By
Ashwini Khare —

On Working at SDSLabs (5)

This January, we at SDSLabs would be going in with our recruitment drive for budding programmers and designers from first year students at IITR. This would be the fourth time after few inspired people came together and founded SDSLabs, that we’ll be doing such a thing. Over the years, the interest in joining the group has seen a steep rise with more than 300 students appearing for our written test last year. Hence, we started a series a blog posts( 1, 2, 3, 4 ) to give an insight to what working at SDSLabs would be all about, this post is one of them.

It’s tough to put down how much and in how many ways I have benefited being a part of the group. I was in the first batch of students who were recruited, so have seen much of it’s progress being a member over time. Back then, this group used to function from a small Hobbies Club committee room. The challenge was that we didn’t have much to show when we used to knock doors of people who matter and ask for support for our much ambitious plans and there was no shortage of people who used to come with similar promises. Inspite of that, we did well, perhaps due to the enthusiasm shown by lab members that closely resembled that of a startup. Our lab soon became functional from its current location. There was growth and when started showing results, we were rewarded generously with more funds. These were utilized to make a fun place to work, so much as some may classify the lab as a luxurious place in IITR’s standards.

Learning

My mentor in initial lab days was Abhay Rana(a.k.a. Nemo). If you have ever interacted him, you’ll know about his technical prowess. While it was exciting working on the same project, it was also a bit scary(no kidding) to ask him an easy question(He did answer them, but a good amount of them used to be lmgtfy links). The best part was that you’ll understand how to go about things and he’ll always give you ample resources to check out and learn.

A year later, I found myself giving lectures to the next batch which joined us. It was no easy task, because I had to be prepared to answer their questions without a second thought and later mentor them for new projects, living up to high standards that Abhay and Harshil had set. The culture has so developed that even today if you participate in any discussion, leave apart the lectures, you’ll learn something new, every time.

Work

Conventionally, you are assigned a project in accordance to where your interests lie. However what makes it different is that we promote an open culture. All discussions/mock-ups/code base is available to everyone in the group. Which practically means one can alter the functionality of any app as he/she wishes. In addition to that, no project is an individual project, every project is shaped by constructive ideas and thoughts by others in the group.

Since the beginning, we have had a hack-ish culture of going about developing applications. There’s freedom, and then there’s rapid development. I was writing code in a Hackathon(codename:Syntax Error) even before I had completed a month as a part of SDSLabs. Although the spaghetti code written by me then never went into production, it in a way inspired an idea for an application which we launched last sem.

First Hackathon in SDSLabs

One thing, I feel should be mentioned here is that the re-naming of the section from Web Development to Software Development isn’t supposed to be superficial. As the founders of the lab would say, our domain isn’t limited to Web only, we would love if you want to work on any field related to computers that you feel has a lot of scope of innovation and application. Our only condition would be, be amazing.

Competitions

We love to grab the first opportunity we get to participate to participate in events and contests, and luckily, someone from lab end up going well in almost all competitions we have ever participated. Whether it was playing with phonegap for Adobe Express Apps, or cracking different levels in a CTF, or writing a research paper for Deloitte CCTC, we do participate. I believe this keeps the competitive spirit alive in the group where we strive to be the best.

Winning of course, is always special. I was a part of the lab team that went specially to IIT Delhi to participate in Yahoo HackU!, and our app was adjudged the geekiest hack. We did try to convince them to add IITR in the future, and hopefully we’ll see something positive in this regard. I’m also part of the lab team in the finals of Google Cloud Developer Challenge, hopefully we make the best of it.

Over the last year, we have taken a step forward from only participating in competitions to hosting them as well. We conducted a handful last march, during cognizance, one of them was Backdoor, our very own CTF. Cracking problems is one thing but framing problems with varying difficulties is an experience of its own. Recently, we did also organize Syntax Error, read more about our organizing experience here. It was the first major event me and Abhishek had planned after being selected as Google Student Ambassadors of IITR, something we got courtesy of being members of SDSLabs

Organizing Team of Syntax Error

Group Culture

We spend considerable free time we get in our lab among others from the group. Add to it, our internal group chat, which ensures that we remain connected is what makes our group close knit. This association isn’t limited to the time one spends during their stay at IIT Roorkee. Statistically speaking, the highest number of mails(which is large number itself) on our current year’s mailing list is from an alumni, just speaks of the strong bond.

Joining SDSLabs

If everything you’ve read above excites you and you picture yourself being a part of SDSLabs, come write our test in January. It’s been a dream ride so far, join us in that journey as we continue to grow. All you need to succeed is willingness to learn and a mindful of creative ideas.