Need genuine Career advice/suggestions and free course/tutorial recommendations.

[VirusDumb]

So uhm this isn't my first time asking here for career advice here are the previous times

 

 

 

 

The thing is I'm stuck in a very chaotic phase of my life right now, and it's more likely to get worse soon, but I wish to prevent that and break the cycle free.

 

So for some background I'm doing a BTech degree in Computer Science Engineering, and the main issue is I don't like how things are going.

 

In the August post I've complained how 11-12 hours of my day are taken up by college. 

 

What I didn't mention is that it kinda sucks

 

The thing is I messed up pretty big time in the last 2 years of school, back then some things weren't going the way they were supposed to and it was affecting me a lot and I couldn't study, I went from being one of the top students in 10th grade to failing 11th, and barely passing 12th grade all in the matter of a few months. I can't explain what happened, it was a lot of things at once and I've been suffering from mental health issues since that period.

 

 

 

So basically because of my 12th's finals results I couldn't apply to study computer science in any actually "good" college, I got 67% and almost all good colleges need 75% minimum to apply for CS. (Can somebody please tell me why'd I need to be good at organic chemistry to study computers)

 

 

Now I wanted to take a drop year, study and give the tests again this upcoming year so I can actually be in a "good" college, but the problem is my parents aren't really understanding and supportive of my own decisions of what I want to do with my life.

 

So they put me in this private college here which sucks, because that's where I could get into, and it's costly too.

 

So for this next part I have to explain how Indian job market and academics are getting fucked over right now.

 

So in India we have on campus placements, this shouldn't be that of a big deal but it is partly to blame for the over saturation in the market.

 

So there's 2 kinds of engineering colleges in India, the legacy ones established ages ago, this includes the IITs which are for the top 0.1% (keep in mind 0.1% is a huge number as compared to the crazy number of students there are in India, a classmate of mine who cheated off me in maths exams in 8th grade made it to one tho, crazy), even the NITs they're owned by the Indian government, even some private ones also like BITS Pilani, these are called "Tier 1" colleges, they're just great, they have great research opportunities, best faculties, best student community, and the best alumni network in the country too, almost all successful tech start ups in India were created by alumnis of these colleges, even if doing a start up failed, there wouldn't be much to worry about cuz the Indian subsidiaries of the FAANGs come there for on campus hiring in these places.

 

So my initial plan was to take a drop year and repeat the last year of school at home, clearing up my mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc through books and online resources so I could get into those colleges

also spending time learning game development and all.

But my dad wouldn't support that so instead I ended up in this college.

 

Fortunately this college is a "Tier 2" which is an awkward place between tier 1 and tier 3,

It has the education quality of the tier 1 but doesn't have the good reputation and opportunities of tier 1,it instead has the opportunities of tier 3 colleges with the academic pressure of tier 1s. 

 

 

Now one thing I found shocking was finding out that a majority of people in my class haven't coded before in their life, because where I'm from schools here teach some amount of coding from 6th grade, and going full on with either Java, or Python and SQL from 9th grade.

 

What was even more shocking a lot of them weren't really into tech or computers at all, instead they took it cuz their parents heard there's jobs, a lot of them came here after they couldn't get into medical school. Currently most stuff we're being taught in CS (we have maths, physics, chemistry, engineering drawing, mechanics, basic electrical, biology, other stuff now mostly and very little actual CS stuff in the first two semester), are shit I already learnt in school, but because everyone is kinda failing the class tests, we're getting repeated classes of the same stuff, (ironically the fucking class test was on recursions and all we had to do was print the damn Fibonacci series, the teacher fucking wrote down the F(n-1)+(n-2) on the board). And not really learning anything new 

 

Now in India there's the WITCH companies, these are basically IT consultancy services companies, they're known for hiring most of these guys, they're called mass recruiters, and they're the ones providing all these jobs, but I really do not want to work for them, why?, just look at this Glassdoor qna, this ycombinator discusssion, and this random Instagram reel (skip to 0:58 where he talks about those companies) where he talks about wlb of companies 

https://www.ddinstagram.com/reel/DAd1kHeuMSB/?igsh=bm4wZDF5YWZhbXNr

 

Now most placements that happen in my college are in the WITCH companies and I just mentioned I don't want to work for them, their freshers pay in India is barely enough to build a Ryzen 5 APU pc build (unless you can find a 3400g and manage it with it), and their work life balance is terrible, also do have toxic work culture.

