from management consultant to software engineer | Humans of MCIT

welcome and thank you so much for you know taking time out of your day and joining me today um you are going to be an amazing person to feature from mcit so you know i just know this is going to be a great conversation so why don't we just start off a little bit intro about yourself some of your background then we can and then we can dive in sure tina thank you yeah it's a pleasure to be here so like you said i'm in mcat now before mcat my background's more in business i ran the string of startups and so originally after college i was a management consultant for a little bit and then i ran a mission-focused startup and i decided that i wanted to move into computer science potentially ai so i applied to a few graduate programs and mcc was a really strong match so i came here and this past summer i interned at nvidia in case you have any questions about that was really interesting experience i'll be i'm happy to answer questions about anything yeah awesome great start so let's just start off with mcit why did you choose to go to msit you

said you mentioned that you did management consulting and then you also did some startup work which you founded yourself so how does walk me through that how did that become mcit yeah absolutely uh so with medford consulting it was really interesting because you get to have an impact in a lot of ways because you're helping with the management of operations you're helping with a lot of people focus things but in a lot of ways it doesn't feel like you're building anything um but i mean for some people they do but obviously with consulting like that's not the main part of consulting you're not really adding that much value clients tend to have people to do that so i've moved into startups because i had startup support university and uh there was an important need i saw and that was not so much financially driven that was impact driven and i thought that would help and at least with the sarp i was running what i found was i was doing a lot of things but i didn't really feel like i was building one thing because a lot of the work was like you know social media here and like learning seo and marketing it was all really interesting i was you know juggling a lot of balls but at the same time uh it wasn't necessarily having the impact that i felt i wanted and that's i think that's pretty common a lot of research a lot of people have had startups will say that industry experience is a really good predictor of startup success both in terms of money but also in terms of impact so um one of my favorite books of all time is sapiens by yuval noah harari it was like a really popular book back in 2011 and it talks about how homo sapiens went from being just on their species to you know modern day to essentially become gods you know making fire flying extending life and he has follow up uh that's also quite good but a little less popular called homodaeus and it talks about the potential futures for the next few centuries and he makes a really good case that infotech and biotech are going to be the biggest catalyst for change of century and not just technologically also socially economically politically and i really want to be in the center of that to make sure that the most good can be done to most people so a couple days after reading that i took the gre and i applied to programs and mct is a really cool program i mean i love philadelphia city but also you know it's intended for people with non-technical backgrounds so if any of your audience has that like that's a really good mix as opposed to trying computer science pro graduate program and missing that um but then also like the career opportunities are really good coming out of penn uh and for some of the other programs uh they're newer or that the information just wasn't there and so i visited and i really liked it yeah so the two book recommendations i've also read cps i better read the second one so wow you were like inspired you read the book you're like okay i'm assuming you always kind of had an interest but that book was something that kind of just pushed you over the edge is that how it was i mean you could say that but i think that would also be me like you know with hindsight like reverse engineering my story like i did for my statements of purpose where i was like oh i liked math as a kid which was like true but like i also haven't touched math in like a decade um so like in a way sure like when i was really young i did a little bit of coding like at six or seven but then my parents when they immigrated here they moved into i. t and they saw themselves working weekends and nights and they're like our kids will not do this so i was like banned but at the same time it'd be a lie to say that like you know i'd been programming or i was like really math savvy or anything like that honestly i think for myself and a lot of people in the program right like we haven't seen math in a long time we're lacking in a lot of areas this might be our first time touching you know program so like i had a little bit of experience but not that much just wasn't something that came intuitively it was literally just um you know i read that book i also read i know we talked about before like so good they can't ignore you by cal newport and that kind of argues against the past hypothesis and it creates this idea of like certain things you need a job essentially with confidence comes happiness or comes fulfillment so those two books at the same time are kind of like well you know what i was in my mid-20s i could decide to do anything and this was something i thought would have a live impact obviously it's a really good career choice especially with hindsight for a lot of different reasons in terms of flexibility um and you know like the ability to use your brain and also compensation um but i wasn't thinking about that too much it took the gre it worked out and i'm here yeah what you say is really true a lot of times you know we look back we're like oh you know i did this because of this reason but honestly at that time it was just like gee i don't know what to do i'm not sure you know i feel very inspired this time i will just do it and see if it works out and in our case it worked out that's why we ended up here so okay well i mean you're here okay so it worked out thus far we'll see okay well it wasn't awesome we always managed to make it