DEV Community: Scaler Academy Team

Experience with Scaler Academy : Review for Freshers

Scaler Academy Team — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 07:40:12 +0000

From the first image of “doubt” to now taking the mission of “GivingBack” ahead in full spirit, The journey of Scaler Kumar Saurav has been anything, but Ordinary.

Based on the journey shared with us, Read the inspiring journey of Kumar Saurav in his own words:

“Disclaimer :

To be honest, When I got to know about them through friends, my immediate reaction was “Scaler is betting on limp horses”.

Taking the responsibility to become that “bridge’ and fill the dearth of quality engineers is too humongous a task and honestly unbelievable in the first instance.

So my journey with Scaler Academy (Previously Interviewbit Academy) is not just around a dream job but so much around self-worth realisation and my ever enhancing interest towards Computers.

My first memory of computers goes back to my childhood when a new teacher from an ITI college taught us HTML. Super fascinated, I remember filling my notebooks with all possible tags I could learn through the internet. Computers instantly became my subject of interest.

But life was never easy. Coming from a lower-middle-class family in Patna, I have seen my father work really hard to provide us with a good education. He owns a departmental store and my mother is a homemaker.

Cycling 12-15 km every single day to attend my IIT Jee coaching in the school uniform, and then rush directly to the school, to save every penny on commute.

I wanted to study in a college in Dehradun, but the fees were such that I could complete my engineering four times in that structure! I decided to join Burdhwan University which had lower fees.

That being said, I have always been positive about life.

Talking about college, there was no coding culture in our college nor any alumni with great past records. Few of our seniors introduced us to competitive programming and we all decided to create a coding club. We used to organise small development contests for juniors, some brought OS contributors from their networks, built small projects, college websites etc.

I found that there is a lot of material available in the market around HLD, LLD, Data Structures, but 90% of it is quite vague. I had to research a lot to find the CRUX and in all this complication, it was easy to lose motivation.

So for somebody like me, Scaler Academy came as a blessing in disguise.

"They were willing to take a risk on me in a way that I hadn't felt in a long time”.

The entire structure was promising and reliable that I immediately decided to apply for the first batch. When I informed my father, even he was quite relieved that I had to pay only once I got a job. Till date, he is super grateful to Scaler.

One of my eureka moments was during a System design class by Anshuman Sir, where he taught us how to build Intuition to prove a solution correct. This is a trait missing even in top coders. Problems like finding the bicycle or Sword passing taught us how to build a program from scratch. This has honestly been such a gamechanger on how I approach a problem even if I don't know all the data structures.

When I had to join a service-based company I got through campus, I immediately reached out to Anshuman sir and his guidance that knowing your capability, we do not recommend that. He immediately initiated my referrals the next day.

One of the opportunities provided to me was with Lido Learning, one of the top ed-tech startups in the country. I get to learn and experiment with so much every day. You realise that salary is one part of the job, but what keeps you going is the responsibility and learning.

Even when they fulfil their promise of referrals, they are available to provide you with the best guidance on how to be the best at your workplace too.

Talking about my personal favourite part of Scaler, it was Celeb talks and networking. I have not missed a single celebrity talk to date. Learning the lifestyle habits of highly effective people goes a long way. I have recently developed habits of reading books through them, (Zero to One being my favourite). Also, I have made so many new friends. One common quality in all these highly talented achievers is the belief and courage to Push hard and keep trying. They are smart and progress-driven, which we usually miss during college.

I visited my college and so many of my juniors asked about my review. There are around 15-20 people who are a part of Scaler now and I feel proud to have started this chain of “#Givingback” to the community. “Clearing the scaler entrance feels more like a goal”
All top coders from my college are part of Scaler academy now.

For someone like me, Scaler Academy has been an absolutely worthy Investment. I credit them for helping me in my Self-worth realization, developing knowledge and giving me some lifelong friends during the journey.

I am proud in every sense to be associated with Scaler Academy!”

Scaler Academy Review: How Scaler Academy Helped me grab my Dream Job At Google!

