Abhimanyu Shekhawat

If you are aiming for Big Tech & can work diligently for 10-15 hrs/week for about 3 months, read this tweet. In this worst market, a mentee was able to 3x his CTC (~ 1 Cr) in India, by following this simple advice. CAUTION: > This is NOT the only way but one of the ways I've seen working. > If you have less than 21 days, this guide is NOT for you. High Level Plan (with resources): (I will deep dive on each step in later tweets) > You need to gain ground on DSA, System Design, LLD & your resume. Most big tech focus on these only. > Prepare your resume first. You'll not be able to apply anywhere/talk about yourself without it. Be thorough with each project inside it. > Keep on applying to jobs that align with even 30% of your expertise. Don't reject yourself. Yes, apply first! Once your resume is done. Apply. Recruiters take time to reach out anyway. > Don't apply to ALL dream companies in the first iteration above. Maybe apply to one. > Choose 1 platform for Data Structure & Algorithms practice. I recommend Leetcode because of popularity. Do whatever sheet you want to do but practice questions daily. Take notes on where you falter. Don't just think about the solution. Implement or you will fail. (More on deep DSA prep in another tweet) > If you are new to System Design, read donnemartin/system-design-primer on github. Read this 2 times. It will give you a basic understanding of things you don't know. Cover the breadth of System Design before going deeper. Get Alex Xu (@alexxubyte) books. Both volumes. Read them cover to cover multiple times. Watch Jordan has no life YouTube iff you have time. Practice mocks under time. (There is more nuance here, will cover in another tweet) > LLD requires you to code + design. Make a list of all the design patterns, ask AI to summarize with an example & quiz you on this. If you have time watch Concept && Coding YouTube channel. Read the concurrency basics. (Use AI) I'll just try to spend less time here as compared to other things. > Invest about 60-70% time practicing DSA, 25% system design, 5% LLD. This will vary depending upon who you are. > DO MOCKS. DO MOCKS. DO MOCKS. Don't skip this. You'll fail the interviews. > Once you have covered the breadth of all the topics above, just start applying. Ask for referrals. You'll never feel ready. Apply anyway. > Prepare a log of your interviews. Don't make the same mistake again. > Use mocks to calm your wits & make mistakes. Have fun in the interview. I'll write a detailed draft for each of the sections above. Let me know your questions below, will answer in the upcoming tweets. Most of you'll never read till this line. Like I said, this guide isn't for most of you. Just for a select few. If you are one of them, I wish you luck. See you on the other side. 🚀

@Hi_Mrinal Would love to know more about the discussions.

had an interview with a senior developer who is building distributed systems related stuffs from past 20 yrs that too in C++ Humbled

In-memory databases (like Redis) are faster than traditional databases (like PostgreSQL) because traditional databases have to read data from a slow physical disk, while in-memory databases read from fast RAM. True or False?

Software engineering isn’t cooked. People pretending to do software engineering, are.

@VazeKshitij Have a contrarian take on this. You need just 1 seat. Prepare like it.

This depends on the kind of roles that you are applying for. And honestly, he makes a great point. The big companies are confused on where is the market headed to, and for good reason. Most of them are scared due to the rapid pace at which tech has evolved. They do not want to be on the wrong side of the biggest capital expenditure of human history. The smaller companies are the ones bringing forward this tech evolution, but most of them tend to die out wayyy before they can fulfil their mission statement, more often than not-due to running out of money. So, what should a young engineer do in such uncertain times? Pivot to hardware. And no, I am not kidding.

Using a higher thinking model & getting subpar results in the AI version of overthinking.

If I can just share a URL for your Computer Science degree, it will be teachyourselfcs[dot]com

Gut feeling is the final state of deliberate practice. You internalize the new knowledge into your own mental model. Performance becomes automatic.

@justinskycak What is your framework to measure this for computer science jobs?

If you're not measuring performance and taking actions to improve it then you're just playing around. Totally fine at the beginning to get a sense of what you like and dislike, what you're willing to commit yourself to training. But at some point you gotta grow up, ya know?

There is this article by @paulg about doing great work. It is like a shinning beacon in the world full distractions. I am not linking the article so that you stumble upon the other gems that he write on his blog.

@rajvishah30 Mere dreams toh bol rhe AI hai.

