Watch: MS in US Job Search Tips: OPT, H1B, LeetCode and System Design

3:00 Insights. So let's start with your background and then we will take it from there. >> so I'm a Mumbai boy. I grew up in Bombay. and I was fortunate to go to the United States for my undergraduate education. so did my undergraduate and my graduate work in in Ivy League schools which is a direct result of the grace of God and the blessings of my u elders. After I finished my undergraduate work, I joined a fortune 10 company in the IT space and I was there for about 20 years and got my graduate degrees along the way. I traveled to many different countries. I was working on all kinds of cutting edge projects and so on and towards the end of my career I was spending some time in the startup ecosystem venturing and so on and so forth.

3:56 I obviously you know built up quite a bit of professional experience. I have a couple of consulting arrangements that are currently going on with industry financial services industry primarily. How I came upon academics and such is that I've been teaching as an adjunct. So teaching has always been a passion. even at my former employer I used to teach internal classes to you know emerging managers, technical leaders and so on and so forth. and so I've been you know I started teaching as an adjunct probably 15 years ago or so about 12 years ago I came across this opportunity at my current university this position called a professor of practice where they were inviting people from industry to come back and teach classes to that pull from their industry experiences etc and help build the bridges between academics and industry and so on and I'd been

4:57 Working for 20 I did really well again with the grace of God. and I decided at the time that I could switch to doing this sort of more purposeful work which is aligned with my basic passion which is education and and teaching. So I really love interacting with young students and sharing my experiences and watching someone develop. So that's what led me to academia and it it's been a fun ride. I love the classroom environment. I love interacting and teaching students and working with students and and things like that. >> So that's a nutshell about my background. >> That's great. Thank you. So let's start

5:41 With I think the main crux of it. I think you know these days we are hearing you know people who are graduating from school and colleges you know unemployment and even lately we are hearing a lot about the deportation. So I wanted to hear like how students can overcome this you know how can they be prepared to be successful like able to get a job as well as also avoid this deportation. So if you can talk through that I think that would be you know helpful. >> Let me begin with you know sort of three specific stories and I want to explain this a bit because I think it's important for the viewers to understand. So there there's a lot of generic guidance that's available which is good okay which is you know students should study hard and focus on their studies and so on but as you rightly noted these days there is a lot of uncertainty fear among students who are even considering going

6:41 To the United States for higher studies that you know what happens to me after I finish my my masters and so like I said I think you know I want to give some specific guidance based on student experiences. >> Yeah. >> this part is important because students these days are extremely well informed unlike you know perhaps when you and I went to the United States. they today's students are well connected. They know about universities. They have seniors who studied there. They're very well informed. But as with anything else, even with professional life, they require some guidance here and there and hopefully we're able to provide the guidance. and I guess before I begin my my short reply here, I'll say that you know these are my personal views you know not to be associated with my with my university.

7:40 So I want to start with mentioning the enormously popular movie Three Idiots. Everybody loves Three Idiots. and particularly everybody loves rancho and that's the backdrop for the story that I'm about to tell right so in the first segment I want to talk specifically about one of my very good students who I will call Dave so Dave came to my university somewhat later in life he had worked in India for some years and then he came to my university for a master's and he had a very specific focus and determination. He wanted to learn how to do programming better, how to build better systems and so on. And so I would notice in the two odd years that I taught him that he was constantly engaged. you know, he was curious to know how things worked in the real world

8:41 And how to apply the things that we're talking about in the classroom and in the labs to real world and so on. and so I was surprised, pleasantly surprised to find this. but still, you know, I developed a good rapper with him and he did extremely well in my classes. and he ultimately got selected for my university's capstone program, which I'll talk about in in a little bit. and ultimately he ended up graduating nearly at the top of his class and career-wise went to one of the magnificent seven companies and they are about to make him a manager and send him on an international assignment. So he's doing extremely well. The moral of this story is that they became an engine of learning.

