Informatics · Career · AI Survival

⏱ 00:00 - 02:00 USK · 2026

Universitas Syiah Kuala — Keynote Presentation

Beyond the Syllabus:
Surviving College, The Post-Grad Cliff & Thriving in the AI Era

A personal retrospective on navigating college from Banda Aceh, surviving the harsh jump to Jakarta's tech industry, and how informatics students build leverage with AI.

30-Minute Talk Allocation

00-07m: Surviving USK & Graduation 07-12m: The Jakarta Post-Grad Cliff 12-15m: Proof of Work: SendTheSong 15-21m: My AI Workflow (omp & CLI) 21-30m: Student Survival & Q&A

Muhammad Razan Fawwaz

Backend Engineer @ SG-EDTS

Informatics USK Alum · Ex-GDSC Lead

Creator of SendTheSong.xyz (80M+ views)

GDG Community

linkedin.com/in/razanfawwaz

Slide 1 Notes (Target: 00:00 - 02:00):

• Greet faculty and students warmly. Acknowledge coming home to USK.
• Set the expectation: Today is an honest story of how a student from Banda Aceh survived graduation, navigated fear, and built national engineering leverage.

01 · Surviving College

⏱ 02:00 - 03:15 The Underdog Reality

Starting in Aceh: The Underdog Mindset

Sitting in FMIPA classrooms in 2020 asking the quiet question every regional student wonders.

The Regional Doubt

• "We are in Banda Aceh, 2,000 km away from the Jakarta tech ecosystem."
• "Top tech companies only recruit from Java's premier universities."
• "Our curriculum feels behind the tools being discussed on Twitter/X."
• "Is getting a passing grade here enough to survive out there?"

The Realization That Saved Me

• The Internet is Flat: GitHub, RFC documentation, and Go compilers don't know your zip code.
• Pedigree vs. Proof of Work: A deployed project with live users beats a famous university name on a blank CV.
• Being the Underdog is Fuel: When nobody expects you to win, you have zero ego and infinite room to experiment.

"You are not at a disadvantage because you study in Darussalam. You are only at a disadvantage if you let the classroom walls define your ceiling."

Slide 2 Notes (Target: 02:00 - 03:15):

• Connect with the audience's real insecurities. Acknowledge that studying outside Jakarta feels isolating.
• Reframe regional background as a competitive advantage of hunger and humility.

01 · Surviving College

⏱ 03:15 - 04:30 Turning Points

The 3 Decisions That Defined My College Trajectory

Three choices outside the standard curriculum that completely altered my post-grad options.

Decision 01 · Community

Leading GDSC USK

Forced me out of my shell. Taught me developer advocacy, organizing workshops, and building relationships with Google Developer Experts across Southeast Asia.

Decision 02 · Cloud Specialization

Bangkit Academy

Dove deep into Cloud Computing. Earned the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE) certification. Shifted my mental model from basic web scripts to distributed systems.

Decision 03 · Public Proof

Writing on Medium

Wrote tutorials explaining what I learned (building Discord bots with PaLM/Gemini APIs, backend architectures). My articles generated more inbound inquiries than my resume.

"Your grades qualify you to graduate. Your public proof of work qualifies you to be hired."

Slide 3 Notes (Target: 03:15 - 04:30):

• Highlight Bangkit and GDSC: programs available to every student in this room right now.
• Writing on Medium was my highest-ROI student habit. Explain complex things simply.

01 · Surviving College

⏱ 04:30 - 05:45 Graduation Tactics

How I Actually Survived College & Graduated

Balancing thesis, burnout, extracurriculars, and the panic of an approaching graduation date.

The Traps That Delay Students

• Perfectionist Paralysis: Trying to make a thesis a Nobel Prize discovery instead of a finished, defended document.
• Tutorial Purgatory: Watching 40-hour Udemy courses without ever writing and deploying an independent project.
• Isolation: Coding in secret, never asking lecturers for feedback, and struggling through blockers alone.

My Graduation Survival Playbook

• Dual-Purpose Every Assignment: Make every course project a portfolio piece or open-source repo, not a throwaway homework folder.
• Iterative Thesis Execution: Treat your final thesis like an agile sprint: a working MVP chapter beats a blank 'perfect' draft.
• Consistency Over Sprints: Two hours of deliberate coding every single night beats 24-hour cramming before exam deadlines.

