Ultimately, a person should not ask what the meaning of life is. Instead, they must realize that life is asking the same question to them. Each person is questioned by life, and they can only answer-not with words-but by taking responsibility for their own life and the way they choose to live it.
Hey everyone, I recently graduated in CS engineering and I'm currently working as a technical consultant at a fintech MNC. Pay is decent, no complaints there, but I've been thinking a lot about where I actually want to be in the next five to ten years and honestly I'm stuck.
One option is doing a Masters after gaining a year or two of experience, probably in the US. But financially this feels like a huge bet for my family. I'd have to leave my job, and the kind of money needed would most likely mean taking on debt. If anything goes wrong along the way, it could really hurt us financially, and that risk keeps holding me back even though part of me wants to do it.
Second option is an MBA back home. Same problem of having to leave my job for close to two years, but the bigger issue for me is that an MBA usually pushes people toward management roles. And honestly I don't want that. I like being on the technical side and I don't want to lose that edge just to move into people management.
Third option, which honestly feels the most natural right now, is just focusing on prepping well and switching to a better role. Strengthen my skills, target better companies, and grow that way. But even here I keep thinking there's a ceiling to this approach. At some point as an individual contributor you become expensive for a company to justify keeping around, and if you want to keep climbing after that point, it feels like moving into management becomes almost unavoidable.
So yeah that's my dilemma. I want to keep growing technically but I also don't want to box myself into a corner ten years down the line. Would really appreciate hearing from people who've actually navigated this, especially anyone who managed to stay technical while still growing in seniority and pay. What would you do in my position, and what do you wish someone had told you earlier. Thanks for reading through all this.
Tweet Made by Official Handle of Maharashtra Congress.
I'm a new joiner at Oracle and had a quick question about the enterprise access we get to ChatGPT and Codex. I know these are company-provided tools, but I'm curious about how much visibility the company actually has into our usage.
Can managers or IT/admin teams see the actual prompts or chat history, or is it limited to high-level usage metrics like active users, number of chats, etc.? I'm just trying to understand how it works from a privacy and administration perspective before I start using it more regularly.
Would appreciate any insights from people who've looked into this. Thanks!
Oracle laid off 500 employees in Romania with emails titled 'COLLECTIVE DISMISSAL - YOU ARE A PROPOSED IMPACTED EMPLOYEE.' This marks the second major workforce cut there in less than a year, echoing similar layoffs in the US and India.
Link to Article
I'm a recent graduate and have started working as a consultant. I want to keep learning outside of work and prepare myself for future software engineering roles.
One thing I've never really figured out is how people actually study from technical books such as DDIA, System Design Interview, etc.
Do you just read them, take notes, highlight sections, make summaries, or something else entirely? I always feel like I'll forget everything if I don't take notes, but when I try taking detailed notes my reading becomes extremely slow.
For those who have learned a lot from technical books, what does your actual process look like?
I just started working as a consultant, pay is decent but it’s not the core engineering work I want long term. So I’m trying to keep learning on the side to prep for future SWE roles.
I’ve got the usual books, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, System Design Interview, and a few others. My problem is I don’t know how to actually use them. If I just read, I forget most of it in a week. If I highlight everything it feels pointless. If I take full notes, one chapter takes me three evenings and I never finish.
For people who’ve actually gotten through these, what worked for you? Do you do handwritten notes, short digital summaries, flashcards, build a tiny project after each chapter, or just re-read?
Would really appreciate your real process. Thanks.
I'm a recent CSE graduate from a Tier-2 college with a 9+ CGPA, and I'll be joining a large MNC next month as an Consultant through campus placements. The package is around 9 LPA, and honestly, I'm excited because I've always enjoyed working in tech.
At the same time, I've been thinking a lot about my long-term career path. One option I'm seriously considering is working for around 1.5-2 years, gaining some industry experience, and then preparing for CAT with the goal of getting into a top MBA college like the IIMs, FMS, and similar institutes.
The reason I'm confused is that I genuinely enjoy the technical side of things. I like building things, learning new technologies, working on engineering problems, and staying close to the product and development side. Pursuing an MBA from a top institute sounds attractive because of the opportunities, network, career growth, and compensation potential, but it also feels like I might gradually move away from the technical work that I currently enjoy.
At the same time, I've seen many people in tech grow significantly through skill development, experience, and job switches without necessarily pursuing an MBA. Because of that, I'm trying to understand whether a top MBA would actually create opportunities that are substantially different or better than what I could achieve by continuing on the technical path.
