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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

#201

Post by kyuudou »

yesenadam wrote: post #140
remmargorp64 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait... so in your mind there is a distinct difference between a developer, programmer, and engineer? Because in my mind, they are all the same. How are they different, in your mind?

I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk: Real Software Engineering , Glenn Vanderburg, Lone Star Ruby 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos which explains what various kinds of engineers actually do. Not at all dry and boring like it might sound! From the YouTube blurb: Software engineering as it's taught in universities simply doesn't work. It doesn't…

Sounds like some of the cynicism behind Dijkstra's bit on software engineering[0]

"A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot."."

[0]https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E... Edsger W. Dijkstra's "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science"

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

#202

Post by moate »

munk-a wrote: post #190
filoleg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

OP was saying that sheltered Americans think America is racist, but other countries aren't/have fixed it.

Are you providing anecdotal evidence to support him or were you trying to disprove?

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

#203

Post by mesozoic »

hodder wrote: post #200

The top story on Hacker News right now is how Twitter is allowing (some) employees to work from home permanently. The locational cost of living arbitrage (from an employee perspective) and labor arbitrage (from an employer perspective) available in the market is immense and companies that can succeed in overcoming the language and cultural barriers are looking at a massive opportunity.

The story goes into how 90% of them are unqualified even after training. It doesn't matter how cheap I can hire someone if they can't do the job they're a net negative.

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

#204

Post by yesenadam »

walshemj wrote: post #158
yesenadam wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk: Real Software Engineering , Glenn Vanderburg, Lone Star Ruby 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos which explains what various kinds of engineers actually do. Not at all dry and boring like it might sound! From the YouTube blurb: Software engineering as it's taught in universities simply doesn't work. It doesn't…

Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once. And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost.

> Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once.

> And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost.

That seems to me a low-quality comment, sorry. The lack of punctuation and the spelling mistakes made it hard to parse, and until you flesh it out more, I'm not sure precisely what point you were trying to make. And more mentioning, less "lets not mention"-ing, please.

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

#205

Post by admiral33 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #28

I would be interested to know if there is actually an oversupply of programmers or whether there is still a shortage of skilled ones in the labour force and they are just graduating anyone who pays their tuition. We have that problem here in Canada and the USA. Plenty of developer jobs are open, but I also know lots of CS grads who never found jobs, even two years out of university. That's because most would struggle…

A good CS program will touch on FizzBuzzesque questions early on as part of one of the introduction to programming classes, and in later classes do a deep dive on algorithms and their efficiency in pseudocode or real code.

I guess it's possible they didn't practice, but I have a hard time believing that they could get through an undergrad CS program and not be able to quickly remind themselves of some basic code logic beforehand if they don't already code regurarly.

Were they actually passionate about CS? Did they have bad professors?

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

#206

Post by mesozoic »

as1mov wrote: post #77

> The best jobs are reserved for graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the crown jewels of the country’s higher education system. Every April, over a million students take the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), the primary pathway to the IITs. There are fewer than 12 thousand seats at the 16 IITs in India, and they accept one in 50 applicants each year. This is one of the core issues many people seem…

Even happens in the US. This is why US tech companies don't give a shit about a diploma. Half of applicants then can't pass basically fizz buzz during a phone interview. It get's even worse once on site. As annoying and ineffective as tech interviews are we can at least weed out the people who have no idea how to program fairly effectively. Though too much of the focus is on that really. When it comes to higher level positions interviews can barely even start to gauge talent.

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

#207

Post by buzzkillington »

hodder wrote: post #200

The top story on Hacker News right now is how Twitter is allowing (some) employees to work from home permanently. The locational cost of living arbitrage (from an employee perspective) and labor arbitrage (from an employer perspective) available in the market is immense and companies that can succeed in overcoming the language and cultural barriers are looking at a massive opportunity.

Why should it be the western companies that overcome the cultural barriers and not the indian workers?

Asking as an immigrant to the west.

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

#208

Post by mesozoic »

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.

After conducting enough interviews to not be able to do them anymore because they depress me. I believe it.

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

#209

Post by google234123 »

aaaxyz wrote: post #194
totalZero wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate... The value of an education comes as much from the group of peers (classmates who interact regarding experiences, plans, lessons, and ideas) as from the books and professors themselves. Like a critical mass of brains. If you water the group down, then the most talented cohort benefits less than if they were the only people to advance.

As someone who got an undergrad degree from a top 40 school and is now taking courses at a state system school accepting a lot more students, I completely agree. The difference in terms of work output and professionalism between students is massive. Presentations from other students lack depth and often fail to explain basic concept; they have very little educational value. Group work is a complete mess since a lot o…

You are not hanging out with the right people then. I think you will find the top students in any random state school are just as good as at an ivy league institution. Source: I've been at both.

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

#210

Post by yesenadam »

kyuudou wrote: post #201
yesenadam wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk: Real Software Engineering , Glenn Vanderburg, Lone Star Ruby 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos which explains what various kinds of engineers actually do. Not at all dry and boring like it might sound! From the YouTube blurb: Software engineering as it's taught in universities simply doesn't work. It doesn't…

Sounds like some of the cynicism behind Dijkstra's bit on software engineering[0] "A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as…

I was very sceptical too, but when I watched it, it all sounded very common-sensical.
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