[charanreddy]

Originally Posted by Cessna182

Try talking to an IIT MTech graduate some day and you will find that even they struggle to get a decent job that pays above 40 to 50k INR a month which is the basic salary you need to live a middle class life in Bangalore or Mumbai.

Not true ! I am such a graduate and though we don't do as well as the President's gold medalist BTech / BE's from IIT, we don't do half as bad.

First, You are almost always assured of a job. Atleast top 30% get placed in companies which do not visit the regular colleges. Examples from my time : Morgan Stanley, Meryll Lynch, Citibank, Adobe, DE Shaw etc.
Worst case the IT biggies and hire people by truck loads (Its common to see Infy , TCS picking up 50+ candidates). These guys may start at a lower salary band, but they are in front line for H1B and On-Shore placements. They earn quite a bit more than their salary band here. Bottom line, it still pays to do post graduation from a top college.

Originally Posted by GTO

Laziness and / or a disinclination to learn are very serious problems affecting a healthy % of the masses in India. Everyone wants to make money, but not everyone wants to put in the sheer effort (working, learning, discipline) that is required.

Very true. In the book "The Magic of Believing" I came across some quotes which left a lasting impression.- "Success is more caused by mental attitude rather than mental capacity". I know a few junior folks who with a little discipline could have changed a whole lot about themselves and achieved a lot more, but alas it seems so close yet so far.

Originally Posted by Almetal

there's no dearth of jobs for someone who is hardworking and dedicated.

+ 1.

[GeneralJazz]

Originally Posted by charanreddy

Not true ! I am such a graduate and though we don't do as well as the President's gold medalist BTech / BE's from IIT, we don't do half as bad.

First, You are almost always assured of a job

As an IIT MTech graduate myself, I have to disagree. I wanted to take an M. Tech so that I could pursue my interest into research. It was only once I graduated that I became aware of the sorry state of research in our country. There were only a handful of companies (in my chosen field of research) , and all of them were paying peanuts to freshers. In my first job, I didn't have to pay tax for over 3 years Thankfully I decided to pursue my passion in automobiles and landed a job where I actually enjoy my work.

And about placements, most of the companies give first preference to BTech grads than to MTech. Most of my classmates have taken/are pursuing their Phds. The rest are in "IT". The selection criteria for Phds is another sorry tale.

[charanreddy]

Originally Posted by GeneralJazz

As an IIT MTech graduate myself, I have to disagree. I wanted to take an M. Tech so that I could pursue my interest into research. It was only once I graduated that I became aware of the sorry state of research in our country. There were only a handful of companies (in my chosen field of research) , and all of them were paying peanuts to freshers. In my first job, I didn't have to pay tax for over 3 years Thankfully I decided to pursue my passion in automobiles and landed a job where I actually enjoy .

Fair . But we are talking about general employability. If you not too particular about the company or field of work, it works out better than being an average graduate. I know people with a civil engineering masters degree from IIT, who took a job in a bank crunching numbers and are doing fairly well. Obviously it is more than any civil engineering firm would offer . Whether it is the right path , not sticking to your core field is a different discussion topic. To each his own..

[vmathews]

I work for a manufacturing company. We have vacancies, but only for "Blue Collar" jobs. We already have way too many Managers.

This is our country's problem. We have too many candidates with Degrees looking for White Collar jobs, not to mention, demanding top dollar, even though they are, at best, mediocre.

Jobs get done by the Blue Collar workforce. Remember, your car gets serviced by a Blue Collar mechanic, not White Collar Managers.

Most MSME's prefer to promote the experienced Blue Collar workers to White Collar jobs, thus retaining experience as well as promoting loyalty. Considering most of our Manufacturing falls under MSME's, it would bode well for our youngsters just do not have the patience to start small and grow from there.

Our country needs more Polytechnics and ITI's rather than Degree Colleges to produce address the "Blue Collar" shortage.

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by vmathews

Jobs get done by the Blue Collar workforce. Remember, your car gets serviced by a Blue Collar mechanic, not White Collar Managers.

Most MSME's prefer to promote the experienced Blue Collar workers to White Collar jobs, thus retaining experience as well as promoting loyalty.

The problem in our country is that we do not want to pay highly skilled blue collar workers what they are worth, and worse, do not want to pay them their free market price. We will instead claim "manpower shortage", and sweep aside any and all logical steps to remedy the problem. As a perfect example of the Peter Principle, the promoted blue collar worker is highly unlikely to be good at his white collar job.

If managers are not really doing any good for a company's bottomline, they should be paid much less, and the entire manager class needs to be put in the proper level in the remuneration hierarchy. But this is something that is unthinkable in our current system, and possibly merits a separate discussion.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by tinshark

Now, in this situation the one way the kids motivate themselves is that after college I’ll get a job and ‘enjoy’ life. I will start earning and I will do all the things I couldn’t do before.

They aren’t prepared for the reality that end of college is not a finish line and they coast from there but it is the ‘start of their lives’. Their real life starts there. The real work starts there. All the things they did till then was training / practice. Unless the person doesn’t enjoy the kind of work they opted for they will continue to see it as a chore.

Imagine starting your career and from day one you hate work!

It is not the kids but parents who create this illusion. How many time have you heard people say, "You only need to struggle till 10th and 12th. After that your life is set".

