Hey Folks!! I am Sougata Das a full-stack developer currently in my final year pursuing B.Tech in Computer Science. This is not a tutorial post just sharing my experience with you guys. To know more about me and my experience stay with me till the end 😄
How it all started
If I can recall correctly it all started when I got admission to my college. I got a decent 5k rank in web jee, and with this rank I could secure a better govt college in the non-cs stream, but I was more into computer science and tech-related stuff, and because of that I choose my current college. I didn't expect much as I knew my college falls in the tier-3 category, so I have to work hard to get a better life.
So there was a senior who motivated and guided me during my initial phase. Thanks to him, I started exploring many domains during my 1st year of college. Training models, creating a web page, and participating in ctfs, were really fun. I got to know about many staffs how to grow in their career, and how to make connections. I came across some amazing people and that was the beginning of this long journey.........
First Internship
Everyone remembers their first experience as an intern or employee. I was in my second year, and only had basic knowledge, I am still thankful to my first company (Videtorrium) which believed in me and gave me a chance. When I started working as an intern I found I don't know anything and whatever I know that's not enough. I started working as an unpaid intern, but I don't regret that as what I got there the mentors, guidance and great peers,those can't be measured by price. I got a chance to explore deep into frontend technology, was introduced to open source and many more.
First Income in USD
I recently started contributing to open source and it caught my interest. I loved solving bugs and there were lots of learning opportunities in open-source projects. I used to compete with my friends about who can contribute more. At that time I started building my GitHub profile as I knew it will help me in future. That time I got to know about GSOC ( Google Summer of Code) one of the top open source contribution programmes. I along with my friends submitted our proposal and profile, and guess what!! After 2month I got a congratulatory mail for getting selected for GSOC'21 under Scorelab organization. At the end of this long programme, we got our stipend and it was in USD 🎉. My very first earning and I was really happy for it. My GSOC journey was awesome and full of learning opportunities. I will discuss more it in a separate blog.
First Product Based Company
So after GSOC I was looking for some change, I want to grow more and I was more focused to work with a product based company. I started my job hunting and found a front-end developer intern role in EPNS. It was a startup, they were working on a decentralized notification system. Their idea seems cool to me and I gave interviews and got selected.
I was excited as it's my first product-based company and now I can work on a product which can impact millions of people. That was the first time I worked on web3. I had no experience with that before, so I started going through the documentation, watching videos, and creating small web3 projects to get familiar. This was an amazing 6-month experience and I admit that I learnt a lot during this time.
Later I joined as an SDE intern in HackerRank, then upstox. Will discuss more specific internship experiences in separate blogs.
First Offline Hackathon
I participated lots of hackathons, coding contest in my college life. But in my final year, I had a chance to participate in SIH and its final round is scheduled at Indore. Kolkata to Indore is a long distance 😁. We were super excited, it took 2days to reach there and believe me when we reached the campus, there was an amazing view from our room and the weather was mesmerizing. Our team did our best but couldn't secure 1st position in the selected topic. But I don't regret it as I believe this whole experience was worth it.
First time moving out of my house
As I joined as an intern in upstox and it is in hybrid mode. So I have to shift to Bangalore. Till now I was a typical home boy, yes I had long trips with my friends but have never been moving out of my house. So still don't know what is waiting for me. Because tomorrow I am going to Bangalore for 6 months and let's hope for the best.
Yes 🎉 that's it for this blog. Thank you for staying with me this long. Now I can just go to sleep. Will see you guys in the next blog. If you enjoyed this article you can support me by buying me a coffee and following me on twitter.