'Never thought they will be in Amazon,' says Google engineer who taught coding to juniors in tier-3 Bengal college

In what could be termed as a remarkable story, Raj Vikramaditya, a Google engineer who, during his college years, took it upon himself to teach coding to his juniors shared  that those very students, once seated on the first bench of his makeshift classroom, are now employed as software engineers at Amazon.

Vikramaditya, also known as 'Striver' on Twitter, reminisces about a particular class from 2017. Amidst a power outage, the determined students used their flashlights to continue learning. This moment, he says, will forever remain etched in his heart. He recently shared a screenshot on LinkedIn, showcasing the current professional statuses of his former students, all visible next to their names.

“I never thought that the first benchers would be in Amazon. Picture from a class I took when I was in my second year. The power went off in the middle of a coding class, everyone got their flashlights on. Some moments stay in your heart forever, this was one of them,” he wrote on Twitter.

What makes this achievement even more commendable is the fact that Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College, a tier-3 institution, was seldom approached by companies for placements. However, the students, undeterred by the lack of institutional support, formed a coding club where seniors would teach the juniors after official college hours.

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Vikramaditya asserts that the coding club acted as a catalyst for these students. Many from the batches of 2021-2023 are now working with top tech companies like Google, Amazon, Swiggy, JP Morgan, and Microsoft. The club, he believes, was a game-changer, propelling its members towards great achievements.

Speaking to Moneycontrol, a former employee of Amazon himself who currently works with Google in Poland, Vikramaditya said, "Jalpaiguri government engineering college is a tier-3 college where no company would come for placements. There wasn't much support from the college faculty either, so the students took matters into their own hands, formed a coding club where seniors would take classes for the juniors after the official college hours. One day, while I was teaching 'prefix sum', the lights went off but since everybody was so interested in the class, they used multiple flashlights and we finished the lecture.” 

He went on to say that power outages were common at the campus. However, Vikramaditya went on to say that for an institution with low rankings, these batches performed so well that the college now has some of the finest placement records in the state.

"A lot of people from 2021-2023 are working in Google, Amazon, Swiggy, JP Morgan, Microsoft, and other top tech companies. Most of these students were in the coding club, so the club was sort of a paddle shifter, people who joined the club went on to do great things," Vikramaditya added.

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