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Some interview anecdotes from India (Not all mine) : For an SDE interview obsessed with binary trees after around 4 possible traversals, the fifth one was: "Ca

by muktabh 11y ago

Some interview anecdotes from India (Not all mine) : For an SDE interview obsessed with binary trees after around 4 possible traversals, the fifth one was: "Can you write code to traverse Binary-Tree in a zigzag manner ?" "seriously ?" Rejected. Questions asked in a PHP dev interview: "Can you write code to invert this link list ?" "Yeah I could in college, but I haven't touched C for last 5 years. I can explain the logic though" "Being a Php developer doesn't mean you forget how C looks like" Rejected. Salary negotitation "My current salary is 50k, I am hoping for 10% increase" "We will give you 30k, dont you want to work for a world class technology product company " "Ok, can you still match my current salary ? I might join in that case" "Do you want to work for a world class technology product company or not ?" "Sorry" Rejected. candidate too demanding, lacks passion. "Do you know Node JS ?" "No I am interviewing for a frontend developer post" Rejected. As these interviews point out, most of us are bad engineers. Yes we Indian developers are shit. We are expected to work 24 hours a day, taking orders* from product managers, who many times just become PMs because they did not want to (or never understood how to) code and are expected to feel oblige to take the smallest cuts from the bonus pie, not paid for/encouraged to take any courses (one of my bosses actually suggested me to unlearn all the "cool shit" as I was increasing expectations of good work of other employees ) , and we are inefficient at that. But even after this, it is not at all fair to compare us to the foreign recruited people who earn twice, generally have more experience (as every experienced person in India becomes a manager), and could do all cool github coding in their career (try telling about Github to one of my previous PMs, he will point you to know more about scrum) . After all its only in foreign developers one can find "10 years of big data" (Hadoop recently turned 10 btw) and "15 years of building scalable applications in Golang" type of experience. There are a few Indian startups which are changing the scene. For the rest, its better they hire from outside the country. If someone can make a bold statement like this, he should have done his homework.

bovermyer 11y ago
This makes me very curious about the culture around the Indian tech industry. Why does there appear to be no encouragement for exploration or experimentation? Further, why does there seem to be a strong emphasis on prestige? For example, I know full well how powerful and prestigious Google is, but that doesn't make me want to work there. I get the sense that that kind of attitude is not common in India.
- sridca 11y ago
  Indian society has traditionally enforced collectivistic values. From a young age, be they a male or female, one is conditioned to unwittingly absorb the various rules and responsibilities of a narrow lifestyle (get married at ~25; have babies; earn a living; stay married till death; have grandbabies) that there is little space and time for creative pursuits. It is all thankfully changing now of course.
- muktabh 11y ago
  No. I think that is because most Indians are too low on resources to experiment with their life. This hence has evolved into a culture, where safe (prestigious) jobs (and now safe startups) are the only ones considered good. I recently started a startup building a product which does not cater to the "hot" sectors like e-commerce and convincing people (we're B2B) to take a risk (for anything, even a free trial) is really hard. Also a innovative solution is generally looked with suspicion (I dont blame people for this, most shiny things here are frauds). I hope we can change this in the long run. I wrote more on this (just yesterday) here: https://medium.com/@muktabh/why-is-a-pure-technology-startup-hard-in-india-fd8e70ad1566 https://medium.com/@muktabh/why-is-a-pure-technology-startup...
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>Why does there appear to be no encouragement for exploration or experimentation? Herd mentality. You are considered good if you are from childhood scoring good grades, ace all the entrance exams, enter a reputed institution, score a good job in campus placement. Any deviation from this is considered dangerous by the herd, to existence of the herd itself. After all if one could get good by exploration and experimentation. All the effort the herd spent in being good guys since they were born, following all the rules of the society would be a colossal waste.
tamaatar 11y ago
This I can certainly relate to. In India wherever you go in the IT industry you are expected to forget about your life,family and just focus on minting money for your employer and for Shitty pay. I have 10 years experience in the industry and I have worked for bodyshops,niche hip companies and for awesome startup(s). In all of them,shamelessly expecting you to work extra hours, sometime 15+ is a norm. And when it comes to paying you for it, you are handed a nice package of politics and bullshit. I kind of admire people who somehow manage to use politics or whatever to actually chill and not work at all. At least they are less stressed. Not good programmers in India. yeah right. Pay them well. care about their life and create a reputation for your company to do that and see how they come to you. Its not just the employer's fault really. I am now in a different country and nobody expects anyone to work after 6. because nobody will do that. We Indians accept it ourselves. A lot of them actually take pride in having no life and spending all the time in office. I hate them from the bottom of my heart.
- brianbreslin 11y ago
  what is a bodyshop? in the united states a body shop is where they repair cars
  - tamaatar 11y ago
    Ah it just means one of those huge outsourcing companies. Infosys,Wipro,TCS.

