Welcome to our new series #MyCashienStory. These are stories and candid conversations highlighting experiences, roles and growth of Cashiens, across all departments and levels at Cashfree Payments.
Here’s Ashish K, an intern turned SDE at Cashfree Payments as he narrates his journey of becoming a Cashien after a successful internship with us. He also sheds light on his preparation strategy, learnings and more!
Hello Ashish! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I come from Patna, the capital of Bihar. I developed an interest in computer science right from school and then I went on to pursue B.Tech in CSE branch from National Institute of Technology (NIT) Patna.
When I am not working, I hang out with my friends, read manga and play games. I also like polishing my skills through a bit of self-learning.
Take us through your experience interviewing at Cashfree Payments and your preparation strategy for the internship.
I was a student at NIT Patna when Cashfree Payments came to our college for an internship and recruitment. I was excited to appear for the internship and honestly, it was a challenging process.
The interview had five rounds:
1 – Online coding round
2 – One to one coding round (Mainly DSA questions)
3 – CS core round (Focus on OS, DBMS, computer networking and one Design type question).
4 – Interview with Engineering VP at Cashfree Payments (Regarding previous internships, SQL and some value-based questions)
5 – HR Round (on what Cashfree Payments can offer to us as an organization and what’s expected of us)
As far as my preparation strategy is concerned, I tried to keep things honest and simple.
In college, I used to do a lot of competitive programming so I was confident about my coding skills. But, as the placement season approached, I allocated some time to practice interview questions (mainly questions of interviewBIT) and core concepts like OS, DBMS, and computer networks – which I used to revise daily.
One of my biggest concerns was that I had done a summer internship in Machine Learning and Cashfree Payments is a fintech company that runs mostly through web development. I was asked in one of the interviews how I am going to help the company without knowing web development. I had done my research to understand their business model, scope, and competitors and expressed my intention to build on my skills, and I’m glad Cashfree Payments took the bet on me and my potential.
How was the initial stage of your internship?
I joined here in January 2022. The first month was dedicated to exploring what our company does. I talked to a lot of developers and managers during that period and they were very patient with their advice and helped me a lot during my internship. We also met our fellow interns and we learnt and played together. We got enough time to learn a different skill and make ourselves feel at home here.
How was your experience when it comes to working with teams at Cashfree Payments?
During my internship, I was assigned to the Partner Tech Team and our time size was 5 members including me and our manager. My manager, Abhishek Iyer, used to catch up frequently to understand how things are going, what I have learnt and how I can do better. He would also help us foresee future learning areas.
At Cashfree Payments, we give the rare liberty to all developers to work on our tech stack. Tell us about your first line of code, written for Cashfree Payments.
I wrote my first API in February and soon my API was deployed to production. I was very nervous but my mentor and manager were very helpful. They ensured that the API is fine, but I was checking it again and again – I wanted it to be perfect! Gradually, I picked up the pace and I would get valuable support from my mentor whenever I felt stuck. I also used to get regular feedback for course corrections.
The most challenging thing I found during the internship was solving merge conflicts, but with time and guidance, I got the hang of it and now I am an expert on it.
Can you shed some light on the work you did, and the technologies you learnt that paved your way to a full-time SDE role?
I was working as a back-end engineer. My focus was on multiple projects rather than singular ones.
And I have learnt so much from my internship, which surely accounts for what I am today. Some of the skills I learnt and applied are SQL, MongoDB, Git , Golang, Java and more. I also got to get my hands on various other skills needed as you code including writing maintainable clean and structured code, writing documentation (very important), working with Postman, working with Amazon redshift and S3 services, k8s and docker.
All of my learnings made it easier for me for my stint as SDE!
What were your key learnings and takeaways from this internship? This would also help our aspiring Cashiens!
My top 5 takeaways from this internship were:
1. Understand the requirements of a task clearly, and talk to people if you haven’t understood
2. Write documentation (very much needed) for future reference
3. Try to learn a lot about what you are doing for the first time
4. Writing unit tests and doing unit testing is important
5. Try to pick new skills, don’t hesitate
Lastly, what’s it like working at Cashfree Payments?
At Cashfree Payments, you are trusted with work and you have complete freedom in terms of the way you want to work. Questions are welcomed here and feedback is valued! There have been instances where I went to different teams to learn about their work and experience. We had our internal Hackathon: SwitchOn! and it was so much fun!
I’m loving working here and being a Cashien!
