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Comment by amandavinci | Hacker News Reader

Though I have an interest in games and AI / ML, I would still consider being a good software engineer first. I'm aiming for a strong foundation and expertise in one field: AI or anything related. Being a fresher, I believe I won't get to work straight at these.

And by "at par", I meant the same opportunities that a top school student gets.

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My opinionated version is that you should bail out on games and focus on AI/ML, then try to get into the best grad school you can and get really good at difficult things that other people can't do (even better, things that they can't do and don't want to do). Games fail that test because too many people want to work on them.

Becoming a good software engineer seems to come from working with people with good taste (on real projects). In my experience I haven't met anyone who learned to be a good SE from university (it may be possible, but I doubt it would happen at a mediocre university).

Indeed. After talking to other people and thinking hard about my options, I have come to same conclusion. But finding good people to work with or under seems really hard. I really don't know how to find good mentors other than contributing to open source and hoping someone senior likes my contributions.

OK, so I'm writing in a 'dead thread' (likely) but for what it's worth: I think your last sentence is the right idea; do the work then find a mentor in a related area as a consequence of that. I really don't like being approached by people who haven't put in any effort yet want to network for the sake of networking.

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