Like thousands of working engineers in India, Zabi started his career at Infosys with the standard package of 3.5 LPA. Over the next 4 years, he worked as a system engineer, trying to improve, while balancing the realities of a 9-5 job.
Similar to many working professionals preparing for a switch, Zabi often compared himself to peers who seemed to be growing much faster. One of his friends, in particular, was already earning more than 3x his salary.
That became the trigger. He started preparing seriously for interviews.
→ LeetCode
→ DSA tutorials
→ YouTube videos
→ Interview preparation content
Initially, it felt like progress because he was putting in effort every day after work.But soon realised, something still wasn’t clicking.
Why Did Zabi Feel Stuck Despite Consistent Preparation?
He used to feel stuck each time he used to come across a new graph or a tree problem and even after following several tutorials, had trouble answering unexpected interview questions on his own.
He called this stage “tutorial hell”
And found himself:
→ Memorizing strategies
→ Copying patterns
As a result, he wasn’t able to solve any new questions.
Things started changing when he joined Bosscoder Academy’s Transformer Program.
According to Zabi, the biggest shift was not in how much he studied, but in what and how he studied.
He shifted his focus towards understanding smaller foundational building blocks initially..
For the first time, he became aware that it is not necessary to create algorithms each and every time.
There are already established patterns, frameworks, and approaches that help simplify problem-solving.
The Role of Mentorship & Guidance
According to him, 1:1 mentoring played a significant role in his development because speaking with mentors who had already undergone the interview process provided him with an entirely new viewpoint.
And helped him approach new problems, build thinking frameworks & debug effectively.
In addition to technical preparation, he focused on strengthening aspects that many applicants miss:
→ AI powered & ATS-friendly resumes
→ LinkedIn profile optimizations
These small changes improved his visibility alongside his technical preparation.
Earlier, every interview problem felt overwhelming but now instead of panicking during interviews, he developed clarity.
And once that clarity clicked everything changed, he transitioned from System Engineer role to SDE at EPAM.
Final Thoughts
Preparing for interviews while working full-time will never be easy.
But Bosscoder Academy gave his journey the right structure that can make the process far less overwhelming.
Because when you stop learning randomly and start learning intentionally, progress becomes much easier to sustain.
