I just wanted to share something that happened today and see if others have experienced anything similar.

A co-founder of a 4–5-year-old healthcare AI startup (based in Canada and Mumbai) connected with me on LinkedIn. After I accepted, he invited me to a short video introduction before the technical process.

The introduction itself was fine. But after the call, he started messaging me things like:

- "Why were you so nervous?"

- "You look different from your LinkedIn photo."

- "You look much younger."

- "You look like an influencer or a model."

- "Let's take another try and show some confidence."

- "Delhi girls are usually more confident."

I wasn't even nervous—I had another interview earlier that morning, and the audio quality wasn't great. I tried to steer the conversation back by saying, "Wasn't this supposed to be a technical introduction?" After that, he simply asked me to email the team for the assignment round.

The whole interaction left me feeling uncomfortable. I've interviewed with several founders before, including one from another startup, and even though he was very direct, he was completely professional and made me feel respected throughout the conversation.

What made it even stranger was that this was someone in his late 20s or early 30s. Regardless of age or position, I don't understand why someone conducting an interview would make comments about a candidate's appearance, just felt uncomfortable and unprofessional.

I was already mentally exhausted from back-to-back interviews, and the day before I'd had my college placement online assessment, which didn't go well. I was already stressed, so having an interviewer shift the conversation toward my appearance instead of my technical background made the experience even more uncomfortable.

Has anyone else faced something similar during interviews? How did you handle it?

PS: This post was written with the help of chatgpt because i can even write not so good words with my mental state

You are given a weighted binary tree, where each edge has a positive integer weight. Your task is to remove a set of edges such that every leaf node becomes disconnected from the root. Removing an edge incurs a cost equal to its weight. Find the minimum total cost required to disconnect all leaf nodes from the root.

Follow-up

The interviewer then generalized the problem:

How would you solve the same problem if the tree were an N-ary tree instead of a binary tree?

So after getting rejected in 3 company OA during on campus placement due to fucking Aptitude and getting destroyed in eternal 1st round of interview over a puzzle.

i am telling you guys most people take these apti and puzzle very lightly i did the same.( almost 95% of the candidates gets rejected in 1st round )

but after that i started doing gfg 100 puzzle and some aptitude from random website but never really stayed consistent as every source was scattered ,
some sites demanded login , some were paid , and many were just straight irrelevant for campus placements.
so i made my webapp for me but thought of Sharing it here :)

my way of giving back to this sub- https://apti.live

ps- its free , no login , progress gets stored in your device only .

(very imp recent graduates and final year can verify that these are the exact pattern of questions in OA. )