Originally Posted by vmathews

I work for a manufacturing company. We have vacancies, but only for "Blue Collar" jobs. We already have way too many Managers.

This is our country's problem. We have too many candidates with Degrees looking for White Collar jobs, not to mention, demanding top dollar, even though they are, at best, mediocre.

I studied B.Sc in Instrumentation and had to intern at companies for a month each summer. During one interaction, I remember an employee making this comment. For Blue-collar jobs, we take people from polytechnics, and at managerial level we hire engineers, wonder where you fit. Although we didn't understand the significance at that time, he was absolutely right. From our batch, the ones who were interested in computers learned coding from outside/did MCA etc and joined IT, while the rest shifted base to the middle-east to find a job in a related industry.

Originally Posted by vmathews

Our country needs more Polytechnics and ITI's rather than Degree Colleges to produce address the "Blue Collar" shortage.

But the solution is simply not more Polytechnics. As long as the blue-collar workers are not paid decently and treated well, there will always be a dearth of people taking up that path. Low pay coupled with the low-status-image is one of the major reasons why there is a migration of skilled labor to foreign countries.

[tinshark]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

It is not the kids but parents who create this illusion. How many time have you heard people say, "You only need to struggle till 10th and 12th. After that your life is set".

Completely agree. I should have made that clear in my post. Parents, teachers, older folks all take the easy route and create this false expectation. I still remember the teachers telling us 12th exam and Engg entrance test is the hardest thing you'll do in life, then everything is easy.

I'm also aware that there weren't too many career options about 30 years back, just after liberalisation. Things have changed a lot since then and the general mindset is evolving but unless we are a social welfare state there is still a lot of unpredictability with 'go chase your dreams'. We need to change our yardstick for measuring success and stop pressuring young folks. But, I digress.

[greenhorn]

There is a manpower shortage - but only because of the prices the industry is willing to pay. This is the indian version of the "STEM workforce shortage" in the US.

On one end - The industry is not willing to put a premium on experience and actual skill - We all know of Mechanics we know who are good, who find themselves hitting a glass ceiling in dealerships and branching out on their own. And this is not true of blue collar - this works for white collar too - Management is more comfortable with hiring 10 junior people than 1 senior person, because even though it costs more on paper, they have more leverage, and can bend them to their will. Also, In india, there is a near infinite supply of fresh graduates, and they know that its easier to force governments to create educational institutions, force kids into education loans, which then puts them in a position to cherry pick the cream and then complain about the rest forcing even more resources into solving this problem.

Imagine, if you will, if wages were doubled or tripled, to bring them in line with white collar jobs - This problem would disappear overnight. In the west, where this gap is less, this happens all the time - the last guy who came to repair my AC said he used to work in IT before he found out working as a handyman paid more. Even in india, during the peak of the ola/uber boom, tons of people switched jobs to take up driving.

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by GTO

Good list, but you have missed out on one of the most important = the candidate itself! Laziness and / or a disinclination to learn are very serious problems affecting a healthy % of the masses in India. Everyone wants to make money, but not everyone wants to put in the sheer effort (working, learning, discipline) that is required.
....
Trust me, this is a very real problem in entry-level jobs. I have faced this issue innumerable times with peons / office boys, office admins, telemarketers etc.

I think this has very little to do with the level of the job. I would wager that between 90 and 99% of the population are happy subsisting or coasting along. This may seem a starker contrast in lower-skilled and lower-paying jobs, because there is a higher chance of improvement (10k increase in salary could be 100%). But look around you. How many people do you know who could be classified as truly hungry or ambitious? There is a reason the world is full of middle managers, and there is very rarely an Obama or Modi or Musk. Most people are happy subsisting with as little effort as possible. The human race itself is a bell curve of mediocrity, whose progress is driven by a few outliers.

[Samurai]

Now Chinese have taken it to a new level by Lying Flat.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-ly...nials-by-storm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqStHkW2dzU

[SoumenD]

How times have changed within less than a year. From the ‘recession’ we are into ‘The great Resignation’.

https://youtu.be/pOphIpddRAk

IT specially is going through insane attrition. And even the pay for folks around 5-10 years experience level has gone over the roof. We used to think of ‘Experience X 2’ to be good. Now the minimum expectation among youngsters(8-10 years specially) seems to be ‘Experience X 3’

[lsjey]

The education system does not emphasize quality in all subject areas. Especially in the arts and humanities area. I've raised two kids and having observed multiple youngsters going through good/excellent schools in CBSE/ICSE I can say this: "very, very few students like Social studies, economics, or law or environment science". They can't wait to get these subjects over with. The schools also do not pay teachers who teach these subjects well. Or as well as the STEM courses. The point is, schools (even the best) act like a production line for engineering or medical college admissions.

And look at the online edtech industry offerings. They are all geared towards IT industry mostly.

And lastly, god help the students pursuing disciplines other than Computer Science or Electronics. Jobs are really scarce in India.

I've seen painfully how bright young students who ace the JEE Mains/Advanced and take disciplines like Environment engineering suffer in the Job market in India. The GDP should grow from the approx $2.8 trillion to around $14 trillion for the demand for such disciplines to pick up in India.

Regards,
lsjey