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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

#211

Post by filoleg »

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…

I wasn't saying that racism or divisiveness aren't present in the US. I am absolutely with you on that, both of those things are present in the US to one degree or another, depending on where you live in.

I was simply saying that a significant number of people in the US get so myopically focused on those issues locally, they don't realize that there is a whole world out there, where those same issues are massively more rampant and ubiquitous. And when they suddenly discover that through a first-hand or a second-hand experience, it is understandable they would be shocked.

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

#212

Post by manquer »

totalZero wrote: post #171
kumarm wrote: post #157

When I joined Engineering in India (1994), my state had 2000 engineering seats. 120K people wrote the entrance test for the 2K seats. Today the same state has about 250K seats. Anyone who writes the entrance test can get into some college or other. Has the quality gone down? I would think so. But I definitely think qualified students is definitely greater than 2k even when I went to college. I would rather prefer ove…

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.

Value of education in a professional context comes from such things. Many professional groups such as lawyers , accountants, actuaries etc have entry systems which are not directly linked to the education itself ( BAR membership and degree in law etc).

Value of education itself cannot be only quantified by the its value in a job, even a poor education is better than none. Lack of employability should not be a reason for not learning.

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

#213

Post by munk-a »

moate wrote: post #202
munk-a wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nope actually - I just fully misread his comment and thought he was saying that Americans don't think America is racist.

Sorry about that!

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

#214

Post by joelbluminator »

battery_cowboy wrote: post #105
burntoutfire wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also have a problem with calling developers engineers. I held this point of view for a long time but, after lurking at r/engineering, I've learned that their jobs are (depressingly) similar to ours. I.e. it's almost never deriving things from first principles, but rather trying to quickly bolt together a solution out of pieces looked up at different vendors' catalogs. Most engineers don't even remember the basic…

The new "software engineer" is just a software assembly line worker. I guess the same goes for other engineers. I would imagine the quality of software engineer will get worse over time as it becomes easier to assemble software from an assortment of black boxes.

Is it getting easier though? Did you try "modern" web development lately? Good luck piecing together a working website...

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

#215

Post by thrower123 »

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…

It's not helped by the Indian consulting sweatshops.

I didn't have any particular prejudices about Indians before I started dealing with Tata and Cognizant and Infosys and Cap-Gemini and the ATT/IBM/Oracle Global Services divisions, but afterwards, it's just hard. You get to where you just expect dishonesty and incompetence and disorganization and abusive behavior as the default.

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

#216

Post by garganzol »

Priem19 wrote: post #127

3 Idiots is a remarkably inspirational Bollywood movie depicting the problem; one of my all-time favorites. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/3_idiots

"3 Idiots" is just a name of the movie. Just have started to watch it and it looks pretty relevant to the discussion, so far. I presume that downvotes to your comment are unwarranted.

I have a question to Hindi speakers: they say a word that sounds like "futur" meaning literally "future". Is that a borrowed word? Or is it something native to Hindi?

I am quite astonished that I can grasp a bit of it. The language kind of reflects some European languages. For instance, I can understand a tiny fraction of what actors are saying in Hindi. Never learnt it before, but that lingual link is interesting.

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

#217

Post by joelbluminator »

mesozoic wrote: post #203
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.

OK, but what about millions of European devs who earn 50% what an American dev is earning? Or Canadian, or South American?

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

#218

Post by macromagnon »

burntoutfire wrote: post #53
mikorym wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I also have a problem with calling developers engineers. I held this point of view for a long time but, after lurking at r/engineering, I've learned that their jobs are (depressingly) similar to ours. I.e. it's almost never deriving things from first principles, but rather trying to quickly bolt together a solution out of pieces looked up at different vendors' catalogs. Most engineers don't even remember the basic…

Sounds like your job could use devops with some deployment stack.

I know the basics of chef/ansible etc but I much prefer traditional dev.

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

#219

Post by magicsmoke »

bluGill wrote: post #128
magicsmoke wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In East Asian economies, the workforce transitioned from farming to labor-intensive manufacturing before moving onto high-tech services. India, in contrast, had a booming tech consultancy sector before they had a strong manufacturing sector. A poor farmer in China, and Japan/Korea in the decades prior, could move to a city and make a better income on an assembly line despite not having any formal education. A poor fa…

Which is good overall because automation is making those manufacturing jobs worth less and less. Companies are starting to leave China for low wage countries already. Right now service jobs designing the automation is where the real money is and India is well positioned to take it. Note there are no easy roads to success in general. Being born to the right family helps (a lot) , but you can sti mess up.

Apparently not based on the premise of the article discussing the poor quality of service workers coming through India's education system. My hypothesis would be that the poor quality in education comes from trying to funnel as many people as possible into highly-skilled service jobs because there's no middle rung for them to take a rest at. Rushing things without a solid foundation always ends up being self-defeating and slower in the long run.

In addition, automating a factory process is more effective if the designers live in a society with plenty of manufacturing experience. Avoids problems like egghead designers creating the latest automated process that turns out to be a nightmare for maintenance when actually used in a high-volume manufacturing line. I'd be willing to bet big chunk of the companies in the future automated factory revolution would be Chinese companies leveraging their manufacturing experience. Once again, skipping steps = problems down the line.

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

#220

Post by lmm »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #54
HenryKissinger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you responded to, but my $0.02. Developer: codes websites and apps. Programmer: writes computer code. Encompasses developers. Engineer: builds bridges, rockets, cars, missiles, smart tvs, gaming consoles, computers, power stations, electric infrastructure, water treatment plants, etc.

Developer: builds subdivisions and "develops" real estate. Related: I've come across a handful of programmers that describe themselves as "contractors". So you hang drywall and install toilets?

You're a contractor if you work on contract. Just as you're a consultant if you consult.

(I'm most comfortable with "developer" because that corresponds most closely to what what I do feels like. I don't spend so much of my time actually programming, but very little in software is engineering-like)

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