Hello folks, My name is Anshuman and I am the co-founder of Scaler Academy and InterviewBit. I am a competitive coder myself, since 2006, been a part of Codeforces since 2009, when Beta rounds were happening. Been to ACM ICPC World Finals twice. Ex-Facebook where I was one of tech leads on the messages and messenger team.
I believe every company/program gets criticism and it should only be taken constructively. While most of the blogs here on Scaler Academy have been very far from truth, I never came to respond here because it’s hard to reason with anonymous fake accounts.
However, the past few days, these folks have started harassing and abusing current Scaler Academy students and mentors. They created a phishing website clone of ours to steal student credentials. They have bullied anyone who has tried to express their opinion if it was positive towards scaler. That, in my dictionary, is online bullying and very unethical. Attaching images of students and mentors who have come forward:
Students on Scaler have however focussed on positivity and I am really proud of that fact. https://i.imgur.com/2AtKGUX.png https://i.imgur.com/i38IANd.png
To everyone who is a neutral party here, I want to do an AMA to answer all questions you have. Hear the other side of the story. That being said, I will only respond to accounts that don’t appear to be trolls. For those of you who claim that they post anonymously, as they fear action against them, tell me one instance of action being taken. Striver has been speaking very openly against us. Ask him if he ever got a negative message from our end.
Background: Scaler Academy is a 6-9 month India-centric online tech accelerator program built out as a parallel university. Our first batch of students from April 2019 has graduated and a lot of them have benefitted from the course and had great outcomes (**2.2x bump in their previous and new salaries**__). Detailed report at https://www.scaler.com/blog/scaler-academy-first-batch-outcome/. [ This includes 3 selections at Google, 24 at Amazon with 4 students as interns, 12 at Samsung].
For those questioning referrals, while I still maintain that learning is super important and no one should join Academy for referrals alone, following are referral stats for April batch alone (April batch had 180 odd students):
- 35 referrals to Google post mock interviews.
- 101 referrals to Amazon for dev roles.
- 42 referrals to Directi group of companies
- 98 referrals to DE Shaw (Direct messages with DE Shaw recruiters)
- 10 referrals to a major investment bank listed on the website [Can't name here for legal reasons]
- 20 referrals to Codenation and no they weren’t sending them links of the test. This was pre-test, directly to interviews.
In addition to this, >250 referrals to premium startups in India including but not limited to CureFit, Udaan, Mindtickle, Razorpay, Dream11, etc. For those interested, please drop by our office in Bengaluru and we can confirm each number one by one to you. The only reason we haven’t posted these stats before is that we don’t want to be perceived as a referral course.
For those of you who believe any student was duped, following are real facts:
- Everyone was given one week of free trial classes before even asking to sign the ISA.
- Following are screenshots of polls which were sent to each student along with correct answers for the poll:
(We actually correct the answers if you choose the wrong answer). - Following is what their agreement stated:
and was made very clear in week Everyone had the option to pay 1.5L upfront.
The course has 3 payment options [ 1.5L (2000$ prepaid) / 3L (4000$ prepaid with guaranteed return if job outcomes are not met) / 15% of salary for 2 years else. The real cost of the course if 1L (1500$)+. There are high paid teachers (full time, not paid per hour), TAs, personal mentors, student success managers, career coaches, curriculum creators, tech platforms, tech teams, support teams, etc. Come to our office and check our books if you really need to see the breakdown. For those who are interested in learning, everyone is connected on Flock, and we welcome everyone to come and ask doubts and learn. The postpaid option is only a way for students who can’t afford education to take the course. Most edtech businesses charge money upfront, don’t they? I was not rich by any standards as a student and would never have been able to afford any prepaid course.
People who don’t attend classes and solve assignments are not referred. Suppose 2 students are studying our course, and 1 is fully dedicated, solving everything and being at top of the leaderboard, even if the other is a great person somewhere else, for us, who deserves better? And how can we ensure authenticity over other platforms? You can’t go to a university and say I will never attend your classes, but want to be a part of your placement season only. We don’t consider the course to be a referral course, and I’d advise every future student to come to Scaler to learn and build capabilities. If you already know everything, great. The course is not for you.
Open to take any questions here. All previous blogs are mostly either factually incorrect or have hidden facts knowingly.
If you really want to know about Scaler Academy, find a student on LinkedIn and message them. I am taking questions for the next 48 hours. Happy to answer any questions here. Some of the April students here: ankitp544,vivek0509, swapnil159, priyatam_sai, rushitjasani, Naman_Bhalla, cenation092
Posting the remaining images on this comment.
Will later convert this comment to FAQs of questions already asked.
Every sensible question asked here is getting around 10 downvotes in 2 mins. Your post after 5 minutes of being posted got +20 upvotes, and now stands at negative. Every of you colleague has upvotes, baring others who are asking, meant to be a AMA, isn't it? Please don't do this over here at Codeforces, I know you have a team of 200 people, everyone can make a fake account, let the people ask, and kindly not use downvote, does not makes sense if it's an AMA.
UPD: Thanks to Codeforces for taking this blog off from the recent blog, their ways of having their entire team does not makes any sense.
Thanks Anshuman for posting your blog and coming forward to clarify people openly. I had yesterday tried to clarify our side of the story as well but seemed to get downvoted by accounts that seemed to be created just to downvote (maybe fake accounts). I am also here to help educate the neutral party of the truth. Kindly hear both sides and then form your opinion.
Charge iff the student gets a job by your referrals, is it too much to ask
Or even better get a list of companies by the student while you are enrolling them stating if you get a job (irrespective of the student accepting the offer or not) at these companies then and then only you pay us (Whatever % your agreement states)
You can decide if you wish to enrol the student or not else everyone might enrol just stating Google in the wishlist (Decide companies by the test you people are taking already during entrance).
9/10 students enrol for referrals and not actually learning what you people are teaching so charging them for jobs which they secure from other sources is just stupid.
