DEV Community: Ameya Sinha

How working from Starbucks made me productive

Ameya Sinha — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:54:59 +0000

The past year and a half have been quite hard for a lot of people. Covid has affected our lives in so many ways that each person has their own individual story and struggles.

My personal struggle was (and still is!) that it's quite hard to work from home for me. My home's just not set up for me being able to work. So for the longest of times, I waited to get both of my vaccine doses, so that I'd be able to roam out into the real world again from this virtual world I've been part of.

In my quest to explore the outside world again, I somehow one day, made my way into a Starbucks. That's when I thought, hey, why not let's try and Work from Starbucks. They provide good (decent to good really!) internet connection and the food, although a bit expensive, is really great! So that's when I started coming to Starbucks for work. Here's how my experience went.

The first day, I thought this is not possible at all, as I faced major internet issues on connecting to the internet. I went through a series of troubleshooting, from clearing my DNS cache to changing my DNS server connection and updating my network drivers. After struggling for half a day honestly, I was able to set everything up to work. So day 1 was not really productive.

I started getting productive from day 2 onwards. That's when I realized that working from Starbucks has quite a few awesome things going for it. For one, you see other people working with you. That's definitely a positive change from working alone which gets quite lonely. Then there's also that much more of human interaction which also definitely helps in being more happy when returning to work from breaks. The change in food is also a welcome, if you're bored from eating whatever it is you get at home.

The people serving at Starbucks are really friendly. They are quite ready to help you with anything that you might need which is possible for them. For example, one day, I wanted to write down some stuff to get a better understanding of what I was working on and they helped me with a pen and tissues (very movieish :P). Also, if you stay long enough, you might even be asked to taste any sort of new cakes or coffee that they are or will be offering.

There are some cons too, one of them is that there's a lot more people around you talking and making noise. This is like a double edged sword for me. I'd invested in a pair of noise cancelling headphones, which help me filter out any noise in and around me. Also, as its people who I do not know (unlike home!) it's really easy for me not to care about what they might be talking about. At home, sometimes, some of the conversations are important and one gets distracted when working at a particular piece of work and your family is discussing something important which could affect the entire family. Although, the extra noise is definitely a con and it's hard to attend meetings. The noise cancelling headphones cancel the noise for me, but the person who I'm talking to hears it all! That's why I work from home during the days when I have more meetings.

All in all Starbucks has been a great experience for me and I'm definitely enjoying it. If you have any experience working from Starbucks or any other place then do let me know in the comments below!

[Import Previous Blog] Internship @ Microsoft

Ameya Sinha — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 09:15:43 +0000

This summer I will be interning at Microsoft India!

I was lucky enough to bag an internship from Microsoft and this triggered many of my 'firsts'. I got my first (uh oh proper) internship which got me my first offer letter and will be my first professional experience in the Industry.

Here is how the process of interview process of Microsoft for internships was like -

The process kicks off with a coding round held on the CoCubes platform. Three questions, seventy-five minutes for ten marks total (2+3+5) are asked. Each student gets a different set of three questions and the questions asked are mainly from Trees, Linked Lists, Strings, Arrays, and Sortings.

Students are shortlisted on basis of this round and called for the next which is the Group Fly Round. In this round, we are supposed to code two questions with at least one degree of optimization in each of them. Microsoft employees are there around to help us understand the question and to discuss our solutions with them. It is very important to discuss the solution with them before coding the problem as they guide us with the problem so that we stay on the right track.

Next, we have the technical interviews :). Each student has to answer at least two interviews to proceed to the further rounds and at least three to be selected for the internship. However, there is no cap on the number of technical interviews a student goes through. I had answered three, many of my friends who were selected had answered four. There was also a person I think, who had answered five rounds of technical interviews before they rejected him/her. So all I can say is until you get the offer in your hand do not take anything for granted.

After the technical rounds, we were asked to wait outside while they decided on which students to select. They then called us in congratulated us and handed over goodies to us (T-shirts and stickers). As I went to get mine the HR looked over to the hiring manager and laughed while pointing at me and saying 'look he decided to come here'. (Background - I had my Goldman Sachs interviews on the same day). After this jokes were cracked, pictures were taken and selfies pouted.

The whole process took around 12 hours for me (8 AM to 7.40ish PM) with eight interviews (both the companies combined). After calling my parents and my cousin I immediately hit the sack :P.

Annnnd that is how the most significant day of my life till now had panned out to be. I cannot be more excited about this internship.

Summer 2019 you where art though?

What exactly is this TDS?

Ameya Sinha — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 15:40:05 +0000

You've been waiting for your internship stipend all month long but you don't know how much of your stipend you'll get. That's because of this three-lettered acronym TDS (Tax Deduction at Source) which everyone except you seems to know how it works.

