three backs and zero jobs later, i had passed out of college

Hi, I am Abhijeet De Sarkar(ads). I am an IT 2015 pass out. My percentage was 59.7 and had 3 backs, and yes I got a job.

I always knew that I wanted to do engineering

Even in school, I would make electronics projects. I would open up old telephones, video games and tried to understand how they work. I just wanted to make things.

So when I got into college I was really stoked that finally I would learn something useful. But my excitement didn’t survive “college teaching”. It was 8 hours writing shit which could have easily been photocopied and distributed. Practicals were a joke, the only priority these guys had was the fuckin’ lab manual. CT’s were something else all the way. I still don’t understand why you had to write 2 pages for 5 marks and 4 for 10 marks. I didn’t like it at all.

I wanted to build something

I went to the electronics market in Chandni Chowk and got some electronic components. I started making circuits I used to find on the internet, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. The first year ended, what I understood was I am not gonna learn anything from college, if I wanted to do anything, I would have to do it myself.

I had heard a lot about this thing called Linux. So I did a course on it in my vacation. I learned how to install it, do ssh, how to setup FTP, DHCP etc. It was fun.

Built stuff, got backs

Simple Line Follower I made

The Second year began, I wanted to learn more about Linux and make more projects. There was a course in Embedded Electronics, which I quickly enrolled for. I learned how to use electronic components and how to program the micro-controller so it does some specific tasks. I made a binary counter, a line follower. But things were not going well for me in the academic front. I didn’t really have any interests in the subjects and I didn’t pay attention during lectures. I had started bunking college and used to spend my time watching tv shows and playing games. My attendance was dwindling day by day. Low attendance letter was sent to my home and Emotional Attyachar started.I didn’t do well got three backs in 3rd sem. I cleared one of them that year, didn’t give one and failed the other one again.

Two week adrenaline

By the Fourth semester I got a bit serious and started going to college more regularly, but that only lasted for a week or two. Around that time almost everyone in my section had started doing “JAVA”, they said it had a lot of “scope”. So I joined Ducat to learn java. The pace of the course was terribly slow since it was only on weekend. Our batch was very small, new students kept coming in and our batch was rebooted many times. I wanted to stay ahead of the curve, so I also enrolled for Red Hat certification.

A coffee evaporates

By the third year, my interest in Java had deteriorated. I dropped out of it and just continued with Linux. After the course the time for certification test came, I cleared one, couldn’t do the other one. But now that I look back at it, I don’t really find any value in that certification.

It is not useful, never was. I had wasted some 20k on something that didn’t fucking matter, I could have easily done all that on my own.

I also started getting some interest in Competitive programming, but I used to get stuck a lot and mostly didn’t understand what the question was, and always used to apply the naive approach. I was stuck at the famous Life, the Universe, and Everything question for almost a year.

My submissions for Life, the Universe, and Everything

My problem was that I didn’t understand what the question was asking, and I didn’t ask for help. With time I was able to solve one or two question in Codechef long challenges. Time for back examination came, again I gave one of them and passed it. Partied the night before the second examination, didn’t give it.

A bunch of naive, incompetent kids

By the end of the third year, I got a chance to work on Mail Server project from One.com. There were two teams from IT and one from CS. Our goals were big we wanted to make a highly available mail-server, with clustering and everything automated. We were naive. On the demo day, our mail server was not working. Nothing was showing up. But we had checked everything yesterday, and it was working all fine.

We had fucked up, big time.

Later I found out that our load balancer was pointing to the server which didn’t have any code. I was furious with my teammates, how could they not check this. Then the CS team presented their mail-server and it was awesome. They had even built a log analysis tool, we didn’t even think that far, I was really impressed.

After the demo there was a programming test, We had to read a file get the contents sort them and then send an email. Fuck. I used to do programming in C, and I knew I would not be able to do this. I submitted a blank page.
Later that day I asked Vedansh to show me his code. He had written it in python and it was fucking beautiful. It looked like plain English. Things which were very difficult in C could be done easily.

I made up my mind: I was going to learn python.

Learn Python the hard way

I was just doing python every day. I did python course on Codecademy then I found Learn python the hard way, did that. Some of my friends also got interested into python and they would come to my place, and we would just code every night. We would do questions on Codechef, write small scripts, etc. My aggregate percentage was around 55–56 at that time, I was not allowed to sit in any placement drive.

This was a blessing in disguise. While everyone would waste their time on giving GDs, stupid tests and interviews, I would code. By this time I also completed my mail server, properly this time.

