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The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

• umvi 6y ago
  "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Churning out engineers as fast as possible and pressuring everyone to become one despite lack of interest just guarantees you will churn out astronomical numbers of crappy engineers. And I hate to say it... but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers because the sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from [Indian/Chinese/etc. universities] has preconditioned you to think all engineers from [Indian/Chinese/etc. universities] are crappy, which couldn't be further from the truth.
  • mikorym 6y ago
    I also have a problem with calling developers engineers. Heck, I would be offended if someone called me a developer rather than a programmer. But unfortunately even the degrees themselves become less significant. A PhD in mathematics used to mean more than it does now. But another point is that with global literacy going up, scarse skills are now not based on the amount of people with certain degrees, but rather with inherent abilities that are uncommon. (Take Fortran coders as an example.)
    • remmargorp64 6y ago
      Wait... so in your mind there is a distinct difference between a developer, programmer, and engineer? Because in my mind, they are all the same. How are they different, in your mind?
      • bachmeier 6y ago
        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.
        • remmargorp64 6y ago
          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 digital doesn't mean that it's not an engineered mechanism. In fact, early computer programs did run on physical hardware in a physically mechanical manner. A doctor or lawer, on the other hand, is not building any type of machination. They are diagnosing patients and having arguments with judges. What exactly are they engineering?
          • bachmeier 6y ago
            > 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.
            • dumbfoundded 6y ago
              https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ You can become a licensed software engineer
              • wyclif 6y ago
                "NCEES discontinued the PE Software exam after April 2019."
                • dumbfoundded 6y ago
      • jeromegv 6y ago
        In Canada you can't call yourself an engineer unless you studied engineering in university and went through licensing. It's not really enforced in tech, but for me the definition is someone who at the minimum studied an engineering degree. Calling yourself an engineer when you studied Computer Science is a bit odd to me.
        • indiv0 6y ago
          I'm fully OK with the distinction because of the licensing process and strict requirements on engineer-certified work, but as someone with a CS degree from a Canadian university I can tell you with confidence that my friends in the software engineering pathway had probably 90% the same course load as I did. Really the only major difference at our university (IMO) was that they had a capstone project they did as a group and took two semesters, while mine was done individually and took one semester.
          • ceejayoz 6y ago
            The course load isn't the critical aspect, though, is it? Licensing typically means professional standards set by a licensing body, continuing education requirements, insurance/liability rules, etc.
            • indiv0 6y ago
              Absolutely, not disputing that. I just took offense to the "Calling yourself an engineer when you studied Computer Science is a bit odd to me" statement. I don't think the degree makes the difference, the licensing does.
              • seemack 6y ago
                I don't believe you would be able to get the licensing without the degree so saying the degree doesn't make any difference doesn't seem accurate.
          • lainga 6y ago
            In my experience at UVic (6 months fresh) the CS students did more theory of computation, and SEng had formal requirements and specification writing, engineering economics, and project management courses that CS did not. And also yes, the capstone. So, those are the features which distinguish software big-E iron-ring engineering from computer science, in my mind. e: and yes, cf. the sibling comment, some of those courses were mandatory curricula set by The Professional Body Formerly Known As APEGBC (I forget what they're called now).
      • HenryKissinger 6y ago
        Not the person you responded to, but my $0.02. Developer: codes websites and apps. Programmer: writes computer code. Encompasses developers. Engineer: builds bridges, rockets, cars, missiles, smart tvs, gaming consoles, computers, power stations, electric infrastructure, water treatment plants, etc.
        • C1sc0cat 6y ago
          Designs bridges :-) its the navvys that build them
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • theandrewbailey 6y ago
          Developer: builds subdivisions and "develops" real estate. Related: I've come across a handful of programmers that describe themselves as "contractors". So you hang drywall and install toilets?
          • lmm 6y ago
            You're a contractor if you work on contract. Just as you're a consultant if you consult. (I'm most comfortable with "developer" because that corresponds most closely to what what I do feels like. I don't spend so much of my time actually programming, but very little in software is engineering-like)
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • nck4222 6y ago
        In my experience most people use them interchangeably with no distinction between them. The only time I've seen anyone show disdain for one term vs another is here on HN. I've never cared what people refer to me as, and I've never seen anyone voice a preference for it among people I've interacted with. I call myself a Software Engineer, because pretty much every job title I've had has used that term.
      • monkpit 6y ago
        Engineers are typically required to have a license, have agreed to some code of ethics, and typically will have a membership in a professional organization. Like mechanical engineers and the SME, or electronic engineers and the IEEE.
        • heisenbit 6y ago
          True in the US, not necessarily true elsewhere.
      • rofws 6y ago
        They're considered the same nowadays mostly because they've been doing overlapping jobs. Even worse, 'entrepreneur' is something that tells me absolutely nothing concrete about what the guy does. But to come to your point, in my mind - an engineer is the one who designs the software, a programmer is the one who actually writes good code to make that design a reality, and a developer is a blanket term for someone who does both (or more) jobs.
        • remmargorp64 6y ago
          But according to the dictionary, and engineer is a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines/machines/public works. An engineer isn't just someone who designs things... but also someone who builds and maintains them. Wouldn't that mean that even a lowly programmer who is just simply maintaining code is also an engineer?
      • mikorym 6y ago
        Engineer: Someone qualified with a B Eng or equivalent. In some countries this requires a masters level as well. Programmer: A person who writes computer programs. I would personally also imply that the programs are typically not deployment of other programs, but this is my own view and not a standard definition. (Actually all of these are not standard definitions. At least, not anymore.) Developer: A web developer; A person who writes or deploys applications. In the web era I guess most developers have some inherent focus on the internet as a client interface. I would also add: Hacker: A person who likes to probe things until nothing jumps out anymore. (These days people call this a White Hat.) Cracker: A person who likes to probe things until nothing jumps out anymore. Then they probe some more where they really should not and the police get uneasy. (These days called a Black Hat.)
        • umvi 6y ago
          "hacker"/"cracker" are terms only used/understood with nuance in the tech community. For the non-tech community: hacker = person committing computer crimes (black hat) cracker = a tasty snack (or, if you are in the American South, a contemptuous term for a white person) tinkerer = someone who tinkers around with stuff (what tech community traditionally called hacker as in hacker news)
          • mikorym 6y ago
            The top two are wrong. The concrete definitions are: Hacker: A programmer; someone who embodies the spirit of the programmer's way of thinking Cracker: A programmer that commits crimes by illegally breaking in to systems.
        • fingerlocks 6y ago
          A programmer writes programs, but a developer writes applications? Really odd line to draw in the sand. If I build an iOS app that streams video to a webpage, am I developer or a programmer?
          • mikorym 6y ago
            A developer is a type of programmer.
      • decafninja 6y ago
        Where did the term "software engineer" originate? The only anecdotal observation I had is that people in nontech, non SV companies use the term "developer". People in SV style tech companies use the term "engineer". YMMV. The line is blurring though, as I see the term "engineer" becoming more common in nontech companies too. Just like how leetcode interviews are spreading too.
        • mcguire 6y ago
          Back in about 1970, various people realized that writing code was not the cakewalk in the park that everyone (who did electrical or mechanical engineering) thought it would be. See "software crisis". They decided that "we would have to get serious" about this whole software production thing. Some people like C.A.R. Hoare and Edsger Dijkstra said something to the effect of "formal logic..." to which the reply was, "Hol' up, there. That's too hard." They then assumed the term "software engineering" and went off in the '70s, '80s, and '90s to develop stuff like UML and the software engineeing lifecycle requirements -> code -> testing -> acceptance V-thing. For the cynical computer science programmery-type person such as myself, the end result seems to have been the software engineering degree, sort of a lite CS degree (just enough to be employable) with more project management and what-not. At least it's more comprehensive than information technology degrees.
      • analog31 6y ago
        Truth be told, a lot of people with engineering degrees or titles are not doing any real quantitative engineering. Probably some sort of 80 20 rule in any field. Most "engineering" is just organizing and arranging things, fitting building blocks together. A lot of engineers stay "at the bench" just long enough to go into management. The people who keep their quantitative skills end up getting all of that kind of work.
