Does a Degree Really Matter? | IIT Madras Seminar 2024

hi everyone and welcome to a new video today we have my online session with the folks at I Madras online bs degree let me set the context this is not the folks from the standard IIT offline degree this is the online degree which is a lot of them from non- Tech backgrounds a lot of them from a dual degree a lot of them only here for the name of an IIT so the discussion was around is this online degree similar to the offline degree what kind of differences exist U Can you call yourself you know

a real graduate from it Madras if you're doing this degree um will the outcomes from both the programs be the same how can the outcomes from this online degree which is very easy to get in be compared with the offline degree eventually because right now there's a lot of iits coming out with online degrees U fairly easy barrier to entry how can you outshine and have similar outcomes as the offline degree U if you're from this batch a lot of discussion around online versus offline how it's very easy to get into these online degrees but

the number of people who are actually able to graduate is really less so how difficult is it to get through these degrees some discussion around research whether or not you should get a job follow research do entrepreneurship and a lot of random doubts that we have on a day-to-day basis as Engineers it's a fairly raw talk a lot of raw questions from students and I've tried to answer them to the best of my abilities with that let's get into my online session at it Madras we do want to become someone who is worthy of the

name iitm so we are kind of in a place where we don't know what to do I think the phone that you're feeling is probably no different than someone from a tier three college or a tier 2 College who probably feel similar how do you hold up to the it name I think one good thing that happens in this program is the number of people who get out is really less like I saw the numbers and you know it's very hard to pass out there's something there like some level of respect you will get you

know you're able to finish the degree how do you see uh the BS program for the students that are pursuing it cently I would say one thing okay think of it like any other BSC or BS program um do not associate yourself you know at all to college in super 30 I've seen two people fail interviews because of DSA only they were very good at web 3 but let's say the company asked DSA and then they so we had to start DSA classes then we saw no one here ised in DSA they're all here for

Dev we stop DSA classes and then whatever referals are happening right now are happening purely based on dev should you do it interview you will need it thank you for making time for us so to begin with let me ask you something though what would you like to be a trist sir kirat or by yeah right I'll k so uh all of the students here are to saing the itm BS degree a remote degree uh I'd like to start off by setting the agenda that uh this won't be a Q&A session at all as much

as we would love to have one with you but we want to just have a discussion for now uh being someone who is so uh into remote jobs remote structure the entire idea of remote looking at this uh particular degree and the students in this degree what would you suggest them like like I mean networking to important of course we have a lot of uh essential factors with networking uh you you keep speaking that uh networking is very crucial for students to do because that is the way to grow so what do you think uh

for people pursuing this degree what kind of uh outlooks to should these people have for networking yeah that's a great question by the way can you hear me well I'm sorry yeah it's all it's totally fine cool uh great question I think especially for you guys considering it's an online degree you probably have to do it more than other people I don't super suggest this in campuses because you know in campuses you have on-site companies and that's part of part is sort of sorted of course not for a remote job but most other jobs you'll

at least get a campus placement so you don't have to aggressively uh Network even though it's a very overused term networking um I think what that means over here is just being in small technical groups lead CTO Founders sometimes very technical events meetings toward Asia things like these rather than you know um know what the other way to network is um but long story short U for you guys considering it's an online degree I'm un sure what kind of placements you know um you guys can sit for at the end um and if the answer

is you don't have an official placement thingy then it definitely makes a lot of sense remote job or otherwise for you guys to look out H I mean uh the the entire curriculum does have a you know placement cell industrial uh cell that does bring opportunities to students uh but the entire idea of you know placements is totally different for the people following this curriculum right and uh when we look at your videos you know it's all oriented towards corporate the corporate world networking through the corporate world climbing the ladder in a smart way and

building your knowledge in a smart way but uh this entire degree deals with data and AI data science in AI mostly uh and this opens up opportunities for research more than corporate in the current world looking at the way these are AI is moving forward now uh considering the remote aspect and also the fact that research is a huge area of uh moving forward what do you look at uh research or corporate because there's a lot of things for us to look at through this degree so that's a tough choice um I have struggled with

