute of Technology ), there is a world class medical institution in your town (CMC Vellore )that sends many of their graduates around the world to places like the Mayo Clinic and MGH.

They have a well regarded neurophysiology lab that was run by Marcus Devanandan. Perhaps you could do research / collaborate with them.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#25

Post by DrWumbo »

praneshp wrote: post #23

Possibly unpopular opinion here on HN. I almost went to VIT in 2007 (shockingly got into NIT Trichy instead). 1. Focus on becoming a good programmer (ie, SPOJ/Topcoder/Directi). That'll help you clear interviews, and get good at thinking about algos and data structures. I'd even prioritize this over other CS fundamentals. 2. Keep your GPA up and get into a good grad school. I disliked both the interview process and t…

I work at a Fortune 50 in the US, and we hire a lot the TCS devs and others from Chennai. A lot of them whom I talk to say they feel trapped where they are, and exploited by these mass VIT employers.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#26

Post by amandavinci »

praneshp wrote: post #23

Possibly unpopular opinion here on HN. I almost went to VIT in 2007 (shockingly got into NIT Trichy instead). 1. Focus on becoming a good programmer (ie, SPOJ/Topcoder/Directi). That'll help you clear interviews, and get good at thinking about algos and data structures. I'd even prioritize this over other CS fundamentals. 2. Keep your GPA up and get into a good grad school. I disliked both the interview process and t…

Being a good programmer and having a good GPA seems like inversely proportional in our college. Only the students who follow lecture slides and are good at writing exams seem to have >=9 CGPA.

And yeah, it would be great to chat. Here is my mail: aman@amandavinci.me Or, you can go to my website for social media contacts: http://amandavinci.me/

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#27

Post by amandavinci »

seesomesense wrote: post #24

If you are at Vellore (VIT appears to be Vellore Institute of Technology ), there is a world class medical institution in your town (CMC Vellore )that sends many of their graduates around the world to places like the Mayo Clinic and MGH. They have a well regarded neurophysiology lab that was run by Marcus Devanandan. Perhaps you could do research / collaborate with them.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out. :)

And yeah, I'm currently looking for internships and such for the summer. But the credentials card always comes in play.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#28

Post by ageis »

Having come from a similar background, I can offer you these suggestions -

1. The level of programming taught in Indian universities is not enough. Writing a sort program is quite different from writing good, maintainable OOP code. Apart from working in a good company, one way to develop this skill (which I feel is critical) is to look and contribute to good open source projects - elasticsearch, spark, etc. Unfortunately I don't know of any good books which teach this overall, apart from specific aspects like Effective Java.

2. Another aspect that I feel is missing in Indian universities is challenging assignments. I would have liked to write my own toy OS to learn systems, or toy kafka to learn distributed systems. The more core computer science fundamentals you master now (preferably through writing code along with learning theory), the better an engineer you will be later.

3. Another aspect that is lacking is the way to reason through things. Indian universities have a third-person approach on the lines of "the experts do things this way so we will just do it this way", on the contrary in a US university the reasoning is more on the lines of "we use to do X, that had Y limitations. So we moved on to Z, now your assignment is to design an extension to Z (say Z+) which solves YY limitation". Unfortunately, I don't know what can be done to improve the way we reason about things.

4. Don't forget to explore different areas. I started with computer graphics, moved on to compilers, then app development, then data engineering, then infrastructure development, then back to data engineering.

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