9:36 And I'm emphasizing this because often what I observe in many students is they have a 50/50 interest in in in in classes and such. and they have a choice you know they if they apply themselves a little bit harder they can do wonders and that's the moral of the Dave story is that he became an engine of learning ain please feel free to stop and ask questions and obviously >> definitely I wanted to hear the story so I think maybe we can pick up on that topic and then continue >> Sure sure the second story is about two people whom I'll call Vinayak and Tara And so when I came to my university first he is a non u EECS guy. His undergraduate degree was not in it was in mechatronics or something. but the moment he came I could see that he's one

10:39 Of these guys who is kind of like a Bill Gates thing. He was unnaturally talented. he would pick data structures. He would pick algorithms. somehow he had this knack of doing so and he recognized that and he was able to build on it as he studied and he took his labs and courses with me and so on. The second thing I observed with him is that he's you know he's a very pleasing personality somehow is a pleasure to entertain him. He'd come to my office and ask doubts and questions and so on and he was always cheerful. Anything that we asked him to do he would be willing to do it. and you know he was you know he's very very cheerful that way. Not only me but a lot of my faculty colleagues spoke about this that you know everyone was keen to help him because he was such a you know cheerful chap. and so obviously when he

11:40 Graduated he got a job fairly quickly in one of the biggest retailers in the United States and they eventually selected him as part of their very selective sort of engineering development program and he's now working in a lab near MIT developing robotics automation and things like that. He's doing extremely well. and I may say that his both Dave and when I H1 was picked in the first shot without any RFS or anything else of the sort which I think is important to note. So he you know really worked hard and and and that's where he got to where he was. when he graduated his girlfriend fiance at the time who we will call Tara she applied to my university and she came and you know again she signed up for my classes and you know I'd known about this and so on because when I talked to me about where she should

12:40 Apply and so on when she came I observed her to be a slightly different thing see she obviously did engineering in CS in India. and then she worked in one of the magnificent seven companies in India but in the operation side. >> Okay. >> So she wasn't a hardcore programmer or anything but on day one when she came to see me she said Dr. Kumar what I want to do is I want to learn because I feel I could have learned a lot better in my undergraduate education etc. And that that's what it is. But she said, "I really want to learn." And that was unusual because, you know, someone comes in and says, "Look, I I know what I missed earlier, but I'd like to improve on it and learn." And my god the way she learned she would put in hours and hours and hours trying this and trying when assignments

13:41 And labs is what I'm talking about is that she would try some approach it wouldn't work and then she would send me email and she was just engaged with this material when I watched her work right and I saw this over a period of about two years or so when she was doing her masters I was immediately reminded of Mrs. Rose Blumkin. So Warren Buffett, the the famous investor and manager in Berkshire Hathaway, he loves to tell the story of Rose Blumkin u who he calls Mrs. B who came to the United States on a refugee boat with nothing and she didn't speak any English and she ended up in Iowa and then she ended up in Nebraska.

14:29 And she was enormously determined to succeed. She if she if there was no way to achieve something, she would find a way and if she couldn't find a way, she would make a way. but she didn't let anything stop her. You know, she would just sort of bash her way forward. In fact, later on, Buffett went on to say that if he had a choice to pick from the top graduates of all the top business schools in the world and all the top CEOs in the world, he would pick Mrs. B. Imagine this woman didn't speak English coming to the US. didn't have any kind of degree or anything else but went on to become the CEO of the Nebraska furniture mark and so when I observed Tara I could see that she had this sort of determination and the interesting thing is she'd never heard of Mrs.

15:28 You know so one day we were talking about something in her office and I told her and I said so she immediately said no no I don't think you know you know this is a much greater person and so on but the element of this story is that you know both Vin and and Tara were just had this grit and this determination that you know they were going to do it and they didn't have any kind of shortcut mentality. nowadays unfortunately we see some cases you know students they love to go hit chat GT or go take the shortcut or you know do things like that but both Mak and Tara Tara by the way ended up landing a job in one of the biggest investment banks and she's now a vice president there and I have a feeling one day she's going to become a CEO I don't know where but she will and so you know The moral of this story of sort of Vinayak and Tara which I think is important for young people is

16:32 Right you've got to want it and that's the main thing that I I hope our youngsters will get next to is that you know they should have this feeling I want to succeed I have to succeed and I can succeed and it should be done without taking shortcuts and without you you know taking the easy way out and so on and so forth. The second part of the second moral to the Vinayak and Tara story is that you attract those with similar qualities as you right so I have no doubt why Vinak and and Tara you know met and and and now they're married because when you you know if if you're yourself a dedicated sincere hardworking type of person you tend to attract that in your friends and your life partner and and so on and so forth.

