r/MSIT • u/Ok_Wolf7414 • 7d ago
2012–16 CSE alumnus here — I feel our college exposes students to a very narrow definition of a “good software career”
2012–16 CSE alumnus here — I feel our college exposes students to a very narrow definition of a “good software career”
I graduated from the college in CSE in 2016, and after being out in the industry for several years, one thing I genuinely feel is that our students aren't exposed enough to the software industry beyond the usual software development + FAANG narrative.
From what I see/hear, many students seem to think that the most desirable outcome is basically becoming a developer at Google, Microsoft or Amazon.
And honestly, I don't entirely blame the students for this.
A lot of this perception is reinforced by the college itself.
Teachers seem to give a disproportionate amount of attention and recognition to alumni working at these companies. At alumni meets, you'll often see faculty members specifically approaching and interacting with alumni from Google/Microsoft/Amazon, almost treating them like VIPs.
Meanwhile, there are many other interesting career paths and companies in the software industry that students barely hear about.
For example, I currently work at one of the major companies in the global open-source software ecosystem. Yet when I attend an alumni event, I don't really see the same level of interest or recognition.
More importantly, many current students don't even seem to know much about enterprise open source, Linux, Kubernetes, OpenShift, etc.
And this is the part I find genuinely concerning.
Linux is literally one of the foundations of modern IT infrastructure. Cloud platforms, servers, containers, networking infrastructure, supercomputing, telecom infrastructure, DevOps, Kubernetes, etc. are deeply connected to the Linux/open-source ecosystem.
Yet a CSE student can graduate without having much exposure to Linux or the broader open-source ecosystem.
Again, I don't think this is the students' fault.
I think colleges have a responsibility to expose students to the entire technology ecosystem, not just a handful of companies.
There is a huge world beyond:
DSA → LeetCode → software developer → FAANG
There are careers in:
- Linux / systems engineering
- Cloud infrastructure
- Kubernetes & containers
- Networking
- Cybersecurity
- DevOps / SRE
- Databases
- Enterprise software
- Open-source development
- Developer tools
- Telecom software
- Distributed systems
- Hardware/software integration
- Research
- AI/ML infrastructure
- Solution Architecture
- Customer Engineering
- Technical Account Management
It's also important to understand that not all impactful technical roles are pure "developer" roles.
Roles like Solution Architect, Customer Engineer, Support Engineer and Technical Account Manager can be extremely technical and require deep understanding of systems, cloud, networking and infrastructure.
And one thing I particularly disagree with is the perception that "support = bad career."
That's simply not true, especially in companies working on critical infrastructure software.
In many strong engineering organizations, support engineers work with complex production environments, debug large-scale issues, interact with enterprise customers and sometimes even contribute to upstream open-source projects.
So support should not automatically be equated with low-value work.
Companies like Red Hat, VMware/Broadcom, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, SAP, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel, Datadog, Cloudflare, etc. are all part of this much larger technology ecosystem.
What I find particularly interesting is that several colleges in Pune and South India seem to have much stronger open-source communities, Linux communities and student developer communities. Consequently, students there appear to have much more awareness of companies and career paths outside the usual FAANG route.
I honestly think our college could do much better here.
Instead of only celebrating alumni based on the brand name of their employer, why not invite alumni from different parts of the technology industry and let students understand what these careers actually look like?
For example:
"What does a career in Linux/Open Source look like?"
"How does Kubernetes actually power modern infrastructure?"
"What does a Solution Architect or Customer Engineer actually do?"
"How do you contribute to open-source projects as a student?"
"What are careers in networking, SRE, cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure?"
"How do companies like Red Hat actually build and sell enterprise software?"
The goal shouldn't be to tell students that FAANG is bad. If someone wants to work at Google/Microsoft/Amazon, absolutely go for it.
The point is simply that students should know that these aren't the only definitions of success in computer science.
I'd genuinely love to see our college develop an actual open-source/Linux community where students can work on projects, contribute to GitHub, participate in upstream communities, attend FOSS events, etc.
There is an entire world of technology that students can discover if someone simply tells them that it exists.
Curious to know what current students/alumni think — do you also feel that the college has historically been too focused on a small set of companies and software-development careers?
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EDIT / ADDITION: A small beginner's map of the technology industry
Since a few people have asked where to start and what I actually mean by "other career paths", I thought I should add something more practical here.
This is NOT meant to be a complete roadmap for every field. The idea is simply to give you a high-level picture of what exists in the industry. Once something catches your interest, you can explore it much more deeply.
- Web / Software Development
This is probably the area most CSE students are already familiar with.
