We’re excited to include guest posts on our blog from interesting people and companies in the industry. This post was written by Conor Livingston, a former Pathrise fellow who found his dream job as a software engineer at Google and is sharing his experience with the program.
Conor’s Story
I was a Pathrise fellow from April 2018 until graduating from their program 3 months later with a job offer to be a software engineer at my dream company Google. I accepted Google’s job offer and have been happily working here for the past 6 months.
I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Pathrise’s help. It was the best career choice I’ve made so far. They’re great people who sincerely desire to help their students succeed.
One of the things that most attracted me to Pathrise was their business model: no tcost upfront. I only had to pay them if I actually got a job. In other words, I only had to pay if their program actually worked. I like this because it aligns their incentives with mine as a student. They have a strong incentive to help me get the job I want because if I don’t then they don’t get paid. This is a really powerful position to be in as a customer to any business.
A couple more specific questions that I’ve been asked about Pathrise from people:
Did you feel that the fee they’re taking is reasonable?
I thought it was reasonable and I would have still signed up even if the fee was higher. To me, getting a job at my dream company Google was totally worth a % of my first year’s salary. It’s a small price to pay for a very high salary for years to come.
What about the program specifically helped sharpen your skills that you didn’t really find anywhere else?
There’s a lot of ways to sharpen your skills by yourself. LeetCode, Hackerrank, Codeforces, the list goes on and on. However, the thing that I found at Pathrise that I hadn’t found anywhere else was a personal mentor who has walked this exact path before and knows exactly what I’m going through. In my case my mentor was an ex-Facebook software engineer so he was really able to motivate, encourage, and support me throughout the process. He also knew how to explain data structures and algorithms concepts that I had trouble understanding and did mock interviews in my weak areas to make me more well rounded for interviews.
My responses to common objections against Pathrise
They are scammers and ONLY after your money.
If Pathrise were scammers they wouldn’t produce real results. But after doing Pathrise I got a job at my dream company and my whole life was changed in a deeply positive way. Pathrise is not a scam.
If Pathrise were only after people’s money then they could probably achieve that goal more quickly by charging tuition up front. However, they don’t do that. They don’t charge students any tuition until the student gets a job because they really care about student success. Pathrise is not only after people’s money.
I did pay Pathrise a percentage of my first year salary after I started my job at Google. However, my current salary is ~4x higher than my previous job. If I do the math, I have more money now than I would’ve had if I hadn’t done Pathrise.
Do your own job search, there are enough job postings out there that you should be successful.
You can take this route and you will probably find a job. Pathrise tries to help you land a better job than you could land by yourself. In this sense, Pathrise is like having a good mentor. A good mentor can help you achieve your goals more quickly. A good mentor can help you get on the fast-track to getting to where you want to be. This is what happened for me. If someone told me in March 2018 before I knew about Pathrise that I would be a software engineer at Google in 4 months I would have never believed them.
They will do absolutely nothing that you cannot do better on your own.
Not so. They provided technical guidance and personal encouragement that I really needed and had not been able to find anywhere else.
Added my responses to some of the objections to Pathrise in other answers to this Quora post [link].
About Pathrise
Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with students and professionals 1-on-1 so they can land their dream job in tech. With our tips and guidance, we’ve seen 3x as many application responses from our fellows in the program.
If you want to work with any of our mentors 1-on-1 to get help with your resume or with any other aspect of the job search, become a Pathrise fellow.
Apply today
This article was originally posted on Conor’s blog. We are posting this to help people learn more about real Pathrise fellow stories. For even more info about Pathrise, check out these articles:
- Is Pathrise worth it?
- Is Pathrise legitimate?
- Pathrise review: 3x salary increase
- Review of Pathrise: Everything I wanted and more
- More Pathrise reviews from fellows
- A Pathrise fellow’s journey to 9 software engineering offers
- Check out our Pathrise Series A funding announcement in Forbes as well!