[pritishc]

Are you in college? You will find that 3 is not all rosy as it seems to you right now, if you are not from a top tier or atleast decent tier college. I was like you back in college when I realized that heading to TCS etc was a dead career path from the start.

The better product startups all look for "IIT/NIT/whatever other brand college" students. Snapdeal, for eg, first switched the application engineer position that I applied for to other secondary positions, and then rejected me when I asked for the original position on this basis. There is no guarantee that you will find good things in other startups. I realize now that these companies have no better way of screening candidates, because the candidate pool quality in India errs on the side of less than decent. Doesn't justify the bait-and-switch but oh well.

If you do end up like I did, make sure that atleast the peer group in your startup is exceptionally talented, and that the startup is good with tech. The pay is shit in these kinds of startups (for eg those running as a small service company, but building their product behind the scenes), but the idea is to become really good at what you do and then jump ship to a good product startup.

Also, if you are still in college, it helps to have GSoC under your belt.

[RandomCSGeek]

So did you make it to a good company?

Yes, I'm still in college, although I'm in final year, so only 6 months left. What you said is true, I realize that most companies are ignoring my resume(as I am not from IIT/NIT, I am not even from a autonomous institute). But I hope I can at least get placed in small scale startups, or small product businesses.

Wish I had concentrated more on OSS contribution/ side projects rather than competitive programming. Let's see what happens now. But I'm sure I won't join the likes of TCS. Worst case, I'll become a Uber driver.

[pritishc]

You can still do OSS contributions and make small side projects to get noticed. The likes of us merely start X years behind the likes of those that go to a prestigious engineering college when it comes to work. X is as big a gulf as you let it be. Factor that into your growth and make of it what you will.

>I'm sure I won't join the likes of TCS

TCS is fine if you're fine with maintenance work and/or want to pivot into doing an MBA or something similar. However, even TCS etc are laying off a lot of people and will probably shrink their "bench" pools greatly in the near future, due to the death of outsourcing.

>I'll become an Uber driver

I'm sure it won't have to come to that, but yes, the job market slowdown is real.