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I think the author touched on this lightly, but I feel like there is a little more to be said about “signaling” or what I like to personally call, “resume flexi

I think the author touched on this lightly, but I feel like there is a little more to be said about “signaling” or what I like to personally call, “resume flexing”. In India, all people at all times are building their resumes for a semi-vague goal usually wealth or a happy retirement. This idea is embedded quite early on in age as the article author suggested - you’re usually pointed at a career in middle school that makes it easier to achieve above said goal. The flywheel then spins ever faster as every decision you make thereafter is about getting closer and closer to this vague goal of “success/wealth/societal perception”. You pick universities based on rankings, large tech companies over startups, management over individual contributor work and of course America over everything else. This problem isn’t isolated to India by any means, and like all stereotypes isn’t applicable to all people from India but in a country of 1B+ people, it’s just dialed up to 11. Hacktoberfest and GSOC are just unfortunate victims to this resume building. The fastest way to put these on your resume and flex it, is to create a spam commit and shortcut your way to a tshirt or certificate.

searchableguy 6y ago
I find the obsession with certificates interesting. One of my past school used to hand them out like candies. It costs like a dollar for 10 and made everyone happy. Same with trophies and medals. After some questioning and feedback from a lot of people indirectly, I concluded that it's one of the best investment any school can make. It results in lot of good PR, recognition, talks, feel good, etc. It's useful to target and engineer certain behaviors in students. Many of them conflate their value and status with those papers. You can make money by holding competition to handout these and charge for chairs, food and other stuff. Many students won't talk about certificates and medals with their classmates because they will be aware of how easy it is to get one but they will boast about it to kids from other schools and their parents. Ha, better conversion rate if someone is looking to transfer their kid to a better school. I don't understand how not enough schools are doing this and still cheap out on $100 total spend every month at best.
- dheera 6y ago
  That's interesting because I've always found someone being "certified" for e.g. Microsoft something is a huge turnoff for hiring.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Agreed -- and an especially big turnoff is a "cert collector", most of which have done the absolute minimum required to get each of them, i.e. mostly rote memorisation. It's a very Quantity over Quality mindset.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      On the plus side, at least you know they knew it at some point in time.
  - wy35 6y ago
    On the flip side, knowing someone is AWS certified tells me they at least know their way around the console.
  - wodenokoto 6y ago
    In my experience it’s a turn off for HN types of commenters, but out in the “real world” it’s a big deal. My current employer has a goal of X% of all consultants must be cloud certified and bringing these certificates to pre-sales meetings with clients helps a lot.
  - qchris 6y ago
    I largely agreee, with the exception of CAD design certificates for Solidworks, etc. I don't even have one, but everyone I've met who has are actually functionally better at CAD than those without, so I acknowledge it.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> The flywheel then spins ever faster as every decision you make thereafter is about getting closer and closer to this vague goal of “success/wealth/societal perception”. You pick universities based on rankings, large tech companies over startups, management over individual contributor work I feel as though I've read numerous parables like this, except describing modern America. We don't tend to choose our careers so early, but is it really so different? In New York City you typically have parents/children competing for spots in the "best" preschools, and throughout the country high school is basically a big competition to be accepted into the most prestigious college. Only among a certain social group, of course, but I'm sure that applies to India too.
- Shog9 6y ago
  The example you picked - NYC - has by far the highest population density in the country. This was one of the major factors cited by the article here; it would seem to lend credence to the "why".
cinntaile 6y ago
Is this also why there are so many low quality videos on technical topics by people which seem to be from India? A way to pad their resumes? Or is this a result of a course requirement or something else?
- rramadass 6y ago
  You must have been looking at the wrong places then (Youtube is not a good indicator). Here is "National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)" which publishes a lot of high quality courses from various top-ranking universities in India - https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/
  - cinntaile 6y ago
    You misunderstood what I meant. I did not say that there are no high quality tech topic videos coming from India, I am sure there are as I have watched a few myself. What I said was that there is a lot of low quality content and I was wondering if the reasons for that were related to what the parent mentioned.
    - rv-de 6y ago
      I checked a few of the videos on that site and they are anyway located on YouTube.
    - mav3rick 6y ago
      No it's not. "Youtube" is still perceived as "time wastage" by most conventional parents. In fact creators are kind of rebelling against the norm.
- srndh 6y ago
  I think you are referring to the Youtube gurus teaching stuff. Its actually 2 fold, the short term goal of raking up some youtube views and getting the youtube ad money. Second is to pad the CV as an "advanced developer with lots of knowledge to share", it helps to put on CV and also be considered for some training positions which is demand as many are rushing to get into tech where "even kids are minting money". I know a guy that put up some coding videos on youtube to be a "youtuber" and one of the big tech firms in India hired him to train their new recruits.
rramadass 6y ago
>and of course America over everything else Ha, Ha, Ha! Very funny but true.

