Episode — 3
The third episode of PK from KEC went quite interesting. The audience participated with full enthusiasm, today I received all the questions prior to the show that too anonymous. All the questions felt very connected with my experiences. Sharing some highlights from the show.
What is the difference between a service and a product-based company? where should I go?
As far as I have experienced, while providing services you are supposed to build a product on the customer’s idea while on product the idea is your own and you build things on top of that. There is a thin line difference. Building a product for someone who is partnering with your company in a good faith is what we refer to as service and that’s where a services-based company makes business. Product is where you got another idea on top of it, and you modify things accordingly. In services, even if you partner for a dead idea, delivering the work is a primary target. For opting for a career, I think one should go for a company that has the services business running and also a product being developed in parallel. I think getting a taste of both the businesses is quite helpful. Fortunately, we have a services business running along with products being developed in ColoredCow, so I could get clarity over both of them.
As a Btech student, what are the three most important things that I should focus on?
Although I did not achieve much in three years of Btech, everything changed for me after getting into the internship during the final year. What I learned after that if you want to pursue a career in any domain, you need to work on that right from day one itself. When I realized to make a career in Software Development, I started crafting my resume from the first day, starting with PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, bootstrap, I gradually added a skillset to my portfolio. So the very first thing I would recommend is to start thinking about what career you want to make and craft your resume accordingly.
The second thing, I would recommend is to build a community around you. Get in the company of those who resonate with you, build your network with seniors and juniors. Share your learnings with them for collective growth, when you will start giving input in the network, there will be fruitful outputs for you as well. Building networks and relationships play an important role, a bigger network means a huge range of resource sets and ideas along with you. Create clubs in the college, connect with alumni to know what’s happening in the outside world.
The third thing that I believe should be living the life you dreamt to have in college, no matter wherever you are, just find opportunities in making things happen and creating something in a beautiful way. Visit places, meet new people, share your views, listen to them. These things give a very different angle to mindset and perspective.
What according to you is the best way to clear academics in college?
I never struggled with academics actually, neither I was too much into the studies. I used to get pretty decent marks, probably the reason might be whatever classes I had attended, I made sure to focus on what’s going on. Apart from that, I used to think of integrating concepts on my laptop. Be it algorithms, data structure, or networking. I had a seniors network in the college, and they used to organize weekly coding competitions for us. The problems always had been from the core concepts of academics but solving them through code was a bit interesting for me, I didn’t have mastery at writing the code, but I was good at building logic using the concepts. That’s where I was connected with the subjects. I remember, while playing Counter-Strike on LAN, we learned so many things from networking from our seniors, that it helped me score the highest marks in the subject itself. How you can make studies more interesting, totally depends on you.
Also, if you really want to get better at academics, don’t focus on getting marks, try to achieve excellence in the subject itself. Don’t fight with the books a night before the exams, indeed keep the concepts integrated into the routine. Learning gradually always works the best
How was your experience when you first worked on a project in collaboration, was it different from the one you worked on in college?
Definitely yes, the experience was quite different from that I had in college. Let’s get to a project in collaboration first. There was a complete team involved with the project including the design, development, project management, quality assurance, and deployment team. Each of the project stages used to have different processes and timelines. Working with the team and sharing daily progress was the major point of integrity. We used to divide a problem into several milestones and modules. Rather than jumping on the code, there was a proper understanding of the problem and the solution of the approach. There used to be daily Github check-ins, suddenly my GitHub profile started looking different from what it used to be in the college.
There were peer reviews to filter minor mistakes in each other's code. There were code reviews from our mentors who used to share better logics and optimization techniques. And finally, when our code used to be live on the cloud, it gave a different sense of belongingness. The experience of working in collaboration is completely different, which I used to miss while working on a project in the college.
How do I find a suitable internship for me?
Finding an internship is again related to the network and community building part. I found an opportunity when ColoredCow came to KEC for CodeTrek sessions. I was involved with the team at that time and my thoughts aligned with the language they were speaking. I found resonance in the way of working and discussed how I can be a part of it. When given a chance, I applied for the internship and got selected. Previously, I had done a work from home internship by searching it on Internshala, but that was more of a college project kind of thing, where I had to build everything on my own. Although I learned Android development during that phase, it sort of became more of a freelancing rather than working as a Software Developer. When landed in ColoredCow internship, things started changing from there itself. All I did was built a community, found resonance in the way people were working, and thought to become one of them. To find a suitable internship, don’t use filters on websites, instead of that reach out to your network and explore if you can get aligned with the work and the team, that’s where you will find a match.
Conclusion:
Today’s session again highlighted the career-oriented questions which have a common pattern in them. In the hope to get all the answers for them through my achievements, experiences, and network, I will be meeting everyone next Thursday on PK from KEC at 4:30 pm. Excited to hear out more from you guys..!!