it uh half of not half of my batch like 20% of my batch went for Masters or phds I'm assuming that's what you mean by uh research so like it's a tough choice it's you earn first or you learn first is the question generally the idea first ear later whoever whichever of my friends have gone for a PhD or a masters in machine learning or AI are very well positioned for this upcoming bull to you know um Sprint past everyone else when it comes to not just monetary outcomes but the network the places they're at

the people they're meeting the alpha they'll have in the next 10 years um so specifically in machine learning and yeah probably five years ago was the best time to go for a PhD today also not the worst time um anything else like cyber security or if you're just going you know for uh for a job in the US or for an H1B then these are tricky times uh because a lot of H1B holders are not uh getting jobs have to come back so on and so forth for ML if you get up basically you should

go for it like that's research is great research is great for ML I'm I'm myself I'm an ml researcher as of now uh I work in ml in biomed data and uh you know medical side of applications uh when I look at it you know looking at your videos you yourself being someone having such a large fan base and you yourself having a lot of followers uh the guidance is very less the kind of uh there's no structured way of going through research at all uh there's there's a lack of structure there's a lack of

hierarchy and I'm a True Believer of this you know if there is no hierarchy it leads to Anarchy that is what I that is what I believe in and the entire research area is totally H so uh when you yourself being someone so structured when you look at your videos it's always structured there's a pathway there's a road map or there's a laid out uh brain map for you and your and you have peers that you suggest to so looking at research and also applying that entire structured concept to it what do you think uh

we should should we like stick to the structured concept that exists that has proven to be right or is there any other way to go ahead accordingly I think there's some some structure in research like you have to publish a lot of papers you have to have great cgpa try to go for an internship early find a good professor get in touch with them eventually your professor is going to you know get you in if you're looking at a Stanford or or a UBC so there's some structure there um there is also competition um because

you know the structure is very well defined for folks at it Bombay Folks at it Bombay are you know probably the on-site people uh because a lot of these people are getting picked for internships from their second year itself going for you know University internships rather than corporates but there's some level of structure U that said uh of course it's fairly ad hog like in the end it's very hard to tell who got in how they got in um there's no examination that you're giving yeah but I would say you know like there's some level

of luck involved and everything but the basic things you should check off like your cgpa needs to be really good some paper if you have published that's great and be in touch with professors if you want to get into uh UBC then make sure you know you know the best professor over there and makes sense I mean okay uh research there is a particular structure now assume that some person goes through all of the structured road map the basic structure that exists does well uh and is in a good position right now would you as

a you know would you as someone who's a senior developer right now or a senior software engineer right now who's in CS would you hire someone into corporate research and if you would what kind of criteria would you look at uh for this person assume it's me and I'm into research what kind of criteria are you looking at as of now to hire someone and to corpor interesting so I've talked to a few Founders when this ml Rush came I was talking to Founders understanding who they're hiring for and tldr was they were avoiding researchers

of course open a will hire you an anthropic will hire you all phds eventually land here only from the best but if you look at you know General startups building on top of llms um one they can't afford you because you know as an ml researcher you're probably going to make a mill at the very least from open AI so how would a startup that's a starting afford you one two they also might not need your expertise because they're not building at the foundation level they're not building llms they're building on top of LMS so

all the companies that I am sort of involved with if I think about it even in web 3 rarely does any of my companies hire a blockchain researcher we work with companies uh who hire blockchain researchers for example if we want to get our contracts audited we'll hire and consult they'll charge us very heavily and they're working with they're hiring or usually are group of phds who are doing cryptography so you know you don't need a job long story short if you're going for research you know you people will pay you for you have value

people will find a way to reach you and compensate you and you don't really need to stuck to the stick to the 50 40 hour week right you can provide value other ways to many companies compared to one but if you are looking for one there'll be an open AI or you know someone working who be happy to at least interview you if not hire makes sense makes total sense but there's this one thing that you said you know about startups that you've talked to a lot of startup people and uh you ask them about

their ml engineer hiring uh that is another issue now that is a like every company has a a next to them now I mean if you enter Bangalore you'll probably run into someone in the Metro and you ask them what they're doing they'll tell you that they're having a company with a next to them so what should we look out for because as someone who is there who who are studying this data and AI uh when the Bull Run is actually happening when there's a proper hike in Ai and unsure as to what is going

to happen in the near future uh what what need what do we need to look at because there's a lot of options out there we don't know which business is going to stand Which business is not going to stand and uh um being researchers or being let just say people who are into corporate how do we look at a company and say okay you know what this looks good I can be here interesting I think that's true not just for AI but generally high growth startups okay you can't judge which one's going to do well

until they reach a Tipping Point for example by now you know GTO is probably going to do well zato is public profitable they're going to do well everything else is a gamble um specifically for you know high growth startups but you can look at their funding run Runway things like these and and usually bet on the founders if there are solid Founders one business guy one Tech Guy you can learn from them your worst Cas is you learn a lot from the company U your medium cases the company survives you get a salary your best

