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The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
221–230 of 393 posts
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#222It's only worthless if you don't practice. There are tons of programming jobs out there but don't expect to get hired if you can't do the simplest algorithms. Many people who earn CS bachelors in India have barely even touched computers. There were some in my Masters courses who were hopelessly lost. Then there are some who are topcoders and into competitve programming, practice and experience are what really matter.
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer the term "software engineer" for a reason I haven't seen yet in this thread: clarity when speaking to people in other industries. Among many of the people I talk to on a regular basis, if I told them I was a "developer" they would assume that I was a real estate developer. If I told them I was a "programmer" it would be a little clearer, but before I moved into software I worked in the events industry for a…
I think part of the discomfort is that there is no exam that software engineers have to pass (other than a few states) unlike real engineering professions. I suspect and I suspect many others suspect that a large percentage would not actually be able pass a meaningful exam. However passing such an exam would probably only be partly correlated to success in the field. Part of this is because exams are imperfect, part…
The exams and credentials part is certainly murky. One could argue we make it worse in tech. Among the certifications I hold is at least one with "certified engineer" in the title (RHCE), but that's hardly only ambiguous one, with "engineer" showing up in all sorts of vendor and third-party certs and "architect" and "auditor" also finding their way into many others.
Are those phrases misleading? I don't know. I certainly feel like I worked pretty hard to earn and maintain the certifications I hold, but I can't compare the rigour and level of effort to licensure, because that's not required of me for what I do.
I also know that there are quite a few "certifications" out there that aren't rigorous at all, that are basically multiple-choice exams you can cram for without actually learning anything. I've never bothered going after a CompTIA certification for that reason.
It's a tough problem. On one hand, I despise artificial barriers to entry on principle. On the other hand, being able to understand and trust a person's base level of understanding and competence does have value.
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#224How much of the problem is too much supply, and how much of the problem is poor quality of the supply?
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#225It's only worthless if you don't practice. There are tons of programming jobs out there but don't expect to get hired if you can't do the simplest algorithms. Many people who earn CS bachelors in India have barely even touched computers. There were some in my Masters courses who were hopelessly lost. Then there are some who are topcoders and into competitve programming, practice and experience are what really matter.
What do they do in their CS curriculum if they're not actually programming?
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think part of the discomfort is that there is no exam that software engineers have to pass (other than a few states) unlike real engineering professions. I suspect and I suspect many others suspect that a large percentage would not actually be able pass a meaningful exam. However passing such an exam would probably only be partly correlated to success in the field. Part of this is because exams are imperfect, part…
The exams and credentials part is certainly murky. One could argue we make it worse in tech. Among the certifications I hold is at least one with "certified engineer" in the title (RHCE), but that's hardly only ambiguous one, with "engineer" showing up in all sorts of vendor and third-party certs and "architect" and "auditor" also finding their way into many others. Are those phrases misleading? I don't know. I certa…
The solution IMHO is to perform your own test. It is hard to scale unless you have some superior filter or are a magnet of some sort (back channel references or your company is really hot).
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen this bias in myself. I interned with several guys from India during college. I was an undergrad, they were grad students, having gotten their undergrad in India. We all went to the same university in the US. They weren't "crappy" engineers, per se, they just seemed to not actually have an undergrad degree in CS. Obviously I never saw their transcripts, but we seemed to be working from very different knowled…
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 don’t think that this is due to the caste system. I have seen it first hand - used to work in a restaurant flipping burgers with the other guys and as soon as somebody was promoted to shift manager - his demeanor towards other employees would change drastically .
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#228I want to emphasize one thing: all the graduates from IITs I've worked with are truly top notch.
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#229This is a well written article. For decades, the Indian society has tried to use engineering (along with law, medicine and IAS) as a template to success. Given the population numbers, it was bound to break sooner or later. As an Indian CompSci graduate, I am excited for this bust to happen as soon as possible. Most people I know did not like studying computer science, are absolutely unhappy with their worklife and wa…
> Out of the 700+ in my graduating class of Computer Science, less than 70-80 are still associated with computers in some for or manner '700+ graduating class' sounds more like a fraudulent diploma mill than a Tier 2/3 college. Actual Computer Science and Computer Engineering grads from Indian Tier 1/2/3 colleges have no problem finding jobs.
Berkeley is graduating 900+ undergrads every year in EECS/CS.
Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless
#230"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…
Let me just nod in the direction of stackoverflow and how it developed with regards to quality of content ...