Hard work: the most quoted reason behind people’s success. It’s the first word people throw at you once you make your ambition known. And I wholeheartedly agree too. But, there is a little something called “right place at the right time”. That’s a major reason why I am working at Delhivery today because along with a lot of hard work, I grabbed the correct opportunity at the most optimal time!
My humble story begins in the town of Phillaur, Punjab where I was born and brought up. I did my schooling from DAV Ludhiana and being the daughter of an MCA graduate father, I was naturally inclined towards the technological side of the world. My father played a huge role in my upbringing as a tech enthusiast so without much hesitation, I went to college at Guru Nanak Dev University for B Tech Computer Science. My college life majorly consisted of me following what my friends were doing which led me to study for an exam I had no interest in cracking. I spent 3 years of my college life cracking CAT and soon realised it was neither my strength, nor my passion. Deep down, I knew I wanted to continue in the tech field. Somehow I managed to study and got placed in TCS during our college placements.
It’s no surprise, but life as an average developer at a service-based tech company is bleak; especially when you aren’t very good at your job. I was told to handle menial day-to-day tasks which barely involved any serious programming. I always felt like working there always felt like a disgrace to my degree and vision.
Hence, I decided to start preparing again to get a job at a product-based company. My CAT preparation phase had left me tired and exhausted as an aspirant. While studying up on DSA, I was constantly reminded of unfinished syllabi. I would gather myself and study again but I soon realised that I needed external help.
One day, one of my best friends told me about Scaler Academy. Since I was already preparing for the same thing, I decided to give it a shot. Within a week I realised that the curriculum was very well defined and the guidance that I was getting from these instructors and mentors was what I had been missing for the 3 years in my tech career.
I was an FTE in a company when I joined Scaler. So, on weekdays, I used to focus mainly on the sessions and try to complete assessments and homework that was given. During the weekend, I used to practice whatever we covered in that week at Scaler on leetcode and GeeksForGeeks.
If I had doubts, I could reach out to any instructor at any time. The homework and assignments were well crafted and if I ever got stuck on a question, TA sessions were held to clear them. If your doubt wasn’t cleared, you could access video solutions for the same. I was very impressed by the mock interviews they held as well.
Tarun sir was my favorite instructor during my time there. The way he taught us during the sessions was very interesting. He was always energetic and never allowed us to get bored. The classes were never just questions/solutions. For every topic, you would be told about the prerequisites first and then he would always involve the whole batch in figuring out the most efficient approach towards a solution.
I had my mock interviews scheduled with mentor, Scheduled them topic wise- more mock interviews for a topic in which I am weak, which helped me identify my weak spots and so I tried to cover as many problems of that topic so that next time I don’t make all those mistakes again and also this helped me in getting hold of that topic.
My mentor during that time was Shrey Mahajan and he was one of the best people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. I remember one time when I had faced two rejections in a row and was feeling dejected. He motivated me a lot and he told me that this was a minor setback and I couldn’t let this get to my head. This guidance was one of the major reasons I got a job at Delhivery soon after.
The work culture in Delhivery was quite good and friendly. I always enjoyed the brainstorming sessions that we had when we used to design dbs/ apis. We used to come up with a few approaches to solving a problem and then discussed what is the best out of them. I would say, learning was exponential and quite fast paced. Personally and professionally, Scaler transformed me. Before, I didn’t know the difference in feasibility of the approaches I made. I was also unsure of whether an online coding course would help me with my programming skills. However, soon after joining, I realised I couldn’t look at problems from an out-of-the-box perspective and Scaler provided me with just that. Now I finally feel like my contributions result in major changes to the work my team does.
I am currently working at VMware. The environment in VMware was a helpful and supportive team. I am an individual contributor here. Learning wise it was similar to Delhivery. Although I’m not at my dream job yet, I strongly feel that I’m much closer to it in a considerably short amount of time. Life comes at you hard and fast, you can either lay down and let it roll over you, or you can pick yourself up and fight it out. Thankfully, I chose the latter. And it was the best decision I ever made!
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