      • alistairSH 6y ago
        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 not an engineer. In the real world, I'd expect Boeing to employ many software engineers [insert 737 Max joke here]. Google and Apple would employ a mix of engineers and developers. And a company that builds CRUD apps on contract would be almost exclusively developers. All of this ignores the licensed engineer's opinion, which is often that none of us are engineers because we don't have to pass a licensing exam. And often don't even have to pass a particularly rigorous academic program.
        • scarface74 6y ago
          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)
          • alistairSH 6y ago
            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.
        • mesaframe 6y ago
          So, whom will you exactly call an engineer? A person with degree or a person with a specific set of skills? If skills, then can you enumerate few of them?
          • alistairSH 6y ago
            Generally, any licensed engineer (PE or non-US equivalent) would be an engineer. That usually means a proof of skills via professional exam. Somebody could have an engineering degree, but not be a practicing engineer at all. Of course, there is no PE for software. So, within our industry, it's a lot more squishy. There's a bit of "I know it when I see it" here... If you're building complex systems with an eye for reliability and/or safety, you might be an engineer. If you're just building a business/consumer app, using infrastructure and tooling that somebody else built and maintains, you might not be an engineer. With all that said, as a hiring manager, I'm not going to be hung up on what title you held at a previous job, as long as you appear capable of doing the job now. And my career has mostly been on the "just a developer" side of the line - there's nothing wrong with that. I'm simply not building software that has massive negative repercussions if I get it wrong (beyond impact on my employer's bottom line).
      • toohotatopic 6y ago
        To me, those are roles that describe different aspects of software creation. Depending on the job, those roles are needed in different proportions. Engineers apply math to create systems. Without Newton and his math there wouldn't be engineers or the other way round: engineers are those who create the stuff that is only possible with Newton's math. Since only few software needs math to that degree, rarely any software is developed by software engineers. Software developers on the other hand are like real estate developers. They don't build walls, they don't do structural analysis. Instead they combine systems. Unlike real estate developers, they mostly do the plumbing by themselves. Programmers are to engineers what words (Greek: grams) are to math. They focus on the language and care about expressing ideas in program code. Then there are also software designers and architects who care about the overall system structure.
        • jkqwzsoo 6y ago
          > Software developers on the other hand are like real estate developers. They don't build walls, they don't do structural analysis. Instead they combine systems. Unlike real estate developers, they mostly do the plumbing by themselves. I like this analogy, because it confirms my personal biases/discomfort about web and app developing falling under the same umbrella of "engineering" as nuclear reactor design, missile guidance, and the worldwide chemical industry. However, to advocate against my biases, in my field (ChemE), most of the fundamental work has been done. Very few BS graduates in chemical engineering will design a distillation column or a chemical reactor. Again, most of the basic science and engineering has been figured out long ago (which is why most research ChemE looks more like chemical physics, molecular/systems biology, and materials science than reactors and unit operations). So, to an approximation, a chemical engineer won't "build" something. They'll stitch together components that were figured out a century ago. In fact, this was the entire point of "unit operations" -- black boxes that can be represented as a functional transformation on their inputs to produce outputs, and can be solved, quasi-linearly, to estimate the overall inputs and outputs of a chemical process. In that case, by the same analogy, they wouldn't be "chemical process engineers", but "chemical process developers". Yet I wouldn't suggest a chemical engineer who pulls correlations out of Perry's isn't really an "engineer", so with critical review, it's hard for me to justify a believe that somebody who stitches together APIs for a living isn't equivalently an engineer. [Edit: a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1988/ https://xkcd.com/1988/ -- Most engineering doesn't seem to be that different]
      • yesenadam 6y ago
        I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk: Real Software Engineering, Glenn Vanderburg, Lone Star Ruby 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos which explains what various kinds of engineers actually do. Not at all dry and boring like it might sound! From the YouTube blurb: Software engineering as it's taught in universities simply doesn't work. It doesn't produce software systems of high quality, and it doesn't produce them for low cost. Sometimes, even when practiced rigorously, it doesn't produce systems at all. That's odd, because in every other field, the term "engineering" is reserved for methods that work. What then, does real software engineering look like?
        • kyuudou 6y ago
          Sounds like some of the cynicism behind Dijkstra's bit on software engineering[0] "A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot."." [0]https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E... Edsger W. Dijkstra's "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science"
          • yesenadam 6y ago
            I was very sceptical too, but when I watched it, it all sounded very common-sensical.
        • walshemj 6y ago
          Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once. And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost.
    • umvi 6y ago
      I agree, I tend not to call myself an engineer because I don't have a PE license and never took a PE exam (though at one point I almost took the PE exam for electrical engineering). However, I was using the terminology of the article. On a side note, when people ask what my job is, I usually say "programmer" or "software developer". For some reason I just feel uncomfortable calling myself an "engineer", I think I find it is just a bit pretentious.
      • WilliamEdward 6y ago
        I think you're right, it just feels a little wrong to claim a title so easily when others work hard in a specific practise to earn it and have standards designated by law for it.
        • C1sc0cat 6y ago
          Or know the right people - certainly in the UK its who you know not what you know.
    • HenryKissinger 6y ago
      > scarse skills are now not based on the amount of people with certain degrees, but rather with inherent abilities that are uncommon. (Take Fortran coders as an example.) Soft skills and people skills are also scarce skills, in my experience. You can always teach a monkey a new trick (you can always teach a fresh looking young man to program in Python or to solve a differential equation), but you can't as easily teach them to: communicate in a professional manner, talk like a professional to other professionals (both people above you and people below you), write clearly, concisely, and without grammatical or orthographical mistakes, sell yourself or your product, etc. The geeks will not inherit the Earth. Socially sophisticated people will inherit the Earth.
      • new2628 6y ago
        Adequate comment for the user name :)
    • burntoutfire 6y ago
      > I also have a problem with calling developers engineers. I held this point of view for a long time but, after lurking at r/engineering, I've learned that their jobs are (depressingly) similar to ours. I.e. it's almost never deriving things from first principles, but rather trying to quickly bolt together a solution out of pieces looked up at different vendors' catalogs. Most engineers don't even remember the basic equations they have learned at university. > Heck, I would be offended if someone called me a developer rather than a programmer. It depends on the specific job, but currently, I can spend 30 minutes changing one line of code followed by one week of deploying, testing it, making sure the configs are all right etc. So that's 30 minutes of programming followed by one week of "installing dishwashers" (as the joke on the team goes). Lately, I see myself more of a software configurator than creator (my nominal job title is a backend web developer).
      • battery_cowboy 6y ago
        The new "software engineer" is just a software assembly line worker. I guess the same goes for other engineers. I would imagine the quality of software engineer will get worse over time as it becomes easier to assemble software from an assortment of black boxes.
        • joelbluminator 6y ago
          Is it getting easier though? Did you try "modern" web development lately? Good luck piecing together a working website...
          • outworlder 6y ago
            It is easier. If you wanted to create a web application from the dotcom era, you could probably knock it out faster by one or two orders of magnitude. It will probably look neater too, and you won't spend days or months tuning it so it will look decent in IE. We even have amazing CSS capabilities now. If you wanted to create something that's better than the pages we had in the Geocities era, you can do that in 5 minutes (download some static page generator, add a theme and voila). When it was unveiled, the GMail frontend was a remarkable feat of engineering. Nowadays? Polishing to that extent (also scaling, etc) will take time, but creating a knockoff UI is no longer a revolutionary job. Most web developers would be able to single-handedly replicate the basic functionality ('ajax' and lots of client side javascript are no longer arcane). As web development progressed, so did expectations.
    • protonimitate 6y ago
      My title is "software engineer". I don't have an engineering degree, or even a CS degree. I feel pretty uncomfortable calling myself an engineer since it seems to carry a certain weight of responsibility, but seeing as the title was bestowed upon me by my work place, I'll continue using it. IMO the designations are meaningless until there is a real standard in place for "software engineer" and what it entails (in the US at least). I refer to myself as a "programmer" or "developer", but I use them interchangeably. Anyone putting any real weight on the title is splitting hairs.
      • kelnos 6y ago
        I feel the same way and try to say "software developer" when I can, though, same as you, my official job title has "engineer" in it. Of course, I also see titles like "Customer Success Engineer" and "Technical Support Engineer", which are just as, if not more, ridiculous.
