[Samurai]

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

-If at all we have so many leaders, why don't we see a proactive nation instead of the reactive nation that we are now? Where are those leaders? When will see them?

Because there is too much resistance from the people who benefit from the status quo.

Consider this data:

Originally Posted by sgiitk

I was once a spectator in a panel discussion in Bengaluru.All corporate bigwigs were cribbing about the unemployability of graduate engineers. One big shot from the Govt sector highlighted thus:

1.Syllabi cannot be revised,since the small college fellow cribs about lack of infrastructure and teachers not being aware.

2. Exams cannot be made tougher, since college owners complain that if you fail most of the kids then they will not get new admissions.

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

Why so? How are we different as a nation when compared to any other country? Why is it so hard to establish oneself here than elsewhere? When one has the right talent/skill required for a job, should he not be able to establish himself in what he is doing, if not easily, but with good efforts? But why is there a struggle in our country?

Because everything turns out to be a fight. For example, I live in one of the most corrupt states in India. That means every government department tries to harass as much as possible. It is a constant fight to ward them off. Even among my local/private vendors (products or service), many turn out to be unprofessional and unreliable. And you already know the kind of talent pool I have to hire from. It is a chaos. But my customers are all abroad, and expect world class products and services from me. I cannot pass on the chaos to the customer, who expects perfection. Customer expects no excuses, and we give none. That is why it is so hard in India.

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

Sorry, this is the truth and I can quote examples from your own interview sessions sir. How many of the engineering graduates of today can speak proper English. leave English, ask them basic mechanics from 1st semester, lets see how many can even answer first, then recollect the CONCEPT and not give a book definition.

Actually many of them can't recall anything from the final semester. But I have met such people while living in US too, even had room mates who were so dense, I couldn't understand how they made it to US. It was them who made me realise that that the cream theory is a myth.

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

P.S:@sgiitk sir and samurai sir: As an youngster I am more than eager to learn and correct myself where ever I am wrong, so please continue to correct me. I am ready to learn.

Please drop the SIR, even the fresh trainees (half my age) call me by first name.

[ampere]

There is another facet of studying abroad too. One aspect we all know is the what we have been hearing from old times.

- Exceptionally good folks end up at Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge etc. May be some part of that lore is true.

- But a large portion of students also end in foreign universities because they think they wont get admission to good colleges
in India, especially for post graduation. Today for instance post graduation in engineering exists in very very small pockets
where I think at most 5-10% of the top guys can be accommodated.

- Now where do the rest go? Many of them would be reasonably very bright chaps who provided a good educational framework
would shape up well. But since our own country does not answer to the needs for such folks, they end up in foreign universities.

And then the familiar story repeats.

[AlphaKilo]

So I speak of our system and here it comes.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...?homepage=true

Our tertiary education system does not serve the masses

I was at Jawaharlal Nehru University recently with some of the top senior academicians in Delhi, before dinner.
I was told that the budget of the University Grants Commission was Rs.41,000 crore in the Five Year plan and the annual budget of JNU was about Rs.150 crore.
In my usual blunt way I said, “How has this benefited the Indian masses? It seems that the huge funds being ploughed into higher education in India are for the benefit of foreign countries and to give you professors huge salaries and fine houses to live in rather than to benefit the Indian people.”
This sparked off a lively debate. Some of the professors tried to refute my statement, but I stuck to my guns.
I said that most of the money spent on education in India went to the institutes of higher education like the IITs and universities, and very little money was spent on primary and middle schools, particularly in rural areas, where the foundation of education was laid. There are very few facilities such as proper seats, electricity, books, classrooms, etc in these primary or middle schools, whereas the institutes of higher education are given huge funds and have very good facilities, state-of-the-art campuses, air-conditioning, etc. I then gave a few examples to prove what I said:
1. I once went to a village about 40 km from Allahabad (my native city) to meet a farmer friend of mine, with whom I had studied at Allahabad University.
At his home I met one of his sons who had passed class seven and promoted to class eight in his high school in the village. I asked him to bring his class 7 mathematics book and solve a few simple problems. He could not do so. I wondered how he had been promoted when he could not solve simple class 7 problems. I then solved those simple problems, and asked him to attempt the other problems in the lesson. He was obviously an intelligent boy, because having learnt how to solve the simple problems, he proceeded to solve the rest.
At this I asked him, “Did your teacher not teach you all this?” He replied, “Master Sahib thekedari karne lage hain, aur doosre master sahib class lene aate naheen hai” (the teacher has become a contractor, and the next teacher does not come to take classes”).