Scaler Academy Team — Sun, 17 May 2020 09:06:35 +0000

Disclaimer:
Despite being a 6 star coder on codechef, a candidate master on codeforces, and an ICPC regionalist, my story is as imperfect as it can get!
I had no internship in college. I faced rejections in Microsoft, Codenation, Directi. In Fact I even considered CAT as an option. So trust me, it’s not clarity but the Not-giving-up attitude and passion that paves the way to big things in life.Clarity isn’t Everything, Trust me, I am Googler!

We are proud to share the journey of our Scaler Swapnil Mahajan, who is a perfect example of Hard work meets Not-giving up attitude.
Read his complete journey from scratch, his motivation behind Not-giving up attitude and how Scaler Academy helped grab his dream job at Google:

Background:

I am Swapnil Mahajan, a 2020 grad from a middle-class family in Kanpur. Engineering was always on my cards, not because I loved computers, but because I loved Maths and Physics.
So when given the option between chemical branch in BITS Goa and CSE in HBTI , I decided to go for CSE.

My journey in coding is credited to my brother, college seniors and competitive friends, who introduced me to codechef early in college.
You know how one achievement of someone, you look up to, gives you your personal goal, a 6 star codechef rated college senior was that inspiration. I decided that if he could do that, I can too.

I joined a course for DSA offered by NPTEL and with a lot of practice in my second and third sem,I became the first student in my batch to reach 4* rating in the second year. But not everything was a cakewalk.

The real eye-opener was during an off campus coding test for internship in Flock, a directi subsidiary, when 2 questions were asked from Dynamic programming(DP) and I had very little clue. Since my college did not provide any internships, off-campus applications was a struggle.
At this point, I decided to even join a coaching for CAT preparation. I used to prepare for CAT entrance in coaching and college free time, while at home, all my time was for competitive programming. I’d agree I was not clear, but I promised myself not to compromise on learning coding.

I was just enjoying the process of coding. There is no other way to put it.

But then came a phase when I confronted a series of rejections and failures. I applied for a Microsoft internship, got rejected because of problems on the binary tree and linked list. Applied for Codechef internship, but screwed in the project round, where I could not implement REST API properly.

I came across a news that one of the college seniors was referred to UBER through IB based on CodersBit, that spread like wildfire. I was very impressed and started solving puzzles on IB . When I got to know about Scaler Academy, I immediately decided to apply for the First batch in April 2019.

I was already coding for sometime, but honestly, it was easy to lose motivation without a proper structure. Here’s where Scaler Academy pitched in. I really enjoyed the entire structure where in 45-50 days, you were trained well for Data structures and algorithms for your interviews. The mentor sessions played a very crucial role in my success today. Having an expert to personally monitor your growth and guide you is priceless for somebody who is striving to learn.

I clearly remember Abhimanyu sir’s words ” Be Audacious, Swapnil. Think of a bigger picture” when I refused to join a hackathon event due to campus placements. His guidance played a vital role in my project.

Now came the most decisive time, I had to choose between CAT and Engineering as a career. Note that by now, I had an offer from OYO through on-campus placements, had become a candidate master on codeforces, 6* coder on codechef, been selected for ACM ICPC regionals, scored an International rank of 51 in Google Kickstart, cleared CCDSAP advanced level, BUT I had a 99.2 percentile in CAT. It was my moment of truth. I knew I have enjoyed coding and decided to go for it.

I got my first referral through Scaler Academy in GOOGLE. Utkarsh Sir and my mentor Kishan Sir guided me all through this while. I cleared all my rounds and I will be a Googler Soon.

Scaler Academy is an amazing platform for those who really want to learn and upgrade their skills. Don’t believe those who say that only DSA will sail you through.System design, projects, HLD,LLD, every topic is important.

One word of advice from my journey would be - Don’t give up. I had my fair share of rejections.
My mother is a literature teacher and this Not-giving-up attitude comes from her. So as a kid, whenever I left like giving up, she always used to make me repeat the following lines from a famous poem:

“Woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have Promises to keep
And Miles to go before I sleep”

I am a Proud Scaler!