
The Story of Engineering Education in India - ganarajpr
http://jnaapti.com/blog/2013/09/22/jnaapti-the-story-so-far/
======
av501
Having interviewed 100+ candidates in past 2 years for my own startup and a
similar number before in my previous job, I completely understand what the
author is trying to say. Believe me when I say that 90% of my interviews
simply stop at the first question (Can you write a function in C which given
an integer array and its size as arguments, returns the number of zeros in an
array?). My interview then turns in a small career counselling session telling
them to learn and how learning to learn is important because it breaks my
heart to see the young ones come out with no ability. Most of them though
dejected at not clearing the interview thank me and tell me in the past 4
years that they were getting their degree nobody told them what I did. Shows
really that there is nobody guiding them out there and the mindset is wrong.

~~~
eitally
I'm in the process of converting my team of 50ish programmers in Chennai into
a DevOps and "legacy apps support" org because finding people with the
necessary _current_ skills is proving too difficult. And by "current" I'm
talking basic stuff like javascript competency, an understanding of what MVC
is (versus dragging toolbox controls onto a webform and writing a couple lines
of databinding), and the impossibility of hiring people who have programming
experience in anything besides .Net (and to a lesser extent, Java, but even
Java is hard to recruit for) and SQL Server or Oracle. My "low cost" (which,
as a result of demand and globalization, has turned into "US light" rather
than "developing world") country of choice now is Mexico, and -- judging from
the recent recruiting challenges there -- I'm not alone. In the Guadalajara
area, HCL, Tata, Infosys, HP, Dell, Oracle, and a raft of others are all
gobbling up freshers who really can code themselves out of a box, who have
good communication skills with at least passable English, who are able and
interested in learning new skills, and generally speaking have much more in
common culturally with the US.

I am certain there are both bright spots and bright futures ahead for the
Indian IT economy (and education system), but for now I'm either putting my
creative work in other countries or hiring [much higher cost] consultancies to
augment the local skills in my captive team there. The cycle mentioned by
other commenters here and in the blog post of finding employment solely for
the sake of certification or learning a new skill to support jumping to a new
employer is a huge turn off for two reasons: 1) a lot of the incoming freshers
literally have zero skills and it's a huge time sink for the experienced folks
to get them to the point where they can contribute, and 2) by the time someone
is contributing they're already either looking for a new job or expecting
promotions and salary hikes in the 20-50% per annum range. This is untenable
and quite ridiculous, even with the recent inflation/currency issues. My
company, like many others, have a different job code/title scale for India
than everywhere else in the world, just to support the concept of having a
dozen steps in between fresher (literally zero skills) and senior
engineer/architect... not to mention similar things on the management side.

I could write a book on this crap and, frankly, I'm already feeling riled up
just thinking about it so I'll stop here. I'll just leave it at this: I truly
hope the Indian education system and cultural issues surrounding employment,
family, corruption, and financial stability are worked out in the coming
years, but the stress dealing with this mess through the past ten years has
put me off enough to abandon ship. The cost savings is just not worth the
productivity hit (not to mention subjective issues like time difference).

~~~
enry_straker
As a person who started one of chennai's first product development org. in the
mid 90's, let me add my two cents here:

1) Hire people for their interest in programming, their core problem solving
ability and the fun they have with the process.

There are lots of such people, just learn to look beyond what everyone else
does. For instance, i once hired a person who could not speak much english,
and who did a BA or something like that. He, later on, turned out to be one of
the stars of the organization writing a core part of a VoIP solution.

2) Invest in long-term training. By that, i mean don't hire some crappy
institute to come and train your people. Here from experienced folks in other
organizations to come in over the weeke-end or other timings to help your
team.

I remember having to train almost every member of my team in assembly, c,
win16 and later on win32 among others. Some of my team members then went on to
train professors in IIT, chennai. :-)

3) Mentor your team members. Show interest in them beyond what they can
deliver today. Build good relationships with them and help them, both
technically and otherwise. When they see you sincerely reaching out to them,
they will do the same.

4) Be patient with people. If they know zilch, be frank with them and let them
know that they are currently not contributing anything to the organization.
However also lay out a plan for them, along with HR, to bring them up to speed
in core areas; viz problem-solving, algorithm design, data structures etc
Don't allow them to waste time on fancy courses from idiotic institutes. Make
your senior programmers take classes some of the time. That's also part of
their job.

------
arocks
This post captures very accurately the engineering education scene in India. I
would add that many students today are actually aware of what they are getting
into (Most of the times, they don’t need engineers but mere “coders”). Unless
they are living under a rock, their predecessors have already told them that
by now.

Going further the students who were pressurized to take up engineering are now
using these jobs as stepping stones to reach a point where they can pursue
their real interest. The good engineers are seen as capable to lead bigger
teams and pressurized to enter project management (which is, in reality,
resource management).