I also wanted to ask about CAT preparation itself. If I decide to pursue this route after gaining some work experience, is it realistic to prepare through self-study while working full-time? Have any of you managed to score well and convert top colleges without joining expensive coaching programs?
Looking forward to your insights. Thanks!
I have a budget of $5 to $10 to top up my API balance. Since both models now cost the same, I wanted to ask those who have used both: which one is the better option?
very tough times, seeing a lot of posts about Oracle OFSS revoking Associate Consultant offers from different colleges.
Just wanted to understand the situation better from other people who were actually affected.
Trying to understand whether this is happening across all colleges or only for certain groups.
I'm in a bit of a time crunch and need some realistic advice. I need to clear the GCP Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE) exam before the end of this month for a firm deadline.
I will be starting my preparation full-time on May 22nd and plan to take the exam on May 29th. That gives me exactly 7 days of fully focused, 6–8 hours a day prep.
My Background / Prior Experience:
So, is this timeline realistic if I completely grind for a week?
For those who have taken it recently:
Would love to hear your thoughts, tips, or any reality checks. Thanks!
I just cleared the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam and wanted to share something that really helped me during my prep, my personal notes.
I’ve had around a year of hands-on experience with core AWS services like EC2, S3, IAM, and Lambda, which made understanding the concepts much easier.
For this exam, I prepared for about 4–5 days, following Stephane Mareek’s course and practicing with some free tests I found online.
These notes summarize the key services, concepts, and use cases in a way that I found easy to understand and remember. While they were super helpful for me, I’d recommend using them.
Doing practice exams is also really important to get comfortable with the question format.
You can check out my notes here : Notes
Good luck to everyone preparing for the exam !
Final phase of BTech CSE student here from a Tier-2 college. Did an internship at an MNC and landed a decent 2-digit placement offer recently. Can’t share much more than that.
Also before people start saying “AI generated post”, I only used AI to clean grammar and structure. Whatever is written below is completely from my own experiences and observations over the last 4 years. Not AI slop.
And these are just my personal opinions, not facts. You might disagree with some things and that’s completely okay.
One thing I genuinely want to tell juniors is, please don’t enter engineering with the mindset that “sab automatically ho jayega”. I saw a lot of people in first year being extremely chill about everything. Like life is sorted already and somehow things will work out on their own. Please don’t have that mindset. I’m not saying live in fear or stop enjoying life, but engineering rewards people who start early and stay consistent. The people who are too relaxed initially usually suffer later when they realize competition is real, they are already far behind.
Your first year matters much more than people think. Not because every subject might not be related to your branch, but because it builds discipline and consistency. It also helps your CGPA a lot. And honestly, I know many people nowadays say CGPA doesn’t matter, but I personally feel it does matter in some ways. CGPA does not represent intelligence, but it does represent the effort you are willing to put in. It slowly builds your reputation in college too. When people hear someone has a 9+ CGPA, they naturally take that person more seriously. Even faculty members tend to trust such students more during difficult situations. At least try maintaining 8+ if possible.
Another thing I noticed is that many students do put effort, but in completely random directions. They keep jumping from one thing to another without understanding why they are doing it. Engineering is already very fast paced, so effort without direction usually takes you nowhere. Spend more time strengthening your weak areas instead of only doing comfortable things. Reach out to professors if you have doubts. Honestly, most faculty members are actually helpful if you genuinely approach them properly.
And this brings me to another important point, never be arrogant. Not with professors, not with lab staff, not with coordinators, not with anyone. Build good relations with people in college. Help them when you can, communicate respectfully, and stay approachable. You may not realize the benefit immediately, but during some serious issue later in your BTech journey, these relationships suddenly matter a lot. Sometimes one supportive faculty member can solve problems that would otherwise become huge headaches.
Also please stop normalizing studying one night before exams. Yes, sometimes it helps you pass, but it doesn’t make you knowledgeable. I’m not saying study daily for hours, but at least pay attention in lectures and understand things slowly throughout the semester. Then exams become much easier and far less stressful.
Now coming to projects, this is something I feel strongly about. In CSE especially, many students simply take projects from GitHub, change the UI a little, and submit them. Maybe it gives marks, but it destroys actual learning. Later during vivas and interviews, they struggle badly because they never truly built anything themselves. Try building useful projects around real ideas, even if they are small. One mindset that helped me was thinking “project to product”. Build something in a way that feels useful to actual people. Instead of taking projects from GitHub, try making projects that someone else would want to take from your GitHub.