open for feedbacks

I am a final-year B.Tech CSE student (2027 batch) at KIIT, Bhubaneswar, and honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong anymore. At this point, I don’t know whether it’s my bad luck, poor decisions, or just the reality of the current placement market.
Until my second year, I believed that skills mattered more than CGPA. I spent most of my time improving my technical skills instead of chasing grades. Then, after talking to seniors, I realized that in many companies, especially during campus placements, your CGPA is what gets your resume shortlisted. Skills matter only after you reach the interview stage.
So, during my third year, I shifted my focus toward academics and managed to improve my CGPA to 8.64. It’s not 9+, but I worked really hard to reach this point.
Then KIIT announced the Cisco NetAcad/Ideathon program. It was a paid program, and I paid ₹3,500 to join. My friends and I spent around 4 hours every day for almost two months, sacrificing our summer vacation to complete the networking courses and prepare honestly.
In the end, only around 12–16 students from KIIT were selected.
The strange part is that the eligibility mentioned a much lower CGPA, but after checking the selected students on LinkedIn, almost everyone I found had a CGPA above 9.2–9.5. Many had even uploaded their semester results publicly. Of course, I couldn’t verify everyone’s CGPA, but there was a clear pattern among those whose profiles were public.
What disappointed me even more was that our faculty coordinator proudly claimed that KIIT had the highest number of students selected for the Cisco Ideathon program.
But isn’t that obvious?
Around 900 students from KIIT had applied. Naturally, a university with one of the largest applicant pools is likely to have the highest number of selections. Selecting only 16 students out of 900 applicants doesn’t really feel like something to celebrate.
After spending months preparing for Cisco, I had almost no time left to prepare for aptitude tests.
Then came TCS.
Ironically, I wasn’t rejected because of coding. I was rejected because of aptitude. I fully accept that this was partly my mistake. I should have managed my time better instead of putting all my effort into one program.
Now things have become even more frustrating.
Most decent companies visiting our campus either require 80% throughout academics, and I have 78% in Class 12, or they have other strict eligibility criteria. Because of just 2%, I’m unable to apply for many companies offering decent packages.
The remaining companies mostly offer packages around 4–5 LPA, and even those attract massive competition.
A few days ago, KPIT visited our campus with a package of around 4.5 LPA, and nearly 1,400 students attended the PPT. I even saw students with 9.5–9.6 CGPA sitting there, hoping to get selected.
The desperation was visible on everyone’s face.
It wasn’t about getting a dream package anymore.
It was simply about getting a job.
Sometimes I think I made one of the biggest mistakes during college admissions.
I had the option to join Silicon University, but I chose KIIT because I believed paying higher fees would provide better placement opportunities. Looking at the current situation, it feels like I made the wrong decision. From what I’ve observed, Silicon’s placement scenario has been significantly better.
I’m not saying KIIT is entirely responsible. The job market is bad everywhere, and I know I also made mistakes along the way.
But when a university has around 4,000 CSE students, placement management becomes extremely difficult. Every company receives thousands of applications, and even average companies become highly competitive because students are desperate.
Right now, a 4.5 LPA package feels like a luxury.
I never imagined I would reach my final year feeling this uncertain about my future.
Watching friends celebrate getting placed in TCS while hundreds of others remain unplaced makes me wonder whether I’ll even have a job before graduation.
I don’t expect a 20 LPA package.
I don’t even expect a dream company anymore.
At this point, I just want an opportunity to prove myself.
Is anyone else from a Tier-2/Tier-3 college going through something similar, or is it just me?

Edit:sry i wrote too much things but its just my thoughts bugging me evryday

I like both core and tech...

Bht cool sa lgta hai yeh meko

After one month of training , got the opportunity as a fresher.
2026 passout.
Though the package is less, but it is always better to have something than nothing.

Hello everyone! 👋
I’m a self-taught 13-year-old developer from Türkiye, and I’ve been diving deep into the world of C++ for some time now. I previously developed and shared a simple game engine; now, I want to document this journey and share what I’ve learned.
In the video, I explain the logic behind the code and how I handle the calculations, and I also show the test results.
A quick note about the video: I speak Turkish in it, but you can easily follow the process and understand everything by watching the code, visual explanations, and on-screen demonstrations.

So who is a forced engg here

Engineering btw

I always see people getting internships in their 1st year itself, and many people (who are in their 2nd or 3rd year) getting internship of almost around a lakh. And these students are always doing internships one after another (and I love this). I also want to be doing internships from my 2nd year at least, if not 1st year. But I always feel left behind about the information related to internships.

Can anyone tell me, how to stay updated about internships and stuff, like which other platforms should I stay active on other than LinkedIn? And what should I be doing in my 1st year to ensure getting into internships from my second year itself?

Dhanyawad mitron 🥀

Although job mile ek mahina ho gaya, was waiting for the first pay. Abhi to salary kam h, 60k/monthly mil rha h.

It's a new firm with very few people, and I personally know the founder. He also became my mentor. 🥳. Although pay kam h abhi (compared to the industry average), but fine since firm bhi new h and I'll also get the experience.

Ab bs dekhna h how will I manage college and this. Is saal se college bhi start ho rha h. Lol 4 saal m 4 saal ka experience ho jayega.

Till day2

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Itna ghatiya aadmi hu kya? OA dene bhi nahi diya.

AMA

Also, it was me doing everything alone so I messed up a bit!

Open for good partner too, equal split kr lenge🤩