I have never relied on traditional interview processes to get a job. No DSA rounds, no system design grilling, no multi-step loops. Almost every role I have landed came through a single conversation focused entirely on the projects I had built.
The reason is simple: proof of work makes interviews optional.
I didn’t come from a big name college. There was no built-in reputation attached to where I studied, and no advantage from well known tags like IIT, GSOC, or Big Tech internships. Those signals help - they make it easier for someone to assume you are capable.
Since I didn’t have those signals, I had to create my own.
My approach was to build things consistently and put them out into the world. Over time, that body of work became my credibility.
Every job I have gotten has followed the same pattern:
Merkle Science One conversation. No coding tests. We talked about the projects I had built in college and how I approached solving problems.
My second job (AI infra company). Again, just a couple of calls. The discussion centered around my previous work and the systems I had built.
My current projects, my work on Water, is what opened the door. The project itself did the heavy lifting.
In every case, employers evaluated me based on what I had already built, not how well I remembered algorithms.
The only consistent strategy I have followed is building things that interested me. Not all of them were complex, but they were all real.
FitMe — fitness assistant using pose detection (later published in IEEE)
VirtueX — virtual try-on system using a laptop camera
TigerDB — a simple key-value database created to understand database internals
CricLang — a toy programming language built while exploring compilers
Water - a multi-agent orchestration framework built purely out of curiosity
These are just a few of the projects I have built. I have built many more projects that are not listed here.
None of these were built for interviews. They were built because I wanted to understand how things worked.