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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

#91

Post by bachmeier »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #24
bachmeier wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same argument used to call a programmer an engineer could be applied to anyone that writes for a living, any doctor, any lawyer, well pretty much anyone. We're all "engineers" unless we're doing something completely mechanical.

According to the dictionary, an "engineer" is a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works. A computer is a physical machine that runs programs which are encoded digitally on physical hardware (memory). I could see an argument for considering a computer program to be an engineered "machine" that runs on a turing-complete computational platform. Just because a computer program is digit…

> According to the dictionary, an "engineer" is a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works.

That's exactly the point. Programmers write programs. They don't design engines, machines, or public works. Programmers are excluded from the very definition you're quoting.

If you want to expand the definition to include the application of scientific methods to solve a problem, so that it includes someone that creates a Javascript single page web app, there's no way to exclude those other professions. Programs are not machines by any conventional use of the term.

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

#92

Post by throwaway158497 »

umvi wrote: post #59
throwaway158497 wrote: post #42

Tagnetially related. Because of COVID lockdowns, many consulting firms are shutting down. I hired an engineer with 2 years experience to teach me HTML/CSS/JS for one month. So fa I am satisfied with him compared to what I learnt on Udacity frontend nanodegree. I am paying him $100 for 30 hours of classes. For people wanting to learn stuff, this is the best time. If you want to contact him, email is in profile

> I am paying him $100 for 30 hours of classes Seems a bit unethical to pay someone $3/hour for their time (unless he is retired/mainly doing it for fun/teaching a lot of students at the same time). But for a person trying to make a living with 1-on-1 lessons, that's pretty brutal. I pay $15/hour practicing foreign languages on italki

>> But for a person trying to make a living with 1-on-1 lessons, that's pretty brutal.

Well, for now, he is looking at this as side/fun income. if he asks, I will pay him more. But ask he has to.

Also, all along I was not able to pay market rates. So, I could not entertain idea of hiring a tutor. Only Because of covid crisis, I was able to hire for so low.

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

#93

Post by NwtnsMthd »

drchiu wrote: post #37

Tangential question (which has been on my mind) related to this: I don’t have a CS degree. Background in something completely unrelated. But I’ve been able to make a living programming doing my own thing (bootstrapped online stuff). As a result, I never bothered to apply for jobs at established CO’s. For those who work in established tech start ups or tech companies, what proportion of your software devs have an actu…

Most of our developers either have a degree unrelated to programming or hold no degree. Of our top three programmers, two are dropouts and one has a degree in physics. Two of them started with us having dropped out undergrad (unrelated), and the third we hired after decades of experience at other companies. The common theme I've found with all three is a passion for programming and learning in general. If they didn't do this as a job it would be their hobby, this is what makes a good engineer or developer. Forget the experience, if a person is driven they will learn what they need to know.

But my viewpoint is skewed, there are only about 25 of us at our company.

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

#94

Post by redis_mlc »

analog31 wrote: post #36

I wonder if India faced a problem similar to the for profit college system in the us, where a lot of the programs were fake.

> for profit college system in the us, where a lot of the programs were fake.

The programs in the US weren't fake ...

The US government (VA, etc.) didn't like paying for schools that had low graduation rates, or had high student loan defaults, so closed them. In some cases, legit trade schools were closed, like Wyotech:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WyoTech

Ironically, this being HN, private investor groups trying to monetize education were behind a lot of the closed schools.

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

#95

Post by californical »

demosito666 wrote: post #39
WilliamEdward wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say the solution is to raise the bar for software engineers, but it seems the problem here is the culture around prestige and money which has prompted millions of people to go after programming careers. It's not easy to change culture. Still I think there should be some needed post-grad accreditation for software engineers if they want to actually be called engineers.

> there should be some needed post-grad accreditation for software engineers Which will depreciate just as fast for the same reason.

Not necessarily if it's challenging enough. Based on CS/SWE knowledge and requiring a lot of focused effort. Not a requirement to create software professionally, but a requirement to be a "Software Engineer".

