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Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

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Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#121

Post by rramadass »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #95
whitenoice wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. Being a doctor is boring? It is challenging to be a doctor, and it is almost impossible to cheat through the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam) process. It is a 3 step process, which includes four tough exams taken at registered centers, which are actively monitored. I'm saying this as a spouse of a physician who has gone through the journey, and the amount of work they put in through their med school, USMLE,…

Three things: first, I never said it was easy , only that it was fairly conventional . Second, I never said that anyone cheated on the USMLE (I agree that would be quite hard). Third, some of these comments suggest that somehow I have no idea what it takes to be a doctor. As a matter of fact, my mother is a pediatrician and a professor at one of the top 10-15 medical schools in the US, so I have a pretty good idea wh…

>nevertheless, I think it is a fairly conventional and unimaginative path to take in life, compared to, say becoming an artist or doing a startup.

This is exactly privilege speaking. Starving Artists/Musicians/Humanities/Literature major are practically a meme and have become a cautionary tale on what to avoid until you have established yourself financially. Whether it is fair or not, life does not reward them in today's economic system (ignore outliers). Hence the need for "safe and boring" jobs like Doctor/Engineer/Lawyer/anything else that helps you earn money to lead a "boring" life.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#122

Post by wodenokoto »

dheera wrote: post #18
searchableguy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the obsession with certificates interesting. One of my past school used to hand them out like candies. It costs like a dollar for 10 and made everyone happy. Same with trophies and medals. After some questioning and feedback from a lot of people indirectly, I concluded that it's one of the best investment any school can make. It results in lot of good PR, recognition, talks, feel good, etc. It's useful to targ…

That's interesting because I've always found someone being "certified" for e.g. Microsoft something is a huge turnoff for hiring.

In my experience it’s a turn off for HN types of commenters, but out in the “real world” it’s a big deal.

My current employer has a goal of X% of all consultants must be cloud certified and bringing these certificates to pre-sales meetings with clients helps a lot.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#123

Post by bollu »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #30
aviraldg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so quick to blame "backwards attitudes" when this behaviour is simply to meant to compensate for discrimination against Asians in college admissions? ( https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-... ) Asians with far better scores are deemed to be less worthy due to "uninteresting personalities" than others far less qualified. I don't think it's difficult to understand why the children of…

I think it's backwards to believe that the measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to, or how much money you make, especially if these goals lead you to cheat and lie to advance.

> measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to

In my experience, the prestige of a college definitely correlates with how rewarding your time at college is going to be.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#124

Post by TrackerFF »

didibus wrote: post #38

A lot of places have societies where culturally the game is about getting ahead of others. You're all together in a society competing for the top spots. Whereas certain other cultures are more about working together to create an ideal environment for all to be emancipated and enjoy life to its fullest. Personally, I prefer the latter, as it just seems much more enjoyable and fun to live in such a culture. The former…

That's one thing I enjoy about Scandinavia - we have a very collaborative culture, where the community is above the individual. The concept of "gaming the system" is extremely frowned upon, and everyone should strive to be the morally best person they can be.

But if you're financially or materialistically motivated, there are some drawbacks with this, though.

- Higher taxes

- More compressed wages (an Engineer with a Master's Degree will for example "only" earn around 1.5-3 times what low-skill minimum wage workers earn - compared to other countries where this multiple could be 5-10)

- A bit less entrepreneurial spirit

With that said, I enjoy living here. Life is comfortable, and there's no endless pursuit of getting richer, just for the sake of becoming rich. Retirement is not the be-all and end-all goal of life here.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#125

Post by cinntaile »

rramadass wrote: post #119
cinntaile wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this also why there are so many low quality videos on technical topics by people which seem to be from India? A way to pad their resumes? Or is this a result of a course requirement or something else?

You must have been looking at the wrong places then (Youtube is not a good indicator). Here is "National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)" which publishes a lot of high quality courses from various top-ranking universities in India - https://nptel.ac.in/

You misunderstood what I meant. I did not say that there are no high quality tech topic videos coming from India, I am sure there are as I have watched a few myself. What I said was that there is a lot of low quality content and I was wondering if the reasons for that were related to what the parent mentioned.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#126

Post by ankurpatel »

There is a story about this mocking Indian culture. One day the captain of the ship was transporting containers filled with crabs. When he discovered it was crabs he got upset and said to his fellow sailors to make sure there is lids on those containers so that they do not get out. To that one sailor said “Dont worry captain. These are Indian crabs. If one gets up another will pull him down.” I remember thinking of this story and feel we are like crabs in India and some of it has to do with huge population and limited resources. If we had a limited population and plenty of resources we would not be doing Jugad.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#127

Post by Lvl999Noob »

compscistd wrote: post #49
Waterluvian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

Highly anecdotal, but my ex at the time (white), bio major, had a real tough time studying for midterms and finals in undergrad. Meanwhile, my cousin (Indian) in the same class was breezing through the exams, partying more than me (a liberal arts major!), generally screwing around and somehow consistently ended up with a better score. My ex couldn’t parse this and just assumed my cousin was smarter or more qualified…

Wait. So your ex _didn't_ study the old exam papers? That is like the first step in any preparation.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#128

Post by kubanczyk »

ankurpatel wrote: post #126

There is a story about this mocking Indian culture. One day the captain of the ship was transporting containers filled with crabs. When he discovered it was crabs he got upset and said to his fellow sailors to make sure there is lids on those containers so that they do not get out. To that one sailor said “Dont worry captain. These are Indian crabs. If one gets up another will pull him down.” I remember thinking of t…

I was told on Sri Lanka that if you put one crab in the bucket, he can easily get out. But if you put five, not one can get out because the others pull it down. Is it true?

They didn't mention the crabs' nationality though.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#129

Post by rv-de »

cinntaile wrote: post #125
rramadass wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have been looking at the wrong places then (Youtube is not a good indicator). Here is "National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)" which publishes a lot of high quality courses from various top-ranking universities in India - https://nptel.ac.in/

You misunderstood what I meant. I did not say that there are no high quality tech topic videos coming from India, I am sure there are as I have watched a few myself. What I said was that there is a lot of low quality content and I was wondering if the reasons for that were related to what the parent mentioned.

I checked a few of the videos on that site and they are anyway located on YouTube.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#130

Post by srndh »

cinntaile wrote: post #113
dhruvarora013 wrote: post #14

I think the author touched on this lightly, but I feel like there is a little more to be said about “signaling” or what I like to personally call, “resume flexing”. In India, all people at all times are building their resumes for a semi-vague goal usually wealth or a happy retirement. This idea is embedded quite early on in age as the article author suggested - you’re usually pointed at a career in middle school that…

Is this also why there are so many low quality videos on technical topics by people which seem to be from India? A way to pad their resumes? Or is this a result of a course requirement or something else?

I think you are referring to the Youtube gurus teaching stuff.

Its actually 2 fold, the short term goal of raking up some youtube views and getting the youtube ad money. Second is to pad the CV as an "advanced developer with lots of knowledge to share", it helps to put on CV and also be considered for some training positions which is demand as many are rushing to get into tech where "even kids are minting money".

I know a guy that put up some coding videos on youtube to be a "youtuber" and one of the big tech firms in India hired him to train their new recruits.

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