Hello community, I am one of the ex-Scaler students from the April Batch. I got a job from Campus Placement and I got only one referral in the entire one year. Sadly, I need to pay them, hence I wanted to make people aware of some facts backed with proof, so that they do-not fall into this trap. I have seen a lot of things written about Scaler in the recent month. Scaler came out in public with a video on "What we do and Why we do", where they said their curriculum is focused on learning and not on jobs. But they end up getting disappointed, like most of us in our did.
In India, rarely people will come out in open to speak, because no-one wants to risk their future, so do I. People join such courses thinking that we do not need to pay now, we will pay when we get job. Hence they just join without giving it a second thought. But the main disappointment starts when you start paying installments for 24 months without getting any help to land up a job from the people whom you are paying. Let me bring to you some interesting facts about Scaler which proves that they sell their course on referrals and maximum people do join Scaler thinking that.
Their course costs you around 4.5L if you have a job paying around 15L base. It might cost you more if you have a good base salary. It is 15% of your base for 24 months.
4.5L for a course where you are teaching Data Structure for 3 months. Even red coders here will not charge you that much. Their entrance test has Questions from DP, Heaps, Trees and Graphs. Someone who knows these stuffs, does he even requires a course majorly covering DSA(3 months) for a huge chunk of 4.5L on average? The agenda of them has been, fooling good talent in the name of jobs, covering it up with DSA course.
We were near about 200 people in our April Batch who joined for the sake of a backup that Scaler might help us. Gradually with time, it appeared to us that they were hoping for us to get a placement on own rather then putting efforts to place us. Once we guys got a placement on own, the EMI plan was setup immediately, and they blacklisted us for future referrals since we crossed the slab. They say that they will keep referring us, but they don't once you are placed. The sole reason is they have got their money from you.
Only referrals were provided to Amazon which is considered to be a mass recruiter in India now, and every 3/10th people on Linkedin provides you a referral. Referrals to Lido learning was provided, but the people from my batch backed of, because the company had a legal case running. However some did join it, after joining those people had to use their laptops in work, they were not even provided with laptops, and those people are paying their installments and are really upset with the way they were cheated.
They state that they have 500 partner companies with them in their website. This is one of the other lies they have been spreading, they hardly have 8-10 companies, and they also hire a max of 10 people every year. If they had 500 partner companies, why were referrals not provided to us, May and June batch for Uber, Booking.com, Netflix, Google, Facebook, Tower Research etc?
In their recent video they released, if you ask them about referral stats, or anything is posted which goes against them, you will find that comment deleted withing an hour. Their new batch started this week, where to enroll people they published a blog which claims that 97% people were placed from the batch. The moment you take the entrance test and select people, you know those people are some of the best talents in India and will get a job. They released their placement stats, where you will not find a company which they mention in the above image.
Moreover they have not added a stat count on how many referrals did they provided to FAANG or other companies, which they boast of during the enrollment. The companies listed below are not even the names they mention in their websites. They have added 4 count to Amazon placed people in the name of PPO just to fool people around and boast them of fake numbers. Amazon Interns have confirmed that Amazon never confirms PPO chances before the internship ends. Moreover, Amazon did a intern drive for entire India and this was open to all. They claim to refer people to De-Shaw. What they simply do is, they go on to Careers site of De-Shaw and fill up your application form, and you get a test link(saying this because referral test of De-shaw is of 70 minutes, and the career site test is of 100 minutes). Then they term this as a company referral. Link to blog.
They have banners which states that there are all the top people teaching the course. Truth is, the people in the banner hardly take 3/4 classes each for the sake of the banner they posted. Most of the classes are taken by some guy who is not that good, or someone who is graduating in 2020 without any industry experience. Previously they gave good slabs to people joining them, they have started giving slabs of 7/8 to the new batches, which is a clear indication that they do not have companies to refer too.
They have some set of mentors who take the mentor sessions for the sake of 1.5K that they get per session. On an average every guy does 7-10 sessions. This is because whenever you approach Scaler for referrals, they will carve out a reason of the ground. Sometimes it will be, your problem % is less, sometimes your attendance, sometime your mentor session is less. And at the end when they are not left with reasons, they come up "What we do?, Why we do?". They claim they spend lacs of rupees for every student, hence their fees is that high. Let me bring you up some calculations.
Average 8 mentor sessions costs 1500 * 8 = 12k.(Source: Mentor). Everyday a class is taken by an instructor who teaches roughly 50 people(50 because most of the people do not join classes after 2/3 weeks) for 2.5 hours. In India, the average fees for an instructor teaching is 3k/hour at a maximum(it is 2k/hour on average). Lets take 10k. So 10k/200 = Rs 50 per day. Every month they have 20 classes, at max they will have 140 classes in 6 months. I have taken the extreme higher limit of everything. Which eventually costs you 7k across 6 months. Since they are not providing you with referrals, I am not adding any money count to it. They for sure do-not have 500 partner companies, lets round off 12 + 7 = 19k to 25k. The profit margin which they are making is immense, 4.5L — 25k is 4.25L per student. I say per student because, maximum people will eventually get placed with the talent they possv when you are binding them for 1.5 years under you in the name of a contract.
I started practicing at Interview-Bit in my second year. I was so pleased with the platform they had then. Then the Scaler thing came up giving us so many hopes. But eventually it is all about making money. The so known good guys(Abhimanyu and Anshuman) are exploiting Indian talent to earn big. This needs to stop. I will urge everyone to share this post as much as you can, the exploitation of talent needs to stop.
Link to the previous CF blog: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/75463, https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/75707