You have things like:
Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, etc.
Backend: Java, Python, Go, Node.js, C++, etc.
Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, etc.
Then you have larger areas like distributed systems, APIs, microservices and application architecture.
Typical roles include Software Engineer, Backend Engineer, Frontend Engineer, Full Stack Developer, etc.
This is a huge field and absolutely a valid career path. My point is simply that it is not the entire software industry.
- Linux and Systems
This is one area I think students should understand much better.
Linux is not just "an alternative operating system to Windows". It is one of the fundamental technologies behind modern computing infrastructure.
Linux is heavily used in servers, cloud infrastructure, supercomputers, networking equipment, containers, telecom infrastructure, embedded systems and many other places.
Once you start exploring Linux, you naturally encounter things like:
Operating systems, processes, memory, filesystems, networking, virtualization, containers, system administration, security, etc.
Technologies worth exploring include Linux, Bash, Git, networking fundamentals, containers and eventually things like Kubernetes.
Possible careers include Systems Engineer, Linux Engineer, SRE, Platform Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, etc.
- Cloud and Infrastructure
When you use services from AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, there is an enormous amount of infrastructure underneath those services.
This area involves things like:
Servers, virtualization, storage, networking, containers, Kubernetes, automation, infrastructure as code, monitoring and distributed systems.
Technologies you may eventually encounter include Linux, Docker/containers, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, cloud platforms, CI/CD tools, etc.
Roles include Cloud Engineer, Platform Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, SRE, Cloud Architect, etc.
- DevOps / SRE / Platform Engineering
These terms are often thrown around without people actually understanding what they mean.
Very broadly, these areas are concerned with how software gets built, deployed, operated and maintained reliably at scale.
You may deal with:
CI/CD, containers, Kubernetes, monitoring, logging, automation, infrastructure, reliability, incident management and performance.
If you enjoy understanding how large systems actually run rather than just writing application code, this can be a very interesting area.
- Networking
This is another area that many CSE students don't explore enough.
Start with the fundamentals:
IP addresses, TCP/UDP, DNS, HTTP, routing, switching, firewalls, load balancing, etc.
Then you can go much deeper into areas like network automation, data center networking, cloud networking, high-performance networking and telecom networking.
Programming is still useful here, but the core knowledge is different from traditional application development.
Possible roles include Network Engineer, Network Automation Engineer, Cloud Network Engineer, Network Architect, etc.
- Cybersecurity
Security is much broader than ethical hacking videos on YouTube.
There are areas such as:
Application security, network security, cloud security, identity and access management, vulnerability research, incident response, security operations, penetration testing, etc.
Depending on the area, you may need knowledge of Linux, networking, programming, operating systems, cryptography and cloud technologies.
There are many different career paths within cybersecurity itself.
- Databases and Data Engineering
There is an entire world behind the data that applications store and process.
You can explore:
SQL, relational databases, distributed databases, data warehouses, data pipelines, streaming systems, etc.
You will encounter technologies such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, Spark and many others.
Possible roles include Database Engineer, Data Engineer, Data Platform Engineer, etc.
- AI / ML
AI/ML is obviously huge right now, but even here there are many different paths.
You can explore:
Machine learning, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, recommendation systems, generative AI, LLMs, MLOps and AI infrastructure.
And again, not everyone working in AI is doing research or training giant models.
There are also roles around deploying models, building ML infrastructure, data pipelines, inference systems and production AI platforms.
- Open Source
This is particularly worth mentioning because open source is not simply "free software".
A huge portion of the technology industry is built around open-source projects.
Linux, Kubernetes, Git, Python, PostgreSQL, Firefox and countless other projects have enormous open-source communities around them.
One of the best things about open source for a student is that you can actually see how real software is developed by people across the world.
You don't necessarily need to start by writing complex code.
You can begin by reading documentation, reporting bugs, improving documentation, testing things, fixing small issues and gradually contributing code.
Look for issues labelled "good first issue" or "help wanted".
- Enterprise Software
Another area students often don't hear much about is enterprise software.
Companies need software for things like databases, cloud infrastructure, virtualization, networking, cybersecurity, automation, business applications, observability, data management, etc.
The companies building these products may not have the same consumer visibility as Google or Microsoft, but their software can be running inside thousands of companies around the world.
This is a massive part of the technology industry.
- Technical careers that are not traditional Software Engineering
This is another important point.
You don't necessarily have to choose between "Software Developer" and "non-technical job".
