Infosys Partners with Udacity to Offer Self-Driving Car Nanodegree
In November Infosys announced that they will train first ever batch of Autonomous Vehicle Engineers with Udacity. Infosys set a target to train around 500 people in 2018 alone. This is a brief dive into the details of the program.
I am proud to be the part of first ever Self Driving Car Nanodegree batch from Infosys. This is equally important program for Infosys and Udacity as this is the first time they are providing in class training for their most prestigious program. Let me take you to the tour of my journey into the program so far.
Selection process
Selection to the program was done in two steps:
- First step was online coding challenge at hackerrank. In challenge we needed to solve 3 problems and 1 of them should be in python and 1 in C++ as these are prerequisit for the program by Udacity.
- Shortlisted candidates were interviewed by Infosys panel. Then interview was mainly to determine that if the candidate satisfies the Udacity’s prerequisites. We also needed to confirm that we are rady to relocate to Infosys Mysore(Infosys training center).
After this process 100 candidates were shortlisted. This whole process was finished around first week of 2018 and we received mail that we are selected for the program and on boarding will start soon.
Induction and On-boarding
After selection we were told more about the program and the road ahead by Infosys leadership. We were provided the Udacity’s credentials also the layout of the program was laid. Duration of the course as per Udacity is 9 months but we need to complete it within 21 weeks. As per the schedule we had 6 week online training followed by 15 weeks of in person training which is still going on.
Online Sessions
Online sessions started around second week on Januray,2018. There were 2 sesssion per week till 19 Feb, 2018 which was the start date of the in person training. Sessions were lead by Subodh from Udacity. Each session was around 2–3 hours and sessions were pretty good as we learned a lot but I should mention that you will need to study a lot from other resources also as Udacity’s content is limited to the topics and you will need to spend time. We also submitted first project around the second week of online sessions.
Classroom Sessions
Classroom sessions were started from 19th Feb. During the first classroom session we were introduced to the 3 instructors Mithi, Fernando and Subodh by Pravin from Udacity who is Udacity India’s Director Operation. We were divided into 2 batches and we got 1 instructor for each batch. We were given first week to catch up to the course content as many candidates were mapped to some other assignments during the online training, during this week we also needed to submit our second project. With the help of instructor we catched up to the session and completed second project during this week. Every weekend instructors tell us about research paper and discuss with us.
We are currently working on the 4th project and by next week our first term of the course will be completed. It is a good journey and trainers are very good and supportive. We give daily feedback to Udacity and they always listen to the feedback and address them.
Will post another review soon as soon as we complete our first term.
