
## intro  -> doreamon image -> 
## my experience ->
company
the languages i used

## resume stuff -> 
 
 before/after of a resume
 
 dos and donts: no two column layout, no need of photo, black and white is more than enough, include numberes, key words and the stand out feture you implemented, the industry standard/technical issue you solved
 
 how to analyse ATS scores? use multiple wesites and take an avg, tehy each look for a specific thing, so use thatt to your advantage

how much does the resume look/ats score matter?


## dsa -> 
 roadmap followed
 number of questions i solved

## project -> 
 how to choose a good project, how to make it stand out
If you use a fancy tool, you MUST know **WHY**. 'It's cool' is a fail.

 #### 1. Backend & Architecture (The "System Design" Flex)

- **Standard:** A monolithic API where the user clicks "Order" and waits 5 seconds for the email to send and the database to update.
    
- **The Standout Move:** **Asynchronous Processing with Message Queues.**
    
    - **Tool:** RabbitMQ, Kafka, or BullMQ (Redis based).
        
    - **The Feature:** When a user places an order, push a job to a queue and return "Success" immediately. Let a background worker handle the heavy lifting (sending emails, generating PDFs).
        
    - **Why it impresses:** It shows you understand **decoupling**, **latency**, and how real-world systems scale.
        
- **Standard:** Basic REST API calls.
    
- **The Standout Move:** **WebSockets for Real-Time Data.**
    
    - **Tool:** Socket.io or raw WebSockets.
        
    - **The Feature:** Instead of the user refreshing the page to see new messages/notifications (polling), push the data instantly.
        
    - **Why it impresses:** Shows understanding of **stateful connections** vs. stateless HTTP.
        

#### 2. Database & Data (The "Optimization" Flex)

- **Standard:** Doing `SELECT * FROM products WHERE name LIKE '%shoe%'`.
    
- **The Standout Move:** **Full-Text Search Engine.**
    
    - **Tool:** ElasticSearch, MeiliSearch, or Solr.
        
    - **The Feature:** Implement "fuzzy search" (handling typos) and relevance ranking, which a standard SQL DB struggles with at scale.
        
    - **Why it impresses:** You move beyond basic CRUD and tackle **information retrieval** problems.
        
- **Standard:** Hitting the database for every single request.
    
- **The Standout Move:** **Caching Strategies.**
    
    - **Tool:** Redis (as you mentioned, but specific implementation).
        
    - **The Feature:** Implement a "Look-Aside" cache. Check Redis first; if data is missing, hit DB, then save to Redis.
        
    - **Why it impresses:** Shows you care about **database load** and **response times**.
        

#### 3. Security (The "Maturity" Flex)

- **Standard:** Storing passwords as plain text (instant fail) or just basic hashing.
    
- **The Standout Move:** **Rate Limiting & Throttling.**
    
    - **Tool:** Redis-based rate limiter or Nginx configuration.
        
    - **The Feature:** Prevent a single IP from hitting your API more than 100 times a minute.
        
    - **Why it impresses:** Shows awareness of **DDoS attacks** and API resource management.
        

#### 4. DevOps & Deployment (The "Ready-to-Hire" Flex)

- **Standard:** "It works on my machine" or uploading files manually to a server.
    
- **The Standout Move:** **Containerization & CI/CD.**
    
    - **Tool:** Docker + GitHub Actions.
        
    - **The Feature:** "I don't just run the code; I have a Dockerfile that sets up the environment, and a GitHub Action that automatically runs tests whenever I push code."
        
    - **Why it impresses:** This is arguably the **#1 thing** that separates a student from a junior engineer.
        

### How to Present This in Your Slide

You can visually group these as "Level 1 (Basic)" vs. "Level 100 (Hired)".

**Example Slide Layout:**

> **Title:** Don't Build a Feature, Solved a Problem.
> 
> **Don't just say:** "I built a chat app." **Say:** "I built a chat app using **WebSockets** for < 50ms latency."
> 
> **Don't just say:** "I made an e-commerce site." **Say:** "I implemented **Redis Caching** to reduce DB load by 40%."
> 
> **The Secret Sauce:**
> 
> - **Logins:** Don't just verify password -> Add **Rate Limiting**.
>     
> - **Search:** Don't just use SQL -> Integrate **ElasticSearch**.
>     
> - **APIs:** Don't just use JSON -> Experiment with **gRPC/Protobufs**.
>     
> - **Images:** Don't just upload -> Use a Lambda function to **compress/resize** automatically.
>     

### Crucial Advice to Add

Tell them: **"If you use these technologies, you MUST know WHY."** Interviewers will smell a rat if they just copy-pasted code.

