Work | So Far and Ahead
Junior Year Summers. Summer Sixteen.
I had such high hopes for these 3 months (starting May '16). My last true summer vacation before we graduate and become clothed monkeys in this big world. Some will end up here, there, some doing what they want, some not doing anything at all. I've been lucky to have done productive and meaningful work during my freshman and sophomore summers. I'm going to write about the work I've done so far (excluding personal projects), and the work I wish to be doing this summer.
Freshman Summer. (May '14) I interned at a university startup that aimed at making books more accessible amongst students within the university. A stroke of luck, and I kick started my journey into Android dev. I learnt how to design, develop and publish Android based applications.
I was given a choice on what platform I'd like to work on, and I chose Android thinking I'd be given a phone to test my applications on. I had a Windows phone then, and absolutely hated it!
Sophomore Winter. (Dec '14) December, 15 days, 12 friends teaching and surveying schools in a remote village 6 hours from Shimla. What could possibly get better?
Sophomore Summer. (May '15) I was extremely, extremely lucky to have gotten into what I consider, one of India's very few true startups. Tesseract, an MIT Media lab spinoff, that was not into food delivery or 'making the world a better place'. Kshitij Marwah, and a team of 4 other people brilliant at what they do used to tour India conducting MIT workshops/hackathons before they started Tesseract. They created a camera that could capture 360 degree images and videos. One of the very few camera companies to have been able to do so at a decent price. I co-developed the Android application that interacted with the hardware they built. This was one hell of an experience! We worked on the 4th floor of this amazing building near the Mumbai airport, and slept on the 5th floor, essentially working like crazy until we just had to sleep, every single day. I couldn't keep a track of weekdays and weekends. I'd code 12-15 hours a day. I learnt how to write extensible, reusable code (20 KLOC+), learnt how software can interact with hardware, and more than anything, know what it really is to work at a startup, the challenges faced by hardware startups, moral dilemmas of declining offers by poachers, the way you do a 7 day job in 1 day, and what goes through the mind of the people that founded the idea. You know, when you're at such a place, there is no one CEO. You're all so attached to the work and the product you're building, each one puts in their all.
I've got to write more about my experience here! The hilarious story of how I got in, not being able to catch a train to Bangalore for my backup intern offer, and getting a call on the very last day from Tesseract. :')
Junior Year - Semester V (10 days, Aug '15)
I volunteered at MIT Kumbathon for 10 days, an NGO initiative to bring technology to the Kumbhmela (One of the largest gatherings of Hindus to bathe in Godavari). I worked with Ramesh Raskar amongst other professors from MIT Media lab, and government officials towards bringing technology into the Kumbhmela. I built a web dashboard to analyze app usage of a healthcare application that provided details of hospitals and medical stores in and around Nasik. This is the application we built.
Junior Winter. (Dec '15) The dilemma of choice. (Do watch this TED)
Say you have a choice between a well established startup that's featured in the Forbe's 40 below 40 three years in a row, where you know exactly what you'll be working on, and the sort of people you'll be interacting with,
or,
a semi-startup, semi-makerspace like lab/hackerarea, where you're not sure of what you'll be working on, the people you'll be working with and if and how things will pan out.
Social Cops vs Sbalabs.
SocialCops say they select just 10 in 10,000 applicants, and have a particularly lengthy selection procedure. A lot of my seniors were furious when I told them I chose to experiment, and declined going to SocialCops.
The best decision of that year.
Sbalabs, Bangalore. A team of 5 people, who've really made things, and chose not to live the easy life. Each one of them could have easily been a highly paid employee at one of the tech giants. Heck, Samya quit his job at Siemens R&D, Nitesh has declined infinite offers, and Anirudh, well, he could be anywhere he wanted to. And instead, these people chose to work on making, building whatever comes to their mind. True makers. I'm still not sure what they are. Startup, makerspace, just a group of people who make things? I don't know.
