What to do during 4 years of engineering?

Quite a few nephews (cousin's kids) are getting into college this year and I've been repeatedly asked suggestions about what college, what branch etc. would be better. My simple reply to most of them is "It Doesn't Matter, they won't get a Job". Decide the college and the branch with this thought in mind and you will decide better. What will matter at the end of these 4 years is how much they can learn about surviving in this wild world. 

I've been thinking about doing this post for long but then, finally, I put down my thoughts today. What triggered this is that a stranger read some of my answers on Quora and reached out asking similar questions. Thanks. I hope this helps you too. 

It's great that you are thinking about making the best of these 4 years already. I wish you the best. 

As of now don't worry about a job/startup. Just try to do more of what you love to do. If you think you would like to do something, go ahead and try it out. Create opportunities for yourself, don't wait for them to appear. Only by trying multiple times will you learn if you like to do something or not. I have tried my hands at 70+ things (yes, I maintain a list) to learn which of the things I love doing versus which I do not enjoy as much.

But, money is important. The earlier you learn about it, the better it is. Let me give you some fundamentals of money making with some over-simplified examples. 

There are only two skills required to become wealthy - 

1. Creating something, 

2. Selling something. 

Everything else is labor. 

Anything that gives you money in exchange for your time is "labor". E.g. a Doctor can only earn for as many hours as she can spend. If she earns 1000 per hour, She can only earn 24000 per day (which is not even practically possible). But, if you have created something that can be copied and sold - you have a product that can earn a disproportionate amount of money even when you are not working on it. E.g. You build an App that users buy, you create just once but people will keep buying it even when you are sleeping. There is no real limit to how much you can earn because it's not dependent on time. 

So always try to learn these two critical skills of creation and selling. Creation is not only about software or hardware, it can be concepts, art as well. Selling - in itself is a complex thing. You need to learn management, communication, positioning, psychology, negotiation, statistics and quite a few other things. It can look overwhelming, but you have a lot of time. 

How you learn Selling, is by learning about people. How you learn about people is by:

1. Reading - Read a lot. Read anything, everything that you find interesting - fiction, non-fiction, history, news, business. Over a period of time, interests will keep changing and you'd learn a lot about different things. Reading books is one thing and reading situations is another. Ideally, Travel helps you learn the most about people, and books are a good hack since you may not be able to travel as much. 

2. Applying - Don't miss a chance to sell. Sell your ideas. Sell what you have created. Sell your services. Organising clubs and events at college can be a great learning experience for all this. Make friends with a lot of people. Do public speaking, volunteer, do social work, play sports.   

Since you are going to be into engineering and you like programming, you'd definitely acquire the power of "Creating" something.

Learn any technology deeply. Try to use it for the simplest of things you want to do. Learning even the oldest - C/Java language can be very helpful. All technologies are similar, just that the syntax used is a bit different. In fact, you may not try to learn the latest and most trending thing. Because trends phase out fast. The basics last forever. However, it would help to learn machine learning since the world is getting data rich very fast and they need more data engineers than ever before.
  

Certifications

I don't believe in certifications. It's just a standard external validation that you have learned something. Doesn't tell much about your abilities. Do it if you like it. Its value is always doubtful. However, learning is always important. Self-learning is the best bet. One awesome way to learn is by creating stuff and learning all that is needed to do that, another one is to help others in learning something. Udemy/Coursera have opened up so many opportunities to learn online from the best teachers in the world (sometimes for free or at very low prices). Take those free courses sincerely. I have moved from tech to business and moved up the ranks without any business degree. I've just leveraged a lot of these free courses, slideshare, and ebooks. Being sincere is more important than being serious. 

Learn about open source see how much software people all over the world have written and shared extensively for free. Fork repositories on Github, share all your ideas and creations freely and extensively. Connect with people who you can't reach out to, on Twitter and Linkedin. See how you can help them. The Internet is your friend, always feel free to ask questions and give answers. Ecosystem works that way - if you can give, you can take. 

Don't forget the FUN part. 

