After studying BCA, MCA and losing a job at Infosys, Mamata Nayak found an attractive tech job
Mamata Nayak, 26 years old, hails from Rourkela, Odisha. Born to a businessman and a homemaker, Mamata says her family sacrificed plenty of their personal desires and provided for her with whatever she asked for. An avid reader since childhood, Mamata wanted to be a doctor until she stumbled upon web applications and computer programming.
Since her school days itself, she developed an affinity for computers and gradually it led her to aspire to be a computer programmer. Mamata went on to do a Bachelor’s and Master’s both in Computer Applications (BCA and MCA). She points out that B tech graduates have an unfair advantage when it comes to campus placements and interviews at tech companies. After many trials, Mamata found herself a job at Infosys, which she could not join owing to health issues.
As a result, Mamata was unemployed for 6 months straight, and she lost touch from the job market. Further, she looked for other support roles but without any luck. Mamata’s younger brother who is an engineer at Wipro, recommended Masai School to her. By the time, Mamata had already identified that her skillset from her computer applications degrees were not enough for her to be fully job-ready.
Zero upfront fee
To reduce the burden of student loans for engineering students, Masai School operates on an Income Sharing Agreement (ISA) where the students pay zero upfront cost. Once they graduate from the course, the students will pay back 15 percent of their monthly income for 36 months, or until they reach a maximum capped amount of INR 3 lac. However, the Income-Sharing Agreement is applicable only when the students get a job offer with a package of INR 5 LPA or more.
“My parents had already paid for both my Bachelor’s and Master’s. Despite that, I was still unable to find the right job. Besides, there was a clear gap between the amount of skill I had and the kind of skills tech companies needed from web developers.”
Plenty of research had gone into the course before Mamata was fully confident that Masai School was the right place for her.
Mamata goes on to say that the staff and mentors at Masai were helpful enough not just with technical education but also emotional support. She was facing a fair amount of hardships, trying to manage the rigorous military-style coding system. Initially, she was excited about the whole idea, but it took Mamata some time to get used to the curriculum.
Before joining Masai, Mamata was an afternoon sleeper and she confesses that she was a lazy student.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see myself going through a lot of transformation. The coursework and the study material seemed so interesting that I was completely okay with giving up on my noon sleep, and also worked extra hard beyond 9AM — 9PM. And the staff was helpful enough to get me on the right track throughout the course of my coding journey.”
After the completion of the course, she even went on to attend around numerous mock interviews, facilitated by external partners who work at reputed tech companies. Recalling an encounter with one of the instructional associates at Masai, Mamata says she was very disheartened after she was rejected in many job interviews before she finally got placed.
Having attended over 25 interviews in 2 months, Mamata spoke with the mentor for about 45 minutes to gain some insight and psychological support from him.
Immediately after the conversation, Mamata found a job. She was clearly able to identify her shortcomings and weaknesses and after having worked them out, finding a job was not a tough task anymore.
HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL and MERN Stack were among the many programming languages and tools Mamata got to learn from Masai School. She adds that her soft-skills were enhanced drastically and her Math expertise had amplified by the time she graduated.