17:26 And again, Warren Buffett, who's obviously one of my heroes, has a quote on this and he says, "If you look around your classroom or your friends or whomever and try to pick one or two of the qualities in the people that you admire and acquire it, you know, you will you will obviously, you know, do well in in life." The reverse is true, by the way. >> Yeah. Yeah, >> if someone is somewhat lazy and you know not very you know dedicated or determined then you're going to attract that type of energy and then that the results will will obviously not be very satisfactory. and so that you know that that was the the takeaway from from this story. Again for both these students Vinayak and Tara their H1s were picked in the first round and and that had to do with the fact that they had really good grades. They had really good project experiences u and they were you know ended up getting sort of direct jobs at at big companies and so there was no question

18:27 Of their capabilities and credentials. The last story is of a student who is a different again slightly different case and I'll call the student Anand. So Anand is from a small town a few kilometers from Visag and he's one the first student you know the children in his family to get a college education. His father is a you know very wealthy you know he's in the business of some kind I think in fisheries and so on. But Anand he did his engineering not too far from where he lived and then ended up in in in the US. so Anand was different right so he wasn't perfecting his programming craft or anything like the others but he had this curiosity and observation and so he would ask me different kind of questions about the software industry and he would ask me about my work experiences and so I spent you know a

19:29 Lot of time in far east China, Malaysia, Singapore and so on and so he was oriented in that direction. So I gave him a suggestion. So my university has a Bloomberg lab and some students who take specific software engineering classes with me, they get access to the Bloomberg lab. So I told him, look, go get a Bloomberg certification, which he did and ultimately got a job in one of the big banks in the New York area. but he knew from day one that he was not keen to sort of stay in in the US. He somehow his thing was you know I want to do better than than my father and so you know a year or so two years I think later he went back to Bangalore and today he runs a software services company employs 10 or 15 people he's doing very well for himself so the story here is one of curiosity observation and

20:29 Opportunity and I would like all of our young students etc to hopefully take away from this is that yes to have good technical skills is very good. Okay, but you want to sort of couple and marry that with an understanding of the industry and understanding of how to communicate with people and so on and if you do that then you will end up doing really well for for yourself. Now to summarize all these type of stories right these students all of them they were all selected for my university's capstone program and a capstone program is where students who have really good grades etc are selected for a sixmonth meaning a semesterl long internship program at one of the either the banks or the pharmaceutical companies in the New York metropolitan area to do a guided project under the guidance of a of a faculty member you know one of my colleagues professor prabat runs program and so to be selected for the program you have

21:31 To demonstrate that you've got all these capabilities that I talked about right and and so these students were in the capstone obviously they got very good recommendations from the employers in their cap in their capstone and that enabled them to build up their GitHub profile put their preferences build their personal brand and so on and all of this happened naturally okay in fact these three students the you They didn't know each other. Okay, they they met and then they you know so on later on but they didn't know each other coming in yet independently they did all the things that they were supposed to do which is to build their profile and brand and so on and so forth and they took it seriously. now I started the story by talking about three idiots right so I'll refer back to Chetan Bhagat just because he's such a popular figure among all the youngsters and the focus of a lot of his videos and other things is motivating youth. So see Chetan Bhagat talks about

22:32 Okat okay and that means he says if you want to be successful in life and if you want people to respect you and so on you should develop okat meaning a set of skills traits capabilities etc that enable you to make progress in the world loosely defined okay >> and so if they focus on this then they will end up you know doing sort of really well so that's sort of the rough story of the of the three sets of students and they're all slightly different in in their ways. but I have to tell you a you know professional success is one thing you get a bonus you get you know rewards and so on. There is nothing more rewarding on the planet than to see young people that you have interacted with >> that they you know develop their wings and they take flight.