The reason I keep repeating Do What You Love - is because that's where the fun is. We are always bound by things that we are obligated to do, so doing something just because you love doing it is extremely important. I'd just want to add that sometimes it is ok to not do anything, idle around, gossip with friends and watch TV. Have fun while you are learning, and learn while you are having fun.  

Cheers, feel free to reach out to me if you have any specific questions or if you feel you are stuck. All the best. Here's something that you'd find helpful as well.



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How to get Training, Internships, Jobs at Startups?

I see a lot of people wonder on Quora if there are any startups that are hiring. And I’ve had engineers (even from IITs) ask these questions – how to get internship, how to get job in your dream company. Or how to find out what one should do? The problem stays same for both freshers and experienced folks – year after year.

The problem is both wide and deep. We are taught engineering, but never taught how to earn a living. Nevertheless, people come out of colleges, try to carve their own path and figure stuff on the way. Then they look back and bitch about the system. The easy way out, perhaps. While I do that too, I thought it may help if I can change something somewhere, at least for a few students who are looking to go beyond the basics and want to know stuff.

Here’s an example of a student who reached out to me (I don’t have a clue why, and how’d they find me… and it doesn’t matter!) :)

Student: Hello Sir, I am pursuing my engineering degree in CS from …XYZ… college, wish to get training from a company outside of the college so that we can understand the actual working style. What should I do for that?

My Answer:

I am happy to see that you are already taking steps to reach out and find opportunities. Good. The first thing you’d have to understand is that companies need awesome people, as much as people need awesome companies. With that understanding you’d need is to think from a company’s perspective why should they give you some time/opportunity/training.

How can YOU help them? If you are from computer science you better be good at something related to it – coding/finding-issues-with-code/mathematical-or-statistical-analysis/problem-solving/designing/identifying-patterns-in-data. I would believe from your background that you may not be able to truly understand anything I mentioned, after the first one – coding. So, assuming that coding is what you are good at, you need some proof in your kitty to show that you are actually good at it.

How? How’d you ascertain if someone is a good painter? or a writer for instance. Wouldn’t you ask them to show their paintings? So it is logical that a good coder codes. Codes for the love of it. Easy stuff – learn some PHP/Ruby-on-rails on the web and create some websites. Or learn some Android development and create an App or two. What app/website? Anything. A simple thing that solves a simple problem.

Now, what if you are NOT good at the only expected thing you should be good at? Well, then you’d need to find out what you are good at, or what you think you’d want to do in future. E.g. sports/music/events/ marketing/ sales – if you think you can do something well you should DO IT often.

Either it will give you confidence and motivation to do it more often or the option to look for something better. 

So keep trying new stuff and keep doing what you love to do.

Don’t wait for someone to ask you to do it. E.g. if you like identifying problems with something or if you are good at bringing in new ideas – take a product. any software product – an app (may be). Think Gmail/ Facebook/ Ola /Uber/ CouponDunia/ Signeasy/ Bookmybattery. Do you think you can improve them? If yes, how? Observe, analyse, jot down your ideas, create a report. Send your work to those guys. They are always listening. That is your way of telling them how useful you are.

That was just one example – I’d leave it to your imagination on how you’d come up with your worth, your story, doing what you really love to do. Once you have that in your kitty, reach out to these people. Most of them have career pages, write to people on LinkedIn, on twitter. Tell them how you need a chance to help them. Don’t drop in your Resume, write a letter to them and you may attach a resume if you like. Be true and candid. Do it more often, for anyone and everyone you think you can help. Do it because you love doing it. They’d love to have you onboard.

I am sure you were not expecting such a big chunk of gyaan and I could have shared some links like internshala.com, letsintern, hellointern, twenty19, inturn where you can find internship opportunities.
But, I thought it will help you in the long run. I hope it does.

Let me know if now you think you can help me. 
Hint: Start by leaving a comment and sharing this post on facebook/linkedin. 

Best luck!

Update: Found this nice example of how Anand did it for Zomato.




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