One of my favourite quotes by Leonardo da Vinci is “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” and everyone at Scaler Academy lives by this.
My first experience of using a computer was in 8th grade when my elder brother got a laptop. For a curious boy like me, it meant a new thing to tinker with. I was intrigued by the operating system; but what interested me more was that a single incorrect command could crash the system. If it were up to my brother, I would never lay a finger on it, but Mom always made him share, despite his protests that I kept crashing his laptop. In fact I did it so many times, that my brother almost became an expert at formatting his laptop!
In grade 11, I opted for computer science only to avoid biology. And it was still just another subject for me until I started doing pretty well at it. I realised I was good at logic and problem solving, so I started taking an interest in it even more. I read about the scope and career prospects of computer science engineering. I read about many engineers and programmers. I was particularly inspired by the works of Alan Turing, Leonardo da Vinci, and Mark Zukerberg — the way they approached things, the way they built technologies… Facebook was fairly new then, and I was fascinated by it. That laid the foundation for my dream of wanting to design a system, a platform, something big — like Facebook that could handle millions of users.
Unfortunately my dream took a major setback when I fared badly in my JEE exams. Despite a year gap, I still couldn’t score better in the second attempt. So I decided to take admission in a tier 3 college, not wanting to waste any more time on preparation. But the college was a major disappointment. Not only was the curriculum outdated, but the college also didn’t permit us to do internships. This put us at a disadvantage because we lacked the applied learning and practical application experience. To add to it, only service based companies came to our college for placement. I had heard enough about these companies — low pay scale, repetitive work, no freedom or growth — that I was certain that I didn’t want to work in one.
So I started preparing for GATE and decided to forego sitting for any placement interviews through my college. But that also meant that I needed to find other avenues to get a job in a product based company.
While discussing the same with a friend, he recommended that I look up Scaler Academy. I’d heard a lot about student’s stories from Scaler, so it felt like a step in the right direction.
And sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed.
I learnt more at Scaler than what I had in 4 years of college. The Data Structures and Algorithms classes helped cement my understanding of the basics of software development and programming. The web development classes conducted by Siddharth Sir and Sandeep Sir were especially invaluable. They taught us a lot of advanced topics — debouncing, throttling, advanced CSS — that most beginners don’t know. This knowledge gave me an edge over most other candidates during interviews.
Despite this, my first few referrals ended in rejections. I underperformed in the interviews because of my nervousness and poor communication skills. Even though I knew the correct answers, I often failed to deliver the same. This added to the mounting frustration that I couldn’t shake off.
But once again, the people at Scaler proved that the support they give is inexhaustible. My Student Success Manager, Sheetal Ma’am, did way more than was expected of her as my SSM. She helped me work on my communication skills and prepare for all my non-technical rounds. She always kept me motivated and pushed me to not give up and keep performing better.
Another person who stood by me was my mentor, Ashok Kumar from Amazon. When he looked at my dejected face after a rejection, he sat me down and narrated the story of his five friends who came to Bangalore and couldn’t find jobs too. But they kept going, and finally got into good product based companies. He told me not to lose hope, and not lose faith just because my journey was different from others. It was he who encouraged me to use the projects we built at Scaler to compensate for my internship experience.
I took his advice, and built quite a few personal projects that earned me praise from my mentors and trainers. The chat app, Email, Bootcamper were some of the projects that I built and each was an invaluable experience. All this built the confidence in me that yes, I could do something, that I could answer different questions, use different approaches, and that I wasn’t at a disadvantage anymore.
The training and the unwavering support helped me bag a great job at Cuemath. But what made it momentous was that I had aced the interview. I could explain and answer every single question that was asked, without a hint of nervousness. And this was possible only because of the people at Scaler Academy!
They teach everything so thoroughly in a way that it sticks with you for life. The learnings from Scaler continue to benefit me even today — not just at my work front, but as a person too.
A big thank you to everyone at Scaler Academy who puts there all and more, in helping us become the best versions of ourselves.
Scaler definitely Works!