What you want and what you should pursue ?
In this blog, I am going to talk about what choices, an undergraduate engineering student has and what should one choose out of those.
Taking mine, and story of million other students in India, who go through this same phase, I will try to explain all the choices we have in our college and what we actually end up taking.
So, I joined Delhi Technological University. It somehow became my dream college, because of a senior in my school. Obviously, the goal was to get into Indian Institute of Technology. But we all know how tough that is, right ? Btw, in 10th standard, I did not have any such goals. I did not even know that IIT existed. I got to know it through my seniors and then it became a dream like it happens to everybody. I didn’t even know that I wanted to be an engineer, but somehow the people around were and they were doing good in their life. So, it kind of made me want it too. I think, this is what happens to most of us.
Then in the college, I got to know about various paths which I could take.
I found each path quite fascinating and I wanted to tread on all of them. When I first joined college, I wanted to join #FAANG and make a lot of money. But as I grew more into college, I realised that there were other possibilities too. Some people wanted to do masters and the reasons for them to do masters were:
- To work in an international location.
- To get H1b and live the American dream.
- To improve skills and actually learn the subject in detail through better education.
There were some others, who were learning development from various places, creating short-term projects. The reasons for them were:
- To gain some money as freelancers.
- To get the skills which would help them in their job.
- To actually contribute to the open source community.
Then there were others who were engrossed in competitive coding and were trying to be best at it. The reasons for them were:
- To win ACM ICPC.
- They were having fun in it.
- To get into a good company
Some were trying out different ideas and trying to launch their own startup. The reasons for them to work on launching their own startup was:
- They did not want to work under a boss.
- To earn money which job can never provide.
- They had a great idea on which they wanted to work on.
Well, today also most of the students would have the same options and same reasons. Now going down on any of the 4 paths requires 4 different strategies and 4 different types of preparation models. I was one of the many for whom grass was always greener on the other side. So, I tried to do everything. In doing this, I actually lost the meaning of why I was pursuing something. So, I don’t want any of you reading this to go through this same process. So, I will lay out the reality, what would be the end goal if you pursue any of the given four options.
Option 1: Work on your startup
Working on your own startup can be because of different reasons like I mentioned above and it requires a lot of motivation and dedication to actually pursue to open a startup. Many people start but quit within the first few days of actually doing something about it. Now I will lay out the only reason for which you should pursue this path.
Reasons to Pursue: Pursue this only if you have full belief in the idea that you have for a startup and you have a great team with you. Now many will argue that you should also have skills for it. I think skills come with the opportunity hand in hand. Once you start working on your idea, you would gain the skills what you need to make it successful.
When to start: Now this can vary for different people. Some people do not have any monetary pressure, some have to support their families. A person who does not have any monetary pressure can start anytime, because even if they do not get a job, it will not harm anything. But for people who actually have to take care of their family, must start as early as possible. College is a time, when no one is expecting anything from you. You have the greatest freedom ever. But we have a mentality that the time in job would be better, because we would not have to study for exams and you can spend the free time from your job in building a startup. But a plain truth to this statement is that the time in job is much less than the time you have in college and your network reduces drastically. While on job, you might have to spend late nights or even weekends to finish some projects and the projects keep on coming, and the cycle never ends. But in college, you have a lot of time free, we know how much we study for the exams right ? In college, you have people with different backgrounds, skills and aspirations, but while on job everything is normalised. Everyone around you is doing the same thing and moving towards the same goal of promotion. So break all these barriers and start as early as possible.
End Result: Your startup might become successful or it may fail. But you will have the satisfaction that you went through the full cycle and gave everything for it. And if the above statement is true, there is no reason you could fail. It is very easy to pivot ideas and make a failed startup successful I believe. i have no experience on it, but I am drawing parallel to other things in life. If we spend long enough time on something, correcting our mistakes on each failure, we are bound to get it. But let’s say you still fail. Then also, you would have a large set of skills, a great network of people and you can anytime get a job at a good company, maybe through your connections directly.
Reasons not to pursue: The reason not to pursue is very important because many people waste their time doing it. Now many of us get motivated by seeing other people working on their startups and we get motivated that we also want to start one and then start finding the ideas to build it. I believe this is the worst reason to start a startup or as a matter of fact anything in life. Because this model is not sustainable and can never create success. Unless you really want to do it and really love doing it, don’t bother. Rather focus on finding something you really love by interacting with people.
