Not satisfied with college, Dheeraj joined Masai and became a software engineer

Born in an army person’s family, Dheeraj Bisht opted for Electrical engineering in his B tech from Bipin Tripathi Kumaon Institute of technology (BTKIT) in Almora, Uttarakhand.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t get placed during his college placement cycles due to limited placement opportunities. The few companies that came were only hiring CSE graduates.

Upon realizing that he needs to switch his focus to Software for having a high-growth career, Dheeraj joined Masai School to learn web development and today, he’s working in Vyapar as a back-end engineer.

This article covers the ins and outs of Dheeraj’s journey from an electric engineer to a software developer and everything in between, so stick along readers.

Switching from Electrical to Software

Dheeraj, inspired by his father, wanted to join the Indian army but his parents had other ideas as they wanted a sustainable, high end career for him.

After failed placement cycles at college, Dheeraj was clueless about his career for a while. Post some self-analysis and observation, he knew that he couldn’t build enough skills during college, nor did he get deep-rooted learning.

Finally, he arrived at the decision of switching to the IT industry because of its infinite scope for growth. He started learning the basics of programming from YouTube and other random sources.

Desperate for a job, Dheeraj applied on various job portals and also sat in a few interviews for IT companies. But success still eluded him as he couldn’t crack any job.

When asked about possible reasons for these failures, Dheeraj states : “There was no structure and depth in those online courses that I took. I could only learn the basics. So, I got absolutely blank from the level of questions they asked. I had no idea.”

Joining Masai School

Fed up with failed job interviews, he decided to first focus on his skill development.

In the meantime, he came to know about Masai School from a Youtube podcast named “Talk with Abdul”. He listened to Prateek (CEO, Masai School) talk about the Coding Bootcamp and its ‘pay after placement’ proposition on this podcast.

Dheeraj immediately got hooked with the whole idea of Masai School. The fact that he’d only have to pay after he gets a job worth 5 LPA or more (Income Share Agreement) made sure that there wouldn’t be any financial risk involved.

Though his parents were skeptical about the program initially (as most Indian parents are), Dheeraj convinced them and wasted no further time in joining the Full Stack Web Development Course with the Web 10 batch which would later turn his career around.

Challenges during the FSWD course

Coming from an electrical engineering background, he did have problems understanding front-end development.

When asked how he’d overcome these challenges, Dheeraj mentioned his Instructional Associate at Masai — “I attended every IA session. I also contacted him in off-hours to ask my doubts and he never skipped anything. He was always ready to help even at midnight.”

Role of IA’s is central to the teaching methodology of Masai School. In a batch strength of 200 students, it’s important to not let them be left out with some issue. IAs connect on a personal level with students. During the IWY sessions, when a student isn’t able to solve a problem, IA’s help them in separate break out rooms.

The 9–9–6 military-style schedule

Dheeraj admits to not having any problems with the 9–9–6 military-style schedule at Masai.

In his words — “Life got really sorted. There was a definite purpose for me to wake up early everyday , attend the Scrum at 9 AM, learn coding, learn DSA and do the assignments. There was no space for distractions. Also, can’t forget the CodeTalks on Saturdays where we met industry mentors and gained valuable insights”

Construct Week & Hackathon at Masai

Dheeraj especially likes the Construct week that takes place after each unit at Masai. In a Construct week, students work in teams to build clones of popular websites.

It gives them a real-time experience of building a website from scratch, meant for the end-user. It also helps bolster their team working skills, preparing them for multiple team-based projects they’d go on to build for their companies.

Dheeraj’s team worked on developing the front-end and back-end of Porter in the first three units, a clone of Himalaya’s website in the 4th and Instagram in the 5th unit.

There’s a Hackathon tournament between teams in the 6th unit. In the Web10 batch, all teams were asked to build a clone website of ‘Park Easy’ within the given time frame of 48 hours.

Talking about the competition, Dheeraj said — “I liked the hustle in those 2 days. Our team was working relentlessly on the project, sacrificing our sleep as well. In the end, it turned out amazing for us as we got the 2nd rank.”

Placements at Masai School

When the companies arrived for placements, Dheeraj first got shortlisted by ‘My Gate’. But his interview didn’t go well and he wasn’t selected.

He corrected his mistakes and cracked the next two companies’ interviews back to back, namely Vyapar and Ola.

Not knowing which company to choose, he contacted Lohit and Venu from the Masai curriculum team for further guidance.

Eventually, he chose Vyapar based on his preferences and has been working there as a front-end engineer.

Interestingly, Dheeraj happens to be working with his Masai batchmate Asutosh on a new project in the company.

Dheeraj has experienced both college and Masai School. We asked him what was the difference between them, to which he replied — “We go to college just for a degree. There’s no proper structure for learning. But Masai provides a system. You start somewhere and follow a step by step process to get to the end result.”

“So is it worth paying INR 3 Lakh to Masai School after placement?”

“Absolutely, no doubt. Especially for people like me who belong to tier 3 cities, it is a blessing. We’re often stuck in a loop figuring out what to do. If someone is providing a job over 5 LPA without any upfront fee, we could ask for nothing more. And also, the 3 lakh payment after a job needs to be paid in instalments. So, it’s not a big deal”

Dheeraj gave his first month’s salary to his parents. And we believe nothing could be better than that. Giving it all to the people who made you.

Build Your Career

Helping students become successful and churning out such transformation stories is an everyday thing at Masai. If you want to work a high paying job in the Software industry irrespective of your background, check out these courses and take action.