From working in R&D to a Software Engineer - Meet Hardik

Hardik credits a lot of his success to the CSBT team at Masai who were consistent in their efforts in improving his communication skills, presentation skills, stress management, etc. among others.

Thumper Hardik Babubhai

Graduating out of a not so common background in Polymer Technology, Hardik always had an inclination towards programming.

He chased this calling much later when he joined Masai School to learn to code. Today, he is working as a Full Stack Engineer at Tracxn.

In this article, we discuss Hardik’s journey, his previous job, experience with Masai and much more.

Previous Education and Job Experience

Coming from a farming family in Charaniya, Rajkot, Hardik has always been a bright student. After 10th he started on the route to engineering, since his family & other relatives wanted him to do something unique, he opted for Polymer Technology in his B.Tech from Lalbhai Dalpatbhai college of engineering, Ahmedabad.

The campus placement cycles turned out well for Hardik as he got placed in the 7th semester. He started as an assistant engineer in research & development for a tyre manufacturing company.

However, he started losing interest in his job after a while due to multiple reasons, the most prominent one being the low salary he used to receive. Staying away from home, Hardik wasn’t able to contribute to his family and take care of his own expenses at the same time.

That’s when his fondness for coding & web development started resurfacing.

Joining Masai School

His interest towards software further consolidated from regular conversations with his ex roommates since most of them were pursuing IT careers.

It was actually a friend from the same lot who suggested Hardik to join Masai School.

At first, he wasn’t sure whether to quit his source of income and pursue a totally different stream.

He browsed about Masai, watched a few alumni success stories that convinced him. Also, he’d been looking for a full-time course, and Masai’s 9-9-6 training schedule made sure that there would be no compromise in learning.

“My parents did ask a lot of questions but were supportive throughout” – says Hardik when asked about his parents’ reaction to quitting his job.

He finally joined Masai School in 2021.

Hardik’s Experience at Masai

He admits to having difficulties in learning since the curriculum hit speed after the first unit.

To put it in his words- “logic is my strength so I understood Data structure & Algorithm well, but design and development was tough initially as they require knowledge of HTML and CSS.”

However, Hardik conquered those problems with the help of mentors at Masai and learned to build a complete end-to-end web application on his own.

In the construct weeks at Masai, he collaborated with his peers to build clones of popular websites, mostly E-commerce platforms starting with Shopperstop’s front-end development in the second unit itself.

Later, he practised full-stack development by building clones of Cult.fit and Reddit.

Construct week has to be there. We develop tremendous self-learning capacity by working on these projects. We face issues firsthand, try different ways to solve them, check from other resources and so on. That gives us a real-time experience of how a web application is actually built. How it all comes together.” – Hardik states when asked about the importance of construct week at Masai.

“I also learned how to create something as a team, how to leverage each other’s strengths, and how to have a constructive discussion in order to build something for the end user. These qualities help me immensely today while working on team projects for my company” he adds further.

Not completely satisfied with his performance, Hardik was having thoughts about going for Async once in the 3rd unit. 

Async If a student doesn’t perform well in a particular unit, they’re asked to join the previous batch and repeat the unit’s content in order to achieve their learning objectives. A student can only get one Async per unit, though there is no limit to the number of units one can Async throughout the course.

But the Masai team ensured that his evaluations were upto the mark and he didn’t need to go back as he’d get a month to revise every concept before the placement cycles.

In the 6th unit, Hardik worked hard with mentors and instructional associates and strengthened his weak areas in programming.

Placement Cycles at Masai

When the companies came in for hiring, Hardik was mentally prepared to take on the assignments & interviews. He got shortlisted by Ola and CoinSwitch based on his assignments but couldn’t clear the final interview rounds in both these companies.

Third company to arrive was Tracxn. Learning from his mistakes in the previous rounds, he cracked the interviews and finally got a job offer from Tracxn.

Hardik credits a lot of his success to the CSBT team at Masai who were consistent in their efforts in improving his communication skills, presentation skills, stress management, etc. among others.

Was Masai School worth it?

“It was absolutely worth it. In 7 months I learned so many things which wouldn’t be possible in 4 years at a college. I’m currently working in a professional software engineering role and more importantly, I have the skillset to build a long term career in this sector. Honestly, I had never thought of it. The idea of going back to college to learn computer science was too far-fetched. I feel lucky that I found Masai at the right time.” – he answers when asked if the program is worth the PAP(Pay After Placement) amount of INR 3 lakhs.

Hardik is a man of few words. And those words carry meaning. He took a brave step when he left his job to pursue coding regardless of the fact that he had no prior experience. But he hustled hard, went through the challenges and learned everything from scratch despite the pressure mounting on him.