My Journey to PayPal, SDE2!
#100Stories is a series of transformational stories of courage and indomitable will to excel, picked from the lives of tech students, particularly in India. Initiative by Programming Pathshala.
How it all started?
Hi, I am Ayush. A 2020 Computer Science Engineering Graduate from NIT, Agartala. Soon After my college came to an end, I had 2 offers in my hand, One from Nokia and the other from Samsung. Due to the sudden Pandemic situation, Samsung’s offer got delayed and I opted for Nokia. I worked there for 3 months and as soon as the Samsung Offer came over, I joined Samsung for the fact that they were paying higher at that time.
When I joined Samsung, I set a goal for myself that I will spend a year or two with Samsung and after that I will begin looking for better opportunities under Product based companies to get a better hike. So, I decided to take up a courses to get structured preparations and guidance so that I can prepare for interviews till 2022. Once I feel ready I can start applying for the interviews. With that goal in my head I started working with Samsung, and simultaneously I was also learning with the Renaissance course from Programming Pathshala. After becoming a part of this course my concepts got cleared, and just after I concluded the course I started applying for various companies, and even got a few more good offers in my hand.
Now that I am on my way to joining PayPal as SDE-2, I believe it is a great achievement for myself. PayPal’s SDE 2 is definitely not the same as Amazon SDE 2, bars are different for both but it still is something I am proud of.
My Resume preparation:
As I completed the course “Renaissance”, I started applying for various companies. But before doing the same, I shared my resume with Anoop. He suggested that I should change the template and also suggested that I should add and edit a few important sections in my Resume. So I incorporated those changes and modified them using Latex. After that I started looking for jobs via different portals, asked Friends for referrals, and after some time I got calls from PayPal, Amazon, and some other Product based companies.
It’s not that I applied to 10 companies and I got calls from 3, instead I applied to many companies, multiple times and then I got these few offers. I never gave up. I used to edit my resume when I would not get selected and then re-apply for the job. Eventually I made it to PayPal!
Interview Process for PayPal:
The first interview round was online based upon HackerRank questions. The difficulty level of questions was beginner to medium level. It was quite easy for a person who has done DSA.
In total 3 rounds were there and all the rounds were comparatively easy. The 1st round was coding based, and I was given 1 hour time to solve 2 problems. The 2nd round was both coding and technical round including designing. The 3rd round was technical and behavioural. All the rounds were of medium level. As for the last round, it was full of Interactions and basically included how you present yourself. As mentioned earlier, all the rounds were faster and smoother.
My Experience with Renaissance:
I had a plan to switch in 1–2 year from Samsung and for that I needed structured preparations. As I started searching for some guidance on social media, I came across millions of courses available but either they were not in my budget or the topics which they were covering weren’t enough. Fortunately, I came across Programming Pathshala on Quora and I was amazed to see some awesome reviews of Renaissance. I went through the website and checked the Curriculum and moreover the fee of the course was in my budget and not over priced.
I immediately called Anoop and enrolled for the course. This course has topics which a beginner can understand and although I wasn’t a beginner, there is no harm in revising those topics. The quality of the course is really awesome.
Here, they begin with the basics of the concept and then walk you through various problems. Mentors, Vivek and Bharat are experienced professionals and they are expert in their field of problem solving.
Vivek starts from the very basics and he will teach you everything. To solve a problem, he doesn’t directly jump to a solution instead makes you understand the problem, providing you hints. So you can take the hint, pause the video and try to implement the whole concept yourself. If you aren’t able to solve the problem you can look for more hints in the video till you reach a point where you get a solution.
Ideally it should take 6months for someone to complete the course but being a working professional, it took me 9–10 months to cover the important parts itself.
How one can prepare better?
To crack any Interview, one must be trained in a way where when they look at the problem, they shall be able to derive the solution, or at max can look at the hint and derive solutions.That is how Programming Pathshala encourages you to progress throughout the course and if you follow their path, eventually you will start gaining confidence in every topic and also each topic has a curated list of problems which are very important. By the end of this course you should have already solved more than 200 problems and you will feel more confident during the interview. Covering the entire course is more than enough for cracking any good company’s Interview.
My major focus was on completing the course or at least being through with all the Important topics in the course. Consistency surely was a factor which I could not maintain much but made sure to watch at least one video everyday and solved questions on the weekends.
A Word of Advice:
I would recommend this course to anyone who is in college, trying to prepare for their first job, or is new to this field, trying to make a transition in software development or trying to get into a really good product based company. Content of this course is really good and eventually you will be in a really good position after you complete this course. Many people think self studying is good but for me, It depends on how serious you are. For me, honestly having a trainer or mentor plays an important role in my preparation and to everyone out there, I would advise them to take up this course as well and begin their journey to their Dream Top-Tech company.
You can also start your journey with Programming Pathshala now. Logon to www.programmingpathshala.com and take a free trial.
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