#4: How This 22-Year-Old Got a $250,000/Year Job at TikTok (AI Engineer)
In episode 4 of Lift Off with Aman Manazir, I talk to Sourish Kundu. We discuss how he landed a machine learning systems engineer job at TikTok, what it's like to work there, and how AI will transform the software engineering industry. Enjoy!If you're a dedicated programmer who wants to land your dream internship or job in 2024 without spamming LeetCode, spending hours at career fairs, or building a personal website, join the Software Engineering Accelerator and work directly with me. Click this link to book a call: https://www.amanmanazir.com/coaching 💌 Free weekly productivity insights/advice - https://amanmanazir.com/newsletter 📕 Get all my free Notion templates discussed here - https://www.amanmanazir.com/notion 📄 Get my free resume template - https://www.amanmanazir.com/resume 📝 Sign up for Notion - https://affiliate.notion.so/2nh3pjr6l5l6 📷 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/amanmanazir/ 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/amanmanazir 0:00 - Introduction 0:58 - How Sourish got into Reinforcement Learning 6:29 - The Value of a Passionate High School Teacher 8:28 - Would Sourish Consider Teaching 9:59 - How did Sourish Land his First Software Engineering Internship 13:40 - Advice for Freshman/Sophomores Looking for Internships 16:55 - How to Supercharge your Experience with Personal Projects 18:40 - Recommendations for Contributing to Open Source 20:30 - How Sourish got Prestigious Internships at Amazon and Capital One 22:48 - Discord Bots Help to Prepare for Interviews 23:40 - How many Practice Problems do you need for an Interview? 26:05 - How Sourish Started at TikTok 28:02 - Advice for a Software Engineering Interview 30:00 - Sourish's Experience as a TikTok Intern 31:52 - Sourish's Advice for Getting a Return Offer 39:20 - Day in the Life as a TikTok Machine Learning Engineer 42:20 - How is Sourish's Time Allocated? 45:49 - How has Sourish Improved at TikTok 48:45 - How Engineers at TikTok are Different 51:12 - How is ML Different than Other Fields? 53:30 - Best Resources for getting Deep in ML 55:18 - Machine Learning Papers 57:18 - Advice to Prepare for an AI Future 59:12 - Sourish's Experience with Public Speaking 1:01:00 - @3blue1brown Inspiration 1:02:00 - Sourish's YouTube Channel 1:03:25 - How Sourish Gets Ideas for Videos 1:07:03 - How to Get Started on YouTube 1:09:31 - The Value of Mentors 1:11:24 - How did Exercise Help Sourish? 1:13:23 - Advice for People to Improve their Fitness 1:18:35 - How did Self-Improvement Content Help Sourish 1:20:42 - Living in California 1:22:40 - Starting a Social Life in a New City 1:25:31 - What Makes a Close Friend? 1:26:50 - Sourish's Advice for his Younger Self 1:27:40 - Where to Find Sourish 1:28:10 - Outro I'm Aman Manazir, a career coach and former software engineer. I make videos about making it as a computer science student and landing your dream job. I post new videos regularly, run a tech interview podcast, and run an email newsletter (https://amanmanazir.com/newsletter).