If you actually "Do what you do, why you do" these changes should be fine
Thanks for asking and I respect you coming forward to ask the question. If we were running a referral business, this would totally make sense. Why charge for a referral, when the other person does not benefit from it.
However, we are not a referral business. We are in fact an educational skilling institute. The only reason we have postpaid model for education is because a lot of students come from backgrounds where they can't afford quality education.
Let me elaborate a story. There is another person from April batch whose parents sell vegetables. His parent could only afford education for one of their sons and he was the lucky one. One of the most grateful persons I have ever met. His university unfortunately did not have the right infra for the right education (True with most universities around us today). He came here for learning more. He could not have afforded us even if we would have charged 1000 Rs (20$).
Today he is in a double digit lakh salary and his employers are super happy with him. His name is Saurav and he works with Cyware today. Go talk to him once.
I also invite other students to tell their opinion here. Naman_Bhalla
Maybe my comment wasn't clear.
I am not against the postpaid model, I am against the students being charged for companies you didn't help them secure.
Run a survey and ask for honest opinion why students join your institute, is it for referral or for "educational skilling", you'll get your answer,I never saw you advertising your course content, all I saw was stats showing how many students got placed at FANG
I respect Scaler for few things, Postpaid model being one of them :)
Edit 1: You getting 12 upvotes in 3 minutes and my +8 becoming 0 all of a sudden do ring some bells
I am sorry if my reply earlier wasn't clear. I will try again. When you say "students being charged for companies you didn't help them secure" — there are 2 reasons why you might say this.
Reason 1: We did not refer the person to the place where the person has a job from now. Learning and referrals are separate. Jobs is an outcome of capability. When you find a job off campus, you don't ask university for refund because they did not refer you to the job you have. You shouldn't pay anyone just for referrals. Learning stays. If you are capable, companies will find you. I have never met people who are super capable and are not with a great job. Capability = hard skills + soft skills + attitude.
Reason 2: We did not teach them anything relevant. If (2) is where any student is disgruntled, then I agree. If you know of anyone who believes they did not learn anything here and got placed, please connect.
As for the upvotes, full disclosure. I did send a message to 5 of the students to come and ask question and point out if we are doing anything wrong. Happy to be corrected.
If you are so proud that your "content" is helping students and hence they should pay you if they get placed after your course irrespective of you not helping with referrals,stop advertising your placement records, start advertising your content, see 444iq's comment here and you'll realise majority of the students join for referrals and that's what tier 3 students are lacking,
we don't directly get opportunity to interview at FANG, if someone asks me to join a course which "Prepares me for future job and gets me a referral for Google", we both know why i'll join :)
I am sorry for mentioning about upvotes, we'll get back to that later
Thanks for the questions again. We post about placements because the outcomes show how good the content was. IIT Bombay would talk about where their students go and work. I am proud of all of the achievers from Scaler Academy. When I grow old, I'd like to tell stories of how people that I taught are now working at CEOs, CTOs of great places changing more and more lives. But rest assured, I can't tell any of those stories if I am running a referral only business.
Quoting a line from my original post: " I’d advise every future student to come to Scaler to learn and build capabilities. If you already know everything, great. The course is not for you.".
When I joined last year, still the complete curriculum was listed there. I joined because I knew I didn't know a lot of it and a lot of System Design as well, which I frankly, love! If putting company images is an advertisement of referrals, putting the course content on homepage is the advertisement of course content right?
One other thing that I think Tier 3 students lack is exposure. If you are in a college with great coding environment, education, you have a better idea of how many people know a lot more than you. The environment is not much competitive in many Tier 3 colleges. So we tend to think we are great, while we might not actually be.
I used to think the same way as you about Tier 3 colleges. So totally understand why that thought is coming and can relate to that. Once you have knowledge, I can say no one needs Scaler just for referral. Just show your credentials to someone on LinkedIn and they will be happy to help.
I don't want to be involved in any argument. I am only putting my views and totally understand that the conflict of point is due to having a misunderstanding of the correct outcome of the course. Will be keeping a watch to see how discussion evolves. :)
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While this profile doesn't look genuine, I will still take this up and reply.
Only referrals won't work logically. If we make someone capable through training, and if the person gets a job outside of our referral, its natural choice for everyone to not take any referrals thorough us, and apply on his/her own. Contrary to popular believe, it's harder to clear the hiring bar of the companies as compared to getting an interview. This way, the initiative can't survive. The clause that they are supposed to pay the course fee irrespective of source of referral, has been clearly mentioned in the agreement and explained to everyone who signed up for the course.
As you would see in my earlier screenshots, we did not say join for referrals. This is a screenshot of the poll we rolled out to EVERYONE. I also shared a screenshot of the agreement which was purposefully kept short and simple for everyone to understand.
That account was registered 8 months ago, looks more genuine than scaler
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Even now is not too late. Focus on the right things (Building skills and capabilities). If you have done that and focus on positivities in life, I can assure you that you will succeed. Please do call me in a year from now and let's discuss where you land up. Gratefulness and Positivity are very undervalued soft skill assets :-)
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I think you are really missing the point people are trying to make. Noone is against you having a postpaid plan. But when you charge 4.5 lacs for something, it comes off less as a way to help the people of poorer backgrounds but more as a way to take advantage of them. Maybe having a cap(I heard earlier there was a cap of 3 lacs which was removed? even 3 lacs seems alot imo) can help. I understand the costs you incur and you have multiple plans to choose from, but you have to realise that people who are from a poorer background, who btw are the people intended to benefit from such an arrangement, will try and take the postpaid plan to avoid paying for as long as they can. To charge such an exorbitant amount from such kids is what really bothered people in the first place, Noone is against your postpaid plan as a concept, in fact I believe that is one of the USPs of scaler.
