r/developersIndia • u/NewDiscount9743 • Apr 23 '24
Course Review Scaler Academy review - my personal experience....
This post comes up almost every week on this sub…is Scaler a scam or is it actually genuine and worth it?
I have been enrolled in the course about 14 months back (back in December 2022), and here is my point of view about the program.
I joined when I got fed up with my job at one of the WITCH. My manager was in big time pain in the bum, shuffling me between bench and shitty projects, just because he didn’t like me. During college I was enthu about web development, and tried a bit of CP in the hopes of getting to a good product company, but I ended up at this banana place. Back then I did give some interviews at a few product companies through referrals of my friends, but got rejected in DSA rounds mostly. I studied at a tier-2 college, with roommates working across many product companies, so I had a good idea of what I need to prepare for. In between a girl with very nice voice from Scaler started chit chatting with me, ngl, initially I was just talking with her because I had nothing better to do, and eventually one day my manager frustrated me enough that I said let me try this out, and see if this helps me get out of this shit hole. That lady however was nowhere to be seen once I joined the Scaler course, lol. I was also checking courses from Upgrad etc, which are mostly master degree from some random universities, but their curriculum wasn't really relevant with my target of cracking interviews of product companies.
Also most of it were just recorded lectures, with a degree slapped on top of it. Cost wise Scaler, while pretty expensive if I compare with recorded courses, is less costlier than these degree courses, and had a richer curriculum and all live classes, so I went with it. Again, it was a big decision for me considering the EMI had been about 20% of my whole salary at that time.
Initial few months of me starting the program:
Course structure:
I must say their curriculum is pretty well researched, and they go in depth. It starts with DSA, then LLD, then HLD, and then they have project building and some electives to choose from, like data engineering etc. They break people into three groups. People with no coding background are put in beginner batch. Those who can code but don’r know DSA are put inter-intermediate, and those who have some exposure to DSA, are put into advanced batch. I managed to get qualified for advance batch, but chose to join intermediate, as I was underconfident with topics like time complexity analysis etc, which they only cover in intermediate and not in advance. I was surprised to see some people with a lot of experience and working at product companies joining Scaler. I did ask them why are they joining, then I realized that even they fear DSA as much I do, and want to brush up on system design etc. End of the day unfortunately everyone needs to prepare for interviews irrespective of your years of experience :(
Their dashboard is fairly well made, for me biggest issue always have been that I buy online courses and never finish any, in my Udemy account even now I’d have 20+ courses where I would have finished less than 10% of each. OTOH, Scaler has built strong social pressure for you to finish. You’re in a whatsapp group, where everyone is posting and discussing all day. Good gamification to keep you motivated as well, but that only works to some extent. And most importantly, the monies definitely keep you motivated to work on it :P That being said, I have friends who are super motivated and managed to slog through CLRS, and YT playlists and built strong DSA, and cracked top product companies. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep myself going myself, but while in Scaler I managed to solve problems every single day straight for six months. That did help me get confidence with DSA. Now if someone does this on leetcode, I’m sure same confidence will get built, my biggest issue was how do I keep myself motivated to keep doing it every day.
Mentor program:
This has been a hit or a miss for a lot of people I know - totally depends on the type of mentor you get and how well you get along with them. I got along with mine so I actually liked this part of the program. Mine was from Amazon who had 10 YOE. Very nice and genuine person, I’m in touch with him even now, despite my mentor sessions with Scaler are over, and even met him in person. Will even call it the highlight of my time there… But again stressing on this… I had people in my batch who were not really impressed with their mentors, because they felt that mentor was only taking mock interviews, and not giving them personalized guidance. Some changed their mentor for that reason.
TAs:
They provide a TA service, that if you’re confused about some topic, or are stuck with some problem, you can get on a call with their TAs, and get your doubts cleared. They say that its available from 10-12, but I always managed to connect with TAs even at 3am, they are mostly developers in product companies, or final year btech students who are good with DSA, and do this for a side buck. I heard however that some of them make pretty good money doing this few hours in a day. For me this was a super helpful thing, because earlier one of the primary reason to give up was getting stuck at some problem and getting demotivated.
Job Assistance:
Lets be honest, this is why most of us join these academies…the promise of a job at the end of the road. I will give you my brutally honest take… the jobs you get on Scaler, are the same job that you can apply externally also. There is no exclusivity of job like being at IITs etc, where company is only doing hiring from some specific campus. Companies when hiring they will also ask Scaler to share profiles, and they might or might not shortlist your profile. It totally depends on your resume and experience. They help build the resume, and you can take help of mentors to review it, but they don’t guarantee interviews in some specific company, you just need to apply and hope to get shortlisted. In order to be eligible for their placement support, you need to clear the mock interviews that they keep for each module. It's not very hard to clear those if you have done all classes and assignments though, their mock interviews are based on only the problems in assignments. They give 12 mock interviews and ask you to pass in minimum five module mock interviews to complete the course, and demand at least two interviews (one on dsa and one on development), to be eligible for the placements. The other are LLD, HLD and Data engineering, but those are not mandatory for placement support. Some jobs however only open up on completed LLD and HLD, like SDE2 and above. Some students in my batch were unhappy about placement being tied to clearing mock interviews, but thats kinda legit, as they won’t want companies to feel that people are not able to pass their hiring bar, and stop coming to Scaler for hiring. I personally applied to many companies, on their job platform, got interviews in about 4. I tanked my initial two interviews, mostly on system design. Eventually I had two offers, one on my own, and one from Razorpay which was through Scaler. I ended up joining Razorpay a few months back, and got almost a 200% hike (nothing too fancy, i was paid peanuts in my previous job), so net net it’s a happy ending for me.
Community:
One of the better aspects of the course acc to me…particularly the whatsapp groups of students are all very active and buzzing all the time. Good opportunity to make connections and get your doubts solved. I live in Bangalore, and they have active sports meetups for cricket etc. I made some good friends there. Its good to have a network of 20-30 people in the city working across multiple good companies, you get to know where some good opportunities are, and what they are doing. You also get a good idea about whether you are underpaid or overpaid.
Final Verdict:
Scaler Academy is not a “scam,” some people start feeling that because of pushy sales tactics of their sales team. Both the founders are really genuine and ground to earth people, almost anyone who works at that company and students will attest to that. I think they really need to curb and control their sales folks. The course content is solid if you can put in the effort, it demands a minimum 2-3 hours of work, and sometimes it gets too hectic with office work. If you conver their entire curriculum fully, you will have enough knowledge to crack SDE-2 level interviews of most product companies, but it also may not be the right fit for everyone. Particularly if you think you can’t give 2-3 hours for studies five days a week, and stick to that for 9-12 months. Be aware, though, and do thorough research before joining, its a big investment so you don’t want to jump in without thinking it through. If you think you can cover the same course material on your own without spending whatever high fee they charge, then don’t join.