Career career career…

If you’ve read my last blog, you already know that I have graduated from IIT Delhi. So, what’s next? Before answering that, I would like to take a detour into my college life. It was October 28th, 2022, my first day of college. (Yeah, due to COVID, JEE Advanced was delayed that year, which in turn pushed everything back). At the time, I wasn't 100% excited about my stream; I was skeptical about whether this was exactly what I wanted. Back in my school days, I loved learning about random things—mostly physics or history, but honestly, it could be anything: trains, private jets, airport runway numbering, visa regulations... basically anything in this world. Whether I would actually like Computer Science was a huge concern for me back then. Though I loved the machine itself and the logic behind its functionalities (taking CS in high school is what ignited this interest), I wasn't fully sure if I would love it in the long run. I suppressed that skepticism and moved forward anyway. Gradually, I did start to like my stream—specifically systems topics like networks, OS, and caches (don't ask me about my grades 😡). After that, I decided that if I took a job after my B.Tech, it had to be in system-level work. I tried out for a few Quantitative Researcher (QR) roles too, but quickly realized that wasn't for me at this point 🥲. So, systems it was. Then came my first internship: PayPal during my sophomore summer. I was incredibly excited, but reality was a bit bitter. Most of the work was standard development, frontend and backend. The corporate experience was completely new to me; I was disappointed but adjusted, and thankfully secured a return internship offer for the following summer. I was skeptical again, but hoped that maybe this time I’d get to work on something better. And I did. I worked on a system design project, deciding how various components would interact and choosing the tech stack. I wrote the documentation and laid out the entire plan. Unfortunately, because it was a lengthy project, my team ended up transferring it to Full-Time Employees (FTEs). Sad again 🙃. After that, the rest of the work went back to basic development, though some backend tasks were algorithmic, which was fun. Following the internship, I received a full-time offer to return as an FTE, but I had already decided against it. I rejected it. Around that time (Summer '25), a Google recruiter reached out asking if I wanted to interview. I agreed, I mean, it's Google after all, lol. I went through the rounds: first, second, third, and fourth interviews. I made it all the way to the final stage of document verification. But then it hit me: the work I would likely do at Google wouldn't be all that interesting, at least for the first few years. On top of that, it was an off-campus process; if I accepted their offer, my on-campus placement portal would be blocked before I even had a chance to start. So, I asked the recruiter to withdraw my application. Then came on-campus placements. I landed great shortlists: SWE roles at HFTs, Big Tech, FAANG, and startups. Ultimately, I accepted an offer at Oracle (that placement story deserves a blog of its own). I wasn't thrilled, but I wasn't completely down either. A friend who had interned at Oracle told me he was working on low-level socket programming with TCP, which sounded genuinely interesting to me. I was somewhat satisfied, adopting a "let's start here and see what happens" type shi. Then, the market shifted. Oracle started executing mass layoffs, which instantly brought a wave of job insecurity. Right around that time (April '26), an ex-Nvidia AI engineer reached out to me with an opportunity at his new venture: an AI lab-cum-startup focused on making inference faster for video models. The role caught my attention immediately because it involved writing CUDA code and handling deep system architecture. I went through the interviews, and they went incredibly well. They extended an offer, and it was great, both the team and the compensation 😜. I accepted on the spot. So, yeah. I will be joining this AI lab for now, and we’ll see what unfolds. It won't be as straightforward or predictable as a traditional Big Tech trajectory, but I think that's the best part. It's going to be a roller coaster ride. But yeah hopefully will learn a ton!