Thought of starting this blog writing journey with my own story!
Let’s start with a quick introduction!
Hello everyone! My name is Aman Harsh. I am from the Blue City of India - Jodhpur (Rajasthan) Currently working as an Assistant System Engineer @ TCS. I am a B.Tech. graduate in Computer Science & Engineering from Jodhpur Institute of Engineering and Technology - 2016-2020 batch. I am a bathroom singer, noob guitarist and a passionate photographer too (would be covering my photography journey in an another blog some day).
Here, I would like to share a few things about my journey that are not on my resume or anywhere else. Let’s begin!
I had science math as my subject in 11th and 12th std, so it was sure that I would be going to do engineering later in the future. But after completing my 12th board exams, I was clueless about my future, in what stream should I go for in the college, what I will be doing in the future after my engineering, etc.
Now, how I chose CSE as my career? Since childhood, I have been so influenced by computer games. I was super curious at that time like how these games were made and what do people study to later work on these kind of stuffs like developing games and applications that helps everyone in some way and another. There were 2 streams in front of me at that time. First Civil (because my elder brother was doing civil engineering) and CSE (because I wanted to explore the tech side out of my curiosity).
Now, at that time I had no clue about CSE and all the tech stuffs. I was not even aware about the programming languages and tech stack used in the industry for different purposes. Before making any decision on which my whole future was depending, I just wanted to explore something in the tech side once. So, I gave myself some time and in that time I joined a coaching for ‘C’ language and started learning ‘C’ programming language. I had a thought past then, that if I start understanding all this then I’ll choose CSE as my career. After few weeks, I really started enjoying learning all that. All the basic programming tasks I did during that time felt like magic. I was overwhelmed with all that magic happening at that time and slowly I started realizing that this is the thing that I would like to work on in the future. Dreaming of making applications that could change the life of millions while knowing just the basics of programming 😂. So, yes this is how I ended up choosing CSE as my career. 🙂
By now, you know I opted for CSE as my stream for B.Tech. Let me share my college life with you all. During my 1st year, ‘C’ was there in our syllabus and at that tie I had good hands-on on ‘C’. Even after knowing most of the concepts, I kept doing that only in my 1st year and never explored anything else other than some basic concepts of ‘C++’. From 2nd year we started having some domain specific tech subjects. And during 2nd year also, I have not studied anything extra other than our curriculum.
And then the 3rd year started, the internship season was there and at that time I started realizing that how much time I’ve wasted and not learned any tech stack. I had no good projects at that time, the ones created during our 2nd year lab were also very basic ones that too with a team of 2 to just complete the assignments.
I was nowhere eligible to get an internship at that time. So, I decided to do training in Android Application Development so that I have some knowledge on at least one tech stack. By the time the training was completed. I started working on my first good project. I decided to work on this project alone as by that time I had no good projects that I can even mention on my resume. I targeted to showcase this project as my final year project.
Our final semester exams were near and the project was in a good stage. However, it required a lot of improvements at that time but it was good enough to submit as my final year project. And after that in 2020 we all know what happened! Yes, due to corona we were in lockdown and our exams were postponed. Initially started enjoying the lockdown thinking that it won’t last longer. But gradually the lockdown was extended for so long. At that time I decided to start working on my final year project again. Decided to give it some more features and to make it a perfect one with all the testing done.
After our final semester exams, we had our internal viva scheduled. I showcased my project to the teachers and they were super impressed to see a full stack android application with less but some good features.
All I can say in the end that all the hard work was worth it. I got 90+ score in my final year project lab, moreover I got to know a lot about android application development, planning & creating projects from scratch and had an amazing experience throughout the whole process.
During the final year, I gave a few exams in mass recruiting MNCs. I got selected in one of them, I would not name it here but I can write the company’s name in short form, it was “CG” - try to decode it if you can 🙃. Going ahead, around 3 months later, my batchmates who were also selected for that company started receiving offer letters. Discussed it with our placement officer (PO) and I was advised to wait for some time as it was corona period and the companies were delaying the joining of candidates. Soon, the next 3 months passed and still I have not received any acknowledgment from the company’s side. Told our PO to contact the company and I also enquired from one of my relatives working in that company and from both the sides I got positive response that my name is there on their recruitment list and they will soon roll out the offer letters for the next batch. I got a sigh of relief and kept waiting. Now by that time our results were also rolled out and now it’s been a total of 9-10 months that I’ve not received any communication from the company. I again contacted our PO to contact the company and this time after 2 days our PO called me and told me that she talked with one of the managers in “CG” and they are saying that they would not be able to give me joining due to some reasons. I was literally shocked at that time. A company (one of the top 5 service based IT MNCs) which was assuring to give the joining since the last 9-10 months refused to give joining after that. Literally wasting such a long span of time of a candidate. I was not expecting that and knowing that I was placed in a good company to start with (at that time) I was relaxed the whole time, not gave any interviews in between (a big mistake).
As soon as out final semester results were rolled out I decided to start preparing and giving interviews again. After 3 months, I was able to get an internship in android application development with a chance of full time after 6 months based on my performance. That company was working on Kotlin and I have only worked on Java for creating android applications. So, they me a month’s time to learn Kotlin and after that they will allow me to start working on the on going project. I started learning Kotlin, my manager regularly used to give me one task that included developing different android activities (screen) with responsive design. He was happy with my performance till now and after a week only he asked me if I can work on the live project or not? and I replied yes I can. And that’s where I proved that statement which I told them during the interview that “I’m a fast learner” (a bit of self appreciation is good) 😜.