    • catlas3r 6y ago
      I prefer the term "software engineer" for a reason I haven't seen yet in this thread: clarity when speaking to people in other industries. Among many of the people I talk to on a regular basis, if I told them I was a "developer" they would assume that I was a real estate developer. If I told them I was a "programmer" it would be a little clearer, but before I moved into software I worked in the events industry for a few years, where "programmer" means "one who develops event programming." In practice, I could append "software" in front of either "programmer" or "developer" to provide that clarity, but "software engineer" seems to be more common, and to me feels like it more adequately covers the totality of my job, which is as much about measuring, planning, and communicating as it is about producing code.
      • babesh 6y ago
        I think part of the discomfort is that there is no exam that software engineers have to pass (other than a few states) unlike real engineering professions. I suspect and I suspect many others suspect that a large percentage would not actually be able pass a meaningful exam. However passing such an exam would probably only be partly correlated to success in the field. Part of this is because exams are imperfect, part because success in the field is not dependent on engineering skill, and part is because the tech field’s success is based on finding/creating/replacing/owning (new) markets rather than pure engineering. If software is much better than what was there before, even shoddy software engineering will be superior to the existing solutions.
        • catlas3r 6y ago
          The exams and credentials part is certainly murky. One could argue we make it worse in tech. Among the certifications I hold is at least one with "certified engineer" in the title (RHCE), but that's hardly only ambiguous one, with "engineer" showing up in all sorts of vendor and third-party certs and "architect" and "auditor" also finding their way into many others. Are those phrases misleading? I don't know. I certainly feel like I worked pretty hard to earn and maintain the certifications I hold, but I can't compare the rigour and level of effort to licensure, because that's not required of me for what I do. I also know that there are quite a few "certifications" out there that aren't rigorous at all, that are basically multiple-choice exams you can cram for without actually learning anything. I've never bothered going after a CompTIA certification for that reason. It's a tough problem. On one hand, I despise artificial barriers to entry on principle. On the other hand, being able to understand and trust a person's base level of understanding and competence does have value.
    • adverbly 6y ago
      It's funny, I actually have an undergraduate and graduate degree in engineering - but not software engineering - and I work as a software engineer. Yet I tell everyone that I'm a programmer/developer. To me, having seen what goes for engineering in other fields, I feel like a small subset of engineering jobs in non-software fields is true engineering. To me, that bar is inventing something worth patenting. I'd say its an even smaller subset in software. The thing is, I wouldn't say it the highest value work is the stuff that is true engineering. Actually implementing ideas is so much more value adding and difficult in my opinion. Execution and front lines gritty work is incredibly undervalued in every industry. So I prefer to go by developer because I take more pride in that part.
    • bentcorner 6y ago
      I immigrated into the US (from Canada) to work for a tech company, and a piece of advice I got from our legal dept was: Whenever you cross the border and the guard asks you what your job is, answer "Software Engineer". IIRC it was important I answer this correctly because that's the role that I was permitted to work for (under a TN, later a H1B; I'm now naturalized). Saying "programmer" or "developer" may have been fine (I don't know), but I do recall some emphasis on getting this right.
      • seemack 6y ago
        It was important because there were specific job requirements that had to be met in order to qualify for a TN visa. The expertise you were expected to be bringing in as a Software Engineer was architectural level knowledge of coding. The TN visa could be revoked at any time which is why you want to be really clear when crossing the border. I worked for Microsoft and they recommended that I bring my full job description package and lawyer's letter every time I crossed the border The best part was when I had to go to the border to apply for the TN visa. The poor guy had a list of questions to ask and clearly had no idea what any of it meant. "And will you be doing any <...long, dramatic pause> programming?"
    • Hamuko 6y ago
      >I also have a problem with calling developers engineers. Well, I for one am both a developer and an engineer. I have a B. Eng (equivalent) degree in ICT and I work as a full-stack dev. I don't really have a problem with using either "developer" or "software engineer" to describe myself.
    • pjmlp 6y ago
      Depends where one comes from. I have no issue calling myself engineer, because I have a degree in Informatics Engineering and in Portugal it is a professional title validated by the Engineers Organization and all universities must have a green light to offer such degrees. What I have an issue with, is developers feeling like calling themselves "engineer" after a six months bootcamp, or not having any kind of engineering degree to start with.
    • the_jeremy 6y ago
      I have a mechanical engineering BS, but I work as a "software engineer". None of my engineering friends in college had a problem with "software engineer" as a title. Pretending that engineer is a restricted title does not match the reality of the world today, and is unnecessary at best and creates miscommunication at worst. Language evolves and certain words become more lax and widely applied. We can prevent it in cases that are sufficiently technical (Zoom does not have E2EE, that's a blatant lie), but getting the world to use "literally" as it was originally defined is no longer feasible IMO.
  • WilliamEdward 6y ago
    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.
    • demosito666 6y ago
      > there should be some needed post-grad accreditation for software engineers Which will depreciate just as fast for the same reason.
      • eximius 6y ago
        Not necessarily. Most gatekeeping institutions outside of education works fairly well. The Bar, the AMA, PE exams, etc.
      • californical 6y ago
        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.
    • triceratops 6y ago
      > the problem here is the culture around prestige and money Everywhere in the world people flock to careers with prestige and money. Chasing cash in a developing country makes even more sense because being poor there sucks even worse than being poor in a developed country.
    • Aperocky 6y ago
      > Still I think there should be some needed post-grad accreditation for software engineers if they want to actually be called engineers. That's just the opposite of what works. I personally find looking at github or whatever personal project the person had to be the best indicator of whether he/she actually liked/is good at programming - for someone coming out of school or claiming little/no experience otherwise.
  • knolax 6y ago
    The article is about the education of engineers in the country of India. The vast majority of Indians working in engineering in the US were born and raised in the US, or at the very least educated here. Ethnically Indian people in the US are disproportionately represented in the upper levels of tech. Anybody who can't recognize this has only themselves to blame.
    • vinay427 6y ago
      Which part of the parent comment are you responding to? I'm afraid I don't see how your comment follows.
      • knolax 6y ago
        > And I hate to say it... but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers GP is trying justify racism by interviewers when the people being interviewed and the people mentioned in the article are two distinct groups. This is HN so you can't just say "don't be racist", but even from a logical point of view this doesn't make any sense. How does perceived poor performance of one group justify discrimination of another unrelated high performing group.
  • cycloptic 6y ago
    > but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers because the sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from universities has preconditioned you to think all engineers from there are crappy You can't blame interviewers being racist on the bad actions of some university. They have to address their own racism themselves.
    • scarface74 6y ago
      “You can’t blame cops for shooting innocent minorities. You have to blame guilty minorities.” Yes, you always blame the racists for being racists. Edit: instead of deleting my (incorrect) parsing of the parent poster, I’ll leave this here and accept my well deserved lashings and downvotes...
      • eximius 6y ago
        I think you're misinterpreting his statement. I think he's saying that the actions of the university are not an excuse.
        • scarface74 6y ago
          You are correct. See edit.
  • cmckn 6y ago
    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 knowledge bases. I've since worked, as many of us have, with brilliant people from all over the world. It just gave me a weird impression of CS education in India. But, I'm sure others have similar experiences of graduates from [random school in the US or elsewhere].
    • kls 6y ago
      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 fastest path to management is via a tech degree. So India is churning out a bunch of want to be MBA's with tech degrees that are just doing their time in tech to get to management. He said it was a hold over from the cast system and that you are held in more esteem in India when you manage more people.
      • christocracy 6y ago
        I remember that comment. I’ve quoted that story a number of times.
        • kls 6y ago
          Thank you, it is good to hear. You know you put words out there and you don't really know if it contributes any value to anyone or not. I just try to relay my life lessons.
      • cmckn 6y ago
        I've had similar conversations. These guys were pretty open about the fact that they crammed for exams and didn't take undergrad very seriously. People that are in tech for the money is common everywhere, but there is definitely something unique about the Indian experience.
  • pinewurst 6y ago
    I hesitate to label that "racist". Developing a feeling from interviewing engineers trained in India or China that they're generally not competent is not equivalent to feeling they're inherently stupid or bad people. They just came through a crummy education system.
