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India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

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Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#81

Post by csomar »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #41
adhipg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college. Most of the times a student's major is selected for him/her with the following preference: 1. What's available in the most reputed college nearby. 2. What the parents perceive to be the best…

Economics also plays a big role. Most of us outside India just don't get this. In India, your choices are the following: a) Be a (relatively, not absolutely) rich doctor or engineer in the top 2.5% [1] of India (in terms of income). b) Be poorer than the bottom 2.5% of Americans. Very likely, be poor even by the standards of Brazil or Mexico. I'd work a job I hate to avoid that. I'd encourage my kids to do the same.…

But this won't solve the problem, does it? This will actually make it worse and lead to unhappy/tired generations. I'll actually sensibles people and push them to make a revolution.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#82

Post by Tycho »

jerf wrote: post #28
galadriel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can teachers be bribed in US to pass students ? (Just curious)

We do it differently. In a traditional bribery situation, one bribes the official to get a specific "exception" through. In the US, we declare that we aren't paying umpty-thousand dollars a year so that Johnny can get an F and that our contributions to the college will be going down if this continues, and in the spirit of American egalitarianism and fraternity, we lower the standards for everyone. Basically, we've co…

Maybe you should stop trying to be sarcastic, then?

Please don't take that the wrong way, I've got nothing against you personally (I've read some good posts from you, IIRC), or even with that particular post - it's just the straw that broke the camel's back. I just read a large thread on programmers.stackexchange asking whether IT job requirements are customarily exxagerated, and the answers were distressing. Firstly because most replies painted a bleak picture of HR practices, but secondly because most had a jaded, cynical tone which made it impossible to guage the sincerity. Or whether all the upvotes were from genuine empathy/agreement, or just amusement at the sarcasm. It gets really unclear.

It's like having two angels on your shoulders, one saying 'these sagacious persons have just offered a terrific insight, you must act upon it,' and the other saying 'these people are just trying to sound cool, of course the real world doesn't work like that - ignore them.'

/rant

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#83

Post by Stormbringer »

magic_haze wrote: post #70
rorrr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression (and I might be very wrong) is that both Indian and Chinese education is concentrated on memorization rather than understanding. That's why so few people from both countries can solve problems (at least in my work experience). I've interviewed a lot of people in the last 2 years, and I never look at the education level. I only care about your ability to solve problems. We've had people with masters in C…

Sadly, as SingAlong mentioned ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412393 ), the hiring system in India is based on grades (except for big name companies like MS or Google, that, from what my friends say, are still unfortunately doing that 90's thing of asking stupid "why are manhole covers round" type puzzles. Warning: Anecdotal Evidence. (I seem to be typing this a lot lately, I guess I need to get off HN for a b…

Based on the description in the article, they need the manhole questions more than we do :D

Which is to say that since the Indian education system as described in the article doesn't teach problem solving, and since you want people who have some problem solving ability, you must ask them to solve a problem in the interview.

But, I find the article confusing, it is about how a call centre company is struggling to find people who can't think outside the box... why the heck does a call centre company want people who can think? Aren't they just going to follow the same script day in and day out?? Wouldn't the ability to think for yourself actually be a curse at a company like that???

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#84

Post by francoisdevlin »

jarek wrote: post #72
hvs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change degrees fairly easily but, depending on the requirements for your new degree, you may have to fulfill a number of additional requirements. For example, if you are going to a large public university and are in their engineering program studying for an electrical engineering degree, you can switch over to computer science with very little difficulty. However, if you are in the liberal arts college studyi…

If switching from EE to CS is very easy, one or both are being taught wrong.

Remind me where CS came from again?

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#86

Post by magic_haze »

csomar wrote: post #74
magic_haze wrote: post #30

As an Indian student who tried to get through the "system", I can relate to this. I was really into computers and programming in high school, so I decided to go into the engineering stream in the "+2" years (basically, 11th and 12th grades, as opposed to the biology stream, which supposedly preps you for medical school). I remember the parental and peer pressure particularly well: my dad was pretty much opposed to it…

Thanks for the detailed comment. I just want to know how did you got the loan? The question is open for anyone too. I'm a third-world citizen looking to study in the USA and while can make my living, I don't think I can pay the expensive tuition fees.

Sure. I think its definitely worth getting a loan if you're really determined that's what you want. Most schools here (private ones included) give rather significant scholarships. You don't even need to apply for most cases: they just base it off your SATs and essay, and they usually give more if you go tell them about your circumstances.

I was actually one of the first ones in my country to get approved for such a large amount ($60K+ for five years (bachelors+masters)), and it helped that my dad was an employee of that bank. However, it was a really long process and many people were very dubious. My dad actually had to go all the way up to the CEO of the bank in order to get the approval, and those people were constantly behind my parents all this time checking up on my progress. Needless to say, it is very important that you not slip up.

