<story><title>The most prized degree in India became the most worthless</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kls</author><text>I posted a comment a while back about this subject and the funny part was I got flamed by a bunch of US based technical workers, while the Indian techies pretty much agreed with me. Anyways the TLDR was I have a buddy Karthick and he is one of the best developers I know. So I asked him one day about why there was such low quality in India and he explained to me it was misaligned incentives due to the fact that, the fastest path to management is via a tech degree. So India is churning out a bunch of want to be MBA&amp;#x27;s with tech degrees that are just doing their time in tech to get to management. He said it was a hold over from the cast system and that you are held in more esteem in India when you manage more people.</text></item><item><author>cmckn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen this bias in myself. I interned with several guys from India during college. I was an undergrad, they were grad students, having gotten their undergrad in India. We all went to the same university in the US. They weren&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;crappy&amp;quot; engineers, per se, they just seemed to not actually have an undergrad degree in CS. Obviously I never saw their transcripts, but we seemed to be working from very different knowledge bases. I&amp;#x27;ve since worked, as many of us have, with brilliant people from all over the world. It just gave me a weird impression of CS education in India. But, I&amp;#x27;m sure others have similar experiences of graduates from [random school in the US or elsewhere].</text></item><item><author>umvi</author><text>&amp;quot;When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Churning out engineers as fast as possible and pressuring everyone to become one despite lack of interest just guarantees you will churn out astronomical numbers of crappy engineers.&lt;p&gt;And I hate to say it... but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers because the sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] has preconditioned you to think &lt;i&gt;all engineers&lt;/i&gt; from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] are crappy, which couldn&amp;#x27;t be further from the truth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>triceratops</author><text>&amp;gt; He said it was a hold over from the cast system&lt;p&gt;I was with you until the &amp;quot;cast (sic) system&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; you are held in more esteem in India when you manage more people.&lt;p&gt;You can replace &amp;quot;India&amp;quot; with literally any country in the world. Managers and bosses always are and always have been held in more esteem than leaf node workers, in every society past and present. It&amp;#x27;s got nothing to do with the caste system.&lt;p&gt;Personal anecdote: I caught up with an American friend from school after about 15 years. He worked in some kind of product&amp;#x2F;project management role. When I told him I was an engineer in the Bay Area he said &amp;quot;Oh, you&amp;#x27;re just a programmer?&amp;quot; (OK so he wasn&amp;#x27;t a great friend, and that was the last time I spoke to him...)</text></comment>
<story><title>The most prized degree in India became the most worthless</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kls</author><text>I posted a comment a while back about this subject and the funny part was I got flamed by a bunch of US based technical workers, while the Indian techies pretty much agreed with me. Anyways the TLDR was I have a buddy Karthick and he is one of the best developers I know. So I asked him one day about why there was such low quality in India and he explained to me it was misaligned incentives due to the fact that, the fastest path to management is via a tech degree. So India is churning out a bunch of want to be MBA&amp;#x27;s with tech degrees that are just doing their time in tech to get to management. He said it was a hold over from the cast system and that you are held in more esteem in India when you manage more people.</text></item><item><author>cmckn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen this bias in myself. I interned with several guys from India during college. I was an undergrad, they were grad students, having gotten their undergrad in India. We all went to the same university in the US. They weren&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;crappy&amp;quot; engineers, per se, they just seemed to not actually have an undergrad degree in CS. Obviously I never saw their transcripts, but we seemed to be working from very different knowledge bases. I&amp;#x27;ve since worked, as many of us have, with brilliant people from all over the world. It just gave me a weird impression of CS education in India. But, I&amp;#x27;m sure others have similar experiences of graduates from [random school in the US or elsewhere].</text></item><item><author>umvi</author><text>&amp;quot;When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Churning out engineers as fast as possible and pressuring everyone to become one despite lack of interest just guarantees you will churn out astronomical numbers of crappy engineers.&lt;p&gt;And I hate to say it... but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers because the sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] has preconditioned you to think &lt;i&gt;all engineers&lt;/i&gt; from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] are crappy, which couldn&amp;#x27;t be further from the truth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cmckn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had similar conversations. These guys were pretty open about the fact that they crammed for exams and didn&amp;#x27;t take undergrad very seriously. People that are in tech for the money is common everywhere, but there is definitely something unique about the Indian experience.</text></comment>