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Singha wrote:well indian culture is high on the designation/title thing. people put up signboards outside their homes with their names and BA/LLB/MSC/Mtech in brackets!
btw is the MCA still there...in my era that was the other alternative to recruiting BE/ME
What's funnier is many put the foreign country's name in brackets next to the degree. For example,
Mango Abdul. MBA (Australia).
Will take another 20-30 years to get out of this colonial hangover. Sorry for the OT.
my kids doctor got so fed up with docs writing their frcs(uk) type degrees on letterheafs that on his pad he has printed as "india educated and trained doctor". lol..and he is hugely doing well.
Slightly OT but since we are talking aptitude and attitude of current crop of engg/ITVity folks, here's my 0.02p
Unlike the older crop (graduated abt 8-10yrs ago), the current ones are not too 'possessed' about the subject at hand, irrespective of the field-IT, Old economy brick mortar, services, etc. With the proliferation of cheap computing and programs for the repetitive as well as advanced stuff, many are plain lazy buggers and have outsourced thinking to the GIGO box. There is immense faith and trust in the output given by computers with only cursory checks being applied. I see this in my brick and mortar field as well as other allied fields where I have ended up defining or changing the specs based on research done out of my own curiosity. Talking to classmates from other streams paints an eerily similar picture. 9 to 5 job in a plush corporate setting with transport to office and back and refreshments thrown has spoiled these brats who jump ship at the first sign of hard work to be done!
I wonder how long this economic growth miracle will last us given we are slowing already. A decade from now, we may on the verge of bein declared nanga in terms of new ideas and innovation irrespective of the stream having outsourced our thinking to the GIGO box.
Singha wrote:well indian culture is high on the designation/title thing. people put up signboards outside their homes with their names and BA/LLB/MSC/Mtech in brackets!
btw is the MCA still there...in my era that was the other alternative to recruiting BE/ME
What's funnier is many put the foreign country's name in brackets next to the degree. For example,
Mango Abdul. MBA (Australia).
Will take another 20-30 years to get out of this colonial hangover. Sorry for the OT.
I have refused to have my degrees printed under my name on the visiting card despite immense pressure from office and the bossman himself. Unfortunately people misunderestimate me and ended getting their musharrafs whipped tender Then they about how I should 'give' more info on my background so they can treat me with 'respect'....
the 20% people who make the diff are still there in youngistan. in the past 80% of the pool(much smaller pool then) decamped long term for the US, 20% remained. 20% came back later.
now it might be ulta, 20% go, 80% stay. the pool is much larger, lot more people who are sub par in absolute numbers, lot more work being done here.
but yes, cos that expect quality x huge_volume like the services co are no doubt facing issues and must be doing lots of internal training to make up. cos that expect quality in small lots will be ok.
since everything is done to increase billing in service industry, innovation (too much) is not profitable for employee/r. though increasing productivity is encouraged (atleast theoretically) atmost care is taken to ensure maximum billing for maximum people.
Incase of a slowdown/stagnation of service industry(not economy in general), the most hit will be people with 4-8 years experience. As it will too late for them to move to totally new sector or too new to move into managing stuff. Maybe folks who just made it into 'Manager' will also find it difficult. Sadly some sort of stagnation has already crept in.
SRoy wrote:
No matter whether one is a BE/BTech/Master/BSc(or any grad) among the best programmer lot (we are excluding the mediocre ones) there seems to be mental threshold beyond which only a few are able to progress to be able to work as architects.
Going by the quality of the average architect I have met, I am skeptical whether such a mental threshold exists in practice.
Doesn't matter whether such thresholds limitation checks are adhered to in practice or not. The threshold exists and the monkeys you saw is because their CEO uncles promoted them over deserving people.
Its not just additional work hours for decent and hard working folks when CEO's chums are given the powers. The problems is that these monkeys when in driver seat mess up without fail, and when that happens they take down the entire ship with them. Failed projects hurt innocent foot soldiers.
SRoy wrote:
Doesn't matter whether such thresholds limitation checks are adhered to in practice or not. The threshold exists and the monkeys you saw is because their CEO uncles promoted them over deserving people.
That is what I am pointing out - the threshold is useless (or rather non-existent) in practice. I see this most acutely for orgs which tout themselves as 'meritocracies'.
On being asked by one bahut bada babu (Trippal Bee), in what way could upper management help our tiny team with our not-so-tiny project - I told him all they need to do is take their hands and sit on them and fight the itch to meddle around and offer their 'expertise' with what we are doing. Pointed out to him that what his Al-Hairbird YumBeeAye stratejee experts came up with in 2011 was something we had independently formulated (a grand total of 3 of us boor non-YumBeeAye injineers) in 2009 and had ~1.5 year head start as a result. So in the end we didn't align with the KB's magical new stratejee, rather the KB finally aligned itself with our team's.
