Surfer1999's blog

By Surfer1999, 3 years ago, In English

I am currently in final year and have job offers. I still like to do competitive programming but it takes away lot of time. I try to give sometime to development but still can't take focus away from competitive programming. Currently I am targeting for master on codeforces. Do you think it's worth spending time provided I have enough skill now to crack any job DSA interview (ofcourse sometime it can be bad luck)? I enjoy doing it. Cracking jobs was not main purpose for starting it.

I sometime think that if I spend that much time doing things like full stack development, I can earn lot of money through freelancing. But still I like CP over any dev work.

From my internship experience, it hardly helped me. Infact it made me lazy since I always switched to do CP during work hours :/.

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3 years ago, # |
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Turn down the offers. Get a pHD and become professor

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    Then you'll neither have time for CP nor make any money!

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3 years ago, # |
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I still like to do competitive programming but it takes away lot of time. I try to give sometime to development but still can't take focus away from competitive programming.

It sounds like you enjoy competitive programming for its own sake. It also sounds like you don't enjoy the type of software development job you've experienced or gotten an offer for.

Do you think it's worth spending time provided I have enough skill now to crack any job DSA interview (ofcourse sometime it can be bad luck)? I enjoy doing it. Cracking jobs was not main purpose for starting it.

If you enjoy doing it, and you're not hurting anyone, then yes it's worth it! Not everything you do has to be for a direct, career-related purpose. I might ask, is it worth pursuing a job you don't like, and which makes you sacrifice the things you enjoy doing?

I sometime think that if I spend that much time doing things like full stack development, I can earn lot of money through freelancing. But still I like CP over any dev work.

So, you've identified that there are two things you can be doing, and they are for different purposes. CP is a fun hobby for you but you don't think it'll help you in your career. Meanwhile focusing on more typical software development is a path to make more money. You need to find a balance that suits you. It's not necessarily one or the other, you can have a job and do CP in your free time.

From my internship experience, it hardly helped me. Infact it made me lazy since I always switched to do CP during work hours :/.

I had a similar internship experience. I want you to think about why you didn't like it. Don't just say you were lazy. Maybe you were wasting time not because of your incompetence or poor work ethic, but because they didn't give you interesting work to do, or they neglected you and it didn't make a difference to them whether you worked hard.

Whatever it was, not all software jobs are the same! If you enjoy algorithms, data structures, and problem solving in CP, why not research what careers there are that align more closely with your interests. Imagine if doing CP at work was in your job description! In my case, I found a job about computational geometry. Keep looking and you may surprise yourself.

You don't have to take an offer just because you have one right now. If you really don't think you'd enjoy it, I suggest you keep looking. It's too important.