into the program and you know you got an internship i managed to get a job so hopefully this stays on track you know nothing terrible happens in the next few years yeah we just make the first few and that's good i really think that's like a really strong way and i know we've talked before uh personally just how like that is my approach for a lot of this where i'm just trying to do it for you know three five years and then make the decision because when you start doing this it's really difficult and it's really easy to get discouraged but i've also seen a lot of friends jump from job to job a career kind of like looking for that soul mate well the like professional equivalent and i just think like it's really hard you know i came back from my internship flying high and i was like oh classes are gonna be a little bit easier and i'm struggling so much more this semester than i was in the past so you know it's not getting easier but hopefully three five years things will start clicking um so you just have to i mean this career i think you also have a really high tolerance for stress uh you know yeah definitely agree with you that you touched on so many questions i wanted to ask you okay let's just go back a little bit and then we'll re-explore some of the question answers you already gave me i wanted to know like in terms of you know mcit give us a little bit of background about what courses that you took um well i mean you took the core classes all of them i assume and then just kind of what your electives were so that kind of gives us the context of your background and where you're heading towards yeah absolutely so my first year i took the other core electives i did swap out the second system scores 595 for operating systems and that was really interesting and that was partially because i didn't know if i went to a dual degree but if i didn't you only really have four electives and i think operating systems is like really important and that class is incredibly difficult but it you know walks you through like threading and deadlocks and all that stuff that you're going to need and you also build an operating system which is pretty cool um and then so yeah second year the way i had my have my schedules out now is this semester i'm focused on like really low level classes i'm like writing performance bug free secure codes i'm taking uh 551 which is security and then taking 547 which is software analysis it's really focused on like compiler optimization specifically um but it's a really interesting thing where some top tech companies like facebook and google you know they have all these tools to make sure the code doesn't have bugs and it's optimized um but not everyone's using them so it's really cool to see how those tools work under the hood and then next semester will be so much easier because i'll be back to the high level i'm probably going to take 555 internet and web systems and 5. 0 databases um to get that really high level and i'm hoping if at some point maybe we'll squeeze in between all of this um i took an a boot camp before i got here which is kind of like coding but it's also different i mean it was in python but um it's you know it's not the same thing exactly and so i'm thinking about thinking fast ai this semester on my own just as a way to complement that i think a lot of academic programs uh in most universities they used to be very academic math heavy having i just don't have that background but for using you know deep learning and ai and machine learning uh there's a lot of ways to do it with libraries and so i'm looking at more practical courses that are focused on usability and less the math wow you are really are doing a deep dive there most people are just like hey it works that's good enough you're like i gotta like actually understand how things work because okay for context the classes that he just listed are electives so they're not mcit classes they're considered classes for everybody in computer science so you know you started coding by properly learning one year right and then now you're jumping into those like actually really hardcore classes so wow i am very deeply impressed by that is something that i feel like not a lot of people have the dedication to do so that's and i feel like it's gonna help you for the long run well first um the dr drop deadline was two days ago and i'm really upset that i missed it um because now i'm committed but uh yeah i think you gotta do it right i have to uh but i mean i think like this is the time to challenge yourself right um if you can obviously recruiting on top that's kind of difficult but um if you have the opportunity you should the grades don't matter as much and it's like really important so uh i know you're probably touching this i'm not trying to fast forward but like at nvidia i know a lot of people i worked with like they understood things that really deep like lower level and it depends on what you're working it's possible you're gonna be working at in like really isolated systems where you don't have to understand the lower level things but i think it's really important to like for example if you know how compiler works it helps like static versus dynamic problems if you have an idea of where bugs or security flaws happen uh that's like real useful because at the end of the day yes you can learn to develop you know there's a bunch of develop software developer boot camps and people are doing it but the reason you say computer science is for all that stuff around right because if you want to write really good code if you don't know that buffer overflow is something that can happen you won't know to avoid it and if you don't know that this is like how static versus dynamic uh like code fac how the compiler works i think it can just create a lot of problems and you won't even know they're there and if you have really good teams you can pick that stuff up but this is the one time we can really explore those different avenues yeah it's the thing is like you can learn it now if you go if you do it through work it's organic right so you know you might pick it up at some point you might not and when you do learn it there's just always going to be pieces of it missing so you don't really understand exactly what is happening so yeah like you bring up a really good point there is the time to challenge yourself thank you for your blessing but that actually segues perfectly um you know you mentioned