An InterviewBit user Siva Teja joins a mobile payments company Boku inspires us by sharing his success journey, read to know more about him.
Siva Teja
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Boku Software Engineer Interview Experience
1) Tell us about yourself in a few words
I am yet to meet myself. I learn. I unlearn. I adapt. I change. Everything (activities, interests, opinions) what I was once has changed. Hence cannot put anything concrete. My parents describe me as “Not believable as a human being”. You better take their word 🙂
2) How did you land a job at Boku?
Landing up at Boku as a Software Engineer is a mystery as I never heard about the company before. It’s like connecting the dots back. Many people have questioned the same and I replied “I don’t know. It just happened”. But If I recollect, my bet is based on interviews and taking chance considering the probability of gain and loss. I just realized there is nothing you lose if you work for a small unknown company and in fact your contribution counts. I knew they planned for an IPO shortly. Some of my friends have ventured into the startup world and shared their stories. They are mixed. But for me, its something to venture into. I recall that’s the initial trigger and I chose the odd one among other 5-6 offers I have at hand. Also, the fact that I worked with a few big names like Amazon and Oracle pushed me to the other side.
3) How/when did you start programming?
Initially, I coded just for the sake of it. But it was my fascination to solve algorithms which brought me closer to programming. I remember sitting in the hostel room, pick a problem and solve it just for fun.
4) How was your experience with InterviewBit?
The response time was so quick. I knew many consultants and never experienced them being so candidate friendly as InterviewBit. I felt IB so professional. As an apt analogy, I wish to compare them with Amazon’s customer service. Credits to Janani for responding back real quick.
5) What do you do when you are not programming?
What got you interested in it? I do a lot, my core inclination earlier was to solve algorithmic problems. Took as many related courses as possible while at college. Now, I am on a continuous exploration for opportunities where I could apply algorithmic paradigms in a day to day life. In other words, in search of arbitrages. Other delights include developing trading psychology, read-write fantasy stories, dig into unconventional philosophy or play chess. By and large have always been intrigued to participate in content where emotion is involved.
6) What are your goals for the future? How do you plan to achieve them?
Having a pre-planned goal and speaking out hasn’t worked for me. A concrete plan hasn’t worked too.
7) What moments, when you’re programming, make you think “Wow, I love my job/field so damn much.”
The way of approaching a problem. (I think this has also helped me for my Interview experience turn out to be a good one.) A scale of impact of those problem solutions on real life. I do like software design and scalability as they need deeper insights. Apart from technical aspects, I love the business aspect too. Every damn software out there is built on an open source. It’s literally free of cost. All you need is a laptop to start a billion dollar company. This thought always amazes me. On the top of that its a professional degree where not many outside the profession dare to venture. This is the reason why VCs believe young computer graduates. So it has moat too.
8) What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about?
Nothing concrete. Anything that keeps the conversation going. I cannot predict what that could be.