Project- project

We were told to start working on our major projects. We went with home automation. I knew that I could handle the electronics part of the project, but I didn’t know how to do the two-way communication between the machine and the server. Another problem was I needed a website so that people could log in and control their devices. I chose Django for that, completed the Tango with Django tutorial to learn the basics.

I was still looking how to tackle the problem of server to machine communication, but could not find anything. Every tutorial on the internet was for a local network. I asked Gupta and he said it is not possible, he told me that Tiwari ji was working on Home automation, and they were using IPV6 because you need a public endpoint to receive data. I was not really convinced, there had to be a way.

I had to pass this time, my career depended on it

The time for back examinations came again, I stopped doing everything else and studied religiously. I had to pass this time, my career depended on it. I still remember it today, It was January 3rd, my birthday, I woke up early and took a bath and went to college to get admit card. I asked the guy for my admit card, he asked for my name and started searching. There was college administration guy standing beside him and started asking me, about which subject I had to give back exam for, I told him. He made a disgusted face and said: “Uska toh exam abhi chl rha hai.”. I was like what the fuck. I told him not it is on 5th. He got to his computer, opened the UPTU examination schedule and showed me. It really was on 3rd.

I had mixed up between UPTU and MTU dates.

I became very depressed after that, could not do anything. Sleep alluded me, could not even write a single line of code. I did not know what to tell my family. I knew I could not get any job without a degree, my future looked bleak. It was hard to go to college, everyone was celebrating their placements.

Me, Ashvini(left) and Gupta(right) at Gupta’s Placement

I became a regular visitor of UPTU site, to check when the back examinations were going to be held. One day I was browsing, and just wanted to see my old results. But there was something odd in there, it showed I had passed all my subjects, even though I had 22 marks in DLD. I dismissed it, thinking there was some error on the website. It was only later I found that grace marks had been increased to 10, and I had finally passed.I had never felt so relieved, it was the best day of my life.

I got back to coding in full swing. I took part in as many coding challenges I could. On Jan 15 long challenge I was able to solve 5 questions(this was an easy challenge, though), this boosted my confidence a lot. ‘

Solved 5 questions on Codechef Long Challenge

I found out that one of my friends, Harshit Anand was doing Django. So I started collaborating with him. I made a lot of small Django apps at that time and was getting confident day by day. I started my research for the project again and found that a protocol named ‘XMPP’ was exactly what I was looking for. I started building the project now. What once seemed daunting, looked very easy now. It was built in less than a week, the web app, communication with the XMPP server and all the electronics.

Arrows in the dark

As days went by, I got more and more worried about my career. I started applying but did not get many responses, due to my less percentage. If by some miracle I would get a call, I was not able to communicate properly due to my introverted nature. I just kept on trying. I would apply to every job I could find, asked seniors to review my cover letter and resume. In March, Gupta hooked me up for an interview at a startup in Hyderabad. It was system administration work, and I thought it is better than doing nothing. I gave the interview and did the task. Again no response, I was used to this by now. I just packed my bags and went home for Holi Holidays. Two days later I received an email, stating that I had got the internship, but I had to go and work at Hyderabad for 15 days, after that it was remote. After coming back to Ghaziabad, I kept on working remotely. Gupta started pestering me to ask them for some compensation as I was working as an unpaid intern.

I was more than happy to work freely, I did not believe someone would pay me for what I was doing.

I was wrong there. When I finally asked for some compensation I got it, though I had to do some negotiation and was scared shitless that I would be fired. But it was all worth it.

I still kept looking for jobs

I knew my technical was okayish but communication was weak. I used to note down the places where I’d fumble and would prepare those points for the next interview. Semesters came and went by. I was excited for the Project Practical but the external examiner didn’t even ask anything, I don’t think he understood what was going on. When I left Ghaziabad on 4th June 2015, I didn’t have any job.

On 10th June got my first Offer Letter. By the end of June, I had three offers.

TL;DR

• Do not depend on college. Do what you want to do now.
• Don’t spend money on certifications. Those folks are there to just make money. You won’t learn anything.
• Do online courses, read books. Ask for help when you get stuck.
• Collaborate with others. It will help you understand, how others perceive the same thing.
• Do not work for free. Do not get backs in college, if you do clear them before you reach final year.

There’s a mailing list, a whatsapp group, a slack channel, a facebook page, a series of blogs that constitute the club. Funny, eh? Come join us!