Team-BHP - IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by Samurai (Post 2411763)

I got lucky again.

Today's candidate claimed 20th century was 2000-2010, so she wanted to discuss mobile phone as 20th century technology. Just out of curiosity, I inquired and found out that century is made of 10 years, and 90s were 19th century.

BTW, I was born in the 16th century... Wish I had visited Hampi then, could have seen it in full glory.

Sir, if you have your childhood photos do see somewhere there might some Independence war going on in your background!! and see if you had met Mr. Gandhi and the rest of the real heros.

I give them simple C programming tests, like replacing a character in the string. Nobody has passed those tests since 2009.

I simply ignore the BE marks. I look at them, but just out of curiosity. It is never a deal maker or deal breaker for me.

Never heard of this before, this was in which state?

I know they are exceptions, that is why I mentioned my dad too, who is not an exception. My dad's generation, lot of them used to drop out if a suitable job was available.

Dropouts doesnt necessarily mean they know nothing. still remember my grandfather's plight to get his diploma degree from the only college in the whole madras province. The fees was 12 INR and he got a pocket money of 5 INR, with which he had to survive in a city like chennai and pay his fees. He worked in hotels and struggled a lot to gain his degree. For some who cannot afford for the 5 INR pocket, they end up as dropouts, and my grandpa used to say the dropouts were even brilliant than the teachers(teachers in the 30's were one of the brightest, most of them had done their engineering in London).

Though I am too among the young engineering pool of the country, but when I see my fellow students from India who are studying with me here, I see that they are indeed talented and they can do all those basic stuff provided they are given an opportunity to do so. All I see about our education is that its very basic and raw. I can assure you all that, no german or for that matter any student in the west would be able to do a Integration or differentiation or for that matter any basic maths as fast as an indian would do it! and we dont need calculators.(atleast I dont for most simple cases!)Our talent pool just lacks the opportunity and not that we are a bunch of idiots.

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Originally Posted by vina (Post 2411670)

There are several misconceptions:

Microsoft was started by Bill Gates and friends at Harvard - all of the guys were quite accomplished
This "college dropout" always seems too good to be true and almost always is. Media needs its heroes and they make them heroes.

Agree 100% , Gates finished several odd jobs including writing payroll system in COBOL and debugging assignments before he entered college.

The main turning point was when he wrote an open letter on why programmers should be payed and circulated among the peers who used to do programming but the monitization was just for the machines being sold and not for the code running over it.

File:Bill Gates Letter to Hobbyists.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Free Software foundation was a result of reaction of others who did not agree to Gates ( FSF came in to existence much later in 1985 but Richard Stallman was at Harvard in 1974 after abandoning his PHd in Physics at MIT in favor of programming, when bill gates wrote this open letter a)

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Originally Posted by vina (Post 2411670)

Coming to our own graduates, there is a myth these guys are smart to begin with - most are actually pretty stupid and a lot of times it amazes me they passed school leaving exams. nd these guys lose the most basic intellectual curiosity in the four years.

I am amazed at the percentage scores of students from the mushrooming colleges perticularly in southern part 97% to 99% marks and Computer Science as specialization and then you ask some basic questions on OS like
what is difference in heap / stack or what is a process and they fumble.

Giving simple programming problems like reversing link list etc is unthinkable.

We can not compare them to Bill Gates who had 15XX out of 1600 as his SAT score or Richard Stallman who started GNU and Free Software foundation and man responsible for world wide criticism of bill gates.

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Originally Posted by AlphaKilo (Post 2411778)

Personally, in my own family I am looked upon as an idiot because I am fighting to stick to my core engineering and not land up in IT at any cost. Nothing against the guys in IT, but I seriously find it irresponsible(its my personal opinion, no harm against anyone and their situations) when one studies mechanical engineering and ends up programming in C or Java.

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Originally Posted by Samurai (Post 2411763)

I got lucky again.

Congrats :D

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I mostly get to hire from students who lost out on campus recruitment, that is how. Fortunately, the HR guys of big firms often reject diamonds in the rough, and I get lucky.

My ex-manager, used to share his views on how difficult it is to hire good candidates off campus. You must be really lucky to find someone through this route.

Some of the candidates i have met while interviewing have absolutely no clue why they want to be in this field.

