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The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

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Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#121

Post by caddemon »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #119
caddemon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 2, why is it better to select on non-genetic traits? Those traits would be determined by the environment, which doesn't feel any more fair to me to judge on, and in general seems like something we try to avoid (i.e. we do not want rich kids to do well purely because they grew up with better resources). I'm genuinely asking because I have no clue what people want "merit" to mean. I always assumed the entire…

I don't think merit should focus on traits, I think merit should focus on effort. Though the problem with that is that traits can be a multiplier for effort. I don't know what merit should really mean though. It seems like there will always be some sort of hierarchy in society, so I guess defining what constitutes merit is a pick-your-poison kind of situation.

That's fair enough, I think effort should be an important piece. I just suspect that's got a large genetic component too.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#122

Post by primitivesuave »

mywittyname wrote: post #60
primitivesuave wrote: post #30

I have been hiring IIT graduates and building a team in India for several years now. They are all really smart people with a strong work ethic, but their approach to work tends to be the same as the approach they needed to succeed in a test-based education system. The engineers will grind until any hour of the night to ensure that all feature requirements are met and JIRA tickets checked off, but nobody will stop to…

Don't write this off as a solely as a symptom of education. Being able to question the judgement of an authority figure / decision maker is a privilege. A squeaky wheel gets the grease but a raised nail gets the hammer. Engineers generally lean more nail than wheel in most orgs, and being a minority or otherwise less respected subset of that group makes you feel even more like a nail. Dotting I's and crossing T's is…

> A squeaky wheel gets the grease but a raised nail gets the hammer.

You're right about this. Indian work culture tends toward rigid hierarchical structures, and expects employees to be much more deferent to authority than you would find in a typical Silicon Valley startup. However, even after bringing our startup culture out there (unlimited PTO, stock options, choose your own hours, don't call me "sir"), I still find this test-taking mentality to be what dominates an engineer's decision making.

Because of this, I know to be extremely specific on exact deliverables and tickets. The "rockstar developer" who can think deeply about the end user's needs is an extremely rare thing to find out there. The dominant mentality among developers is to expect a detailed specification that can be treated as the exact boundary of the problem.

To give a concrete example - I recently got quite frustrated when a simple CRUD feature shipped without a delete button, since the specification failed to explicitly mention where the button should go. Out of 30 developers and a full QA team, not one person thought critically about the specification or tried using the app from a user's perspective.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#123

Post by primitivesuave »

flowerlad wrote: post #62
primitivesuave wrote: post #30

I have been hiring IIT graduates and building a team in India for several years now. They are all really smart people with a strong work ethic, but their approach to work tends to be the same as the approach they needed to succeed in a test-based education system. The engineers will grind until any hour of the night to ensure that all feature requirements are met and JIRA tickets checked off, but nobody will stop to…

Something is really wrong, if he highly capable kids are checking off "JIRA tickets". Couldn't you find some college dropouts in Oklahoma instead?

I think the wording may have been confusing there, I meant that some developers tend to define their work to be exactly what is assigned to them on project management.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#124

Post by primitivesuave »

908B64B197 wrote: post #102
primitivesuave wrote: post #30

I have been hiring IIT graduates and building a team in India for several years now. They are all really smart people with a strong work ethic, but their approach to work tends to be the same as the approach they needed to succeed in a test-based education system. The engineers will grind until any hour of the night to ensure that all feature requirements are met and JIRA tickets checked off, but nobody will stop to…

That's true of new grads in general. When you complete a course there's an exam, and labs and assignments typically have a set of instructions to get started and a list of requirements. And there is always a domain expert (TA) not far. Now they are learning to become the domain expert in their own (limited) area.

You're right if you're thinking about American universities, but IIT operates much differently (this may have changed, so IIT students, please correct me if I'm wrong here).

No student enters IIT declaring a CS major like an American university - they have to first excel at test-taking within IIT across a range of subjects (chemistry, physics, etc), so they can be part of the top cohort within IIT that is allowed to enroll in CS classes. Based on a couple Youtube video lectures I watched, these courses tend to be lecture-based and tested based on printing the correct output (not on software architecture or code quality).

