Anirudh Sharma

When you join a new org or switch teams in the same, it is quite an unsettling and borderline anxious experience. Here are a few things that I did to ramp up faster. 1. I consciously made an effort to remain unblocked 2. I read a ton of code and its history, sometimes even unrelated 3. I asked questions about the past, the present, and the future 4. I took up relatively mundane tasks - cross-team work, tests, and docs 5. I extended a helping hand in whatever capacity I could 6. I proactively met skip-level leaders and managers to understand the vision Some companies do have a culture of pairing up with someone existing in the team, but even if you do not get a mentor, it is important that you still navigate the situation and ramp up as quickly as you can. The above list is not exhaustive, by any means, and hence you can always add things that you find helpful in your context. but the lowest common denominator is to show extreme intent and interest to get output and drive outcomes. Hope this helps.

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After all the layoffs in so many companies, finally a good news of job openings which can be a chance after long time for so many people. Feb and March are going to have a lot of new job openings. And if you are starting now, here's a list of to-do before hirings start, how to prepare and list of companies to monitor job openings, classification of these companies, job roles and requirements and what products they are working on. Source: Internal town-hall meetings, VPs and leads, HR discussions, and best of all- info. on upcoming ambitious projects and their funding in these companies. In short, anyone who’s been in Bengaluru for a few years and has some connections knows how this info travels. STEP-1: Let's list first, how to PLAN your preparation: 1️⃣ Make a simple Excel sheet, list companies, roles, and their requirements. You’ll thank me later when you start tracking everything properly. 2️⃣ Target at least 5 companies to apply everyday. Do it regularly through Feb–March. Don’t wait for “perfect timing.” 3️⃣ Make 2 resumes, small hack but works like magic. One resume for direct applying when you see the opening. Another one for referrals. (change your phone and email). And if referrals get delayed, you already have one application there. 4️⃣ Update your LinkedIn and Naukri profile. Very seriously, don’t waste time on fancy job alert sites — most of them share fake or old listings. 5️⃣ Track your interviews, make a folder and note down every interview — questions, discussions, feedback, everything. Even the rejections will help you improve. 6️⃣ Work on small AI and LLM projects, try building and deploying them on cloud. These skills will be useful because many upcoming roles are in such teams. Will list them down. 7️⃣ Talk to people from the companies you’re targeting. Referrals still work, there are people who say "koi fark nahi pdta(doesn’t matter)" but don't listen to stupidity. 8️⃣ If you don’t know something in interviews, just say, you have not worked on it but you are willing to learn. Honesty is always better than fake confidence. 9️⃣ Write your own resume. Use Google Docs to make it yourself. You know your story better than any AI tool. 🔟 Try to apply within the first week after a job is posted. No HR will go through too many applications till the end of their excel sheet. STEP-2: LISTING companies here: Tier-1: Vm Ware, Google, PayPal, Nvidia, Goldman Sachs, Arcesium, Intuit, Adobe, Linkedin, Philips Tier-2/3: Myntra, Epam, Sapient, Expedia, Bluejeans, FIS, Twilio, Virtusa I know it looks like few names, but there will be a lot of openings in these companies for different experience levels. And given the domains of these companies, I'm pretty sure soon I'll get info. on some more in the similar sector. Sorry, but due to word limitations, I'm stopping here. Will continue in next post on job roles, projects and more. → Keep learning. It's almost the right time. And keep helping others too, good karmas do come back🫶

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Here are 3 Lessons I’ve learned in my 3 yrs as an SDE that changed my life. LESSON #1 → Asking early saves you time later. Whenever I got stuck, I reached out, paired with a teammate, shared logs, or walked through the flow together. A good engineer doesn’t solve problems alone, they solve it faster with collaboration. LESSON #2 → Take feedback seriously. Whether it was Code or design reviews, the feedback stung at first, but acting on it made me sharper. Each review wasn’t about “fixing mistakes” but about raising my bar. LESSON #3 → Systems break at the edges. The happy path is easy. What I started focusing on were edge cases: timeouts, retries, failover behavior, scaling limits. That attention to detail made me more confident in production environments. Working at Microsoft & now Salesforce, these lessons have shaped me into more than just an engineer who codes & into someone who owns systems end-to-end. So if you’re a working SDE preparing for your next switch to mid-level SDE roles while working full-time, I’d strongly recommend Bosscoder Academy. 🔗 Explore their programs here: https://bit.ly/4gBc1Il They’ve already helped 2200+ engineers land roles in top PBCs with structured prep in DSA, System Design, and Full Stack, 1:1 mentorship, mock interviews, resume support, and 100% job switch guidance. #sdeprep #career #jobswitch #systemdesign #growth #collab

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If you thought you’d leave data structures behind after college.  Think again. – Google Maps, graphs in action, finding the shortest path for you every single day. – WhatsApp, queues, to make sure your messages are delivered in order. – Instagram Stories, stacks, letting you go back through stories one by one. – Chrome’s Incognito Tabs, linked lists, so you can jump between tabs seamlessly. – Spotify, hash maps, to instantly pull up your playlist or favorite song. Also, – Amazon uses recommendation algorithms to suggest products just for you. – Facebook uses priority queues to decide what shows up on your news feed. – Uber uses graph search to find the closest drivers and fastest routes. – YouTube uses tries to autocomplete your search instantly. – Twitter uses rate-limiting algorithms to prevent spam and abuse. You have to practice DSA for interviews, yes. But don’t skip over the foundations just because you’re in a hurry. Because one day, you’ll hit a challenge where the right answer will come from actually understanding how things work under the hood. If you don’t build a strong foundation now, you’ll feel it when it matters most. Because sooner or later, every real engineering problem comes back to the basics. When the system breaks, the deadlines close in, or your code needs to scale for millions, It won’t matter what language or framework you know. What matters is whether you understand the building blocks. That’s the difference between fixing things and just guessing.

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This was the FIRST LLD question I got in 2 out of 3 interviews. And I messed it up 🫤 The question seemed harmless “Design a leave approval system.” I jumped into code. Nested if-else. Done. ✅ 🤣 But then came the follow-up- ➤ “What if I want to add another approver?” ➤ “What if Director is on leave?” ➤ “Can you make it scalable and clean?” That’s when I blanked 😭 Here’s what I wish I knew back then- The interviewer was looking for Chain of Responsibility, not hardcoded logic. Think of it like a relay race. 💡 This one pattern teaches: • Clean code separation • Extensibility for real-world needs • Reusability across different systems Whether you're prepping for system design or writing backend logic—this pattern is gold. Especially when you want your code to grow with your product. Dive into a full breakdown (with Java code)-> https://lnkd.in/gPPQzybF

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