Let's face it, getting your first salary is a big deal. But first salaries come with its fair share of surprises and one of them is TDS. If you're like me and have no idea about TDS and how it works then this blog might be useful to you.

According to the Income Tax Act in India, employers are required to deduct tax at source (i.e before giving you your monthly salary). The government probably does this partly to help us pay our taxes properly and partly so that we don't spend all the money and have nothing to pay them later on :P. So the way it works is the employer deducts your tax before paying you your monthly salary and at the end of the year after you have filed your returns you'll get back any amount that is due to you under the law of the land.

But how much money is deducted?

Income Tax Slab	Tax Rate for Individual Below the Age Of 60 Years
Up to ₹2,50,000	No tax baby!
₹2,50,001 to ₹5,00,000	5% of total income exceeding ₹2,50,000
₹5,00,001 to ₹10,00,000	₹12,500 + 20% of total income exceeding ₹5,00,000
Above ₹10,00,000	₹1,12,500 + 30% of total income exceeding ₹10,00,000

Taxes on internship stipends are deducted just like full-time jobs. This table should help you figure out how much tax you'd be paying. Take your internship stipend, multiply it by 12 and wherever you land, that's the amount of tax that would be deducted. But there's a catch, this table is only applicable to you if you have submitted your PAN card to the organization. If you haven't then 20% of tax would be deducted! So be sure to submit your PAN card information to your organization guys.

Also after deduction your taxes, your employer will give you a TDS certificate certifying that they have indeed deducted your taxes. These certificates generally go something like Form 16 or Form 16 A. This is proof that your money has been deducted and paid to the government. You can claim your money back while filing returns.

How to claim your returns? I'll post a blog on that later, for now, enjoy your first salary :).

PS - Three cheers to all the companies that manage to do something something and not deduct TDS for interns (Asli Messiah!). Also as you can probably see, different companies have different ways of deducting taxes for interns and your company might do something else than what's described above.

PPS - Tax laws are subject to the government's whims and may change any time.

What should you do before your Summer Internship?

Ameya Sinha — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 15:36:28 +0000

Your college semester ends and your internship which you've secured months ago is about to start. You barely get time to go home, if at all.

What should you do at this time? What should you know before interning at a Tech firm?

If this is going to be the first time you are interning in a Tech firm in a city that you've never visited before then hey! you're just like me. I interned at Microsft Hyderabad in the Summer of 2019 and here's my $0.02 to you.

So what should you do?

Eat as much home food as you can :P

Trust me, this is very important. You will spend your entire internship eating in the company's cafeteria or restaurants one way or the other. Home food is something that you're going to miss. If you're in India like me then the food gets different in different parts of the country. So you would not only miss food from your home you might even miss food like your home!

Figure out your accommodation for the Internship.

In India, it's quite hard to find decent apartments and PGs to live in. This trouble gets greatly reduced if your company is providing you accommodation for the internship. Some companies provide accommodation for the first two weeks. So use that time to find yourself a place to live in. Otherwise, try and contact some people who you might know in the city and try to find apartments to rent. You can even try and find places to stay online. Ideally, your accommodation should be close to your place of work.

Learn Git

Whichever company that you intern in the knowledge of Git is very useful. If your intern project is something where you will have to deploy into the existing codebase then knowing Git might save you a day or two worth of work.

Don't learn new technologies just for the Internship

This is something that many of us want to do but unless you know about your intern project from before (which rarely happens) it does not make sense to try and learn new technologies from before. Just because there's a very large chance that you might not work with what you've learned. For example, at Microsoft, my project was on Blockchain Technology. Projects of other interns were on Machine Learning, Kubernetes, Web Technologies, Integration, and even Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality. So unless you can learn about all of these(and more!) technologies it does not make sense to take this time out to learn one of these and work in something completely unrelated.

Have a fresh and learning attitude.

You'll be experiencing and dealing with a lot of new things. Unlike school and college the 'real world' works in a very different way. So go with a positive and learning attitude. Learn whatever tech stack they ask you to work with. Make new friends. Get to know your team. Learn how to play pool or table tennis. Explore the company, explore the city. Find that guy to talk to about sports from across the building. If you feel like doing something, it's probably a good idea to do it. Learn to learn :)

Spend as much time as you can with your family.

Your internship will take away most if not all of your Summer holidays. And this might even be the last summer vacation. So make sure that you spend a lot of time with your family and try to take a short trip with them somewhere :)

Don't think too much.

This mantra surprisingly works well in life :P. Don't think too much about getting a return offer from the company or worry about your performance during your internship. You've been chosen by them after passing their interviews. They believe that you'll do well and you should too. Just give your best and things usually work out :)

Well, that's all I gotta say. All the best for your internship and have a great one!