At Scaler Academy, we believe in providing a level playing field for all software engineers irrespective of their geographical, financial & educational background.
Overcoming all the odds against him our Scaler Subham Mallick paved his way from tier 3 college to top product companies. Here’s his review about his experience as a Scaler Mentee in his own words.
My Interview Experience with Top IT Companies
My hometown is Hasnabad, West Bengal. My father was in the Indian army, so for most of my childhood years we were roaming throughout India.
I did my high school from West Bengal. I have been coding since my 9th grade. I used to create projects and experiment with languages.
The kid’s life at army quarters is quite amazing, disciplined and extremely different from the civil life. Every three years we had to shift. I visited a lot of places during this time including Jhansi, Jammu, Goa, Kolkata and more.
It was amazing to get to know so many different cultures, meet so many different people, learn about their culture, their perception, listen to Gayatri Mantra and Quran on certain days, it still gives me goosebumps when I think about it.
I have never liked cramming stuff, I liked computers since it involved a lot of understanding and practical application rather than reading stuff and remembering it in order to score good.
After my high school, I applied for IIT JEE but couldn’t clear the Mains. I went to LPU, Punjab for graduation, where I pursued B Tech in CSE. Around the 2nd year of my college, I started competitive programming.
There was this group of 4 people in my college who used to code super fast and score the top position in almost every coding contest. They used to code and submit while we were busy reading the questions and trying to understand the problem. One of the guys from the group didn’t even know what a computer was until he came to college. It was a wonderful thing to see him become such a great coder. That inspired me to do something extraordinary as well.
I used to practice coding interview questions on InterviewBit. The best part of practicing on IB was the question quality. The content was highly structured. So whenever any on-campus placement used to take place, I made sure to solve as many problems as possible on IB.
One day while solving problems on IB, I saw a banner about Scaler Academy batch launch. I applied for the academy entrance test without giving a second thought.
I cleared that entrance test. Within the first week of the classes I realized how much value it could bring to me. Fortunately I saw the banner on Thursday since the test was scheduled for the following Saturday. I still feel very lucky to have seen the banner and grabbing this opportunity.
During my program tenure, several times I used to feel like I was the only one in the class who was not understanding the concepts. If a question was answered in the class I used to get the solution. But when I saw people asking their doubts in forums, I couldn’t understand their point of view.
I felt that I needed to know how they were thinking, people were a lot better than me in my batch. I felt if I couldn’t do better in this batch then it would be very difficult for me to crack interviews at any of the top product based companies..
So I started taking my classes more seriously and put extra efforts in understanding the concepts in depth, understanding the intuition behind the question and its solution.
I was really lucky to have all the instructors at Scaler Academy who taught me thoroughly about the inside out of the concepts.
I started doubting the concepts I had at the beginning of the program. I used to think that whatever I knew was enough. But as soon as I started with Scaler Academy, I started thinking in a very different way. All the instructors helped me develop an understanding about various concepts and thinking in a more profound manner.
I recall one incident when my mentor gave my referral for Amazon. Considering my preparation, I would have been able to easily solve the questions that were asked in the interview. But I couldn’t.
I questioned myself that day, I tried so hard, I did the course for so long, I took mock interviews but still I couldn’t clear even the first round of interview at Amazon.
It came to me as a setback. I didn’t attend any class for a few days.
After some time, I finally gathered my strength and decided to attend the remaining classes. That day my mentor told me – “You are the best candidate out of my lot of mentees. It was probably just luck that you couldn’t clear. This sure wasn’t your last chance, there are many more opportunities still in store for you. So buckle up and prepare hard to perform your best in the next one.”
I thought if he can believe in me, I should totally have that faith in myself. I got referred to Informatica and I cleared all the rounds.
Since the moment I posted about it on my LinkedIn profile, I have been receiving hundreds of queries about how to join Scaler Academy.
It feels great to have the power to inspire people. If I had to advise my fellow coders, I would just say – If you are growing, grow together, there is no happiness in growing alone.