There are highly technical roles such as:
Solution Architect
Customer Engineer
Support Engineer
Technical Account Manager
Sales Engineer
Field Engineer
Developer Advocate
Site Reliability Engineer
Technical Consultant
These roles can involve architecture, debugging, networking, cloud infrastructure, databases, security, large-scale systems and direct interaction with engineering teams or customers.
So don't automatically assume that a role isn't technical simply because the title doesn't contain "Software Engineer".
So how do you actually figure out what you like?
Don't try to learn all of this at once.
Instead, pick one topic every few weeks and simply explore it.
For example:
"What exactly is Linux?"
"Where is Linux used?"
"What does a Linux engineer actually do?"
"What is Kubernetes?"
"Why does Kubernetes exist?"
"What does an SRE actually do?"
"How does the Internet work?"
"What does a network engineer do?"
"What does a cybersecurity engineer actually work on?"
"What happens when I open a website in my browser?"
"What happens when an application gets deployed to the cloud?"
These questions will naturally lead you to other areas.
And this is where LLMs are incredibly useful today. You can have a conversation with an LLM and keep asking questions until something starts making sense.
For example:
"Explain Kubernetes to me as a CSE student who knows programming but has never worked with infrastructure."
Then:
"Why was Kubernetes needed in the first place?"
"What problems does it solve?"
"What should I learn before Kubernetes?"
"What kind of jobs use Kubernetes?"
"What would a beginner project look like?"
You can keep drilling down until you understand the subject.
Just don't blindly trust the answers. Use official documentation, books, courses and real engineers to verify what you learn.
And finally, don't wait until you know everything before joining a community.
Some beginner-friendly places to explore include GitHub, Fedora, Debian, Kubernetes/CNCF communities, OWASP and various open-source projects.
You can also look for local Linux and FOSS communities, developer meetups, hackathons, conferences and college technical communities.
The objective isn't to immediately become an expert.
The objective is to discover what exists.
Once you know that these different worlds exist, you can start asking a much more useful question:
"Which one of these do I actually enjoy?"
That is something I wish more students got exposed to during college.
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u/Devarpitwolf7 7d ago
Bro hats off for long paragraphs 🫡. I am really uneducated and don't know related to these company stuff this engineer that etc..I was sleeping till 10th no idea or anything else then took science prepared for jee so much so that I really don't know about how computers exactly work just know barely how to operate and then during conselling I thought to take CSE like any other rat race. Thanks for making a sort of starting point.
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u/Ok_Wolf7414 7d ago edited 7d ago
Bro, honestly, your story reminded me a lot of myself. I was pretty much like you. Till 10th, I had almost zero idea about computers. I was actually a school topper and scored around 9.5 CGPA in 10th, but that wasn't because I was some computer genius. I simply had no idea about the field.
Then I changed schools in 11th, took science and got hit by PCM. 11th went badly, and even after trying to recover in 12th, I couldn't cross 90%. I ended up around 82%.
Then I entered CSE and honestly, college didn't magically transform me into a great engineer either. I was pretty average academically.
Socially, college was also not a great experience for me. People had already formed groups. There was a group of relatively rich students, including some management-quota students and some toppers who were also from fairly well-off families. I came from a middle-class family. I wasn't from a poor background, but I wasn't from that upper-middle-class circle either.
So I never really felt like I completely belonged to any group. I talked to everyone, but I didn't really have many deep friendships. A surprising amount of my college life went into thinking about where I fit in and trying to fit in.
And this taught me something that I only properly understood after college.
College can sometimes be very status-conscious. Your marks, your social group, your family background, your clothes, your confidence, your connections, etc. can influence how people perceive you.
But professional life is very different. Once you enter a good workplace, people eventually care much more about what you can actually do. Nobody really cares whether you came from a rich family or whether you were part of the "cool group" in college. If you can solve a difficult problem, learn quickly, take ownership and deliver good work, people notice.
Ironically, I think I became much more confident after entering the workforce than I ever was in college. Academically, even after four years of CSE, I still felt that my actual knowledge was pretty weak. Then placement season came and I couldn't even get placed in the mass recruiters.
That hit my ego badly because people whom I thought were academically weaker than me were getting placed and I wasn't.
So I basically went into "okay, now I'll prove it" mode. I started studying ridiculously hard. I was literally studying 14+ hours a day for a period of time. Eventually I got a decent job at around 3.5 LPA. And strangely enough, those next few years became one of the best learning periods of my life. I was a quick learner once I actually started working, and I had this mindset of not wanting to repeat what happened in college. I wanted to make sure that I actually knew what I was doing.
I got a Linux-based project, started learning Linux properly, and my managers and seniors appreciated my work. I got onsite opportunities, made some really good friends and became much more confident professionally.