 

Most of my classmates are aiming for those and they don't care just.

 

But the thing one of the reason I don't want to work for them is, if I spend my 4 years studying and working hard, I want a job that's fulfilling in not only a monetary way, that's enough for me to survive and buy stuff I want, but also fulfilling in a creative and ambitious way, because the main reason I took computer science is because this is what I felt like I'm passionate about, what I dreamt of. 

 

 

Thing is as a kid, I dreamt of becoming a game developer and making video games for a living, but I guess that's hard to do in India as there's not much game studios that'd hire me here.

 

Video games are what got me into tech and computers, and most of my projects which I wish to do even revolve around them,

 

like right now I really want to learn machine learning just to make an AI that's really good at speed running plants vs zombies. I had a lot of other ideas for projects but those kinda dissipated because of me not getting enough time to attain the skill to work on them 

 

Now there's this one thing, one idea I've had for sometime now, this is kinda a start-up idea I want to execute, it involves video games and brand marketing, it's something that's been done before but it sucked back then, but I got this idea while playing god damn Pepsi man for PS1 and then getting a Pepsi instead of my usual Thums up.

I want to start a video game studio that makes mobile games like those of promotional games of 80s-90s-2000s

Imagine like an app of some food chain brand, which has a game built in, which is something people would actually want to play and enjoy playing, probably a casual multiplayer game, so people would ask their friends to play with them too, and events and leaderboards to get coupons and stuff, but everytime they'd play the game, they'd first go through the food that's hot then navigate through the menus to the game. Eventually their hungry ass would order something or something. I hope this could be translated for other brands too.

This is not a well formed idea, but I wish to work on it and execute it in a way that works

this is my first time posting about publicly.

 

For that I need to get experience making and releasing games as well as marketing. This is where my struggles are.

 

As I mentioned earlier 11-12 hours of my day are gone in college, then 8-9 hours essential human function like sleeping, washing etc then with 5-4 hours I get I could either study do my assignments or work on my coding skills and engage on these endeavours, instead I end up stressing myself and procrastinating.

My college has a 80% attendance mandatory thing to pass all classes. And I'm not having fun, I feel like I could've done things and progressed faster by just learning things on my own and networking with people, I just want to learn and build shit, instead of being tired after travelling and spending 8 hours within a school like building, they aren't doing a great job in teaching me skills too, I feel like I'm getting complacent with my mediocre high school kid coding skills.

 

So all that start up thing and even building other projects which I wanna like the speed running bot is impossible for me now, the way my life is set up, now I decided to do something about it, the thing is my parents won't let me drop out because like they don't want to see me unemployed at home leeching off their income (I don't fucking want that more than them). They're not supportive of my decision don't have much confidence in them, but there's one thing I can try to do which will change things.

 

 

That is

Getting a job right now within January next year. A remote job that pays like more than ₹50k a month (it's like around €500k)(even slightly under that would do).

 

Issue is I don't have any skills or certification to do so, like I mentioned earlier how I'm getting complacent, yesterday I saw the roman numerals problem on leetcode and started writing a god damn else if chain, stopping midway and realising that fucking dictionaries exist and feeling really stupid.

 

Last week I thought what was the hottest I could do with Python right now to get a job, it was ofcourse ML, so I started watching the ML specialisation course by Andrew Ng and then stopped midway cuz I realised I can't look at the code without paying, I literally am so broke right now I can't even afford that ₹5k fees on coursera (I got ₹1.9k on my savings account right now).

 

Right now I'm willing to learn and do anything to get a income and learn more things. This will change my life in a lot of ways.

 

I'd have more freedom from my parents, I'd be able to ride the more expensive bus with reserved seats so I can sit down and do productive work while travelling if I stay in college, I'd be able to buy things like more computers, raspberry pis, make a damn home lab, I'd be able to afford professional help for my mental health I really need it my parents won't pay for it.

 

It'd give me a lot of options.

I can either 

1. Leave this college and spend sometime studying while on the job and apply for better universities. While saving up for my start up, but I really wouldn't like to go back to high school tho

 

2. Give up on university all together, but still just to have a degree to my name, do an online BSc in CS course which is currently being offered by BITS,Pilani, one of the tier 1 schools. I'm still interested in learning the maths and other theory of computer science, I'd pay for it with the paychecks of my job, but without actually going to campus, it'll be hard to network with people and I think I'll get lonely 

 

3. Stay in college and moonlight the job somehow, and save up for the start up too, but I already ranted about it here

 

4. Nothing, don't get the job instead slowly learning hoping things would get better next year and just keep that in the goals but what's the point then 

 

5. Get the job, leave college and getting a degree, move to a different city, network with other people and slowly learn game development and marketing for my start, but I still want to have the knowledge I'd get from a degree including all the maths, I'm a nerd.