Bade wrote: It was interesting that BE with non CS majors like civil were preferred over even BSc math, which beats all logic ! That is the Indian system for you.
I think the reason for that is the belief that bright students who get good marks in 12th go to BE and the rest go to BSc. There is some truth to this (even if you argue that bright != good marks). How many 'bright' students do you see getting good marks in 12th and opt for BSc Math? Companies are just playing safe with the system as it is.
AL: some companies are recruiting BSc's too (heard from somebody, not sure).
Gus wrote:AL: some companies are recruiting BSc's too (heard from somebody, not sure).
Lots of companies do. Vegetable Oil.Co regularly does this as I personally know folks who have joined the co. after the B.Sc graduation. Yes companies rely on that fact that the smart chaps from school automatically go for B.Tech, and so by picking up B.Techs they get the best folks in the market. From my experience I dont think this is a universal truth. I have found that most of the new breed B.Tech joining the organisations dont have the aptitude/attitude to do any engineering. Most of them require too much spoon feeding. And that is why I made the comment two pages most of these folks joining IT firms are here because of the money (and the so called prestige associated with the job).
PS: It was in last year I saw my friend's brother after doing a good job in B.Tech Elec. wilfully gave up his "Techie" job to join II.Sc to do research. From what I know of him, he is a chap who wishes to deep dive into technologies and analyse stuff. Next was a B.Tech graduate who said enough is enough after 10 years and moved to Accountancy (and some other small time consulting work).
Bade wrote: It was interesting that BE with non CS majors like civil were preferred over even BSc math, which beats all logic ! That is the Indian system for you.
I think the reason for that is the belief that bright students who get good marks in 12th go to BE and the rest go to BSc. There is some truth to this (even if you argue that bright != good marks). How many 'bright' students do you see getting good marks in 12th and opt for BSc Math? Companies are just playing safe with the system as it is.
AL: some companies are recruiting BSc's too (heard from somebody, not sure).
But from what I heard they are recruiting again for the 'wrong' reason to cut costs. That implies BSc(math/phys) << B.E. (generic). This is not going to attract good students to BSc even if they know a priori that a BSc degree is enough to get an IT job. I hope you see how this doesn't help the educational system to improve quality. The reason good students went to do BE in the first place was better job opportunity and pay as a fall back even if they made bad engineers at the end of their 4-yr ordeal. In most cases there is no pay differential in massa for a phys/engg degree holder for the same job in a neutral field. CS major deserves perhaps a higher pay for the same job, but I do not see why there should be a difference between between a Phys/math or Chem/Civil guy all other things being equal.
But of course in India, everything is ab-initio biased/prejudiced. So we get what we deserve.
Bade wrote:
But from what I heard they are recruiting again for the 'wrong' reason to cut costs. That implies BSc(math/phys) << B.E. (generic). This is not going to attract good students to BSc even if they know a priori that a BSc degree is enough to get an IT job. I hope you see how this doesn't help the educational system to improve quality. The reason good students went to do BE in the first place was better job opportunity and pay as a fall back even if they made bad engineers at the end of their 4-yr ordeal. In most cases there is no pay differential in massa for a phys/engg degree holder for the same job in a neutral field. CS major deserves perhaps a higher pay for the same job, but I do not see why there should be a difference between between a Phys/math or Chem/Civil guy all other things being equal.
But of course in India, everything is ab-initio biased/prejudiced. So we get what we deserve.
If you are comparing B.Sc Phys/Maths vs BE Chem/Civil for the topic in question, do also take into account that many B.Scs actually come from relevant streams like CS/Electronics. Leave aside Phys/Maths, I never figured out how BE Chem/Civil guys are more deserving for IT work than BSc CS/Electronics folks.
When I did my BSc(Hons) my minors were Math and CS ! That was 20+ years ago. I was personally happy to not do Chemistry at that time, though there were times I regretted that later. Most of the younger Math faculty at JU in those times were PhDs in Math/CS from ISI-Kolkata !
Yes even in those days there were MSc Electronics, Radio Physics, Instrumentation courses in India, though not at that many places. In fact in JU, there was a BTech in Instrumentation which required a 3-yr BSc Phy/Math before you can apply for it. Some of my class mates did that following BSc. I can attest that the BSc(Hons) curriculum is on par with many BE (electronics) except perhaps the lab/workshop. We had to do Millman Halkias level circuit analysis as part of Physics coursework in 3rd year.
