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!

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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).