nvidia so tell us a little bit more about why don't we start in terms of like your internship search and then your experience in nvidia um and we can talk about some of the topics we talked about earlier as well yeah absolutely um so the internship search was interesting um like i've noticed i think we had a brave classmate who shared her list of all the companies she got rejected from um i think i got rejected from twice as many companies this year than probably more than like a lot of people because i just saw a lot of applications and honestly like write the filtration from resume to online assessment to interview like it's a really tough process and once you're at the interview that part is actually by far the easiest because they're already investing you know it doesn't cost the company much to give you an online assessment and still you know they don't do that too often um so what i ended up doing was i applied a lot through handshake um i looked for opportunities on my own and i also went to a couple career fairs which was really helpful and so i got three different opportunities uh that i mean i had a few online assessments uh pretty early on and i wasn't someone who we coded super heavily i was able to do okay and some and not okay in others and i don't know um which ones or why i did or did not get to future rounds i don't remember if ibm i think i did take one for them but that was one of my opportunities that i had they have an extreme blue incubator i also went through a process for qualcomm uh which was really great and i met them at an lgbtq career fair uh and i you know talked to their recruiter and i gave them my resume and then i also met nvidia at the penn career fair so i find career fairs and you know if you can get a referral that's also helpful i mean people discuss whether or not that's how helpful that is or if it's even helpful but i think it's pretty important but generally once you get to the interview round it's a lot easier like in the interview rounds my questions were more about fundamentals and less weak kodi a lot of it was uh around like how i think and things like that it's so interesting talking to different people because like yeah like just like you know different experiences from different people right like because i also went through this i didn't do any handshake applications i didn't go to this so yeah like there you go there's so many ways of actually how do you get an offer what i just applied to stuff online oh okay so you just like thread the goldman site and like the other yeah yeah i just applied directly i didn't even get referrals for stuff i got like a couple just from people that i know really well but i didn't really focus so much on that either and funnily enough uh the referrals that i got i didn't even get a first round from those companies it's the ones that i applied just by myself that you know i was able to get so it's just so interesting like you know that just that experience is so different recruiting is like mythical we don't understand how it works it's just people right like there's algorithms there's tech and but everyone's doing something different i know there's been debates even this year among people came back from internships and everyone thinks they know the golden key and like obviously certain things matter like you know if you're going to like google and facebook and amazon or anywhere that has an online assessment like coding is important um but you also don't know the other pieces especially if you're coming with like a non-traditional background uh i know one of the things that i've heard from our careers that i did really well and was the reason i got offers from the interviews i had to do with the communication and things that are not traditionally engineering skills and then the questions i had you know other people had like actual coding questions i had some but the difficulty wasn't coding a lot of it was just like explaining things logically um it was a lot harder to discuss things like deadlocks and garbage collection and things that luckily for i at that time i happened to be covered in class might be a little bit more difficult to do now yeah yeah it's also so interesting you didn't get legal style questions because most people who do this kind of stuff it's pretty much like all legal style questions and that was for me as well do you think it might have been because you're applying to completely such as like qualcomm nvidia it's like very low level programming places maybe yeah i mean it's also possible that like i didn't consider things like super difficult um coding that maybe someone else would but it definitely wasn't like anything like gleek code you know i still look at leak i wouldn't want to cry i might do it for this fall and i like hate doing i have a very low i'm developing a frustration tolerance at some point in computer science i start with a very low frustration tolerance so like i would like we code i like look at questions for like five ten minutes and just look at the answer and then like read the answers and try to do it because there's just too much to do from scratch um so yeah i don't know because i did have a couple of like really why consider basic things like converting a stack to a queue um which is like just a conceptual question and things like that i know i had the question about how to debug a server that's not working i never worked service had no idea what that is so i just used like it was like a consulting case interview for me i kind of broke it down logically and i didn't know 90 of the potential causes of server malfunctions but like i could logically be like well you know either it's on this side or it's on like a server side or client side like it's either this or that and like breaking it down and it might not work for everyone that's my background like my background's in business and communication and that's kind of a rare skill in engineering but if you have background in chemistry or healthcare or you know other areas there's a lot you can bring to the table that maybe the traditional engineer wouldn't and it's not that you can like you can't fail the technical part they still have to like you have to pass it but because you're bringing something else to the table even if you're technically moderate if you're strong somewhere else and they see value for the team and bring you on they will bring you on i agree with that yeah for