In fact, you trying to justify charging 4.5 lacs instead of taking it in your stride and accepting that yea, maybe you missed this corner case and should have not charged this much is what is really turning people against you.
With regards to people not getting referrals to top tier companies, I wouldnt worry about it much, There will always be people on both the ends of the spectrum, some are going to be satisfied and some dissatisfied with the company they get placed at. Besides,as you mentioned, it is not a referral course so that criticism is not something i feel you should give much thought to.
Great of you to come here and clarify your side of the story. It helps people like us get to know both the sides of the coin. Cheers!
Thanks for the question gur_chella. Very reasonable.
I'd like to point out a few facts here:
Let me know if this makes sense.
Yea I read about your 3 payment options and it makes sense to me. But I am just trying to point out that the number 4.5L is what really irked people in the first place. My 4 years of undergrad cost only marginally more than that. Maybe if you could fix that and try and have an upper limit, people wouldn't care so much.
Other than that, there is no denying that your platform helps students of tier 2 and 3 colleges, something that is really needed. I do feel your platform serves a wonderful purpose, but the sky rocket fees equivalent to a professional 4 year degree course is something that if looked into can not only solve this problem you are facing today, but enable more people to join your platform.
Hey, this is Abhimanyu here, I'm other co-founder of Scaler Academy. I've never been an active competitive programmer hence a young profile on CF. I enjoyed development and web technologies more since college days and collaborated with Anshuman to build startups since 2007.
One small correction to make here, the mention of 4.5 lakhs in the blog is factually incorrect and misleading. Only someone who earns 1.25 per month in hand pays 18,750k out of that, still left with 106,250INR per month. Someone who earns 60,000 a month would only be paying 9000 a month(total 216,000 in 2 years), left with 51,000 a month, that to iff his min CTC was less than this if it was not s/he pays ZERO. Isn't it logical to keep less burden on someone who is earning less? Isn't this how socialistic governments across the world design the taxation system as well? Is it not better than 28,000 INR a month with a job at a service company? if someone earns a rupee less then min CTC s/he doesn't pay ANYTHING, however, we bear the expense of 100,000+ INR on that student. Where should that money be adjusted?
If you know India spends just 4.6% of GDP on education(China spends 15% of their massive GDP), expecting that govt will support this is futile, this is the best structure we could come up with to ensure a sustainable high-quality educational initiative which is open and accessible to everyone. Happy to brainstorm and come up with better structures that are "sustainable" while ensuring that it absorbs the money invested of people who couldn't secure a well-paying job for any reason including but not limited to recessions, bad health, bad luck, etc. We took the help of statisticians and actuaries to build this model along with inspiration from other models across the world. Of course, we will keep evolving, but few trolls/fake accounts without logic spreading misinformation are definitely not interested in collaborative improvement.
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Sorry for that. I'd never come and discuss this at a forum meant for knowledge discussion. I was forced because of the online harassment our students have been facing. Some screenshots attached above.
You are such a fruad company shame on you, do you even feel little bit of shame by fruading 20 yr old who came to you with big dreams in head only to see that they have been trapped.
Instead of maligning people who are actually trying to make it better for others out there, focus on building your skills! That is a better use of your time. Try to engage with them with your issues, that will not only help you but will also help others. Putting silly comments on a social networking site will not get anything.
Creating fake ids to reply on comments here is surely a "better use of time".
Look who is talking!
Yes, this is a fake id and No, i didn't create it to comment on the blog(registered 7 months ago if you can see) unlike you and also I didn't give anyone advice on how to utilise time better.
If you are blaming them for fake ids, that means that your id is a real one. Considering that your account is created 111 minutes ago, there is a huge coincidence that you dropped yourself into a blog which was not even in the recent actions list/ top because of so many downvotes. pjsugu5810142 Brother you have no idea who vivekr_nirma and BabuRao are. You will be shocked to see their main ids. So don't just say that they are putting silly comments on Codeforces which according to you is a social networking site XD.
Why not stop the referral system completely? Why not just be a teaching institute?
I mean surely you would know that referrals are quite easy to obtain (use LinkedIn wisely), if you can demonstrate you have the skills.
This is from one of the "Student Stories" advertised on https://www.scaler.com/ : "I heard about Scaler Academy (IB Academy): learn new skills, pay nothing upfront and get referred to the dream companies!"
I mean if you advertise something like that, then fail to live upto your promise, then justly or unjustly, it's going to rain criticism on you guys.
Thanks, Swapnil for the question. We absolutely can. Referrals is a good to have. Just like placement seasons in your college. We do have placement seasons. Some companies visit. And people get placed as well if you refer to the stats shared above.
My message might have been misunderstood. My message is that if you only run for referrals and de-prioritize learning, don't attend classes or do assignments, and then come ask for referrals, then that's completely wrong. The program in no communication mentions itself as a referral only program. We do advertise success stories of our student, but we never state that we referred them (Although In almost all of those cases, we do). Reason: Because it fuels the assumption that job = referral. No, job = capability. Scaler or not, we should help people understand that.
We used to have this interviewing question at FB where we would ask people to rate themselves in their favorite programming language. People answering 9 or 10 out of 10 were usually rejected as they exhibited the behavior of know it all. That dangerous to a person's growth.
Scaler or not, would need your help in spreading the message that let's not run after referrals. Most students are already doing that. Differentiate yourself by how capable you are.
Majority of the students in Academy do not resonate with the folks who posted in earlier blogs. Vendetta campaign as I stated earlier. Happy connecting you to genuine folks who can talk to you about their experience in Scaler Academy.
That's quite an oversimplification, isn't it? Colleges don't prevent their students from participating in the placement season, based on CGPA or performance (unless they have failed too many courses and wouldn't be able to graduate the following year — this is reasonable).
You guys don't refer if somebody does not participate in your classes, as you said.
I couldn't care less about Scaler Academy. But from the previous blogs (what you call vendetta campaign), your team does not do a good enough job at setting a fixed criterion for referral, and updating your students regularly about if they meet that criterion or not.
