Kashish Shah, MSDS from USC, is no ordinary woman or an ordinary black cat. She is a real badass.

Kashish started her US journey back in 2022. It is never easy, going in a far distant land and making a life for yourself there. However, she endured and kept going anyway. Her healthy social support around her played a big part. At the start itself she got an impressive on-campus job which eventually paved her way to a summer internship, in such a terrible job market. And she got the internship confirmation at the very last day before leaving for India for early summer! Can you believe it??

After a successful stint there, she bid goodbye to the firm. But she had made good, solid connections for life. That is what she does, she impacts the people around her in an amazing way. If you meet her once, I am sure you will never forget about this person. You will be like "Ohh yeah I remember Kashish, she is such a fun person!".

Anyway, cutting to May 2024. She graduated. She had an amazing time with her family in the USA but that was like the calm before the storm. She has graduated, but is there a proper job in her hand? no (Sure there is volunteering and stuff). She is confused as to what do, she applies to 10+ jobs in a day, She cold mails CTOs, Founders, everyone in her network, however one thing she doesnt do is give up. She persevered. May ended, So did June, July. August brought itself with a lot of interviews/assignments - at startups that she had cold mailed. August slipped away into a moment in time. She gave her best everywhere and landed at a shady-ish startup.

It was a job, a job on paper with money and all involved but then what came was borderline exploitation. She had no happiness or satisfaction of the "first job", rather it was torturing. She eventually took the hard call of quitting it. That was probably one of the best decisions she's ever made. It's not easy to be in her place. Getting a job in such a terrible job market and finding out its an exploitative shit show? Not easy. But she was not made to do easy things.

Come October, just like plenty other OAs she had an Amazon one. It was 3 hours?? She did it, she did it well. Then she eventually heard back for interviews. From that day onwards she became laser-focussed and every waking hour she was practically solving or at least thinking about a Leetcode problem. Its again not easy to be her - cause her interviews are not confirmed yet - many of us wouldve given up at this point, but she doesn't. She makes a schedule, sticks to it, puts in 12 hours a day prepping for it. All this while battling with things at her home. I constantly wonder, how does she do it?

But that is just the spirit of Kashish Shah, incoming SDE1 at amazon.