Week 1 Recap of Headstarter SWE Fellowship ✅💻
Monday, July 22: Kickoff with CEO Yasin Ehsan & Sajjaad Khader🚀
We kicked off the Headstarter AI fellowship with an inspiring talk by Sajjad Khader. He shared invaluable insights on personal branding for software engineers, emphasizing the importance of defining your brand, consistency, leveraging multiple platforms, and engaging with your audience. His ten key lessons provided us with a solid foundation for building and promoting our personal brands in the tech industry.
1️⃣ Define Your Brand: 📢 Highlight your expertise and share valuable insights.
2️⃣ Consistency & Passion: 📅 Post regularly and stay passionate.
3️⃣ Multiple Platforms: 📱 Start with Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, then expand.
4️⃣ Engage & Provide Value: 💬 Answer questions and share experiences.
5️⃣ Track & Adapt: 📈 Continuously improve based on feedback.
6️⃣ Leverage Career Experiences: 💼 Share job lessons and real-world examples.
7️⃣ Highlight Unique Experiences: 🌟 Use personal projects to connect with your audience.
8️⃣ Passionate Reporting: 🔍 Focus on areas you love.
9️⃣ Be Authentic & Relatable: 👐 Share both successes and failures.
🔟 Network & Collaborate: 🌐 Connect and collaborate with others.
Tuesday, July 23: Insights from Jack O’Brien 💡
On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to learn from Jack O’Brien, a former Google software engineer and CTO of an A16z-backed startup. Jack shared his journey of building a successful product, highlighting the importance of creating something cool, leveraging your network, promoting widely, and choosing the right tech stack. Faizan Ahmed also showed us how to approach company founders through Y Combinator, adding valuable insights into networking and startup growth.
Co-Founder Faizan Ahmed hosted Jack O’Brien, former Google engineer. Jack shared tips on building projects and entrepreneurship:
- Create Something Amazing: Develop an MVP to test your idea.
- Tap into Your Network: Get feedback from friends and family.
- Shout it from the Rooftops!: Promote your product on social media.
Wednesday, July 24: Social Media Strategies with Farzy 📲
Farzaan Aleem (Farzy) discussed content creation and going viral. Key takeaways:
- Authenticity builds trust. 👤
- Balance informative and entertaining content. 🌱
- Use video content on Tiktok, Instagram for audience reach ✅
- Use written content Linkedin, Twitter and Reddit for audience reach. 📲
Thursday, July 25: Partnership with Ruby & Event Takeaways from Tech Entrepreneurs at Headstarter Pathways to Tech Event 🌟💼
CEO Yasin Ehsan announced a partnership with Ruby, offering top fellows paid internships without interviews. Highlights from the Pathways to Tech event:
Meet 3 CEOs who raised $100M, $10M, $1M and who they look to hire:
- Nabeel Alamgir — CEO of LunchBox 🍔, Raised $100M VC 💵
- Logan Havern — CEO of DataLogz 📊, Raised $12M 💰
- Dustin Beadle — Director at Lattice 🏛️, Ex-Director AMD 🖥️
- Shariar Kabir — CEO of Ruby YC 23 💎, Ex-Salesforce ☁️
- Miguel Acero — CTO of Ruby YC 23 💎, Ex-Google 🔍
- Building Relationships: Network effectively. 🤝
- Career Development: Embrace growth opportunities. 📈
- Startup Journey: Adapt and persist. 🚀
- Technical Skills: Develop a diverse skill set. 💻
- Community Support: Engage in hackathons and collaborations. 🛠️
Friday, July 26: Personal Portfolio Project 🌐
Completed my personal portfolio website: mirzamohammedbaig.com
(backup link: https://mmb-personal-portfolio-website-epgwh4ndr-m1rzab4igs-projects.vercel.app/)
Saturday, July 27: Headstarter Hackathon 🚀
My hackathon team developed CloutCraft, a text based social media post assistant optimal for LinkedIn. Check it out at cloutcraft.me. Shoutout to teammates Adrian E., Aryan Kumar, and Khaled Yerima! 💡🔥
Sunday, July 28: 10+ IRL Headstarter SWE Fellow Meetups worldwide🌟
🎉 What an incredible day at the Headstarter AI SWE Fellows meetup in Atlanta! We had the privilege of hearing from inspiring speakers:
- Sajjaad Khader, SWE at Splunk
- Hawa Sylla, SWE at Manhattan Associates
- Mohammed Awad, Lead SWE at WarnerMedia
- Monzurul Ehsan, Sr Eng Manager at Zocdoc
- Hammad Sophie, Lead Member of Tech at Salesforce
The event was packed with valuable insights on breaking into tech, building a personal brand, and expanding our networks. Huge thanks to everyone who attended and made the event a success! ⭐️
Shoutout to the Fellows who attended: Abdurrahman Habeeb, Kamrul Tarafder, Farhan Soomro, Rizwan Shaikh, Hamza L. Kurdi, Yashwanth Alluri, Santos Ochoa, Richard Phan, and more 🤝🏽
We also had the pleasure of welcoming the first Headstarter AI hackathon winner Itwela Ibomu, who made CitySwipe, a tinder-esque app for travel destinations! 🏆
We also had weekly assignments: 💻
- Networking Assignment: Reach out to an SWE on Linkedin✅
- AI Mock Interview: DSA Problem on Arrays & Hashing with an AI version of Aidan Ouckama✅
- Giving Project Feedback to Fellows on their Week 1 Portfolio Projects✅
- Team Project Gameplan: I met with my team (Abdurrahman Habeeb, Kamrul Tarafder, Vien Tran) and we discussed plans for our final project✅
- Attend Pathways2Tech event and share insights on linkedin ✅
- Attend a Meetup with fellows in your locality ✅
Week 1 was an amazing week of learning, networking, and growth with Headstarter AI! Excited for the weeks ahead! 🚀
Special thanks to Yasin Ehsan 🚀, Faizan Ahmed, and Headstarter AI for helping us build a stronger community of future tech leaders! 💡🤝
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