"A finished thesis is better than a perfect thesis. Finish the degree, clear the mental runway, and step into the real arena."

Slide 4 Notes (Target: 04:30 - 05:45):

• Address final-year students in the room who feel stuck on their skripsi / thesis.
• Don't let academic perfectionism delay your entry into the job market. Ship it.

01 · Surviving College

⏱ 05:45 - 07:00 Mindset Shift

The Syllabus Trap: Why Academic Comfort Kills Growth

University curricula are designed to teach foundations, not keep up with weekly industry tooling.

What the Syllabus Gives You

• Foundational Mental Models: Discrete math, relational algebra, memory architectures, algorithm complexity.
• Proof of Stamina: Proving you can navigate bureaucratic deadlines, academic rigors, and complex exams.
• Baseline Literacy: Understanding how computers communicate, store bits, and execute instructions.

What You MUST Build Outside It

• Modern Production Tooling: Go, gRPC, Docker, Cloudflare edge caching, CI/CD pipelines, agentic terminal tools.
• Real Operational Empathy: Diagnosing live production crashes, handling connection starvation, managing cloud bills.
• Product Taste & Human Curiosity: Understanding why people actually open an app, click buttons, and share software.

"The syllabus is your floor, never your ceiling. The degree gets your resume scanned; what you build outside it gets you hired."

Slide 5 Notes (Target: 05:45 - 07:00):

• Respect the lecturers: Curricula aren't meant to change every 3 months with trendy JavaScript frameworks.
• The responsibility to bridge the syllabus with production reality is 100% on the student.

02 · The Post-Grad Cliff

⏱ 07:00 - 08:15 Post-Grad Reality

The Post-Grad Cliff: The Day After the Ceremony

The celebrations end, the robe is returned, and you face total professional silence.

The Sudden Silence

No Structure Left

For 16 years, school told you what to do every morning. Suddenly, there are no homework deadlines, no semester calendars, and no roadmap.

The Job Market Freeze

Hiring Winter

Sending 50 resumes into automated applicant tracking systems (ATS) and getting 48 automated rejections and 2 ghosted threads.

The Fork in the Road

Retreat vs. Leap

You can either retreat into excuses ("the job market is impossible"), or take a one-way ticket to Jakarta and force yourself to survive.

"Comfort is the greatest enemy of a fresh graduate. Growth only starts when you step into an environment where you are the least knowledgeable person in the room."

Slide 6 Notes (Target: 07:00 - 08:15):

• Describe the emotional reality of graduating. It is disorienting for everyone.
• Talk about deciding to pack bags and move to Jakarta to take on enterprise engineering.

02 · The Post-Grad Cliff

⏱ 08:15 - 09:45 Mindset & Resilience

Surviving Imposter Syndrome: Aceh to Jakarta

Sitting in your first corporate engineering sprint surrounded by graduates from elite campuses.

What The Imposter Voice Whispers

• "They speak faster tech jargon than you."
• "They know frameworks you've only read about on Hacker News."
• "One bug and they will realize you don't belong here."
• "You're just a kid from Aceh who got lucky."

The Antidote: How to Actually Survive

• Ask Questions Without Shame: Senior engineers respect a junior who says "I don't know, explain it to me" 100x more than one who pretends and breaks prod.
• Become the Master of Logs: When something breaks, be the one who digs through the traces and finds the exact line number.
• Consistency Beats Pedigree: Show up early, write clean documentation, verify edge cases, and deliver reliably.

"Nobody knows everything in a modern distributed codebase. Seniority is not knowing all answers; it's knowing how to remain calm and debug systematically."

Slide 7 Notes (Target: 08:15 - 09:45):

• Give students reassurance: Every single junior engineer goes through imposter syndrome.
• Being humble, curious, and relentless in debugging will outcompete arrogance every time.

02 · The Post-Grad Cliff

⏱ 09:45 - 11:00 Enterprise Survival

Surviving as a Junior Backend Engineer at SG-EDTS

How to transition from writing hobby code to maintaining production enterprise systems.

