Shruti managed teaching and coding for 7 months to enter the Tech industry
Shruti PS is a 27-year-old Software Engineer who works at Qapita Fintech as a Software Developer.
As a child, she was always fond of animals and dreamt of becoming a veterinary doctor. Being a dog lover, she would think that she was destined to be one. But soon after high school, she realised that biology isn’t her cup of tea. During the time, she was just introduced to Java Programming as part of her Computer Science syllabus. A friendly and passionate teacher made her step into the world of Computer Science and helped her fall in love with coding. From then on I aspired to have a career involving programming.
“I was fortunate to have been admitted to an ICSE school by my parents. This exposed me to Computer Science and Programming during middle school and high school. There was a lot of importance given to thinking and answering logically rather than memorizing concepts at school.”
Shruti joined Computer Science Engineering in college from HKBK College of Engineering and graduated in 2016. But while searching for opportunities after college, it was noticeable that she needed to acquire additional industry-relevant skills, but she was still looking actively. During this time, she got an opportunity to tutor a couple of high school students, which pushed her to find interest in teaching and, which led her to apply for jobs in the education field. For the next 4 years, she taught Computer Science to students from primary school to senior secondary school.
While she was at it, she was also eager to learn more and sought technically challenging opportunities in coding. A newspaper article introduced Masai School to her and she researched more about coding schools that offer jobs via Pay After Placement(PAP). The prerequisites for the part-time Backend course were basic programming and clearing the admission test so she was confident enough that she would be eligible, and cracked the MSAT.
She goes on to add that online learning from resources on the internet seemed very chaotic and confusing. However, she feels that Masai offered an extremely structured syllabus that would help crack interviews in product-based companies interviews. She felt that this was her opportunity to enter the Software Development field though she was neither a fresher nor did she have prior experience in the IT field.
Life at Masai School
Shruti was part of the part-time course at Masai, and it was challenging to balance her teaching job as well as the course work. Every evening after work, she would work on the daily assignments and prepare for the upcoming Masai classes. Being a teacher, she would have duties after school hours to evaluate test papers, prepare lesson notes and presentations for the lectures but she would manage her time enough so she could also give enough time to learn and practice the new concepts she had learnt in the training everyday.
“I feel those 7 months of rigorous learning and managing work motivated me to complete my work on time and manage my time better. I am also able to learn concepts more effectively in a shorter time now.”
Shruti took the part-time Backend Development course where she had learnt Java Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms, some core Computer Science concepts and Development tools like Springboot and Postman.
During the projects, she had learnt how to collaborate remotely with her batch mates and the Masai faculty. This helped her see a problem from different perspectives and find solutions. Whenever we came across obstacles that we found hard to resolve, the faculties guided us in the right way and gave us hints, encouraging us to find the answers. The faculties are extremely professional, passionate, and open to feedback. As we interacted and learnt from them, I felt their enthusiasm influenced me to do better. I could learn so many new relevant concepts in such a short time here.
During the placements season, Shruti says the students were provided with revision classes, regular coding challenges and interview preparation sessions, that helped her not only strengthen her technical knowledge but also her presentation skills.
“The HR team kept a constant check on us on a day to day basis making sure we completed all the coding challenge opportunities well before the deadline. This helped me get a job within two months after placements started. I got a hefty compensation package.”
Currently at her workplace, Shruti is learning learning various stacks like C# and the API testing tool, Postman. Since she had already learnt the fundamental concepts of Java Programming at Masai, it helped her quickly start learning a new language. She works as a Software Engineer at Bengaluru-based Fintech startup Qapita Fintech.