At least on the open source front, there seems to be a real community of
interest in India, who seem to involved due to their love in the area. The way
I see it, getting into engineering was an 'arbitrage opportunity'. That window
has closed and people will slowly move on.

~~~
kamaal
>>The good engineers are seen as capable to lead bigger teams and pressurized
to enter project management

In which company does this happen?

Because nearly everywhere that I have seen, and especially in big IT services
companies. Managerial aspirations happen as people find coding to be too much
of intellectual work and would like to settle down in a desk clerk sort of
work accounting job.

A middle manager in a large company these days is basically a guy who fills up
forms for work accounting purposes.

------
okpatil
I am a start up founder as well and I am facing the same problem. Most of
freshers applying for the jobs claim to have decent "Java", "SQL" knowledge in
their resume. But they cannot even write a simple program that reads and
writes to a file.

They don't even know that there is something called "Open Source Technology".
Absolutely no one has hands on experience with Linux. And they haven't even
heard of technologies like ROR and Node.js.

I had to invest in their training. But even after 3 months of rigorous
training, they still fail to grasp basic concepts.

I am not blaming parents for their child's failure. Of course, they pray that
he should have a better life than themselves. That's why they pay for his
education.

I will blame these petty colleges with their petty engineering degrees.

Paid projects are killing "problem solving attitude" of entire engineering
generation.

~~~
enry_straker
Also blame the students themselves. It really doesn't matter what collages
they attended, how poor their teacher was etc.

The internet is the biggest teacher of all. With institutions like Khan
Academy and MITx and Google and coursera and other MOOCs, the availability of
free knowledge is plentyful for people with an ounce of interest.

And never invest in a person who does not love programming or problem solving.
No amount of training can fix a character flaw.

~~~
okpatil
I agree. I learned that hard way.

------
pramalin
Even the top institutes like IITs engage in superstitious and fraudulent
activities.

Here are some very recent examples.

Pseudoscience unchallenged at IIT Kanpur:
[http://nirmukta.com/2012/08/06/pseudoscience-unchallenged-
at...](http://nirmukta.com/2012/08/06/pseudoscience-unchallenged-at-iit-
kanpur/)

Hall of Shame: On a Hindutva Apologist’s Recent Lectures at IIT Madras:

[http://nirmukta.com/2012/09/05/hall-of-shame-on-a-
hindutva-a...](http://nirmukta.com/2012/09/05/hall-of-shame-on-a-hindutva-
apologists-recent-lectures-at-iit-madras/) """ Gravity was not discovered
(sic) by “Newton or Oldton”, but by Bhaskara II and is described in his work
Siddhānta Siromani.

The spherical shape of earth was not discovered by “Copernicus or Silvernicus”
but Indians knew it well in advance and is mentioned in Bhagavata. """

One can imagine what is going on in other less reputed colleges?

Granted these are off-school activities, but it would be better for them to
seek entertainment in better ways.

------
denzil_correa
One of my colleagues was taking an interview of a potential candidate who
listed "Python" as a core programming language. This is similar to most
interviews I've been part of. Here's how it went -

Interviewer : Name some data structures in Python Interviewee : Same as C, C++

Interviewer : Can you name some specific data structures? For example, have
you heard about lists? Interviewee : I haven't heard about lists in Python

Interviewer : What is the key difference between Python and C? Interviewee :
Python requires indentation, C doesn't.

That was the final straw in my colleague's patience.

~~~
kamaal
I once had a experience with a colleague. She would continually come to me to
parse XMLs and give it to her in some format like a csv which she could open
it in Microsoft excel for some report generation purposes.

It started to happen pretty frequently and would consume a great deal of my
time- It was reaching a stage where I had to stop my work to do her's. After a
time she would just show up at my desk with her laptop, I had to write the
code while she chatted with some one on her mobile. One afternoon I had, had
enough and I asked her why she couldn't do it herself. She then mentioned she
only knew C and C++. Then I asked why couldn't she parse the XMLs in C or C++?
After a few questions back and forth, she understood I wasn't going to her
homework after all.

She shed enough tears to convince our project manager, that I wasn't a good
team player and I was the reason why the productivity in the project was
falling down.

Thankfully one afternoon our clients had her removed from the project when I
was on leave, and they made her write programs in a war room while the whole
team was watching her screen on a projector.

~~~
thewarrior
That seems like a pretty brutal way to treat someone. Not that I'm excusing
their behaviour.

------
shubhamjain
Let me take another viewpoint where everyone is too biased to the idea that
the parents put the clamps on their kids. I am an engineering undergrad and
honestly, the kids doing Tier-3 Engineering won't be even slightly better off
if they weren't. For the simplest reason, for 90% of people there is a no
sense of purpose in life except settling for a 20K income and have a well
settled family of four.

I see no sign of passion, creativity in 9 out of 10 people. For the remaining
"one", there is no stopping them to what they want to become. People want to
shrug off their shoulders blaming they were forced to do engg.. without
knowing what would they be doing if not it.

~~~
dkarl
_For the simplest reason, for 90% of people there is a no sense of purpose in
life except settling for a 20K income and have a well settled family of four._

FWIW, I see a lot of competent people in the United States with this mindset
(different numbers, but the same mindset.) They work hard in college and learn
what they're supposed to, and after college they keep up with the technologies
required for their work. They are rarely superstar coders, but they are
competent and productive. People like that end up exactly where society guides
them. In the U.S., the society turns them into valuable professionals; in
India, apparently the outcome is not so good.