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

Really sir? Is this really because of the jobs or the development that has happened or due to the worldwide economic slow down?

Sorry I was away for a couple of days.

I think it is a combination of three major factors. First, of all compensation levels in India are now becoming very reasonable, most students know that at a fairly early stage most employers will post them abroad for a few years, and the job market abroad is in the doldrums. Also, many do not want to be losing their jobs ar a later date (poor risk appetite, maybe!).

Also, with our crazy system where on one hand there are engineering seats going abegging in Tier III and IV, the elite ones have a major crush for seats, and reservations etc. are resulting in dilution of standards. Today coaching it becoming almost mandatory to qualify esp. JEE. So the upper or even the mid-upper economic group is encouraging their kids to forget IIT and NITs and look abroad. Definitely, an Engineering degree from HK or Singapore is a very good degree - Globally these institutions are ranked far higher than any Indian Institution.

[srishiva]

So, there is a problem with intense competition to get into mediocre institutions? It would be better for most to look at education abroad then. That would really mean greater problem with the infrastructure and system in place than students

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by sgiitk

Also, with our crazy system where on one hand there are engineering seats going abegging in Tier III and IV, the elite ones have a major crush for seats, and reservations etc. are resulting in dilution of standards.

It is indeed crazy. When I first started the company in 2004, I was quite concerned about how to get attract people from top colleges. Eventually it turned out to be a non-issue. I should have known better considering I am from a Tier 3 college. With lot of filtering, I am able to find high quality people from Tier 3 or even Tier 5 college. We have to constantly refine the hiring process, and follow it up with a creative training regime. This way I am able to create very competent engineers. My senior partner who is an IITian himself has been pleasantly surprised how it worked out.

It is the people that matter, not the college. People who heavily depend on outside factors to get and retain a job, prefer to get pedigree via top colleges. But there are lot of people who prefer to attend local colleges due to cheaper cost and convenience of staying with parents. They don't worry too much about pedigree or depend on it to get/retain a job. You can find lot of good candidates among them.

Originally Posted by sgiitk

Definitely, an Engineering degree from HK or Singapore is a very good degree - Globally these institutions are ranked far higher than any Indian Institution.

Exactly, this is another revelation I had during my long stay in US. Outside of desi groups, IIT was rather unheard of among the tech crowd in the 90s. But you could always go to soc.culture.indian usenet group for a good old IITian vs non-IITian fight. It was a thread that ran for years like this thread.

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

Once, I was asked this question by my professor, "You Indians are working on almost all of the latest software stuff, and you guys give statistics that x % of microsoft, y % of Intel and z % of NASA employees are Indians

I have seen that recycled email many times over a decade, and it is a highly exaggerated info. Very far from truth.

[AlphaKilo]

Originally Posted by Samurai

It is indeed crazy. When I first started the company in 2004, I was quite concerned about how to get attract people from top colleges. Eventually it turned out to be a non-issue. I should have known better considering I am from a Tier 3 college. With lot of filtering, I am able to find high quality people from Tier 3 or even Tier 5 college. We have to constantly refine the hiring process, and follow it up with a creative training regime. This way I am able to create very competent engineers. My senior partner who is an IITian himself has been pleasantly surprised how it worked out.

Can you give us a small road-map on how the trend has changed from 2004 untill now?

It is the people that matter, not the college. People who heavily depend on outside factors to get and retain a job, prefer to get pedigree via top colleges. But there are lot of people who prefer to attend local colleges due to cheaper cost and convenience of staying with parents. They don't worry too much about pedigree or depend on it to get/retain a job. You can find lot of good candidates among them.

