Yash Sharma - AI And ML Actually Solved My Daily Life Problems On A Very Large Scale (Software Engineer)

Your college curriculum, your classroom cannot make you a software engineer. It just will just give you a kind of an understanding like how the things work, but until unless you don't do a practical you won't get a good job and you won’t become a good software engineer. 

1. Tell us more about your background and journey.

Hi, Myself Yash Sharma and I am a software engineer by degree and DevRel (Developer Relation) lead by profession and community and tech evangelist by passion. In 2016 I started my journey into the bachelor of technology. I was not able to crack IIT JEE in 2016 and because of that, I landed into a tier 3 college. 

Before this I wanted to join the armed forces but while being in engineering my vision changed to something else and I started doing work more into tech and I started loving it. 

In 2018 I went to the USA which actually raises my interest into the startups and tech industry and since then I am working with communities technical things and developer relations and currently I am working as a developer relations lead at figment which is a Canadian company that's a bit about my background.


2. How has the Indian software industry grown open in the last few years?

In 2016 when I started my engineering in computer science and engineering. At that time computer science was on boom but no one expected that this much big It will be suddenly in upcoming years. The software industry has grown exponentially, I truly say just because of this community and developer things and all these events happening all around in India. 

This growth into the software industry was unpredictable and nowadays every single company which is working on some good things looks for hiring great developers from India that's because of all these community things so I can say Indian software industry grew a lot on a large level in the last few years especially in 2018, 2019 and 2020.


3. How has the advent of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning impacted your job?

I don't work in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning things but from the perspective of being a technologist, I say it's actually solved my daily life problems on a very large scale from meeting reminders to Google Doc and virtual assistants. 

It actually affected my daily life a lot as well as my job because there are a lot of things and a lot of work is going on into the AI and ML domain. Professionally, I work in the blockchain domain which is one of the most emerging technologies. Nowadays these are the few things which are actually advent and affected my job and daily life.


4. Your advice to future software engineers.

My advice to the upcoming software engineer is your college curriculum, your classroom cannot make you a software engineer. It just will just give you a kind of an understanding like how the things work, but until unless you don't do a practical you won't get a good job and you won’t become a good software engineer. 

Apart from these two things if you’re thinking to pursue software engineering so don't run after colleges, don't run for a good college name for good grades, a college name and grades don't matter at all. 

What all you need to become a good software engineer - practical skills, good knowledge of structures and algorithms, command on different programming languages databases and all day to day things, skills which actually needs by a software engineer so start doing some practical start doing projects.

Don't go or don't run behind the marks grades college name and all run behind the communities, what technical communities are working on, what is the new hype is coming up, what is the new things are going on, what is the new work new projects are going on in the industry go for them. 

Don't go for just blindly follow anyone. Go for the actual things that you love to do like if you love working on any specific programming language do that learn more about it and gain expertise in that.


5. Which is your favourite book and why?

I love to read books about technology and startups. Few of them are: 

• Rich dad poor dad - This book gives you great knowledge about Life, the value of time, money and learning.
• The Lean startup - I can say this is one of the best books for startup founders and complete 101 on startups.
• The Startup Hero - I Love this book because this one is written by Tim Draper and in this book he talked about his experiences with startups, entrepreneurs and funding etc.

- Yash Sharma (Software Engineer)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharma-yash/

Interviewed By Daisy Sharma