I learnt a whole lot of things apart from tech during this short 20 day period. How to keep your childhood dream of making whatever you want alive. As a kid, I was crazy about LEGO, I created thousands (not joking, literally thousands) of structures and lego kingdoms, and published a dozen LEGO Mindstorms creations on the NXTLog. Working with Anirudh and the rest reminded me of that. I wish it lasted longer.
Junior Year - Semester VI (Feb '16)
I started working with Prof Ganesh Bagler, on a very interesting project. He has performed extensive research on study of food pairing in Indian & Western recipes, to understand what makes a recipe delicious, at the molecular level. I am working with a Senior year student to develop a 'recipe recommender' system based on Prof Bagler's research, that learns from existing recipes, and spits out novel recipes pairing ingredients that show a particular pairing pattern.
Junior Summer (May '16)
Question mark.
I wished one out of the two would happen. An internship at a well established tech company making things, both hardware+software, or a research project at CMU, or MIT.
Initially I applied to just places I really, really wanted to work for. (No, this list did not include Google, Facebook, or the common ones. I was very specific, and had an entire list of companies, some you may not have heard of.)
Nothing turned up from them. I started writing to the common ones after the initial blow. I've been rejected at the 25 companies that I've applied to so far, almost each company quoting something of this sort :
"Thank you for your interest in xyz. We were fortunate to have a lot of applicants to the abc position. The team has reviewed your experience and we have decided to pursue other candidates at this time"
Almost every company replies with something of this sort (some don't reply at all). I'd really love to connect with these other candidates, and would love to know the sort of things they've been doing! And probably the direction in which I should be working to get into the companies I really want to work at. Or maybe it is just because I am in India and they'd have to pay too much to relocate me just for the summer. I was foolish not to apply to research labs within India. Is it too late? Neither did I try for GSoC. Should've.
Well! Leaving this blog on a happy note, I will most likely be traveling to Ladakh for the first two weeks of summer if absolutely nothing works out, and spend the remaining at Workbench, a hackerspace, in Bangalore, where I'd make things I've been wanting to for so long! :D
I had such high hopes for these 3 months (starting May '16). My last true summer vacation before we graduate and become clothed monkeys in this big world. Some will end up here, there, some doing what they want, some not doing anything at all. I've been lucky to have done productive and meaningful work during my freshman and sophomore summers. I'm going to write about the work I've done so far (excluding personal projects), and the work I wish to be doing this summer.
Freshman Summer. (May '14) I interned at a university startup that aimed at making books more accessible amongst students within the university. A stroke of luck, and I kick started my journey into Android dev. I learnt how to design, develop and publish Android based applications.
I was given a choice on what platform I'd like to work on, and I chose Android thinking I'd be given a phone to test my applications on. I had a Windows phone then, and absolutely hated it!
Sophomore Winter. (Dec '14) December, 15 days, 12 friends teaching and surveying schools in a remote village 6 hours from Shimla. What could possibly get better?
Sophomore Summer. (May '15) I was extremely, extremely lucky to have gotten into what I consider, one of India's very few true startups. Tesseract, an MIT Media lab spinoff, that was not into food delivery or 'making the world a better place'. Kshitij Marwah, and a team of 4 other people brilliant at what they do used to tour India conducting MIT workshops/hackathons before they started Tesseract. They created a camera that could capture 360 degree images and videos. One of the very few camera companies to have been able to do so at a decent price. I co-developed the Android application that interacted with the hardware they built. This was one hell of an experience! We worked on the 4th floor of this amazing building near the Mumbai airport, and slept on the 5th floor, essentially working like crazy until we just had to sleep, every single day. I couldn't keep a track of weekdays and weekends. I'd code 12-15 hours a day. I learnt how to write extensible, reusable code (20 KLOC+), learnt how software can interact with hardware, and more than anything, know what it really is to work at a startup, the challenges faced by hardware startups, moral dilemmas of declining offers by poachers, the way you do a 7 day job in 1 day, and what goes through the mind of the people that founded the idea. You know, when you're at such a place, there is no one CEO. You're all so attached to the work and the product you're building, each one puts in their all.