sure that's also i feel like as non-traditional people coming in that's really something that we need to like lean into we need to demonstrate more because you know what we're not going to be like truthfully speaking after a few months of coding we are not going to like those people coding even since undergrad right they've had like two three four years of coding well you to bring something to the table like you can't fail a technical part but you really try to emphasize where your strengths are like for like what you're saying in your case you come from a business background from a consulting background so you really demonstrate your ability of breaking things down logically and your ability to communicate and i feel like you know for you that was something that really like you know when people were looking at your application like this is what they wanted right they're like this is someone who is not traditional they have these skill sets that are not usually found in engineers and that's why what makes you really a great applicant and ultimately you got the offer yeah so it worked i agree i think people don't use that enough and people kind of try to in a way degrade themselves by like trying to fit a typical mold when they don't right because if you're either you're competing with other master students we're competing with undergrads who have two or three years of experience in multiple internships and quite frankly you learn so much in your internship it's really hard to like you know just from academics no matter how good of a suit you are no matter what you do as a side project to compete with someone who's done one two three internships so if you're able to make it to that i mean so one of her classmates joseph flew actually asked me the other day like how much of my resume is dedicated to like non-technical stuff and honestly like last year it was probably like 80 but i do have other things in there i have things that show that i'm analytical um like with my startup that i can handle failure and like if i have a problem that's never been solved i can find the answer and i think those were the things i received questions about i had some technical things in there like projects but aside from a couple machine learning ones for machine learning positions i didn't receive any questions about the technical side yeah for sure that's really interesting because yeah i also was thinking of breaking down my own resume because it was from a non-traditional background but you just like put it perfectly so much of my resume as well is not technical because that's how my background is right but you're emphasizing what you do have and it's also really important to emphasize why it's important in an engineering world right it's like if you just are able to talk very well so what right i was able to communicate this like talking is great right but you really need to drive home the point why it's important as an engineer to be able to communicate well but yeah you cover that very well so i'm gonna stop rambling

yeah i also wanted just in terms of your um experience at nvidia i'd love to learn a little bit more about that as well sure so literally this all translates exactly in 10 video right because first month was brutal um honestly like i was trying to learn the software the stock i was using languages i'd never used i was using methodologies i've never used i'd never had experience like a consumers integration continuous development environment everything was really it was a lot and also this was the first year that things we're remote and from one computer science is software development and probably most areas of tech are very mentor driven it's a lot of learning you actually have like a negative net value early on not just as an intern but like as a junior engineer for your first year or even as a senior engineer if you're coming on a new project for first few weeks or months um so that part was really difficult and i think what i did that made it really difficult school year but i would actually highly recommend especially if someone's in similar position is i extended my internship as long as i reasonably could so i did it from essentially finals and night to i have i had a little over off my academic year in september which made the academics hard but that four month period was really useful because i was able to learn the first month and it was kind of a disaster honestly and then like the second and third month i was starting to get into the rhythm and especially third month i was like contributing but by that fourth month i was essentially already an engineer on the team you know i had my project come out i uh well like my big my biggest project come out because i worked from small things they gave me a few small things to work on as i proved myself there i got a bigger project been that last month um as opposed to a lot of people who were really stressed the last few weeks trying to get everything in document and transferred i was able to work on improving my project making it more useful for customers spotlighting it was getting highlighted a little bit so like open sourcing i was able to do a lot of things because i had those extra few weeks and also that's a great example too where my strengths came in because uh because they do carry you know you're the strengths of your background that first month uh really difficult and a lot of it was just painful and i was honestly spending weekends into my second month like learning docker and kubernetes because i've never worked with containers and all the things there and linux and git so just even understanding the tools that underlie my project the basic stuff was really difficult but then the second and third month again i was trying to force myself into a typical software engineer position and i was just focused on technical once my product started to take off in the last you know six weeks i was only leaning a lot more in the presentation and the communication and like the business logic skills because i was able to you know really focus on showing what the values the business and working with solution architects and people on the business side i was able to present to a lot of people so they understand the projects working i was able to package and do all these things that interns don't typically do that they would seek mentorship for i was able to find the right people uh package it deploy it work with