by muktabh 11y ago

bovermyer 11y ago

This makes me very curious about the culture around the Indian tech industry. Why does there appear to be no encouragement for exploration or experimentation? Further, why does there seem to be a strong emphasis on prestige? For example, I know full well how powerful and prestigious Google is, but that doesn't make me want to work there. I get the sense that that kind of attitude is not common in India.

sridca 11y ago
Indian society has traditionally enforced collectivistic values. From a young age, be they a male or female, one is conditioned to unwittingly absorb the various rules and responsibilities of a narrow lifestyle (get married at ~25; have babies; earn a living; stay married till death; have grandbabies) that there is little space and time for creative pursuits. It is all thankfully changing now of course.
muktabh 11y ago
No. I think that is because most Indians are too low on resources to experiment with their life. This hence has evolved into a culture, where safe (prestigious) jobs (and now safe startups) are the only ones considered good. I recently started a startup building a product which does not cater to the "hot" sectors like e-commerce and convincing people (we're B2B) to take a risk (for anything, even a free trial) is really hard. Also a innovative solution is generally looked with suspicion (I dont blame people for this, most shiny things here are frauds). I hope we can change this in the long run. I wrote more on this (just yesterday) here: https://medium.com/@muktabh/why-is-a-pure-technology-startup-hard-in-india-fd8e70ad1566 https://medium.com/@muktabh/why-is-a-pure-technology-startup...
kamaal 11y ago
>>Why does there appear to be no encouragement for exploration or experimentation? Herd mentality. You are considered good if you are from childhood scoring good grades, ace all the entrance exams, enter a reputed institution, score a good job in campus placement. Any deviation from this is considered dangerous by the herd, to existence of the herd itself. After all if one could get good by exploration and experimentation. All the effort the herd spent in being good guys since they were born, following all the rules of the society would be a colossal waste.

tamaatar 11y ago

This I can certainly relate to. In India wherever you go in the IT industry you are expected to forget about your life,family and just focus on minting money for your employer and for Shitty pay. I have 10 years experience in the industry and I have worked for bodyshops,niche hip companies and for awesome startup(s). In all of them,shamelessly expecting you to work extra hours, sometime 15+ is a norm. And when it comes to paying you for it, you are handed a nice package of politics and bullshit. I kind of admire people who somehow manage to use politics or whatever to actually chill and not work at all. At least they are less stressed. Not good programmers in India. yeah right. Pay them well. care about their life and create a reputation for your company to do that and see how they come to you. Its not just the employer's fault really. I am now in a different country and nobody expects anyone to work after 6. because nobody will do that. We Indians accept it ourselves. A lot of them actually take pride in having no life and spending all the time in office. I hate them from the bottom of my heart.

brianbreslin 11y ago
what is a bodyshop? in the united states a body shop is where they repair cars
- tamaatar 11y ago
  Ah it just means one of those huge outsourcing companies. Infosys,Wipro,TCS.