------
kamaal
Your post has a lot of gems, but you also misunderstand a lot about what is
going on in Indian society. I am not surprised, not a least bit.

>>I am sorry to say this, but parents come with an “old generation” mindset
... Because they think that if he gets a job he has settled in life ...
Unfortunately, what they don’t realize is that there is no such thing as
“settling” in IT jobs.

They come with a very correct mindset. For many people here. Including my own
family, getting to a IT job was a long drawn battle against very tough
financial conditions, social pressures and all other kinds of problems. There
are people, including few of friends where they were the first people to enter
a Engineering college. Imagine having to drive a taxi, or an auto rickshaw, or
pushing a vegetable cart, or a small time farm worker practically working 18
hrs/day and then sacrificing every small desire of yours to save every single
paise and doing this for decades you can so that your child can study. And
imagine the kid, having to wear only two shirts and two pants a year.
Traveling in near-to-explode crowded buses in a city starving all afternoon,
and practicing math problems on a newspaper just to get a decent degree and a
job.

From their perspective, they are really reaching a milestone, when they get a
full time job. At least that is how I felt I when I got my full time job at a
Call center here in Bangalore. You might think that's a disaster for an
engineer. But from my perspective, the analogy is similar to a person dying
out of thirst in a desert getting a glass of cold water, and you criticizing
him for not aiming for Apple juice.

Its extremely difficult to understand this, unless you have suffered the same
fate. Even if you think you do, you don't. You really need to suffer from it,
to understand what it is.

Remainder of your post has some nice insights. But I believe our society
suffers from a crisis of honesty. Throughout my entire childhood, teens and
now in a job I see rampant corruption. I don't mean bribery. But unfair play
of all kinds. Question papers in exams getting leaked, seats in colleges being
secured through 'high influences' & capitation fees, Seats denied to general
category students due to reservations.

And now in the corporate job, I don't see things as any different here. In
fact this is the worst I'm seeing in my life. Even if you are the best
programmer out there, you will be slaughtered in the resulting office
politics. I've seen some super idiots being promoted, sent to onsite
locations, and given amazing hikes just because his manager happens to be
speaking the same language as him, or belongs to same state from some part of
India, or is because of some religion. At the same time, the entire industry
is full jumping jacks, attrition in nearly every company is record high.
Because every one wants to be a manager, thanks to the IT services companies
and the mess they created in 90's. Now every one joining this industry thinks
programmers are losers, and climbing the corporate ladder is all that is sole
measure of one's success, or how many time one has visited the US.

Meritocracy is dead in the water, when it comes to the programming scene in
India. If you want progress, you need to be some managers's pet and "suck up"
to him. Playing political games, and being in manager's power structure is all
that counts. Else find your self a manager who is of your state or speaks your
language.

This has nothing to do with engineering education. Its about being honest and
playing fair. Besides I chuckle every time a guy gives 'engineering education'
as a reason to not do something. A 20+ year old with Google at his disposal,
has 0 reasons to complain when it education and knowledge these days.

Start up's and bootstrapping are our only hope at this point of time.

~~~
rahul_rai
A 20+ year old with Google at his disposal, has 0 reasons to complain when it
education and knowledge these days

WRONG

Totally

Where would a 20 year old learn about a driver code written 15 years back ,
with no documents? This job would feed him And it is hard.

~~~
kamaal
Nobody gets Google search results, For "segfault in driver.c written by rahul
rai in 1985"

But, they get good enough help on writing device drivers and troubleshooting
them. That is all you need, and you have to take it from there.

There is nothing like copy-paste if your are solving a new problem. You have
to incrementally work your way to a solution.

If you think that is not possible for a person, they must rethink and chose a
different profession instead.

~~~
enry_straker
No.

It also indicates that companies hire people and then throw problems at them
without training them or mentoring them or providing adequate tools for them.

------
linux_devil
Agree , but thankfully we have industry experts who understand this problem
and I personally appreciate move like this:
[http://jaaga.in/study](http://jaaga.in/study) . They provide free classes
through "Coursera" etc. and technical help to financially backwards ( those
who cant afford higher studies)

------
yogrish
"we can expect a new technology that we don’t even have now to get outdated
before our lifetime." Very well said and so true. People must Adapt in order
to cope up. Probably online education programs (MIT/Coursera etc)play vital
role here in learning new domains/skills and keep us going...

~~~
linux_devil
I tried to sum it up in my recent blog : [http://linux-
devil.blogspot.in/2013/09/online-courses-for-co...](http://linux-
devil.blogspot.in/2013/09/online-courses-for-computer-science.html)

------
VLM
Early on in the article I was unimpressed with the assumption that "who you
are" or "what you'll be" is defined by your job title which is defined by your
school major.

------
roshansingh
To add to it there is a lack of career counselling. One really does not know
about many of the career options out there when he/she is in Class 10, when
he/she has to make a choice.

------
anovikov
I thought i knew what a broken educational system is...