23:24 >> it's really a gift from God to watch the success of our youngsters. you know which I'm very pleased and satisfied and thankful that you know I was able to be small part of their journey. No, I can definitely notice that right someone who was in academ and like you know in a professional journey and career-wise who enjoys and even the three stories that you explained right I mean each one has their own unique way of learning or unique interest identifying them and providing the guidance to for them to thrive in in the way that would be beneficial for the pros right I think in terms of how they can succeed I mean I think that's the best part of any like a teacher or professor And then the satisfaction that you get as you rightly said is immensible and you know thank you. I mean I think you know having those kind of professors are the one that fuel like you know students in a in a right path and then they can also be successful. So I really appreciate you doing that. So from these three

24:27 Stories I think my takeaway was I think it's the you know people's not only the technical but it's the soft skills right. I mean you know the passion the interest to succeed. Exactly. for different aspects. I think you know those are the things that plays an important role for anyone you know whether they are in this early on in their career or later in the career. These are the things that you need to have to thrive in any any any part of your life. I think in terms of that so >> yeah please go ahead. >> I was going to say one thing I mean I see you've also worked in in the US and then you you're working in India and so on right. So the soft skills are extremely important. I want to mention one thing which is to be sort of easy and pleasant to work with you know the so that your colleagues can trust you rely on you and your management teams can depend on you to get things done but you're absolutely right the having good technical skills is a necessary condition to be very

25:28 Successful but if you want a sufficient condition on top of it then you need to have the technical skills and you need to have really good soft skills. So that's absolutely the takeaway. >> I think you hit the nail on the head. >> Great. So I know I think we kind of talked some examples of the people with

25:46 The right skill set who are successful, right? Maybe from your experience working with 2,000 students. I know there are like you know kids who might not be on the right track. You might have guided them or maybe someone you know who is not successful for different reasons. I think you know what is that you would tell the other students? Hey, you know, watch out for this. Maybe they are not aware of that or you know, they might not be aware that they're on the wrong track. So, anything that you can suggest like how they can avoid like maybe these unsuccessful situations? >> Yeah. So, this is a very important question. okay. so you know first and foremost before I tell this story you know I want to make it really clear that as a teacher or a professor right you have to be committed to let

26:46 Everybody do well and to succeed. a and we are designed to to to in a way support whatever our ultimately students end up doing right so it's not at all my intention to you know to paint this but I think there are certain elements in the story which I think is important for some of our youngsters so this story is about a student whom I will call Serves anyway so seeves the story is that he's a right fellow. But somehow you know coming in he came in with a very different mindset and you know his even during his interactions with me and so on he had this idea fixed in his mind that y masters masters type of thing that u you know I can get a masters is just a passport to

27:47 Getting a job. and he would quote the startups you know he'd say or Bill Gates he never completed his college and Zuckerberg never completed college and he'd name a few startup founders in India these days you know and he he was watching some kind of show and he would you know whatever so when it came to sort of his classwork I observed that he would you know he was somehow keen to take a lot of shortcuts and they wouldn't turn out well and you know he didn't assignments etc he wasn't doing very well and I actually one day I you know he came to see me and he said you know and I talked to him about it and he said you know I don't understand what is all this focus on on aca in aca academics you know and you know he had some ideas of his own on this He so I told him I said see you're

28:49 Focusing on this fact that okay Bill Gates maybe didn't get a degree I mean he finally did later on in life but Gates had published sort of very serious mathematical papers during his first two years at at Harvard and his learning was extraordinary right the way he learned and the way he and Zuckerberg same thing even before Zuckerberg went to Harvard He had written some music matching system you know he knew classical languages Latin and Greek etc. So they certainly had a strong academic bent of mind. In fact somebody asked Bill Gates in one of these interviews and he said all I want to do is to wake up smarter the next day than the previous day.

29:37 So, I think it's not accurate to say that, okay, they dropped out because they never stopped learning and they're still learning now. And that nuance is what Serves, I think, missed the point. And then he, you know, got into this thing about, okay, the Nikl Nitan Kamat brothers and he said, they also didn't complete college now see they're billionaires. Why is education? So again that I told him I said if you watch their activities now they are on a quest for learning they you know and specifically the Zeroda brothers they were they spent almost you know decade decade plus deeply studying the the Indian markets before starting up Zeroda which is obviously very successful and now they're doing so many other things. So he somehow got confused between you know

30:37 They dropped out of college and they didn't have any learning that confusion happened for him. Anyway he graduated and then he struggled to find a job. and I think it hit him when he started doing his first type of interviews because the questions that they would ask him were these lead code type of questions with data structures and graphs and this type of thing which he you know never paid attention to. So anyway, he decided to go back to to India, but he's got a job in in Bangalore now. He's doing reasonably well. and I think he came back with a deeper understanding of of the thing. And now he has a GitHub profile. He's learning and he's doing sort of other things. So I don't know how I would classify this, you know, is this a failure or or what. I would just call it a late bloomer or a somewhat delayed success. Meaning he's now in a career he's doing well.

