I am writing this post just the night before my last attempt at JEE, there is no point of studying now, it will be fruitless. I also might continue writing this after the exam since idk how long this will be. This post is about the cloud of thoughts that have overcast my mind for the past two weeks. It is a bit of a rant, a bit of future planning, and opinions about jee, computer science and life in general, because I dont really have anyone else to talk to.
Through this blog I do not:
- intend to mean that jee is evil or anything and do not at all urge you to drop out of jee or anything.
- intend to mean that jee is the only way to get into the dream job.
- imply that I am a good developer or anything, i am just an evolved pigeon who has the ability to type.
JEE
One thing that sucks about being a topper since your first grade is that you have built a false sense of hope in people around you. They think you are a genius, and that getting a top place in JEE will be a moonwalk. In 10th, when my grade plummeted a bit to 91%, they had a hard time digesting it, even though the one who gave the exam thought it was satisfactory. My decision to take physics, chemistry and maths was not that much of a decision, but more of a silent handshake I had to do.
I have never been a good student when it comes to JEE, mediocre once a blue moon. I never had any significant interest in studying physics, and I have always hated chemistry. JEE is not really your cup of tea if you don't enjoy 66% of the syllabus.
The post which I have just linked, is very much of a truthnuke. It is very true that once you get access into the top colleges, you have the safety net of just grinding in the last few months and getting away with a job that tier 3 people will have to grind 1-2 years for.
Now do not get me wrong, I like the concept of jee, and only people who have the focus and will to spend entire days ravaging through the problems deserve the shiny colleges at the top (cannot say the same about jobs). I get the hype of having a good college, a good peer circle which helps you grow.
Looking aside that, I do absolutely hate the way JEE is marketed. Its image has gone from an exam to "the only way to get a good life". Coachings depict JEE as a game that anyone no matter how dumb can do it. You will hear toppers themselves say that "anyone can do it". And you are going to read countless stories about people who cracked JEE in 1 year, 6 months or 3 months even. But the blatant truth as is, that these are the outliers, all survivorship bias. Some of these people are lucky or just very very smart. This is a point I will bring up later again.
The amount of suicides that happen every year contradicts the fact that "anyone can do it". It also very much saddens me that people have grown insensitive to students suiciding over JEE. I have seen grownups say that it is entirely the students fault, and that they should have been more focused because "anyone can do it".
I started prepping in 11th, but from the start I was just not interested in it. Except for mathematics, all the course flew over my head and I only spent my time thinking about new things to program. All the time these two years, I had already mentally prepared myself that I was never making it to a top college.
But I sure as well know that JEE does not really determine much in the longer run. I know I have the skills good enough to be fine on my own. I have been programming for 8 years now, and I have a good grasp of the concepts. I know that I can get a job at a good company, and I know that I can do well in it.
Yea, I will not have the "tag" or a good peer pressure but I have the skills to back it up. JEE matters but not "life or death" matters. From the way I see it, the road from college to a job is a straight line and a good college will provide you with a better y-intercept. But the slope of the line is determined by your skills and not the college.
The Indian CS Road
TLDR: Dull, mediocre, and full of scams
Seeing the way getting a CS job works almost makes me hate the very thing I love. Before I go on further, here is a small monologue:
Programming Is Art
I treat programming as an art. I love how you can create something out of seemingly easy concepts. Its this love for creating new stuff that has me hooked. Programming at the very core is about solving problems. There is a problem statement and there are a million ways to solve it. It is just a form of self expression and a passion because through it, I bring out my true self.
Sure I am not the best artist, not even close. I am not even trying to be the best. I am just here to have fun and create things. I do not care about the money, and hence I am never programming with "the hot new things" or "the industry standard". I am creating an image editor with odin, a card game with zig, and discord bots with c of all languages. I have never applied for jobs, but still I got a few offers, and all of them were with tech stacks I have never used. Not a flex, but I'm just saying that you should just do what you love.
CS Trap
Its coaching all over again, nothing else, I have touched a bit on this in my previous blog, about Fun Driven Development. The sheer population has almost ruined the tech scene. Popular creators drive people to just do a mindless grind of DSA and Web Dev only. People only do web dev because they don't even know that there exists so many other fields in programming. Everyone has the same resume, down to the same template, even the same 3-4 projects that they do with a course which has only lead to increased levels of mediocrity.
Courses
this part is only for the course sellers in india.
I just find them immoral. They are just a way to get money out of people who are desperate to get a job. There are multiple "0 to xx LPA" roadmap videos on youtube and in the first four minutes, they will start shilling their DSA course because they know the audience watching those videos are desperate. It is like coaching all over again. The people who actually succeed with the course are the outliers, and the rest of the people are just left to rot and are left to only blame themselves because 1000 people out of 100k got jobs.
Another thing that I really do not like is that your college and your LPA is how people percieve how good of a programmer you are. Complete nonsense but that is how it is. I have seen people irl who think I should have aboslute 0 knowledge because I am academically weak and am self taught. This trash mindset is why the course sellers are thriving. The course seller would be from a good background, for example a top college, and then have a great job, and then will drop out of the job because they know the real money is in making T3 students believe they can be like them.
The funny thing is, that they can be like them, but not by doing the same things they did. The amount of variables in life is infinite and there is no definite way to get a job. The only way to get a job is to be good at what you do which comes from exploration, and not by following the same path as someone else.
Indian Tech Twitter
Dumpster fire. Thats it. Nothing Else. Very rare good accounts.
The Future
So one thing that I have to do for sure is to pivot. Either embrace low level dev and gamedev or go into the world of ML/AI. Regardless of what I choose, I will have to be strong in mathematics first. I think I always had a liking for it, but never really explored it. So one of the goals for 2025 is to self learn mathematics to a point where I am comfortable solving questions.
Other than that, I will working on my own projects and side projects. From June, Flora will be one of my primary focus, it has been inactive for a while now because JEE and all. We have a lot of plans for it, and I am really looking forward to it. Other than that I have a lot of personal side projects that are pending, such as the rust static site generator, a new image editor, a 2d card game and more. If everything goes well, I also might start working a job in the summers. I will revisit this post after 4 years and see how much I have grown.
The end goal is always to have fun.