Yall i had a dream about hanging out w mukesh ambani on the top of a building and the building caught fire but we didn’t move cause he’s like “fires dont get to me, nothing can harm u when ur here, above..” guys do u think it means something

@VazeKshitij Don’t ignore a few Mock interviews. They don’t look useful but they can make or break it.

Right lads, here is the plan for an interview. I have a week, yeah? 6 more days to be very precise. So, the prep is split into 2 parts - Fundamentals, and the Current experience. For fundamentals, I know that I don't need that much work, since they happen everyday and teaching kids over the weekends has led to me having strong fundamentals in the first place. So my way of going over them, shall be to put them in practice. I have 2 boards with me, an STM32F407 which is a non-OS based MCU, and a BeagleBone black, which is Linux based. The plan here, is to implement things like UART, SPI, I2C, and a few other protocols between these two. Also, I plan on making some other cool shit with the hardware, but that's for a latter time. I wish to interface with the RTC, the ADC, the DAC, the Timers and the PWM, the CAN bus, and a lot more things on the BeagleBone Black, Imagine, understanding how comms protocols and other hardware peripherals work within a literal OS-based processor. And then building something on top of that architecture. That would complete the last piece of the puzzle when it comes to embedded and it's fundamentals. For the Current work experience, it's quite straightforward - I will be reading the documentation and the repos. That's not an issue at all. So yeah, that's why the coffee and the sleep-deprived nights are back. Because if there ever was a time to do just that, it is NOW.

@Priyansh_31Dec I love this channel, such great visualizations and explanations.

Don't tell me you're into competitive programming if you didn't know this amazing channel already. That Graph Theory Playlist is just pure gold.

@rage028 @VazeKshitij Yes, just think through your spending patterns & potential returns. Run some numbers and make the call.

In the last 2 days, I have had 9 calls from my company's partner bank for Credit Cards. Got the 10th call a couple mins ago, which prompted this post. Their script- everyone who's got a salary account with us gets a Credit Card, with a 1,00,000 rupee limit, and points that you can get, and a hundred thousand things that they want me to suck up. My answer every time - I am not interested. Why? 11-year old me answered the damn door when the debt collector came knocking with a 4.5 LAKH Credit Card bill. Same day, I had to wipe tears off of my mother's face. The very same day, I swore to never pick up a paisa of debt unless I had no other choice. Cut to the present, I have a 5 Lakh health insurance, I have a 25 Lakh life insurance, I live on about 35-40% of my monthly income, I have 8 month's salary stashed into investments that can be accessed within a week. The point is, I have 0 need for credit. I have any and every emergency that could happen planned for. And I sure as hell am not spending enough to get points that'll be worth anything to me. So no, I will not be getting the plastic poison called a Credit Card any damn time soon.

@rage028 @VazeKshitij Fair. It depends on what you want to do with the earned points. Most of the people spend on flights and hotels. That is the best conversion IMO. If you don't want to do that, you may not miss out on much.

@pulkit_mittal_ This 3 book combo is pretty goated. Good.

Planning to go deep into this masterpiece. Strategy? 10 pages per day. No more. No less. (hard stop at 10) Cumulative goals: 10 pages by day 1 20 pages by day 2 30 pages by day 3…. The book has 600 pages. Who’s in? Will share micro-notes along the way. Stay tuned.

@VazeKshitij How to solve it by computer. You will like reading it.

Here is why DSA is supposed to be studied. No, it's not just to clear placements. Computer science eventually boils down to one simple thing - how to get a task done in such a manner that it consumes the least memory and takes the least amount of time. Data structures are, indirectly, ways to organize data in a manner that uses memory in the most efficient way. Algorithms are methods to get things done in the fastest possible time. Now put them together, and you'll have your answer.

This is a top tier advice. Social media is primarily the echo chamber of conformist takes. It will lure you into believing that you are honing your craft by reading & talking about it. Do not be fooled.

> Join a big tech after college. > Milk it to the core, make roadmaps to crack FAANG > Join a startup > Still milk, big tech tag by using ex-FAANG > Bash big tech A gentle reminder to why not to take advice from any random person on social media, who doesn’t signal value with actual work. Don’t take people too seriously (including me). Keep an open mind, listen to contrarian thoughts. Ponder before internalising.