Once again, your advertising is too misleading, and even if the contract states that you guys are legally correct, doesn't mean that deceptive advertising is a good idea. You need to do a much, much better job at communicating that referrals are not gauranteed.
Oh colleges absolutely do. If you don't attend classrooms, you fail. Simple enough. People who have failed are not allowed to sit in campus placements. None of the colleges advertise this. If you study, you learn. You learn, then you become capable of finding the best job.
"your team does not do a good enough job at setting a fixed criterion for referral"- This is not correct. High adherence is communicated right at the beginning. As I said, talk to real Scaler students and try to understand this better. Or trust platforms where people post with identity. Please do not form opinion by what you have read by a handful of fake accounts.
"what you call vendetta campaign" — There is a reason I call that. Anyone, who wants to share feedback does not harass fellow students or mentors.
If we really had things to hide, I won't be here taking questions. The only reason I am here is to be super transparent about what has transpired. This is with the hope that this community has heard our side of the story. Rest, it's for you to decide.
I think I would know how colleges work, since I am enrolled in college right now. The point is, the placement drive in college is just an additional service. You are paying for the tuition to get the college degree.
You do realize the bar for passing courses in college is quite low? And by the way, you can skip classes without any major consequences in BITS Pilani.
All I am saying is that there is a fundamental difference here. The primary objective of the college is to provide you a degree. The degree has certain requirements, which the college enforces. But if you satisfy the minimum requirements for a degree, the college won't discriminate between you and other candidates w.r.t. placement opportunities. This happens because your placement offer is dependent on you obtaining the degree.
All I am saying is, it is your team's duty to appropriately and regularly warn your students about insufficient participation for referrals. If you don't do so, I consider it very unethical behavior.
Overall, I consider any type of academy for interview topics (for which very high quality free material is available), to be of dubious intentions, and it is sad that a person of your calibre has no better job than to teach students how to clear interviews.
"However, we are not a referral business. We are in fact an educational skilling institute"
Tell that to your publicity team
Hi Sir,
I have one question. This is just a very general question. If we can learn everything on our own, and if tier 3 college students can get into great companies and startups without requiring such courses, then why to get into paid courses.
There is a lot of free quality content by one of the best competitive programmers.
You also would have done CP without taking any courses. I know you were from one of the best colleges in India and must have had one the best CPers as friends. But there are many more examples like Utkarsh who are from tier 2/3 colleges.
Absolutely agree. There are people who choose to take paid courses for various reasons including but not limited to, accelerated learning, better guidance, inspiration, access to community.
Copy pasting my earlier comment: "We don’t consider the course to be a referral course, and I’d advise every future student to come to Scaler to learn and build capabilities. If you already know everything, great. The course is not for you."
Respected Sir, I appreciate that you yourself came here to address the concern of the students.
I also have a few queries related to the academy and I'll be happy if you can help me with these.
1) The content provided by you is great and I have improved my self a lot from this. But still, I have a few questions related to referrals. I have been receiving messages like "Since your batch is about to end in the next month we, at IB Academy, are planning multiple referrals and interview events for you" and many other similar messages very frequently from the academy. Also on your website, it's clearly mentioned that " Once you're job-ready, we start referring you to the top tech companies.". So can you please make it clear for every one of us.
2). Recently for the April batch, you gave students an option to increase their ISA for 6 months because of the recession. But since the course is already completed and the recession does not have any impact on teaching, and the scaler is not to provide referrals then what is the meaning of extending the contract.
P.S.: I have PSP above 70 and I haven't received a referral from any of the above companies. I am a 2nd batch student.
Thanks for being so respectful, Jass.
There was never any such official communication from our end. We instead did a class called "COVID19 And Scaler" a few weeks before the job slowdown happened. We assured everybody that we are with them in difficult times, and will help with connection to the best of our capacity. We even gave students the option to extend by 6 months. This was not to promote referrals, but to assure everyone that we as community support.
The reason of extension was this itself. People have their offers being revoked. The messaging is super simple. The course is done. You extend if you need support.
If you are actually a student, reach out to us.
I have copy-pasted the lines that I have bold above from the messages that I received from your Success Managers only. And I am sure most of the students have received such messages.
``And if I was not the scaler students, I wouldn't be commenting here.
Please come talk to us if you actually are.
Every on-boarding was about referral to top tech companies sir. I have some questions for you since it is a AMA. I hope you answer.
A total of tons of student, as figured by you on Linkedin. They can come down with their real accounts and leave a comment here. Why are they not doing? people always support the good. Don't they?
One of my friends received a SDE interview call at DE-SHAW, and reads in my college. Why was I not considered for that role?(I can share the ss of mail if you want me to) are these not simple business trick that sdet roles will be easier to crack, and hence you will be getting us to pay?
Every single advertisement Scaler made till date, was on referrals. Why did you start speaking on for education suddenly after I shared my video on YouTube, after a barrage of blogs started coming? If this was so eccentric on Education, it could have been done right from the start.
Tons of students, a referral stats of how many referrals was provided per student above their min slab will really help the community to understand it better. Thanks.
"Once you're job-ready, we start referring you to the top tech companies", I had a psp in range of 60-75. Left doing it, because I was not referred. I might not be as talented as you, but on what criteria did you decide I was not job ready, despite me approaching to have a mock-interview. I ended up landing up offers from Media.net and Amazon, this clearly nullifies that I was not job ready. Can you please give me an answer why was I not referred? Please don't mention I didn't attend the classes, because the SSM said, if I get my PSP up to 70, it will start, so did Sourabh Saxena sir. I have the messages with me.
