I have witnessed many ups and downs in my journey. But my passion for making myself better was the one thing that always kept me going.
The professional leg of my journey began in 2014. Despite having attractive job opportunities, I didn’t shy away from learning even after my graduation and looked for opportunities that would actually satisfy my passion for this field.
I graduated in 2014 from SRM University and got my first job as a programmer in a service based company- Cognizant. I wanted to work in a product-based company for better application of my learning. I moved to Mumbai when I got my first chance to work in a product-based company. I changed my job again when I got an opportunity to work on open source technology with Stryker in Gurgaon. It was a new experience for me as I’d never worked on open source technology. I know these job changes seem a lot, but I guess I just wanted to find a workplace where I could fully utilise my passion for this field.
I think it is passion for that one particular thing that makes people go an extra mile for satiating it. For me, this extra mile was equivalent to improving my skills by learning. Through a friend’s recommendation, I started learning and practising problems related to DSA and system designs on LeetCode. Even after spending hours learning these concepts, I was unable to solve even the most basic problems on LeetCode.
Around the same time, I attended Scaler’s masterclass which was taken by Anshuman sir. Since I was pretty frustrated with how the problem solving was going down for me, I decided to seek external support in the form of Scaler’s course. I didn’t even tell my parents as the expenses of the course were a little on the higher side. But I told them after I got placed at WiseTech Global through Scaler with a package of 25 LPA and well, they were quite happy for me.
I have to admit that learning in a proper context helps a lot. After just two or three months of joining Scaler, I was able to solve many medium level questions on LeetCode.
But managing all these things together wasn’t easy at all. Practice hours and lectures on top of my 9 to 6 job at Stryker made it very difficult to handle all these things. I would get stressed out at times. I think I was able to tackle all these problems because of my passion. I know it is an overused word and I have used it all the more, but that’s exactly what propelled me to keep going. On working days, I made it a rule for myself to solve at least 3-4 problems. On weekends, I used to complete any pending assignments and solve problems on LeetCode.
I remember how dedicated I was during that time. You wouldn’t believe it but I would not even take a single break during my working hours. During any break or free time in my working hours, I would either work on Scaler’s assignments or solve problems on LeetCode. It is a little funny but it became my muscle memory to switch to LeetCode or Scaler’s portal as soon as I got even a few minutes of free time.
Apart from my own efforts, my mentor- Mr. Ashutosh had a huge role in discerning my learning trajectory. I told him in the first session itself that I was mainly aiming for Amazon and Microsoft. Accordingly, he laid down a rough plan for me depending on how soon I wanted to start giving interviews for these both organisations. I wasn’t even halfway through my preparation when all my planning was challenged by this one call from Amazon. They informed me that they will be setting up an interview with me within a month's time. It was obviously very short notice and I wasn’t completely prepared. My mentor motivated me to give it a try at least. He spent extra hours on my preparation during those weeks. Despite it all, I did get rejected in the last round but I think trying counts for something, doesn’t it?
Anyway alongside Scaler’s assignments, I continued checking my progress by practicing problems on LeetCode. The most significant difference was that I went from not being able to solve even the basic problems on LeetCode to solving about 1000+ problems of varying levels of difficulty after Scaler’s course.
I am going to say it again - “You can’t excel in a field without passion”. If you are passionate enough, you can achieve anything that you set your eyes upon. Passion coupled with the will to go beyond your comfort zone can do wonders for you.
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