I uploaded my recent resume to ChatGPT and told it to review, expecting I am the best junior, entry level, fresher developer in the world who can easily conquer any type of SDE and AI roles. Then all the giggles and laugh went down my foot when “a mere AI” gave me a score of 6.5 for the resume….
I didn't write about the tutorials, or localhost development. With an experience of working in an startup led by once-industry giants, I worked under them. Built various project though not for any consumers or for any public use cases just to fill my GitHub and make myself proud, i can build this.
You see most junior developer who gets or make an intern in their early stage, feels like they can build and crack any interview and any job they see, and to some it is even possible. But in today’s market condition, and things going on with the AGIs, and all sort of “SOTA AI” roaming around the world, its very difficult for a student or a fresher to make a strong position in the market. While being in the bubble that if he/she had achieved a certain type of goal in their early years that doesn't guarantee it would be same for the proceeding years. Earlier like around the boom of the AI when Leetcode and other “job recruiting CP platform” started being popular, then at that time, if it was 80% of your skills and hardwork then 20% of the luck was there to push you further and make you stable within the company. But now, man, its horribly, 20% stays hardwork and all, which becomes the second priority if you were able to have 80% of the luck to let you just for the interview. I have sent, in my prefinal year, nearly 200+ applications online, i even made an Automation tool for filling the applications but getting only handful of 5–6 interviews with absurd amount of skill and tech stack feels illegal to chose the CSE branch. As I mentioned 20% skill, don't judge to fast, i mean to show your skill to a recruiter, you first need to make yourself visible to him, and trust me, neither you are a god nor they and hence it comes to the chances only that one get noticed by the recruiter, its not recruiters fault as well, reviewing tens of thousands of candidates for a backend role, (or any), where each candidate has revised all the concept of their favorite youtuber, is indeed difficult to chose. That 80% luck, also comes from a unknown source which a candidate follows and suddenly whatever predictions and choices he make, they came out to be true, some people say this as coping up with the market needs. And tbh, developers should be dynamic and adapt the present needs, but again the problem is the timing and the timeline we are all trapped in, currently, a month changes, and there comes another Fireship video on new AI (including AI editor and everything) being SOTA on all benchmarks, that are generated by the company itself and chasing for the superiority.
Coming back to the interviews, considering me, I still dont know what is going on, like I fill an absurd amount of applications (100s of them) then there comes an invite link of 2 or 3 companies, and i dont know how come, intern interviews are becoming a three round of judgement, where every time after the first round the interviewer only says “I am considering you, and have sent your profile to the further rounds of process, if there is a match we will get back to you.” Seriously, if there is match… man it was a match that's why i was interviewed… now what do you want!! I am fed up with this… man… what I would say. Being a CSE guy from a tier 2–3 college is a curse to a student unless, you are god’s child, or you are lucky, atleast what i think. Cant say much about college, it could get me into trouble.
A senior told me make a decent coding portfolio would get you a role in good company. I asked how much is decent, plot-twist he is still unplaced working alongside a startup with stipend of 15K pm. Nonetheless, I took his advise, started watching tutorials, learned Git, started doing CP, after rigorous, 6–8 months of grind i finally farmed some greenness in my GitHub/LeetCode, but guess what, when 80% of your luck is playing with your life, nothing goes along the path you think the best. “India is a country where labour is cheap”, this you have often heard, but i thought how come it is true, eventually, we Indians are running major firms. But its sadly true, earlier, GitHub, used to be a platform where coding and contributing was considered privilege and only some people could understand and able to contribute, but now the condition is worse. People are fighting for the issue, continuously raising PRs even if the issue is solved and closed, commenting on PR to assign them, and the foolishness goes on. This resulted India to suffer from delisting from the MLH, and possibly GSoC is no far as well. I even tried the GSoC, but the competition and overwhelming nature of other contributors revealed what true, open source has become. I really hope GSoC bans India so that I can hid my inefficacy (I don't really want its just the frustration/sarcasm). Not to mention, I’ve got unfinished business with LinkedIn, Internshala, Wellfound and the entire circus. If I start naming them all, this rant will turn into a full-fledged Beggars & Broken Dreams.
I dont know how large and/or good this blog can be, as I havent written any such "essay" since a long time. If you find any grammatical, indentation or anything wrong, congrats you know better english than me. I dont even thought of writing a freaking article, just saw someone's useless article on Medium explaining shit out of his work and explaining he learnt a lot.
Lastly, I would just say that, IT'S ALL GOD'S PLAN IN THE END. No matter what you think how you do, it takes time, and decent time. For some its early, and for some its you know...
Thanks a lot for reading. Sorry for any sarcasm, jokes, or any grammatical mistake.
Thank You, and if you are a recruiter, HIRE ME, please🥺! at least have an interview.