Cas is the company does really well your Equity grows a lot so specifically for a companies as youve said a lot of B companies in Bangalore not all of them would require or you know most of them wouldn't probably require an AI engineer as I said most of them have delegated all AI things to uh either libraries or to llms they're not doing this in house it's referred uh but I think generally companies are looking for you know whatever that product needs let's take an example uh a good example of an something on top of

llm might be what Zoom recently added you know meeting summarizers so they if they're building on top of llms their existing fullstack Engineers can build that specific problem now if they want to fine tune the model they want to bring the model in house bring the pricing down they'll probably negotiate with openi but in the worst case if they do want to build it in house is when they will hire you know a COR ml person but again probably you know contractually things like this so I don't know that answers your question of you know

find I it does answer to it does answer my question more or less but it brings up a question you know being someone who's in the tech World for for like a decade or over a decade now I would say um why haven't you gone into the AI bulletin because you've been analyzing the market you've been into the you know economic and financial status of the market and I'm pretty sure you were aware of the fact that AI is going to eek because your your your circle specifically was pretty good I would say you were

you were having a one of the top bunch at I right so what made you take a step back and look into web web 3 and you know blockchain I think not everyone from it is following one specific R if I'm honest uh if I'm being honest most of them are following you know trying to get into Fang um rarely of you are following you know hype markets like these and you know making sure they're making their way there it's either you go for a m or a PhD cryptography information security machine learning and then

you eventually join the company there hope that the market has survived by then um or you know the market is doing well U or there are very few people like me who are you know changing markets left right and Center U for me uh why have I not done this I followed these markets for a while now for example web RTC followed by web3 I'm not saying I'm not following AI in fact recently I've joined you know U one of these a Rappers that's doing really well as a consult so not necessarily shying away from

it that said U since I'm not working at the model there right I don't know I can't I can't extract as much value as I can being a core let's say smart contract writer because I probably have more value as a core smart contract engineer during the bear of the web three than a full stack engineer in AI during the bull so that's a high the learning curve of ml is fairly High compared to you know um let's say something like web3 orc resources are less very limited there's a circle of you know researchers which

is why it's really good if you get in like that's sort of a filtering Benchmark for a lot of companies if You' have done you know some sort of research in machine learning unless you've done done that very hard to or you know compete with those people I mean yeah you make a point but uh why is it that if it's if it's so obvious that we need to get into research and if you do get into research that the pay will be absolutely amazing and you have a great future ahead even though this fact

is established why is it that the market or the majority of the students in India struggle to find out the fact that okay I need to get into research I need to build my knowledge first work on uh you know cases which are compet which like ask me questions that I need to think in a unique manual for why is that this this mindset is not inculcated and I've been a follower of your videos since you were posting you know uh those sequential videos lectures so Le you had a proper pink and violet layout if

you remember that three years ago I guess I've been following you since then and uh even when I look at your videos there haven't been a lot of talks with how research is uh you know giving you a lot of value uh so this entire culture is not inculcated in students and even from your point of view haven't really you know that path I mean it's a given that you are not into AI but why why is this factor missing what do you think it's a personal choice for people right uh for example when I

was going for my masters I Accord to Tamu NYU one more Inu I forgot all of them were charging fairly High there was I had to take a loan for sure plus there was covid so there were a bunch of factors that made me not go there U it's not necessary everyone has to do research people can do well without it like entrepreneurship is one part being a engineer C someone is good part being an employe is also a great part and one uh there are a lot of factors that come to the picture like