Rule 01 · Code

Read Before Typing

Spend 80% of your time reading existing architecture and tests. Follow the codebase's existing conventions rather than forcing your own.

Rule 02 · Safety

Write Failing Tests

Never fix a production bug without first writing a unit test that fails. Once your code passes that test, you've prevented future regressions.

Rule 03 · Data

Respect the DB

Code is easily rolled back; corrupt database state is a nightmare. Always verify migrations, query execution plans, and transaction boundaries.

Rule 04 · Ownership

Own Your Incidents

When your code breaks staging or production, don't hide. Communicate clearly in Slack, post logs, propose the rollback, and publish a post-mortem.

"Good engineers write code that works. Great engineers design systems that fail gracefully and make debugging obvious."

Slide 8 Notes (Target: 09:45 - 11:00):

• Give concrete day-to-day advice on working with Go, gRPC, and PostgreSQL at SG-EDTS.
• Emphasize ownership: taking responsibility builds trust faster than anything else.

02 · The Post-Grad Cliff

⏱ 11:00 - 12:15 Mentorship

The Mentorship Cheat-Code: Never Struggle Alone

How building in public attracted senior mentors who saved me from fatal engineering traps.

Architecture Guidance

Mas Rubi

Creator of lokal.so & akselerasi.ai

Taught me how to look at systems from 30,000 feet. Showed me how to untangle messy backend bottlenecks and design clean, maintainable boundaries.

Product & Mindset

Mas Gilang Januar

Owner, Solopreneur Club

Kept me grounded during overwhelming moments. Taught me product intuition, user empathy, and how to stay calm when projects explode in traffic.

Deep Production Chops

Mas Hanif Azhary

Former CTO, Bersinar

Showed me the dark arts of Linux kernel optimization, connection pooling triage, and how to keep servers standing when millions of requests surge in.

How to Get Mentors: Senior engineers don't mentor people who ask "Can you be my mentor?". They mentor juniors who share clear code, show deep research, reproduce exact logs, and show up consistently.

Slide 9 Notes (Target: 11:00 - 12:15):

• Give sincere credit to Rubi, Gilang, and Hanif.
• Teach students how to reach out to senior engineers: with clear context and reproducible questions, never vague demands.

03 · Proof of Work

⏱ 12:15 - 13:45 Case Study

Proof of Work: Building SendTheSong from My Bedroom

A weekend side project that proved geographic location is completely irrelevant in modern software.

80.0M+

Pageviews in 72 Hours

An 808% traffic spike over a single viral weekend.

6.0M+

Unique Visitors

Concurrent users searching their names across multiple countries.

48 Hours

Initial MVP Build Time

Simple Go REST backend + Next.js web interface. Zero ad spend.

The Real Lesson: SendTheSong wasn't built by a venture-backed team in Silicon Valley. It was built by a recent graduate from Universitas Syiah Kuala using lean tools and basic human psychology. The internet gave it global distribution in 72 hours.

Slide 10 Notes (Target: 12:15 - 13:45):

• Use SendTheSong not as an ego trip, but as living proof that a student sitting in Banda Aceh can touch millions of people worldwide.
• No funding, no PR agency, no giant team. Just a laptop, lean code, and an authentic human idea.

03 · Proof of Work

⏱ 13:45 - 15:00 Resilience Under Fire

What 80 Million Hits Taught Me About Grit

When servers melt at 3:00 AM, engineering stops being theoretical and becomes emotional stamina.

When Everything Collapses At Once

• Database connection pools choked by millions of unindexed searches.
• Origin CPU locked at 100%; reverse proxies returning 502 Bad Gateway.
• External song APIs returning 429 Too Many Requests rate-limit blocks.
• Thousands of users tweeting that your site is dead while traffic keeps doubling.

The Engineering Grit Mindset

• Don't Panic, Isolate: Triage one bottleneck at a time: add PgBouncer, index search columns, configure Cloudflare edge CDN rules.
• Cache Everything: Move 92% of traffic off origin servers onto edge caches in 10 minutes.
• Resilience is Learned: True confidence as an engineer comes from surviving systems that break and fixing them live.

"Theory says 'normalize your database'. Production at 80M hits says 'cache at the edge, index your filters, and stay calm while the world watches'."

