Vivek chose software development at Masai over a government job

Vivek Ranjan - A Masai graduate now working as Software Engineer at Birdeye
Vivek Ranjan - A Masai graduate now working as Software Engineer at Birdeye

Vivek Ranjan is from a family of farmers and was born and raised in the Indian state of Bihar. Even though he always wanted to, he could not really go to a regular school until 6th grade because there was no structure or curriculum in his village. He attended a school where the medium of instruction was Hindi until the tenth grade.

Vivek’s life at school:

For his further studies, he moved to Jamshedpur because of his father’s new job as a government teacher. And here, he finally switched to an English medium school. While he wanted to be a civil servant like his father, the latter suggested he go into engineering instead. The reason for this was government exams are very difficult to crack, and it takes years of preparation- while becoming an engineer was relatively more feasible.

Post this discussion, Vivek took the Science stream in class 11th and started preparing for various entrance exams. However, he could not make it to any IIT or NIT after his board exams and this left him dejected. To try again, he took a year gap to prepare- but this time too, unfortunately, he could not make it to his dream institutions.

Engineering college and all that followed:

Following the setback, he took admission to a private college called SCOE in Pune to pursue B.Tech in Electronics and Telecommunications. While it was hard for him to pass every subject because of a gap in communication, he cleared every subject by the end of the final year. But now another hiccup awaited him- the pandemic.

Because of the lockdown, it took him an extra 6 months to graduate and look for jobs. The pandemic limited the scope for most people to find a suitable job opportunity- and Vivek was one of the many. The desperation to find a job led him to prepare for government exams for the next 2-3 months- but the preparation did not excite him.

This is how he came across Masai:

When he was in his final year of college, Vivek saw some of his friends from the IT department develop websites, which he found really intriguing. Thinking that web development has a bright future, especially during such tough times, he learned web development by himself through videos and other online resources.

While looking for one such video, he came across a video by Masai’s co-founder & CEO Prateek Shukla on YouTube, where he talked about Masai‌. Impressed by his speech, he checked out Masai’s website and applied for the Full Stack Web Development course.

The Masai experience:

The preparation for government exams polished his skills in Mathematics and Reasoning, which further helped him clear Masai’s entrance exam and get onboarded as a student. What touched Vivek about Masai was a practice-based curriculum, which meant that a student should study for 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. This kind of arrangement ensured that they gave every topic its due attention on a daily basis.

According to Vivek, discipline is a very important aspect of any field, especially in coding. At Masai, he learned how to study and prepare for the corporate world with discipline taking no pressure. He also improved his other soft skills related to communication and time management through regular expert sessions conducted by Masai.

Under the Full Stack Development course, he learned JavaScript, HTML, CSS, MongoDB, and REACT, which was the toughest language for him to understand. After failing REACT for one test, he reached out to the Masai faculty for help, and after their thorough guidance; he cleared the unit with flying colors.

Time for placements:

After finishing the course, Vivek got placed as a Software Engineer at Sahara Global, which took him 3-4 weeks. It relatively took him more time than other students to get placed, however, not for once did he feel negative about any rejection that came his way. He was always positive, as he trusted Masai and the way it had prepared him as a whole new individual. Finally, after getting placed, he was able to have a sigh of relief and make his family proud.

Vivek is now working as a Software Frontend engineer at Birdeye.

Words of advice:

To every student who wishes to join Masai but is skeptical, he suggests they should not have second thoughts about it- he took a leap of faith and it helped him change his life for the better. As he looks back at how far he has come, he feels extremely grateful to the Masai team and everyone who supported him throughout his journey.