you have to be willing to bet on a market for 5 years for example I was talking to my one of my friends recently who did a PhD in computer vision he was telling me the problem statement I was working on U for five years after you know graduating from it bomb so 9ine years almost that problem statement can now probably be solved by llms so we were looking at it the wrong way we probably should have solved it a different way there's some risk that comes with u you know unless you love the problem

deeply uh and you know want to follow it through don't care about mon outcomes as well considering you know if you're giving 9 years as a medical practitioner if you give 9 years you know there's a lot of monetary outcome at the end like infinite money at the end but that's not true for you know most research there's some money and if you do very well then it's more than it but I don't think this needs to be forced on everyone uh people are smart enough to you know figure out U whether or not they

want to go into research also there are family situations sometimes you can't afford it if you go for a PhD also you know you're barely subsidized U so you're not living a super Lish lifestyle of course you can save some money um but if you look at your counterparts with working in fan you know they're probably making more there's a lot of uh compromise that you have to do initially uh which is not for everyone that's probably one of the reasons I did not go for it uh as I said I applied never applied for

PhD honestly did apply for Masters nothing too specific computer science U goal was to move to the US honestly there's no other research well there a little bit of ml like one of my seniors who went for ML research in NYU is doing really well I started by uh ni company they raised like 80 mil if I did go to NYU he' probably you know be guiding me I was would be doing that that would have been a great part what I'm doing right now was a great part it's very hard to judge thankfully life

is very single threaded so you know you don't know what would have happened if you went down the other part maybe my flight would have crashed what knows yeah everyone has like a personal choice yeah I mean I remember watching a video of yours and you mentioning the senior who was like into ML and you looked at him you talk to him and then you realized okay you know what the next buun is V3 and I'll get into that but uh don't you think the ml buun is still going on because that video came came

out one year ago I guess this EML bullrun thing that you had with your senior that video came out one year ago or N9 months ago more or less and U your talk was like two years prior that or three years prior that I'd assume so you had that talk four years ago and ml buun is still going on I'd say it's at its peak and I can for sure say that it's going to be at its peak till 2026 so uh how long do you think this is going to run oh I can't predict

that would be nice if I could but I there's sentiment shifts though right initially there was a lot of euphoria everyone was getting funded left right and Center now the companies that are getting funded are people who have found real use cases on top of AI who have real Revenue so when move towards business of course open has a metric all llm companies will do really well my talking about they're also building their own llm for companies that's why they're raising at whatever valuation they want but other than that you know um now the next

set of value is going to AC or Investments are going to ACR to real businesses will build on top U so will it continue it will honestly the whole problem is whether or not you can find real use spes on top of these things blockchain be AI or you know something else um if you do then you know companies will do well I don't see ml going anywhere honestly it's much better much more sticky what's come out via LMS compared to what you know web3 sols or web RTC sols say so we'll see but of

course this is going to do well for the next few years makes sense totally makes sense now uh you being a webc andb web web3 and also blockchain person your content is totally I mean it it it of course deals with uh these Technologies these Landscapes when we when we put out our link you know the link for registration to this and we put a small category saying ask your questions all of these students enrolled in this I madas degree make uh by making sure that they're going to be involved in data and AI okay

but all of the questions or not all I mean 40% of the questions said uh is is this a good time to get into web3 is a good time to get into blockchain now these students mind you these students are in the remote degree and half of them are pursuing like two degrees like I am I go to an offline College in Hyderabad and then I do this simultaneously so it is through interest that they they took this in but they're still considering web 3 and you know blockchain because they are thorough Watchers of your

content now what there's this fine line you know that you tread when you're a content creator that you should not misguide people you know uh you should not uh you know give the wrong uh idea to people and guide them through to an interest which they which they shouldn't probably look at of course number games number game is huge in India 15 LPA they set uh so when you post videos what kind of uh you know logic runs in your mind that okay I shouldn't probably put out the wrong agenda because these students are data

science students and they're still giving questions like these so it's it's kind of a personal concern to be honest I think generally it's not just for your degree any degree people are interested towards course yes if you go to an IIT look at mechanical engineering people 50% 60% are taking coding jobs so it's not just that your degree has data science and people are looking at other CS options every degree you look at most people are looking at CS options getting placed in CS companies rarely are people you know actually taking core jobs um when