But this was five years ago, and I've heard from my parents that a lot more students are been approved now after the banks saw its not that big of a risk. All in all, be prepared for a lot of bureaucratic hassle.

My recommendation, in retrospect, is that it is not generally worth it. You can learn more from the classroom videos MIT and Stanford have put up, and if you participate in open source projects, you can pick up the programming idioms and practices fairly well. Take advantage of what the internet has to offer. Most companies, atleast from what I've seen on HN, value your github commit log more than your degree as it says more about what your interests are.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#87

Post by Stormbringer »

To me the most disturbing thing as described in the article is that despite an emphasis on rote learning, they can't even teach how to read.

To me it seems that reading and 'thinking' are such fundamental skills in IT that they would just be assumed elsewhere... but an educational system that fails to teach reading is really enormously broken.

That said, I have actually worked with two lots of people in Bangalore. One lot got flown out to my country, and they were nice if a little lazy. On the other hand, they put up with some shit that the 'white natives' wouldn't have, like ridiculously long compile times because some idiot (most likely a well educated white person) had thrown the kitchen sink at their ant script. I wouldn't have put up with a 30 minute build, I'd have lost my nut. They were at least as smart as the 'white natives', they could converse, their English was at least as good (and better in some cases) than the native English speakers.

However, they said that in Bangalore working for companies is very stratified. Everyone wants to work at the large American companies (e.g. IBM) so they are the top tier and get to pick the best candidates, and then you get this trickle down effect, till you get to relatively small non-US foreign companies (like us). From the article, it seems there are even lower tiers, e.g. presumably the good candidates don't apply to the smaller Indian companies.

Funnily enough, later on I got the opportunity to work with some guys in Bangalore who were employed by IBM, and they were completely, atrociously bad. The only time I've seen worse is deliberate sabotage. These guys got on the excuse merry-go-round and never got off, and would keep recycling excuses why they hadn't done any work, even though you'd think "didn't we already deal with this the previous two times it came up?". These guys did nothing.

Naturally, I cheated. :D I took a page out of the managers handbook, declared 'victory' and ended the programming phase. Now we were into the testing/bugfix phase. My 'white native†' colleagues who had also been frustrated by lack of progress in Bangalore were puzzled by this. They said how can it go into testing, they haven't done anything? So I said "run the tests and if you find any problems, fix them" so they said "but there's nothing to run!" and I said "well, that is the first problem to fix then isn't it?". And suddenly the lightbulb went on and they 'got it'. We actually made up all the lost time and then some.

So I'm not particularly impressed with these so called 'top tier' candidates either.

†Not necessarily white or 'native', but naturalised citizens of an English speaking country

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#88

Post by ideamonk »

magic_haze wrote: post #30

As an Indian student who tried to get through the "system", I can relate to this. I was really into computers and programming in high school, so I decided to go into the engineering stream in the "+2" years (basically, 11th and 12th grades, as opposed to the biology stream, which supposedly preps you for medical school). I remember the parental and peer pressure particularly well: my dad was pretty much opposed to it…

Last 3 years of my higher education has been an emphasis on "what"s and not "how"s. But a college where every other week there's a test stacked up for the 6 subjects, syllabi is mixed up the way it should not be, even the last semester has two useless subjects lined up, and attendance is compulsory, it hardly leaves you with much time to answer the "how"s you've been wondering about.

This overburdened-ness hardly leaves students the time to think about what they'd love to do in life & any kind of self-improvement. Tired of such a monotonous routine for 3-4 years the escape route turns into getting a job asap -> hence your observation of "how little enthusiasm most people have about the work they'd end up doing" <- for they really never got a time to think & discuss about how they wish to drive their lives.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#89

Post by yalogin »

Its not the educational system that is the main reason here. Well the system needs to change but the problem here is caused by the proliferation of engineering colleges (and other technical degree colleges). Its too easy to start a engineering college in India. There are way too many "engineers" and degree holders pushed out that don't deserve to get that degree. The schools only care about getting money and are really shitty. That is what is making for the influx of poor candidates into the employment pool.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#90

Post by ido »

csomar wrote: post #74
magic_haze wrote: post #30

As an Indian student who tried to get through the "system", I can relate to this. I was really into computers and programming in high school, so I decided to go into the engineering stream in the "+2" years (basically, 11th and 12th grades, as opposed to the biology stream, which supposedly preps you for medical school). I remember the parental and peer pressure particularly well: my dad was pretty much opposed to it…

Thanks for the detailed comment. I just want to know how did you got the loan? The question is open for anyone too. I'm a third-world citizen looking to study in the USA and while can make my living, I don't think I can pay the expensive tuition fees.

Why not go to continental Europe instead? Universities are mostly either very affordable or, in some cases, free.
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