illegal open source it do all of these things that i was only able to do with my background and that's my background maybe some of your viewers also have a business background but for example that that's true i think anywhere right uh if you have a background in mathematics for example maybe you know you have certain skills that you can actually glean on to go more on the machine learning side or look at models and find places to drive value and if you lean into those i think your internship will be so much more powerful and it's going to be really memorable because how many people can do that yeah again spot them i actually why don't we talk a little bit about you know i know that you had a blog post come out that was a pretty big deal you guys so um yeah tell me a little bit more about that because that really is like a demonstration of the fruits of your labor right oh and also i will link the blog post above and also below if you guys want to check that out which i highly encourage you to thank you tina um so i was pretty lucky it's not a common thing for interns but essentially because again i extended right so i had essentially the biggest project i was working on this summer was a gpu performance profiler so we have a lot of ai models that run on nvidia's inference server both internally and externally and i was able to get that done for my team so i was working healthcare ai but it was applicable really across nvidia especially once we made it more of a general purpose tool uh and so for that you know that was work with a lot of teams one of the things there is um again i you know the business back right so you have like cell tools like a lot of engineers will work on tools if you can tie the tools with the business value that's even more important because uh tools aren't just made to be tools they're made to be used by customers and customers have reasons for using them and the business's so that performance profiling tool was useful kind of like across nvidia and the easiest way to get uh you know the word out was a blog so i got permission from my mentor and then my director and then worked the business teams to do that and i you know that was completely new experience have no technical writing experience and i just kind of had to push it out and edit it and get it out um really quickly so i would have time to answer questions while still there and as a result of that uh that blog post you know it was you know again it's it was the first time i think in like over five years that you know an intern published a blog post as like a primary author as a sole author and then being able to do all that kind of like the success led to itself right because it was the tool was out there but then once you have the blog post and then the open source and then people start using it sharing the article uh it was really big i will say i also caught the blogging bug myself and i started blogging on the linkedin medium which might have not been the best idea because originally i had like nvidia's platform so i was like oh like cool like thousands of people be you know reading and sharing my stuff um and now i'm on medium i'm i like made myself the editor of why david y where i talk about like tech concepts but um i'm just sharing it on my linkedin now and it's not the same um i'm not you know this is like i know you're quite good at like you've learned you taught yourself very quickly how to you know share concepts and i think it's like a really useful thing yeah i caught the bug i'm like oh communication's a strength so like let me do this now but mostly right for myself at this point because yeah it's actually a lot harder so kudos to you for what you're doing it's really amazing thank you i mean it's i'm still learning so much right now i literally started off like not knowing how to use a camera so you know guys like i have checked out david's articles and um i will link those as well like just provide me with the links later i will link them above and below as well i really think that you guys are interested in this kind of stuff you either transitioning to your career we're just learning about tools in general that people are using this is really helpful especially coming from someone like david like he's not from a traditional engineering background his communication skills are really his strongest points right we're adding on with the engineering as well but like you know coming in your communication has always been your strongest point so his ability to communicate these two people is really super so i'm just gonna put that plug in for that but yeah like congratulations again i said this to you personally as well like really it's amazing that you're able to create that blog post right before tool because i saw you from the first month coming in like you're like tina it was so helpful thank you were so helpful all summer tina was there for me when i was like practically breaking down it's hard like you know because a lot of times after people talk about you know like oh like i wrote like 10 000 lines of code this summer i did all these cool things and you don't always get to see it behind the veil of like really the struggling potentially working evenings or weekends or not being sure that you could do it um and honestly like when things go well like you know people talk about that but people don't talk about all the positions that they did not get all of the things that summer that they kind of that they blew uh because it just isn't you know we're in this we're in instagram culture right you talk about your website you don't talk about the worst side i will also say because i do want to add this as a caveat for using your skills do be careful because you can also get pigeonholed right i once i wrote the blog post i had the ops effect where people were like oh have you considered technical writing like maybe that's like a good career choice for you and like i know that's not what i want to do or you know like product management or i go more in the business with solution architects and it's really cool to see those options and opportunities pop up and it's because you used your skills but yeah just be aware that like you should do what you want to do and work in the strengths you want to have obviously take advantage of the opportunities especially if they're unique and they're unique to you and you know no one else can do it but do be careful about being pigeonholed