you join a degree you're fairly young you don't know what you're getting into honestly uh when I was getting in I was struggling between it Bombay mechanical and RI CS pretty randomly I took RI CS but I know eventually I had CS was a good option I have core interest in CS it's also had a decent monetary outcome which might not have been the case at mechanical so if I join mechanical day still a very high probability I would wouldn't have done Justice to my degree would have gone for a CS job so I don't

think there's anything bad around uh choosing a different path in CS or otherwise a lot of people in CS eventually become engineering managers PMS so on and so forth though it's very you're fairly young to decide I've done a data science degree so I have to stick to data science U I think it depends on a lot of factors including you know where do you think jobs are where do you think uh how long does it take to get a job how hyping the job is so on and so forth which is why people from

all degrees flock towards CS not just this one uh how do I decide whether or not I'm misguiding people on YouTube I thankfully do not think about it uh all the videos that are coming out are pure natural what is happening in my life right now what I'm trying to build right now and I'm putting that out what kind of let's say money I'm making and putting that out U two people get influenced probably uh would that lead to a bad thing for people at it Madras uh data science degree considering that took a data

science degree I don't know maybe so you guys should think before you know you decide looking at any content creator H if he's getting into X should I get into X or not do your own research and then you know decide based on that makes sense makes sense and you know the journey for like getting into Cs and also like into and film filming videos putting them on YouTube uh it it it was an exciting one clearly because I've seen you since you're what 55k follow 55k subscribers or something and early subscriber it so uh

I'm sure the journey was like amazing and throughout this process I've seen you change your stance a lot of course I mean opinions change especially in the Cs landscape that is totally understandable now one of the most controversial opinion of course considering the Indian market is the DSA one there were videos saying DSA okay no and then videos saying okay DSA you know what maybe and then there's a super 30 now uh in the middle there was a thing saying okay you need to so all the I guess we got like 60 to 70 questions

on this just just address that one one thing for like for a minute what do we do for DSA uh in super 30 I've seen two people fail interviews because of DSA only they were very good at web 3 but let's say the company asked DSA and then they so we had to start DSA classes then we saw no one here ised in DSA they're all here for death we stop DSA classes and then whatever referrals are happening right now are happening based purely based on dev should you do it there were interview where you

will need it for example for me my very first remote job they asked fairly solid BSA also you guys are in college so you have a lot of time to explore you can do a bunch of things two degrees like you are I don't know why you're doing that you know you're not able to manage DSA but personally I've seen for example you good colleges people do ICPC good sort you know your DSA sorted for a while you have to practice before your interviews U for most the common answer is can do it it's just

another two hours every day you have to give U and should not avoid it uh for extremely you know for example you you said you want to go into research so does it make any sense for you to do DSA probably not because similarly there are people who know I want a remote job a very high growth remote job where I get selected based on my skills and nothing else but then you know you don't need H I mean okay coming to the fact that I'm puring two degrees I realize them into data and math

a bit too late my original degree deals with blockchain cyber security and IOD and uh I I study blockchain and cyber security daily while I you know go to college but it doesn't involve data and math so I'm not enjoying it as much so I thought you know what I'll just try this out and it worked out for me so I thought okay fine and then it led to research so I'm glad I took this decision uh moving forward though uh when you look at you know DSA there are a lot of Landscapes to look

at but uh as someone who is into tech for so long and uh you must know that there will be newer technologies that are coming up for sure I mean it it is an analy cycle at this point is it essential for us to stay in the loop especially with with llms man I mean like every week we have a new announcement from from open AI every week every month we have a new announcement from Gemini anthropic comes up with something insane and then suddenly the CEO changes his drama so is this like uh should

we keep up with this or should we just leave it all alone work on our Concepts you know do our research or do are corporate and move forward what do you suggest so so when you say should we focus on this do you say should we focus on the standard DSA or should we focus on the funding anoun yeah should we like focus on standard DS I mean that is again of course a personal opinion for sure but the kind of Bull Run that AI is in the kind of announcement that you're getting on it

on a weekly or monthly basis it's insane I mean the growth is insane and if you look at the Nobel prizes that the people won I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not all three in maths physics and chemistry dealt with AI there were AI applications in their respective fields that that shows the kind of influence AI is going at right now and should we like keep up with the pace that AI is moving at is it important to keep it up because when you are in your youngest ages I'm sure there were