It was torture but fun a diversion from other tortures in Physics like double jeopardy Nandi&Roy Acoustics and Thermodyamics combo ! I welcomed the circuit analysis class to refresh my sagging morale.
we had the yellow book in 2nd yr 1st sem Introduction to EE. only a small part of it was covered. some more was in 2nd yr 2nd sem and then for CSE types we were off, EE/ECE went much further.
iirc in the 2nd yr 1st sem exam, close to 50% of my CS class had failed to reach 35 pass mark. so 15-20 "floating" marks were granted by the academic commitee. I managed to bag around 43/100 PBUH. that was the closest I ever came to failing in my whole academic life. the next closest was getting 48/100 in theory of computation in 3rd yr a core CS course. there even grace marks didnt much have impact. 26/55 students in my class failed. they had to stay back in 46C summer heat during vacation time and clear suppli exam, surviving on fruits and the one hostel mess kept open.
Coming back to topic of IT, if India sees large scale hiring for IT even in the near future (we have been doing this for last 10-20 yrs) why are we promoting BE courses as a requirement when a good BSc(Hons) will do. There is the odd fact that the lobby of exisitng BE engg colleges (private) who stand to lose with such a paradigm shift.
But from a pure costing point of view, it will be cheaper to produce equally good BSc graduates for the IT sector than have people spend time doing BE if the end goal is still the same. One master stroke by IT majors that they will predominantly hire only BSc (math/phys) types will change the scenario for quality of a broader education. Engg will still attract deserving students who do not want a generic IT job !
Bade wrote:There is the odd fact that the lobby of exisitng BE engg colleges (private) who stand to lose with such a paradigm shift.
. That is a reason. Consider the number of engineering colleges in three Southern states in India. All except Kerala are very liberal when it comes to Private Engg. colleges and deemed universities. In the name of campus selection what pretty much is happening is trucks/buses parked in the campus and batches recruited en-masse. I am reminded of "General" Electric (;) ) recruiting an army for himself in the Asterix Comics "Asterix and the Goths".
One master stroke by IT majors that they will predominantly hire only BSc (math/phys) types will change the scenario for quality of a broader education. Engg will still attract deserving students who do not want a generic IT job !
If I read it right there has been a steady decline in the demand of B.Tech Computer Science after the recent down ward trends in IT. Recruiting B.Sc graduates would be a measure in the right direction as it gives equally good resources at much reasonable pay scale. Another irritating trend I have seen is some IT-vity "Majors" (and Colonels and Brigadiers) recruiting B.Tech folks and putting them as "functional consultants" in areas like SAP's Finance and Control Module. Only these worthies can give a reason as to how a chap who did engineering studies the last four years, can pick up a functional area like Finance and Controlling, and worse get into discussions with veterans from Europe or US who have been doing Finance and Accounting all their life . Where as it is easier to train a B.Com or an ICWAI candidate, many folks don't recruit them.
One solution to save the lobby, is for the Engg colleges to start giving BSc(Hons) courses on the lines of Presidency/DU/JU etc with a smattering of CS courses. There is no need for MCA etc then for additional time pass.
In fact with the resources at the disposal of Engg colleges as they exist today, they can perhaps give a better quality BSc lab/workshop environment than may be cutting edge Univ. Engg facilities actually required to match elsewhere in the world.
Of course faculty needs to be spruced up and not the fresh BE/BTech they hire now to fill in.
Bade wrote:You can do a BS with Physics and take up lots of CSE courses if you care and have the energy. It is simply an cultural difference, and does not measure any skill level. It was interesting that BE with non CS majors like civil were preferred over even BSc math, which beats all logic ! That is the Indian system for you.
Given the need to travel, I would hire anyone with at least 16 years of education, as that makes travel easier. BE/BTech then make the cut more often than not as it also happens to be the fastest way to get at least an internationally accepted bachelor's degree in India. MSc or candidates with two BSc's also qualify, but there are far fewer of these to start out with.
If most work can be done domestically or in countries lower on the educational totem pole, the need for 16 years of education can be dispensed with. In fact, it is very likely that a lot of good high school graduates (12th Pass) can be tapped as well.
^^^ A 4-yr BSc can and should be instituted in India. There are other reasons for it. The 4th year can have electives based on what one wants to do later in life.
Places like IITS and even univs like JU had integrated admission for 5 years. At JU at the end of 3 yrs one got a Bsc degree and can exit to pursue other avenues.
