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I have been hiring IIT graduates and building a team in India for several years now. They are all really smart people with a strong work ethic, but their approa
by primitivesuave 6y ago
I have been hiring IIT graduates and building a team in India for several years now. They are all really smart people with a strong work ethic, but their approach to work tends to be the same as the approach they needed to succeed in a test-based education system. The engineers will grind until any hour of the night to ensure that all feature requirements are met and JIRA tickets checked off, but nobody will stop to ask why things are being done a particular way, or offer up some alternative. When success is measured solely on hard metrics (e.g. ticket completion, bug reports), there isn't much emphasis placed on critical analysis or many of the "soft skills" referred to in the article.
I don't mean to say that IIT graduates lack creativity - there are many well-known examples to the contrary. My point is that an academic system where success is predicated on test-taking ability will produce great test-takers who function quite well as cogs in the machine. The system does not cultivate enough creative thinkers who can imagine the machines that have not yet been built.
- mywittyname 6y agoDon't write this off as a solely as a symptom of education. Being able to question the judgement of an authority figure / decision maker is a privilege. A squeaky wheel gets the grease but a raised nail gets the hammer. Engineers generally lean more nail than wheel in most orgs, and being a minority or otherwise less respected subset of that group makes you feel even more like a nail. Dotting I's and crossing T's is exactly the kind of behavior one would expect from a person who is smart enough to recognize something is a stupid idea, knows that they lack the authority to make any changes, and will bear the bunt of the inevitable failure.
- Aeolun 6y ago> Dotting I's and crossing T's is exactly the kind of behavior one would expect from a person who is smart enough to recognize something is a stupid idea Maybe? But it makes them useless for my purposes. Which requires them to think for themselves.
- sriram_sun 6y agoI remember reading a speech made to West Point graduates on the value of questioning authority. Not sure how much it is actually followed, but was pleasantly reassured that at least the thought is being planted. Now if someone could only help me locate that speech.
- mywittyname 6y agoThat is thinking for oneself. That's seeing a problem, attempting to address the problem, and when that fails, taking copious notes for CYA purposes. It's the enterprise version of I Told You So. What I think you mean to is you want a person who will take action. And that's down to company culture. If you want employees who act empowered, you have to give them power.
- primitivesuave 6y ago> A squeaky wheel gets the grease but a raised nail gets the hammer. You're right about this. Indian work culture tends toward rigid hierarchical structures, and expects employees to be much more deferent to authority than you would find in a typical Silicon Valley startup. However, even after bringing our startup culture out there (unlimited PTO, stock options, choose your own hours, don't call me "sir"), I still find this test-taking mentality to be what dominates an engineer's decision making. Because of this, I know to be extremely specific on exact deliverables and tickets. The "rockstar developer" who can think deeply about the end user's needs is an extremely rare thing to find out there. The dominant mentality among developers is to expect a detailed specification that can be treated as the exact boundary of the problem. To give a concrete example - I recently got quite frustrated when a simple CRUD feature shipped without a delete button, since the specification failed to explicitly mention where the button should go. Out of 30 developers and a full QA team, not one person thought critically about the specification or tried using the app from a user's perspective.
- skybrian 6y agoI wonder if making a game out of it would help? Suppose you intentionally introduce a specification error and challenge them to find it?
- blueblisters 6y agoYeah and also I don't think introducing unlimited PTOs and stock options is the same as tasking people to take responsibility for architecting a product. The likely reason is that India still lacks talent in mid to upper-level engineering leadership roles that can make user-centric decisions and groom entry-level talent.
- stevegalla 6y ago> not one person thought critically about the specification or tried using the app from a user’s perspective. I come from a manufacturing background and have moved into software. In manufacturing, if there actually are issues with the specification, you raise those through engineering change notices. If you start changing the spec on your own, that’s a big time no. Do you have a formal process for spec changes or are you expecting the team to raise these issues independently and unprompted? If someone has actually raised concerns with you about the spec or offered up changes, how did you respond to those? I work with people who always say, “why doesn’t anyone challenge me on my ideas?” This happens at the end of a meeting where these people will have shot down everyone else and their ideas. In reality they want “yes people” who tell them there is no disagreement because their idea is best. I’m not saying this is you, but they may have been through these experiences and might need permission or direct instruction to show them speaking up is valued.
- flowerlad 6y agoSomething is really wrong, if he highly capable kids are checking off "JIRA tickets". Couldn't you find some college dropouts in Oklahoma instead?
- 908B64B197 6y agoThat's true of new grads in general. When you complete a course there's an exam, and labs and assignments typically have a set of instructions to get started and a list of requirements. And there is always a domain expert (TA) not far. Now they are learning to become the domain expert in their own (limited) area.
- primitivesuave 6y agoYou're right if you're thinking about American universities, but IIT operates much differently (this may have changed, so IIT students, please correct me if I'm wrong here). No student enters IIT declaring a CS major like an American university - they have to first excel at test-taking within IIT across a range of subjects (chemistry, physics, etc), so they can be part of the top cohort within IIT that is allowed to enroll in CS classes. Based on a couple Youtube video lectures I watched, these courses tend to be lecture-based and tested based on printing the correct output (not on software architecture or code quality). Some of our younger IIT developers say the system is modernizing to be more like other higher education programs, so I might be totally wrong here.
- random314 6y agoIIT students pick their major before joining the university.
- primitivesuave 6y agoThanks for clarifying, glad to be wrong about this one. Would you happen to know if this was true at some point?
- sudhackar 6y agoAFAIR to choose your major you'd to fill a list of preferences - priority of majors in different IITs. These are then awarded based on merit - rank in the JEE(Joint Entrance Exam). So if you want a specific major at a specific IIT you'll have to get higher ranks in the JEE.
- rkunal 6y agoReplace word IIT with College. Most of your statement would feel correct nonetheless.
- primitivesuave 6y agoAgree the same mentality can be found in higher education everywhere, but it is especially prevalent in India.