Option 2: Competitive programming
Competitive programming is a great way to get better at data structures and algorithms. It is like a mental sport, which helps you become good at solving technical problems through data structures and algorithms. Considering the four criteria competitive programming too:
Reasons to Pursue: I believe everyone should at least try once competitive programming. Now this statement is not true for someone who is aspiring to lead a startup. In my experience, doing two things at a time has always been cumbersome and less productive. Competitive Programming helps to grow your skills in data structures and algorithms and also helps to improve your aptitude and problem solving skills. But, after pursuing it for a while, you find that you are not having un doing it, then you should leave it. The reasons to pursue competitive programming should not be just to get a good job and not having fun with it. Because there are other ways too, to get a good job.
When to start: Everyone should start learning data structures and algorithms and try competitive once in the 1st year of the college itself those who do not have any other plans. Most of the students spend their time on college studies in their first year, because they do not know what is important and what is not. So, instead of doing that, I think, one should spend time in coding and learning DS & Algo. It gives you a lot of confidence and will protect you to be in a panic situation in 3rd year when you are sitting for internships.
End Result: you might love it and get hooked to it and get so better at it to take part in international competitions or you would gain enough knowledge and skills which will make a foundation for you to crack any company.
Reasons not to Pursue: If you don’t love it after doing it for a while, then don’t do it and find something which you like. There are many other ways to actually crack companies and just pursuing it to get a good job is not a good idea. Rather, you should try and explore what you love.
Option 3: Do research and get into masters
Very few people actually choose this option and go for masters in computer science. From my batch itself, there were just 2–3 students aspiring for it. Major reason for people trying to get into good international universities is either to get a tag, get a work visa in the country where they will be studying or actually improving their skills.
Reasons to Pursue: I believe the only reason to pursue this path should be to actually gain skills and if you really want to get deep into a subject or you want to create a great network of people around the globe. If the reason for this is to get a better job or work in a different country, then this is probably not a good idea. If you are not rich enough, you would probably get under a lot of debt which you will be repaying in next 2–3 years after studying. So considering a happy life after 5 years, you can easily get to work anywhere internationally after 2–3 years of experience in your own country and even at a better position because of the experience you will have which master’s students don’t have
When to start: To get into a good college, you need to be good into various fields. The most important is that you should have good grades, you should have atleast 1–2 research projects. You should be able to write a great SOP and getting good GRE and TOEFL scores are a cherry on the top. So, it is a combined effort spread over 4 years.
End Result: You would gain a master’s degree, and a great network of people and friends. You would get to work in an international location. You would easily get a H1B visa if you are targeting U.S.A
Reasons not to Pursue: If your reasons to pursue are just working internationally or gain visa of some location, then you should probably drop the idea, because there are other ways to get this and it is not worth risking a lot of money just to work/settle in an international location. Any job you take after Master’s will be an entry level job and the people with just bachelors could be working at a level above you at the time you graduate(real story not just hypothesis).
Option 4: Do development and freelance projects/open source programming
Well, this is a great area to work on, to gain varied skills and connecting with people around the globe. This will actually give you a taste of what software development is like and also make some money around it.
Reasons to Pursue: The only reason to pursue this path should be to actually gain some skills and develop different new applications. If developing new products really excites you, then this is definitely for you.
When to start: You can start and get feel of it anytime. It is a vast domain and you can get knowledge about different things. There is no harm in starting it early or late or maybe never if you don’t want to.
End Result: You would gain a lot of skills, and you can even make it a full time career, creating things for the people and working as a freelance developer.
Reasons not to Pursue: Most of people start to pursue this to just gain money or just to create something to add on resume. If these are your reasons, then please don’t go for it. You will burn out of it as soon as you start.
I would simply like to conclude with, that do only something which you really love. In college, you have the freedom to experiment as many things as you can, so you must really focus on experimenting and finding the best possible thing. They are many other paths too, which get blocked out of perspective for a student. Don’t get blinded by what people around you are doing. I believe, we should just focus on finding what we really like and continue to work on it until we get perfect at it.