    • emiliobumachar 6y ago
      I agree, as far as that. But it's racist to overgeneralize that feeling to ethnic Indians or Chinese who did not go through that system.
  • onetimeusename 6y ago
    Something similar happened in the US where numbers of students in CS went up over time. However, academic fraud has not been as big of a problem as it is in India. An Indian friend of mine said that IIT is good but hardly anyone can get in and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway so many people try to get engineering degrees from schools with lax standards. The professors are completely unqualified, according to her, and people have to pay more to learn the material from off-campus tutors but not everyone can afford that. I think this should be the focus is ending academic fraud rather than some of these other issues. That could do a lot of good. Here is a reference to a story I found that corroborates what I was told.[1] [1]:https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/UGC-probe-finds-50-faculty-unqualified/articleshow/48766010.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/UGC-probe-f...
    • andrewflnr 6y ago
      > ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway Like, officially, in writing? Even if it's informal, as an American it blows my mind that that's still a thing.
      • onetimeusename 6y ago
        Yes. There is actually a whole Wikipedia entry[1] on it. The relevant portion: > For candidates in the general category, successful students must generally score within the top 0.25% or top 0.5% of all students to gain admission to the IITs, whereas SC/ST/OBC candidates must generally score within the top 2% of all students to gain admission to the IITs. > Currently, reservation of 15%, 7.5% and 27% seats are provided for candidates originating from the SC, ST and OBC communities respectively. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_policy_in_Indian_Institutes_of_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_policy_in_Indian_I...
        • finnh 6y ago
          To be clear, that's affirmative action for people in the lowest castes (not everyone knows what SC etc mean offhand).
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  • BaronVonSteuben 6y ago
    I have noticed this as well, both as a worker and an interviewer. The number of unqualified people of Indian ethnicity that inundate job applications is staggering, and some perform embarrassingly bad in the interview. 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.
    • ekianjo 6y ago
      > 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 can get the job done.
      • sethammons 6y ago
        Because humans are pattern matchers. We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. I know intelligent and successful people who would never take financial advice from someone with a beard for example. Edit: maybe an interesting example. I grew up around smart woman and girls. From observation, I “knew” women were smarter than men. I was in college before I heard that some thought that woman were not suited for math. I couldn’t even process that. But people see patterns and extrapolate based on their observations and what they hear, and often start to believe something that does not exist.
        • ekianjo 6y ago
          > Because humans are pattern matchers Agree, but then you would think that engineers (when it comes to working with other engineers) are a little more rational than the average folks and can go beyond superficial observations.
  • thrower123 6y ago
    It's not helped by the Indian consulting sweatshops. I didn't have any particular prejudices about Indians before I started dealing with Tata and Cognizant and Infosys and Cap-Gemini and the ATT/IBM/Oracle Global Services divisions, but afterwards, it's just hard. You get to where you just expect dishonesty and incompetence and disorganization and abusive behavior as the default.
  • rv-de 6y ago
    Let me just nod in the direction of stackoverflow and how it developed with regards to quality of content ...
    • Aperocky 6y ago
      I didn't check in for a bit of time, but the homework questions are still quickly closed and marked right?
  • Spooky23 6y ago
    That hasn’t been my experience. Biggest predictor for anything is past experience, and understanding what bad habits people pick up in different places and roles — your interview needs to look for that. End of the day, people are snobs about education, etc. Some companies just won’t deal with you if you didn’t go to a school on the happy list.
  • specialist 6y ago
    "sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from" This has been a problem my entire career. Long before China, India, Vietnam, etc entered the fight. Credentials are just one signal in the torrent of noise.
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• travisoneill1 6y ago
  Same thing has happened with college degrees in the US. Why are people always surprised by this? A credential only has value through exclusion.
  • Jaygles 6y ago
    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 population recognizes that value and rush to claim some of that for themselves which in turn diminishes that value for everyone. As the value of the exclusivity is removed, the true value of the credential is discovered.
    • wccrawford 6y ago
      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.
      • fragmede 6y ago
        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.
      • Jaygles 6y ago
        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.
• stanfordkid 6y ago
  Peter Thiel talks about how the "4-year degree" has obtained a similar status within the United States.
  • danso 6y ago
    Not exactly. It is much more common than it was a couple decades ago for jobs to require a bachelors degree as a minimum. You can argue that the intrinsic educational value of a 4-year-degree has become diluted, but the (unfortunate) reality is that having a degree is a baseline requirement to even get an interview. That's different than a computer science/engineering degree being devalued to the point where it's no longer more attractive than any other college degree.
• wobbly_bush 6y ago
  This article is all over the place, with some elements of truth. The essence is that Indian universities don't provide good education - that's been known for decades now. This is reflected in how many Indians have been going for higher education to Western universities for decades. > There are currently more than 3,500 engineering schools across the country, and about 90% of graduates do not have the programming skills to work in software engineering That's because there are non computer science graduates as well? > In India, you need a ‘traditional degree’ before you pursue your passion,” he said. “And that degree in almost all cases is engineering.” Not true, this depends on the region. Engineering is way more prominent in South India than the rest of the country. > With programmers everywhere, annual salaries for entry-level jobs have remained at around $4,500 for the better part of a decade This is referring to the outsourcing companies I'm assuming. Ironically, majority of intake of the outsourcing companies are graduates whose major is not computer science. So the presence of "programmers" should not have an impact on the other engineers.
• MattGaiser 6y ago
  I would be interested to know if there is actually an oversupply of programmers or whether there is still a shortage of skilled ones in the labour force and they are just graduating anyone who pays their tuition. We have that problem here in Canada and the USA. Plenty of developer jobs are open, but I also know lots of CS grads who never found jobs, even two years out of university. That's because most would struggle with FizzBuzz. Sure, they are on paper qualified to do the work, but absurdly unqualified in actual skill.
  • admiral33 6y ago
    A good CS program will touch on FizzBuzzesque questions early on as part of one of the introduction to programming classes, and in later classes do a deep dive on algorithms and their efficiency in pseudocode or real code. I guess it's possible they didn't practice, but I have a hard time believing that they could get through an undergrad CS program and not be able to quickly remind themselves of some basic code logic beforehand if they don't already code regurarly. Were they actually passionate about CS? Did they have bad professors?
• gloman206 6y ago
  school.com
• analog31 6y ago
  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.
  • inapis 6y ago
    Yes. A lot of universities were found to be fake and shut down. Though it has been a couple of years since I've heard anything more about it.
  • econcon 6y ago
    In India from low tier colleges, you don't learn anything. Heck, they don't even let you use the machine that are on premise. Only top engineering colleges have any skill if it's even available.
  • redis_mlc 6y ago
    > 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 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.
    • analog31 6y ago
      Maybe the term "fake" is over-used, but I meant something along the lines of selling people an expensive training that leaves them in debt and unemployable. Some of those schools also made hyperbolic claims about the career prospects and earnings of their graduates.
• drchiu 6y ago
  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 actual CS degree vs self taught? And is there some glass ceiling as a result?
  • statictype 6y ago
    It depends entirely on the company and their policies and strategy on hiring. FWIW, I can't even remember the degrees of the guys I've hired. Probably not even at the time I hired them.
  • throwaway158497 6y ago
    Almost 100% of people that I work with, at a large email provider have a CS degree. That said, we don't discriminate at developer/team level. That's handled by recruiters and management :D CS degree from right places puts you on at a advantage. So, without a degree you will be competing with guys who had benefit of formal education. And that may seem like a glass ceiling if you don't interpret correctly.
  • gazelle21 6y ago
    I work as a dev with an agency. I don't have a BS degree, went to a coding Bootcamp. I had a lot of places tell me my work is great, but without a degree, I wasn't a good fit. I freelanced for a year before getting a job. I think opinions of a 4-year degree are changing but older companies are still looking for that degree imo.
  • NwtnsMthd 6y ago
    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.
