Title: I spent most of my undergraduate degree (in applied math&#x2F;physics) with my head down powering through courses and working a job in the evenings to pay for my education. Over that time, I met a bunch of talented people, many of whom I keep in touch with, but none of whom I could ever see myself working with. Moreover, they&#x27;re also all engineers as well with skillsets that more or less resemble my own.<p>I&#x27;m at a FAANG company at the moment and I&#x27;m finding it quite unfulfilling (nothing new here), and for the last several months I&#x27;ve been hacking away on my own projects just to keep honing my skills and to try to figure out what&#x27;s possible in terms of turning technical know-how into commercial products.<p>The last one I built felt like a relatively solid idea but I quickly realized (a) how much of the difficulty in launching the product depended on having a good network and knowing how to utilize it, and (b) how much I felt poorly equipped to do (a). Moreover, I&#x27;m also understanding how deeply reliant tech products are on domain knowledge in the industry they&#x27;re attempting to push into.<p>The conclusion here seems to be that I&#x27;d be far more effective at reaching my goals working in partnership with someone who checks the above boxes (which, in hindsight, was incredibly obvious). The problem I&#x27;m having now, though, is that none of my friends are similarly motivated to me, and networking feels nigh-impossible with the COVID-19 situation.<p>Does anyone here have tips on how they meet people and feel out whether there&#x27;s any professional compatibility – especially in the current situation? While I&#x27;m not opposed to just riding this out and trying to network the traditional way when the world reopens, it seems like there has to be a more effective way.
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