Hyderabad: In an attempt to equip aspiring engineers with the necessary skills, city based entrepreneurs Meraj Faheem and Sadiya Sabera are offering courses in code and other technological programs under their flagship coding bootcamp titled The Hacking School, India’s first coding boot camp.
The first batch of CS Engineering Program students will be graduating this month. Speaking to Siasat.com, Sabera, the current CEO of the Hacking School explains why such a boot camp was necessary to better ensure that engineers who graduate from their program leave with a quality skillset which would benefit them in the industry of their choosing.
“It is unfortunate that in conventional Engineering colleges in the state and across India don’t equip students well enough. We have had students who have completed their engineering but were unaware of even what HTML stands for,” remarks Sadiya.
She further adds that four years of learning did little for them as at the end of it, they spent 10-11 lakhs and gained very little. “The skills they learn in computer engineering courses don’t suffice. In the current industry, they need to learn how to engage with the shift in technology, understand how data analysis, code, etc works,” she added.
The Hacking School’s most unique selling point at the moment seems to be their one-year long CS Engineering program which is supposed to work as an alternative to the four year long Engineering degree. Sadiya claims that the CS Engineering program will make an individual a software engineer in 12 months as opposed to 4 whole years.
“Despite the fact that I am a BTech graduate, I had little to no knowledge of operating systems, computer networking, DevOps, cybersecurity, and so many other topics. My mentors at cs.code.in however helped. I am now capable of architecting, designing, building systems, seamlessly writing my own libraries, and so on, and can proudly call myself a computer science engineer,” says 22-year-old Ruqayyah Sara, one of the cohorts from the CS engineer program.
“Things were simpler before the COVID-19 pandemic,” Sadiya remarks. “After the pandemic and with the crash of the market and rampant recession, students need to have skills. No body in the current industry has time to train students so if given a choice, a company would choose someone who has the coding skills necessary over someone who doesn’t.”
The Hacking School’s first CS Engineering batch consisting of seven students is graduating and Sadiya claims that industry is rushing to hire the students as they are now ready to face the challenges thrown at them.
“I joined Meraj Faheem (founder of the Hacking School) in 2017. I took to technology and coding and became a program manager. Over a period of time, I took charge as the CEO as Faheem went on to take care of the EdVenture Park, a start-up incubator,” adds Sadiya.
Aside from other short term courses, The Hacking School’s one year long engineering program teaches code, web development, mobile development, data analysis. The requirements are minimal as anyone with a 12th class certificate can apply. Once they get in, students are given resources to train for a month after which they start learning.
“We make our students publish papers and technical studies. Our professors from the industry are software engineers and entrepreneurs and I would argue that this is a healthy way to learn as time is of the essence,” concludes Sadiya.
The Hacking School is inviting applications for its CS Engineering program. Students can apply here. The cost of the program amounts to Rs 4.5 Lakhs.