Technologies which were coming up even in web development or web 3 or blockchain and were you keeping up with the latest you know technologies that were kept that were like bringing forward or did you just mind your own business short answer no I wasn't um there in it as I said there's a very standard what everyone is doing which back then at least was everyone was going to Google us uh everyone was following the path of getting to Google us that's where your invion was limited right there was some people Bombay has a culture of

research thean was focusing on Research over there I would doubt they were also looking at funding announcements they were looking at CV uh you know computer vision papers that are coming out so on and so forth so the fancy funding announcements or you know who's getting hired whereare or llm came out um I think more than that smart people focus on what research underlying research is coming out U that will eventually maybe lead to something a better you know 10x outcome like llms did chat GPT something new for sure like everyone tries it and gets

allowed what is that next thing that is coming I think most people are focusing there so rather than looking at you know funding announcements and these things if you want to go for research you should focus there research paper for me never did that honestly was going through the but nothing outside that had friends who had to go forar fair enough as much I was allowed to like keep talking to you I think uh over to you all right uh I will come in in a bit again uh hello hello sorry uh so uh we

were talking about our uh curriculum so can you please uh give your review on our curriculum uh yeah yeah yeah I haven't gone through it yet well a little bit I did um looks like a lot of it is your your videos are just on YouTube and also in your Erp is what I could tell I looked at some of your YouTube videos uh it's decent like it's much better than you know traditional College honestly uh or you know whatever TI three colleges U is IT industry oriented probably like Pro again this is fairly relative

but compared to other colleges it's decent U also I haven't looked too much into it so you know I'm not the best judge right now we have foundational course which talks about I mean which teaches about mathematics and statistics a little bit in um English also yeah and do we have a little bit of programming python so tell me this what when you when you say little bit of programming in Python how deep are we going here uh this is the foundational course which means it is like stepping stone it is like a basement so

this just deals with everything in uh in a very very basic level so from there we are taking to I mean we are taking us in a diploma level which deals with programming completely so here we have pdsa dbms mad projects Java system commands and then uh there is also another diploma degree here which is for specifically called data science where we have six courses and two projects and other diploma also had two projects and six courses as you can seen so it deals with MLF uh machine learning is split into three different courses here

foundations techniques and practice we also have a project on it and there is BDM uh here we actually go and talk to a business and do a project analyze your data give them some suggestions that kind of thing happens that is the project and how to do it is the course and uh business analytics and tools and data science are related to the same thing so and then comes the BS degree so here we have two parts we have to choose from this one or this one which is related to uh deep learning and Ai

and the other is related to software and software testing engineering and testing so there are some elective courses me sorry I was scrolling too fast these are some some of the elective courses we can choose is it all right uh I've seen this before uh it's very good uh I mean compared to a different colleg is pretty good uh is there scope for improvement there always is uh but you know love it and and uh I think the bigger problem is this not just proof for you guys like in any college people are rarely learning

anything from you know the whatever classes you learn from the community and the problem with you guys might be you guys mean don't meet enough because most people if you ask so you know that might be missing U cabus wise of course it is much better than you know what you would find in a traditional College people are sleeping in a traditional College you guys have an Erp just studying one day before the examination um which is also fun so it seems like you know whatever you guys are paying for you're getting some value from

it you have you can learn from it are there better resources maybe for learning the same things from you know maybe yeah that's that's a high level but you know happy to dive deeper uh one thing uh there's a better question that I wanted to ask why um how do you see the BS program like after the promotion that uh she did how do you see uh the BS program for the students that are pursuing it I would say one thing think of it like any other BC or BS program um do not associate yourself

you know at all to a colleagues and I say that to everyone even from go to it offline okay you know your degree is your people who the people that you found around you and you know who are now doing really Val because usually colleges if you look at a lot of coding YouTubers which are they from they're all from D because start follow what you guys should really look for is this you know people possible this is having similar outcomes at the out of ID Delhi so what is that thing that you guys are

doing like or you're going to do Consulting will probably be the first aliz from from this online program um that's something we'll figure out in a few years U but is that possible in an online degree uh yeah I've seen your stats lot lot of people go to level two there's less you know pressure on you guys to graduate everyone passes together everyone very Clos net I'm seeing you the age Gap is fairly big and you know some are very lower going to level two are going to level three so it's a good experiment and

