
Ask HN: India tech industry, discrimination to ones without tier1 college degree - puthan
Why the Indian tech industry is so ignoring and stereotyped towards people without a degree from tier1 college? It has become impossible these days to even get a SE or developer role interview if you don&#x27;t have a tier 1 college degree in India. More and more job postings these days specifically mention tier1 college degree as a requirement. Its seems no matter what the degree matters the most because there are many instances I personally know of people with tier 1 degrees getting an interview than another guy even of the other guy has way better open source contribution and projects. Why is such high level of discrimination prevalent in Indian tech industry?
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robinphilip1989
It is generally impossible to interview each an every candidate for a
position. Recruiters will try and narrows the field by using easy filters.
Numerical and categorical filters are easy to implement (especially if this is
an automated process). For e.g. CGPA, Academic Pedigree... are easy to check
for.

Recruiters are typically not techies and cannot evaluate open source
contributions / other projects. As harsh as this sounds, there is an over
supply of engineers in India with a marked difference in quality of teaching
in tier 1 as compared to tier 2. Companies expect this difference to be
reflected in candidates. Of course there are expcetion to the above, but, most
companies will not pay to spend to much time giving a fair evaluation to every
candidate on an individual basis.

Legally speaking they can do this on candidate attributes except race, gender,
ethnicity (anything where right to equality will apply). Right to equality
does not apply on academic backgrounds, i.e, people do not have a right to be
treated equally in the labor market regardless of educational background. As
far as I know there is no precedence going against this.

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puthan
The hard truth. It seems like nothing other than the college you went to
matters in this industry. Atleast everyone should know about this situation so
that people with passion and skill opting for engg from low tier college
because they couldn't get into top ones won't waste their life

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statictype
This is not really limited to India - having a Stanford degree opens up a lot
of doors in Silicon Valley.

The unfortunate truth is that people don't really know how to properly hire
and identify talent, so we end up using signaling like education. Having a
tier-1 degree doesn't always mean you're good - but statistically its a
reasonable indicator. That doesn't mean its the only indicator but its one
that is 'easy'.

I studied at IIT - a lot of my peers were brilliant but couldn't code their
way out of a paper bag. Many have gone on to success, but not a lot in the
tech industry on the technical side so I can see both sides of it.

For the record - we are actively hiring (details in profile) and we hardly
look at your degree qualifications. Your Github profile is more interesting -
and your in-person and phone interviews and work samples are generally much
more informative than anything on paper.

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puthan
You are right its the most practical way. But companies these days are acting
like it's the only indicator

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bendermon
Consider it a blessing. Apart from the few success stories, most tier1 college
graduates take the safe route of unsatisfying mass recruitment, do an MBA and
end up in less technical jobs.

Unlike in the past since the advent of the internet, resources available to a
random student is almost as good as that available to someone from a tier1
college.

There are plenty of small companies/startups where one could have a much
better long term career. Outside the glamours jobs, plenty of niche area like
manufacturing/defence/... software has much more real world impact and long
term value than social media/marketing/finance.

ISRO's wonderful engineering team is built almost entirely of graduates from
tier3 colleges.

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puthan
Hope you won't take it wrong sense but don't think not getting opportunity and
being stereotyped because not part of cream layer is that much of a blessing
:) By the way the all the requirement of tier1 degree were found in startup
job ads not just in big tech company jobs. Regarding the resource availability
you are right but the problem is not about becoming skilled instead no one is
ready to accept your skills if you don't have a tier1 college degree

