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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

#361

Post by entha_saava »

eps wrote: post #303
ekianjo wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said some of my favorite people to work with (smart, easy to work with) are Indian. It's really a shame that the issues affect perception of everybody. It's a good reminder to me not to judge a book by it's cover, metaphorically speaking. I don't even know why race or color would even matter when it comes to considering one's capability to do some engineering job. At the end of the day just work with whoever c…

Because there is a clear correlation between an amount of blatant lies in an average resume and the country of origin.

I am from India and I think it is because many people try to game the system instead of actually working hard. It is rooted deeply in the education system itself.

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

#362

Post by [deleted] »

kls wrote: post #78
cmckn wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

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

#363

Post by entha_saava »

kls wrote: post #78
cmckn wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

It has nothing to do with caste system. It is that younger people are not supposed to say elders are wrong or oppose them, even if they are clearly wrong. I don't know about other countries but this kind of culture is root of many problems in India.

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

#364

Post by rusabd »

maddax wrote: post #360
plandis wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expected this kind of lazy analysis to appear on Reddit but not on Hacker News. > If you are a median person (which most likely, we all are), then your expected value will be about the same, at most a bit lower cash wise than in the US. In my experience wage offers were significantly lower in Europe when I was potentially looking about a year ago. levels.fyi seems to be pretty in line with my pay experience in the…

Wow, just wow! Unfortunately I did expect your response from the HN crowd. You and I have very different ways of looking at the world. The entitlement and privilege among software engineers in the US to have crazy high salaries and "perks" such as health insurance is exactly the reason why I will never move there. I think your last statement sums up the situation very well, but it baffles me how any decent human bein…

You can earn 250k and donate 190k if you want. 190k per year will go very far. If you don't to whom to give I can send you names of specific people who are struggling at the moment.

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

#365

Post by mytherin »

siscia wrote: post #311
rusticpenn wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is pretty welcoming. There is a huge shortage of software engineers (of acceptable quality) here.

Well it is also true that wage are lower than in the US. So if you are young without many families bonds makes a lot of sense to seek employment oversea. If Europe started to pay better money, then there would not be such lack of engineers.

While the salaries are indeed lower, you should take into account that in the US people almost always report their salary before tax, whereas in Europe salaries are almost always reported after taxes.

An engineer earning 100K in Europe will be listed as earning 60~65K, whereas in the US that engineer would be listed as earning 100K, despite earning the exact same wage.

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

#366

Post by core-questions »

iguy wrote: post #300
core-questions wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. Why? Does fairness serve a business purpose? Are businesses held to be fair to their employees in other circumstances? What is fair? Perfect proportional representation of the host population? Within what limits? Can we make a heuristic for what's more fair? Should that drive hiring decisions more than other factors? The…

Another reading of "We have to strive" is simply that, if we do wish to reduce various biases, it is something we must do consciously. That doing so runs against what's easy, our natural inclination is to extrapolate and generalize. Deciding what fair means is indeed hard. But most would today agree (I think) that judging someone to be incompetent based on the reputation of those of the same ethnicity is unfair.

> if we do wish to reduce various biases

Again, though, the desire to do this is based entirely on marketing, and not on merit.

> judging someone to be incompetent based on the reputation of those of the same ethnicity is unfair

Sure, but mandatory hiring of people of particular ethnicities in order to boost some arbitrary "diversity quotient" (read: non-white quotient) is potentially just as unfair to other qualified applicants.

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

#367

Post by core-questions »

red_admiral wrote: post #350
core-questions wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. Why? Does fairness serve a business purpose? Are businesses held to be fair to their employees in other circumstances? What is fair? Perfect proportional representation of the host population? Within what limits? Can we make a heuristic for what's more fair? Should that drive hiring decisions more than other factors? The…

"Fair" can mean a lot of things. If you asked three people to define fairness, you'd get at least three definitions, and I can think of some definitions that would indeed have a business purpose; I can also think of some that wouldn't. An example of something that would serve a business purpose: widening the potential target market. Of course if your company is producing maternity wear then you probably don't want to…

There's no reason to assume that a diverse (read: non-white) group is required in order to market to a diverse audience. Plenty of 100% Chinese companies manage to market to everyone in America via Amazon etc. every day. Will there be some requirement or even some business advantage to them to hire diversely?

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

#368

Post by core-questions »

sethammons wrote: post #338
core-questions wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. Why? Does fairness serve a business purpose? Are businesses held to be fair to their employees in other circumstances? What is fair? Perfect proportional representation of the host population? Within what limits? Can we make a heuristic for what's more fair? Should that drive hiring decisions more than other factors? The…

There have been studies on the value-add of diversity in the workforce. TL;DR: research "suggests that diverse work environments boost profitability, culture, and public perception.[1]" 1: https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/careers/how-does-workplace...

Research that validates the only conclusion you're allowed to publish isn't research I'm going to base my life around. The famous Putnam study on diversity in neighbourhoods is much more realistic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...

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

#369

Post by core-questions »

taurath wrote: post #307
core-questions wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. Why? Does fairness serve a business purpose? Are businesses held to be fair to their employees in other circumstances? What is fair? Perfect proportional representation of the host population? Within what limits? Can we make a heuristic for what's more fair? Should that drive hiring decisions more than other factors? The…

If you want to have good objective judgement you must remove or at least be aware of your biases as much as possible.

What's a bias, versus a well-trained heuristic? Am I to deny a million years of evolution as a pattern-finding organism just to satisfy the political goals of a group of people who do not have the best interests of my own group at heart?

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

#370

Post by amf12 »

plandis wrote: post #354
igorkraw wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna defend Europe a bit more here, I'd wager there are soft benefits which aren't as easily appreciated as cash. On Europe you make less, but you also get out of the meat grinder much earlier. If you are a median person (which most likely, we all are), then your expected value will be about the same, at most a bit lower cash wise than in the US. But even that is debatable, in most of (western) Europe we don't treat…

I expected this kind of lazy analysis to appear on Reddit but not on Hacker News. > If you are a median person (which most likely, we all are), then your expected value will be about the same, at most a bit lower cash wise than in the US. In my experience wage offers were significantly lower in Europe when I was potentially looking about a year ago. levels.fyi seems to be pretty in line with my pay experience in the…

I find your rebuttal short sighted and frankly immature, no offense.

> In my experience wage offers were significantly lower in Europe when I was potentially looking about a year ago.

They are. But the median wages are good enough to raise a family and have a happy and peaceful life. Not everyone works for the top-tier companies.

If someone's goal is to optimize the amount of money they make and save, then for Tech US beats everywhere. That's not everyone's goal.

> People in the US certainly do not treat active shooters as a matter of normal life.

Agreed, but the frequency of being shot is higher in the US than in other developed countries. That does not mean the probability of a person getting shot in the US is very high, but certainly higher than other developed countries.

> I think you would find that most technology companies are in cities with walkability/public transit in the US.

This is certainly not true. There are some companies, in some cities with high walkability, but that's not true for most companies. Also in such cities, the cost of a home or rent is expensive for a family and so most people have to live miles away.

> Medical insurance at tech companies I’ve worked for in the US are very good. For example, I pay $20/mo and the theoretical maximum I would pay for insurance in any given year is $3000.

What happens if you lose your job? What about for people who don't work at the best companies (majority of the people).

> if you call the cops they won't shoot you >> Again, I think you’re treating news as proof that this is a common occurrence

I agree with this though.

tl;dr: For people who don't prioritize $$$ and want to raise a family without a lot of PITA, Europe is great!

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