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Originally Posted by SilentEngine (Post 2411909)

Very good point! The reason why most people end up in IT is because it is considered as an attractive job. And most IT companies are OK with anyone with BE degree because they know they will have to train the freshers anyway.

Some of the candidates i have met while interviewing have absolutely no clue why they want to be in this field.

Very rightly said! Not some I feel most of the youngsters dont know why they are in this field and I hear from my juniors and others who are currently pursuing that they are not allowed to choose their electives and are forced to take what most of the students take because:
1. They are not willing to take classes for one or two students who choose such subjects.
2. they dont have profs who are experts or even have an idea about it
3. students and most profs prefer to choose the thoeretical and easy electives in which they can bluff something and get away with some decent score.

The youngsters of today are trained to go with the flow and not to stand unique and do something that they want. So they(we, I am an youngster too!! Guys believe me i am just 24!! :D) and when they want to stand unique they are seen as a idiot!

The case of Mech engineers landing in IT jobs is not only the case with freshers but I myself have seen friends of my brothers with 5-7 yrs of experience in the mech industry changing into IT just for lucrative money! How sad! I am not totally against joining a IT company because, today Wipro, TCS or Infy or for that matter the IT giants are not only concentrating on IT but they also do engineering services, so if an engineer can end up there, its well and fine but mostly they prefer programming and software side because of the higher packages. my point is, if at all one wanted good package, it is not necessary that he should study engineering that too mech or auto or aero rather could have done BCA and MCA and still end up with a similar salary. Atleast would have saved some money and tension for parents!

Also, today I consider myself lucky to see the greats like Dr. kalam in flesh and listen to his speeches and see his work and consider myself very lucky to have chosen the same field as his specialization. How much are we using such legends? are we listening to them atleast? How many of us are really inspired by him and follow his words?

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Originally Posted by SilentEngine (Post 2412004)

Well you definitely are :)

When you follow your passion you are bound to succeed.

Sirji, its not the question about me! Its about the majority! Society is not about a single person, its about everybody. Well, Samurai sir said in his post earlier that "What are we doing as a person to improve oneself, and not complaining the society or the system?" So now my question is what is the plight of the ones who do something, in my case I did and I was shown the door! I am not talking about the private sector, but its the government sector which caters to the direct development of the nation and its resources. For eg., DRDO/ISRO contribute to the development of defence and space sector directly and also boast the nations science and technology capabilities to the rest of the world. Do they really assists the ones like me in DRDO? Ask me, I would say a big no and they treat so badly that one feels he should never come back to work in such govt. organisations. Why do the most IIT'ians drop out of such so called prestigious organisations? Its the attitude of the gentlemen there who want to simply while-away time and enjoy at the tax payers money. where does this sarkari babu attitude come from? I do accept that there are sincere workers everywhere but how many??

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Originally Posted by Samurai (Post 2413253)

Today one candidate stated Moore's law, although I didn't ask for it.

He: Moore's law says that transistors become half after every 2 years.
Me: Ugh, can you clarify that point?
He: It becomes diminished after two years.
Me: In what way?
He: Um, they will be half as good, err...half as efficient...
Me: Hmm, what must one do about it?
He: Replace it with new hardware.
Me: Electronics companies would love that.

BTW, he is a Telecommunication engineering graduate with distinction at all levels.

:uncontrol " Electronics companies would love that." I didn't even understand what the joker was really saying (I thought he was saying newly built transistors would be bad) till I read the last line.

And as a designer I would surely love that.

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Originally Posted by Samurai (Post 2413253)

Good lord! Im a civil engineer and even i can tell you that. I really wonder if they even think before they speak (cliched i know but seriously..)

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Originally Posted by Samurai (Post 2413253)

Sir, I think you should contribute to the Jokes thread with such highly educated new inventions and discoveries by our beloved technical graduates!!

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Originally Posted by Samurai (Post 1622321)

.....
Unlike IITians, we succeeded despite our engineering education.

The Power of Instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy situations where it is almost superfluous. -William James
We get the JEE top 500 in almost totally Computer Science or Electrical Engineering. The joke is that we cannot do much damage in the four years the chaps are with us!

If you look at the situation after the first 500-1000 there are maybe a few hundred if not thousand applications at every mark. So the qualitative difference between AIR1000 (who gets into IIT) and 10,000 (who doesn't) is minuscule. It could be just a few wrong selections.

