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The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

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Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#181

Post by kls »

christocracy wrote: post #84
kls wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted a comment a while back about this subject and the funny part was I got flamed by a bunch of US based technical workers, while the Indian techies pretty much agreed with me. Anyways the TLDR was I have a buddy Karthick and he is one of the best developers I know. So I asked him one day about why there was such low quality in India and he explained to me it was misaligned incentives due to the fact that, the f…

I remember that comment. I’ve quoted that story a number of times.

Thank you, it is good to hear. You know you put words out there and you don't really know if it contributes any value to anyone or not. I just try to relay my life lessons.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#182

Post by kls »

triceratops wrote: post #135
kls wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted a comment a while back about this subject and the funny part was I got flamed by a bunch of US based technical workers, while the Indian techies pretty much agreed with me. Anyways the TLDR was I have a buddy Karthick and he is one of the best developers I know. So I asked him one day about why there was such low quality in India and he explained to me it was misaligned incentives due to the fact that, the f…

> He said it was a hold over from the cast system I was with you until the "cast (sic) system". > you are held in more esteem in India when you manage more people. You can replace "India" with literally any country in the world. Managers and bosses always are and always have been held in more esteem than leaf node workers, in every society past and present. It's got nothing to do with the caste system. Personal anecd…

> I was with you until the "cast (sic) system"

You will have to take this as second hand information as I am not familiar with the relics of the cast system. But as he relayed it to me. When you go on a date with a girl that would be considered to be in a higher social status than yourself, the first thing the father will ask is how many people do you manage. Being a manager seems to provide some mobility in the relics of the system that is left. This is how it was relayed to me.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#183

Post by adverbly »

mikorym wrote: post #4
umvi wrote: post #2

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Churning out engineers as fast as possible and pressuring everyone to become one despite lack of interest just guarantees you will churn out astronomical numbers of crappy engineers. And I hate to say it... but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers because the sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from [Indian/Chin…

I also have a problem with calling developers engineers . Heck, I would be offended if someone called me a developer rather than a programmer. But unfortunately even the degrees themselves become less significant. A PhD in mathematics used to mean more than it does now. But another point is that with global literacy going up, scarse skills are now not based on the amount of people with certain degrees, but rather wit…

It's funny, I actually have an undergraduate and graduate degree in engineering - but not software engineering - and I work as a software engineer.

Yet I tell everyone that I'm a programmer/developer. To me, having seen what goes for engineering in other fields, I feel like a small subset of engineering jobs in non-software fields is true engineering. To me, that bar is inventing something worth patenting. I'd say its an even smaller subset in software.

The thing is, I wouldn't say it the highest value work is the stuff that is true engineering. Actually implementing ideas is so much more value adding and difficult in my opinion. Execution and front lines gritty work is incredibly undervalued in every industry. So I prefer to go by developer because I take more pride in that part.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#184

Post by derefr »

addicted44 wrote: post #162
CydeWeys wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can replace "India" with literally any country in the world. Managers and bosses always are and always have been held in more esteem than leaf node workers This is true to a much greater or lesser degree depending on country, though. Here in the US you can be a really senior leaf node software engineer with fancy titles like "Staff" or "Senior Staff" or "Distinguished Fellow" and command tremendous respect and…

That's only true for a small subset of technology companies. Outside the tech world it's barely true, and even within the tech world, the vast majority of companies still require you to enter management the moment you've been promoted a couple of times.

Sure it exists outside the tech world. It's the meaning of the word "profession." A senior doctor or senior lawyer is respected, despite being a leaf-node.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#185

Post by analog31 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #94
analog31 wrote: post #36

I wonder if India faced a problem similar to the for profit college system in the us, where a lot of the programs were fake.