• matchagaucho 6y ago
  A lot of this argument seems to rest on this premise... "Good coding skills (the ability to write functionally correct code) are possessed by 4.6% of Indian job applicants, 2.1% of Chinese candidates and 18.8% of the US candidates in the IT and software industries"
  • throwawayengda 6y ago
    A wrong premise based on Aspiring Minds fraudulent studies. Aspiring Minds is an Indian company that sells buggy web-based pre-interview filtering tests as a service. It is in Aspiring Minds interest to portray (Indian) college graduates as incompetent to make companies buy their pre-interview filtering services.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
    Based on the US candidates that have come across my desk, I'd agree with that!
• inapis 6y ago
  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 want to get out of it as fast as possible. 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. Most fucked off to other fields, predominantly MBA. I hear similar stories from other Tier 2/3 institutions. I can't wait for Indians to realize just how much easier it is to get employed today if you are willing to let go of the traditional path. Internet has unlocked so much opportunity and after 2016, pretty much all barriers to internet access have been lowered as much as possible. All you need is a computing device like a phone or laptop to get started. Doesn't work for the extremely poor still, but the opportunity for mass swathes of people have been widened much more than before.
  • AQuantized 6y ago
    What sort of opportunities are available for someone with little experience/qualifications in a poorer country?
    • magicsmoke 6y ago
      In East Asian economies, the workforce transitioned from farming to labor-intensive manufacturing before moving onto high-tech services. India, in contrast, had a booming tech consultancy sector before they had a strong manufacturing sector. A poor farmer in China, and Japan/Korea in the decades prior, could move to a city and make a better income on an assembly line despite not having any formal education. A poor farmer in India needs to jump up to a service job which needs a lot more training and preferably a diploma to prove it. So even if your local college is a shit diploma mill, you'll still send your kids to it because there's no other choice for upwards mobility. There's no factory job where your children can get hired at and save up so the next generation can go to a college with legitimate training.
• throwaway158497 6y ago
  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
  • umvi 6y ago
    > 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
    • throwaway158497 6y ago
      >> 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.
  • scarface74 6y ago
    Who in the world would be willing to teach for 30 hours for $100? I would be much better off spending those 30 hours looking for the few available jobs that are out there or do the old r/cscareerquestions “learn leetCode and work for a FAANG”
    • throwaway158497 6y ago
      Err. The kid is awake for 16 hours a day. He is applying for jobs in 15 of those hours. This one hour is extra money for him. Also, it is at the same rate as as his full time job pre covid. There are just not enough new people hiring in India right now. So any extra little money helps. To your question, who in the world is willing to teach for that low, think of it as his first teaching gig. Through this, he is discovering a new market for himself.
• GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  I've noticed something similar in the US university system. I was a Assistant Prof during my PhD in CS at a state college. Students from our program went on to directly compete and get jobs over students from Stanford, MIT, CMU, etc. Our program probably cost 1/4 that of other "prestigious" universities yet we largely had the same outcomes for students. Personally, I'm glad there's been a leveling of the playing field.
  • yaitsyaboi 6y ago
    But the article is describing the opposite phenomenon, it seems that in India only students from their Stanfords and MITs are qualified for and get the jobs.
• duxup 6y ago
  I felt similarly after a career change via a coding bootcamp regarding what perspective employers would really think about someone coming out of such a system. I think bootcamps can work, but the incentives for those running them are off. At the camp I'd look around the room and think that about half the folks straight up can't do the job, and "If one of these people interviews before me / or worse gets a job and bombs ... am I even going to get an interview?" Fortunately I got a chance to prove myself with an employer and got my foot in the door. But even so sometimes in casual conversation I just say "self taught".
• tpmx 6y ago
  Five years ago I was working at a software company in Europe that was willing to accept hires from anywhere, globally. We managed to hire about one smart person a month, out of a torrent of perhaps 1000 applicants per month. The vast majority (like 85%) of the applicants were from India and Pakistan. And out of those, 95% used the exact same resume/personal letter layout and content, sometimes down to the exact same wording. We tried to be openminded, so we set up a bunch of interview calls with especially promisingly people from this "pool". After about 10-15 of those calls we just gave up. We did eventually hire two indian people and were very happy with their contributions, but only after they had made their ways to our little country on their own. Imagine being a talented developer in India, interviewing for a job overseas, against this background of overwhelming mediocrity?
  • WkndTriathlete 6y ago
    Resume scanning/filtering is a real problem. Generally I start classifying resumes into two piles: those that put everything they know on their resume, and those that include a handful of relevant, interesting pieces of knowledge with a few lines of job experience to back those up. When "everything they know" fits on four pages, in my experience they aren't worth interviewing. When "interesting pieces of knowledge" makes me want to ask more questions about what they did, in my experience they are worth interviewing. Unfortunately the HR system scans for keywords, which makes the "interesting pieces of knowledge" resume less likely to get through HR and "everything they know" more likely to get through HR, which is the opposite of what I want to see. HR needs to either admit that they need to hire a developer to scan resumes instead of using automated software or just admit defeat and pass all resumes on, regardless of source or quality. They just are not capable of filtering software developer resumes in their current form.
    • tpmx 6y ago
      "HR" wasn't really involved in hiring, except as a secretary role here. The scanning and decisions were made by development managers and team leads. I think that's the way it should be. (HR printed out all applications on paper. We sat in a meeting room to scan through them, and discuss them. The mechanism was: scan through each one; write your initial and then yay or nay. Obvious ones got into the yay/nay piles, then we debated the maybe pile. After all of that, HR set up interviews with the people who ended up in the yay pile.)
• as1mov 6y ago
  > The best jobs are reserved for graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the crown jewels of the country’s higher education system. Every April, over a million students take the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), the primary pathway to the IITs. There are fewer than 12 thousand seats at the 16 IITs in India, and they accept one in 50 applicants each year. This is one of the core issues many people seem to ignore. The number of universities where you can actually become a good engineer is really small, apart from the IIT/NIT/BITS/IIIT, the rest can be categorized into mediocre to astonishingly bad. I do have a lot to say about this topic, as I had go through this experience first hand, and I wasn't one of those who managed to get into a good university (in fact, I barely managed to get into a really shitty one). Here's a short summary of what's it like to get a degree from shitty private university in India - a) There's no focus on getting an actual education, people (including professors, students, their parents) are more concerned with getting a piece of paper which certifies that the student is an engineer now. b) The faculty responsible for teaching rarely give a shit, not that they have an ability to give a shit in this case. Most of them barely know the material they teach. I've had lecturers who would literally write out Java code on a board and then explain the meaning of each word for the next hour. c) Most of these schools have mandatory attendance for classes, so if you have assumed you'll just sign up and go through the material on your own, you're screwed. You will end up spending 8 hours everyday for 4 years doing this, then spend additional 2-3 hours everyday doing assignments which basically consist of copying shit from a textbook. d) Exams are just an exercise in mugging up the textbooks. Even for subjects which involve programming. e) Companies that hire out of these schools are usually service based like Infosys, TCS, etc on a salary of about $300/mo. So the next time you complain about the shitty Indian guy with a thick accent who writes spaghetti code, just remember that they're getting paid peanuts for doing so. Also these companies have a bond of anywhere from an year to 3 (which basically means if you leave anytime before this period, you pay the company <X> amount), it might be illegal, but then your lowly IT guy doesn't have the resources to take these companies to court. There's lot to write about this topic, there are a lot of facets which intermingle with one another in absurd ways, perhaps I might write something more detailed some other day.
  • downerending 6y ago
    > The number of universities where you can actually become a good engineer is really small, apart from the IIT/NIT/BITS/IIIT, the rest can be categorized into mediocre to astonishingly bad. I wonder why this is. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to teach basic CS well, nor would I think that India would lack for competent people able to teach this way. Does this occur in other parts of Indian society? For example, is it like this in medicine? Or food processing?
• throwawayengda 6y ago
  > 3,500 engineering schools across the country, and about 90% of graduates do not have the programming skills to work in software engineering, according to one study. The "study" is by 'Aspiring Minds' - an Indian company that sells buggy web-based pre-interview filtering tests as a service. It is in Aspiring Minds interest to portray Indian graduates as incompetent to make Indian employers buy their pre-interview filtering services. Aspiring Minds tested engineering students from all fields (including chemical, mechanical and civil) to make up the misleading '90% of Indian graduates are stupid' headlines. It worked. The headlines went viral and people still quote their misleading study. The coding part of the test was to submit compile-able Java code through an HTML input without any syntax highlighting or formatting. Needless to say most chemical and civil engineering graduates will not be able to do that. I was a CS student at an Indian engineering college. I was forced to take an Aspiring Minds test. The test was buggy and had no feedback. I probably failed. But today I'm a full-stack developer in Denmark. Most of my graduating class have good jobs and almost half of us work overseas.
