I need to talk to you. Because no one else will tell you the truth.
Every single day, my DMs are flooded with the same messages.
"Bhaiya, how do I get a 50 LPA package?" "Sir, which tech stack should I learn in 2026?" "Bro, refer me."
And every time I read these, my heart sinks.
Because you are asking the wrong questions. You are playing the wrong game.
And if you keep playing this game, you will lose. Hard.
The Dead Crowd
Walk into any engineering college in India.
What do you see?
Zombies.
People walking from class to lab to hostel, waiting for four years to pass.
Waiting for a magic piece of paper to save them.
But the paper doesn't save anyone anymore.
You are surrounded by a dead crowd. People who have outsourced their ambition to their parents, their professors, or some random YouTuber.
Wake up.
The Crab Mentality Problem
If you try to do something different, what happens?
They pull you down.
"Why are you doing Open Source? Just do Leetcode." "Why are you building a startup? Just get a TCS job."
It's the crab mentality.
If I can't escape the bucket, neither can you.
You have to learn to ignore them. You have to learn to be okay with being the weirdo in the room.
Because the normal people are heading for a cliff.
The Average Tag Trap
We have romanticized being average.
"Thik hai yaar, ho jayega." (It's okay man, it will happen.)
No, it won't happen.
The world doesn't reward average anymore. It punishes it.
If your skills can be defined by a syllabus, you are average.
If your portfolio is a clone of a Spotify clone, you are average.
You have to run away from the "average tag" like it's a plague.
The Small Bubble Problem
Your world is too small.
Your competition isn't the guy sitting next to you in your Tier-3 college.
Your competition is a 14-year-old kid in Estonia who has been coding in Rust for three years.
Your competition is a self-taught designer in Nigeria who works 16 hours a day.
Pop your bubble. Look at the global standard.
Then look in the mirror.
It should scare you.
When Internship Becomes Your Personality
I hate this one the most.
You get a 2-month internship at a decent company, and suddenly it's your entire personality.
LinkedIn bio updated. Twitter bio updated.
You stop learning. You start posting "gyaan" (wisdom).
An internship is a stepping stone. It is not the destination.
Stop optimizing for the tag. Optimize for the skill.
AI Destroyed Average
Let me be brutal.
If you are an average coder, you are obsolete.
AI can write average code faster, cheaper, and without complaining.
The only way to survive the AI wave is to be exceptional.
To understand architecture. To understand the 'why' behind the 'how'.
To communicate. To solve ambiguous problems.
AI ate the bottom 50% of the market. Don't be in that 50%.
Final Thoughts
Stop asking for roadmaps.
Start building. Start failing.
Stop waiting for someone to give you permission to do great work.
The world is unfair. The system is broken.
But complaining won't change your reality. Hard work will.
— Get to work.