The biggest problem is that our education system (including Coaching) makes rote learning the norm, and makes sure to remove any common sense (aka horse sense). Sometimes I feel that coaching schools are like Pavlov training his dogs. You see a situation and do not think, just react accordingly.

I remember in 1974 when I was appearing for my Comprehensive. The Prof put a question, and I filled the board with equations and solved the problem. At multiple occasions the members of the board remarked, 'Good, we have done the maths, so let us now try and do the Physics'. Taught me that Science is not just solving equations!

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Originally Posted by sgiitk (Post 2420871)

If you look at the situation after the first 500-1000 there are maybe a few hundred if not thousand applications at every mark. So the qualitative difference between AIR1000 (who gets into IIT) and 10,000 (who doesn't) is minuscule. It could be just a few wrong selections.

Wow! And the scary part is we are made to believe that it's perfectly fair. Only now do I realize what I had been thru when I was a student.

And here is something similar I wrote in my blog about maths

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Back in school/college, we took pride in the being the first to come up with an answer when the teacher put a question on the board. In fact, we would start calculating even before he would come to a halt explaining what he wanted out of the question. As mentioned here, we would look for shortcuts and formulae in the textbook without even caring for what the chapter was trying to convey.

To take it to a higher level, we were praised and even rewarded for being the quickest number crunchers in the class.

But as I continue my education, I am beginning to realize that it was really not as good as we were making it to be. While I was being taught many subjects, all I was learning was maths. Now in my statistics class I feel I have lost 18 years of my life because all I learnt was formulae to solve problems. Only now I am beginning to understand the concepts behind dispersion, correlation, regression and so on. Gosh, even in chemistry class all I was learning was maths.

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Originally Posted by vivekiny2k (Post 2421216)

Wow! And the scary part is we are made to believe that it's perfectly fair. Only now do I realize what I had been thru when I was a student.

Fair, yes but unless you are really good, luck plays a role. There are various tie breakers. I think Maths > Physics > Chemistry for tie breaks. Also, age comes into it somewhere after this.

For simplicity, say, there are 300,000 applicants and there are 300 marks. So if you have a totally flat distribution then each mark will have 1,000 candidates! So massive bunching is but natural.

I realised that this sort of bunching may be the norm when my son got the a sub 100 rank in the PGME at Manipal and at counselling there were 6 candidates at the same mark. The declared tie breaker was MBBS marks. This is a far smaller examination than JEE, or AIEEE or whatever.

Liked the topic and spent around an hour going through several thought provoking posts. Here is what I feel.

I have been working for last 7 years in various IT companies and have seen many graduates coming from the top notch engineering institutes. Before discussing anything I would say how many colleges have better teachers ? Mostly the engineering colleges has teachers who are industry discards. I have studied computer science and I am yet to see a professor who actually preferred to be a professor. We always blame colleges and the system but how many of us wanted to be teachers. If we keep on producing incapable bunch of professors then we can never have better future. Now despite of this we land into jobs but a job is not the only thing. We have forgotten the values of the words like "Innovation" which should be the 1st letter in an engineer's dictionary.

Over the years the definition of teachers has changed. Currently they are only responsible for completing the syllabus on time and they have 100 different ways to complete the whole syllabus. Who cares if the student does not understand. But this was not the case may be 30 years back. No teacher cares about all round development
of students. I go to many private colleges and see a fresh BE graduate becomes a part of the faculty member and he quits in no time after landing into a job. Every one is not born inspired or motivated, we need people to pour this thought into the young minds. I believe many people in this forum can do that. I read few posts here in this thread and feel they can really motivate students, but unfortunately they are not into teaching. Just like in any sports a good mentor is required and in college that has to be the teacher. Now the attitude of the students are 'the prof does not know anything', and in most of the cases it is correct. Now, if every good engineers become engineers then what we have for the next generation ? The answer is on job training which is the case.

Lets put hand on the heart and say how many of us wanted to be teachers ?

I belong to a family of teachers and my parents always wanted me to become one, but fate had different plans for me. I still remember the joys of the old gen teachers when their wards complete the Phd thesis. I still remember my granny getting angry on my dad when he used to spend long hours with his students in the night and every one used to dine/stay in our small place. These things do not happen any more and I don't see it happening too.

So in my view points lets have some good teachers first. The society/institutions need to encourage good people to give it back to the next gen, then only we can produce few dream engineers.