Slide 11 Notes (Target: 13:45 - 15:00):

• Share the raw feeling of panic when your server crashes in front of millions of people.
• Staying calm, reading logs, and systematically applying fixes is the hallmark of real maturity.

04 · The AI Era

⏱ 15:00 - 16:30 The Great Equalizer

The AI Era: The Greatest Equalizer for Students

Why graduating right now gives you more individual leverage than any generation before you.

The Old Reality (When I Started)

• Building a backend service required writing 2,000 lines of repetitive boilerplate by hand.
• Debugging distributed concurrency deadlocks took 3 days of manual print statements.
• Deploying and orchestrating full-stack apps required a team of 4-5 specialized engineers.
• Learning new tech required reading 500-page textbooks without interactive feedback.

Your Superpower Today

• Instant Boilerplate: Schemas, migrations, and gRPC endpoints generated in seconds.
• 10x Solo Leverage: 1 junior with strong CS fundamentals + terminal AI agents can build and operate what previously required a startup team.
• On-Demand Senior Mentor: AI explains complex concurrency models, profiles memory heaps, and critiques your SQL queries 24/7.

"AI doesn't lower the ceiling of engineering; it dramatically raises the floor for anyone willing to learn how to direct it."

Slide 12 Notes (Target: 15:00 - 16:30):

• Shift the tone to optimism: this is the most exciting time in history to graduate.
• A student in Aceh now has identical computing and reasoning tools to an engineer at Google.

04 · The AI Era

⏱ 16:30 - 18:00 Terminal Agent Stack

My Daily AI Tool Stack: 3 Core Weapons

Moving past web chatboxes: How I build, debug, and ship production backend systems directly inside the terminal.

01 · Fast Terminal Runtime

Oh My Pi (omp)

Terminal-native agent runtime. Surgical AST-level file patches, persistent multi-step session memory, and instantaneous tool execution directly in the shell without UI bloat.

02 · CLI Task Orchestration

CommandCode

Autonomous CLI dev harness. Executes shell tasks, drives git workflows, runs local compilers, lints, and executes test suites in uninterrupted background loops.

03 · High-Context Synthesis

Gemini

Deep architectural reasoning and schema generation. Ingests full repositories, database schemas, RFC specs, and multi-gigabyte production incident logs.

"Professional software engineering with AI doesn't happen in browser chat windows. It happens in the terminal, connected to git, compilers, and test suites."

Slide 13 Notes (Target: 16:30 - 18:00):

• Introduce the exact 3 tools you use daily as a professional backend engineer: Oh My Pi, CommandCode, and Gemini.
• Emphasize terminal integration: no clicking buttons, no copy-pasting back and forth.

04 · The AI Era

⏱ 18:00 - 19:30 Terminal Dev Harness

Terminal Execution: Oh My Pi & CommandCode

Speed, surgical file edits, and autonomous shell orchestration without leaving your terminal environment.

Oh My Pi (omp) · Surgical Runtime

• AST-Level Precision: Edits only exact targeted tokens and functions; zero accidental whole-file overwrites.
• Instant Terminal Speed: Launches in milliseconds, executes built-in tools (grep, glob, bash, read), and maintains persistent context.
• No UI Friction: Operates directly in your working directory where your compiler and debugger live.

CommandCode · CLI Orchestration

• Autonomous Shell Execution: Runs go test, compiles binaries, checks linter errors, and diagnoses output.
• Git Tree Operations: Manages branch creation, stage inspection, and clean atomic commits automatically.
• Background Agent Loops: Executes multi-step development pipelines while you focus on architecture.

"When your AI agent can run the compiler and test suite directly in your terminal, the iteration loop drops from minutes to seconds."

Slide 14 Notes (Target: 18:00 - 19:30):

• Explain the difference between whole-file replacement (which causes bugs) and AST surgical editing (Oh My Pi).
• CommandCode gives the AI hands to run commands, test scripts, and verify work in real time.

04 · The AI Era

⏱ 19:30 - 21:00 Production Workflow

The Production Pipeline: From Spec to Deployment

How modern tools connect into a seamless, deterministic production development loop.

Step 01 · Synthesis

Spec & Schema

Gemini Reasoning
Define gRPC protobuf schemas, relational database migrations, and edge-case contracts with strict JSON outputs.