- _Question:_ "Why did you use Redis?"
    
- _Bad Answer:_ "It's fast."
    
- _Good Answer:_ "My SQL queries were taking 200ms. By caching the result in Redis RAM, I brought read times down to 5ms for frequent data."

## interviews -> 
 tips: always look to steer the conversation in your favour, always tell them you know _something_, every question you answer should leave a breadcrumb for them to followup on which is exactly what you are confident in answering, ensure your introduction has such a bait for them, as an intro is a guranteed thing to happen in any interview.
ex: tell me about yourself.
> blah blah bblah, i like to experiment with new technology (oss and alike) and its fun when i end up breaking them cuz that way i get to learn more about them.

now he thinks he will get some boring answer out of me for asking "tell me what you ended up breaking recently and what you learnt?"
but in reality ill talk to him about how i iim using NixOS(i use nixos btw) cuz win10 went eol and i had to learn the nix way of doing things and ended up breaking a few things.
which is a pretty good answer and lets him know that i know what im doing and im not afraid of change/new things.

ex2: if he asks you a very broad question to whihc you dont know where to begin, just add a few details in the form of a question and ask itt back to him
if you were to use a AI/ML  in this college, what would it be and why? 
> i didnt know what he meant, so i just asked him: if he is tryna get me to find a aiml based solution for a problem in college? he said yes thats what he is asking(he could have told me directly but me being proactive is exactly what they are looking for, i kept rephrasing his question with better wording and terms a few times. this will also let them know that i know what he means/ you know to detect bs/waht is not really ideal/ not a good solution. )
> 
> but i stil couldnt come up with anything, so i asked him if there are any constrains regarding teh location, tech, anyting in specific he is looking for
> 
> thats when he told me "yeah sure take the library/canteen/ administrative/ sports department as an example and start there"
> 
> BINGO! that was enough fro me to cook up and idea
> now that ensured a few things for me:
> -i now know what type of probelm/solution he is looking for
> - any constraints if any 
> - he literally gave me a headstart by mentioning those locations
> the rest was just me coming up with something basic and then going back and forth with him on the details and technology i used and explaining it to him

and in this rephrasing is exactly where you will be injecting your strengths, and voila you have steerd the convo in YOUR favor

> can you tell me about x?(x, you dont know)

ill be like "you asked me about x, but ive heard/ know of y which is very similar" and proceed to explain it just a wee bit and look for the interviewrs expression, if its good then ask them if thats what they want

that way you can verify your solution/ answer if you are unsure of it

if you were wrong, at the least,  you didnt say "idk".


 stay confident, avoid saying "idk" unless you are sure you wont get it

need good communication skills
its completely fine if you make mistakes, you need to show that you can recover if that is the case
i was asked about LRU cache, something that i completely forgot to revise
>i made up my own solution on the fly when asked and forgot a few crucial parts of it, but each time they asked me indirectly about it, i jsut 

its guranteed that they will ask if you have any questions for them,
always ask them a question, how has your career trajectory been? how did this company help your career, hows the work life bbalance here? waht tech stack is being used/ migrating to? most interesting programming challenge you faced?
## masters -> 
 depends on your situation, your family's needs- whether they can afford to let your ass sit at  home for the next 2 years, yes masters will give you leverage ofc, and the only thing to do in india is leave, so yeah
 
 im planning to go abroad for masters after around 2-3 years of job at the minimum


all topics after my experience will have Q&A in them which are the questions asked by the juniors along with some advice in each section from my side

## general tips

if you have interest in networking, thats vgood cuz the competition is very little in that space
high chances of getting placed, companies like cisco care 80% only about that so you will have sooo much leverage

 tips to avoid distractions(df insta mod apk, unhook yt extension, revanced to avoid shorts, pomodoro timer)
 
goated java resource: https://javabook.mccue.dev/