Was the same case with my brother(cousin) during the early 90's. He cleared the JEE(don't remember what it was called back then!) and even got a seat(without any coaching ) in NIT(REC back then!) Kurukshetra but wanted to stay back with his parents for all the above reasons you had mentioned.

Even I had some of my classmates from the same status. Although the institution to a certain extent influences a student but its the student's individual efforts that seperates one from another, the best from the remaining.

I have seen that recycled email many times over a decade, and it is a highly exaggerated info. Very far from truth.

Probably, he also got that forward mail.

Well, jokes apart, if we have to discuss why such a thing is not happening in reality, then, I believe we would start to beat around the same bush once again and this topic will go nowhere.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

Can you give us a small road-map on how the trend has changed from 2004 untill now?

It isn't the trend that changed. In fact, the average quality of candidates has been steadily declining. But our hiring/training technique is constantly tweaked/revised/adapted. We have just gotten better and better at separating wheat from the chaff.

[blue_pulsar]

I witnessed a worst fresher last week. There is this new fresher in my team. My company trains freshers (this one on Java/J2EE). After she came into the team, we (my competent juniors) brushed up her basics once again and inducted her into the project etc. We didn't rush her through this. We gave her three weeks time. Finally we gave her some work. We gave her some testing first. In parallel, we asked her to debug through the code. She did the testing pretty well. Next, I gave her to code a simple method which would have been around 50 lines. Also, to her luck, we had a similar method in other part of the project. Only thing is that she had to iterate through the loop and change few parameters related to this module (when compared to similar code). A day passed by, no progress. EOD, I saw her google "while loop". I was shocked! It is significant to add here that she is from a Computer Science background. I'm sure, a competent high school/11th/12th kid could write that piece of code. What do you do with such freshers?

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by srishiva

It would be better for most to look at education abroad then. That would really mean greater problem with the infrastructure and system in place than students

Originally Posted by sgiitk

S

an Engineering degree from HK or Singapore is a very good degree - Globally these institutions are ranked far higher than any Indian Institution.

Well in past couple of years there is a focus on recruiting PhD degree holders in my organization so I have interviewed several Phd and Master degree holders from Nanyang and other Asian universities and also from top tier universities from Australia /NJ , My experience is not good.

These PhD's are as good as a PhD from say Anna University

When someone has done his masters from US ( Even tier 3 university), Canada or some European university some of the things you can expect are.

1. He will be taking some problem for thesis / dissertation which is moderately complex befitting a Master / PhD .

2. Candidate will be able to explain the work done lucidly.

3. There will be a fair degree of original work.

4. If the work done is in the areas of Communications / Software or Computing you can expect to see them submitting the patches to Open Source based on the work done.

One the Contrary Indian , HK, Singapore candidates do not fulfill the above hygiene conditions and probably a B.E / B.Tech is much better because he has not wasted 5-6 years and is much more malleable.

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by amitk26

I have interviewed several Phd and Master degree holders from Nanyang and other Asian universities and also from top tier universities from Australia /NJ , My experience is not good.

These PhD's are as good as a PhD from say Anna University

I think the Singapore Univs are known for the UG programs and not the P programs which are known to be pretty sad.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by sgiitk

I think the Singapore Univs are known for the UG programs and not the P programs which are known to be pretty sad.

May be true ,

During campus recruitment In one of the IIT in last year , I observed M.Tech students with undergraduates from unknown colleges were better then duel degree or B.Tech , May be simply due to the fact that they worked harder to get that IIT tag and studied a lot for getting high percentile in GATE and were much more serious to get a job. ( We were on day 4 morning, Slots on first 3 days were for investment banks/foreign recruiters ) Many other colleagues shared similar observation.

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by amitk26

During campus recruitment In one of the IIT in last year , I observed M.Tech students with undergraduates from unknown colleges were better then duel degree or B.Tech , May be simply due to the fact that they worked harder to get that IIT tag and studied a lot for getting high percentile in GATE and were much more serious to get a job. ( We were on day 4 morning, Slots on first 3 days were for investment banks/foreign recruiters )

The Dual Degree chaps are almost all the ones who do not get admission to the single degree. They just become lazy, sure that they have enough 'bank balance' of grades from the first four years. I am aware of only two cases of chaps asking for a switch into Dual Degree! I do not put any weightage on GATE, since I know there are colleges who do intensive coaching the the last years of their BEs just to get high Gate Scores. Students from other colleges (there are virtually none applying from IITs or NITs) are a mixed lot, from sublime to the ridiculous.

