Hello, dear readers of Habr!
I am a former student of MEPhI, this year I graduated from the PMI bachelor's program. In my third year, I was actively looking for internship / work opportunities, in general, practical experience, which will be discussed. Inexperience, crooks, mutual assistance.
I was lucky, our department collaborated with Sbertech, which organized a two-year educational program for future programmers in exchange for a year of work after studying in a position no lower than an engineer. The Sbertech course program consisted of 4 semesters, each of which usually had 3 courses. There were teachers at our department who also taught courses at Sbertech, therefore, having entered the program, 2 courses from the first semester were credited to me (a course in Java and a course in software system development technologies), I had to take a course on Linux. The program itself was aimed at training big data engineers.
In parallel with the beginning of my studies on the Sbertech program, I was interested in the course from mail.ru on neural networks (TechnoAtom project), as a result, I decided to combine these educational programs.
During the training, the difference in courses and teaching quickly became noticeable: the course from Sbertech was designed for all applicants to complete it (students for the program were selected pseudo-randomly according to the merged last year test related to OOP and elements of mathematics), and the course from TechnoAtom was more designed for enthusiasts who were ready for big and incomprehensible dz (out of 50-60 who entered the course, only 6 people completed the course, three were taken for an internship).
In general, the course program from Sbertech was simpler and more boring than TechnoAtom. By the end of the semester (the middle of the third year at MEPhI), it became clear that the internship at Mail was much more attractive. And then the fun began.
Termination of the contract with Sbertech, start of work in Mail
It is worth noting that before I decided to quit Sbertech and go for an interview in the Mail, we, students of Sbertech courses, were assigned mentors with whom we should ideally coordinate our R&D and diploma, and also with whom we would get a job to work after graduation, and maybe during, as some did. Also, the combination of writing UIR / R&D and a diploma with Sbertech was a pain, since those teachers and leaders at our department who did not work at Sbertech really did not like the combination of diplomas at the department and at Sbertech. At Sbertech, the organizers of the program knew about this and even talked about it if it came up, but did nothing about it.
-Setup
The first attempts to establish contact with the program coordinators in order to leave Sbertech were unsuccessful. The coordinator of our program answered after 2 weeks something in the spirit of "I quit, call on such and such a phone number." By calling this phone, I did not learn anything new, rather I informed the person in the new place that there were students, mentors, courses, and so on. Also, I called the appointed mentor, who very perplexedly answered about the possible employment, “Um, yes, we are engaged in development, well, yes, there is testing, well, I’ll find out from our architect if I can offer something, in principle, there is something.” As a result, at first, during several telephone conversations, we almost agreed on an interview, but then the mentor said that he didn’t know anything - how to arrange someone there, said to wait.
It all dragged on for about a month (November-December 2017), neither the mentors knew what to do with the students of Sbertech, nor the organizing teachers from MEPhI, who invited them to Sbertech and promised practical experience, nor the link - the coordinators of the program .
It all seemed strange to me, so I went for an interview at the Mail, and from the beginning of February 2018, the work experience at the Mail began. Already on the second day of work, the team leader sent me a dataset, according to which it was necessary to build predictions, and from the first days I plunged into work. The organization and involvement in the process amazed me, and all doubts about the termination of relations with Sbertech were cast aside.
punch line
I figured that Sbertech would have to return a scholarship of 20 thousand for the previous semester + the only course (the other two were read to me as part of the MEPhI undergraduate program), I counted approximately 40-50 thousand, including from the words of those who had already left Sbertech and according to teachers from MEPhI, who, before signing the contract, assured us that “the contract is a formality, if you don’t like it, leave, you have to try.”
But it was not there. The program coordinator confidently said that I owe Sbertech 100 thousand. Exactly 100 thousand cost 3 courses + some other details - the coordinator told me. In response, I explained for a long time and in detail that two of the three courses were read to me at MEPhI, so I should not reimburse the full cost of the program, there’s simply no reason, because I didn’t attend those courses with Sbertech students, I was given an automatic machine for them. Also, during conversations with the program coordinators, I had to talk a lot about the fact that the mentors do not know how to work with us (specifically mine, and the distribution of the mentor-student was random and the change of mentors was not welcomed according to Sbertech representatives, my mentor was associated with information security, which I had no idea about), about who is responsible for this at MEPhI, and so on, it turned out that they have no organization and access to information at all. But most importantly, in response to the fact that I did not take part of the courses from Sbertech, that I did not have to pay the full cost, there was a firm no - pay 100 thousand. In my third year, it was a huge difference for me to pay 40-50 thousand or 100 thousand.
At first, I did not believe in the need to pay such an amount and went to find out from the teachers who were the organizers of the Sbertech program at MEPhI, but they told me that probably 70-80 thousand costs one semester of education, but the semester could have risen in price, and that they (teachers) do not know at all how these contracts work there - it is logical, their job is to teach. For a very long time, I tried to explain to the program coordinator and someone else at Sbertech that 2 of the 3 courses out of 6 were credited to me, read to me at MEPhI, are in the student's record book, closed for four, but the coordinators were firm and after a week or two conversations with the financial department they said that the maximum they could do was installment for 6 months, which was also hard for me. Also, representatives from MEPhI told me that it was useless to sue Sbertech, there were already XNUMX such courts - Sbertech won everything, so they advised me to stay on the program.
Then, in order to evaluate the potential job, I went for an interview at Sbertech, but there was no interest on the part of the interviewers, they only told me roughly, they say, “someone is doing big data, yes, but we don’t know, listen, there is neighboring department.
Also, a representative of the Sbertech program from MEPhI recommended to me the “artificial intelligence center at Sbertech”, but when asked about it, Sbertech only shrugged and grinned.
Resolution of the situation
Not finding 100 thousand rubles in my pocket and those responsible in Sbertech, who are aware of how the educational program works, I turned to the team leader in Mail in the hope of somehow resolving the situation. He immediately cheered me up, saying that it was good that this happened at the very beginning - the issue was resolved (I turned to him after about a month and a half of work). A week later, higher-ranking officials already knew me, and they offered me the following: a transfer of 100 thousand to my account, and I partially work it out in the summer, working full-time (during my studies it was 0.5 rate). All this was decided orally. I was very pleased with such a quick and adequate outcome, which was also good for Mail - to work with employees in the long term without painful bureaucracy.
The issue with Sbertech was resolved, and only later, a year later, I found out that I could simply not contact the mentors at Sbertech and ignore them by mail (there was nothing about mentors in the Sbertech agreement, it was just a common practice - cooperation a student-mentor, but I’m not so strong in the documents and I didn’t think this point through) and then Sbertech terminates the contract for its part without payment from the student (despite the fact that the student closes all courses). By the way, it was not intentional to leave the Sbertech program, Sbertech could terminate the contract at any time for some reason.
I worked in Mail for 9 months, gained experience, still have warm memories of mutual assistance, left to devote more time to studying at the university and enter a good master's program.
In no case do I exclude the possibility that organized and decent employees can work in Sbertech, but it seemed that everything was very complicated and opaque in the organization itself and the courses associated with it.
Such courses and, in general, close cooperation between the industry and education are an excellent opportunity for students to develop, and for employers to supplement the university program to suit their needs (from my limited experience, there is only a positive example from Mail and a negative one from Sbertech). Only the system of interaction between Sbertech and the university and students needs attention and revision.
I hope the article will be useful for both students and companies offering courses / internships for beginners.
Source: habr.com