Last edited by Bade on 07 Mar 2012 22:32, edited 1 time in total.
SRoy wrote:Good first class (70-75%+) B.Scs (CS/EC/Math/Phy/Stats...better if with Hons.) are far better than non-relevent BEs.
The Univ rank holder during my time had only 71% or so.
CU/JU is bit stiff in this regard.
I know an acquaintance from my alma mater (Andhra Univ) with 76%, batch topper of course. The chap followed up with a M.Sc Electronics and at one point in time happened to be senior colleague of mine. The gent did his time in DRDO before falling prey to lure of lucre.
Many of the maintenance contracts signed these days with the big companies have a clause that every year the outsourcing vendor has to show anywhere between 5-10% of savings depending upon circumstances. All the more reason for companies to bring in non BTechs into the projects and reduce costs. Right now there is a dearth of quality 6-12 years experience senior techies. Emphasis on the word quality. I know of some companies who do away with the manager overhead by recruiting such experienced candidates who can work as a team without oversight. The lean methodologies contribute to this.
It is too early to write off any particular role/experience group in the IT world. The only ones I know of (ready to be corrected) are the manual testing folks. They can only stay put in the project where they have built up domain/product/application knowledge but cant jump jobs. For such chaps Management opps in the same companies are most sought after.
I know of some companies who are cutting costs by hiring folks in Latin America. Same time zone as in US and skilled talent pool is easily available with costs almost same as in India. This IMHO is a serious threat the Indian IT industry needs to wake up to.
If there is across the board cost cutting due to competitions from elsewhere outside of India in cheaper labor pool, or even shrinking contracting opportunities for IT majors, why are not the Engg graduates salaries also shrinking . They have no where else to go, right. So that means they need to make salary adjustments too. Or is it too much below their expectations and H&D in the totem pole setup that is India !
The difference between a guy/gal who can solve a Resnick/Halliday level problem in 5 secs flat or 50 mins does not have deep significance to the quality of IT work. Or does it ?
>> We had to do Millman Halkias level circuit analysis as part of Physics coursework in 3rd year.
tell me about it. even the lab diff is far less right now. in fact there is far too much electronics for my taste.
about the instrumentation BTech at JU, CU has 3 yr post BSc Btech courses in a host of engn disciplines like radio physics, instrumentation, opto-electronics etc. the output is generally considered better than run of the mill engn colleges, esp radio physics, which many of the toppers opt for. major diff with regular BTech is you need 6 yrs to complete this Btech.
Bade wrote:[quote="SRoy"Good first class (70-75%+) B.Scs (CS/EC/Math/Phy/Stats...better if with Hons.) are far better than non-relevent BEs.quote]
The Univ rank holder during my time had only 71% or so.
CU/JU is bit stiff in this regard.
I know an acquaintance from my alma mater (Andhra Univ) with 76%, batch topper of course. The chap followed up with a M.Sc Electronics and at one point in time happened to be senior colleague of mine. The gent did his time in DRDO before falling prey to lure of lucre.
In AP, Andhra University (AU) in Visakapatnam, Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) in Tirupati and Osmania University (OU) in Hyderabad were traditional top 3 universities, representing 3 regions of AP.
Not sure nowadays but till early 90s AU and SVU were very conservative in marks so getting 70% (aka distinction) is very tough. AU/SVU 70% = OU 95%. Other thing was 50+% students from AU and SVU qualify for GATE (Masters entrance for IIT) where as <5% from OU.
But later SVU and AU grunt-working engineering/science students were corrupted with many choosing for foreign education and jobs.
ShyamSP wrote:
In AP, Andhra University (AU) in Visakapatnam, Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) in Tirupati and Osmania University (OU) in Hyderabad were traditional top 3 universities, representing 3 regions of AP.
Not sure nowadays but till early 90s AU and SVU were very conservative in marks so getting 70% (aka distinction) is very tough. AU/SVU 70% = OU 95%. Other thing was 50+% students from AU and SVU qualify for GATE (Masters entrance for IIT) where as <5% from OU.
But later SVU and AU grunt-working engineering/science students were corrupted with many choosing for foreign education and jobs.
I am an output of Andhra University College of Engineering. It is one of those few in those days selected by DRDO to sponsor some students in various science and engineering sections. Our comp science dept has a M.Sc programme with stipend and job gaurantee by DRDO. It has a clause of five year contract. There used to be a super computer called cyber given by DRDO. I wrote my first Fortran and C programs using it. Getting 70% is really tough but I do not know if it is same. My class topper got 77%.