 

So what I'm asking for here is, opinions, advice and suggestions on this

 

And also some free course recommendations that'd teach me things, even if I don't do anything of the above, having skills won't hurt to mog my batchmates.*ahem sorry about the brainrot*  

 

That's all, this took me 3 days to write down so I'd really appreciate some help from the community with much more experienced people, my teenage is soon gonna end and I'll be stepping into my 20s soon, if I do something huge and risky and I fail, I want to do it early in life so I'm still young enough to be hired for a job.

 

Thanks in advance 

[saintlouisbagels]

From reading all 3 threads it's clear you have a superiority complex - you keep thinking you're too good for everything and not getting the work done. You keep fantasizing about all of these things as if you are completely in control of all outcomes.

 

You don't need course recommendations. YOU'RE IN SCHOOL RIGHT NOW. DO THE WORK.

It took you 3 days to write all of this? Did you actually get any work done?

College is not just about taking courses and getting a degree. You're still developing as a person. You need to learn the social skills before you're thrown out into the adult world and making friends and connections becomes much harder because EVERYONE IS TIRED. Do you talk to any of your professors? Have you made any friends? Part of getting a job is to be able to sell yourself to the recruiter. Alternatively, you become good friends with someone and you find a reference that can help you get your foot in the door.

 

I've met plenty of people like you in my 10 years of being employed at a few places. The people like you who keep saying things like "let's start a business" or "this would be better if X" are also the people who get fired for not doing the job. I have them on Linkedin and they're either "Looking for work" or working low level jobs at big box retail stores. Maybe some day in the future I'll eat my words and they become successful. But you know what? I'm happy being average.

[VirusDumb]

12 hours ago, saintlouisbagels said:

From reading all 3 threads it's clear you have a superiority complex - you keep thinking you're too good for everything and not getting the work done. You keep fantasizing about all of these things as if you are completely in control of all outcomes.

 

You don't need course recommendations. YOU'RE IN SCHOOL RIGHT NOW. DO THE WORK.

It took you 3 days to write all of this? Did you actually get any work done?

College is not just about taking courses and getting a degree. You're still developing as a person. You need to learn the social skills before you're thrown out into the adult world and making friends and connections becomes much harder because EVERYONE IS TIRED. Do you talk to any of your professors? Have you made any friends? Part of getting a job is to be able to sell yourself to the recruiter. Alternatively, you become good friends with someone and you find a reference that can help you get your foot in the door.

 

I've met plenty of people like you in my 10 years of being employed at a few places. The people like you who keep saying things like "let's start a business" or "this would be better if X" are also the people who get fired for not doing the job. I have them on Linkedin and they're either "Looking for work" or working low level jobs at big box retail stores. Maybe some day in the future I'll eat my words and they become successful. But you know what? I'm happy being average.

Man you sound frustrated, sorry i reminded you of those guys, yea I dont want to be like them, I dont want to be above average successful, it's just the way things are going on where I'm from right now, you can either be jobless, or work for really low salaries for the WITCH companies infamous for having bad work life balance, there's huge ass supply of engineers but no one to hire them, even some of those WITCH companies didn't hire any new labour last year because they were too busy training the labour they hired previous year with new technologies. I just want to have an employment but also at a good company which pays enough and isn't known for having bad work life, but according to some more experienced people I hav asked, just doing the work isn't enough, my section has 100 students, and there's 20 of these sections in the university's first year batch all of them studying some variantion of CS.

 

12 hours ago, saintlouisbagels said:

It took you 3 days to write all of this? Did you actually get any work done?

Yea man I went to college, came home and did assignments and like on the 15-20 minutes free time which I usually spend scrolling through youtube, I decided to do this.

12 hours ago, saintlouisbagels said:

College is not just about taking courses and getting a degree. You're still developing as a person. You need to learn the social skills before you're thrown out into the adult world and making friends and connections becomes much harder because EVERYONE IS TIRED. Do you talk to any of your professors? Have you made any friends? Part of getting a job is to be able to sell yourself to the recruiter. Alternatively, you become good friends with someone and you find a reference that can help you get your foot in the door.