searchableguy 6y ago

I find the obsession with certificates interesting. One of my past school used to hand them out like candies. It costs like a dollar for 10 and made everyone happy. Same with trophies and medals. After some questioning and feedback from a lot of people indirectly, I concluded that it's one of the best investment any school can make. It results in lot of good PR, recognition, talks, feel good, etc. It's useful to target and engineer certain behaviors in students. Many of them conflate their value and status with those papers. You can make money by holding competition to handout these and charge for chairs, food and other stuff. Many students won't talk about certificates and medals with their classmates because they will be aware of how easy it is to get one but they will boast about it to kids from other schools and their parents. Ha, better conversion rate if someone is looking to transfer their kid to a better school. I don't understand how not enough schools are doing this and still cheap out on $100 total spend every month at best.

dheera 6y ago
That's interesting because I've always found someone being "certified" for e.g. Microsoft something is a huge turnoff for hiring.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 6y ago
  Agreed -- and an especially big turnoff is a "cert collector", most of which have done the absolute minimum required to get each of them, i.e. mostly rote memorisation. It's a very Quantity over Quality mindset.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    On the plus side, at least you know they knew it at some point in time.
- wy35 6y ago
  On the flip side, knowing someone is AWS certified tells me they at least know their way around the console.
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  In my experience it’s a turn off for HN types of commenters, but out in the “real world” it’s a big deal. My current employer has a goal of X% of all consultants must be cloud certified and bringing these certificates to pre-sales meetings with clients helps a lot.
- qchris 6y ago
  I largely agreee, with the exception of CAD design certificates for Solidworks, etc. I don't even have one, but everyone I've met who has are actually functionally better at CAD than those without, so I acknowledge it.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> The flywheel then spins ever faster as every decision you make thereafter is about getting closer and closer to this vague goal of “success/wealth/societal perception”. You pick universities based on rankings, large tech companies over startups, management over individual contributor work I feel as though I've read numerous parables like this, except describing modern America. We don't tend to choose our careers so early, but is it really so different? In New York City you typically have parents/children competing for spots in the "best" preschools, and throughout the country high school is basically a big competition to be accepted into the most prestigious college. Only among a certain social group, of course, but I'm sure that applies to India too.

Shog9 6y ago
The example you picked - NYC - has by far the highest population density in the country. This was one of the major factors cited by the article here; it would seem to lend credence to the "why".

cinntaile 6y ago

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

rramadass 6y ago
You must have been looking at the wrong places then (Youtube is not a good indicator). Here is "National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)" which publishes a lot of high quality courses from various top-ranking universities in India - https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/
- cinntaile 6y ago
  You misunderstood what I meant. I did not say that there are no high quality tech topic videos coming from India, I am sure there are as I have watched a few myself. What I said was that there is a lot of low quality content and I was wondering if the reasons for that were related to what the parent mentioned.
  - rv-de 6y ago
    I checked a few of the videos on that site and they are anyway located on YouTube.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    No it's not. "Youtube" is still perceived as "time wastage" by most conventional parents. In fact creators are kind of rebelling against the norm.
srndh 6y ago
I think you are referring to the Youtube gurus teaching stuff. Its actually 2 fold, the short term goal of raking up some youtube views and getting the youtube ad money. Second is to pad the CV as an "advanced developer with lots of knowledge to share", it helps to put on CV and also be considered for some training positions which is demand as many are rushing to get into tech where "even kids are minting money". I know a guy that put up some coding videos on youtube to be a "youtuber" and one of the big tech firms in India hired him to train their new recruits.

rramadass 6y ago

>and of course America over everything else Ha, Ha, Ha! Very funny but true.