So my computer science journey started at the age of 15 - when I took it as a high school elective completely unaware of the struggles that go into learning your first programming language, let alone if it is a monstrosity (I say with love) like C++.

I was mostly just winging the elective choices at the time, and coding just sounded fun enough to try.

Cut to first year of college, and I am already in the CSE department with great hopes for where the future would take me. Funnily enough, the first year of an engineering degree is mostly a repetition of the stuff you study in your final years of school - which is to say, the best way to spend it was obviously to invest most of the time into a dance society (enter World of Dance championship dreams).

While I had a lot of hobbies, building stuff was plain cool like only a few other things are.

A random screenshot of a practice blog app

Coming from a childhood love for maths, I think it only made sense to combine that with my absolute obsession with drawing at the time. And so, I started learning web development as a side project in my second year.

That’s when I was introduced to Google Summer of Code.

GSoC Days

Oh the awe with which I realised that we don’t have to be older to contribute and actually make a difference, that the world of open source is all out there and waiting for us (aka: me). I was told it was going to be a challenge, that it takes a lot of effort and is pretty hard to do if it’s already mid january and the application process starts the very next month.

At the time, my young and naive brain took it for a great challenge and got down to reading about different organizations and projects. Luckily for me, I ended up finding a project I genuinely liked. This meant I had to slowly start letting my presence known inside the organization - contributing to open issues, working on the backend to gain some insights, and using the product enough to take ownership and find problems that I could fix.

I spent a lot of time learning all about what the org did in order to come up with a kick-ass proposal. I want to say it was a piece of cake after the proposal bit, but the nerves were wrecking and as I waited impatiently, it took them quite a while to release the results. When it finally arrived (at like 2 in the night), I woke everyone up in my family to tell them the news, jumping around, literally shaking at all the possibilities. The next four months were pure magic - learning all about the open source world in itself was an experience I will always be grateful for having.

During GSoC, I ended up applying for the Google Women in Tech scholarship. Receiving the scholarship was even wilder, because I was one amongst only 74 across all of APAC to be awarded with the scholarship.

And then there was MLH

2020 was the year of challenges and reaching for the sky - a very formative year in my ultimate career advancement. I had gotten a taste for open source and it was hard to stop. By the end of the year I had already applied to Major League Hacking Fellowship - a platform that lets you intern with some of the best open source projects leading the industry. When the fellowship program finally began in 2021, I was put in the team meant to work on Facebook’s Docusaurs and the next three months were spent gawking at just how things get done in a company of such large scale.

Code for Good Hackathon and Oracle

In 2021, I participated in the Code for Good Hackathon conducted by JP Morgan to work on projects that would contibute towards improvement of society. The next few months I interned at Oracle to build an app to perform zoom room maintenance tasks automatically. This was a fun time that taught me about how user requirements affect user interface - ultimately building a great user experience.

By 2022, I had received an offer from JP Morgan as well as a pre-placement offer from Oracle.

I ultimately ended up joining a start-up because it sounded much more challenging, and the idea of building things from scratch, and participating in early decisions sounded very enticing.

Lastly

Looking back, each step from that first C++ class to my current role has been about embracing challenges and seeking out opportunities to learn and grow.

Like Steve Jobs said, “You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future”. All the challenges I faced during my internships, and everything I learnt, have all come to use in my full time work. You can read more about that here.