31:37 I think the model that I would take away from this is sort of to avoid this shortcut type of mentality. Right? So learning is important and personal skill development is important. I remember a famous investor well-known investor Mr. Sanjiv Vchandani founder of nori.com and then Zomato right so Mr. Nichanani has once said and and you can watch these things you know they're on all over the net. He says that when he looks to invest in different companies and so on he looks to see who has got sort of this deep customer insight and deep insight into customer behavior that leads them to solve a real problem and his own experiences in starting info edge and no and later investing in Zumato etc showcase this. Okay. So they all worked immensely hard. I don't think young people should take this message away that oh I don't need college let me just

32:38 Do a startup and then I'll make billions and that's the end of it. It's very hard to become successful in the in the startup ecosystem and again there you have to do a tremendous amount of learning discovery and insight mining to be able to you know to to to do this. So in my professional career I was part of the venturing group at my company and so we evaluate investments. now I'll say one other thing right and to be really raw and candid with the viewers part of survious somewhat sort of disappointment I'd say is that a community of teachers or friends or others could not convince him otherwise.

33:25 Okay. And that's, you know, a a very sad thing because he could have done extremely well. But again, as they say, right, a picture of Abaki and Meridosi. >> So hopefully he's able to to do to do well. So that's the, you know, maybe >> hope the story. >> No, thanks a lot for sharing that. I think you know one one thing that you kind of mentioned that struck me and I think you know it's important to maybe just underline from my perspective is someone who came thinking that masters is a you know as a ticket to get into job or you know they're not keen on learning I think the vehicle they see it is maybe an easy way to get into US or maybe you know later find a job or an opportunity to move on. I don't know maybe that's an important one to underline I think to the three examples that you said earlier which is much more of a genuine interest to learn or maybe the curiosity to you know grow and

34:26 Learn versus I'm taking this as a shortcut I'm just going to do one year or two years so that I can get my H1 picked up or whatever right so there was never a keen interest because there are some people who might be thinking along those lines I just wanted to maybe underscore that from the three stories that you have mentioned I think when you have the genuine interest when you have really like you know curious to learn I think that strives the path to be successful but otherwise you might have to pay certain price you know for the journey or the shortcuts that you are planning to take >> you know you've made a very perspeacious observation ain so I want to riff on this a little bit because I think it's an important thing for our young viewers to to understand see it's not entirely their fault okay when a student in in India or anywhere else is 21 22 and they're on a threshold of going a lot of them are influenced by their seniors and friends and also there's a you know a lot of these

35:27 Consultancies that have cropped up all over India that will help facilitate mast's apping and these consultancies usually do the usual type of thing saying okay are you ECE are you e major have you taken this Python course if yes then you can do a you know MS in one year should you do an MS in one year or two years if you have working so they devolve the application process into a pattern matching set of if then else if then else type of rules unfortunately our students who at the time don't know better right they're driven into this because that's what a lot of their seniors did and that's what a lot of other things >> so what they miss the nuance that they miss is that the apping process to get an education is vastly different from the job hunting process.

36:22 You know, and the consultancies that help them with the apping process unfortunately leave a undesirable aftertaste in their mouth. So they feel okay the way I apt for my masters is the way I would maybe go and apply for a job which is that okay you know I and not really focus on the on on deep learning and skill building and other things but that's exactly right I I hope that again you know young students these days they're very bright they will learn from their friends so hopefully you know in the future they're able to do better. No, thanks for adding that additional color and insights, you know, what can influence and how they you know make the decision. So I think it perfectly makes sense. so just continuing that I know lately we

37:11 Have been hearing a lot about deportations. I think you know the students there is a lot of fear concern you know from your own experience interacting with students anything that you can talk about this topic or maybe provide some you know reality to that I mean is this real is it happening or what should students be aware of and you know be mindful about this particular topic. >> Yeah. so it's real enough. You hear you know the news stories about these things and so on. I don't know of any cases in my university because we're a research R1 institution and we are you know very disciplined about our academics and so on and and students who don't shape up to our academic standards etc. end up not being able you know go somewhere else or do something else.