because if you have a rare skill that's not coming among engineers it's very possible that you will then like be asked to use that and it might not be something that is a good learning experience for you yeah yeah for sure i think that's what you did really well as well you were like you know i know that i'm good at these things and thank you for asking me but what i'm really trying to do right now is become a great software engineer and i will learn those things to do that so yeah i feel like you know the fact that you're just learning all those classes and putting yourself through that it really demonstrates that so yeah like um i you know i showed up with like some of the list of questions i want to talk to you about but you know always with these kind of conversation i just get like so interested in that specific person and just everything that we're talking about i'm just like what was i gonna ask you after this okay let me okay um so yeah like i guess like really the last question that i really have for you which i think people um who are considering mcit especially if they come from a background that's similar to yours would be interested in learning about is you know what do you think makes a good mcit

candidate right and you talked a little bit about yours your own background and how you ended up in mcit um as someone from a business background where there's like a few of you guys but not that many right so from your perspective what do you think makes someone a good mcit candidate when you say candidates do you mean like for the programmer do you mean um like it'll be beneficial for to come through here and they'll be successful after the program uh so i feel like we're gonna go with more like after the program because there's also unfortunately be cases of people where they show up to the program you know they got in and they had amazing stats and they're really smart people but they didn't go through with that program and you know that's kind of one of the reasons why the application process is quite rigorous because it's not for everyone right so what is someone that can go through this program successfully and ultimately succeed after the program too sure okay that makes sense yeah and i mean i can also like really quickly just filter out groups like if obviously you have a computer science background or you've done a significant amount like this is not the program for you and honestly the admissions committee will probably not bring you through just because it doesn't make sense for you to be here um it makes more sense to go through typical computer science program because like again your first year is like learning the foundations and you can wave out of the classes then you're missing the whole experience the point is to like really accelerate the key classes from a in a year and everyone's kind of coming in and trying to do that so let's see so if you go through a program i mean you're pretty much guaranteed like all the career paths are great right some people become data scientists other people go uh to be quants um other people go to tech firms as product managers as software engineers as solution architects as a million different things and you have a lot of say with that uh i think if you know that you want to be somewhere within technology like this is a good program especially if you don't have that background if you're trying to pivot and you want to make sure you have the foundations because the other way to do that is to do another bachelor's and that's a lot more expensive and time-consuming so this is probably a better way and if you jump if you do boot camp you're gonna miss a lot of the stuff around it so you can be a good developer um and some people will you know they can be engineers like you can pick up the skills i just think for a lot of people unless you have like extreme amounts of independence and drive that that's a really hard path to pursue because it's you know you don't get the same career fairs and same opportunities so if you're here i know i just told you a bunch of things of people who should not be here but again if you want to be in technology you don't have a technology background and you want to make sure that you're building a strong foundation this is a really good place and then you didn't ask me this but like just general tips for being here and things i've noticed um some people struggle with if you have this background like me a lot of times in the classroom you're kind of told like what to think or what methodologies to use or what research to reference whereas like something like this is like fair game right because stem is it's factual right it's subjective it's not like what michael porter taught necessarily it's uh if you have an issue with the program or even if your instructor doesn't explain something like i'm in a security class right now and we have a ton of resources but i'm actually looking up stuff for pen testing myself and that was this entire summer you know uh my team would be like oh it would tell me you know this uses docker and they would try to help me but they were also expecting me to go through a doctor documentation figure out myself so having that mindset being able to try to solve answers or solve questions yourself and get all that information i think is really

useful um another other thing is really just pushing through because you know for a lot of people this program is incredibly stressful especially their first year but honestly even their second year because then you're taking typical graduate computer science classes with some of the best faculty who literally are top researchers in this field uh and it's quite the transition so if you're able to you know work through that at the same time uh have that mindset of being able to just solve problems and uh i know he jokes about before but you do have to have a high frustration tolerance to be in tech and there's different positions i don't know i can't say that for everything but if you can develop that the sooner you do it the better oh yeah that's that last part i i'm very similar i think i yeah i might even be worse than you i have a very low tolerance for frustration and you know in the beginning when i couldn't figure something out it was just like but now i'm like oh you know it doesn't work whatever i don't know if it's gotten better but like i think it's had to i literally spent 10 hours we have an assignment