  • the_pwner224 6y ago
    > But today I'm a full-stack developer in Denmark. Would you mind sharing more details about this? Were your recruited or did you seek out overseas employment? I'm Indian but in the US since a young age; I'll be finishing my CS education next year and would like to leave this country.
    • rusticpenn 6y ago
      Europe is pretty welcoming. There is a huge shortage of software engineers (of acceptable quality) here.
      • siscia 6y ago
        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.
• tannhauser23 6y ago
  It's really interesting to see the bottom-rung schools closing. In the U.S. the legal field has been saturated for years and I'm not aware of any law schools closing. I wonder if the easy availability of school loans is propping up the lower schools in the U.S.
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > In the U.S. the legal field has been saturated for years and I'm not aware of any law schools closing. There have been several mergers (I'm personally aware of one in my area), and it sounds like some schools have closed as well: https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/urge-to-merge-law-school https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/urge-to-merge-la...
• ChuckMcM 6y ago
  Pretty damning "There are currently more than 3,500 engineering schools across the country, and about 90% of graduates do not have the programming skills to work in software engineering, according to one study." That said, I'm curious how you could talk to someone about programming for four years and at the end of that 9 out of 10 of them could not actually do it.
  • CosmicShadow 6y ago
    I taught intro web dev courses at a "highly rated" college in Canada in a program that was specifically for a post-grad, international audience. It was 99% people from India who finished 4 year university degrees in computer science and the like. Out of a class of 35 students who were already in their 2nd, 3rd or 4th term of this program, no one knew to press F12 to see the console in a browser. This was a web development program. I basically had to teach these kids as if they just walked off the street. No matter which new batch of kids I had, it was like this. I asked them how they could know so little about anything development wise if they took 4 years of CS, like literally what did they do. They'd always just answer that they learned "Theory" and something about learning out of a book, not actually developing or anything. I still didn't understand how 4 years of theory or book learning couldn't teach you the most basic programming concepts. I'm pretty sure the schools were just mills or scams or something, it was sad. Most of the students had no real interest in actually learning how to code or doing any learning either, they seemed to believe that just by showing up they'd pass, get a degree and a good job, which was bizarre, especially in a university town and tech hot bed. The amount of cheating, copying, lying, begging, etc. didn't help. A few folks were genuine, but the program seems like it's just a legal loophole to get into the country where if they get at least a technical support job after 2 years of grad they can legally become citizens. This is the fastest growing and most profitable sector of this college.
    • HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
      My MS (Software Engineering) classmates usually didn't have that problem but interestingly, someone pointed out to us that it was possible to go through the entire MSSE program without writing a single line of code if you chose the right classes. I sometimes wonder if they did that by design...
• rajasimon 6y ago
  I graduate in 2009 ( BE - EIE ). But I got my first software company job in 2015. It was hard for me. And during college days I love reading CS books and playing with computer. After doing Non technical job including Call center and printing machine service engineer finally I got a job. I learned programming myself.
• Aperocky 6y ago
  Sounds like India's 'push against tech event' The same around early 2000s where suddenly there were a large amount of surplus programmer and even my parents social circle which is about 3 level removed from any programming start talking about this 'surplus' and how starting a programming career or major is a bad choice. Tech is still the biggest job creator and the best paying job for what we do. It's easy to be shortsighted over a couple of months about what you don't understand or can't do well, but this world is clearly marching towards an more autonomous future.
• dandare 6y ago
  Nobody mentioned the problem of Indian "high context society". Individual developers may be very productive when employed by western companies but from my anecdotal experience Indian teams in India have very low real productivity due to the "cultural specifics", aka rigid hierarchy and people dynamics.
• Priem19 6y ago
  3 Idiots is a remarkably inspirational Bollywood movie depicting the problem; one of my all-time favorites. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/3_idiots https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/3_idiots
  • garganzol 6y ago
    "3 Idiots" is just a name of the movie. Just have started to watch it and it looks pretty relevant to the discussion, so far. I presume that downvotes to your comment are unwarranted. I have a question to Hindi speakers: they say a word that sounds like "futur" meaning literally "future". Is that a borrowed word? Or is it something native to Hindi? I am quite astonished that I can grasp a bit of it. The language kind of reflects some European languages. For instance, I can understand a tiny fraction of what actors are saying in Hindi. Never learnt it before, but that lingual link is interesting.
    • chillacy 6y ago
      I don't know the specific etymology of that word, and I do recall that there is a lot of english in bollywood films, but the linguistically the languages are actually related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
  • mythrwy 6y ago
    Seconded. It's an awesome movie! And I'm not normally a Bollywood fan.
• vmception 6y ago
  tl;dr oversupply. nothing unexpected here
• woem 6y ago
  This is precisely why most top tech companies in India only hire from the top colleges (IITs, BITS Pilani, IIITs, NITs, etc). It's usually not worth their time to even interview someone who did not graduate from one of these. This is also evident in the compensation for new grads. CS grads from lower ranked colleges typically make $5k-$10k per year, while those from these good colleges make $20k-$40k per year(gross). Exceptions exist of course.
• SmartestUnknown 6y ago
  I am an Indian and I have seen so many worthless engineering colleges. The main issues, at least in my opinion, are "very very" bad teaching and very low incentives for someone to study well. I can't fathom how easy it is to pass a class in these engineering colleges and how widespread plagiarism is. When >50% points of the class is determined by a single exam that repeats same questions every year, it isn't hard to study for a day and pass the class. I am not kidding, you can buy an "all-in-one" of around 600 pages which is essentially enough to pass or even score 80% in "all the classes" in a semester. I would say at most 10% of engineering students in India are properly taught and properly tested and rest of them just spend 4 years in college essentially learning nothing. When it is so easy to get an engineering degree, people who barely pass high school also enroll in these programs for "engineering degree" and become an "engineer" after 4 years of college. It's no wonder that most of these "engineers" can't do anything.
  • duskwuff 6y ago
    > The main issues, at least in my opinion, are "very very" bad teaching and very low incentives for someone to study well. Another significant element I'd point to is outdated curricula. By way of example, many Indian CS course materials still require students to use Turbo C++ -- an IDE from the mid-1990s which runs under DOS. Needless to say, what ends up being taught is hardly representative of modern practices.
    • kshacker 6y ago
      Reference please...
      • duskwuff 6y ago
        One common citation is: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Turbo-C++-still-being-used-in-Indian-schools-and-colleges https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Turbo-C++-still-being-used-in-I... But I'll do one better -- here are a couple of syllabi and course materials that suggest that it's still being actively used in universities: https://www.darshan.ac.in/DIET/CE/SubjectDetail/2140705 https://www.darshan.ac.in/DIET/CE/SubjectDetail/2140705 (note the "reference books") http://cmscollege.ac.in/course-menu/syllabus-object-oriented-programming-using-c/ http://cmscollege.ac.in/course-menu/syllabus-object-oriented... (similarly) http://www.alagappauniversity.ac.in/modules/DDE/uploads/books/sem-2/B.Sc%20(Computer%20Science)/Lab%20-%20Object%20Oriented%20Programming%20and%20C++.pdf http://www.alagappauniversity.ac.in/modules/DDE/uploads/book... (published in 2018, references Turbo C++ throughout) http://www.dbit.ac.in/cse/syllabus/compiler-design-lab.pdf http://www.dbit.ac.in/cse/syllabus/compiler-design-lab.pdf (2017, references Turbo C++) You can find more examples pretty easily. It does look as though some universities are starting to support the Code::Blocks IDE and/or Geany, but not consistently.
• gxqoz 6y ago
  First article I've seen from what looks like a newly launched site. Seems like a neat niche--tech stories outside of the West. Any existing sites/newsletters already on this beat?