I appreciate your post-paid plan for people like us who cannot pay upfront. But does it not makes sense to charge interest on it, rather than taking up different amount from different students, given that they did the same course, assuming they took the same referrals too. Why not keep it something based on interest rate? Consider my case, if I was enrolled according to your current condition, I will end up paying 5 lacs. 5 lacs for learning? It does not matter how much I earn as Abhimanyu sir pointed above, what matters is for what you are paying, that cannot be discriminated from a student to another student, just because he was lucky or more talented to get a better job.
I do appreciate you have not said any bad thing directly to me, but I wanted to keep my point of view. I really appreciate this part sir, that the Scaler course is now advertised on "LEARNING". It will be really great if this goes on, the marketing team should market it on the basis of course, hence it will make it easier for people to decide. It will be a straight forward roll of dice than, whether to join the course for learning or not. Really happy that Scaler is talking about "education" after all the outrage.
Update: Regarding the extension of the course, if you want to help students, I think you should not charge them if they get a job during the extension, looks really unethical that you are charging them in that extra 6 months when the course is indeed over. Community support never takes money when the contract ends.
"Every on-boarding was about referral to top tech companies sir." — I disagree. The onboardings very clearly mentioned that it's going to be a lot of hard work studying. I have hence posted 2 screenshots above which are proofs of what I say.
We have never asked the students to do so, as this is a complete distraction for all of them. I'd rather they focus all their energy on upskilling. The point which got me here is that a group of miscreants have started harassing our students and that is not okay.
Had you attended more classroom, then you would definitely have been considered. Given a choice, we would have to give preference to people who are attending classes and have better scores. We don't know where you stand if you don't participate in our sessions. As I said before, you can't go to a college and say I am not interested in attending your classroom, but I should have all the access to all of companies coming during placements.
Please pull up the said advertisements and show it to me. Maybe I am ignorant. It is both learning and referrals.
If you read the above article, the numbers are right there.
I will copy paste again. You might be a genius, good for you. All the best for your career. "Had you attended more classroom, then you would definitely have been considered. Given a choice, we would have to give preference to people who are attending classes and have better scores. We don't know where you stand if you don't participate in our sessions. As I said before, you can't go to a college and say I am not interested in attending your classroom, but I should have all the access to all of companies coming during placements."
1.5L in prepaid does not get refunded. It covers for cost of the course. In the post paid model, we do not charge everyone. Only people who are placed above X. I have posted a detailed response at https://codeforces.net/blog/entry/76439?#comment-609241
"the scaler team has been blaming me for the outrage" — This is completely false. Could you please pull up one communication anywhere where this was communicated (Even verbally or implicitly). Our communication has been that there are some miscreants trying to misguide everyone. I am not sure why you assume that's you.
I am also appreciative of the fact that we are having a civilized conversation here instead of downvoting things unnecessarily. Both sides of the stories should be heard, right?
"group of miscreants" someone sharing their experience cannot be termed that, I think you should take your words back.
We have never asked the students to do so, you don't need to ask, people appreciate good thing on their own. It has not been happening with Scaler.
Had you attended more classroom, then you would definitely have been considered. , did-not find this mentioned in the ISA, you did mention it for the October batch(this statement is for them not for the first three batches), not for the first three batches, whom to blame?
Please pull up the said advertisements and show it to me, the world has seen it, get to your youtube channel, linkedin live, it is all over it, once the course is over, we start referring. I am not arrogant, I am putting forward facts which are correct.
If you read the above article, the numbers are right there., referral per student above min ctc, was my question, I think you misread it.
preference to people who are attending classes and have better scores, this should had been mentioned in the clause, did not find it anywhere, even in our colleges it is mentioned you need to have 70% attendance. You have it in the October batch, not for APril, May and June, I will also copy paste my above answer,** whom to blame?**
In the post paid model, we do not charge everyone, Charge equally to everyone who gets places, why differentiate? If you are so sure your education program is so brilliant, I think you should not worry about people not getting place, do you?
I am also appreciative of the fact that we are having a civilized conversation here instead of downvoting things unnecessarily, saw 25 upvotes to the post withing 5 minutes of it getting posted, every comment of yours is getting upvoted numerous times in 3/4 minutes. Every comment of a student who asks a question, gets multiple devote in the first 5 minutes, With all due respect sir, I think we should be saying this.
"group of miscreants" : Not sure why you want to associate yourself here. I was referring to people harassing other students and downvoting any content they don't see in their favor.
"We have never asked the students to do so": No they don't when there is a vendetta campaign going on where people are attacking each other. All civilised discussions (like the ones on LinkedIn) have participation from students and mentors alike.
"Had you attended more classroom, then you would definitely have been considered." — It need not be. Online classrooms are meant for learning. Given a choice, I will always prefer to refer students studying in the class. You know everything, great! You don't need us.
"Please pull up the said advertisements and show it to me" — I repeat again. None of the ads/messaging has only been around referrals. There are success stories where we show how someone succeeded after studying here. There is never a mention of referrals happening through us. They very well might have learnt here and then gotten referrals elsewhere.
"If you read the above article, the numbers are right there." — Easily derivable, right? Referrals are knowingly done to places paying above min CTC (unless based on interview performance, company pays lower. This could happen with a company with undefined salary bands). Just adding the numbers there might give you a prelim number to arrive at.
"preference to people who are attending classes and have better scores" — You might be a know it all. How am I to know? I will again copy paste my answer from above. "As I said before, you can't go to a college and say I am not interested in attending your classroom, but I should have all the access to all of companies coming during placements."
"In the post paid model, we do not charge everyone": Because there will always be people who don't attend classes or try to cheat during assignments. No matter how you teach. No matter how much attention you give to them.
"saw 25 upvotes to the post withing 5 minutes of it getting posted, every comment of yours is getting upvoted 15-20 times in 3/4 minutes. Every comment of a student who asks a question, gets multiple devote in the first 5 minutes, With all due respect sir, I think we should be saying this." — I could say the opposite for my earlier comments being downvoted. Don't mud-sling :-)
"Had you attended more classroom, then you would definitely have been considered", sad that there are people who did it and were still not considered, I am happy I did not waste my time unnecessarily. Or else you would have been ready with some other reason as always. The point lies, we students have constantly agreed on not attending classes, because that was not in the clause.
