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Indian techie fired by Tesla gets 4 crore Meta job: ‘Needed to prove myself again’
At the time, Hemant Pandey was elated with the trajectory of his career but then Tesla laid him off seven months later.
An Indian techie- Hemant Pandey- who joined a full-time software role at Tesla in 2018 after an internship at Amazon during his graduate program in Delhi said that Elon Musk's company was his dream and the pay was "top-notch". At the time, he was elated with the trajectory of his career but then Tesla laid him off seven months later when he had invited his parents from India to visit him in California, Business Insider reported.
Read more: Apple CEO Tim Cook on India: ‘Incredibly exciting market, our major focus…’
He shared, "It was my first job and getting laid off meant having to build rapport all over again in just six months. I needed to prove myself again."
What is Hemant Pandey doing now? He is a senior software engineer role at Meta with a ₹4 crore per annum salary and has received offers from LinkedIn and TikTok, he said. Talking to the publication, he said that he had applied to Meta in 2021 after learning about the company's "crazy" salary packages even though his GPA during the master's degree was not very “impressive”.
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He shared these few tips for younger professionals:
- On work experiences, he said, if people ask me what I did at Salesforce, I can help them know more by explaining rather than writing a paragraph." And he sticks to three short bullet points for each role.
- On how to connect with recruiters during an interview, he said, “I generally share how I bombed my first semester and was intimidated. This makes a good growth and learning-from-failures story.” Read more: Apple CEO Tim Cook on AI: ‘We continue to feel very bullish’
- On how software engineers grow to senior roles, he said that the job becomes less about coding and more about leading teams. He explained, "But if I still interview for a startup, they don't really care about how I'm leading or shipping products. They care about whether I can write code or be tech-savvy enough."