where it's like you're like hacking into code um and so we have like 10 questions and think i have like other people from our program in the class with me because they're all take like it takes us about a day to do one question and one question is like a few lines of code but it's like just the logic i spent 10 hours on like two bites like just figuring out like where the bites go and having being able to focus in and be that frustrated for that long that's not you know that's i've heard stories i remember someone was telling me how their roommate in college first semester of computer science was getting super frustrated about like semicolon errors just like finding the missing semicolons and like i we got for like i'm sure you i definitely got frustrated by that but like it wasn't enough to make me drop out um and hopefully you can handle that because obviously the bugs only get harder as you get better yeah yes yeah well armor and i talked about this a bit as well like you call it grit you know that's just from a professor it's like you can sit you can be like so annoyed feel frustrated everything is terrible but the whole thing is like you just have to keep going you know and that's really in the end that's what matters right that's where you got to where you are today as well like if you just in the beginning when like oh i just can't figure out docker yeah i still don't know how i was not like that was not who i was as like a person if we're being honest i sold brain teaser and stuff as a kid but like also the ones i got quickly not the ones that took a while um and you know over time like you have to develop it i um i have a blog post like mine but the experience but like in there called the engineering mindset because like i know there's a lot of words like grit and like tenacity and they're so overused in the hack and i like i was trying to avoid it like that's literally what it is you know a lot of engineers well and this isn't me for the record this isn't this is like i'm learning but like i will like read the book i'll like get all the context you all stuff that's me what engineers typically do if you're trying to go that route his engineers will like you know uh you want to learn the django or react or whatever they will like literally go they'll find a blog post with a project in react they'll follow the blog post and the blog post will have problems they'll have to like debug it until it works and that's how they'll learn and then they'll do another blog post or another project and they kind of just like learn by doing which sounds easy but it's also every time you have a bug you have to like without understanding it you have to go really deep until you find it and it's a lot of frustration and so i think if you can like at least adopt that's enough to your primary approach but at least adopting that approach is really useful i think that's one of the most important things i learned this summer and i'm trying to apply it to academics but again i came back here and i was like oh i'm gonna do this it's easy it's not easy but like you just have to get better at being frustrated unfortunately but the reward is you build something really cool and then you get like you get really happy when it works sometimes you don't know why it works but you get really happy when it does it's kind of like that reward is what you have to keep your eyes on that's what gets you through yeah and i mean that could be something else for other people but like and i know people talk about like monies or prestige like those things like you'll burn out maybe i don't know like i think you would but to some degree like this is something you have to develop if you're not if you don't like solving problems or whatever there's a lot of lucrative careers this is a good one but yeah that you have to be really rewarded by like you know like literally focus hyper focusing for six hours stinking bit or bite or whatever and then you find out that like literally you were testing the wrong thing or the comb was in the wrong place and then it works and then yeah that in itself is a reward for some people and hopefully you're able to become one of those people you know lucrative career you make six figures coming out but when you're actually trying to fix the thing or like just do the thing that's not what you're thinking about that doesn't matter yeah so okay i lied i have one more question um where are you headed now what are you

doing right now and what's your plan for a year is too long like the next three to six months that's better recruiters would ask like next 10 years or like my team this summer's like where do you see yourself five years out and it's helpful i have no idea i just switched careers um three to six months uh well i mean i'll still be a student then so that's an easy answer but um right now i'm taking like i said i'm really hyper focusing on like trying to get both sides like the low level and the high level and then also probably ai um i do see myself going back into um i didn't have like a machine learning role per se i did the computer science under the machine learning but i helped the people who are doing it and so i see myself again going it's like an ml adjacent role probably in healthcare it's a really high impact area you know providing health high quality healthcare and making accessible to more people or to everyone and so i see that as like a really cool problem space to be working in and i'm not sure i mean at the things they write software engineering you don't always the problem space the application isn't uh it doesn't really change the day they work it's just like what your projects have an impact on so i'm not sure uh i feel i i'll probably call you in a month when i know but right now really just learning as much as i can because i'm here uh and then once i'm out of school hopefully the chrome environment situation will be over uh and i'll get to like work with the team in an office and just you know live life probably in the west coast which that's the one thing they don't tell you is that like if you want to take a top tech job you probably have to go like california or seattle or new york city i mean most people know but they don't realize just how much uh but yeah sorry that does not answer your question sure answers i don't know there you go tldr i don't know perfect all right so let's just do a real quick lightning round most stressful activity in mcit