Step 02 · Terminal

Agent Execution

Oh My Pi + CommandCode
Terminal-native agents apply surgical AST patches and drive shell build, lint, and test commands in background loops.

Step 03 · Shipping

Deterministic Gate

Go Compiler & CI/CD
Strict typed compilation, race detector (go test -race), automated staging deployment, and production verification.

PIPELINE: 1. Architecture & Spec (Gemini) → 2. Terminal AST Edits (Oh My Pi) → 3. Shell Task Execution (CommandCode) → 4. Verification (Go Compiler & Tests)

Slide 15 Notes (Target: 19:30 - 21:00):

• Notice the boundary: AI is used for exploration and implementation, but the gate to production is 100% deterministic (Go compiler and automated tests).
• Never deploy code without passing deterministic verification.

05 · Student Survival Guide

⏱ 21:00 - 22:30 The Stakes

Why Students Must Adapt: The Stakes

AI is an asymmetric leverage multiplier: It supercharges foundational builders and eliminates boilerplate typists.

The Market Reality

Syntax Value: Zero

Memorizing API syntax and writing repetitive CRUD endpoints is now table stakes. Any modern LLM generates standard controllers in 2 seconds.

Asymmetric Power

10x Solo Leverage

One student with rock-solid CS fundamentals + terminal AI agents can build, test, and ship products that used to demand a 5-person team.

The New Bar

Junior Bar Elevated

Companies no longer hire juniors to "learn syntax on the job". You are expected to reason about architecture, latency, and data integrity from day one.

"The gap between passive students who just pass exams and proactive builders who leverage AI will be the widest divide in tech history."

Slide 16 Notes (Target: 21:00 - 22:30):

• Frame this not as a threat, but as the biggest opportunity USK students have ever had.
• You don't need a massive team or VC funding to build products that reach millions of users.

05 · Student Survival Guide

⏱ 22:30 - 24:00 Survival Blueprint

The Student Survival Blueprint: 4 Non-Negotiables

How to guarantee you never get replaced by AI or by another developer in the job market.

01 · Never Commit Unexamined Code

If you cannot explain every goroutine lifecycle, memory allocation, and SQL query execution plan line-by-line, do not commit it. Auditing > Generating.

02 · Fundamentals are Your Shield

AI frequently hallucinates subtle concurrency race conditions and security holes. OS, networking, and database internals are your ultimate verification filter.

03 · Spec-Driven Prompting

Formulate strict interface schemas, error contracts, boundary conditions, and test assertions before asking AI to implement.

04 · Ship to Real Humans

A deployed side project with 50 real active users teaches you edge caching, connection pooling, and rate limiting that exams never can.

"AI will not replace you. An engineer who leverages terminal agents, foundational CS, and deep verification will replace you."

Slide 17 Notes (Target: 22:30 - 24:00):

• Give students the 4 non-negotiables.
• Treat yourself as the Tech Lead and Code Reviewer of your AI agents.

05 · Student Survival Guide

⏱ 24:00 - 25:30 Career Leverage

Building Demonstrable Leverage Before Graduation

How to graduate with proof of work that makes technical recruiters reach out to you directly.

01 · Technical Writing

Medium & Articles

Write breakdowns of what you build. Explain concurrency, database optimizations, and API integrations. Clear technical writing proves you understand complex systems.

02 · Public Repositories

Curated GitHub Profile

Delete empty homework forks. Pin 2 or 3 polished projects with comprehensive READMEs, architectural diagrams, Dockerfiles, and passing test suites.

03 · Professional Footprint

LinkedIn & X Network

Connect with engineers working at companies you admire. Share what you learned this week. Thoughtful comments on technical posts build relationships naturally.

"Recruiters don't hire promises. They hire evidence. Your public commits and technical tutorials are undeniable evidence."

Slide 18 Notes (Target: 24:00 - 25:30):

• Demystify personal branding: it's not self-promotion; it's simply documenting your learning journey publicly.
• A polished GitHub repo with tests stands out from 95% of generic student applicants.

05 · Student Survival Guide

⏱ 25:30 - 27:00 Resilience & Rejection

Handling Failure, Rejection & The Job Hunt

Rejection is not a reflection of your potential; it is simply part of the feedback loop.

