How Abdul Jabbar rediscovered passion in Coding after having moved on from Aviation
Abdul Jabbar Peer has been an airplane enthusiast since he was little, and he still is. He had serious aspirations to become an airline pilot. Owing to his family’s financial conditions, Abdul’s dream could not manifest into reality.
After having moved on from his earlier dream to become a pilot, Abdul chose the next best thing. He took up Aeronautical Engineering at a local engineering college in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, which was where Abdul was born and raised.
The 27-year-old comes from a very humble family background. His father was a taxi driver and mother a home-maker. With a total of three siblings, Abdul recalls that his father had to make one sacrifice after another, to make ends meet in the family. After joining engineering, he found that his college did not have access to basic infrastructure or quality teaching from the faculty. As this aggravated, he ended up losing his interest in education, and more so his belief in the education system.
After graduating from college, he had only one career option — to take up a job in a services-based IT company. With zero intentions to take it up, Abdul moved out of home and started to live in Hyderabad, wanting to find a better direction. With the desire to be in the aviation field still strong, Abdul found an operations agent role at SpiceJet Airlines in Hyderabad.
Though his original intention was to stay there for a little while, Abdul — like many others — found some form of comfort zone a few months into the job. He went on to work for three years at SpiceJet. Abdul also admits he never really wanted to be there, nor did he feel any sense of belonging at the place. But, fear of uncertainty & rejection did not allow him to get out of this comfort zone.
When he told himself enough was enough, he left SpiceJet and moved back home to Vijayawada, to start afresh in career. A month later, Abdul’s father had passed away and things went haywire. He spent about 8 months, managing the crisis at home. Once the storm had passed, Abdul was finally able to spend some time for himself. He came across a Command Line tutorial on YouTube, which ignited a curiosity toward software development.
Despite having sat through his C and C++ programming classes in engineering, Abdul never imagined becoming a software developer. But after his first tutorial, he went on to watch video after video and had also come across a Python tutorial. As this continued, Abdul started to develop a deep interest in software programming.
An article about Masai School had appeared on his Google feed one day. The concept of Income-Sharing Agreement (ISA) clicked with him really hard.
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.
Enter Masai School
“I was hardly in a position to spend any money to upskill myself in programming, from scratch. Within 15 days, I was able to make a decision that I wanted to make a career as a software developer. I took the MSAT, cleared it, and moved to Bengaluru to join Masai School.”
Being a binge-watcher of Netflix for 12–14 hours a day to replace Netflix with coding for the same amount of time, was a total paradigm shift for Abdul. He even says that the 9–9–6 training at Masai is something that tends to stay with the alumni, even after they graduate from Masai School. Abdul recommends that students should never want to part ways with the habit. Once students get habituated with the 9–9–6 schedule, they tend to not look at it as it is enforced upon them, but only make it a lifestyle naturally.
Abdul took the Full-Stack Web Development course at Masai. He started with frontend web development in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, different UI frameworks and libraries. In the backend area, he learnt Express & Node along with MongoDB. Simultaneously, he took part in soft skills training and also Data Structures and Algorithms. (Click to understand DSA in simplest terms)
Abdul, who is now a technical mentor at Masai School, adds that it is really important for programmers to follow a structured approach towards learning coding. He says that being a really good developer comes with a certain level of discipline and commitment.
Watch Abdul share his experiences, and the impact of Masai School, in this video —
