My first job hunt experience

4th February, 2024

The whole ordeal ( tests, multiple rounds of interview ) of securing a job or internship is so kafkaesque. Candidate selection is based on so many factors that are not dependent / proportional to the candidate skill. Let me give you some background:

I love video games and by extension of my curiosity, the tech that powers it. I have enjoyed games since I was a kid. I started writing my own game engine and it has taught me an enormous amount of things about software development. But my forray into development has been prefaced by this excitement and wonder. So I naturally got better at it.

This is not so true for others. The coding wave was taking over the Indian crowd , and it happened right with my generation. The appeal was not so much in computers but with the high paychecks. This makes sense in India where poverty is a real thing and, sitting all day, just doing what is told and earning buckets of money is what every Indian parent dreams of for their kid.

So, many people’s introduction to coding was grinding leetcode just to get a high paying job. Which is boring. Trust me, if I was forced to do something I didn’t like just because it’s high paying, I would be miserable too (I am also miserable too because I had to do leetcode). But this fits right with middle class parents who force their kids to do things the kid hates to earn a big enough paycheck that will satisfy their ego.

Due to the insanely huge amount of people in CS right now, getting a job is only possible through referrals. Else companies won’t even look at your CV. I’ve heard stories on reddit where people have applied to 200+ companies and didn’t get in any. Your only chance is through campus placements( job fairs hosted by colleges ). Candidates are shortlisted for an online test ;based on various opaque factors that depend on the company and may involve what’s in your pants; and then for an interview.

The interview is really tough compared to the actual job, so sometimes the interviewer knows less than the interviewee and if the positions were switched, the interviewer will most probably not get the job.

All of the times I interviewed, the interviewers were shocked when I said I did all these projects for fun, which has disappointed me very much. One interviewer was genuinely confused and was asking me repeatedly why I worked on a game engine for 3 years and what was the end goal. Duh.

This article was prompted after I read this post on r/developersIndia