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“I can say that I’ve doubled my salary after joining Microverse and that really has a significant impact on my life... I have wanted to become a developer ever since graduating in 2016, and I’m grateful to Microverse for helping me to achieve my dream.” - Abhigyan Mahanta, Microvese alum, India
Microverse students work incredibly hard to become professional software developers and change their lives. Microverse student have landed jobs around the world, earning 3x more than what they made before — without paying Microverse anything until they’re employed.
Microverse success story, Abhigyan Mahanta, currently based in Guwahati, is currently working as a remote software developer for a New York-based company. Abhigyan shared his story and experience learning with Microverse, and landing his remote job.
“I graduated as a Civil Engineer in 2016 then worked as a Manual Test Engineer at Pole To Win in Bangalore. However, I wanted to escape the cubicle life, so I made the decision to go fully remote in 2019. I then worked as a freelance Frontend Developer for 1.5 years before deciding to join Microverse. Now, I work as a remote junior full-stack developer at Catprint. When I'm not coding, I spend my time working on my tech blog and playing VR simulation games.”
“Learning to collaborate with fellow developers and pair-programming. This helped enormously with my current job.”
Abhigyan also shared that learning to create descriptive pull requests, and practicing presenting the work he did over video calls were two other key areas that Microverse helped him improve.
“Although I had developed my communication/soft skills in previous jobs, I think it differs to some degree when applying them to remote working cultures.”
Soft skills are a critical part of being a software developer, which is why they are an important part of the Microverse curriculum. “I learned a lot from the soft skills curriculum, which also helped me create stellar profiles on LinkedIn, Github, Twitter, and AngelList,” he further shared.
Job searching is a full-time job, and Abhigyan dove in headfirst. “I applied to around 200+ jobs in the three months after I completed the program and got invited to 8 interviews.”
He also noted, “I have to admit this was the most challenging of all. Waking up to rejection emails is not really a good feeling. My career coach, Crystal, and my other teammates kept me motivated. It helped that others had experienced a similar journey and ended up getting a job.”
Abhigyan shared that he spent a few weeks applying for jobs before realizing that LinkedIn and AngelList weren’t that helpful for his personal job search journey. Everyone's job search varies, but he had better luck with Remote.co and WeWorkRemotely.com.
He also shared a job search tip that worked well for him, “One of the ways which I got invites was by searching ‘Top 100 web development agencies in the US and UK’. Then, I applied to each company for the positions I was interested in, and sent a message to the company’s HR on LinkedIn.”
Abhigyan noted that although he was looking for a remote job, some companies he came across were only interested in local developers. “I think my location had an impact when it came to my job search. As I’m from India, no companies I came across in the UK were even interested in an interview because I’m not a UK resident.” Nevertheless, Abhigyan persisted and landed a job after 11 weeks of job searching as a remote software developer for a US-based company.
“I can say that I’ve doubled my salary after joining Microverse and that really has a significant impact on my life.” Abhigyan shared that before Microverse, he was chasing clients while freelancing as a front-end developer.
“But now, the security of a regular pay check during these times is everything that I need. I have wanted to become a developer ever since graduating in 2016, and I’m grateful to Microverse for helping me to achieve my dream.”
He added that he’s currently working during his night since he’s working with a team based in the US. Despite that, he hasn’t found the workload to be too much and has enough time in his day to still work on his blog as well as, spend time with his family.
Abhigyan landed a remote role as Junior Full-stack Developer at Catprint, a US printing company. “I’m currently working on adding new features to their website. They use Hyperstack, which is a Ruby DSL compiled by Opal, bundled by Webpack, and it uses React for the front-end.”
At the time of sharing this, he had just completed 5 weeks with Catprint, so was still in the learning stage. “My typical day consists of asking questions mostly to my seniors, making code changes, and pushing the branch that they verify. Sometimes they point me towards the correct documentation for Hyperstack and I have to figure out the errors I’m getting on the console. When I get stuck, they offer me hints and suggest ways to improve my code.”
“Overall, I’m learning a lot at my new job and I’m happy that I have a friendly team of developers to work with.”
“One thing I can truly say is that you can never be prepared enough for the technical round interviews. So, you need to get rid of the feeling that it’s not the right time to apply for jobs.” He added, “Working on mock tutorials and coding challenges will give you the confidence to work out the problems in technical rounds.”
Abhigyan also shared that while behavioral interviews were easy for him, that’s not the case for everyone, so you should be present daily and interact with your stand-up team to prepare for them.
“Just keep applying and don't give up. The first job is hard to get. After that, it will be easier. As soon as I updated my position on LinkedIn, HRs started contacting me with proposals. Before, it was the other way round. So, work hard on getting your first job and have faith in the Microverse program because it works.”
His final words of motivation were this, “I got a Full-stack job without a degree in Computer Science and without industry experience as a developer. If I can do it, you can too.”
Want to become a software developer? Get started below today!
Ariel is the founder & CEO of Microverse, an online school for software engineers. Read more about Microverse and how it can help you.
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