you guys are you know the first batch probably one of the first batches will come out the experiment so I'm excited to see what comes out of it but yeah very early to tell okay you know whether it will be better than let's say you know a real it col what a real this a real it college but onsite I or onsite tier three or onsite tier say better time will yeah I just like to but in here I mean really resonated with with the point on College like bomb is going to research that he's

going to entrepreneur um so a couple of points with the online degree obviously because it is online you don't meet people obviously the guys at Chennai few of them do this full-time so they they have a community they have a desha they have a i and Research Park they have a couple of professors they work with they have the entrepreneurship and they have the library of ss right um but that's not there for the people online so that's number one uh number two harking back to a point previously about how personing two degrees might be

stupid I don't think it is because with with this with the online degree you get the tag of the stamp of IIT on your resume you get like a tier three college and the I on your resume as well as you get I mean you get the content but then you can get the content from other YouTubers as well but I think the major thing is uh first of all the stamp secondly like this Society this entire meeting we're doing today is is a part of this huge Community Driven effort to get people together otherwise

174 people on this call wouldn't be together if not for the society so I I just wanted to share a few thoughts I mean no no particular question at this point great point I think there's no downside if you can manage two degrees you should do it U my yeah yeah I agree because not not the worst idea in the world if if you're on tier three college but does it really give you you know the credibility of an i is my question it's very easy to get in that is that is exactly so I

talked to a professor from Colombia and I put IIT on my resume uh so he thought I was actually offline IIT uh and then I'm like no it's on BC degree and we're doing it and it's but it's official and all I have ID card and it's like oh no you should put online on it so I I think message for the other 1 170 people there on the call I put a bracket online on it you know but I share a story here when Yash came to the office for the first time he was

wearing an IT madas degree sorry t-shirt I was like cool it madas then he said and from online I like degrees associate fake it till you make it I think is the vi it'll hurt you really bad if you use fake it make it if you you know eventually someone realizes agre High L advice for people here speaking of uh you did mention about offline iatm I and online I uh we are doing it in online so we do have this kind of foro because uh most of the people here are either working or they

are having their own ENT uh they are entrepreneurs and they have their own companies or uh they have dual degrees and I I have come across so many people and I myself uh I'm doing it as a standalone degree so we really feel foral and I not even in Chen so I feel very left out and I don't know uh how we should come come over this thing and uh we do want to become someone who is worthy of the name iidm so we are kind of in place where we don't know what to do

and we do have some people to look up to but we're not sure how we are going to make it or it's kind of what should I say maybe cat and a all kind of situation here interesting so I think the phone that you're feeling is probably no different than someone from a tier three college or a tier 2 college would probably feel similar um how do you hold up to the it name I think one good thing that happens in this program is you know um the number of people who get out is really

less like I saw the numbers and you know it's very hard to pass out there's something there like some level of respect you'll get if you know you're able to finish the degree uh so I wouldn't say it's you know completely uh someone would deny can you go to it Madras an online degree if you finished the it Madras degree considering I've looked at the stats I would respect you it's a hard degree to go through you know they Grill you really bad I know anyone can join but not everyone can graduate so that's one

and two it goes away with time and years you know uh I did not make it to whatever in xyc but you should you should you guys should meet offline just say 174 people this happens on steroids when you're on campus you're every day having you know meetings like these smaller groups yeah yeah that is super important nothing else onl but if you if you filter out the smart people and put them together they 100 times better than taking smart people but keeping them in their houses so one thing you guys can figure out somehow

consider your society and you know um you guys are saving a lot on your fees also so why not spend a little on meeting I don't know Goa meet up Bangalore meet up and you everyone sort of reaches them yeah that is happening actually but uh it's not that everyone can go and meet on the specific time in so there are some uh drawbacks one more thing by which I wanted to ask is um um which I wanted to convey is that to all the people um one of my cousin was watching anime okay so

