Team MisFits - The Perfect Fit For Tally CodeBrewers 2022 Winner Title (Commander of Full Stack Track)

The hiring challenge Tally CodeBrewers 2022 exposed future engineers to the ideas of logical thinking, puzzle-solving, collaboration, and on-the-spot coding. It was open to full-time engineering students from select campuses without any restriction to year/domain/specialization.

We decided to enter the competition and called ourselves Team Misfits. Our team comprised of Himanshu Kumar, Harsh Mishra, and Divyanshu Singh. We are final year students from IIT (ISM), Dhanbad. This was our first competition as a team and we performed pretty well. Harsh Mishra felt that for him this competition was not only a memorable but also a significant experience in his life. And winning definitely doubled the fun of embarking on this journey, for all of us. 

Talking about the competition, there were three rounds in total. The first round of the competition was split into two sections- MCQs and a basic coding challenge. Our combined score from these rounds helped us move on to the second. While the first round was good, the real challenge came in the second round. This round was a weekend hackathon and we had to plan ahead. 

Brainstorming Sessions Are The Key

The second round required us to build an entirely new application, taking care of all the security issues, scalability, and other important stuff in about 48 hours. Harsh was rightly worried about the fact that the time constraint would be a big challenge and it did restrict us from implementing all features in the model. 

Nonetheless, we decided to get started by brainstorming all the features we were considering including our app. We researched all the available similar apps, their shortcomings, and their great features. By the end of our brainstorming session, we had a huge list of features we wanted to work on. Our strategy was to build a basic model and then add all the essential features we wanted to integrate.

As we started by brainstorming at the initial stages and gave deep thought to every idea, we stuck to the same; hence we didn't experience any conflicts, and everything went smoothly. This experience made us realize that brainstorming is a crucial part of a project and its eventual success. For instance, we spent time looking for the best approach before implementing anything. It was our approach of brainstorming before implementation that resulted in efficient performance and encouraged us to think creatively at every step.

Divided The Challenge To Conquer It

We continuously worked for three days to complete our model as fast as possible, before the deadline. To make things easier and to ensure that everything went on smoothly, we decided to use the divide and conquer technique. We divided our project into different phases, the primary one being to complete the basic essential features while incorporating changes so that we could easily integrate the future changes into our existing solution. 

We also split our team into two streams- backend and frontend- which helped us move on to the next step, much quicker than we would have otherwise. During this time, we barely got sleep as we had a long list of things to get done. Though it was exhausting at that moment, looking back now- it was an exciting, excellent experience and everything was perfect. 

The Competition Was An Eye-Opener To The Real World

This competition presented us with real-world experience of working on a project which taught us how to work as a team and increased our coordination. It also gave us an insight into how to use different technologies together to come up with the solution to our problem. The competition was very well planned and everything went on very smoothly. The best part was that we all were assigned mentors to help us and provide feedback at every step. Our mentors were really amazing, were very supportive of us and we learned a lot from them. 

Not just this, even the jury was very thorough. They analyzed our application very minutely and explored every aspect of our model in depth. It was great to see them analyzing our work and giving us positive feedback. All in all, the competition was very well organized and the experience was nothing like we have ever had before. 

Teamwork For The Win

Working as a team was extremely fun even though it was exhausting at times due to the tight timeline. We are friends as well as roommates, which means we spend a lot of time (almost all the time) together. This served as a boon to us, as we have a great mutual understanding which was reflected in our teamwork during this competition. Plus we are all hardworking, dedicated and wanted to win this competition. Therefore very few conflicts arose and we talked with each other to reach a conclusion every time something came up.

One other important thing about our team was, that we always made a joint effort even though we had specific assigned tasks. For instance, Himanshu’s and Divyanshu’s problem-solving skills and analytical way of viewing any problem are extremely impressive. Also, they are both excellent at React JavaScript, and they used these skills and knowledge to help me with the integration part despite all they had on their plates. This is how teams should work. We used our combined knowledge and experience to work as a team and went all in for the win. 

A Great Learning Experience Culminated Into A Special Moment

The moment when we received praise from the judges as they declared us the winners, was extremely special. It felt like all our hard work, sleepless night, and endless sessions had finally paid off. Add onto this the fact that we learned a lot during this competition and it helped us grow as individuals as well as future professionals. The most crucial learning and takeaway for us was realizing that planning and execution are important for any task you take on. 

This experience was particularly important for our teammate Harsh Mishra. He was always averse to giving public speeches and presentations. But for the first time during this competition, he was able to communicate his ideas, feelings, plans, and everything else really well. This was a great learning experience that we are all going to carry forward with us, and we know that these learnings will make a huge difference in our future lives. 

You might also be interested in reading the following:

1. Tally CodeBrewers 2022: How Kushal Jain Defeated Teams From Tier-1 Colleges & Became The Wizard Of System Programming!
2. Meet Team HellRaisers: The International Finalists Of L’Oréal Brandstrom 2022 (Green Track)
3. How to win Amazon Customer Excellence (ACE) Challenge | With Mahak, Santosh, Rahul and Ritika from IIM Ahmedabad
4. IIT vs Branch: Why do IITians Compromise On The Branch To Get The IIT Tag?
5. IIT Hyderabad Soars High With India’s First Test-Bed For Autonomous Navigation; Launches A Fleet Of Inventions