What Rejection Feels Like

• Sending 30 applications and getting zero replies.
• Failing a live coding interview and feeling like you don't know computer science.
• Watching peers announce job offers while you are still searching.
• Wanting to give up and blame the university or the market.

How to Turn Rejection into Growth

• Every Interview is Free Data: Note down every question you couldn't answer and master the concept that very evening.
• Iterate on Your Proof of Work: If you aren't getting interviews, improve your GitHub projects and write a technical case study.
• It Only Takes One 'Yes': You don't need 50 offers. You only need one team that recognizes your hunger, grit, and fundamentals.

"Engineering is debugging. The job hunt is just debugging your career: inspect the errors, adjust the implementation, and run it again."

Slide 19 Notes (Target: 25:30 - 27:00):

• Be vulnerable about rejection: share that you faced rejections before landing your role.
• Remind them that resilience is the #1 predictor of long-term software career success.

05 · Student Survival Guide

⏱ 27:00 - 28:00 Actionable Playbook

4 Actionable Rules for USK Students This Weekend

Four practical steps you can start tonight to change your professional trajectory.

01 · Ship Outside the Classroom

Side Projects > Pure Grades

Assignments are baseline. Build tools that solve real problems (a campus tool, a bot, a viral experiment). Real users teach you what exams never can.

02 · Build in Public & Document

Technical Writing is Leverage

Write tutorials on Medium. Share architecture post-mortems on LinkedIn and X. Your articles and GitHub commits will land you more interviews than a polished resume.

03 · Use AI as a 10x Tutor, Not a Crutch

Active Interrogation

Don't ask AI to write the assignment for you. Ask it: "Explain the concurrency model of Go vs Java", "Why is this query doing a full table scan?", "Critique my database schema."

04 · Engage with Developer Communities

GDG, AWS UG, Open Source

Join developer circles. Network across universities and cities. Mentors like Mas Rubi, Gilang, and Hanif exist because of open community spaces.

Slide 20 Notes (Target: 27:00 - 28:00):

• Challenge every student in the room to publish their first technical breakdown on Medium or LinkedIn this weekend.
• Proof of work is your ultimate credential.

06 · Conclusion

⏱ 28:00 - 29:00 Mindset Shift

The Mindset Shift: From Aceh to the World

Geography is no longer a constraint. Your terminal has the exact same power as Silicon Valley.

The Passive Consumer Mindset

"I am far from the tech hubs..."

• Waiting for course syllabi to teach modern industry tools.
• Treating assignments as obligations to complete for a grade.
• Believing major scale is only reserved for developers in Jakarta or California.

The Autonomous Builder Mindset

"My terminal has global reach."

• With an internet connection, terminal AI agents, and CS fundamentals, you have identical leverage.
• SendTheSong proved that 80 million users do not care where your server was launched.
• Curiosity, consistency, and verifiable proof of work open doors everywhere on Earth.

"You are not limited by your geography. You are only limited by your willingness to build, fail, and ship in public."

Slide 21 Notes (Target: 28:00 - 29:00):

• Speak directly from the heart to fellow USK students.
• SendTheSong proved that location is an excuse. You can build globally from Darussalam.

06 · Conclusion

⏱ 29:00 - 30:00 Q&A · Connect

Final Thoughts · 30 Mins Keynote Complete

"The tools will change every six months.
Your curiosity and ability to solve problems are permanent."

Thank you, Universitas Syiah Kuala! Let's build things that matter.

LinkedIn Profile

Muhammad Razan Fawwaz

Backend Engineer @ SG-EDTS

linkedin.com/in/razanfawwaz

Technical Writing

razanfawwaz.medium.com

Backend engineering, Bangkit journey, Cloud, and building Discord bots with PaLM & Gemini.

Web & Community

razanfawwaz.dev · sendthesong.xyz

USK Alum · GDG Lead

Slide 22 Notes (Target: 29:00 - 30:00 / 30 Mins Total):

• Thank the dean, lecturers, student organizers, and attendees.
• Direct them to connect on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/razanfawwaz) and read write-ups on Medium.
• Open the remaining 2-3 minutes for Q&A questions from the floor.