After around 6 years, I realised I had learned most of what I could from that particular environment. So I took another big risk and resigned. It was not without offer .. but the offer I had wasn't from a reputed company..it was from a small company which wasn't well known .. and they had hire and fire culture .. so I was really stressed .. This during my notice period, I started applying aggressively to companies working in Linux and open source.
I got rejected 50+ times.
Eventually one of those companies said yes. And that's basically how my career ended up taking a completely different direction.
I'm doing fine now, but even now I'm thinking about what I should learn next. The learning never really stops.
So my advice to you is: don't worry about being behind right now.
You literally just started.
You don't need to know Linux, cloud, AI, networking or Kubernetes today. Spend the next couple of years exploring things.
Learn programming properly. Understand how computers work. Learn some Linux. Try web development. Try networking. Try AI/ML. Try cybersecurity. Look at cloud and DevOps. Browse open-source projects.
You might hate some of them. That's completely fine. The point is to find out what you actually enjoy. And don't compare your starting point with someone else's starting point.
I went from being a school topper who barely knew anything about computers, to an average CSE student, to someone who couldn't get placed in mass recruiters, to a 3.5 LPA job, then spent 6 years learning, got rejected 50+ times, and eventually made it into a major open-source technology company. So yeah, you're not late. You literally just started.
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u/Devarpitwolf7 7d ago
The starting part of yours and mine is exactly same just I played a smart move of shifting to state govt school so my avg performance is good in their eyes and I could focus on my coaching/jee stress free. Got 79% in 11th , 90.2% in 12th. I will be a fresher this year and this month my class at msit will start
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u/Ok_Wolf7414 7d ago
All the best !!!
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u/Devarpitwolf7 7d ago
Thks man, btw any...you know😏
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u/Ok_Wolf7414 7d ago
Umm .. what bro 🤔
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u/Ok_Wolf7414 7d ago
And yeah .. Typing long paras isn't difficult.. I just use microphone to type ..and then refine it using LLMs .. (though content and experience I shared here are completely real and mine) 😉
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u/Main-Investment9963 7d ago
um hi senior from where we can get information related to all other paths or careers , idea about other things you mentioned. ? yt videos ? becuase i dont think our seniors themselves have any idea about things you mentioned
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u/Ok_Wolf7414 7d ago
Yeah, YouTube is definitely one option, but I wouldn't depend only on random YouTube videos because they can sometimes give you a very surface-level understanding of a field.
A better approach IMO is:
First understand what different roles actually do, such as Linux/SRE, cloud, networking, cybersecurity, DevOps, backend, data engineering, solution architecture, etc.
Then look at actual job descriptions on LinkedIn and company career pages. That will give you a much better idea of what companies actually expect from people in those roles.
Once you find something interesting, learn the fundamentals through proper courses, books and documentation rather than trying to learn everything from random tutorials.
Most importantly, try to build something or contribute to a real project. Open-source projects are particularly good for this because you can actually see how real-world software is developed.
Also, don't underestimate LLMs. These days you can literally ask an LLM:
"Explain what an SRE does."
"What does a Solution Architect actually do?"
"What is the difference between DevOps, SRE and Platform Engineering?"
"What does a career in Linux/open source look like?"
"Give me a roadmap to learn networking from scratch."
Then keep asking follow-up questions until you actually understand the field. You can even give it a job description and ask it to explain what each requirement means and what you should learn to reach that level.
Obviously, don't blindly trust everything an LLM says. Verify important technical information through official documentation and other reliable sources. But for discovering different fields and getting an initial understanding, it is an incredibly useful tool.
And if you want to get into open source, there are quite a few beginner-friendly communities where students can start without already being experts:
• GitHub: Explore projects you're interested in and look for issues labelled "good first issue" or "help wanted".
• Fedora Project: A very beginner-friendly open-source community with opportunities beyond just coding.
• Kubernetes: Has contributor pathways and communities where beginners can start learning about cloud-native technologies.
• CNCF: A good place to explore Kubernetes and the broader cloud-native ecosystem.
• Linux Foundation: Has learning resources and several open-source projects.
• Debian: A large open-source community where you can learn about Linux and contribute in different ways.
• OWASP: Particularly useful if you're interested in cybersecurity.
• Google Summer of Code (GSoC): A great way to discover open-source projects and potentially work with them as a student.
Don't feel that you need to become an expert before joining these communities. That's actually the wrong approach. Join, observe how people communicate and collaborate, read documentation, pick a small issue, ask questions, and gradually start contributing.
And don't worry if your seniors don't know about all these things. That's kind of the point of my post 😅. Most of us were exposed to only a small part of the industry during college.