Sir, just a small feedback, learn to accept the mistakes that you did 1 year back, accepting the thing will never make you down, indeed it will help Scaler grow. You cannot keep on putting reasons at every comment, and contradict them on self.
Sir, I don't agree with you for the 2nd point. I have a PSP above 70% as I said earlier. My friend who has a PSP way lesser than me has got around 4-5 referrals while I haven't got any of those. This might be because he was already having an offer from campus with CTC just below the Minimum CTC that you offered. I think the students are judged more on what offers they currently have rather than looking at their problem solving or attendance percentage.
Please correct me if I am wrong or missing something.
That is not correct at all. As I said in my earlier comment, if you are really a student, please send us a message without fear. We have tried to create a place where we welcome feedback. If you message, we might be able to give a more informed answer.
Sir I have tried to contact my Success manager many times but don't respond. Then I mailed to the scalar academy but I haven't got any satisfactory response from them also. So, I was having no other option left instead of commenting on your post here.
I respond to every single student query on Flock. Ask anyone in your batch if they ever pinged me and gotten a response back or not.
Yes, I always received a response from you whenever I send you a message.
Hey jess, there is no point in making these guys understand. At the starting of the course, SSM is your POC, after some days when they don't reply, Sourabh sir, "Meko contact krna tha na", when he does not takes care, Abhimanyu sir: "Meko karna flock pe", inko karo kuch nai hoga, then someone else X will come and say "Meko kyu nai kiya?"
Why are you having the SSM then? It is not possible for the student to knock at everyone's door, it is the POC whom he will knock, or it is your responsibility to knock him. Thanks.
One suggestion Raj, if you want to take it. Think about what would make things work, instead of cribbing what didn't work. Looking for positives in life goes a long way!
I asked you multiple times to get on a call and figure out what should be fixed. People who kept in touch I might have helped them in multiple ways, including the referrals that you crib about. You instead wanted to just complain. Life is simple you can try to stay positive and take help from people, and thank them for it, and help others(this you do already, and I'm really happy about it). Or you can keep complaining, instead of talking to people who want to help.
Peace out brother, nothing against you, just doing our bit as well we can, we are not perfect, but we try to be better every single day.
When I was sharing my experience, you bashed me in front of 5000 people in a talent social group. You termed me skill-less and gave it the reason not to refer me. Everything you did say, was before even knowing my real name. You just came and in order to defend Scaler, you kept on speaking terms like "You have terminated cp people from your firm" and so on. After that, you pinged me privately to sort it out.
Bashing me without even knowing my name in front of 5000 people, would it not have been better, that you would have at least known my name, considered having a talk then, rather after bashing someone, you decided to peace out. I know sir, no one is perfect, nor am I nor are you, but then in life, it is good to accept mistakes. I am glad that Scaler is now pointing it that will focus on the "course-education" part. Peace, thanks.
Raj, I never bashed you. While I never knew your identity, no one has a right to bash anyone irrespective of who someone is. I was sharing my opinion, I did realise that you are agitated, thats why I personally messaged you instead of continuing a futile argument in public, And in my opinion we had a cordial chat, I even requested to talk on call because I felt you were still mis interpreting what I was saying, you declined that.
When I said I let go a CPer from my team in 2013, it didn't mean you are not capable(as you yourself say, I didn't even know who you are, how can I say anything about you?). Some of the sharpest and most hard working people I know have been top CPers, including Anshuman. I meant there is more to life, that person didn't have good attitude and was not able to finish any given work. He might be succeeding at some other place, but for that particular job he was not a fit, it doesn't mean that even he was not a capable person either.
One unsolicited advise Raj, never be too self righteous, always be willing to listen to others, absorb, share your opinion and do what seems to be right. Even we are not perfect, but try to get better everyday. Its better to work on constructive things together, the results are exponential then. The path of hate, destruction and negativity only leads to misery, Happy that finally we are getting to talk, despite all my efforts back then :)
PS: I know this comment will be drowned in mass downvotes by bots and trolls soon, its not meant for public anyway, Its only meant for you.
As I said no one has a right to belittle or bash anyone. Despite all this, I apologised that day if I unintentionally hurt you, I've got no ego to stop me from that.
Is all this just because your ego was hurt on that day? Is that not bit too destructive? What could we have done if we decided to rather talk resolve misunderstandings and do productive things instead?
I do have screenshots where you mentioned “we donot refer people who do not have adequate skill-set”. Let’s not go off topic, I never had ego, if you have seen my video at youtube, you must have known what have I gone through. Nothing destructive, I have not used any bad word, whichever words I have used has been constructive criticism. What I posted was a video and a linkedin post. If success stories have a right to be posted, failure stories too have their own right. I hope you understand the point that there was a failure somewhere in the system, instead of constantly hiding it down with psp and attendance thing, which anshuman sir has been doing. Let’s not start over again, I will hope your marketing team works on this aspect. I seriously believe, if your course is good, if you advertise on it only, people will know they are enrolling for it and they will have a clear vision. This is what the entire community wants you to do. The entire community cannot go wrong. Thanks.
Raj is this a fight or is this is discussion? If its a fight, lets stop it here.
We have been repeatedly saying, Scaler is a program for learning, referrals are a support function. When we noticed there are people joining just for referrals, we added the clause of minimum attendance. Why would we conduct daily classes and get you mentors and spend so much money if it was only for referrals?
Yeah that is my point you introduced attendance system from October batch, so you cannot put the blame on april, may and june batch for not having attendance. You yourself contradicted your sentence, that you felt people are joining for referrals, so it was somewhere down the line the fault of yours, that the attendance was not their in the initial batches, So is it justified to put the blame back on students? yes or no, and let's end this convo over here.
