In the last few decades, India has been known to produce engineers aplenty. While it was only the IITs and NITs that made such dreams possible earlier, a steady rise in the number of private colleges has meant the numbers have risen exponentially. More than 1.5 million engineers are known to graduate every single year, but as is perhaps now a known fact, a large chunk remain unemployed. According to the annual employability survey 2019 by Aspiring Minds, 80 per cent of Indian engineers weren’t job-fit.
Of these, many are from the famed computer science stream, which has seen an obvious uptick in recent times as the field has simply ballooned in terms of unrealized potential. This is where things get even murkier. The aforementioned survey found that a meager 4.6 per cent hold the ability to write good code.
This was the problem statement that Scaler by InterviewBit took up when it was launched a couple of years ago. Already a fairly popular interview preparation platform for coders by then, the founders Anshuman Singh and Abhimanyu Saxena touched upon the idea of taking it a step further when they realized the massive gap that existed between industry requirements and college education.
When it comes to coding education in colleges beyond the best of tier-I institutions, things have been known to be dismal. It is an unsaid rule that students from these colleges are destined for IT companies that mass hire, and even though many work hard to aspire for something better, they often do not get there owing to lack of a proper path to follow.
Below is a comprehensive review of all the courses that currently exist under the Scaler umbrella.
InterviewBit first launched Scaler Academy, which now serves working software professionals with 0-6 years of experience, and by and large, want to upgrade their coding skill sets to the point where they are ready to go out there and pursue their dream tech job.
To ensure that students get a differentiated experience, and subsequently end up being the best of software engineers, all enrolled students first attend live online classes with instructors, followed by sessions with teaching assistants who regularly help them solve complex coding problems.
But among the salient features of the programme is the ability to choose a personal mentor. These are working professionals from top tech companies that act like guides, often the only thing a student needs, and help them with just the right amount of motivation and advice to help them succeed when it matters.
With Scaler Academy achieving great success, and Scaler alumni now working at top tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google as well as startups that have now become household names like Dream11 and OYO, there have been a couple of recent additions in terms of programmes under the brand.
There is Scaler Academy Plus aimed at high-performing working professionals with more than six years of experience and a willingness to elevate themselves to leadership roles, and there is the newly-launched Scaler Edge which has largely been kept under wraps with a sense of exclusivity attached in terms of early access.
Scaler Edge follows in the footsteps of Academy, and acts as a college companion programme. The audience in this case are pre-final year college students, who may or may not necessarily belong to the CS-stream. But what is required, however, is a lot of dedication for a period of two years.
An important thing to mention would be the flexibility the course allows for. Imagine a situation in college where one cannot possibly attend Edge classes regularly for a while. No problem. They can simply pause, and resume at a later point. If it happens to sound ridiculously easy, that’s because it probably is.
Both Academy and Edge also have features such as career support, with dedicated folks to help with resume building and preparing for the interviews.
With a base of success stories behind it and the backing of global venture capital firms such as Sequoia and Tiger Global, Scaler by InterviewBit looks all set to scale higher. Whether it changes the coding education landscape along the way is a question that would be answered in some time.