I told him that oh you are watching cartoon so I I did that because I wanted to see the reaction so see U here's the agenda If he if he wants you know uh to prove that anime is not a cartoon he will be in the aggression or he will be in Lost Sensation that no no it's not a cartoon thing it's a anime or it's a different kind of class but he was not about that okay uh he said that okay no worries uh it's it's a cartoon for you it's a anime for me

let's be Let's uh you know accept that so here's this thing for all the online people who are you know in the it Madras if you are know defending that I'm I'm in know online you are doing the wrong things on the on that step itself what's your call on this yeah I mean be Elling towards it bro like someone saying let them say I mean if someone is taking out the time and beting your degree or spending two minutes thinking it any ITB let them be people will say whatever want what difference will it

make in your Liv arguing with them or agreeing with them we can do it as about that so um we cannot let like people openly ask because so guys like we got your questions We shortlisted Them Say set them into proper questions so we'll be asking soon since you have only like 12 more minutes we'll we'll get can I ask something not really please uh try to like you know keep it contained we have your questions here don't worry we'll cover everything which is which is repeated which was important so sh start so uh so

the first question is there are two categories here so uh first category is people who are who are knowledgeable I mean they do have some coding uh knowledge but they don't have any formal degree in the coding aspect as not they not from the computers background so they want to get into Tech and the other situation is that there are people who don't have any work experience they are from uh Tire three college and they have a age Gap and they are doing this degree and they want to get into Tech so what advice will

you give for these two category of people you're saying most people here are in these two categories madas this degree is not going to help you too much help you crack some prerequisits in a Google or somewhere else you need to work extremely hard on your skills you anything you work really hard and do DSA Dev and get really good at it and second choice is you get into a degree and chill you take the first one to that less paid or free thing of looking at a lot of videos and working really hard should

be your goal that's 99% of the effort a degree will help you 1% here are some prerequisites and sure I'm sure there are placements and other things that you get from you this needs to be done even more for people are from nonch makes sense I mean yeah that totally makes sense I mean the next question though uh people most of the responses were were likey most of them are in the first year offline College Med dual degree people uh they're like okay there are multiple Pathways for me to look at they came into this

thinking key half of them came into thinking madas well enough good enough for me but now they're like okay there are hackathons there's compet programming and then there is you know increasing my knowledge in data or AI should I like go into research as I asked and uh when you are already occupied with two degrees one offline one online and there's a lot of things laid out for you what is your suggestion like like is there any other option that you can suggest colle course have to manage a lot of things U yeah to drop

out from one would be first advice U I don't think I mean unless you find something very good in your degree I don't know um but within a year figure out this one makes more sense for me and and you know probably because handling academics handing making sure you're passing through your examinations considering it's so hard you'll spend all of your time there only and what with what final outcome um is that really worth it maybe I don't know man I mean everyone has their own situation so think about it I I think you have

to spend a lot of time working hard yourself on things that are happening in the industry which is most probably not being taught in your col makes sense now the next question though uh do you think decentralizing AI is possible from like a blockchain perspective out of honestly I mean this is no can try lot of people have tried it lot of somec money there but no one has been able to figure it out I think web AI exists very well on web2 traditional systems web3 is all something else merging them people have tried no

sticky use case until now no stick use Cas until now I mean would you suggest people exploring though like your personal suggestion no makes sense now uh so many questions and I mean it so many questions asked about chok it is the Talk of the Town right now in CS for all the tech people and uh it is it goes without saying most of J is for web developers people with JS skills or like you know Java now dealing with data and AI most of the people like here what is your advice for people for

G in data and specifically so many questions on yeah generally I would say don't stick too much to a degree as I said don't sck yourself you should look at standard things that you know lead to sometimes research outcomes sometimes ICPC sometimes D sometimes a Google job sometimes a startup job sometimes open source so said most of the companies uh do come in web def python JavaScript Java the three common stacks and this is look at college and judge it the best way to Jud iture um so you guys should do it you know you'll

probably as I said be the first ones full pioneer when I was at it RI there used to be five people or six people who got into G by the time I graduated we did 42 we were the highest college you know doing G you should do that next madas online is 50 selection you have so many people but you know the real people you have to figure out what the bestes andus that makes that makes sense I mean conc on the standard stuff to while moving forward with your own with your own uh things

so guys to a suggestion by the man himself make sure that you Explore More don't restrain yourself to data and AI sounds good anything else sounds good that's that's pretty much it yeah thank you thank you so much congratulations here