38:11 So we're very clear about this. I'll also say that you know universities are generally apolitical and certainly my university is apolitical. as a research one institution we work with the federal government of the United States for research and funding and other things. I think I will say this is that you know the rules around sort of student visas have certainly become stricter in this climate right and I'm trying to sort of answer your question without obviously you know crossing lines or anything and I think the message that students ought to take away from this is to play center coat meaning you Don't play close to the edge. now there's lots of rules around student visas.

39:09 You know, you have to complete certain amount of credits and so on. And you're only allowed to take up employment if it's related to your curricular or optional training that's directly connected with your field of study. sadly, I've you know heard of certain cases at some other universities. and so on. and you know they're on the news and so on. But in many of those cases, it seems that the students concerned were either close to the line or on the other side of the good and straight line. You know, they were doing things that they should not be doing. and you know, there's a lot of anecdotal stories. you know, somebody gets pulled up somewhere and then abruptly and somewhat, you know, harshly sent home and so on. but my general advice

40:12 To all students is particularly those who are on an international student visa and so on is that recognize the limits of your visa. speak to your DSO, international students officer at whichever university you're studying in and just don't do sort of you know stupid or or or or across the you know below the line type of things. Just focus on your studies and and and you know you'll generally be okay. other than that certainly you know it's very sad to hear of some cases where you know bad things happen to students but students have a choice as I said right so just stick to your visa rules and be in touch with your ISO DSO and hopefully you can avoid all the other stuff and focus on the thing that you actually came to America for which

41:14 Is to study well and to >> get a bright future. >> So hopefully that helps. >> No, thanks for sharing your thoughts on that. So I think maybe you know we have talked about like factors that would impact in successful or like what

41:30 People can avoid to be successful right. So if there are any tactical things that students can do right now with this I mean like okay specific tips and any tactical things that you can suggest like maybe LinkedIn or like you know do this beforehand or do this so that they can land up in a good job you know so that they can take away some value points and then they can implement right now that can help them with their you know finding a good job for them. Yeah, this is a fantastic question, right? so I'll pick up from the stories that I talked about earlier and you know start off type of in this way, right? So as I said the apping process is very different than the job hunting process.

42:23 And the other thing that was common in some of the stories that I talked about is that they naturally were able to build their personal professional eminence, which is that they were able to put up a a GitHub. By the way, GitHub profile doesn't necessarily just mean a GitHub account, right? Anyone can make up a GitHub account, but to be able to demonstrate high quality technical content, right? Even if it is a paper or, you know, so on. And I would encourage students to do this when they're doing it their third year of studies. in fact I have sort of visiting collaborations with three and four Indian universities where I give some guidance to students to do you know certain projects and so on and so forth in u collaboration with their professors in their home institutions.

43:16 And so when they're in their third year of study and going into their final year of study, they should seek out sort of good projects. And by that I mean, you know, you can go to the Kaggle competitions and you can go to the well-known data sets available and try to see what papers have been published in that area and try to see what can you do that's above and beyond what's in the papers that have been published in that area so far. and try to work on these projects, publish something and publish sort of original technical content. Number one, right? Number two, a lot of companies are using sort of a technical screener at the very beginning of their interview process, right? Nearly all the mag seven companies are doing it. that they have a technical interview which focuses on more or less the lead code type of problems. Now my faculty colleague professor Alex teaches a

44:18 Very popular class on data structures and he incorporates some of those into his projects. so students really ought to become very familiar with the top 200 odd lead code and they're available right and they should develop confidence that they can crack these problems on their own. So this is an exercise in intellectual honesty. See solutions are available and these days you put into chat GBT in 2 minutes it'll tell you what needs to happen except on the day of your interview there's no chat GPT available to you. Okay. So, and the lead code covers the strings, the searching, sorting, a bunch of different topics are there. So, students who are keen on becoming, you know, successful job-wise should really pay attention to this and gain mastery over these well-known topics.