You wrote right, duel degree like I often call out highways, Duel carriageway!

[AlphaKilo]

Originally Posted by amitk26

May be true ,

During campus recruitment In one of the IIT in last year , I observed M.Tech students with undergraduates from unknown colleges were better then duel degree or B.Tech , May be simply due to the fact that they worked harder to get that IIT tag and studied a lot for getting high percentile in GATE and were much more serious to get a job. ( We were on day 4 morning, Slots on first 3 days were for investment banks/foreign recruiters ) Many other colleagues shared similar observation.

If I may ask, can you share with us on what basis you felt that M.Techs with undergrad from outside were better, and the Ph.D's from Singapore/HG are only as good as from "Anna" univ? May be quoting a example or a situation might help! Nothing offensive, just curious to know the recruiters/managers perspective. (not that i am looking for a job but always good to know!)
Thanks

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

If I may ask, can you share with us on what basis you felt that M.Techs with undergrad from outside were better,

I Participated in Campus interviews in various campus for last few years , In IITs students were asked to sit in a written test and interviews were conducted for shortlisted candidates. The input was mixed group of B.Tech and M.Tech.

Branches we targeted were CS , Electrical , Communication or related fields for M.Tech such as VLSI , DSP.

My observation was simply based on the interviews conducted.

A few samples common questions out of my memory.

1. A student did his project for Image noise removal , I asked him how do you define Noise in case of Image ? No clear answer finally he said suppose it is 8 bits grey scale image then values will be from 0 to 255 so when it is 255 it is a noise. On further digging if you are clicking picture of a white board or black board ( depending on what is 255) will it be image full of noise.
He remained silent.

2. What is difference in time domain and frequency domain ?
With no answer forthcoming asked directly do you remember Laplace and Fourier transforms ? The answer was no , How exactly they studied DSP and Image Processing is beyond me.

3. For Computer Sc. students

(a) Asked to design a clock going to hour and day deriving from a lowest level tick ( assume 1 sec tick) ? Very few students solved this , No code was required only asked to explain with pen and paper the approach taken.


(b) Asked a few questions on System Design and asked do you necessarily need an OS ? The answer was invariably yes then when I asked then how come micro-controllers and programs in toys work they had no clear idea.

(c) More direct question on services provided by OS were often replied in form of what a PC OS does including TCP /IP when I asked is it essential service for OS answer was yes in 90% of cases.

After this when I asked what is difference between Micro Kernel and Monolithic Kernel very few people realized that answer to previous question was incorrect ( and they were shortlisted for realizing it)

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

and the Ph.D's from Singapore/HG are only as good as from "Anna" univ? May be quoting a example or a situation might help! Nothing offensive, just curious to know the recruiters/managers perspective. (not that i am looking for a job but always good to know!)
Thanks

Based on empirical results after interviewing few dozen of Phd candidates.
My observation is people who go for PhD after some work experience voluntarily generally are better others simply did Phd because they could not secure job after graduation and after a gap of couple of years higer studies was a necessity.

Few common red herrings

(1) The problem description was too simplistic or the thesis was mostly a comparative study.

Example: A Candidate submitted 32 page resume with everything under the sun in Cloud computing with all essential keywords such as SODA , SOA , Internet of Things etc. with the description of the term from Wikipedia but no description of what exactly he did.

On asking what is your contribution or work in these areas same lecture on cloud computing was repeated.
Probed further but similar response so finally after few iterations gave up and said thanks for your time.

(2) The development was done on some open source but could not clearly identify what capability particular research added.
(3) No patch ever submitted back or questions evaded citing that blah blah is confidential ( if it is confidential how exactly you submitted your thesis ? )

(4) A common question asked was where can you apply your research giving certain broad situations , Again no answers.


Disclaimer I am myself not a PhD but some of the things were too basic.