Adithya

I would say just fafo but okay youre in 2nd year so you have time, use it. start with a REST API in Node or Python, pick one and stop thinking about it, no framework magic, just raw HTTP, what is a request, what is a response, what is a status code, why does auth exist. build a todo app, yes that one, but add users to it, add JWT auth, make it so only your todos are yours, deploy it on railway or render, now you have a real server running on the internet that you built. that already puts you ahead of most people who just rewatch the same tutorial. then go build something with a database, not ORM first, raw SQL first, what is an index, why does a JOIN get slow, what happens when two requests hit the same row at the same time. after that throw a message queue in somewhere, Redis or RabbitMQ, something like user signs up and email goes out on its own, and now you actually understand why real systems are not just one function calling another calling another. then go build things with actual scale problems, URL shortener with rate limiting, file upload with background jobs, chat app with WebSockets. when those break or feel slow go look up Kafka, connection pooling, how Postgres handles a lot of writes, not to study but because your project is forcing you to ask those questions. the path is HTTP then databases then async then auth done right then real time then distributed systems when you actually need it. I built a zero copy IPC library in Rust with lock free ring buffers at around 102 nanosecond latency, built a full voice AI system for restaurants with Twilio and ElevenLabs, none of that was planned, it just came from building one thing and that thing needing something else. you do not wait till you feel ready, you just open a repo and start breaking things until you understand things thats all. Damn i talked too much

HR round done! ✅ Feeling really good about it I was confident, clear with my answers, and the conversation went smoothly overall. Now hoping for some positive news 🤞 Here are a few questions they asked during the interview 👇🏻