45:15 Obviously, everybody has why why is this important, right? It's the reason is this. If you look at the magnificent seven companies that are doing search and supply logistics and so on and so forth, this is their bread and butter. Amazon for example requires highly optimized distribution, logistics and delivery. Everybody knows this. When you order a book in Amazon, it shows up you know exactly a day later. So you obviously need to know the graph theory algorithms and so on and so forth which are driving these things. So obviously Amazon is going to look for those people as an example. who have mastery of these types of skills and and so you know people should really gain this and obviously my sort of third thing is that they should be able to build working systems so students know this one of the key pillars of the job interview process is what's called a system design interview >> where they will ask you to build a mini Amazon or something else and you have to give full stack type of details and so

46:16 It's interesting you should mention this because about two years ago I started having these informal Saturday afternoon sessions which are with a handful of students to talk through a bunch of lead code problems and system design type of problems and I'm teaching classes in software engineering where I teach some of these things. and my students reported back to me that a lot of the questions they were getting asked in their job interviews ultimately were touching on these topics, you know, and I said, "Okay, it's not really what my, you know, there's no surprise here. There's no magic here and there's no raasa type of thing. This company wants these skills. So you should get good at these skills. It's really that simple. I would say there's a final thing that encompasses all of this is that see tech, computer science, mathematics etc.

47:17 This is a vidya. Okay, this is a it requires you to do what I generally call sort of sadena which is to practice right and it's no different from learning to play a sport or learning to play a musical instrument etc. So there's a famous report that came out I think many years ago that says you have to put in 5,000 hours of effort or something to be really proficient at something it's important right only when you do this sadena and do it honestly then you will get the blessings and the benefits of that vidya. There's no shortcut here. It's just that simple.

48:04 You know, if you want to learn to play a musical instrument, you have to practice. So, what I would do this actionable thing is to say if I'm in third year, then I'd start doing five to 10 of these lead code type of problems or pick up a data structures book and try to work through some of those problems on your own and just do the math. Right? So, 300 odd days in a year, you spend two hours every day, you get 600 odd hours in a year, right? four hours every day and three or four years down the line you have your 5,000 hours in and that's when you're ready to hit your u job interview, right? And it you know it's a doable. It's right in front of you. It's it's free. You have a laptop. You have access to all these materials etc. There's no reason why people should not do this. and yeah I I you know I hopefully these are specific enough but yeah people should really you know start doing this early

49:06 In their in their careers and lives be able to be successful. No, I appreciate you sharing the thoughts there. Kind of switching gears a little

49:16 Bit, you know, someone who have done bachelor's in US and who is into academics and who who where you are also teaching here in India right now, right? So just trying to understand and get your thoughts in terms of Indian education system versus US education system currently like in terms of where we are, what are the things that's going on on that side. Yeah, sure. so you know the Indian education system and I think a lot of people have given this view and it's a true view. It it's a a relic or a remnant of the Macaulay type of system that is left behind by the by the British.

50:03 There's also you know an explosion in so many universities you know in our times a there were probably five or six IT and today there's 27 IT etc which is necessary right for a country of this size and you know 20 or 30 cr students coming into education and so forth you can't get by with you know a handful of universities the dilemma here is a supply demand equation right? You're admitting you know 200 million odd students for the next so many years. How are you going to find so many trained people? so see Modi government has organized this thing called as the Gan initiative which enables people like me to come to India and spend a week or two at different universities and do short-term classes on things.

50:57 So yes there's there's a relic of the old education system and there's also a supply demand inefficiency. You don't have as many qualified teachers and so those are the hard facts right so in the United States it's not quite that much universities have been around country the US is a relatively young country and after the second world war when engineering tech etc really picked up there centers like Boston and New York and and the Bay Area and so on where you had government labs and then universities and there's an excess or a connection between them that led to the creation of business ecosystem, startup ecosystem in the Bay Area and Boston, financial ecosystem in the greater New York area and so on. those are the hard facts. Now on the soft skill side and many students will attest to this

51:59 Is the US is a very different kind of thinking and you know educational type of model where a lot of my students even the undergraduate students openly challenge what I say in class. Okay, you don't get to see that. It's changing though. and so there's a lot of constructive critical discussion that takes place in in class and and so on. But that's coming here too. Okay. We a lot of the IT etc are beginning to recruit a lot of new faculty. I I want to say one thing Avin which I think is directly relevant to your point. you know I'm I'm always very system etc etc

53:00 Yeah you know India as a country is is coming up to be about 75 and change years old. we we came through an extremely difficult time with the British administration. Today this Bharat Ganaraja is blessed to have an aggressive forwardinking leader in Modi G who is determined to transform India. In fact, a lot of guests on your show, Avin, have said, and you know this and I know this too, is that the India they left is no longer the India that was today. The India they come to is completely different. There's digital everything. The mobile is in your in in your hand and the world is in your hand.