i want to say debugging but it's not that i can't even print words it's like when you have a problem and you have no idea how to do it and you just you like try but you still have no idea because debugging is easy that's like you have something working but yeah when you're given a problem and you have no idea what to do here uh what's your favorite book you actually already said so what's the book that you recommend to people i mean if you like sociological history like sapiens is incredible like reframes a lot of concepts of our world in like a really good way even like the agricultural revolution but uh the other book i mentioned so good they can't ignore you by cal newport i think uh a lot of people in our generation switch jobs a lot uh and there's a lot of issues and i know for a lot of people i recommend it too it was quite helpful for getting ribs in that angst perfect okay when you feel overwhelmed and unfocused what do you do um i like to go outside because it's one of the few things that we still can do oh no okay and what's your favorite classroom sergey from the foundation like the first six classes right or anything i know it's probably toss-up and this can make me sound like systems which isn't necessarily the case um but like 593 uh the architecture class i think is really difficult but like at the end you feel the most accomplished which i i guess that's how hazing works right like the more difficult it is like the more accomplished you feel after uh but also operating system same thing you build a whole system and i didn't realize how useful it'd be you know when people talk about race conditions or uh deadlocks or other things or threading like you don't learn it properly in other places and like actually having implemented it is like super cool oh yeah i thought you were wait that's not fair um obviously this is like recorded let me think so it's hard because the first semester you're taking all these courses and a lot of them like i need immediate application that's how my mind works and so like 592 is like math and like it's interesting but like you're not they're actually applying it and it doesn't feel like it's building toward anything so that was um the instructor is incredible arvind's really good but uh there wasn't much immediate application and then we also have the class 591 which keeps getting revamped i don't know in its current rendition but um if someone if you have a programming background it might be in your best interest to waive it i didn't but i had enough from like different things i picked up over the years that the first half of that wasn't super useful for me it might be different for other people but like that is a lot of people's experience yeah yeah yeah i think it is still being revamped again notice i was like uncomfortable to give you one class i didn't like so i gave you two perfect there you go all right so that's all the questions that i have for you um this is you know it's always so fun talking to you in general youtube's not now i get to ask you questions right that's how this works you can ask me a question whatever you want okay for somebody who's looking to get into youtubing or blogging or media what's the recommended like fashion like how would you fast track their progress what would you recommend for them you know i don't think i have enough experience to answer your question i still try to figure that out myself all right wait one second you've asked me questions why what classes i don't like by the way i'm sorry i'm not gonna say the professors are classes were great they were just anyway least favorite for utility um you asked me questions you asked me a lot of invasive questions here i can ask you okay no the thing is okay fine i'm not quite i feel like i'm just not qualified to answer that because if i knew how to do that i would be you know i'm still trying to figure that out myself okay i guess okay for me the one let's say like the thing i've learned the most okay that i have i didn't do very well on my first video is how important it actually is to share it with people because you're like i made this thing i put it online i hope someone watches it but no like nobody cares nobody even knows you made it like you have to be comfortable sharing that on forms of social media and that's coming from someone that literally used zero social media right now i use one form of social media which is still very difficult for me to adapt to so yeah that's my one thing oh that's good to hear because i literally deactivated my facebook two days ago sorry to anyone who works there um in your audience but that's good to know that makes a lot of sense and then also on behalf of tina if you're still watching and you've gotten value out of this smash that like button oh yeah i'm really bad at that i literally keep forgetting like people tell me they're like oh you need to like tell them to smash that like button and subscribe and i just you know i just talk about my thing and i forget there you go guys david said it for me smash that like button subscribe do the thing comment all the things click on notifications okay any more questions no i think you had you handled that one so well i'm just speechless no more questions okay well thank you so much again for coming out that was just so much fun talking with you and just like yeah like it's like i said it's always just so much fun talking to you as well um i will be linking everything that we talked about in terms of your posts uh your blog post or nvidia as well as the medium post above and below again reminder you guys should really check that out david is amazing and he's also an amazing communicator so you will miss out if you don't thank you so much again for coming here i really appreciate it really enjoy talking to you and i think this would just have so much value for anybody that's coming come from a business background or just even not coming and thinking about going to msit which is computer science in general if you would like to watch more of these videos featuring people with non-traditional backgrounds going to computer science especially the focus at mcit because that's the people that i know the best definitely make sure to look out for more videos coming up i'm making this into a series and i'm going to be interviewing for people from mcit who come from all walks of life and their experience so i will see you guys in the next video