• kumarm 6y ago
  When I joined Engineering in India (1994), my state had 2000 engineering seats. 120K people wrote the entrance test for the 2K seats. Today the same state has about 250K seats. Anyone who writes the entrance test can get into some college or other. Has the quality gone down? I would think so. But I definitely think qualified students is definitely greater than 2k even when I went to college. I would rather prefer over supply rather than shortage of educational opportunities any day.
  • totalZero 6y ago
    To play devil's advocate... The value of an education comes as much from the group of peers (classmates who interact regarding experiences, plans, lessons, and ideas) as from the books and professors themselves. Like a critical mass of brains. If you water the group down, then the most talented cohort benefits less than if they were the only people to advance.
    • fillskills 6y ago
      Looks like the parent is saying that the right answer is somewhere in between. When enough engineers can be educated without watering down the entire cohort
    • aaaxyz 6y ago
      As someone who got an undergrad degree from a top 40 school and is now taking courses at a state system school accepting a lot more students, I completely agree. The difference in terms of work output and professionalism between students is massive. Presentations from other students lack depth and often fail to explain basic concept; they have very little educational value. Group work is a complete mess since a lot of people never learned how to organize themselves, have very little motivation or fail to explain their ideas properly. Simple things you usually learn in undergrad like putting a bibliography together or spell checking documents are lacking. You end up wasting huge amounts of time correcting other people's mistakes. Another big difference I've noticed is that students seem to have little interest in the area of study; none of the ones I met have non curricular side projects. There's also a lot less discussion happening outside of classrooms.
• draw_down 6y ago
  End result of everyone trying to get every kid to “learn to code!”
• ycombonator 6y ago
  Great solution to “economic inequality”. We should do it here too, increase admissions in ivy leagues by 100 fold. Will solve the inequality problem the television pundits and grifter politicians breathlessly blabber about.
• hodder 6y ago
  The top story on Hacker News right now is how Twitter is allowing (some) employees to work from home permanently. The locational cost of living arbitrage (from an employee perspective) and labor arbitrage (from an employer perspective) available in the market is immense and companies that can succeed in overcoming the language and cultural barriers are looking at a massive opportunity.
  • mesozoic 6y ago
    The story goes into how 90% of them are unqualified even after training. It doesn't matter how cheap I can hire someone if they can't do the job they're a net negative.
    • joelbluminator 6y ago
      OK, but what about millions of European devs who earn 50% what an American dev is earning? Or Canadian, or South American?
  • buzzkillington 6y ago
    Why should it be the western companies that overcome the cultural barriers and not the indian workers? Asking as an immigrant to the west.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sabujp 6y ago
  It's only worthless if you don't practice. There are tons of programming jobs out there but don't expect to get hired if you can't do the simplest algorithms. Many people who earn CS bachelors in India have barely even touched computers. There were some in my Masters courses who were hopelessly lost. Then there are some who are topcoders and into competitve programming, practice and experience are what really matter.
  • ineedasername 6y ago
    What do they do in their CS curriculum if they're not actually programming?
    • sabujp 6y ago
      they just do the math and theory, many classes have hundreds of students and neither the students nor the universities have the infrastructure to support computing for all the students. Not all students can afford a Rs35k (~$500) laptop (or cheaper) when that's the price of admission for the entire year.
• ineedasername 6y ago
  How much of the problem is too much supply, and how much of the problem is poor quality of the supply?
• Fede_V 6y ago
  I want to emphasize one thing: all the graduates from IITs I've worked with are truly top notch.
• EL_Loco 6y ago
  Change 'engineering' to 'law', and you have a similar situation in Brazil. There are 1,500 law schools in the country. Most graduates today never end up practicing it.
• sn41 6y ago
  In the Indian context, what matters today is not _what_ the degree is, but _where_ the degree is from. Some historical perspective as I recall it: even as late as the late 1990s, there were very few engineering colleges in India, and a B.E. or B.Tech was a prestigious degree to have. For example, Uttar Pradesh, which is a state that has about the population of the entire US, had 5 or 6 state engineering colleges (+ IIT Kanpur + Univ. of Roorkee + Banaras Hindu Univ, which were national level institutions). The AICTE which controls technical education in India, mandated that no CS department should take more than 65 students in a year. I think what changed was Y2K. I suspect under pressure from NASSCOM, (led by the charismatic Dewang Mehta [1]), B.Tech in CSE got doubled in number by creating a second department called I.T. thus working around existing norms. In the 5 years following, engineering education itself got "liberalized" by allowing a large number of private for-profit colleges. The impression was that they will become places like Harvard and MIT, just because private is better than public sector. Many of these colleges still do not want to employ qualified teaching staff - the faculty are mostly people with just a B.Tech degree from similar colleges, who did not get a job in the tech sector, hence are willing to pay for dirt pay, and under draconian corporate-style management. The situation is true to this day. An inevitable result has been the deluge of people ill-trained, but holding a degree, tarnishing the reputation of Indian engineering education. TLDR: 20 years ago, there were very few engineering colleges in India, the degree was prized, and the graduates were kind-of well-trained. Then there was a huge and unregulated explosion in graduates from for-profit colleges. Today, the graduates who are assured of good jobs and whose degrees hold value, are still those from the pre-1990s engineering colleges. Doctors have resisted a similar dilution of norms. But recently India achieved a significant "number" - one can only hope that the doctors are better off than the engineers. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewang_Mehta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewang_Mehta [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6259525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6259525/
• carrolldunham 6y ago
  The article and the thread are horribly mixing at least three different things under the word Engineer. Actual Engineer degrees B. Eng., 'programmers' which I guess could be B. Software Eng. and something called IT Engineer which I presume is a sort of two year network admin thing. No wonder there's so much confusion about the value of things and people being surprised not to have the status they expected when the person telling you you need to be an engineer meant a substation designer and you thought it meant tech support.
  • gentleman11 6y ago
    In Canada, the term “engineer” is protected, but in most places the term is used loosely. Eg, in the USA, if you email Unity about a licensing question, you get a response from a “customer service engineer”
    • Qu3tzal 6y ago
      Which probably means an regular engineer assigned to customer service, I don't think it is means that customer service is viewed as an engineering discipline.
    • 52-6F-62 6y ago
      Only with regard to certain industries. I believe software engineer is pretty free-for-all. Just don't try and represent yourself as a P. Eng. Then you're in trouble.
• gumby 6y ago
  The saddest quote in this article was this: “I majored in computer science but realized I wasn’t cut out for a coding job. Dropping out wasn’t an option, so I stuck to the course,”. At lease he appears to have landed on his feet.
• entha_saava 6y ago
  I am an Indian student studying in freshman year in one of the so-called "top" colleges and there are just too many problems. * First of all, the system is very rote learning oriented. The questions in the exam will be exactly same as those solved in the class. That means people without proper understanding of concepts can still get A+ grades by memorization techniques. But it is PITA if you actually have some interest in subject. You may not get good grades if you write right answers in exams but they aren't like what is in the book. * Too many people enter Engineering, especially CSE in hope of getting a Job. Entrance process is based completely on basic sciences and while better than other exams, people still game the system by studying four years for entrance exams. This and management quota in Engineering colleges leads to huge influx of students out of them somewhere like 2% - 5% actually have interest in the branch of engineering they take. * Talent gets no recognition many times. Rote-based exams make it easy to distinguish average from absolute low. But average and talented appear to be at same level because a talented person can be as good as an average but hard working student in these rote based exams. * Since there is huge influx of students and huge number of engineering colleges, most faculty is underskilled and better we could have robots teach us. We had a teacher who doesn't appear to indent C code, but also has a "qualification" in "distributed systems" and "computer networking". * Something that has been a problem to me: I was pretty good in basic sciences, passed entrance exam with good marks without any tedious "coaching", and I took up CSE because I was interested in computer science. The first year of engineering syllabus consists of same common subjects to all branches, like Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics (Calculus) and introductory courses to other engineering disciplines (C programming is only CSE related thing they teach us). That's improperly using one year. However relevant those subjects are, they aren't as relevant as teaching programming/CS related subjects in practice. We will have campus placements in 7th semester and due to this, we only get 2nd and 3rd year to actually study CSE. Even those subjects wouldn't have been a problem apart from being waste of time - but they are too rote learning based and uninteresting - As in teaching some methodologies to solve some kind of numerical problems and asking them in exam. Today as I am writing this I have an online exam some hours later. I never thought I would be grades in 7/10 range but the uninteresting and rote based nature of these exams doesn't motivate me to study anything. And this "interdisciplinary" kool-aid has another effect. I have seen even toppers of my class not understanding recursion and algorithm complexity. Because algorithm complexity is not taught in first year. We only get to learn C programming (No 'advanced' concepts like malloc / free, file I/O) in first year. This is huge waste of resources because all these rote learned physics fundamentals don't be useful for most of these people in practice. They will be forgotten after exams. If they had taught something related to CS, at least it would be useful to do side projects and have something more on our resumes, and would be perhaps useful as an engineer. * Perhaps as a result of the above, Syllabus is far behind the actual advancements in technology. Git? Apparently only members of college's coding club know what that is. Docker? What's that? I am frustrated. It is just pointless. Especially because all this is too costly for a middle class rural student and we have to get education loans. If it was not the societal pressure / norms, I could have self studied and could have become a better engineer. The system is so screwed up - perfect one to churn out enterprise droids anyway.
