Meet Team Secure- From Thinking of Dropping Out To Winning The 1st Runner-up Title Of Tally Codebrewers 2022

Hiring challenges and hackathons are quickly changing the hiring landscape and are speeding up the process of reaching out to top talent. Recently Tally Solutions also conducted one such challenge called the Tally CodeBrewers 2022 at Unstop which saw participation from numeorus undergraduate engineering students. Pranay Pandey from IIT ISM Dhanbad also participated in the same and emerged as the 1st runner-up for the Wizard of System Programming track. Here is what he had to say about his journey.

Tally Solutions conducted Tally CodeBrewers 2022, a hackathon, to reach out to the next generation of engineers from about 100 institutions in the country. A hackathon of such a calibre serves as a great opportunity to test one's skills and gain unparalleled exposure at the same time. With this thought in mind, I also decided to register for the challenge and put my coding abilities to test.

There was an option to participate in teams with a maximum of three members each. However, I chose to participate as a lone candidate, with my challenge avatar named- Team Secure. The challenge microsite also specified the structure they would follow. The first round was conducted in two parts- an MCQ quiz and a spot coding challenge, both of which aimed at testing basic programming and coding skills. The combined score of these two sub-rounds determined if a candidate moves onto the next round or not. Thankfully I made it to the second round.

My Initial Plan Failed- Had To Start From Scratch!

The second round was the main show of the competition. Here all participants were asked to choose between two segments/ tracks- system programming and full stack. I was more interested in the first one, so I entered the Wizard of System Programming track. Once this decision was made, the organizers provided all participants with a problem statement.

Now I had to come up with a working solution to the problem within 48 hours. This made me nervous and I initially planned to try and search for existing solutions, and code them properly. But unfortunately, this was not feasible for the competition and I had to start from scratch. With the first 6-hour assessment quickly approaching I did not have anything concrete to show to my mentor. I tried my best to get things done, but at that point, I had just been able to grasp the basics of my problem and had just begun to build the data structure that I was going to use.

The Thought Of Dropping Out

Even though it was my decision to go with the Wizard of System Programming track, throughout the competition I was very worried that I did not have any real experience in system programming. Also, there were teams who seemed extremely confident during the briefings and claimed that they could complete the task easily.

All of this affected my self-belief and confidence, and I even thought of dropping out of the competition. But at last, I decided against it and asked for help from the mentor who was assigned to me. And my mentor's advice served as my saving grace.

Mentor- The Guardian Angel

The first assessment in Round 2 was nerve-wracking for me. Since I was unable to prepare anything minutely structured, I was worried about my mentor’s response. But that single assessment completely changed my outlook and approach to taking on the challenge I was facing. My mentor was simply amazing and was like my personal guardian angel throughout the competition.

Thanks to the advice from my mentor, I was able to design almost the whole system before the next 18-hour assessment. I feel that these mid-evaluations that the mentor conducted and the guidance they gave were paramount to making my journey on Tally CodeBrewers 2022 fruitful.

Hard Work Always Pays!

The competition, it's framing, and the procedure were all well-planned, and hence everything went on smoothly. The judges were very good and extremely knowledgeable, and they also pointed out some extreme case scenarios in my solution, something I would never have been able to foresee. I felt very inspired by the mentors and the judges.

I was a single person who was competing with teams with multiple members. And it had its pros and cons- while on one hand, I had to do everything on my own. On the other hand, I was able to implement exactly what I wanted without running into any resistance. But none of it was easy. The belief which helped me see this journey through was- even if situations appear tough, we should never give up and keep trying because hard work always pays.

Exhilarating Experience!

My journey had many ups and down, especially when it came to how I was feeling. I was extremely anxious till the end and was worried about my final presentation. But just before the final evaluation, we had to present a demo in front of some other mentors. Getting praised by these mentors gave me the confidence boost that I needed to nail the presentation in front of the judges. My journey in this competition was extremely fun, enlightening, and exhilarating. I know that all the experiences I had and the lessons I learned will help me become my unstoppable self.

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Team Secure - IIT ISM Dhanbad

2020-2025

Pranay Pandey is currently pursuing Integrated Masters of Technology in Mathematics and Computing from the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad.