How a Finance internship led Aayushi Shah to become a Software Developer
Born and brought up in Mumbai, 25-year-old Aayushi Shah admits of not being a very ambitious person since childhood. She happened to choose Commerce as an education background because most of her friends did. Having joined HR College of Economics and Commerce for her bachelor’s, she graduated in 2016. After graduation, she only managed to find an internship as an investment analyst but not a full-time job.
It was a Mumbai-based financial securities firm where Aayushi was working on fundamental research and diligence on stocks that are listed on the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange. While she was just breaking into Finance, she realised she wanted to understand the quantitative side of it. In the process, she stumbled upon the basics of software programming.
Besides, Aayushi needed to learn at least one programming language to understand financial modelling fully. This led her to pick up Python.
“If I wanted to call myself a developer, I needed to learn what Frontend is and what Backend is. While listening to numerous coding podcasts, I noticed that most people go to bootcamps and short-term programming schools to fully excel at it. That is when I went on to search for one such school in India.”
She came across a story of a Salem-based automobile mechanic who earned Rs 18,000 per month, but had to let go of the job for 6 months, to study at Masai School. His name was Mohammed Hassan. It was a risky call for Hassan to not be employed and paid for such a long duration but only study hard to become a developer. As fate would have it, the automobile mechanic turned into a software developer with an annual salary about 10x of what he used to earn.
If Hassan could have that level of determination and grit, what was stopping Aayushi?
The best proposition she found at Masai School was that she did not have to pay a single penny for her coding education.
The ISA Payments System
To reduce the burden of student loans for engineering students, Masai School operates on an Income Share 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 Share Agreement is applicable only when the students get a job offer with a package of INR 5 LPA or more.
Coding at Masai School
“My biggest fear was whether I would be able to manage my time, working and studying from 9AM to 9PM for 30 weeks. But once I started, it was a smooth and natural flow. I was not able to finish my assignments on time, while learning HTML and CSS. I would stay up until late night to finish them. By the time I moved to Javascript and React, I had evolved into an entirely different person on the discipline front.”
Aayushi was able to pick up the topics really quickly, and she ended up enjoying her Masai experience to the fullest. Having chosen Full-Stack Web Development, she learned the MERN Stack along with JavaScript, Data Structures and Algorithms, in addition to HTML, CSS. The real transition from being a Commerce graduate to becoming a developer happened when she was starting to immediately solve her problems and challenges during the course.
Bengaluru-based social networking and media startup ShareChat, has a reputation of typically hiring graduates only from Tier-1 engineering institutions. Aayushi was hired at ShareChat after her Masai School graduation, but only as an intern. Masai School CEO Prateek recommended her to go ahead with the company because of its strong engineering team, and that she would get to learn a lot of technology in a short period.
She had been working on building a product the company was then shipping and happened to be a critical part of its deployment. When ShareChat had a performance review after 3 months, it was a no-brainer for the company to take her employment further into a full-time role.
While the company typically tests these interns for a duration of 6 months, Aayushi was converted into a full-time Software Development Engineer (SDE) in a matter of only 3 months. As it happened, it took only 24 hours for Aayushi to receive a job offer after graduating from Masai School.
“Be selfish when it comes to your career. Know what is more important for you, and take advice from very few, trusted guides. Following your heart will take you a long way ahead,” Aayushi offers advice to aspiring developers.