I've got to write more about my experience here! The hilarious story of how I got in, not being able to catch a train to Bangalore for my backup intern offer, and getting a call on the very last day from Tesseract. :')
Junior Year - Semester V (10 days, Aug '15)
I volunteered at MIT Kumbathon for 10 days, an NGO initiative to bring technology to the Kumbhmela (One of the largest gatherings of Hindus to bathe in Godavari). I worked with Ramesh Raskar amongst other professors from MIT Media lab, and government officials towards bringing technology into the Kumbhmela. I built a web dashboard to analyze app usage of a healthcare application that provided details of hospitals and medical stores in and around Nasik. This is the application we built.
Junior Winter. (Dec '15) The dilemma of choice. (Do watch this TED)
Say you have a choice between a well established startup that's featured in the Forbe's 40 below 40 three years in a row, where you know exactly what you'll be working on, and the sort of people you'll be interacting with,
or,
a semi-startup, semi-makerspace like lab/hackerarea, where you're not sure of what you'll be working on, the people you'll be working with and if and how things will pan out.
Social Cops vs Sbalabs.
SocialCops say they select just 10 in 10,000 applicants, and have a particularly lengthy selection procedure. A lot of my seniors were furious when I told them I chose to experiment, and declined going to SocialCops.
The best decision of that year.
Sbalabs, Bangalore. A team of 5 people, who've really made things, and chose not to live the easy life. Each one of them could have easily been a highly paid employee at one of the tech giants. Heck, Samya quit his job at Siemens R&D, Nitesh has declined infinite offers, and Anirudh, well, he could be anywhere he wanted to. And instead, these people chose to work on making, building whatever comes to their mind. True makers. I'm still not sure what they are. Startup, makerspace, just a group of people who make things? I don't know.
I learnt a whole lot of things apart from tech during this short 20 day period. How to keep your childhood dream of making whatever you want alive. As a kid, I was crazy about LEGO, I created thousands (not joking, literally thousands) of structures and lego kingdoms, and published a dozen LEGO Mindstorms creations on the NXTLog. Working with Anirudh and the rest reminded me of that. I wish it lasted longer.
Junior Year - Semester VI (Feb '16)
I started working with Prof Ganesh Bagler, on a very interesting project. He has performed extensive research on study of food pairing in Indian & Western recipes, to understand what makes a recipe delicious, at the molecular level. I am working with a Senior year student to develop a 'recipe recommender' system based on Prof Bagler's research, that learns from existing recipes, and spits out novel recipes pairing ingredients that show a particular pairing pattern.
Junior Summer (May '16)
Question mark.
I wished one out of the two would happen. An internship at a well established tech company making things, both hardware+software, or a research project at CMU, or MIT.
Initially I applied to just places I really, really wanted to work for. (No, this list did not include Google, Facebook, or the common ones. I was very specific, and had an entire list of companies, some you may not have heard of.)
Nothing turned up from them. I started writing to the common ones after the initial blow. I've been rejected at the 25 companies that I've applied to so far, almost each company quoting something of this sort :
"Thank you for your interest in xyz. We were fortunate to have a lot of applicants to the abc position. The team has reviewed your experience and we have decided to pursue other candidates at this time"
Almost every company replies with something of this sort (some don't reply at all). I'd really love to connect with these other candidates, and would love to know the sort of things they've been doing! And probably the direction in which I should be working to get into the companies I really want to work at. Or maybe it is just because I am in India and they'd have to pay too much to relocate me just for the summer. I was foolish not to apply to research labs within India. Is it too late? Neither did I try for GSoC. Should've.
Well! Leaving this blog on a happy note, I will most likely be traveling to Ladakh for the first two weeks of summer if absolutely nothing works out, and spend the remaining at Workbench, a hackerspace, in Bangalore, where I'd make things I've been wanting to for so long! :D
Comments
Post a Comment