About Me

Hi, I am Pulkit from India 🇮🇳. I love building stuff, and all my projects are hosted on GitHub. I began my journey back in 8th grade. We had basic HTML-CSS classes where we learned fundamental HTML rules, and I was amazed by the wonders of the web. I used to make my all of my firend's projects. Back then, I didn't had my personal laptop - we shared a basic Dell laptop between me, my mother (for her work), and my sister. We didn't even had WiFi back then, so I couldn't explore much. I didn't even knew that there existed such a big tech world in tech that have so many things to explore, I wish I had this exposure at that time. I focused more on academics, and things stayed pretty much the same until I finished school because of the og IIT/JEE rut. Anyways by the end of school time, I had a good knowledge of vanilla HTML and Python.

Then I entered the horrible world of engineering, I took admission in a decent college. That's when I started exploring how to get into tech. I saw people on YouTube shouting Do DSA, so like many others, I started with that. I bought the Alpha course from Apna College and spent 2-3 months grinding through it. I didn't find much interest there, like you have to focus on boring concepts and just do this that number of leetcode questions. I was like, "Is this all there is to tech?". I started exploring other options like web, app, cyber, you name it. Since I had some experience with web development, I decided to focus on that. Looking back, it was one of the best decisions I've made.

I got really interested in web development and started learning from free YouTube resources by amazing creators like @CodeWithHarry and @ApnaCollegeOfficial. Wanting more structured guidance, I purchased another course from Apna College called Delta. I spent 4-6 months(around June-March 2023) learning from there. After completing it and learning how things work, I realized some concepts like ejs were getting outdated as tech keeps evolving and no one was talking about those concepts. So I kept exploring and building lots of projects to maintain a good grasp on concepts. If you see my contributions graph, you will see a lot of contributions in the second half of 2023.

It was around somewhere same in April 2023 when One of my mentors introduced me to fullstackopen.com - a turning point in my journey. This blog-based tutorial taught me great concepts from web to DevOps to testing and app development. I completed this course as well, but it was tough for me to complete this course as this was not some video tutorial but a reading based flow and it sucked at reading at that time. Big shoutout to one of the course creators, Matti Luukkainen. You can find all my assignment solutions, certificates, and university credits at github.com/Pulkitxm/fullstackopen

I discovered more awesome creators on YouTube like @Kevin Powell and @developedbyed, improving my frontend skills while creating more projects. I started following @harkirat1, @piyushgargdev, @HiteshCodeLab and @KunalKushwaha. I got most of my tech updates from them, I watched a lot project tutorials and ofcouse been through the tutorial hell. But somemhow managed to escape and continue working on my own skills

Looking back, I'd say consistency (never taking a break since day one in college) and building projects have been key to my progress. I kept my LinkedIn updated throughout my journey and now ofcourse my X account. I also did a 6 months long remote internship which I got just because of keeping my network updated with my work. I did some really cool work there. After that I took some break for my 5th semester improved my portfolio and github, If you'd see my github contributions of 2024 that were quite improved as compared to 2023.

During my 5th Semester break, I approached Harkirat in one of his cohort classes regarding a referral with this notion doc and he loved my projects and profile so much that he followed me instantly during the class. He also praised me in another class. Here are the recordings of both instances:

He got me referrals at two YC-backed companies. The first one didn't work out due to a mismatch in expectations with the founder. But the second one turned out to be a great fit. I had two rounds at this company — an intro call with one of the founders followed by a final technical round with all three founders the very next day. They liked my work and gave me a 2-week trial. I gave it my best, cleared it smoothly, and was offered a full-time role.

About 1.5 months in, during a morning standup, the founders told me they no longer had a requirement for my role. It was sudden, unexpected, and honestly, a hit to my confidence. I kept thinking, "What went wrong?" But one of my mentors quickly referred me to API.market, and that changed everything. Joining there turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made. I'm now working full-time, building and improving the API marketplace, and contributing to some really exciting features.