You people bring out downvotes into the conversation out of thin air to gain sympathy, I feel sorry for you.
Get well soon abhimanyu_saxena AnshAryan
I was determined that I wouldn't join the course after clearing the entrance examination.. then I was been assured by the mentors and alot of scaler people to take up the course as it would provide us a platform where tier III colleges would get referred and that was the only word which they gave. "Along with the dsa course the important thing which we provide is referrals to top tech companies". This gave me a new hope that i would end up somewhere good and joined the course. But then when I asked the SSM about the referral process he added that we would get refferal from the month of FEB . But that never turned out to be true. He didn't even reply to me when I texted him to start my referral process. I'm not in favour or against of anybody. I'm just sharing my personal experience which I felt wasn't upto the mark.
Hi Twinkle, I am not sure who these Scaler people are. I'd love to hear those names. Also, for complete transparency, weren't you given an option to opt out without any liability and you have. Would love to understand where the gap is.
She is entitled to give a feedback even if she has opted out.
Similar thing happened to me what happened to Twinkle before joining, when I had a slab of 12, I asked Sourabh sir to increase it, he said you will get the same referrals. Not a word about "education" was there, that is where the problem lies. The whole point is the "REFERRAL" thing you advertise, that is what Twinkle says here.
Don't you think it has to do with the context of conversation? If you approach someone saying that why is my min CTC X and not more. Then, wouldn't the response be in the same context.
Repeating again, and I am backing all I have said with screenshots and proofs. The first week was completely free to experience learning (Not referrals). The poll stressed on learning, not referrals. The ISA was crystal clear on how the payment terms work. Let me know which part of that wasn't clear.
From your website: "Once you're job-ready, we start referring you to the top tech companies"
This never happened for a lot of students who had >70% problem solving percentage. The only info June batch got in terms of referrals was they are starting in December, then December changed to Jan, then Feb, and then March. Then pandemic happened and you can't be blamed for that, but you have to admit that you failed to follow up on your promises. I know that scaler is not just for referrals, but it wasn't just for learning either. The course was advertised as learning+referrals, never as learning+maybe_referrals. Even in onboarding, Anshuman talked about the schedule as : "We'll teach you till December, then we'll start referring you, and keep getting you better and better offers".
He also said: "If you don't have a satisfactory job, we'll refer you to better jobs". and "The value on agreement is just a lower limit for students who perform badly, follow the course properly and you'll definitely be referred to big 5"(These are not verbatim of course)
But most students didn't receive a single referral till late March. I am not saying you scammed the students, it's more like you guys bit more than you could swallow. The course is pretty good, it's even overkill having such overqualified folks teaching the basic topics, I'll say that. But it's all useless if a lot of students are unemployed or are in unsatisfactory jobs by the end of course. The usual responses when asked about referrals were non committal statements like "Scaler academy is for life", "we are working on it and have lot of companies lined up" etc.
But you guys are not accepting this, and are busy playing victim which allowed it to escalate so far. Who wouldn't feel scammed when after all this, you come out with the statement like "Scaler academy not for referrals, you guys should have known that while joining"
My side of the story: I joined Scaler on the promise that they will start referring us after 12 weeks, we were said we will have various companies to choose from. They will keep referring us till we want. Never did they say "education', I can clearly recall.
Being from a tier-3, the insecurity made me join it. I approached them for referrals, they asked us to get the PSP > 70%, but this was not mentioned in the clause. I did that. From then I have been messaging my SSM, "KRUPALI" about referrals. She never replied back nor on Flock nor on whatsap(if you want me to share screenshots, I can do that over here), just made the message seenzoned. Your education system might be great, but the point everyone here making is, you failed to deliver what you promised. I hope you understand it. I was not provided with a single referral to any of the companies despite having > 70% psp from the month of December. We being from a tier-3 college joined it with a lot of hope sir, we looked up to you people, but coming down today, we feel we took the wrong decision 1 year back. Scaler should be advertised more on education front, the "referral" has to stop if you do-not have those 500 companies. I hope you are no more advertising it on "referrals". All the best with your academy.
I don't believe that Asipu Pawan. We failed to probably make you understand the importance of adherence to the courses being taught. 2.58% attendance does not help you learn. Had you been studying properly, you would never have to ask for referrals. Anyway, good that you dropped out. Feedback taken :)
No attendance clause was their sir. You did good by bringing it in for OCT batch. If I ask you to learn for loops now, will you? This is the point about attendance. You wanted for us to solve problems, I did it. Did not find a point in spending time to learn things which I have a knowledge of. I will prefer to solve problems and up-skill myself rather than watching DSA lectures. The common observation here is you are not willing to accept the thing that was done a year back. We can keep what we experiences, you can always counter us with multiple reasons, similar to what your team did when I had 10% psp, they said "psp > 70 karlo, we will start the process". Piling up reasons for not referring will never work in the long run. I wanted to share my experience, I did it, will not get into an argument. Good luck.
If you look at the stats shared in the placement blog, they very clearly state the difference we are creating for tier 2/tier 3 students as well. There is absolutely no reason why we would prefer one student and be partial with the other. If you follow through the class, there is no reason why we won't connect you to any company that comes, because we know you are the best and we want the companies to be happy as well. A happy company will hire more which would mean more student placements. If we are not stupid, we should do the above.
Now, I agree I won't want you to sit in classes which teach about loops. But performance in companies is about so much more, Pawan. Participate and maybe you learn more.There were classes on project building, HLD, LLD, OS, Networks, Databases, schema design. All things important for software dev.
Something I have to point out, your attendance system is pretty messed up so take those stats with a grain of salt. It doesn't work properly for archived videos, it's a issue I raised with Abhimanyu during hackathon. I have seen most archived videos till Launchpad, but they are still not logged. Is that also a factor for being considered for referrals? I had a talk with Himani(i think) some months back and she said I just need to keep my problem solving percentage high. It's the first time I am reading anything about attendance from you guys in such context.