• Animats 6y ago
  The article draws mostly from this piece from a company that apparently tests prospective employees.[1] Good coding skills (the ability to write functionally correct code) are possessed by 4.6% of Indian job applicants, 2.1% of Chinese candidates and 18.8% of the US candidates in the IT and software industries. However, if we consider only those candidates who can write correct code with few errors, the gap between China and India narrows (8.6% vs. 9.8%, respectively). Interestingly, while the percentage of Indian engineers who code well is greater than the number of Chinese engineers, a much higher proportion of Indian engineers (37.7%) cannot write a compilable code compared to Chinese engineers (10.35%). This means that India must do more to educate its general population in proper coding skills. By comparison, the US engineers perform four times better than Indian engineers in coding: only 4% of the US candidates cannot write compilable code despite the fact that the base of the engineering population in the US is approximately four times smaller than in India. I wonder what their tests look like. [1] https://www.aspiringminds.com/thankyou/?url=2602 https://www.aspiringminds.com/thankyou/?url=2602
  • in_cahoots 6y ago
    The last sentence of this paragraph makes me distrust the whole analysis. Mixing percentages with population-dependent numbers makes no sense. And even if that did make sense, the conclusion is exactly backwards. If fewer people go into engineering you would expect the few people who do make it to be of higher caliber. Obviously as you widen your pool you will regress to something closer to the mean programming ability.
    • barbegal 6y ago
      And I don't consider being able to "write compilable code" as a good metric for programming ability. You can be a great programmer in many different ways: in optimising for performance, in optimising for testability, in increasing readability or in reducing the time taken to produce working code. Most people I know really heavily on an IDE to help them write compilable code because they want to use their brain power on solving issues the IDE can't help you with.
• hypesafe 6y ago
  Indian universities outside of the top rung (IITs et al.) have been issuing worthless degrees for at least 3 decades. In my state during the 90s tech/outsourcing boom a lot of corrupt politicians realized that engineering education was a gold mine and opened degree factories all over the state. I graduated from a supposedly "reputable" university in 2004 and was basically unemployable on graduation. Looking back here are a few memories of my college education experience that stand out: * 1 computer "lab" with 15 PCs shared amongst 720 students. Only 1 PC had a dial-up internet connection that rarely worked. * Majority of the courses taught by industry rejects who were unemployable. * Hilariously we learnt standard nix command line tools (sed , awk, filesystem commands etc.) by writing the commands and their outputs using a pen and paper never once using a real terminal + shell because the college did not have a single nix machine. * "Systems Programming" professor walks in the first day and declares she cannot code in C and 8086 assembly which the course mandated. She encouraged us to seek external tutoring (coaching classes as they are known in India) instead of relying on her. * There was small cottage industry that sold finished projects to students - including source code, project reports, electronic circuitry where applicable. About 30% of the class bought these “projects” off the shelf. Thankfully my family was able to send me to an American university for a graduate degree allowing me to have a shot at a tech career. Now having lived and worked in the Bay Area for 15 years I can say that quality of education at an average community college in the US is far superior to the tier-2 / tier-3 universities in India.
• mnwsth 6y ago
  There are 23 IITs
• CivBase 6y ago
  A degree is supposed to be a guarantee issued by an organization that someone has met that organization's standards for some dicipline. In theory, those degrees are valuable to businesses because they assure some baseline competency from prospective hires. It sounds like many organizations in India have significantly reduced their standards or are awarding their degrees to unqualified people. So why do businesses continue to value degrees issued by those organizations?
• unnouinceput 6y ago
  "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life". A famous quote, can't remember by who and too lazy to search, but it also can be reversed to summarize the article: "Do it for money and you'll be crappy at your job"
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• RoadieRoller 6y ago
  90% of the Indian Software Engineers are from two states in India - Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. While 10% or so are good, the remaining are junk. They get into jobs through shady practices, through team work (one guy gets in to a company and works his way to get others inside, and they chuck every other guy out, including other Indian guys from other states). I know people who even edit PDFs and produces fake client letters to get visa extensions. Most of these guys can't even speak proper English. But their perseverance and tenacity to come to US, and stay here is like a parasite on a mammal. Doesn't leave the bite. When a couple of them gets into an apartment, they invade that place by inviting everyone who is from those two states. Never gives a penny as tip. Worst is when they speak in their local language in restrooms, aisles, between pens/cubicles.
• andarleen 6y ago
  Strangely enough east european outsourcing is skyrocketing, so demand is out there. Most companies coming here complain about their negative experience with outsourcing to India, and are willing to pay far more than outsourcing there, albeit still less than in western europe. So the issue is not necessarily numbers, but the quality of those numbers. Indian programmers are great, this is honest feedback based on what i heard.
• LeagueSucks 6y ago
  I am currently pursuing a CS Degree in one of the top schools of India (top 0.01 percentile) and I also have some friends in Tier 3 colleges. CS education is only good in top 15 colleges in the country i.e. around 10k CS graduates every year. The rest 50k - 100k graduates are of much lower aptitude. The reason for this is that learning in Indian colleges is mostly peer learning and the top students all end up in the top colleges.
• GnarfGnarf 6y ago
  I interviewed some "Masters" level students from India. They couldn't do FizzBuzz. if(i % 3) ... else if(i % 5) ...
• upquarking 6y ago
  Just want to make 3 quick points: 1/ Society should provide the courses that people want to study. Not everyone wins the lottery when they are young. So to to limit engineering to X number of slots and lock the rest of society out of engineering degrees. That's wrong. That's not freedom. And that's why bootcamps and diploma serve important roles. They give people a choice. As for the quality of graduates, that's up to the filtering process of companies. 2/ Computer science is far too broad and should obviously be broken up. Yet it hasn't. People focus on different things. Some focus on security, on web dev, on robotics, on machine learning. You can't throw a frontend guy into the backend and 1 month later call him "a terrible coder". That's unfair yet it happens. 3/ Programming is clearly on the path to becoming ubiquitous. My prediction is that the trend will move towards having more domain knowledge. So yes, the degree is becoming useless because just being a programmer isn't going to be enough anymore in the future.
• luminati 6y ago
  I know clickbait, hyperbolic titles allow for more, hmm, clicks, but they rarely help make the case for your article. Since he uses the word "worthless", how does that compare it to folks who graduated in History or anthropology or (running joke in the US) graduated in English? Think of this: People in poor country, need to do what it takes to better their prospects. So they go for the one industry that pays relatively better. Nothing illogical about it and seems perfectly rational to me. And I can see similar trends in the US too. A lot of lamenting on "how I wished I learned to code, major in CS, etc.", given how drastically better the tech industry pays. https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi ICYMI. Oh, the poor worthless English majors. Also the lack of empathy was quite striking given the author himself is a recent "worthless" graduate of a technical degree - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilesh-christopher-20831784/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilesh-christopher-20831784/ Maybe he comes from an upper-middle class background and was able to pivot into journalism, but the fact that he didn't mention his own background meant that I couldn't take this article seriously. On a more meta topic, does education always have to "worthful"?