Andhra University nuclear physics department is very reputed and I know several of them ended up in BARC too. The rumor is that it has a small Nuke reactor in its lab which I am not sure and per rumor it was imported from Australia. It is ironic that Arihant is being built here and there is a Naval colony on the shore named after Arihant.
The bad news is all my class, every single senior and junior is in US as DOOs and we are not contributing anything to India other than inflating the real estate and doing some petty biz
SRoy wrote:
If you are comparing B.Sc Phys/Maths vs BE Chem/Civil for the topic in question, do also take into account that many B.Scs actually come from relevant streams like CS/Electronics. Leave aside Phys/Maths, I never figured out how BE Chem/Civil guys are more deserving for IT work than BSc CS/Electronics folks.
I am a BSc Stats(H) graduate saar. And to be honest, I haven't seen anything till date which demonstrates that doing injineering as a degree somehow makes a person better equipped or skilled for ITvity as compared to a non-injineering science graduate (physics/math/chem etc.). My BIL is a pee-chaddi in Math and he designed some of the ICs which run in just about every base station in the world today.
^^^
RB is right. Incidentally, just because a person has a BE in CS doesn't mean they're very good. Hell, I ghost-wrote a couple of thesis for my year's BE (CS) batch and all I learned about computers was due to my own personal interest. Also, all the BE (CS) guys and some of the BS (CS) guys at my present workplace are kinda sucky programmers that we can only trust to do some front end UI programming (and they're bloody slow at that too). The really good guys are mostly from non-CS backgrounds (physics, psychology, accounting, chemistry, mechanical engineering, high school etc.) who all took to programming because they liked it and studied mostly on their own time. I can only count one or two BS (CS) grads who are actually good at programming.
So coming to hiring patterns and strategy used in the IT industry, the basic question I have is this. Does hiring more BSc graduates these days imply, some kind of trade-off to offset the rising costs of hiring or keeping BE/BTech at a higher designation and salaries ? If that is true, then nothing much has changed in how a BSc is viewed by the industry versus a BE.
This may be borne out by patterns which show limiting the hiring of BSc grads to just do the routine low level work/tasks while still employing BE grads for what is deemed more challenging or with upward mobility.
The ace programmer (C/C++) in my group is actually a high school graduate who thought himself programming to get a job to support his then GF and now wife after she got kicked out of her home.
Raja Bose wrote:I am a BSc Stats(H) graduate saar. And to be honest, I haven't seen anything till date which demonstrates that doing injineering as a degree somehow makes a person better equipped or skilled for ITvity as compared to a non-injineering science graduate (physics/math/chem etc.).
I am an Arts graduate. I did pick up computer programming as a hobby during my 10th standard at a local training institute. The best programs I have written (no rocket science, but some utility applications etc.) were the ones I did as hobby projects. The work I am doing now also can be done by a person who has a basic aptitude to do programming and understand the concepts.
It is only in case of core engineering (chip design, VLSI etc.) where I have realised that a B.Tech Elec. and Commn. graduation would really help (and folks like me have no chance ). But from what I have heard from my B.Tech friends is that even the work which gets off shored to India, does not require very bright B.Tech (E&C) chaps as well. Perhaps a Elec. and Commn. Diploma graduate may suffice.
As an aside, the biggest crib I have is the amount of spoon feeding the new breed B.Tech graduates require. Most of them rely on code generation tools to such an extent that they dont understand what is the code which is getting generated at the back ground. They move to another project which has a different tool, they they are stuck. Really make me wonder what is taught to these folks during their much glorified B.Tech training.
I see an across the board lowering of standards everywhere. Maybe its just me and the people I meet and I am sure that's what older people said about us..
well the industry is much bigger now vs even a decade ago. infy/tcs/wipro each approaching 200,000 mark when that time they were like 20k each. captive units of MNCs et al have also hired lakhs in india.
its obviously hard to maintain quality in such a breakneck expansion.
Then they 
at the end of their 4-yr ordeal. In most cases there is no pay differential in massa for a phys/engg degree holder for the same job in a neutral field. CS major deserves perhaps a higher pay for the same job, but I do not see why there should be a difference between between a Phys/math or Chem/Civil guy all other things being equal. 
. That is a reason. Consider the number of engineering colleges in three Southern states in India. All except Kerala are very liberal when it comes to Private Engg. colleges and deemed universities. In the name of campus selection what pretty much is happening is trucks/buses parked in the campus and batches recruited en-masse. I am reminded of "General" Electric (;) ) recruiting an army for himself in the Asterix Comics "Asterix and the Goths".