This would reduce the need for crazy interviews for those that have passed it, since it proves a level of competence above scraping by for a CS degree, etc! Maybe you need a few years of real work experience to have a chance at passing the Software Engineer accreditation. Just like if you have a long work history at GoogAmaFaceSoft, it's assumed you're already pretty capable.

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

#96

Post by fragmede »

wccrawford wrote: post #58
Jaygles wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The credential's value doesn't go down for the entity seeking someone with the credential. The value only goes down for the person who has the credential IF they were deriving value from the exclusivity of the credential. In other words, the value one gets from the exclusivity of a credential is separate from the practical value of having the credential. The value from the exclusivity is bound to decrease as a popula…

If a credential gets less exclusive over time (meaning they relax the requirements on it) and the same company seeks someone with that credential repeatedly over time, the value that the company expects from that credential does go down.

Lowered exclusivity doesn't require the requirements relax though. If, before, there was one student passing the exam candidate, and now there are 10 passing, where have the requirements been relaxed (assuming there's no cheating going on)? It's less exclusive because now there are ten instead of one (well, eleven total) but the bar hasn't been relaxed, there's just higher supply.

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

#97

Post by Jaygles »

wccrawford wrote: post #58
Jaygles wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The credential's value doesn't go down for the entity seeking someone with the credential. The value only goes down for the person who has the credential IF they were deriving value from the exclusivity of the credential. In other words, the value one gets from the exclusivity of a credential is separate from the practical value of having the credential. The value from the exclusivity is bound to decrease as a popula…

If a credential gets less exclusive over time (meaning they relax the requirements on it) and the same company seeks someone with that credential repeatedly over time, the value that the company expects from that credential does go down.

A credential becoming less exclusive doesn't necessarily mean the requirements are relaxed. Could mean the requirements stay constant and there are more people shifting their priorities, seeking to obtain it and succeeding.

Of course in the real world, supply will react to the increase in demand and those looking to make a quick buck will offer an inferior credentialing service. For example: the fairly recent glut of web dev bootcamps (Of which I am a graduate of one, it can work occasionally).

And then things get complicated and every firm tries to filter out unqualified candidates with wild interview processes which leads to countless blogs about the whole situation including the article featured here, which is, at least, tangentially related.

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

#98

Post by alistairSH »

scarface74 wrote: post #83
alistairSH wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, developer and programmer are the same. Engineer implies a higher level of skill WRT establishing and following processes designed to minimize risk. A software engineer, like their mechanical or civil equivalents, has a strong sense of duty WRT building things that are useful, safe, reproducible, etc. No doubt the line is gray. But, your stereotypical web app developer (failing fast while chasing a unicorn) is no…

No doubt the line is gray. But, your stereotypical web app developer (failing fast while chasing a unicorn) is not an engineer. That could just as easily describe Google and it is full of “smart people” (tm)

And I wouldn't call those developers engineers either. I said as much in the next line of my comment...

Google and Apple would employ a mix of engineers and developers.

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

#99

Post by inapis »

throwawayengda wrote: post #87
inapis wrote: post #41

This 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.

Nope. Legit college whose students went onto excellent post graduate programs in US and Europe. 700 in a graduating class is chump change in India. Plenty of colleges whose annual batches are that size.

I never said they had trouble finding jobs. You jumped the gun. I said they were not happy with choosing computer science as a career.

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

#100

Post by inapis »

eklavya wrote: post #70
inapis wrote: post #41

This 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. I can back that up with my anecdotal stat as well, that number is rather generous, not even 70-80 would be doing it still. There were some which hated it and it showed. They were pressured into it and they were just struggling all around to develop any interest at all in the field.…

> I am skeptical about this. Unless you can actively demonstrate competence (select few) you are not going to be favoured against someone with real degrees in the pile of resumes.

That's why I said, if you are willing to let go of the traditional path. If you have to compete against a pile of resume, you are near or on the traditional path.

Employment doesn't necessarily mean you have to be working for a company.

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