Scaler Academy Review - Anuj Bhatnagar talks about how he got into software development

Anuj Bhatnagar, a software engineer at Samsung in Noida, starts this conversation with us nostalgically talking about his college days- "The first year of college is all about fun, making new friends, participating in many new events and doing a lot of things. Nobody realises how quickly the year comes to an end, and neither did I." He continues, "Most of the subjects were common for all the branches in the first year, and I didn't realise that there would be much difference between the subjects taught to me and other students in the future. In the second year, we were introduced to our core subjects. I tried finding some interest in Electronics, but, unfortunately, nothing was interesting enough for me to invest my time. I then started talking to my seniors about the different fields where I can pursue my career, and what if I don't want to continue in the Electronics domain. From them, I got to know about the roles as a Software Engineer, Product Analyst, Data Scientist and few more. I then realised that I wanted to pursue any of these fields I need to work on my coding and programming skills."

A vast majority of young engineers start their careers by making a similar error of judgment. They end up picking up fields of study they may not like once they get a better understanding of what the domain offers in terms of career prospects. While not a lot can be done to change streams mid-degree, thanks to the power of the internet, young engineers today have the option to study online and carve their career paths. Several online learning platforms exist today, and quite a few of them offer specialised skill training to engineers looking to move towards software development and allied fields. One such platform is Scaler Academy. Started last year in April, Scaler Academy is an immersive accelerator course on coding and computer science programs.

Anuj Bhatnagar is part of Scaler Academy's June 2019 batch. He has been associated with them for almost eleven months and has secured an offer from Samsung. He has agreed to share his review of Scaler Academy with us. In his own words -

"At the end of my third year, I was anxious about my placement. Even after solving many questions online from different topics, I was not confident enough, because I was never sure if I had completed that topic entirely or was there something more to learn. I heard about Scaler Academy (previously called InterviewBit Academy) from my friends. They told me that they teach all the relevant topics from basic to advanced levels and also help students apply to the right product based company. I gave their entrance test several times and finally joined the June 2019 batch.

The first week is the introduction week where we were told about the flow of the course. The kind of salaries we can expect post the course are also discussed. My estimate was above my expectations, and I was happy with it. They also explain in detail the payment plan they offer for course fees which is also very convenient. You only pay after you get a good offer from a company and it can be paid in instalments.

The classes of the academy started from covering the essential topics like arrays, strings, and went on to advance topics over the next six months. The live sessions are scheduled in a way that they don't clash with college classes or internship timings. They are mostly at night between 9 and 11 p.m. Classes are very helpful and the teachers teaching the concepts are quite good. Most of them are people who have worked at companies like Amazon, Directi, Google, Facebook and other such big names before they started teaching the engineers at Scaler.

Every class took me one step further into programming. After almost every class, we were given some time to solve questions after which we had TA sessions where we can clear all the doubts regarding the problems. We were also assigned Mentors, who are working professionals in big product-based companies, with whom you can schedule sessions and directly interact. You ask them for guidance in almost any field, and they also take regular mock interviews which helped me build my confidence.

I would also like to mention that while I got a campus offer but the primary reason I got this offer was Scaler Academy. Their course made me capable enough to crack the online round of most of the companies, even before Samsung I cleared the online round of two more companies but unfortunately did not get the offer.

For me learning from such competent professionals, not only the teachers, TA's, Mentors and the entire team who put so much effort into getting us an offer from good companies was utterly worth it. I would highly recommend all the students irrespective of their branch or even working professionals who want to get into a good product based company to join Scaler Academy definitely."