Some of our younger IIT developers say the system is modernizing to be more like other higher education programs, so I might be totally wrong here.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#125

Post by primitivesuave »

whack wrote: post #93
darth_avocado wrote: post #75

This article is a gross misrepresentation of what it takes to get into IITs. I got into one, and I can guarantee that this article pretty much picks and chooses data points as it wants. Yes it is academically challenging to get into IITs, but there's two ways you can get into one: Devote your entire life towards "cracking" the game that's the entrance exams, or just study enough that you've mastered the understanding…

The following is a great example of how the article cherry-picks its data: > “They have been cut off from society, they are unaware of current affairs, and are desperately in need of our induction programme for freshers where we try to re-orient them to society and the institute,” the (IIT) professor said on the condition of anonymity. This skill gap haunts them even when they graduate. Despite all the hard work engi…

When I read that statistic, the article immediately lost credibility to me. I think journalists are just lazy, and would rather write something that confirms their own worldview, rather than fact-check a ridiculous statement like that one with someone who is actually in the industry.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#126

Post by spoonjim »

darth_avocado wrote: post #75

This article is a gross misrepresentation of what it takes to get into IITs. I got into one, and I can guarantee that this article pretty much picks and chooses data points as it wants. Yes it is academically challenging to get into IITs, but there's two ways you can get into one: Devote your entire life towards "cracking" the game that's the entrance exams, or just study enough that you've mastered the understanding…

Well you probably have a very high IQ. The less gifted need to work harder as is true in every discipline.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#127

Post by rkunal »

primitivesuave wrote: post #30

I have been hiring IIT graduates and building a team in India for several years now. They are all really smart people with a strong work ethic, but their approach to work tends to be the same as the approach they needed to succeed in a test-based education system. The engineers will grind until any hour of the night to ensure that all feature requirements are met and JIRA tickets checked off, but nobody will stop to…

Replace word IIT with College. Most of your statement would feel correct nonetheless.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#128

Post by selimthegrim »

medium_burrito wrote: post #38
BrianOnHN wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, let our population continue to shrink. Perfect for the "elite" who get to coast on trust funds while the unemployed poors die off. Not so perfect when an outside force decides to declare war.

We can even speed up the process by letting the poors have unlimitied opiates!

Tell BoJack! You've solved the drug problem in America!

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#129

Post by gowld »

908B64B197 wrote: post #104
whack wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following is a great example of how the article cherry-picks its data: > “They have been cut off from society, they are unaware of current affairs, and are desperately in need of our induction programme for freshers where we try to re-orient them to society and the institute,” the (IIT) professor said on the condition of anonymity. This skill gap haunts them even when they graduate. Despite all the hard work engi…

He got it from here https://www.businesstoday.in/current/corporate/indian-engine... Completely unrelated to IITs.

That site has ad cancer, so I'll save you a click: It's a completely bogus "survey" that claims that 80-90% of engineers worldwide are unqualified for their jobs.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#130

Post by mywittyname »

Aeolun wrote: post #77
mywittyname wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't write this off as a solely as a symptom of education. Being able to question the judgement of an authority figure / decision maker is a privilege. A squeaky wheel gets the grease but a raised nail gets the hammer. Engineers generally lean more nail than wheel in most orgs, and being a minority or otherwise less respected subset of that group makes you feel even more like a nail. Dotting I's and crossing T's is…

> Dotting I's and crossing T's is exactly the kind of behavior one would expect from a person who is smart enough to recognize something is a stupid idea Maybe? But it makes them useless for my purposes. Which requires them to think for themselves.

That is thinking for oneself. That's seeing a problem, attempting to address the problem, and when that fails, taking copious notes for CYA purposes. It's the enterprise version of I Told You So.

What I think you mean to is you want a person who will take action. And that's down to company culture. If you want employees who act empowered, you have to give them power.

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