I can totally understand the reason to maintain assignment percentage, but what about attendance? Studying in Indian colleges, you would know that certain students will be outliers and will not need to attend a lot of classes to perform at the same level as others who attend all of them. To me, it just seems like an excuse to milk out 2 lac rupees from someone who couldn't get into a company despite being good enough.
Relevant clause from the contract:
Otherwise, the Student is liable to pay a fee of –
i. 17% of Annual Gross Salary for a period of two years, but not exceeding the total amount of INR 3,00,000, in the event that the Student receives an Eligible Job Offer.
ii. INR 2,00,000 if the Student has failed to complete Satisfactory Course Engagement despite having enrolled with the Institute and does not receive Eligible Job Offer.
Neutral Party Member. From what I understand from all these discussions so far is:
From students point of view
NOTE: Will get you a Referral claims were made but I did not get any.
"what is the reason for not getting a refferal ?" following are the senerios:
From your(Scaler's) point of view :
NOTE: We are not a refferal company and do not optimize for that, this is a learning platform if you are a great programmer nothing can stop you from getting into xyz company
Your response to above questions :
**** Please do correct me if got something wrong from either side.
I want to ask a few questions:
For case 4 above how did this happen ? Are you saying this is fake ? if not then please explain what other criterion you have make it transparent all the conditions which makes a student not sutible for referrals .
After entrance test you place students in different batches based on their test perf, does every group have equal opportunity(referal to companies) after the course ends or is it like only the elite batch students will get a refferal to FANG and other batch are not good enough for FANG ?
Can student change their batches based on their perf ? or is it decided based only on the test and nothing else ? If yes one can how would decide the perf of student for batch change ?
What other criterion you have to select a student for referal ? Lets say there are 200 students >70% psp and attendance would you refer all of them to all of the companies ? If not can you please tell on what basis will you decide that ? Will top 50 people get referrals from all the companies ?
Can you provide data for the minimum psp and attendance percentange student had which was refered by you to Google, Amazon, directi and DE Shaw ?
I understand as a company you can't refer students you don't find fit to other companies this will undermine you value. But what is it you are looking for in a student after 6 months of course that makes them unfit for referral to lets say Google.
For case 4 above how did this happen ? Are you saying this is fake ? if not then please explain what other criterion you have make it transparent all the conditions which makes a student not sutible for referrals . I don't know if they are fake. Which is why I asked them to message me to check what their variables were on the platform actually(if they really are students). At the end of the day, we want all students to have the best job. However, you can't do that with a high failure rate on the employer end. If we refer you somewhere and you bomb the interview, then the natural next step is to work on improvements, rather than referring you blindly elsewhere, right?
After entrance test you place students in different batches based on their test perf, does every group have equal opportunity(referal to companies) after the course ends or is it like only the elite batch students will get a refferal to FANG and other batch are not good enough for FANG ? Yes. At the end of 3 months, batches get re-shuffled into backend and fullstack batches. Referral team does not even know who went to SuperX or EliteX.
Can student change their batches based on their perf ? or is it decided based only on the test and nothing else ? If yes one can how would decide the perf of student for batch change ? The split of the batch is done to ensure the classes don't get boring to you and you are taught content which still helps you learn. SuperX moves faster and EliteX slower. If you are in EliteX and feel the content is going slow, come tell us. We move you to SuperX if you are fine with it.
What other criterion you have to select a student for referal ? Lets say there are 200 students >70% psp and attendance would you refer all of them to all of the companies ? If not can you please tell on what basis will you decide that ? Will top 50 people get referrals from all the companies ? Different companies can have different criteria. Some might enforce that they need students from a particular college. Some might someone who has learnt ReactJS. Some might ask for someone who is good at Core Java. This criteria aligns to their business needs. We select top students from there who fit the criteria.
Can you provide data for the minimum psp and attendance percentange student had which was refered by you to Google, Amazon, directi and DE Shaw ? The percentages checked are at the point of referral being made. As I said, we try to pick the best people fitting the criteria. That would be a combination of PSP, attendance, pending correction items if any and so forth.
From a student's endpoint, just stay true to the course if you feel it adds value. If you do, you will build the right capacity. Won't have to come asking for referrals then.
I have two pretty simple queries:
SELECT company_name, referrals_given FROM partner_companies WHERE referrals_given>0;
SELECT psp, referrals_given FROM students ORDER BY psp DESC;
PS: Expecting the result of the first query to have a size of 500+
Referrals to companies working in the domain of IT and Software engineering. At least 1 interviews for full time jobs will be provided by InterviewBit with their partner companies.
It is clearly written in the contract given to April 2019 batch students. How can you say that you never mentioned referrals? It's clearly stated that you will not only refer but at least provide 1 interview and since the students were allowed to turn down any referrals (you mentioned this in the onboarding seminar) so why wouldn't this mean that students would get to interview in a top company (which most people thought) ??
The argument that you now propose is that you can not allow anyone to give the interview and bomb it, it is understandable. You say you look at assignment solved percentage and attendance to see if someone is ready or not and you do not consider performance on other platforms as you are not sure of their authenticity. Let me make you remember something here. For the April batch students, their min CTC was decided before the entrance test by the information provided on Interviewbit profile which includes links to codeforces, codechef, spoj, topcoder and hackerrank profiles of students. So you believed the authenticity of these websites when you were taking people in so why you do not believe in their authenticity now??
You say that you have provided the referrals to everyone who has solved 70% questions. The largest figure I can see is of Amazon (101 refers) that means atleast 101 students of April batch had 70% assignments solved. I never saw 101 students with 70% + solved percentage. It was always around 50-70. So I don't think even these stats are real for April batch. Please correct me if I am wrong.
If someone joins Scaler even after reading all this, I feel sad for them.