Random Topmate Story 😅

I see a lot of folks opening their calendar and offering resume review and career guidance and other things via Topmate. Some are charging like 6000 per hour. And posting that as if they are making some contribution to the community. They are keeping posts as that is their way of giving back to the community as if it's some sort of charity. How the hell is giving back to the community when you are charging 6000 per hour ?? I dont have a problem with people who keep it openly as its a way to earn some money. You are giving your time so asking money for it is not at all wrong in my book But please dont label it as charity for god sake 🙏🙏

Education: CS from Tier 4 Years of Experience: 2+ FTE Prior Experience: Service based Date of the Offer: Between Feb to Apr 2024 Previous CTC: 7L + 1L bonus Alphasense: CTC: 22L + 60 units stock ESOPs Position: SE 2 It's a great product. Well funded. $2.5B valuation. IPO within couple of years. Work and tech stack aligns well with my aspirations. Oracle: CTC: 18.6L + 3.6L towards relocation Position: Applications Engineer Team: Fusion HCM It's ADF tech stack which is an outdated tool/wrapper, which is a con for me. Lowe's: CTC: 16L + variable from 0% to 200% of 1.6L Position: Software Engineer Team: Product Promotions Work, tech stack, Wlb is good. Freecharge: CTC: 14L Position: Senior SDE Offers are in chronological order- first one is the latest. Please help me decide. My priority is learning. And then my profile value for future opportunities.

So.. Around 2 years back I got my first payout of 50k as a referral bonus for a friend I referred to my company. Around same time.. My team had a few positions.. So i put it on linkedin and got a decent response.. Got another referral.. Next year.. I decided to scale it.. I started putting multiple posts on linkedin for positions across my company and started streaming the responses on google sheet. Having a big linkedin network of 20k helped. This year I scaled it to 4L a year... But then it all stopped after one fine day there was a HR circular to not undertake commercial level sourcing of profiles on linkedin.. And only refer ppl I know. It's a different matter that I could manage to source almost 20-40x more relevant profiles as compared to my HRs even with their third party agencies. More than half of my team members are my referrals :). While scaling this hustle.. This is what I learnt. 1) You will get lots of spam.. I feel sry for some candidates .. But sometime even civil grads will apply for semiconductor jobs. 2) Better to invite applications using a google form with proper filters.. Only serious ppl will apply. 3) Do not refer everyone.. Reduce your effort and only refer candidates who have a chance. 4) Engage with candidates, followup after interviews. 5) Do not trust your employer will automatically honor referral payouts if you don't track.. I literally lost more than 2L coz of inefficient referral tracking system. 6) Control your greed.. Even if you scale up.. Limit yourself to a decent no.. Say 2L a year.. Referral policy is for company's benifit.. They will shut you down one way or another if they find you are gaining. 7) Handling it at scale is a lot of work.

A bit about me: IIT 2022 Grad (Top 4 IITs) Product Manager Ex-Founder Just shut down startup. Job hunt in progress. Closed an offer yesterday. Joining is 20 days away. Going through an acute cash crunch. Urgent need of money. Need to pay rent and wifi bill for the month. 🫤 Got any work that doesn't interest you? Got office backlog to clear? Have a side project you always wanted to explore but didn't have the time? Reply & DM!! I am an expert at Figma, ChatGPT and other LLM tools, Midjourney, Email Marketing, Analytics, Product research, Market research, PRD writing, Framer and no code web development, Landing page review and conversion rate optimisation, Content Writing, User Surveys and interviews, Pitch deck creation and presentation creation (pro). An upvote would go a long way in case you don't have any work at hand. PS: Credit score ki watt lag gayi hai. No point suggesting personal loan.

If you are an over performer and doing great work at your company, I request you to also start working for yourself. You have no idea how much you can make just working directly for clients.

I often feel that I am under qualified for my job and have been able to clear all the rounds by pure luck. I think that if I go out in job market I won't be able to again bag such a good offer... Does any one else also feel so... How to overcome with this feeling...

So I interviewed for a SaaS company serving US clients. I got selected after three rounds (basic email chat, built a project, technical coding round at last) and got selected. Finally, it was time to discuss salary and joining date with the CEO. He was impressed by the about section on my portfolio, where I mentioned that I like to go on treks, hikes, read books, lift weights, go on a run, etc. During our call he mentioned that everyone at the startup works 6-7days a week, 12hrs a day and asked if I'd be fine with it as I have a "happening life". I said that I'm not used to it but I'll manage and work in appropriate working hours. He seemed to agree on it. But he ghosted me after that, and when I pinged him in the email thread; he said he's not moving ahead with me because my other properties won't allow me to "work as much as other employees". How am I supposed to react to this lol

So, just to be clear, I have no grudges against the people, but basically I don't like the core idea of doing a paid "guidance or mentorship" session. Examples being career guidance or famous resume reviews on Topmate See, The very basic idea of asking for guidance is that you are in a vulnerable state and someone 'helps' you out by sharing their experience & giving back to the community in that way. This entire concept is thrown away when you Charge Money for it, it's no longer a help relationship - I can understand people are busy and have less time for mentorship, but that doesn't justify charging for it There is another tangible problem in my opinion. When you Charge for a guidance session, it gives a transactional outlook for you - As in you never want to go really deep into conversations because it's a paid one time thing and as soon as your 30 minutes is gone, you have earned your prize. I know it's difficult to describe in words but when you do something for 1-time money, it's very difficult to not have a purely transactional perspective to it . This is something I have personally observed when I used to be in a competitive activity & did paid mentorship Sessions. There is also a 3rd issue of inexperienced people giving out paid gyaan on issues which they don't have an idea of (I saw someone looking for their first full time job and yet running paid "career guidance" session on Topmate) but lets keep that for another day ps : This is not against People whose job is advisory, that's a much more formal relationship by nature & there are enough checks and balances.

Spoke to few people who have their Topmate link. On an average after speaking to them i found that they are in their positions just by luck. Asked for resume review, ek se ek expert 😂

Recently i was talking to my senior just for fun and wanted to see what exactly is this whole thing So he paid xxx Rupees to the person for a Call 1:1 and he asked if I'm having 2.5yrs exp I need to switch to faang This guy '22 Passout says I will give you a roadmap for 6 months you need to pay 23,xxx Rupees I will give you a referral in my faang (He is in one of them) I have the roadmap I will make sure you learn LLD My senior has 2.5 exp in a startup that was listening to him and eventually said I'll think about it and ended the call Someone who has just entered is giving advice like they have worked for 5-6 years I've seen students in college start topmate and they are in top1% stuff Do these things are really required And Ego of those is such high They are not realising achieving faang is part of life not the whole life