Most Impressive Thing that I have done
Being born poor in a poor country, then becoming rich enough to get your family out of poverty and collecting enough resources to be able to live without a job, is in my eyes the most impressive thing I have done.
Here is my story in detail
In 5th grade, I wrote a district-level exam and got selected to study at the JNV in my district. JNV is a special school system where you get great quality all-round education, totally free from 6th to 12th grade. They only admit students for 6th grade—only 40 students per batch in those days.
We did not have teachers for Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics in 10th grade. We all self-studied. I got 10/10 in Mathematics and 9/10 in Science.
We did not have teachers for Mathematics and Physics in 12th grade either. We all had to self-study. I got 85/100 in Mathematics and 80/100 in Physics.
The real result that matters in 12th grade is how well you do on the exam for admission to IITs and NITs. There is a huge industry for coaching these tests; the curriculum is tougher than 12th grade. I have not met anyone who cleared these exams without expensive coaching. Sure, some folks do it, but I haven’t met any.
By self-studying, I got college seats to study engineering at both an IIT and an NIT. I wasn’t happy with the stream I got, so I studied more and took those exams again the next year, and again got seats at an IIT and an NIT. My NIT seat was really good, so I got admitted.
Taking these exams again was an irrational risk that one can only take with extreme self-belief. While I was preparing for these exams again, I was already admitted to a college. I had to sacrifice my grades in that college heavily. Doing poorly in these exams would have meant I had to continue studying at the same college (far worse than my NIT in reputation), with pathetic first-year grades. I was also risking the loan my dad had taken.
I mostly did experiments, built websites, started a college magazine, made short films, wrote some short stories, tried to write novels, and did painting. I thought grades didn’t matter—all that mattered was your talent. I thought I was going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Turns out grades mattered a lot when you wanted a job out of college. Getting better grades involved a haggling process with temporary and underqualified tutors. I scored 5.4/10 overall. I was second to last in my class of 106.
I was good at writing software. Someone gave me a small job. I had to struggle with low pay for about a year. I found open source as a great tool to prove yourself, and I used it. After that, I probably had the best job in my batch, both by pay and quality of work. I was the only software engineer in India for a USV-funded, YC company, with a $300M+ ICO (Filecoin).
At this point, I have some 7-8 years’ worth of open source contributions to some amazing projects. I feel like I have enjoyed a good career in software so far.