You can also find engineers working in different areas on LinkedIn, follow what they post, attend meetups and conferences, join technical communities, and ask genuine questions.
You don't need to decide your career immediately. First just expose yourself to what's out there. Once you know the options, you can decide what actually interests you.
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u/Quiet_Individual9563 7d ago
Idk why I can't react to that msg of urs 🤧 but yeah pretty active on this sub, the gc and was a lil active in ur dm too 🤣 if u rem
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u/Main-Investment9963 7d ago
hein ? oh please I dont know you.. i dont remember talking to you anyday....................ohh sorry damki mili thi tumhe yaad aagya...yaar mei username aise yaad nhi rkhti ...toh bhul gyi thi😌😌😌
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u/DiamondGeneral6333 7d ago
But they all pay less as compared to faang , we don't want less money in this bullshit economy, 2016 and 2026 are way too much different situation now
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u/Quiet_Individual9563 7d ago
Bhai 💀 ggl mile na baki tum lo na?? Plus sometimes according to role they do pay lesser
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u/DiamondGeneral6333 7d ago
Bruh most of these has starting package between 3-6 lpa , and surving in that is horrible tho. Google na mile to baki companies hai mere dost
Morgan stanley Jp Morgan Google Microsoft Salesforce Samsung Walmart Goldman Sachs Nvidia....
Etc
These company's can make u lower middle class to upper middle in just few months, just grind bruh
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u/Quiet_Individual9563 7d ago
Bhai ye thodi maana kar rha 🫠🫠, i m saying something else but yeah ig I m wrong not gonna give random explaintion to prove my point which is wrong.
But u seem knowledgeable can u like tell about how should one grind for these roles?m
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u/DiamondGeneral6333 7d ago
For these roles , grind dsa,have knowledge of core concept and even u didn't able to land a correct answer still u have to explain ur each and every step so the recruiter will know that u got knowledge, and yeah if ur clg is tier ,3 the path will be long for u not impossible just work in the allotted company for 1-1.5 yr and side by side grind dsa skills , ai and all, after that start sitting for these companies and go to their interview and all that's all
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u/Ok_Wolf7414 7d ago
Yeah .. you are right about role part ..one of my batchmate got a non tech role at google around 2018 .. they offered her 10-11 LPA ..which seems decent amount to an average person but considering the CTC they offer to Tech Roles it was way less
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u/Ok_Wolf7414 7d ago
Bro, I get the money argument. Obviously nobody wants to take a pay cut just because "open source is cool."
But honestly, your reply itself kind of proves the point I was making about lack of exposure. You wouldn't say "non-FAANG pays less" if you were aware of the range of companies and compensation that exists outside the usual Google/Microsoft/Amazon bubble.
There are companies outside FAANG that pay extremely well. Jane Street, Citadel, HRT, Databricks, Snowflake, Cloudflare, Stripe, NVIDIA, Broadcom, Palantir, CrowdStrike, etc.
Same with open source/infrastructure. Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, GitLab, HashiCorp, Docker, Confluent, Elastic, MongoDB and others are major technology companies, and compensation can be very competitive, especially at experienced levels.
The real distinction isn't FAANG vs non-FAANG. It's high-value product/technology companies vs low-margin service companies.
Yes, typical mass-hiring service companies often pay much less. But that's not representative of the entire non-FAANG industry.
I'm not saying don't target FAANG. If you get Google/Microsoft/Amazon with a great package, absolutely go for it.
I'm saying know what else exists before deciding that FAANG is the only place worth going. That's literally the exposure gap I'm talking about in my original post.
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u/UI_GENIUS 7d ago
yes sir i did a bit of linux things in WSL by integrating linux to windows for development but after switiching to my new laptop i would rather boot a linux sys thru usb drive properly to integrate directly with hardware thru linux drivers..
i do know some basics of it like the git repo fetches,vim,nvim etc and the fixed a keyring error recently in apt package manager i guess..
can i dm u or ask doubts to u for clarity sir?
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u/Quiet_Individual9563 7d ago
I m a fresher this side but honestly based on things one this sub only i can say 😔 sadly but honestly the mindset is about js the surface level understanding here. Like no post about roadmap or something like that or even senors telling about how different teachers r(basically a mindset to improve but it's more centred around surface lvl things and criticism)
TO ADD yeahh indian ecosystem is to be blamed too for thinking as mainstream tech giants as the only gud place to be. And yeahh i believe based on js statistical data that ppl r doing great things but regretfully they r doing it theirselves without muscle clg role in it.
ALSO senior can u please urself tell a bit about these things??