A Polytechnic Diploma holder now makes 10 times more money after graduating from Masai School
21 year old Suhail Malik was born and raised in Awwalpur, a village near Amroha in Uttar Pradesh, India. Suhail’s early childhood and schooling was in the village, and then the family moved to the larger town Amroha where he finished the rest of his schooling.
Suhail was a video game enthusiast from an early age, and his father had a computer at the time. With a mere interest to play around computers, Suhail had his mind set on doing something around the machines since he was a child. A big fan of Bill Gates and all the tech stalwarts of the business world, Suhail considers Gates his inspiration. After 12th, Suhail had done a Polytechnic course from the town.
A vocational training course that offers a diploma in computer-based technical education, Suhail has not had the opportunity to pursue anything other than the government-supported Polytechnic after his 12th standard.
There was no concept of campus placements in the institute, and Suhail had been trying to find himself a job as a software developer. Though he opted for a course of his liking, a Diploma in Information Technology, Suhail started to lose interest on realizing that there was a stark difference between what was being taught and what companies looked for. The deeper he went into his job, the more he learnt that his Diploma was of no practical use.
After throwing multiple attempts at it, Suhail took it upon himself to learn Python all on his own, in hopes to find a job. And he finally did. He was working as a support engineer at a Noida-based IT firm.
Here, Suhail opines that there were days when he had absolutely no work at all, despite having asked his supervisor repeatedly for work. Most days, he was just installing office software, leaving his routine to be mundane and unsatisfactory.
“With no job opportunities on the horizon, incomplete education, very little money left to sustain a healthy lifestyle and a million questions about my future; and not to forget COVID making things even more difficult, it suffices to say that I was struggling. What would my next step be — another job? But what would I get paid or what job would I even get? What about a course? Where would I get the money for that? And I couldn’t ask my parents anymore. My situation left me demotivated.”
Hearing of the concept called bootcamps, that help aspiring developers upskill themselves without having to spend years, he started searching for the right one.
“There were plenty of scammers who would take your money and not teach you anything. But the idea of not taking any money from me until they make me job-ready and place me at a tech company, was very promising.”
The Income-Sharing Agreement (ISA) at Masai School enables students to enroll in the coding programs without having to pay any upfront tuition fee. Only after they find a job that pays them above Rs 5 LPA, would Masai activate monthly payments, capped at 15 percent of monthly income for 36 months.
The ISA payments do not activate if the candidate does not get a job within one year of graduating from Masai School. Besides, these payments also stop once a total payment of Rs 3 lakh is made. Masai School follows a military-style 9–9–6 training, which was a tough transition for Suhail to follow initially.
Admitting that he was very lazy before joining the school, he says he picked up the habit of waking up early and also enjoys the routine gradually. As of today, Suhail is proficient in tools and languages like Node.js, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React.js and Bootstrap. He is an active developer in Frontend and Backend Web Applications, React Applications and Data Structures. Even better, Suhail made a clone of the popular stock photo website pexels, using its own APIs.
Today, Suhail is an SDE at a budding technology startup, making 10 times the money he was making before he was introduced to the world of Masai School. Interestingly, he was able to find a job while he was towards the end of finishing his course, and immediately joined it as he graduated from the school.
“Working as a Full Stack Developer, I realized that joining Masai was probably the best decision I ever made. Irrespective of the challenges I faced, I made constant progress in my learning all thanks to the guidance I received.
To all of you — who may have been let down by the education system, even the ones who never got an opportunity for quality education — if you have the passion to become a developer, look no further than Masai School. All you need to bring here is your commitment and dedication and the rest is taken care of by the system!”