Yeah man, the professors were the first who told me that I should do these courses on side and build some projects I could show, I've been making friends in college, that's how I've been getting their perspectives too, I've been hanging around with some talented guys too who also are planning to change colleges next year tho and not pursue computer science anymore, I've started going to hackathons and there I've been making connections with some seniors and a few people who are from different sections and are also into game development, and we decided to team up together and make this sort of strategy based android game to teach water conservation for this hackathon type contest being held by the government.

 

 

Again man I am not sure of the superiority complex, I suck at doing what I am trying and want to do which is why I thought maybe taking a course would help, and having a part time job would help too i feel like, I dont wanna be superior, I just dont want to be under average with a bad pay in a bad company 

 

 

Btw man thanks for sharing your perspective, I'll keep that in mind and try not to end up like those guys and actually get work done

[Echothedolpin]

I was the ‘smartest’ person in my high school, I was the smartest person in my engineering classes.

 

Then I failed diff/eq and hydrodynamics, got depressed, stopped attending, dropped out. Turns out I wasn’t the smartest, I was just able to coast on my ability to learn without studying up to a certain point.

 

I then got a full time job, worked 60 hours a week and had 14-16 hours of class the next 2.5 years as I got back into school and worked my way through.

 

Best thing that happened to me in all this is I was humbled pretty hard and had to actually learn to study and work hard at things I though I didn’t need to do.

 

 

Im not trying to put my story on you, but, respond however you feel you need to: what are your thought on humility in your own education?

[VirusDumb]

4 hours ago, Echothedolpin said:

I was the ‘smartest’ person in my high school, I was the smartest person in my engineering classes.

 

Then I failed diff/eq and hydrodynamics, got depressed, stopped attending, dropped out. Turns out I wasn’t the smartest, I was just able to coast on my ability to learn without studying up to a certain point.

 

I then got a full time job, worked 60 hours a week and had 14-16 hours of class the next 2.5 years as I got back into school and worked my way through.

 

Best thing that happened to me in all this is I was humbled pretty hard and had to actually learn to study and work hard at things I though I didn’t need to do.

 

 

Im not trying to put my story on you, but, respond however you feel you need to: what are your thought on humility in your own education?

I don't know I wasn't really ever smart, I was one of the top performing students from like 8th grade to 10th grade but still not the smartest in my school, I failed my 11th grade and barely passed 12th grade like I said earlier, I just happen to be the smartest with computers in my class, I still suck at physics, mechanics, maths and electrical, I'm not worried much about those (except maths), Im trying to gradually improve upon them, but those won't be there from next semester so just trying to pass them somehow.

But yeah I happen to be the best in writing simple python programs only cuz like I already learnt them in high school and my other batch mates didn't, Im not even really good at that as right now I still don't understand how class works and what doess the init fucntuon actually do in python, I don't feel like I'm any smarter than them, it's just they happen to be not that interested in computers that much, I just fear I'll become complacent if I just do the same as them because of the other people I also meet and see on the internet

 

I'm no longer gonna be a teenager soon, but on the internet I keep meeting and watching people who are the same age as me and just entered college like me, some even younger than me and still in highschool, are already working on huge projects as their hobby, or already working for some successful start ups straight out of high school, and doing whole lot of other things, I just wish I could do something like what they do and just build something. I really wish to be like them, maybe this is what's causing issues

 

I don't wish to be the smartest guy and top all tests really, I just want to leverage what I have and build, one of the things I lack is the knowledge and skill to build the things I want, I don't understand how more humility would help. I already feel a lot humbled when i talk to those guys I meet, it's just in India everything's a competetion, there's a huge supply of engineers, it's a saturated market, 1.5 million engineers graduate every year, and jobs are scarce,
 

I dont know now how I should answer your question but in terms of being "smart" I'm probably at the bottom as my other batchmates unlike me did more than barely pass their high school, I fucked up back then because I was going through things in life and was deppressed, because of that I'm struggling at linear algebra, I'm struggling at calculus, I'm also struggling at physics because I'm struggling at those two, I have no fucking clue what the fuck is going on in mechanics, I'm somehow trying to learn them through books and videos online, right now I am scared if I don't leverage the only advantage I have over my other classmates, which is my previous knowlegde in coding and knack for computers and keep on building upon them, I'll fall behind severely and end up with a job working 70 hours a week  at 6000 usd a year or lower.