53:53 >> there's an ecosystem. so I think young students in India should look to this positively right so you have NPTEL lectures online classes available so many resources available to you digitally in your hand so yeah to sum up all this right yes the Indian education system is developing but I am you know I'm I'm I'm very encouraged by the direction broadly that that's taking place there are more rec or nits coming up there are more joint industry ventures you come to a place like Bangalore even Hyderabad there is a thriving startup ecosystem where students can connect and do projects and sort of do other things so generally I think I would encourage all of our young students to take action to better their lives you know learn do projects and achieve your potential don't keep

54:53 Pointing to education system. Yes, we know we're doing the best we can. you know, I'm sorry I'm going on a little bit, but I think it this is important. I was having lunch with with some professors at at at an institution in in my home city Mumbai after I had given you know some talks there and so on. and the professors were outlining their plans that there are two different satellite campuses of the university that are about to get built but obviously these things take time and so you know u I'm encouraged by what I think the future will bring and I think young people should be the change that they want to see and you know do well hopefully that answers you >> no yeah it Yes. So I think maybe one last question I think before we wrap up

55:50 Our discussion. this is going back to the comment that you made earlier right the kind of students that you interacted with you know you have interacted with the students who were born in US who moved to India you know did their primary education or the schooling here and then moved back to US for their undergraduate studies. maybe what were your experiences? I think you know just curious on that you know because they were the one who were born maybe might have studied for some time in US spent some time in India and then coming back so just curious on that interaction and your takes on take on that >> I think you're asking for three more stories a >> okay maybe we can do that yeah >> yeah but I mean I don't want to let the question go unanswered see this is An interesting again one of these dynamics that you see the parents of these students right people like you and me and so on they have been

56:53 Very involved with the education of their children >> so like you have a lot of guests on your show that you know have done a lot of research and they've found the right school the right school system ICE CBSC and so on and so forth >> many of the parents because they had done their masters or some cases they're you know etc etc they are preparing their students and so you know I I recently in the past maybe five or six years or so I've been doing SAT ACT tutoring just as a community service and so on and I've begun to get a bunch of inquiries and so on from local friends, relatives and and and others >> in this. So the parents are very keen there's also

57:55 You know I was I was just looking this up the other day India as a country if you look at the Sensex from about I want to say 22100 about 8 10 years ago today it no it's crossed and beaten its limits. and so there's a lot of income that's coming up in India. As a result, a lot of parents etc have you know done that it's become affordable to to come out to the to the to the US and to do their undergraduate education there. And so that preparation starts when you know students are in ninth and tth grade because they also have to do profile building. Undergraduate admissions is a very different ball game than graduate

58:57 Admissions. You have to have your academics, your test scores, your extracurriculars. There's a whole framework for this as a common application coition application so on and so forth. so my interaction with students is they're a lot more confident and they're younger and a lot of these students are born digital. Lash Abin you know I you know we didn't see mobile phones and so on you know until perhaps our college days >> but these kids are born digital they you know are well informed and it's good to see it you know they they they're you know they they're confident they're able to do this but in terms of admission obviously their parents in India and the students desire that they should go to the top colleges to the IVs and so on and so forth. So I have a bunch of experience with IVs. I

59:59 Studied in one of the IVs. so I know some ideas of what the thing is that but hopefully we'll get to the the three stories because this is a very hot topic and you know a lot of people are very curious and and anxious in some cases about >> Yeah, for sure. I think I think sounds like I think it's something worth a deeper discussion and understanding the different dynamics there. >> so yeah thank you very much Dr. Kumar for taking the time and sharing you know lot of insights about what makes the student successful you know some of the things that they need to watch out. So yeah thank you very

1:00:41 Much for taking the time and sharing your insights. I know this is a not a typical of what we do but I felt this is an important topic that we want to cover for a lot of our young you know people like who are in US going through masters or just graduated or like you know considering to do the masters I think this is a very helpful topic for them and I would encourage the viewers to provide their questions or feedback or anything in the comments. So I think you know that can help us out to you know plan out the next set of discussions in this topic. so with that thank you very much for being with us and really appreciate >> Thank you very much Avin again you're doing a terrific job for our community.

1:01:28 I wish everyone who watches this episode every success in their careers. Jind and God bless America. >> Yeah. Thanks again.