WE Bootcamp '22 Experience

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” - Grace Hopper        

Thinking about what Grace Hopper said, I left my cloak of fear behind and stepped out of my comfort zone and travelled 2K kilometers for what is now the best memory of my 2022.

As a Google Women Engineer Scholar Cohort 4, I had the opportunity to attend a 2-week boot camp at The International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H) organised by TalentSprint and supported by Google .

If I have to describe the entire camp in short, I would say it was an experience of a lifetime. The camp shaped me into a better professional, a better programmer, and a better learner with some life lessons I would cherish forever. The boot camp not only taught me technical skills but it has left me with a grown personality as well. Meeting fellow cohort mates from diverse backgrounds and cultures was an extremely enriching and wholesome experience that came with a treasure of memories.

Becoming a better professional

On the first day of our boot camp, we were welcomed in the best way possible, that is, with a session on The Significance of Mentorship by Sphoorthy V , our Associate Director. The session focused on the importance of having a mentor and how it can catalyst one's growth and once you find a mentor, you need to have a mentee too as peer learning is unparallel. We were introduced to 'IKIGAI : a reason to jump out of bed each morning' and how to align our goals to our ikigai.

Kunisha Reddy , our Corporate Skills mentor, conducted a session on building up our dream professional persona, how to overcome our interview fear, the importance of dressing up and being presentable, and most importantly how to stand up for ourselves in the real world.

Sphoorthy V also led a session Rock Your LinkedIn Profile where the importance and impact of a great LinkedIn profile were emphasized and I personally learned different sections of my LinkedIn profile which can be improved.

Sangeetha K, our Corporate Skills mentor, led a special talk Crossing the Chasm where she shared her journey of going from an introverted kid to a public speaker, from a software engineer to a law student. She taught us different doesn't mean deficient. Her stories were inspiring as always!

Becoming a better programmer

"Take the charge of your destiny. You can" -Asokan Pichai        

My biggest takeaway from the bootcamp is learning how to learn. A month before the bootcamp, I could never even imagine that I would learn three new programming languages (Haskell, GoLang, and Elixir) and tools like LateX Beamer, Pelican, and Sphinx and also the fundamentals of Machine Learning in just a span of 13 days. Asokan Pichai made us realize that the only thing that stops us is us, our only limit is what we set for ourselves. I learned how powerful the command line is and how quite complex problems can be solved using the command line within minutes. Asokan taught us how important is to read the screen to find the errors because honestly the screen already has answers to most of our questions. I learned how important is it to read and learn from the documents rather than watch videos.

Asokan also conducted many fun sessions for us which included How to take professional photographs and our personal favorite set theory sessions.

The Google Visit

I still can't get over the fact that I visited Google Office, Hyderabad! The feeling is incomparable. Each moment there felt like such a dream come true moment. I would like to thank our Program Managers at Google Rohan Malik and Rahul Raveendran for making this tour possible. Harshitha A.V.L , our senior from Cohort 1, who now is a Googler also interacted with us and shared her journey with us which was quite insightful. Director at Engineering at Google , Suvarna Singh , a working mother, shared with us her journey and her valuable learnings and talked with us about the work culture at Google.

The Christmas Party and Bootcamp Bash

All work and no play doesn't just make Jill and Jack dull, it kills the potential of discovery, mastery, and openness to change and flexibility and it hinders innovation and invention.        

We at WE believe that fun is equally important as work and thus we had not only one but two parties.

The Christmas Party with secret santa and delicious treats and endless pics was a perfect Christmas evening.

The Bootcamp Bash was full of fun with We've Got Talent, finger-licking good dinner, and a DJ party where we enjoyed everyone's amazing performances and had a great time with all our friends.

Touring IIIT-H

We were given a tour of IIIT-H where we visited the Smart City Lab which was very hi-tech and inspiring. At the Materials Lab, we saw the working of 3-D Printer, Laser Printer, and GreenBoard maker.

We also had a session with Anubhav Tiwari , Head of CIE IIIT-H, and also learned in detail about the incubator and accelerator and also visited the three floors of the Drone Incubator, MedTech Incubator, and DeepTech Incubator.

Lastly,

This Bootcamp transformed me as a person, I gained skills to grow as a professional, learned the right way to learn, and made some friends for life and many memories. Last but not the least, Hyderabad offered me some of the best food I had in my life, and all the hype was justified.

Signing off,

Bhavya Sharma