30 year old Mihir’s career transition to Technology after spending a Decade in Logistics
Mihir Kumar is someone who is enthusiastic enough to talk of his interests and experiences like they are fresh. Yet, he displays a keen sense of maturity that interests and experiences are not always constant, but change all the time. During early childhood, he wanted to be a Musician, which was accompanied by a serious interest in Computer Science later on.
Mihir, 30, was born in Kolkata. He went to Don Bosco Academy, a boarding school in Patna, Bihar for the entirety of his schooling. To finish his 11th and 12th, he went to Delhi Public School, RK Puram, Delhi. Mihir goes on to say that, had Engineering in India not have Computer Science as a field of study in it, he would have taken up some other profession entirely. He went on to graduate in B.E Computer Science in 2008, and took up an IT job in Tech Mahindra soon after.
A year into the job, Mihir had to come back to his hometown to tend to some family issues. Subsequently, he had to leave his career in tech and enter one in Customs and Clearance. For a decade, he was working in the same industry.
Enter Masai School
In contrast to the usual belief that it’s hard to switch careers especially after building one for 10 years, Mihir recalls his interest back to technology and Web Development. It was as fresh as exploring what’s really going on in tech, and the new innovations that were driving the business world. Through a friend, he heard of Masai School and the training the school offers in a 9–9–6 military style coding.
It was a hard switch to make, personally and professionally. And having to go through a rigorous training at this point, though hard, was exactly what Mihir needed.
But it only led to building up more excitement to have a totally different life altogether. He admits it was not easy at all, saying he could feel the change in himself completely as a human being. 6 months into the training, he learnt the art of learning by one’s self, which he considers his biggest takeaway from the Masai School training.
“After a deep session of focusing on something, it takes about 20–30 minutes to get back to the same amount of focus again. If you are easily distracted and diverted, coding is not for you. It does take an immense amount of discipline, and once you follow it diligently, you get to discover that you will solve the toughest of problems very quickly only by mere discipline and focus.”
Mihir took the Full-Stack Web Development course at Masai and the tools he learnt were UNIX commands, GIT, HTML, CSS, Python, Flask, MySQL, JavaScript, React.js and Redux. Having learnt HTML and CSS on paper, a decade ago, Mihir never got around to do anything about it. After Masai, he was now able to build real-time applications.
He also got around to learning and implementing projects with React.js and Redux, which were completely alien for him before he joined the course. Using Python command line inputs (CLI), he was also able to build applications for a parking lot.
Thanks to the staff at Masai, Mihir is now equipped with enough skill and experience to even train the new recruits on React and Redux at his current workplace.
“The staff at Masai are truly promising, polite, encouraging and more importantly, realistic. They do deliver what they promise, and they are well aware that 9–9–6 is rigorous and it is not easy at all. But they were also there to push the students further by reminding us of the bigger picture. Whenever we had any queries and doubts, they were resolved almost immediately.”
The common question he often kept hearing was, ‘Why do you want to switch now?’ from recruiters, while attempting interviews at tech companies. With the leap of faith he already took, it only took 2 months for Mihir to find a job in tech.
The React.js knowledge and expertise he gained at Masai came in as really handy, in Mihir’s everyday job. He adds that he was able to build applications that impressed multiple offshore clients of his. While he was able to fully upskill himself in React.js which opened up a diverse range of career opportunities, he still considers that his biggest takeaway from Masai School was that he was able to learn things by himself, without anyone’s help.
Above all, Mihir had to pass the toughest hurdle of making a career transition from logistics to software development, after almost spending a decade in the former. He says he had to take a leap of faith and enter it anyway.
Though he does not make as much money as he was making in logistics earlier, Mihir expresses his unwavering confidence that he would be able to reach that figure in 2021 itself, and even double the figure in the coming years ahead.