> for profit college system in the us, where a lot of the programs were fake. The programs in the US weren't fake ... The US government (VA, etc.) didn't like paying for schools that had low graduation rates, or had high student loan defaults, so closed them. In some cases, legit trade schools were closed, like Wyotech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WyoTech Ironically, this being HN, private investor groups trying to…

Maybe the term "fake" is over-used, but I meant something along the lines of selling people an expensive training that leaves them in debt and unemployable. Some of those schools also made hyperbolic claims about the career prospects and earnings of their graduates.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#186

Post by babesh »

sushid wrote: post #169
andrewflnr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway Like, officially, in writing? Even if it's informal, as an American it blows my mind that that's still a thing.

Is it that surprising? We have the exact same system in the States. Affirmative Action exists today. The Ivies modified its acceptance criteria to "soft" discriminate against Jewish Americans in the 50s and 60s. There are arguments that this is indeed the case for Asian Americans today.

The soft discrimination actually happened much earlier than that. I think it was happening in the 20s and 30s already.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#187

Post by johntiger1 »

CosmicShadow wrote: post #123
ChuckMcM wrote: post #111

Pretty damning " There are currently more than 3,500 engineering schools across the country, and about 90% of graduates do not have the programming skills to work in software engineering, according to one study. " That said, I'm curious how you could talk to someone about programming for four years and at the end of that 9 out of 10 of them could not actually do it.

I taught intro web dev courses at a "highly rated" college in Canada in a program that was specifically for a post-grad, international audience. It was 99% people from India who finished 4 year university degrees in computer science and the like. Out of a class of 35 students who were already in their 2nd, 3rd or 4th term of this program, no one knew to press F12 to see the console in a browser. This was a web develo…

Yikes, I guess this changes my opinion on Canada's immigration system...

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#188

Post by triceratops »

derefr wrote: post #184
addicted44 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true for a small subset of technology companies. Outside the tech world it's barely true, and even within the tech world, the vast majority of companies still require you to enter management the moment you've been promoted a couple of times.

Sure it exists outside the tech world. It's the meaning of the word "profession." A senior doctor or senior lawyer is respected, despite being a leaf-node.

"Doctor" is always respected, senior or not, in every society going back to the stone age. It's the nature of the profession. And doctors have authority over people in the workplace - nurses and technicians primarily - even if they don't fire or give out raises.

"Senior lawyer" isn't a thing AFAIK. Law firm partners or senior partners have management roles, or at least, influence, in their firms. Otherwise you're an associate, or in private practice, working for the government, or as corporate counsel (where again, you might manage teams of people). A random lawyer with a small private practice isn't going to command a ton of respect in society generally, even if they do very well financially.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#189

Post by TheCoelacanth »

andi999 wrote: post #116
andrewflnr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway Like, officially, in writing? Even if it's informal, as an American it blows my mind that that's still a thing.

I was told (if I remember correctly) that discriminated castes get an advantage (or even a certain percentage of seats) at universities in India. I am surprised this could be considered mind blowing, isnt there also affirmative action for college admission in America?

Universities aren't allowed to have racial quotas in the US. They are allowed have affirmative action that is implemented in a fuzzy non-numerical way, but they can't just say "we will admit X students of Y race".

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#190

Post by munk-a »

filoleg wrote: post #172
thaumasiotes wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hearing that was pretty shocking, not so much because it’s clearly untrue, but because he held that opinion of other Indian people. Why would it be shocking for people to perceive nepotism in their own society?

From my personal observation, it seems to be because a lot of sheltered people who grew up in the US tend to assume that the US culture is the epitome of racism, divisiveness, and inequality that is unprecedented in the rest of the world. So, in their minds, it is very shocking that a racial minority immigrant said something negative about their own culture. Especially since it sounds even worse than their over-exagg…

Growing up in Boston specifically - there was quite a lot of awareness of the inequality in the US. Boston has certainly made an effort to address inequality but the old racial divides between communities were quite visible and active racism was still all around me growing up.

In terms of nepotism in particular - we had the Kennedy's, honestly not the worst political dynasty in America but a pretty clear example of name trumping qualifications. I've since emigrated, but I think I was probably disabused of any glorification of the land of opportunity and american exceptionalism by the time I finished middle school.

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