How I made it to PayPal from a Tier-3 college in India?

Read the story of Ashutosh to know how he landed into PayPal — the company that revolutionised the digital payment sector. This story has been contributed by Ashutosh Amrutkar, one of our bright students who recently grabbed a software engineering position at PayPal.

About Ashutosh

I am a 2020 graduate with a BE in Information Technology from MMCOE, a Tier-3 college in the vicinity of Pune, Maharashtra. For the past 8 months, I worked as an IT trainee for a company FIS global and recently joined PayPal as a Software Engineer. This is like a dream come true but how did it happen?

How did it all start?

I did not have much idea about Competitive Coding, Data structures & Algorithms and Product-based companies until I came to know about a Free Workshop on Dynamic Programming by Vivekanand Vivek Sir from Programming Pathshala. I was always afraid of this topic and had heard about it a lot, so I registered for the workshop.

After attending the workshop, I was amazed by the teaching skills of Vivek sir and joined a 10 days program with Programming Pathshala. It kindled the fire in me to learn more and embarked on a new journey to dive deep into Problem-Solving and be an excellent Software Engineer.

Interview preparation with Programming Pathshala

In February 2020, Programming Pathshala announced their first of its kind, a 6-months placement preparation program for cracking product-based companies.

I enrolled in the program without second thoughts as I already had an excellent learning experience with them. It was very well-structured with weekend live classes, combined with weekly problem sets for homework. These problems were hand-picked for all the topics and covered all of their possible variations.

Throughout the course, live classes were taken by either Bharat and Vivek Sir and they actually emphasised on building the intuition to Problem Solving rather than mugging up some concepts or a few important problems. We solved around 600–650 problems on the course and honestly speaking, if you practice these problems, there will be hardly any questions in the interview which will be out of course. The way of teaching at these classes was such that I could even apply the taught concepts to new problems and build an approach.

In the course, We also had in-depth modules on System Design and Low Level design, taught by Deepak Gupta Sir. He is a very seasoned and passionate engineer who has worked in Google, Amazon, Rubrik and loves conducting discussions in his classes. I used to ask him a lot of questions — how systems scale, how the backend of Amazon works, how these systems handle huge traffic etc. and he used to help me find answers to all of my doubts while making me think throughout the process.

My Peer Group Advantage

I made so many new friends here. We also had a wonderful peer group, with Shaswat, Srikanth, Ekesh and Shubhashish, we used to discuss so many approaches to a single problem which proved to be extremely helpful during the interviews. Together we also worked on projects for interviews, we also built a peer group portal during our project as part of the program. Later, Shashwat and Srikanth joined Amazon, Ekesh joined Spinny and Shubhashish joined NAS Academy Singapore.

Our peer group helped us in maintaining the much-required consistency for coding interview preparations. Our mentors used to ask us to explain the given problems to our peer group. Even during the interview, it is not only about solving a problem but explaining it well to the interviewer, considering all the optimisations and corner cases. I also practised a lot of mock interviews with Manish from my batch here, who came from mechanical engineering and joined HealthifyMe as a Software Developer.

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My coding interview experience at PayPal

Placements at Programming Pathshala commenced in January 2021. I got referrals for several companies but I was rejected by most of them. I was at a point where I could not figure out what was going wrong and where I was lacking. To resolve this, Programming Pathshala scheduled a series of mock interview rounds to help me figure out my mistakes and improve them.

During this time, I had applied for PayPal and I received a test link after a month. It had two medium level questions on data structures and algorithms and I was able to solve both of them in the given time. I didn’t receive any response after the test and during this time, I got infected with COVID-19. My studies got badly affected, though I tried my best to keep up with revision and mock interviews. A week after recovering from Covid, I received a call for Interviews.

There were three interview rounds- the first round was mostly based on data structures & algorithms and after that, there was a round on low-level design, system design and CS fundamentals. I was able to answer most of the questions and was confident about the interview.

On the same day, I had the third round in which they asked behavioural questions to know why I wanted to become a software engineer and join PayPal, for which I answered genuinely with confidence.

My Support System at Programming Pathshala

There was constant support from my mentors at Programming Pathshala, Vivek and Bharat Sir were really accessible directly and I used to ask them a lot of questions and they used to answer all of my doubts.

Anoop Sir has been a source of inspiration and positivity and helped me bust my stress through innumerable failures throughout the long journey. After being diagnosed with COVID-19, I got a call from him to ask me about my well-being and he asked me to take a rest for a few weeks instead of giving mock Interviews, but I said that I will be ready in a week and he wrote a post for me on LinkedIn, appreciating the grit and dedication- what could pump me better?

With the classes, Vivek and Bharat Sir raised the bar so high for me. I was amazed to see the way they teach and the amount of devotion and dedication they put into their classes, each day.

I used to push myself by questioning that if they can put this much effort then why can’t I?

My preparation strategy and tips for software aspirants

There is no replacement for hard work and consistency. You have to put in extra hours. I rigorously followed the course curriculum as I already started late and there would always be many more skilled people than me — in the queue.

At the end of the day, it is about learning. I will not recommend preparing only for the sake of the job but also try to kindle your interest. If you are learning concepts with interest, you will definitely get a good job.

Keep learning, and remember that you learn a lot from failures.

This was the story of Ashutosh, who was new to programming with almost zero prior experience of data structures and algorithms. But he unlocked the door of his dreams with his constant determination and hard work.

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