And don’t just make one or two projects during your whole degree. Build multiple things. Good projects give you actual exposure, real debugging experience, and important discussion points during interviews.
Communication skills are another thing students ignore for way too long. Many technically strong students later suffer badly when they see someone less technically competent getting better opportunities, and then they blame everything completely on luck. Luck is definitely a factor, I agree with that, but communication matters a LOT more than people realize. If you cannot explain your thoughts confidently, present properly, or communicate naturally, it affects interviews heavily.
If you’re not naturally good at communication, that’s okay. This is exactly the time to improve. During presentations, stop reading directly from slides and actually try presenting. People may laugh for one day, but they forget the next day anyway. Your improvement stays with you forever.
Hackathons are another thing I have mixed opinions about. They are honestly great till second year because they teach teamwork, pressure handling, networking, and fast learning. But personally I feel that from third year onwards, unless there’s PPO or internship potential involved, spending excessive time on random hackathons is usually not worth it. At that stage, placements should become the priority. Because in interviews, hackathon certificates alone won’t save you. You still need strong fundamentals, projects, communication, and preparation.
Your peer group also matters much more than people think. The people around you slowly shape your mindset, habits, and discipline. Try staying around ambitious and hardworking people. Especially for projects and placements, having a strong team where everyone contributes properly saves you from massive headaches.
And yes, enjoy events, sports, clubs, gatherings, all of that. College life should not become robotic. But always remember those things are side activities, not the main track. Don’t get so lost in them that you forget your actual priorities.
One personal rule I always followed was this, if I cannot openly tell my parents about something, I should probably avoid doing it. This may not apply to everyone because every family is different, but personally I feel this mindset saves people from many unnecessary problems.
Another thing engineering taught me is that compounding effect is very real. A lot of students suddenly wake up during placement season, but placements are mostly the result of your previous few years of effort. CGPA, projects, communication, networking, internships, consistency, everything compounds slowly.
And yes, luck absolutely exists too. Sometimes you’ll see technically weaker people getting better opportunities. Don’t destroy your mental peace over that. Stay stable, keep preparing, and stay in the game. Your time comes too.
Finally, try thinking long term before making decisions. Even small things. Engineering teaches you many things beyond coding. For me, one of the biggest lessons was learning how to think strategically about effort and time.
That’s pretty much what I wanted to say. Maybe some people will disagree with parts of this, and that’s completely okay.
All the best to everyone currently surviving engineering :)
The Windows clipboard has been giving me trouble for months now.
I use clipboard constantly while coding, writing docs, sharing links, using commands, and switching between different apps all day. But after using the Windows clipboard for a long time, I realized it still missed many things I needed in my workflow. Clipboard history disappearing after restart, no proper search, no way to save important clips for long-term use, and overall it never felt built for heavy daily usage.
So I decided to build something for myself.
The project is called ClipStack, a lightweight clipboard manager for Windows built with Tauri + React. I’ve been using it daily for the past few days and honestly it has already become part of my workflow.
One thing I cared a lot about while building it was keeping it fast and lightweight. That’s why I chose Tauri instead of Electron. I had previous experience with Electron and it’s great, but for a utility app like this I wanted something that feels more native, responsive, and efficient. Since Tauri uses Rust under the hood, the app feels extremely smooth while still staying under 15 MB.
The app is fully local-first. Everything stays on your machine with local SQLite storage, so there’s no cloud sync or external upload happening in the background. You get persistent clipboard history, fuzzy search, pinned clips, reusable snippets, quick paste workflow, export support, and a keyboard-first overlay that opens instantly with Alt + V.
The goal was simple, make something that stays out of the way but becomes super useful once you start using it daily.
Would genuinely love feedback from people who use clipboard managers regularly or anyone interested in lightweight desktop apps.
I recently built a small side project - a desktop app that can download videos from most sites (basically anything supported by yt-dlp).
I started this because I was tired of using command line tools every time, and most GUI apps I tried felt either outdated or unreliable. So this was mainly a learning + personal use project at first, but I kept improving it over time.
It now has a clean, minimal UI and is structured more like a proper app with sections for download, queue, history, and settings. I tried to keep things simple but still useful.
It supports queue downloads, pause/resume, playlist downloads, and lets you pick quality or format. Along with that, I’ve added a few things that made it much more practical to use:
Also made it cross-platform now (Windows, macOS, Linux), earlier it was just Windows.
If anyone wants to try it: Just download the setup from Releases and run it.
